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...fomentors and beneficiaries of all this divine madness are the festival's two bosses: Piers Handling, chairman and CEO of the Toronto International Film Festival Group, and Noah Cowan, TIFF's co-director. They supervise a team of a dozen programmers who make this sprawling event the world's best 10-day movie binge. Europe may have those venerable showcases Cannes, Berlin and Venice, but the crazy intensity of Toronto - the too-much-of-a-muchness - makes it utterly American. Or, as Canadians would no doubt gently correct: utterly North American...
...some, TIFF is an Oscar reunion party; this year's 500-plus guest list of actors, directors and producers includes more than a score of Academy Award winners, from George Clooney to Jodie Foster, Sean Penn to Susan Sarandon, Michael Caine and Michael Douglas to Michael Moore. The new hot couple, Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, will show up to promote their politically charged drama Rendition; and perpetual hottie Brad Pitt will light up the city when he appears in support of his western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Rock icons Lou Reed and Eddie...
...list English-language slate is just a small part of the TIFF experience. At its inception in the '70s, it was called the Festival of Festivals, and that name still applies: all kinds of genres, dozens of national cinemas, play to an equally diverse audience. Indeed, TIFF could split itself into eight or 10 different festivals, run throughout the year, instead of the one smorgasbord from which no one can get his or her fill...
...Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days at Cannes, where it won the Palme d'Or, has many critics hyping the new Romanian cinema. The Mungiu drama will play prominently at Toronto, but Cowan's enthusiasm for a national Romanian film movement is guarded. He notes that TIFF's resident specialist on Eastern European films, programmer Dimitri Eipides, "approaches the Romanian new wave with some skepticism. You could barely field a soccer team with all the Romanian filmmakers. Apparently there's one great teacher at the film school there who has passed his influence to a half-dozen...
...Mind you, if there were more Romanian emigrants in Toronto, the festival might find more films to please them. TIFF prides itself on catering to different local constituencies. "If there's a commitment to a specific cinema from the city and its audiences, we try to address it," says Cowan. "There's been a huge rise in interest for East Asian films - not just China but Korea, Japan, Thailand." The festival is also expanding its coverage of Bollywood directors. "In the last five years," he notes, "they've been seeking a wider international audience, so they've been toning down...