Graham: Oscar hopefuls, big stars headed toward Toronto

In a world gone mad with Donald Trump, Miss Piggy and Miley Cyrus, sometimes you have to turn your attention toward something that makes sense. Like the Oscar race.

The Oscar ceremony is still more than five months away, but a better picture of the major players will begin to emerge at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival —TIFF, for short — which kicks off Thursday and runs through Sept. 20.

It’s the 40th year for the festival, which launched in 1976 with little expectation it would become the glitzy showcase and launching pad for prestige films it has become today.

Now the fest, roughly just a four-hour drive from Detroit, routinely plays host to megawatt movie stars and shows major Oscar players such as “12 Years a Slave,” “The King’s Speech,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Hurt Locker” and “American Beauty” — all of which screened in previous years — to the world.

This year’s festival boasts nearly 400 shorts and features from 79 countries, including Oscar hopefuls such as “The Danish Girl,” starring last year’s Best Actor winner, Eddie Redmayne, as one of the world’s first sex change operation patients; “Freeheld,” starring Julianne Moore as a police officer battling cancer and fighting for her partner (Ellen Page) to be entitled to her benefits; and “The Martian,” Ridley Scott’s big-budget sci-fi adventure starring Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on Mars.

Other biggies at this year’s fest include “Where to Invade Next,” Michael Moore’s first movie in six years; “Trumbo,” with Bryan Cranston about a blacklisted 1940s screenwriter (look at “Birdman,” “Argo” or “The Artist” — Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood); “The Program,” with Ben Foster playing disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong; “Spotlight,” a newsroom drama about a team of Boston Globe reporters (including Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams and Mark Ruffalo) who uncover a child abuse scandal in the Catholic church; “Legend,” which stars Tom Hardy in dual roles as London gangsters the Kray twins; and “Room,” starring Brie Larson (“Short Term 12”) as a woman held captive with her son in a small room for years.

They can’t all be winners, and Toronto has been known to let the air out of some Oscar hopefuls’ tires, like last year’s Jason Reitman flop “Men, Women & Children” or “Labor Day,” Jason Rietman’s soggy 2012 drama. (OK, maybe Reitman doesn’t have the best luck at Toronto, but he’ll be back this year with two episodes of “Casual,” his new Hulu series, part of the fest’s expansion into television programming).

Still other features don’t aim high at all, like the midnight programming that includes the parkour adventure “Hardcore,” the Neo-Nazi punk rock explosion “Green Room” or director Takashi Miike’s (“Audition,” “Ichi the Killer”) latest exercise in gangster extremes, “Yakuza Apocalypse.” You’ve got to love a film festival that shows both “The Danish Girl” and “Yakuza Apocalypse.”

The programming and scheduling at the festival can be maddening and befuddling, but it’s known to be one of the world’s most accessible film festivals, with fans making up the large part of the expected 500,000 attendees. Snag a ticket to a premiere and you might find yourself talking to Alec Baldwin on the red carpet, or ride an elevator at the Four Seasons and you could be sharing close quarters with Dennis Quaid. (Both have happened to this reporter in previous trips to the fest as a fan.)

And, oh yeah — Donald Trump, Miss Piggy and Miley Cyrus won’t be there, which is one more reason to love TIFF.

agraham@detroitnews.com

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