TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL Event brings the promise of many premieres

This year's lineup is full of Oscar favorites.
By TERRY LAWSON
DETROIT FREE PRESS
Another September, another Toronto.
When you've been attending the Toronto International Film Festival, opening Thursday, for as many years as some of us have, it's easy to get a little jaded, if not trepiditious. So many movies, so many people to see, so little newsprint.
Then you see the schedule. Then you start talking to some of those people.
"You still going to Toronto?" is the first thing a fellow critic asks when he calls after learning this newspaper had been sold.
"Are you going to Toronto again?" asks actor Nic Cage, when I interview him for his new movie "Lord of War." Cage, who has introduced a number of his films at the festival, is in British Columbia filming a remake of the cult classic "The Wicker Man" and won't be at this year's fest.
"Some year I'd just love to go as a civilian, you know?" says the movie-loving Cage. "See all those little, odd out-out-of-the-way films that you'd never get to see."
Cage and everyone else. Unfortunately, it's too easy to get caught up in the desire to see THE movies, the Academy Award favorites and critical darlings before anyone else sees them. And this year's lineup is full of them.
Good chances
I'm hardly going out on a limb to predict that the drama "Capote " will win at the least an Oscar nomination for Philip Seymour Hoffman as the young Truman, researching "In Cold Blood," the book that made him a literary superstar .
Other films debuting at the fest have chances every bit as good:
* "Proof," an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play with Gwyneth Paltrow as the troubled daughter of a brilliant, mentally ill mathematician played by Anthony Hopkins.
* "Walk the Line," with Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Reese Witherspoon as his wife-to-be, June Carter.
* "A History of Violence," with Viggo Mortensen as a small-town hero with a secret past.
* "In Her Shoes" with Toni Collette as the responsible sister of sexy mess Cameron Diaz, and Shirley MacLaine in a show-stealing role as the grandmother.
There may be an Oscar nomination awaiting Robert Downey Jr. for his knockout performance of a small-time thief gone Hollywood in the ridiculously entertaining "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang."
"Wallace & amp; Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" should be a lock for a best animated film nod, if not the big prize itself.
Their little secret
There are 335 films at the festival, representing 52 countries, and some of them have been seen by no one except the filmmakers and their friends and the festival programmers. The not-so-dirty secret of festivals like Toronto is that some films are accepted on the basis of rough cuts and the reputations of the filmmakers.
Toronto is predisposed to accept new films by old friends like directors Stephen Frears ("Mrs. Henderson Presents") and Michael Winterbottom (" A Cock and Bull Story"), who were bringing high-quality films to the festival long before anyone but film lovers knew who they were. Thursday's opening night film, traditionally of Canadian origin, will be "Water," a drama set in pre-independence India as Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent strategy is gaining momentum and uniting the country. It is the third film in a trilogy by director-writer Deepa Mehta, and 1996's "Fire" and 1998's "Earth" both premiered at Toronto.
Of the 335 films to be shown over 10 days, 109 are world premieres, and we can be sure that a couple of those will hold the knock-out surprise of previous Toronto premieres.