The noisiest Oscar buzz at this year's Toronto film festival, which wrapped up its 10-day run last week, was geared more towards performances than films. Kate Winslet's portrayal of an adulterous suburbanite in Little Children has a strong shot for a Best Actress nomination, as does Penelope Cruz's happy little widow in the Spanish film Volver.
Catherine O'Hara gets plenty of props for her role as the hopelessly deluded, veteran Hollywood actress caught up in Oscar hype in the latest hilarious satire from director Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show).
As for the men, the very underrated Forest Whitaker may finally get his day in the limelight for his turn as Ugandan despot Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Sean Penn (doing what Sean Penn always does in his creepy "I'm going to kill you way) got some major applause for All the King's Men, though the film looks like it's gonna be a stinker. Peter O'Toole proves he can still breathe without an oxygen tank when he plays an aging English actor who forms an unlikely friendship with a crass young woman in Venus.
As for Infamous, that "other Capote film," well I think we all know what a waste of time it was to make that. Everything I need to know about Capote I learned from Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who already snagged the Oscar for his role in Capote last year. And sorry Sandra Bullock, I doubt your Lee Harper is better than Catherine Keener's. But maybe it is. We'll just have to see, won't we.
He might not get nominated, but Sacha Baron Cohen (HBO's Ali G) is pretty damn funny, and plays the title role of a bumbling, Eastern European news reporter in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Demi Moore and Sharon Stone's respectively play boozy night club singer and trashy hair stylist in Emiio Estevez's JFK lovefest Bobby. Let's hear it for those old sexy bags!
And speaking of old bags, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson (who j'adore) are apparently pretty damn good as the depressed novelist and Lit professor in Stranger than Fiction, which also stars Will Ferrell (who I have to admit is getting a bit stale.
AND...A panal of international critics gave their prize to the contentious "Death of a President," a fictional documentary looking back at the October 2007 assassination of George Bush. "Death of a President," The film was noted by the jury "for the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth."
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