A drama for Amanda, a film feast for Chris, a new musical for Catherine and a Toronto visit for Meryl!

ANOTHER OPENING, ANOTHER SHOW: Sadly, most of the publicity surrounding the making of Chloe, the new Atom Egoyan drama set to premiere

SEYFRIED: at TIFF as Chloe

Sunday night at TIFF, focused on leading man Liam Neeson when his actress wife Natasha Richardson died tragically during the shooting of the film. What no one seems to have noticed is that the title character in Egoyan’s film is played by Amanda Seyfried, so outstanding as Meryl Streep’s daughter in Mamma Mia.  In Chloe she plays a sultry young seductress hired by Julianne Moore to test her husband’s faithfulness. (Expect to hear a lot of tongue-wagging after this one!) … and tonight’s TIFF Galas should offer some genuine surprises. Already winning rave reviews, The Men Who Stare At Goats showcases a stellar cast led by George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges in a stranger-than-fiction true story. (Want a sample? Just click here.) And the new version of Dorian Gray, with Colin Firth and terminally handsome Ben Barnes directed by Oscar Wilde aficionado Oliver Parker, reportedly takes that famous portrait mythology to new heights (and depths.) This one sure doesn’t look like any of the Dorian Grays we’ve seen before. For a sneak preview, click here.

OUR TOWN: Hollywood columnist George Christy, Norman Jewison and Gina & Paul Godfrey were among the boldface who turned up for the Best Buddies tribute to Ann-Margaret this week at the Four Seasons. Glamourous

STREEP: Toronto-bound

in a glittering cocktail dress, the award-winning actress beamed when someone asked her if she minds being called Ann-Margrock, her character name on The Flintstones. “No, I love it!” she exclaimed. “That’s why I voiced the part in the first place!”… delighted by its successful run at Niagara-On-The-Lake, Theatre Museum Canada has finally brought its much-lauded retrospective of stage designer Cameron Porteous to T.O. After a week of previews, Risking The Void: The Scenography of Cameron Porteous, opens tonight at the Design Exchange and runs through October 20 … and talk about a hot ticket: current box office queen Meryl Streep is set for a public sit-down session with Johanna Schneller at the ROM on Oct. 7. Bon appetit, ladies!

McKELLAR: Tiff Talent booster

TIFF TALK: The aspiring filmmakers who made the final cut to attend TIFF’s annual Talent Lab are in good and remarkably famous hands this year. Governors overseeing the program are Danny Boyle, John Collee, Miranda July and Cooking With Stella star Don McKellar. Film folk who have agreed to be drop-in mentors include Tilda Swinton, Atom Egoyan, Gaspar Noe, Jane Campion, Bruce Beresford and Suzana Amaral … is anyone having a better year on film that Christopher Plummer? He’s a major voice in Up, one of the summer biggest box office hits, and one of the top-billed stars of the new animated film 9, which opened here this week; he’s nominated for a Gemini Award for his performance in the screen version of his Stratford hit

PLUMMER: as Dr. Parnassus

Caesar & Cleopatra; he plays the title role in Terry Gilliam’s much-anticipated Imaginarium Of Dr. Parnassus, premiering here at TIFF next week; and he and Helen Mirren play Leo Tolstoy and his missus in the new German-Russian-U.K. co-production The Last Station. Can’t wait to see that one … and the best and most significant comment I’ve seen on the current tiff over TIFF’s choice of Tel Aviv for its City To City program comes from Toronto film critic Peter Howell. Says Howell: “Film festivals are supposed to be about opening minds, not closing them.” To which we say, bravo. To read his thoughtful column in yesterday’s Toronto Star, click here.

DOUGLAS: playing Solitary

STARS IN OUR EYES: New Manhattan-dwellers Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones won’t have a lot of time to unpack their California bags. He’s already started shooting Oliver Stone’s sequel to Wall Street, reprising his role as imprisoned corporate crook Gordon Gekko opposite TIFF scene-stealer Carey Mulligan (An Education.) Meanwhile Solitary Man, Douglas’ meaty new drama with Susan Sarandon, Mary-Louise Parker and his longtime pal Danny DeVito premieres at TIFF next week. Meanwhile the ravishing Zeta-Jones, who won her

ZETA-JONES: back on the boards

Oscar for her song-and-dance tour de force in Chicago, is starting rehearsals for her return to the musical stage in A Little Night Music, tackling the role played by Glynis Johns on Broadway, Judi Dench in London, Jean Simmons in Toronto and Elizabeth Taylor on screen. And speaking of Dame Elizabeth, who not so coincidentally happens to be the Founding International Chairman of AMFAR – will she jet here to attend our first-ever Cinema Against AIDS Toronto Gala on Tuesday at the Carlu? And will Global Fundraising champion Sharon Stone come with her? Kevin Sullivan & Trudy Grant are presenting sponsors of the lavish evening, which features a special dinner designed by Jamie Kennedy with Sarah McLachlan and Deborah Cox served up for dessert. For ticket information, click here.

Have a great TIFF weekend.

See you at the movies!

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Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford & Julia Roberts will make Monday June 8 a night to remember

On Monday June 8, the night after Neil Patrick Harris hosts the Tony Awards, Broadway will have a second starry night, for a spectacularly good reason. Joanne Woodward, Robert Redford & Julia Roberts will co-host

REDFORD: Paul pal

a fundraiser Celebration of Paul Newman’s Hole-In-The-Wall Camps with performances by Joshua Bell, Harry Connick, Jr., Art Garfunkel, Yo-Yo Ma, Jerry Seinfeld, Take 6 and James Taylor. Tickets begin at $50 and are available through Center Charge, 212-721-6500 or www.lincolncenter.org. Benefit tickets including an after-party begin at $1,500 and are available for purchase through the Benefit Office, 212-627-0678. The evening will benefit the Association of Hole in the Wall Camps – the world’s largest family of camps for children with serious and life-threatening medical illnesses. The camps were Paul Newman’s dream and this event will celebrate his legacy.

To which we say, Bravo!

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NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Mentalist star Simon Baker is set to co-star with Casey Affleck in the thriller The Killer Inside Me … dynamic

PARKER: prescient

Weeds heroine Mary-Louise Parker is still smarting over her nude bathtub scene from last year’s finale. “I didn’t think I needed to be naked, and I fought with the director about it, and now I’m bitter,” she tells More magazine in its June issue. “I knew it was going to be on the Internet: ‘Mary Louise shows off her big nipples.’ I wish I hadn’t done that. I was goaded into it.” So are we surprised that “Mary Louise shows off her big nipples” is currently among the Most Viewed clips on Google Trends? … and ‘gorgeous’ Kerry Connelly opens a two-night stand tonight at the Jane Mallett Theatre, bringing some of her favourite repertoire by Stephen Sondheim, Georges Bizet, Steven Schwartz and more. For a soupcon of Kerry in action just click here.

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SANDLER: reunion

 

FLICKERS: Chalk up a first leading role in a feature film for Christina Aguilera. She’ll play “an ambitious small-town girl with a big voice who tries to escape a hollow past” in Steven Antin’s Burlesque …  Ray Stevenson has the title role in the forthcoming crime drama The Irishman … Adam Sandler‘s new comedy, The Lake House, is not, repeat, NOT a remake of the Sandra Bullock-Keanu Reeves melodrama. In this one Sandler plays one of a bunch of guys (Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, David Spade) who get together for a reunion at a summer cottage … and Robert De Niro will play parole officer to Edward Norton’s arsonist in John Curran’s Stone.

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BUT WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO IS DIRECT: Currently launching Inglourious Basterds in Cannes, Quentin Tarantino is reportedly plotting

AGUILERA: leading lady

 

a new film called Weekend, to be filmed in Serbia (!?!) with Sharon Stone, Jessica Biel, Lucy Liu, Dennis Hopper and Michael Madsen … remember H.A.L., the wondrous computer magically voiced by Douglas Campbell in Stanley Kubrick’s masterwork 2001: A Space Odyssey?  Now Kevin Spacey is following in his voiceprints, playing Sam Rockwell’s robot companion in Moon, a new sci-fi thriller spine-tingler penned by two famous sons – Nathan Parker, son of filmmaker Alan Parker, and Duncan Jones, son of David Bowie. Duncan, formerly known as Zowie, also directs … and as we near the 40th anniversary of the murder of actress Sharon Tate and four others at the hands of Manson family cult members, Oliver Stone is in talks with Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecuting attorney on the Manson case, to bring his creepy classic  Helter Skelter to the big screen.

Hope not. Four decades later, it’s still too fresh for some of us.

Colm & Carol & Rick & Annie & Harvey & Sharon & Lana & Lee & Deborah & Joan & …

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Reportedly set to tiptoe through the tulips at the Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa next month: Margaret Atwood, Rick Mercer, Fred Penner and Ian Tyson, to name only a few …

BURNETT: any questions?

my spies say tickets for the new Stratford production of ‘the Scottish play,’ with Colm Feore as the tortured king, are already selling briskly …  resilient movie mogul Harvey Weinstein will again host the annual Cinema Against AIDS gala and auction at the Cannes Film Festival on May 21. Set to join Harvey in Cap d’Antibes are super auctioneer Sharon Stone, singer Annie Lennox (she’ll serenade the high rollers gathered at the lavish Hotel du Cap) and Bill Clinton, who has proven himself to be a tireless crusader in the battle against the worldwide AIDS crisis … Big Love scene-stealer Jeanne Tripplehorn plays Jackie Kennedy and Jessica Lange & Drew Barrymore play her eccentric cousins when HBO premieres the much-anticipated screen version of Grey Gardens this weekend … also this weekend, Kenny Robinson celebrates 15 Years of Nubian Disciples shows at Yuk Yuk’s. Now that’s an anniversary worth noting! … and just to make you glad you had this time together, Carol Burnett is set to bring her one-woman Q&A show to Massey Hall on June 12.

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GOSH, THEY GROW UP SO FAST: Doesn’t seem possible, but APTN, Canada’s first and only Aboriginal television network, will celebrate its tenth anniversary this September. And as a member of the 2010 Olympic Broadcast Consortium , APTN will also become the world’s first Aboriginal Olympic broadcaster.  And you can check out the net’s sunny new redesigned website by clicking right here.

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REMICK: Anatomy

FAMOUS WARDROBE MALFUNCTIONS: Sure, that SuperBowl incident with Janet Jackson was historic in its own way. Fortunately it wasn’t a career-breaker. But I recall at least two wardrobe ‘malfunctions’ that turned out to be career-makers. Lana Turner was set to co-star with James Stewart in Anatomy Of A Murder until she saw the slutty outfits they wanted her to wear. When she refused to show up unless her costumes were changed, director Otto Preminger quietly fired her and hired Manhattan TV actress Lee Remick to replace her. The film created quite a sensation at the time, and three years later the once-unknown Remick won an Oscar nomination for The Days Of

KERR: Eternity

Wine And Roses. And classic British beauty Deborah Kerr feared she’d be forever cast as the proper English schoolmarm until her agent got a call from Columbia Pictures tyrant Harry Cohn. Cohn had just fired Joan Crawford because she refused to wear the blowsy ’40s era wardrobe that had been designed for her; would Ms Kerr be willing to replace her? The enigmatic Ms Kerr was more than happy to do so — and that’s how she ended up on that beach with Burt Lancaster. She won her second Oscar nomination for Fram Here To Eternity, and had collected four more (for The KIng And I, Heaven Knows Mr, Allison, Separate Tables (with Lancaster again,) and The Sundowners before she received an honourary Academy Award in 1994.

The moral of this story? Never lock a clothes horse in a closet.

Or something like that.

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YOU LIGHT UP MY LIFE: Still believe it’s better to light one candle than curse the darkness? Yeah, me too. And apparently we’re not alone. Earth Hour was such as phenomenal success this year that the Canadian World Wildlife Fund has created a new web-based community called The Good Life  I’ve signed up and you can too. To explore and properly exploit the new site, click here.

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SOUTH PARK EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU: Stumped by the fact that huge companies with huge debts are getting financial bailouts while small companies with small debts are going under? You obviously don’t have a proper grasp of the scientific methodology behind all these key decisions. To further your understanding and education of North American economics — no, no really, no need to thank me — just click here.

TOMORROW:  Celebrating Norman Jewison in Hollywood.