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Tag: Toronto Film Festival

  • Sandra Bullock Stuns at Toronto International Film Festival

    Sandra Bullock was positively stunning as she walked the red carpet at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday. Her upcoming film, Our Brand is Crisis, premiered at the festival.

    Wearing a sexy black dress with mesh cutouts, Sandra Bullock perfected her pout with dark red lipstick. She paired her dress with nude high heels.

    “My life has been wonderful,” she said at a press conference on Saturday. “It’s a great day today, hopefully it’s a great day tomorrow. I’m very lucky to be here, very blessed. What I want for the future [is] more of the same but if it doesn’t happen there will be a good reason for it.”

    Sandra Bullock’s life has recently taken a turn for the even-more-wonderful. She is now dating a very handsome photographer named Bryan Randall. The two attended Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux’s wedding, and the four were recently spotted out on a double date.

    In Our Brand is Crisis, Sandra Bullock plays a political spin doctor. The film is produced by Bullock’s dear friend and Gravity costar George Clooney. Billy Bob Thornton costars.

    “She’s struggling with mental illness, she’s struggling with addiction, she’s trying to take herself off the carousel once and she gets pulled back in because of an addictive need to win,” Bullock said of her character, “Calamity” Jane Bodine.

    “That’s in all of us and those of us who don’t have it have been through enough journeys in life and enough hardships to come out on the other end and realize that’s not what life is about,” she added. “I look at things and think, ‘What am I going to leave behind for my son [Louis]? What things do I want to say that I want to parlay to him in what I feel about the world, and how I want the world to be?’”

    Sandra Bullock is one talented, sexy lady–and now she has a new man, too. Life is indeed wonderful for her.

    Will you be checking out Sandra Bullock in Our Brand is Crisis when it hits theaters in October?

  • John Travolta Finally Addresses Rumors

    Iconic actor John Travolta doesn’t give too many revealing interviews. However, the Pulp Fiction star recently opened up to The Daily Beast while attending The Toronto Film Festival in support of his film The Forger.

    According to The Hollywood Reporter, Douglas Gotterba, a former pilot who worked for Travolta in the 1980s, will have the opportunity to claim in a lawsuit that he does not have to abide by a confidentiality agreement with Travolta. Gotterba plans to write a tell-all book about an alleged affair with the actor.

    When asked about the lawsuit, the 60-year-old replied, “This is every celebrity’s Achilles heel. It’s just about people wanting money. That’s all. It happens on many levels.”

    Travolta is certainly no stranger to rumors, but he says that he doesn’t let the media speculation get to him, “I don’t care that much about it. Other people may attack it back more than I do, but I let all the media stuff go a long time ago because I can’t control it. I think that’s why it persists, to some degree.”

    The one time that Travolta did get upset with the media was following the sudden death of his son Jett, “I found it most offensive with the loss of my son. I felt like that was the lowest I’d ever felt. Sex stuff is always going to be interesting to somebody, but you stay away from family. You really should. With that, I always felt like the media—not all of the media, but parts of it—went too low there.”

    The interview wasn’t all about rumors and speculation, however. Pulp Fiction recently celebrated its 20th Anniversary. The acclaimed film is often regarded as Travolta’s Hollywood comeback. When asked about a favorite moment from the film, Travolta said, “I watched it at Cannes this year, and it’s still got it. The scene that gave me the most pleasure was the scene with Uma in Jack Rabbit Slims—the whole conversation, intrigue, and then moving onto the dance floor. That was my favorite to film.”

    “Vincent’s getting to the bottom of why he’s so intimidated by the date, and then she says, “A foot massage? You think he’d kill someone for that?” She tells me it’s bullshit and that wasn’t why he was thrown out the window, so it brings a bit of relief to the character, and the spirit of the scene was very playful. She’s trying to size me up about why I’m so aloof, and the scene with the cherry where she’s looking at me thinking, “What’s this guy all about?”

  • John Travolta Didn’t Have To Study Tragedy

    John Travolta Didn’t Have To Study Tragedy

    John Travolta is riding the waves of yet another comeback as his new film, The Forger, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival.

    The film is about an art forger in prison for his craft who must make one more jaunt into forging in order to make a deal for his freedom.

    He wants to be free so that he may be with his dying son.

    The premise sounds very interesting.

    John Travolta actually completed a forgery of Monet’s Woman With Parasol in order to feel what the pressure is like for forgers.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9uLCyJRtI8

    “I have an affinity for painting, but I needed to know what it felt like under the gun,” Travolta said.

    He continued, “I just needed enough of the taste of the pressure to feel what it would be like.”

    So how did his real-life forgery turn out? He said, “I framed it. I’m very proud of it.”

    Travolta studied with art forgers in the U.S. and Hong Kong to perfect the technique. One aspect of the role that he didn’t have to study for was facing the death of his on-screen son, played by Tye Sheridan.

    In 2009 John Travolta’s autisitc son, Jett, died from a seizure while the family was on vacation in the Bahamas.

    He said of playing that role, “I’ve experienced so much tragedy in my life, I didn’t feel the need to explore it any more.”

    Travolta continued, “Tragedy is something I am very familiar with, so I did not need to research that.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gK4_Slhyyc

    While he didn’t name the tragedy, all in attendance were aware of what he spoke.

    It’s likely that John Travolta’s talents, along with the real-life experience and emotions of losing his son, will shine through in this movie.

    Good luck to John Travolta as he enjoys his 87th comeback!

  • Jennifer Aniston Is Generating Oscar Buzz

    Jennifer Aniston Is Generating Oscar Buzz

    The Academy loves to award Oscars to actors and actresses who physically transform. Think Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, Charlize Theron in Monster, and Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club. Perhaps we can add Jennifer Aniston’s name to that esteemed list in 2015?

    The former Friend is drawing rave reviews for her performance in the film Cake. In the drama, Aniston plays a pill-popping druggie with a chronic pain problem. Her face in the movie is stripped down, makeup free, and covered in white scars. Considering that she is one of the most beautiful, photogenic actresses in the world, the juxtaposition is difficult to imagine.

    Aniston’s character, Claire Simmons, is an addict who is in constant pain after injuries sustained in an automobile accident. Claire is depressed, angry, and bitter. She is also so tweaked on pain medication that she suffers from hallucinations of a support group member named Nina (Anna Kendrick) who committed suicide.

    Cake had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Monday. When the screen faded to black and the credits rolled, Aniston received a standing ovation for her performance.

    In order to get ready for the dramatic turn, Aniston looked to two friends who knew what it was like to live with chronic pain. She also wore a brace that kept her body stiff. “For me, it was really important to stay true to what the medicine I was taking physically would be doing to my body and at what point,” Aniston said. “It turns out if you walk like that for five weeks, you do actually become in pain.”

    After the screening, Aniston discussed what drew her to the part in a Q&A segment, “It was a no-brainer. Just reading Patrick’s script I actually saw myself doing it. I just felt like it was already happening and it was pretty easy to say ‘yes.’ It was such a beautiful, complex, layered, tortured character. I just tapped into something I was meant to do.”

  • Jennifer Aniston’s Possible Oscar Nomination for “Cake”

    “She is next-level incredible in this.”

    For over a decade, Jennifer Aniston has been one of America’s television and film sweethearts. From her role as Rachel Green on Friends to her comedic turns in Horrible Bosses and We’re the Millers, Aniston continues to spark interest from fans everywhere. But now the 45-year old actress has taken on a different role: one that could get her an Oscar nomination.

    On Monday at the Toronto Film Festival, Aniston showed a new side of herself in the film Cake: one that includes scars, greasy hair, and no makeup.

    In the film, Aniston plays Claire, a woman suffering from addiction, rage, and suicidal depression who attends a chronic-pain support group.

    “I let myself pretty much fall apart physically and that was really important for me, emotionally and physically,” Aniston said.

    Aniston also mentioned that she did “quite a lot of homework” for the role.

    “I have two girlfriends who have suffered from chronic pain and one who is actually a dear friend and a stunt woman who experienced a very severe accident and became addicted to pain meds,” she said. “For me it was really important to be true to what the medicine that I was taking physically would be doing to my body and at what point. That was actually kind of my biggest challenge as we were shooting out of order — having a ledger of where I was in my pain management and my physicality.”

    But the role of Claire actually took a physical toll on Aniston herself.

    “I wore a brace which someone told me was a brilliant idea, because I tend to slouch and it helped me to just keep that [posture],” she explained. “It turns out if you walk like that for five weeks you do start to actually become in pain.

    “The one thing I did have to do was have some treatments on the weekends because I would have pinched nerves and pinched this and pinched that, just from the physicality of it.”

    In the end, Aniston loved getting the opportunity to play an unglamorous character.

    “It was extremely liberating to do that. I loved it. Because you know as women, we do feel we have to live up to an expectation,” she said.

    “The truth of the matter is that that’s just not the way it is. We don’t always have our high heels on; we don’t always have our makeup on. This character was someone who had just basically given up on just even waking up sometimes. That’s what it required. That’s how I approached it.”

    Anna Kendrick, who plays a member of Aniston’s support group in the film, spoke highly of The Good Girl actress.

    “To be honest, while we were making the movie I just wanted to shout from the rooftops how incredible she was on set, and what an extraordinary performance she was giving,” Kendrick said. “She just brought it every day.”

    Cake is currently up at the film festival. If picked up and released, it could enter the Oscar race this year. And talk is already out there about Aniston receiving the “big O” herself.

    “Aniston proved way beyond cosmetic changes that she is the real thing,” wrote Deadline’s Pete Hammond. “She’s heartbreakingly good.”

    Cake is directed by Daniel Barnz and also features Sam Worthington (Avatar) and Adriana Barraza.

  • Tina Fey Film To Get Attention At Toronto Film Fest

    Tina Fey is starring in a new book-to-movie adaptation called This Is Where I Leave You. The movie is what we call a dramedy and revolves around Tina Fey’s character, as well as those of Jason Bateman and Jane Fonda.

    The movie is about siblings who gather for their father’s funeral. It sounds a little dark, but the film’s director, Shawn Levy, begs to differ.

    “Tina [Fey] has said that people will describe this as a dark comedy, but it’s not dark. It’s an emotional comedy,” says Levy. “And I thought that was on point.”

    Levy doesn’t normally attend events like the Toronto Film Festival, but this year he is making an exception in order to see the debut of This Is Where I Leave You.

    “I don’t make festival-type movies,” Shawn Levy admitted to The Hollywood Reporter. “And I made a vow early on that I would only attend a film festival if I had a reason to be there.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbzqco9iMtc

    Now he, along with Tina Fey and others involved with the project, have a great reason.

    This was a different sort of project for the cast and its director. It is one done out of passion for the material and one that demanded self-sacrifice from all involved.

    Levy said, “With Jason and Tina, my whole approach was, we all have done well working in comedy on a big commercial scale. I said, ‘I want to try something a little different here and I want you to try that different thing with me. None of us are going to get paid what we normally get paid.’”

    He continued, “So we really linked arms in an economic model that kept the budget low and a creative aspiration that would be different.”

    Good luck to Shawn Levy and Tina Fey, as well as to all the other actors and crew involved as they ramp up for the Toronto Film Festival!

  • Johnny Depp and Lily-Rose Depp to Star in ‘Yoga Hosers’

    Johnny Depp and his 15-year-old daughter, Lily-Rose Depp, are set to begin filming for a new movie they will star in together. Called Yoga Hosers, this film is dubbed a ‘comic book movie,’ and it also stars writer Kevin Smith’s daughter, Hailey Quinn Smith.

    “People always ask me ‘Are you ever going to make a comic book movie?’ This is it–but instead of yet another dude saving the day, our antiheroes are the most feared and formidable creatures man has ever encountered: two 15-year-old girls,” Smith explains.

    This isn’t the first time Johnny Depp and Kevin Smith’s daughters have appeared on the big screen either. Both teens had cameos in Kevin Smith’s last film called Tusk. Tusk will premiere in September at the Toronto Film Festival.

    In Yoga Hosers, Lily-Rose Depp and Hailey Quinn Smith will play the crime-fighting Colleens. They will join forces with Johnny Depp’s character to–according to the film’s producers–battle evil, “all seven Chakras, one Warrior Pose at a time.”

    Johnny Depp has spent many years keeping his two children he shares with former partner Vanessa Paradis (both Lily-Rose Depp and Jack Depp) out of the limelight. It seems as Lily-Rose is trying to forge her own path into the acting world, he is becoming more in tune with her wishes by helping her learn her craft–but staying close by at the same time.

    One place Lily-Rose Depp didn’t make herself obvious was on the set of Black Mass, in which Johnny Depp plays the role of mobster Whitey Bulger. That film is set to premiere in 2015–and Depp is hard to recognize. Many of that film’s scenes were shot in the Boston area where Whitey Bulger committed so many of his heinous crimes.

    Do you foresee Johnny Depp and Lily-Rose Depp becoming the next father-daughter film sensation or do you think Depp is just affording Lily-Rose the opportunity to dip her toes in the water?

  • Ben Stiller’s New Film Features A Hip Hop Favorite

    According to Spin, Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, AKA Ad-Rock, will be featured in Ben Stiller’s new film While We’re Young. The drama also stars Naomi Watts, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Driver, and Charles Grodin. It was directed by Noah Baumbach, the filmmaker who helmed several critically acclaimed dramas including the black-and-white Francis Ha and The Squid and the Whale. It was just announced that the film will be screened at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

    This isn’t Ad-Rock’s first time in front of the camera. He’s appeared in several shorts and television shows, including Inside Amy Schumer and 30 Rock. However, his biggest silver screen role was as a supporting character for the 1989 drama Lost Angels, which starred Donald Sutherland. So, it’s been almost 25 years since Ad-Rock has had a major role in a feature film. Of course, he’s been busy putting out albums and touring with one of the biggest hip hop bands in the world.

    Fellow Beastie Boy Michael “Mike D” Diamond and Ad-Rock announced this past June that the Beastie Boys will not put out anymore new music following the death of fellow original band member Adam “MCA” Yauch, who died of cancer in 2012.

    Here’s the official synopsis for the film: Noah Baumbach’s exploration of aging, ambition and success, stars Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts as a middle-aged couple whose career and marriage are overturned when a disarming young couple enters their lives.

    The film reunites Stiller and Baumbach, who worked together in Greenberg in 2010. James Murphy, the man behind LCD Soundsystem and co-founder of DFA Records, has signed on to score the movie.

    No release date has been set for While We’re Young. The film does not currently have a U.S. distributor.

    Image via YouTube Screenshot

  • 12 Years A Slave Wins Toronto Film Festival Award

    For weeks now, the Toronto International Film Festival has been previewing the large lineup of movies that would be shown during the festival. Everything from John Turturro’s racy Fading Gigolo to one of Cory Monteith’s last movie roles (McCanick). The long festival came to an end this weekend, and the Toronto International Film Festival chose several movies to honor with awards.

    The biggest award of the festival, the People’s Choice Award (branded by BlackBerry this year), went to the period drama 12 Years a Slave. Set in the 1840s and 50s, the movie is based on the true story of Solomon Northup. Northup was born free in New York but was kidnapped and sold into slavery.

    Chiwetel Ejiofor (of Serenity fame) plays Northup, and is joined by some of modern Hollywood’s biggest male stars. Brad Pitt, Michael Fassbender, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Michael K. Williams, and Benedict Cumberbatch all make appearances in the movie. Young Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild) even makes an appearance in the feature.

    During the 12 Years a Slave panel at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Steve McQueen and actors from the movie chatted about the themes of the flick, as well as the state of race in America. The panel, seen below, is preceded by the trailer for the movie:

  • Daniel Radcliffe Moving on from “Harry Potter” Role

    Daniel Radcliffe has been and always will be known as the famous Harry Potter. However, he is setting out to make a career that goes past the Harry Potter series.

    Radcliffe has taken on three new roles in films that were premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. He will be starring in Michael Dowse’s comedy, “The F Word,” Alexandre Aja’s murder mystery, “Horns” and another film titled, “Kill Your Darlings.”

    E! News got a chance to interview Radcliffe at the film festival and asked him about his three upcoming movies. “It’s very exciting because they’re all so different,” he said. “I hope that people see as many as they can.”

    On the Harry Potter topic, Radcliffe added: “There’s never going to be one film that comes out that officially breaks me away from Harry. It’s a process. But I definitely think that these three films are a part of that. You don’t make a long-term plan in the film industry because it’s very hard to,” he admitted.

    “I’ll always be incredibly proud of it. I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you all if it weren’t for Harry Potter. I have no illusions about that. But I don’t particularly miss it. I’m very happy doing other things now.”

    Radcliffe is excited to get to break away from his image as the young boy wizard. He wants to move on from being considered a child actor into the more sophisticated roles. “I’m excited that people will finally get a chance to see me do different stuff,” he said.

    His new films touch on some very mature topics such as murder and homosexuality. What will the “Harry Potter” fans think of such a drastic change from Radcliffe?

    “What you got to remember about the Potter audience is that they grew up with me, and a lot of them are now my age or older. They want to see dark, challenging material as much as anyone else does,” Radcliffe said. “You have to make films based on your own instincts … I have to make the kind of films that I would want to see,” he added.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons