There’s nothing quite so humiliating as exiting the Hotel Intercontinental, high on the buzz of interviewing some director or actor, and seeing the dozens of autograph-hounds and paparazzi size you up and realize you’re nobody. It’s so bad, I’ve once or twice slid out the back or side exits, just to avoid that little punch to the ego.

Inside, it really is a circus. Publicists whispering madly into their cellphones. Photographers weighed down by their equipment. Hotel brass checking you up and down to see if you belong there or not (especially outside the entrance to the restaurant...

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Bay Station has a doppelganger don’t you know? One level below the platform where Yorkville shop boys and girls and armies of dental appointmentees exit their Bloor-Danforth trains is a look-a-like station. It was built ages ago and abandoned in the usual round of TTC cost cutting and now plays movie set for Keanu Reeves (Johnny Mnemonic) and Olson twins (New York Minute) flicks.

Until last night.

Brilliant Toronto publicist Kim Graham convinced city big wigs to open up Lower Bay for FilmItalia’s festival fete. And it was the best bash of the last few weeks.

The theme of my festival this year seems to be genocide. Fugitive Pieces, Shake Hands With The Devil and Darfur Now – these are the films I’ve done the most work on. Not really what you’d call fun, although all three films have uplifting messages by the end.

That’s why the two Mavericks panels I attended were so fantastic: they were anti-depressants, in panel form.

The first was The Time Is Now: A Conversation About Darfur, which took place at the Isabel Bader Theatre on Sunday afternoon. Three of the participants in Darfur Now –...

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Once upon a time, running into your favourite celeb wandering across Cumberland or squeezing into a new pair of designer denim in the change room next to you at Over the Rainbow was a pretty sure bet during the film festival. Toronto’s rep for a look-but-don’t-touch brand of star worship and a tight schedule of screenings and press conferences confined to Yorkville created our Hollywood North village every year.

The rhythm of TIFF used to be an easy beat with boldface lingering in the city for days. Now, they’re in and they’re out and we’re left with a...

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Leelee Sobieski likes my leather jacket.

Actually, she likes the sound of my leather jacket.

At the Mongrel Media garden party at Hart House on Sunday she worked the room with her artist-turned-manager mom Elizabeth (a splendid team by all accounts with nary an ounce of Dina Lohan-esque enabling drama in the mix) and Natasha Koifman, IT Lounge and Time Magazine party gatekeeper and publicist extraordinaire on Sobieski’s Walk All Over Me festival flick. After pleasantries and a few flashes from a NOW photographer, Koifman told the actress about the silver lamé bomber I wore...

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While there are parties, receptions and soirées every night of the week during TIFF, most of them are excuses for people to dress their best and hopefully rub shoulders with somebody famous for a few seconds while sipping free booze and scarfing down a few bites of food. Rarely do I come away from any of them feeling in any way enriched by the experience (a little tipsy maybe, but hardly enriched).

Except - and it's a big except - this year, amid the various and sundry schmoozes, I was fortunate enough to be invited to a...

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When you go to hear the people involved in making a film about the riots in Seattle during the 1999 WTO meetings, you don’t expect the morning to be non-stop sex jokes.

But that’s what happens when much of the film is shot in Regina, a name that apparently non-Canadians think is just. So. Hilarious!

At the presser Sunday for Battle In Seattle, actor Stuart Townsend’s directorial debut, the innuendoes were flying fast and furious.

Super-stylish Andre Benjamin describing his initial discussion with Townsend about his role: “Our first conversation was...

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Monday is hump day on the TIFF party circuit. The frenzy of the first few nights has settled into an easy buzz. You don’t feel the need to pound back your free champers so you can make all 10 parties on your itinerary. And your neck doesn’t jerk quite so quickly every time a star crosses into your line of vision.

Last night was loaded with bashes but what it delivered in volume, it lacked in celebs. We still had Jude Law, Michael Caine and Kenneth Branagh celebrating Sleuth with a dinner at Brant House....

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Here’s something all we ink-stained wretches don’t have to worry about: the complexion of whomever we’re writing about.

At Sunday’s press conference for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, I distinctly heard a cameraman say, “She’s so white.”

“She,” of course, is Cate Blanchett, and apparently her lovely pallor becomes an issue for the camera. Especially if you’ve spent most of the week taping a parade of tanorexics.

Blanchett, while in many ways not a classical beauty, harkens back to the days when being pale was desirable (being a pasty gal myself, I...

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Gray Sunday rain didn’t stop Canadian content players from boarding a shuttle bus at the Park Hyatt and chugging up to the Canadian Film Centre for its annual afternoon BBQ. If Martha Stewart moved to Toronto, she’d settle nicely at the CFC. Its handsome New England architecture and oodles of lawn would mesh perfectly with her real estate portfolio.

She probably would have upped the barbecue’s plastic lawn chairs and burgers-on-a-bun but when you’re feeding a thousand-or-so film types with hangover munchies, keeping it simple works best.

Enduring the grass stains and mud caked...

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Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was because it was Saturday. Maybe it was because they’re tired of being scolded for not doing their jobs. Whatever the reason, the press turnout was surprisingly meagre for the press conference for Captain Mike Across America, Michael Moore’s concert film about the 2004 presidential election.

Most pressers feature a panel of film participants – not this one. Just like in his movies, Moore goes it alone.

“This is a film for the choir,” Moore said, explaining why he’d brought the film out three years after the...

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Allison Janney is drop-dead gorgeous.

Let’s just get that out of the way right now. Why this woman is not a mega-star is baffling to me. She’s amazingly talented, a fabulous comedian, practically eight feet tall, and did I mention gorgeous? She deserves to be on a level with Meryl Streep, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, and one day, I hope, she will be.

Yesterday was not that day, however.

At the Sutton Place press conference for Juno, Jason Reitman’s (Thank You For Smoking) new flick about a pregnant 16-year-old, the photographers only had...

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I had been warned about the TIFF dragon ladies. The vicious Hollywood publicists who ascend to Toronto and ruthlessly cramp the style and bar the entrance of every journalist trying to dish a little publicity towards their Festival project.

So I was pleasantly surprised when, after a quick explanation of our little scene covering column here, every A-list invitation arrived on my desk, every burly body guard parted to allow my entrance and every early morning skip out the party door included a “Thank you for coming”.

Until tonight.

But first the fun stuff. The

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Does size matter?

At TIFF, the answer is yes.

There is, for example, the size of the star. The two biggest here are probably Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Big star equals big press coverage, which in turn leads to big room needed for press conferences. So instead of the tiny ballroom at the Sutton Place, the pressers for Michael Clayton and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford took place in a huge set of suites at the Four Seasons yesterday.

But that’s not all.

Knowing what...

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There’s something eerily calm about a TIFF party red carpet. Standing behind photographers, fans and reporters doing reps of microphone thrusts at the Holt Renfrew party to launch Sienna Miller and sister Savannah’s Twenty8Twelve line is about as serene as the scene gets. Even when the Millers arrive and Sienna jumps out of her SUV bronzed in a circus master’s top hat, the only thing that upsets the calm is a few calls of her name from fans across the street and the perpetual beat of camera snaps and flashes.

Inside Holts, the store has been...

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Chances are you’ve tried to get tickets for something that’s sold out. Not to worry. In some ways, TIFF is merely a smorgasbord of sneak-previews. Many of the big English language studio films at TIFF are opening soon after the festival. (On the other hand, you never know when those foreign-language films, or Vanguard, Discovery or Canada First! Movies, will open, if ever. Note: Some will play other festivals.)

Here’s a rundown of commercial openings. So mark up your movie calendar, but keep in mind that release dates frequently change, especially with smaller films.

“I love, love, love that you guys are bilingual. It makes me feel like I’ve got a purpose.”

Well, hey, Jodie, we do what we can.

Yeah, that’s right. She’s not just gorgeous and talented and well-respected and generally awesome. Jodie Foster also speaks better French than most people who went through bilingual school with me, myself included. Sigh. She got to show off that particular skill in the ballroom at the Sutton Place hotel, where the media was packed to the rafters for the presser for The Brave One. She answered two questions in...

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It’s kind of a sad commentary when the opening night gala, a Canadian-made, Toronto-set film, attracts so few journalists to its press conference that the ones who are there have to be told to move up, so it doesn’t look like the room is empty.

But that’s what happened at the presser for Fugitive Pieces, Jeremy Podeswa’s gorgeous adaptation of Anne Michaels’s equally gorgeous book.

Most of the cast was in attendance, including little Robbie Kay, who plays the young Jakob Beer, and looked a tad overwhelmed by all the flashes going off in his...

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WARNING: Shameless self-promotion ahead.

I was on CBC Newsworld today (a semi-regular gig I've landed) talking about TIFF. Well, talking about the celebrities at TIFF, how it shoud be renamed The Brad Pitt International Film Festival given the buzz surrounding his arrival. Anyway, this is my tenth TIFF and I was asked if it ever gets old (it doesn't) and what I liked most. I gave the usual "the opportunity to watch movie for 10 days and perhaps discover some new great filmmaker blah blah blah..."

But there's something else I get a real kick...

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Josh Dean (Young People Fucking) and Sarah Polley

Watching the dancer-behind-bars fiddling with her Razr mid hip thrusts and jiggles though was...

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Just got home from the festival's opening night party at the Liberty Grand. You were probably there. Seriously. It's not like Paris Hilton is gonna show (which greatly disappointed my cab driver on the trek home). Although I did spot a few out-of-town indie filmmakers making the rounds with their PR escorts. Gotta love the NFB for getting their people in front of the cameras!

In brief: Same food, same drinks, same people as every other year. Just who are all those too cool for school partygoers, anyway? It's like a casting call for Entourage extras, with...

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The streets of Yorkville were mellow this morning as journalists scurried through the neighbourhood weighed down with swag. Thursday is media day in TIFF’s gift lounges and the grand loot bag tour delivered a bounty of freebies and celebrity sightings.

Actress Kristin Booth rifled through the racks of Canadian designer clothing and accessories with her stylist Linda Gaylard at the Wardrobe Lounge, hidden in a laneway off of the Four Season’s Hotel. Local labels including Jason Meyers , Nada and Colette Harmon will loan their wears to stars including Liv Tyler and...

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The invitations have been mooched, sunglasses polished, and I've been air-kissing myself in the mirror for a week. The Film Festival is rolling, and so is my first foray onto the TIFF buzz beat.

Late nights and stiff drinks mean I'll probably miss out on seeing actual movies, so I spent a recent Saturday night watching classic gossip flick Sweet Smell Of Success to prep for the preening and loose lips that infest any celebrity-saturated environment.

The Elwy Yost types pontificating on the 1957 flick's lack of naturalism during the pre-show almost spoil the guilty...

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Continuing our TIFF updates (the TIFF communications department must be working overtime!), here's what we know about the Masters Program:

LES AMOURS D'ASTRÉE ET DE CÉLADON Eric Rohmer, France

A shepherd named Céladon (Andy Gillet) journeys through crazed love and despair via idyllic glades, craggy hills, nymphs and delicious temptation for his beloved Astrée (Stéphanie Crayencour) in this first film adaptation of Honoré d'Urfé's baroque love story L'Astrée.

BEYOND THE YEARS Im Kwon-taek, South Korea

A former pansori drummer rediscovers both his abandoned past and step-sibling. Together or separate, they part and reunite, unable to...

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Johnnie To, Ang Lee and Francois Ozon highlight this year's TIFF slate of Special presentations. Here's a rundown of the latest straight from the TIFF press office:

ANGEL  François Ozon, France/UK/Belgium

England, 1905. Angel Deverell is a gifted young writer who dreams of success, fame and love. But what will happen if all her dreams come true? From acclaimed filmmaker François Ozon, ANGEL stars Romola Garai, Lucy Russel, Michael Fassbender, Sam Neill and Charlotte Rampling.

CHACUN SON CINÉMA  Various, France

The Toronto International Film Festival is honoured to be showing this Cannes Film Festival favourite....

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The Toronto International Film Festival has announced two more of this year's galas, as this year's lineup continues to take shape.

Here's what the TIFF press release had to say:

BLOOD BROTHERS  Alexi Tan, Taiwan/China/Hong Kong

Shanghai in the 1930s was a city at its prime – no other place in the world could match its glamour, excitement, sensuality, and potential. Kang (Liu Ye), Fung (Daniel Wu) and Xiao Hu (Tony Yang), three innocent young men, have arrived in this "paradise" in search of a better future, finding instead that life is cheap...

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The Toronto International Film Festival has announced 13 more titles at this year's event, all from the Discovery programme highlighting the work of up-and-coming filmmakers. This is the 12th year for the programme, which is sponsored by Diesel Canada and offers a $10,000 top prize. Last year's winner was the wonderful Trainspotting-esque relationship drama Reprise by Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier.

Here are the films in the Discovery programme:

THE BABYSITTERS David Ross, USA

Sixteen-year-old Shirley (Katherine Waterston) turns her babysitting service into a call girl ring for married men after she begins...

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