Can movies help you feel better about your miserable life? That seems to be the only explanation for the trend toward media reports about how action-packed the Toronto International Film Festival purports to be. Preoccupied organizers! Frantic publicists! Weary journalists! Doing their part to perpetuate the magic of 312 different movies. The most daunting thing about that number, it seems, is they require paying attention to a specific product for a couple of hours in a dark room. These days, who has time for that?
TIFF as a metaphor for multi-tasking provides something to hang on to throughout the ten days of the festival — even though coverage for the first two is based on few actual happenings, and the industry players high-tail it out of town no later than Tuesday. That leaves at least an entire week of workdays to focus on products on display in gifting lounges, losers eager to be interviewed while waiting in a lineup, and how other outlets are covering the film fest.
Well, since you’ve landed here, the least we can do is try to be comprehensive about it.
Samantha Ronson, putative ladyfriend of the planet’s most interesting movie star, will serve as DJ at the eTalk Festival Party tonight, which plays with perception by taking over the 299 Queen St. W. space and time formerly occupied by Citytv’s earnester Festival Schmooze. Now it promises a headliner who will only answer to “Diddy” — a new handle that couldn’t convince the MTV Video Music Awards to give him a Sunday night performing slot, so eTalk it shall be. Lindsay Lohan will be there, too, fielding vague softball questions from co-hosts Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim, building up to the celesbian couple’s appearance across the street at the Ultra Supper Club next Friday.
Not to be outdone for manufactured drama is Paris, Not France. The documentary about Paris Hilton by Tom Petty’s sympathetic daughter Adria had two of its three screenings cancelled for what was initially assumed to be some kind of cease-and-desist situation – but the scarcity turns out to be a strategic gesture so that Paris herself can make the scene Tuesday night at the Ryerson Theatre. The night before, beau Benji Madden will make like Samantha Ronson at the Ultra Supper Club as Paris strategically poses to promote her tin-can champagne, Rich Prosseco.
And then there’s an actual big-budget Hollywood movie, Joel and Ethan Coen’s Burn After Reading, with a high-wattage North American launch at TIFF on Saturday. John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton and Brad Pitt will not be asked how much their jealousy of Judd Apatow & co. contributed to their participation in what amounts to an upper-middlebrow version of that kind of flick, whose crowd-pleasing qualities are getting lukewarm reviews just because a mugging George Clooney risks making the entire exercise feel more like Ocean’s Fourteen. But everyone can see it in one week.
SCROLL ELSEWHERE: Toronto Life’s blog Scene & Herd reports boldface sightings at VICE magazine’s Hart House party amounted to “anyone you might see at Wrongbar on a Friday night” including EYE WEEKLY senior editor Stuart Berman; Globe and Mail columnist Simon Houpt’s Hollywood & Yonge blog was fielding complaints about elitist ticket pricing at the Elgin Theatre; or just follow the ennui of the National Post’s Twitter feed where a group of arts reporters make a solid case for giving up on that whole “newspaper” ruse.
scroll@eyeweekly.com