The Globe and Mail

Thursday, September 16, 2010 9:20 AM EDT

The ladies love Gosling

The girls were squealing for Ryan Gosling on Wednesday night, first on the red carpet outside the Ryerson Theatre for the Canadian premiere of his film Blue Valentine, and again during the screening, when his character takes his shirt off. (Gosling and Michelle Williams play a married couple in the throes of a breakup, juxtaposed against flashbacks of them falling in love.)

Then the girls switched to cooing when Gosling appeared on stage carrying in his arms Faith Wladyka, the young actress who plays his daughter in the movie. Gosling said his scenes with Wladyka were his favourite to film.

“Not since Hall and Oates has there been a team like this,” he said, giving Wladyka a high-five.

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Thursday, September 16, 2010 9:07 AM EDT

Fans pack Horsehoe in hope of a Springsteen sighting

Sarah Boesveld

10 p.m. at The Horseshoe

Boss fans, unite! It feels like a rock 'n' roll, E-Street lovin' temple here as people crowd at the bar and in front of the stage just yearning for a Springsteen sighting. The legendary venue is packed and rocker Jesse Malin's show – he's the actual headliner tonight – is sold out. It's the best shake at one last Boss sighting, fans say, and the possibility he'll leap onstage with a guitar and jam with Malin, a long-time buddy.

Ottawa-based rock outfit Clothes Make the Man are tying up, their driving rock coursing through the think anticipation in the legendary Shoe. Earlier today, I heard Springsteen had already headed back to Jersey. But promoters at the Shoe have been cagey about this Malin show – Springsteen has been a surprise guest at some of his gigs before and they've said the odds are good that he'll appear (of course they'll say that). Tickets for tonight's gig have been going for over $100 on Craigslist - even I had to talk to a guy who talked to another guy to make sure I was on the guest list. Will Springsteen appear? "If you missed it, you'd be kicking yourself," says Ron, a fan I met tonight. He and friends Susan and Jill got their tickets on Ticketmaster on Monday after hearing the rumours. Jill says she's seen Springsteen "tons of times" and she has a drumstick from one of the concerts.

There's no sign of the Boss just yet – true, it's early. And it's a crapshoot either way. But devoted fans like Ron, Susan and Jill aren't willing to miss a beat.

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010 4:37 PM EDT

Abigail Breslin's lucky Horseshoe

Johanna Schneller

Abigail Breslin, the 14-year-old star of the TIFF film Janie Jones, got a little education in the less-than-glamorous life of a club singer when she took the stage at Toronto's legendary Horseshoe Tavern Tuesday night.

First, her co-star Alessandro Nivola had to sing over some major feedback. Then the Irish singer/songwriter Gemma Hayes, whose music appears in the film, was saluted by a fan with a boozy-sounding, “I love you, Emma!”

“It’s Gemma, but thanks,” Hayes said, grinning. “Good one.”

When it was her turn at the mike, Breslin (pictured above) sang in a voice that showed some promise but was uneven enough that she shouldn’t quit her day job just yet. Between songs, though, she grinned with such relief, and spoke so sweetly -- “I’m very excited to be singing. It’s the first time I’ve sung in front of people” – that any glitches were forgiven.

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Thursday, September 16, 2010 8:39 AM EDT

Nossiter: Don't baby the actors!

Liam Lacey

Jonathan Nossiter, the filmmaker who created Sunday, Signs and Wonders and the epic wine documentary Mondovino (2004), has spent the last five years on his latest film, Rio Sex Comedy, a combination of political farce and documentary set in his adopted home of Brazil.

Nossiter created an unusual co-op working system on his set, in which the stars -- Charlotte Rampling, Bill Pullman, Fisher Stevens and French actress Irene Jacob -- were paid the same as the lesser actors and the 10-person crew for a long four-and-a-half month shoot.

"Four years ago, we could see that the film industry as it existed was headed for disaster and this was just one of the possible responses to that," he said. "Friends told me, you can't get a major American actor like Bill Pullman eating his breakfast off the back of a truck on a sidewalk in a favela, or a European diva like Charlotte Rampling to work in those conditions. But the first day I went to visit her I found Charlotte in a very modest room busy ironing her clothes in preparation for shooting.

"I believe if you treat actors like babies, they act like babies. You treat audiences or journalists like babies, they do the same. So you treat them like adults."

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Thursday, September 16, 2010 8:40 AM EDT

Ryan Gosling's character studies

Liam Lacey

Ryan Gosling has a history of taking on difficult roles: a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer, a crack-addicted junior-high teacher in Half-Nelson, for which he received an Oscar nomination, and a man who loved a blow-up doll in Lars and the Real Girl. His new character is Dean, Michelle Williams' husband in Derek Cianfrance's portrait of a marriage on the rocks, Blue Valentine.

When it comes to choosing a role, says Gosling, "a large part of the consideration for what I want to do is this part of it: what do I feel comfortable talking about and living with, for months or years afterward. At the risk of sounding trite, it's like taking a lover; it may not be someone you marry but you're going to live with the choice."

An actor who often works with independent and first-time directors, he's in a familiar position of having a movie that depends on his fame to make it commercially viable. Does that add to the pressure?

"I think you have to choose films where the material is a lot more important than you are," says Gosling (pictured above in a scene from Blue Valentine). "If you think your performance is going to save the film, you're setting yourself up for a fall."

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010 4:40 PM EDT

Rainn woman

Johanna Schneller

Actress Taraji P. Henson put up with a moody pimp in Hustle and Flow and a child who ages in reverse in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for which she received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination.

In her TIFF film, Peep World, she’s a cop who inspires a hapless lawyer played by Rainn Wilson (The Office) to stand up to his overbearing family.

“I just love dark humour,” Henson said in an interview on Wednesday. “I get it. I’m always told in my work that I’m the ray of sunshine. I’m always the one who’s like, ‘Come on, you can do this!’ This was another opportunity to be that ray in all of this dark humour.

"And I think Rainn is incredibly sexy, and I just wanted to kiss him.”

She burst into giggles. “I’ve always been a fan of his work,” she continued. “I thought it was unexpected, me and him together, and I love throwing curve balls. And he has swagger in this. He’s got those curls going on, that beard stubble. That is very sexy to me. I was like, ‘Rainn! Rainn on me!’”

“So much so we had to cut it out of the movie,” director Barry Blaustein chimed in. “For ratings purposes.”

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010 5:43 PM EDT

I met the Boss!!

Sarah Boesveld

I found the Boss, guys. Shook his hand and now will never wash the legend off.

After an exhausting day yesterday chasing after Bruce Springsteen, I got some amazing intel this morning: Head to the Royal Cinema on Toronto's hip College Street to stake out The Promise listening party. I bolted over on my bike and saw a convoy of shiny black vehicles outside of Coco Lezzone, a great Italian resto on the strip. Bingo. I'd also gotten a tip from Globe colleagues that he might be lunching there post-party.

I walked in, marched past the bar, and there he was, seated beside his lovely wife Patti Scialfa and among almost a dozen suits.

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010 1:07 PM EDT

Redford's Conspirator inks deal at TIFF

Robert Redford's Abraham Lincoln assassination drama The Conspirator has been picked up for theatrical distribution by Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions.

The two companies aim for a spring 2011 release for The Conspirator, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The $20-million production directed by Redford was one of the biggest films to enter the festival without a distributor already in place.

It stars Robin Wright as Mary Surratt, a boarding-house owner tried as an accomplice in the assassination by John Wilkes Booth. James McAvoy plays a Union Civil War hero reluctantly forced to defend her.

The film co-stars Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, Alexis Bledel, Tom Wilkinson and Justin Long.

Canadian Press

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Wednesday, September 15, 2010 9:47 AM EDT

Some things disturb you forever

Johanna Schneller

Regular festivalgoers are scratching their heads at the movie clips chosen to accompany the ads for the Cadillac People’s Choice Awards, whose tagline is, “Some things you see once and remember forever”:

There’s a shot of Janet Leigh in Psycho, a shot of the silver Terminator with glowing red eyes, and a shot of Sharon Stone just before she uncrosses her legs sans underwear in Basic Instinct.

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Tuesday, September 14, 2010 10:42 PM EDT

Poster imposter

Johanna Schneller

There’s only one thing that Paul Giamatti doesn’t like about Barney’s Version: the poster.

“That poster, gaahh, I really hope they change it,” said the star on Tuesday, with a kind of grinning grimace. (He plays the title character, a curmudgeon who falls in love on his second wedding day – with a woman not his bride.)

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