Penelope Cruz won friends and influenced people Friday outside the Intercontinental Hotel on Bloor Street.
The actress stopped, chatted and signed autographs for the mob of movie fans who congregate daily outside the hotel in hopes of seeing their idols.
In the midst of all the body guards, dark glasses, disguising baseball caps and limousines, Cruz was a breath of fresh air.
-- Liz Braun
THIS KAT LOVES READING:
Kat Dennings, who stars with Woody Harrelson in the movie Defendor, is a big reader. She's busy with Dodie Smith's novel, I Capture the Castle, at the moment, recommends Haruki Murakami's A Wild Sheep Chase and mentions that she's also writing herself.
At the moment, she's got a screenplay on the go that she wrote with one of her brothers.
Dennings, who also starred recently in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist and Shorts, says she really, really loves acting, but writing is also a big passion of hers.
"And I want to have something else I can do, just in case I get into a, you know, disfiguring, fiery accident." She laughs. "I'm just saying."
-- Liz Braun
GOATS HEAD SOUP:
Remember when the music group The Moldy Peaches broke into the mainstream after their song Anyone Else But You was used in the TIFF breakout film, Juno, a couple of years ago?
Well, the '70s classic rock anthem More Than a Feeling by Boston could get the same boost from its prominent use in the George Clooney war comedy The Men Who Stare At Goats, which had its premiere screening at TIFF on Thursday night.
Trust me when I say you'll leave the theatre humming; "It's more than a feeling, when I hear that old song they used to play."
Among the other great late-'70s and early-'80s songs in the hilarious film about psychic soldiers include Generation X's Dancing WIth Myself and Billy Squier's Everybody Wants You. Clooney even dances on screen. Twice.
-- Jane Stevenson
Diablo loves horror:
Forget Freddy, Jason and Leatherface. Pop-quippy wordsmith Diablo Cody, who won an Oscar for penning Juno, believes more horror movies should separate the boys from the monsters.
"I think there's nothing scarier than a bitch," says Cody, who wrote the new Megan Fox vehicle Jennifer's Body. In the film, which opens wide Friday, Fox plays a high school cheerleader turned demonic cannibal. "Dracula, Frankenstein and like a bitchy attractive woman. It's about that bad."
You don't find many Oscar winners dabbling in horror so soon after Academy Award glory, but Cody, who conceived Jennifer's Body around the same time as Juno, is an unapologetic genre geek.
"I've loved the horror genre my entire life. When I was a kid I was restricted from watching them most of the time, which made that section of the video store all the more tantalizing. So now being able to make a horror film is delicious."
-- Kevin Williamson
Girl on girl reporting:
Megan Fox isn't surprised she's being asked about how tantalizing tight she and Amanda Seyfried get in the lesbian-laced horror comedy Jennifer's Body. But at a news conference for the film's TIFF premiere, she admitted to being a bit puzzled at just who is asking her.
"It's weird ... That question is always asked by female journalists," Fox told the latest woman to inquire about the lingering kiss she and Seyfried share on-screen.
"It's bizarre because you'd think it would be males (asking) and it's not. I would think you'd want to attack this from a different angle, being a woman and us being women."
Fact is, Fox doesn't think the scene is very sexy at all. "I felt like it's so awkward and quiet."
Audiences will get a chance to judge the lip-lock's hotness for themselves when the schlock send-up, co-starring Adam Brody and Johnny Simmons, opens wide on Friday.
-- Kevin Williamson
'60s are still groovy:
Whether it's Mad Men, Revolutionary Road or the Beatles Rock Band video game, the early 1960s are as groovy as ever. Add to this pop culture pile-up An Education, the bracing coming-of-age drama starring Carey Mulligan as a teenager in 1961 London.
"I always loved reading books that took place in that period," says Danish director Lone Scherfig. "My early childhood is that period and it's so nice I didn't have to become an adult like they thought I would have to."
In other words, she had more options than to be either a civil servant or a housewife -- the grim choice most women had to face.
As for why the era of JFK and Marilyn Monroe still holds such appeal, Scherfig theorizes it could be because it helps people who weren't born yet -- or were just children -- understand the world their parents came from. But the period is also close enough to the present-day that the situations are relatable.
"I like seeing movies set in the 15th century, but it's hard to get emotionally involved. If things aren't that far back, it's easier to break the glass wall between the audience and the movie. I love Mad Men. They don't run it in Denmark yet. And I loved Revolutionary Road."
In fact, she loves Mad Men so much that when she learned during roundtable interviews that one of the nearby gifting booths -- or swag suites -- was doling out Mad Men DVDs, she went to get one for herself.
An Education meanwhile opens across Canada this fall, starting in select markets in October.
-- Kevin Williamson
reverse your t0ngue:
Carey Mulligan is now being schooled in how to sound like an American.
The star of An Education is co-starring as Michael Douglas' daughter in the Oliver Stone sequel Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. The drama, which co-stars Shia LaBeouf, is shooting in New York City and is due in theatres next spring.
And she's quickly discovered that there are some words she hates more than others -- like 'father.' "There's a lot of things that, to say it with an American accent, you have to reverse the way your tongue moves. (In Wall Street 2) I have to say a line, 'Futures commodities marginalization act' and I spent two hours with a voice coach on that. In An Education, Peter Sarsgaard has a line, 'You slam your glass down on the bar and ask for more.' And he struggled with that. He nailed it in the end, but I remember on set trying that line with an American accent and everything is reversed."
-- Kevin Williamson
O LUCKY SUCK:
It's received arguably the most attention of any Canadian film at TIFF -- including a distribution deal with Alliance Films.
But the thing that impressed me most about this fun, rock' 'n' roll vampire musical was its clever digital use of one of my favourite '70s films, O Lucky Man, starring Malcolm McDowell. Credit goes to McDowell himself, who was so committed to the project, he intervened to help director/writer/star Rob Stefaniuk land the rights.
McDowell plays vampire hunter Eddie Van Helsing in the movie, and is seen in "flashbacks" as a twentysomething, flipping over a bedsheet and discovering his lady love lying bloodless in bed -- a trauma that launches his career as the bane of the Undead.
Of course, anybody who's seen the 1973 O Lucky Man, knows Malcolm actually flipped the sheet to discover a squealing pig/human hybrid. But hey, a look of horror is a look of horror.
"It's amazing how many people have seen our movie and think we hired a young Malcolm McDowell lookalike," says director Rob Stefaniuk.
--Jim Slotek
