At 'Hollywood North', films at Toronto International Film Festival are extras

TORONTO

Is anyone left in Hollywood? So many stars have come to Toronto that the corridors and alleys of Tinseltown must be deserted.

The site this week is TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival, where every movie is worth at least one party, and there are 312 movies. There's Keira Knightley talking about being a duchess. There's Queen Latifah talking about selling honey. There are husbands without wives. Guy Ritchie left Madonna in Europe - putting on concerts and creating a furor by comparing John McCain to Adolf Hitler. Brad Pitt left Angelina Jolie in the south of France to look after the new twins. There's Spike Lee politicking and P. Diddy rapping.

They call this Hollywood North. It's the 33rd year of a festival that has become the largest in North America and arguably the second largest in the world, after Cannes. Movies from 64 countries are represented, but the emphasis, more than most film festivals, is on Hollywood glitz and glamour. There's even a segment called "Midnight Madness" in which the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as himself in "JCVD," about a faded action star. And, for the teens, there's "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist" playing right beside this year's Cannes winner, "Gomorrah." Subtitles and rapping - all in the same town.

Toronto isn't the friendly little festival it used to be where the press could actually attend screenings with real people. Now the press is relegated to little, basementlike rooms where they see the movies among their own kind.

A hometown paper, the Toronto Star, finally had the nerve, this week, to call the whole thing an "elitist corporate spectacle," taking note of the obsession over who is invited to what party more than any interest in the movies themselves. The festival has become so successful that it is building its own $196 million structure, but it still needs $49 million in uncollected donations.

Tickets for some movies go for $40, but the average is about $20. Many of the foreign movies will never be released in the United States, but most of the Hollywood movies can be seen locally in a few weeks for as little as $5. Some people stand in line for as long as five hours for movie tickets. Others take their vacation during this week so they can go to movies all day long and into the night.

The festival almost always houses the next Oscar winner, as it did last year with "No Country for Old Men." There's no hot favorite this year, although "Rachel Getting Married" has emerged with a likely Oscar nomination performance from Anne Hathaway. Ben icio Del Toro's Cannes-winning performance as Che in "Guerrilla" is also unreeling here - as a two-part movie.

As to charges of elitism, the festival counters with the fact that it sells more than 400,000 tickets to real people - its eager public. (Maybe it's just the parties that are elitist.) This year there was an open-air, free screening of "That's Entertainment" with MGM musical stars ruling over a festive park crowd. The Big Donators, locals who almost always out-dress the mere Hollywood visitors, get to wear gold stars to identify their status, while everyone gets to gasp and gulp at the stars in the battle of the bling.

But when at TIFF, you play the TIFF game and, yes, give movie stars enough to drink and they might even say something.

For example, Michael Caine, who is here for his movie about being old - "Is There Anybody There?" - let slip that Johnny Depp is, maybe, set to play The Riddler in the next Batman movie and that Phillip Seymour Hoffman will play the Penguin. Caine said that he was given the news by a Warner Bros. executive but that the deal is not finalized. He, of course, will return as Bruce Wayne's ever-faithful butler.

"I never stop working. I never turn anything down," said the star of "Jaws: The Revenge."

Jeremy Irons, the Brit who always plays cool, weird characters (one all the way to the Oscar), was here to represent a Western called "Appaloosa." He said he got along well enough with horses "but never expected to be in a Western." He has not seen the current remake of his star-making original TV-miniseries, "Brideshead Revisited," he said. The movie reduced the TV version from 13 hours to two. "I haven't chosen to see it and, actually, it has not been difficult to avoid."

Jennifer Hudson, the Oscar winner for "Dream Girls," was celebrating a serious acting role in "The Secret Lives of Bees," filmed in North Carolina.

"I think singing will always be the major thing with me but, yes, I want to learn everything I can about acting. Now that I was in 'Sex and the City,' I have a comedy. This is my drama. I'd like to go back to do a musical. Most of all, I'd like to play Mahalia Jackson in a bio pic."

Alicia Keyes, who also stars in "Bees," was in Toronto to film the music video for the new James Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace."

"When you think of the people who've done the title songs before this, it's a real honor to be among them," she said during an interview at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Zac Efron, trying to prove there is life after a high school musical, was in town to represent "Me and Orson Welles," co-starring Claire Danes.

Michael Cerra, the star of "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist," carried a backpack and appeared as self-deprecating and shy as the characters he plays. He grew up not far from Toronto and saw the festival as a homecoming.

Tea Leoni, who had been scheduled to appear on behalf of "Ghost Town," cancel ed at the last moment, on the same day her husband of 11 years, David Duchovny ("The X Files") went into rehabilitation for sex addiction. The movie opens here a week from today.

Gerard Butler, star of the surprise hit "300," said he was glad to give up swords and sandals to star in the Cockney gang flick "RocknRolla" for director Guy Ritchie. Butler, who is Scottish through and through, yet again had to try a London accent, he said.

"They don't make movies with people who talk like real people, Scots."

Spike Lee was there to represent his World War II movie, "Miracle at St. Anna," and couldn't resist getting political. He said the day Barack Obama received the Democratic nomination for president was the biggest day of his life. He sported an Obama button.

Lending a bit of class, Ellen Burstyn was there with her new film, "The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond." She was the first winner of the ON film festival's lifetime achievement award. (ON is a co-venture of Old Dominion University and the city of Norfolk).

And Mark Ruffalo, who made his first stage appearance in a production of "West Side Story" at First Colonial High School in Virginia Beach, is represented by two movies at Toronto - "Blindness," co-starring Julianne Moore, and "The Brothers Bloom," co-starring Rachel Weisz.

Ruffalo is one of the busiest actors in Hollywood. He grew up, as he puts it, "riding my bike on the Boardwalk at Virginia Beach."

The festival continues through Sunday, or until the last moviegoer collapses.

Mal Vincent, (757) 446-2347, mal.vincent@pilotonline.com