In Toronto, festival has high-profile movies on tap

The stars will come out for 10 days and nights.

By STEVEN REA

THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

The stars are preparing to align on the 43d parallel. That is, the likes of Juliette Binoche, Cate Blanchett, Michael Caine, George Clooney, Jodie Foster, Ethan Hawke, Terrence Howard, Samuel L. Jackson, Nicole Kidman, Keira Knightley, Shirley MacLaine, Sean Penn, Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon, Charlize Theron and a swarm of fellow actors, producers, directors and (of course) publicists are heading for the Toronto International Film Festival.

Arguably the most important movie confabulation in North America — and one that is used to launch prospective Oscar contenders into orbit — TIFF offers an impossibly rich and varied menu. Long, short, new, old (Martin Scorsese’s “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” is one title on the retrospective list). Chinese, French, Iranian, Thai. Hollywood, indie, doc, experimental — well, you get the idea.

Notables

Some of the high-profile pics that will premiere at the festival, which begins today and continues through Sept. 15, include:

•Atonement,” based on the Ian McEwan best seller, with James McAvoy and Knightley.

•The Brave One,” the Neil Jordan-directed drama with Foster as a grief-stricken, gun-toting vigilante New Yorker.

•Cassandra’s Dream,” a drama about two brothers from writer/director Woody Allen, with Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor.

•Eastern Promises,” a London-set tale of Russian mobsters from Toronto’s own David Cronenberg, starring Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts.

•Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” in which Blanchett reprises her Oscar-nominated role as the powerful 16th-century British monarch.

•Into the Wild,” with Emile Hirsch as the bright, troubled young backpacker of Jon Krakauer’s haunting best seller.

•Michael Clayton,” with Clooney in the title role, and Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson in a legal thriller from Bournes screenwriter Tony Gilroy.

•No Country for Old Men,” with Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones in a modern-day Western based on the Cormac McCarthy book, adapted and directed by the Brothers Coen.

•Silk,” from Alessandro Baricco’s erotic novel of a wandering 19th-century silkworm merchant. Michael Pitt and Knightley star.

•Sleuth,” with Caine and Jude Law, from director Kenneth Branagh, adapted from the Anthony Shaffer play by Harold Pinter. (Caine, in the 1972 version, played the part Law plays now, and Caine’s now doing the Laurence Olivier role.)

Additionally, among the hundreds and hundreds of titles, Ryan Gosling stars as a socially awkward, weird young guy who begins a relationship with a life-size doll in the Sidney Kimmel-produced “Lars and the Real Girl”; Jack Black, Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh contemplate relationships amorous and filial in Noah (”The Squid and the Whale”) Baumbach’s “Margot at the Wedding”; Jonathan Demme delivers a documentary portrait of President Jimmy Carter (”Man From Plains”); Julian Schnabel presents a concert film on Lou Reed (”Lou Reed’s Berlin”); and there’s both a doc (”Joy Division”) and a fiction feature (”Control”) based on the seminal 1980s Brit band from Manchester, Joy Division.