In Youth in Revolt, Michael Cera isn’t just the unlikely leading man, he’s two leading men.

Terry Gilliam is waxing Brazilian again.

The Vancouver Public Library’s central branch isn’t the only Canadian icon featured in Terry Gilliam’s new opus, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.

In The Young Victoria, Emily Blunt plays the title character in a story that begins just before Victoria became a teen queen at age 18.

For most 13-year-old boys, having Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings play your dad in the epic science-fiction movie The Road would be a dream come true, but Kodi Smit-McPhee may be one of the few kids on the planet who didn't know anything about Viggo Mortensen until recently.

Werner Herzog wants to make something clear, and if you don’t pay attention, the German director is going to get cranky.

Director Lone Scherfig suspects that her new movie, An Education, may be so impeccably British because she’s Danish.

Michael Moore seems to have two places on the planet that fuel his imagination—Flint, Michigan, and Canada.

For his turn as real-life whistle blower Mark Whitacre, Matt Damon schlubbed down and put on 30 pounds, a fake nose, and a variety of wigs.

Jennifer’s Body isn’t billed as “a Diablo Cody film”—but it could be.

According to Ewan McGregor, working on Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream was a dream come true.

I was sure the scariest thing about making The Green Chain would be climbing 50 feet up a tree, or maybe interrupting our shoot to scare off a giant black bear before it snacked on us—but nobody warned me about the dangers of opening weekend.

Writer-director Amos Kollek spent most of his life in his father's shadow, an experience upon which he drew when crafting the dysfunctional family drama Restless.

After I interviewed Kevin Smith about Zack and Miri Make a Porno, I had one request for my editor at the Straight: more space, please.

Kevin Smith (aka Silent Bob) jokes that his favourite part of making movies is the question-and-answer sessions after they screen. Or maybe he's not joking.

Entourage's Jeremy Piven claims he isn’t worried about being typecast as superagent Ari Gold. And his new part in Guy Ritchie’s latest gangster opus isn’t exactly an acting stretch.

Director Guy Ritchie discusses his latest film, RocknRolla, a story of culture clashes and a series of double, triple, and quadruple crosses between British mobsters, more British mobsters, and the Russian mob.

The Real Time host's first documentary aims to inject a shot of cynicism into American faith, and perhaps a prayer of controversy.

TORONTO—One of the most star-studded events at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival featured a green carpet, not a red one.

When the directing brothers wanted to cast an actor as a gum-chomping, geeky-looking, flamboyant moron, there was one actor at the top of their wish list––not who you'd expect.

The Coen brothers’ quirky espionage-caper comedy, Burn After Reading, wasn’t intended as the follow-up to their Academy Award–winning No Country for Old Men.

One of Bollywood's biggest stars is fast becoming a fixture in Canadian films too, and her role in a modern-day fairy tale about a rickshaw driver and a billionaire should help cement that.

(Mark Leiren-Young, director of The Green Chain and an occasional Straight contributor, sent this e-mail from Barcelona)

Toronto—A crew making a documentary was filming in the guest suite at the Hotel Intercontinental, where Gabriel Byrne was conducting one-on-one interviews about his new movie, Emotional Arithmetic, just before its world premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. And the crew had clearly chosen the right year to follow Byrne around.

The screenwriter, director, and graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi adapts her autobiographical graphic novel to animated feature.

The sheer melodrama of the story - more than fancy effects or working with stars like Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, and Ethan Hawke - attracted the vet director.

On-screen, it's a battle of egos. Off-screen, as they meet with a half-dozen reporters at a hotel to promote their movie's world premiere at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, the actors can't stop raving about each other.

The Oscar-winning actress was glad to leave the bereaved-mother role to Jennifer Connelly in her latest film so she could focus on motherhood.

Michael Caine wants to be clear about this. His new movie is not a remake of the Sleuth he made in 1972. The characters and plot are fundamentally the same, but the 2007 version–costarring Jude Law and directed by Kenneth Branagh–features an all-new script by Britain's most acclaimed living dramatist, Harold Pinter.

Toronto–Let's get this out of the way. Yes, Brad Pitt, in person, really does look like Brad Pitt. But at the Toronto International Film Festival news conference for the North American premiere of his new western epic, Pitt also looked a little emotional.

Toronto–There are a lot of standup comics who make the jump to acting, but at a Toronto International Film Festival news conference for his latest flick, it appeared George Clooney harbours reverse ambitions.

TORONTO—B.C. child actor Jodelle Ferland took over the director’s chair from Tideland’s Terry Gilliam.

When Tommy Chong went to jail for his bong-selling family, Josh Gilbert was determined to tell the tale

Park Chan-wook claims he's not sure wherehe gets his fascination with vengeance.

When Princess Amidala says she'd like to make a movie with you, the only thing to do is trust in the Force.

TORONTO””When Jeff Feuerzeig is told that his award-winning documentary, The Devil and Daniel Johnston, seems too weird to be true, he laughs and agrees.

More than 50 years after she became America's most famous pinup, Bettie Page may no longer be notorious, but the bondage queen next door is definitely iconic.

TORONTO-Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are still celebrating the news of their second Palme d'Or win when they are interviewed in the bar of the Hotel InterContinental just after their movie's North American premiere at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.

Based on the books by J.R.R. Tolkien. Directed by Matthew Warchus. A Mirvish Productions presentation. Now playing at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto

TORONTO-When he set out to adapt Vivienne Laxdal's play These Girls for the big screen, writer- director John Hazlett (Bad Money) was convinced it would be an easy sell, because what sells better than sex? "Crassly, on the surface, it's the story of three girls sleeping with this guy," he says. "It's like a sex comedy.

TORONTO-Picturing Vancouver theatre legend Brent Carver in J.R.R. Tolkien's mythic universe, the first image that comes to mind isn't the wizard Gandalf. But that's the role he's playing in the $27-million musical adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which premieres Thursday (March 23) at Toronto's Princess of Wales Theatre.

TORONTO-The striving 30-somethings may have moved to Calgary to strike it rich in the just-opening Six Figures, but the actors who play them actually hooked up in Vancouver. Vancouver-based JR Bourne and B.C. native Caroline Cave play Warner and Claire, a couple with two children who are chasing the Canadian dream, or at least the Ralph Klein version with maximum income and minimum tax.

For most of the night it looked like the only B.C. content at the 2006 Genie Awards was going to be Terry David Mulligan, who hosted the presentation ceremony with actor-model Lisa Ray (Water). But Velcrow Ripper (and producers Tracey Friesen, Cari Green, and Harry Sutherland) tore through C.R.A.Z.Y. night in Canada, with ScaredSacred, winning the Genie for best documentary, one of the only categories where C.R.A.Z.Y. wasn't a contender.

TORONTO-It's a little disconcerting to discover that any similarity between Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, an adaptation of an 18th-century novel, and 24 Hour Party People, a freeform comic biopic about British music maven Tony Wilson and the birth of the Manchester music scene, is purely intentional.

TORONTO-Should Canadians be worried about the U.S. invading us for our water?

TORONTO-The oldest Hollywood joke is that what everyone really wants to do is direct. But not Lajos Koltai. Despite the acclaim for his directorial debut, Fateless, the Hungarian cinematographer of more than 65 films-he received an Oscar nomination for 2001's Malèna-has no plans to quit his day job. On a hotel rooftop patio just before the North American premiere of Fateless at last September's Toronto International Film Festival, Koltai says he was pretty much fated to direct the film.

TORONTO-The hero of Neil Jordan's Breakfast on Pluto, Patrick aka "Kitten", cheerfully dismisses political and personal dramas as "serious, serious, serious". But Jordan himself is, well, a pretty serious guy, and Pluto is a pretty serious film.

TORONTO-Clément Virgo wants to turn you on. If it wasn't obvious from watching his movie, Lie With Me, which kicks off with Vancouver actor Lauren Lee Smith (The L Word), seriously enjoying herself while watching a porn movie, it was clear at his movie's launch party-which featured male and female strippers simulating various sex acts-at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival.

TORONTO—When writer-director Jean-Marc Vallée met with the Georgia Straight, things were just starting to go crazy for C.R.A.Z.Y. His comic coming-of-age film about a gay son connecting with his father was already a hit in Quebec and was generating great buzz at the Toronto International Film Festival. But it was still a few days away from winning the festival prize for best Canadian feature, about a week away from C.R.A.Z.Y.

TORONTO—Brenda Blethyn has something she wants to make very clear to Jane Austen fans. There's nothing silly about Mrs. Bennet.