Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie spotting

Brad, Angelina and Philip Seymour Hoffman were seen leaving burroughes building on Queen at Bathurst.

'Goodbye First Love' an attempt to capture the past

The North American premiere of Goodbye First Love was well received.

A lyrical film, it charts the journey of a melancholy teenage girl and her evolution into a strong female architect who chooses a new love over her first love.

The film's director, Mia Hansen-Løve, told the crowd one of the key location choices of the Loire was important as the Loire was mystical for her!

Hansen-Løve said being a filmmaker made her love architecture. The scenery in the film was divine and the characters were well written and well acted, showing great vulnerability.

Writing a film, for the director, is an attempt to keep something from the past  Hansen-Løve said. But once it's made the film becomes an independent, organic, separate piece of work.

-- Debra Black

Hanging on for a heartthrob

Two girls hang on to a lamp post at the red carpet area at Roy Thomson Hall waiting for heartthrob Brad Pitt/Debra Black

When the cat doesn't come back, cast a wolverine

Now it can be told: the reason for the mysterious stuffed wolverine that is front-and-centre in Keyhole, Guy Maddin's madcap ghosts-and-gangsters movie at TIFF.

"I was supposed to be a cat, a living cat," says star Jason Patric, who plays a gangleader named Ulysses.

"And I'm allergic to cats. And Guy had a wolverine in his apartment. So I said, 'Why not make it that wolverine?'"

Maddin says he readily agreed to Patric's suggestion.

"A couple of other people were allergic to cats, too.  It was a lot simpler using the wolverine, because you dont' have to have a cat wrangler. And they take off like a shot as soon as you put them on the set. You spend 20  minutes chasing the cat down, and things like that. So just having a taxidermied what-not was fine with me."

He had a choice of stuffed animals, though.

"It was either a wolverine or an emu. The emu is in my wife's apartment."

-- Peter Howell.

A close-up French view of George Clooney's star power

André Wilms, the French star of Aki Kaurismaki's comedy Le Havre, playing at TIFF, doesn't consider himself a movie star, despite his decades in the business and his popularity in Europe (North America will soon be following).

But he knows what a star looks like: George Clooney.

He watched Clooney in action last weekend at the Telluride Film Festival, which both men attended enroute to Toronto for TIFF.  They and other actors and filmmakers were summoned for a "class photo" near the end, for which Wilms showed up in casual attire. Not Clooney, however.

"It was very funny, because I came to understand what it is to be a star," Wilms told The Star.

"We had a group photo of everyone who was in Telluride -- with George Clooney.

"And George Clooney was made up:  make up -- everything -- perfect. Even in a group photo in Telluride, where everybody is nice and everybody is great, he had perfect maquillage (makeup). Perfect!

"And I thought, 'Yeah, that's a real job to be a star!'" said Wilms, 64, laughing.

"He was the only one who was absolutely perfect. His teeth were absolutely white.

"That's Hollywood. That's a movie star! It's tough, though, because it's real work.  He's a nice guy, though."

-- Peter Howell.

Clooney plays the joker and Gosling talks politics

George Clooney answers and laughs though questions about his film The Ides of March.

You could tell it was Friday at the TIFF Lightbox – it was giggles all around.

George Clooney was present to field questions on his new epic The Ides of March – in which he stars and directs, but he couldn’t seem to keep a straight face.

He laughed when he was asked what it was like to direct a film, he guffawed when he was asked what it was like to act in a movie he directed.

People snickered when a reporter asked co-star, Ryan Gosling, A Canadian, if he had ever thought of running politically in Canada (he said no).

But the biggest hoots came after a confusing story about Clooney spraying the crotch of Gosling’s pants with water. Hollywood, go figure.

Anyway, the movie is supposed to be good. It’s a political drama taking place during a US presidential campaign with the usual ingredients of power, intrigue and – most of all – betrayal.

Clooney is Mike Morris, a democratic preseidential candidate with Philip Seymour Hoffman as his campain manager.

But Clooney stressed it wasn’t a movie about politics but more of one about moral choice.

"It’s a fundamental moral tale placed in politics," he said. "It’s a thriller, a political drama."

He said it isn’t wrong to hold up a mirror to a country’s political reality – one that may be filled with cynicism – but that’s not what The Ides of March is about.

Clooney said Gosling, who plays the part of Stephen Meyers – the brains behind Morris’ campaign – is superb along with the rest of the cast.

"Ryan knocked it out of the park." he said. "He’s a tremendous performer."

Clooney said intelligence is a requirement of an actor … but that doesn’t always happen.

-- Paul Irish

Report from the lineup: 'Goodbye First Love'

The lineup for Goodbye First Love is very civil. Chatty crowd waiting in anticipation. Munching on popcorn. Small crowd so far surprisingly.

-- Debra Black

Bono says U2 on 'edge of irrelevance'

Despite being considered one of the biggest bands in the world, it was a contemplative Bono and the Edge at Friday’s press event. Flanked by Davis Guggenheim, the director of From The Sky Down, the opening night documentary looking at the making of "Achtung Baby", and hosted by Thom Powers, the documentary programmer for the festival, who also took questions submitted by Twitter.

What was most striking is that while the theme of the documentary was about the band’s struggle for reinvention 20 years ago, Bono said that they are basically at the same place now. 

“U2 has been on the verge of irrelevance for the past 20 years," Bono said. "We made some great work, I hope, along the way, and on occasion, faux pas. But this moment now, where we're at, for me, feels like really close to the edge of irrelevance. And we can be successful, we can play the big music in big places, but whether we can play the small places — the small speakers, the radio, clubs, or where people are living, remains to be seen. And I think we have to go to that place again if we are to survive." Interesting words from a musician who really has done it all, and makes us even more curious about what comes next.

-Raju Mudhar

If you think actors are difficult to work with ... try cows

Director Guy Édoin had to build a manure deflector to protect his cameras while filming his first feature film, Wetlands.

He was filming the drama on his parents’ dairy farm in Quebec’s Eastern Townships and an important part of the story involved a cow giving birth.

With a crew of 12 and 40 bovines in the barn, it was pretty close quarters, he told a TIFF panel discussion Thursday that featured first time directors on six films primed for release.

“We made a s*** deflector,” he told the laughing audience, “It’s true and it was a great experience for everybody.”

 
Wetlands director Guy Édoin

Anne Émond, whose film Nuit#1 was shot over 20 nights with two actors in a small apartment, replied, “We didn’t haven any animals, just two humans. But people are hard, not just cows.
“We had hard scenes, lots of nudity, lots of long conversations. It’s another kind of challenge.”

Riverdale residents Yonah Lewis, 25, and 24-year-old Calvin Thomas’s coming-of-age film Amy George was shot entirely in their backyards, lanes and nearby Withrow and Riverdale Parks. Once shooting began, Lewis realized that he had many scenes “of kids climbing trees” which were difficult to stage and shoot. The two directors also wrote and filmed the movie after arriving at the conclusion the common experience they both had and which they wanted to put on screen was “adolescence”.

Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas

It took 15 years and a volley of letters to imprisoned bank robber Edwin Boyd before Nathan Morlando’s dream became a movie starring well-known actor Scott Speedman. The long labour of love became “an obsession”, he admits, and one that he is only now ready to let go now that Edwin Boyd is ready for theatres. He urged young directors to be persistent and to find a good producer. The session was sponsored by Telefilm Canada which had provided some assistance to all of the directors.

-Trish Crawford

tcrawford@thestar.ca

 

Everybody loves Sam Neill

Irish-born Kiwi Sam Neill has a sense of humour that’s as dry as a James Bond martini, so I’m always glad to get a chance to talk to him at TIFF. He’s in town promoting The Hunter, a made-in-Tasmania dramatic thriller starring Willem Dafoe which has its world premiere Friday night. The film is gorgeous, but clearly shot off the grid in some challenging, mist-shrouded territory that looked cold, wet and often miserable despite the natural beauty. Was it rough, I asked? “My athlete’s foot will never be the same again,” deadpanned Neill.

Neill is a popular guy with his fellow actors. Dafoe praised him and his sense of humour in a later interview Friday and before that, Machine Gun Preacher Gerard Butler was pleasantly surprised to hear I’d just spoken with his pal. “I love Sam,” he said.

-Linda Barnard