TIFF 2011
From the coolest auteur to the hottest actress, the top 6 at TIFF
Liam Lacey AND Gayle Macdonald
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published
Last updated
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The It Boy
Most recently caught on YouTube breaking up a street scuffle in his adopted city of New York, the Southern Ontario-raised Ryan Gosling – with the six-pack Emma Stone thought was photo-shopped in the romantic comedy Crazy, Stupid Love – is clearly the highly versatile, go-to guy in Hollywood. A-lister George Clooney hand-picked the former Mouseketeer to co-star with him in the much-anticipated The Ides of March, about dirty backroom politics. He’s also set to star in the Cannes award-winning thriller Drive, where he plays a stunt performer-turned-wheelman with a price on his head. At 30, the Oscar-nominated actor (Half Nelson) has made a succession of smart choices, from tear-jerkers (The Notebook), emotionally wrenching dramas (Blue Valentine) and action thrillers, proving there’s little this no-nonsense, dog-loving Canadian can’t do.
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The It Girl
Since her Oscar win for Fernando Meirelles's The Constant Gardener (2005), the University of Cambridge-educated Rachel Weisz has been constantly busy, working with international directors such as Wong Kar-Wai (My Blueberry Nights) and Alejandro Amenabar (Agora), and in independent films such as The Whistleblower. This year, the 41-year-old actress has three films at TIFF (four if you include the retrospective screening of Bernardo Bertolucci's Stealing Beauty), including Meirelles's psychosexual drama 360, an adaptation of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, and David Hare’s espionage thriller Page Eight. This year, Weisz also bagged her Bond Man, marrying Daniel Craig, whom she worked with in Toronto on Irish director Jim Sheridan's thriller Dream House, in theatres this fall.
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The Film
Given the warm reception that George Clooney’s other films have enjoyed at TIFF, it seems a no-brainer that The Ides of March, boasting an all-star cast including Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman, will be the gala hot ticket of 2011. The meaty political drama, which was directed and co-written by Clooney and based on Beau Willimon’s Broadway play Farragut North, features Gosling as an ambitious but naive press spokesman, who is the victim of nasty backroom politics and finds himself at the centre of a political scandal that threatens his Democratic candidate’s (Clooney) shot at the presidency. The film, which also includes Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood, has all the makings of Clooney’s other TIFF darlings, including 2007’s Michael Clayton and Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, both of which netted him best actor Oscar nominations.
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The up-and-comer
It may come as a surprise, but there are more than two Olsen siblings in Hollywood. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen – twins, former child stars, fashion icons and tabloid cover-girls – have a younger sister named Elizabeth, or Lizzie. Another shocker: The 22-year-old is a serious actress who became the break-out star of this year's Sundance Film Festival for her performance in Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene, as a damaged young woman who escapes from a cult and tries to rejoin her family.
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The auteur
The English director Steve McQueen came to fame as an artist and experimental filmmaker, winning the 1999 Turner Prize, and later serving as England's official war artist in Iraq. Then, in 2008, he directed his first feature, the harrowing drama Hunger, starring Michael Fassbender as Irish hunger-striker Bobby Sands, who died in Northern Ireland's Maze prison in 1981. Hunger won the Camera d'or at Cannes, followed by a string of prizes (including the Diesel Discovery Award voted by press at TIFF) and ended up on many year-end top-10 lists. McQueen's second film, Shame, set in New York City, stars Michael Fassbender as Brandon, a sexually compulsive man whose life begins to spin out of control after his younger sister (Carey Mulligan) moves in with him.
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Celeb sighting
It’s a three-way toss-up between a Material Girl and the two heartthrobs known as Brad and George for who will draw the biggest crowds this year. To be sure, there will be throngs of people trying to sneak a peek of Pitt and Clooney – Oceans 11, 12 and 13 co-stars as well as long-time friends – grabbing a meal together. (Mind you, Pitt could prove the bigger attraction for fans if he brings Angie and the brood). But the Michigan-born, globe-trotting Madonna, in town to promote W.E., her biopic about the scandalous affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, won’t be outshone. When it comes to stealing the limelight, she’s a ruthless pro.
