And now for the latest on the Toronto International Film Festival...
We couldn't be there ourselves - our invite must have gotten lost in the post - so we'll have to make do with keeping tabs on all TIFF related news online. By all accounts so far, it's shaping up to be a very good year for the festival; most films to premiere there have reportedly delievered on their respective promises - Looper, The Place Beyond The Pines, The Silver Lingings Playbook - while films that had already done well at other festivals, continued to shine here (The Master, On The Road, Argo, Anna Karenina).
From a filmic point of view, one of the festival's producers said over the weekend: "It feels like the start of something new... A lot of the old ways of making movies don't work anymore, so filmmakers are trying different things and we're seeing a lot of fresh energy here."
In star related news, while Kristen Stewart's love life (shit storm) settles down around her, she's been keeping herself busy forging a friendship with fellow starlets Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Roberts at TIFF. Dispelling any rumours that these three consider themselves rivals, the trio of 22 year olds were snapped hanging out in a corner of the priate Soho House Club in Toronto, having a chinwag over a cocktail. Noted by Nick Jones (founder of the Soho House group): "They're just three girls having a quiet chat after a long day and an even longer night working". Lawrence was in town for the premiere of her latest movie The Silver Linings Playbook, K-Stew was there to promote On The Road (as well as to avoid bitter Twi-hards at the VMAs) while Hermoine was there for The Perks of Being a Wallflower from a novel by Stephen Chbosky.
Also on the subject of beautiful people watching, it's said that Ryan Gosling arrived by private jet with a cat in one arm and girlfriend Eva Mendes on the other. Didn't take him for a cat man myslef. Gosling of course was there for the premiere of his movie The Place Beyond the Pines which also stars Bradley Cooper, who's here also for The Silver Linings Playbook, which also stars Lawrence above. Keeping up? And breeeeathe.
In terms of reviews, as per The Hollywood Reporter, one of the films to go down particularly well at this year's TIFF is Tom Hanks starrer Cloud Atlas which earned itself a whopper standing ovation. Now we haven't had the pleasure of seeing it yet ourselves so we have to take THR's word for it that is "a mind-blowing film" adapted from a best-selling novel by David Mitchell with the Wachowski directors at the helm. Apparently the film, which releases in October was greeted with a "loud and lengthy standing ovation" that lasted pretty much the entire length of the finishing credits. The large ensemble cast which includes Oscar winners Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, James D'Arcy, Jim Sturgess, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, Keith David, Xun Zhou and Doona Bae were almost all in attendance. For those of you who've yet to read about Cloud Atlas, the actors here play multiple roles in multiple eras across this time-travelling narrative. I spoke to Hugh Grant earlier this year about his particular roles in the film. While THR's reviewer wasn't himself blown away by the sum of this movie's parts, he does allude to the ringing of Oscar sounding bells.
