Toronto International Film Festival

Left, right or center, there's two things nearly everybody in Hollywood agrees on: There's no disease that can't be cured by raising enough money and the state of Israel deserves unabashed support. These days, sympathy for Israel puts the American entertainment industry at odds with much of the European film and academic communities. In those circles, vehement criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and boycotts of Israeli scholars and artists have become almost fashionable.

Reporting from Toronto — The blood was boiling at the Toronto International Film Festival this week, where the movies were dark and brooding, with filmmakers churning up a world of turmoil out of our discontent. I say our discontent because more often than not, the movies reflect the collective ethos, rather than stir it up. If the filmmakers are reading us right, we have moved beyond merely being worn down by war, politics, the economy and institutions (including marriage); we're of a mind to go rogue.

Movies featuring Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Kate Beckinsale, Edward Norton and Colin Farrell and a documentary about Paris Hilton have joined the lineup for the Toronto International Film Festival. North America's largest cinema showcase announced Tuesday that the schedule will include Joel and Ethan Coen's CIA comedy "Burn After Reading," with Pitt, Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich. Among other additions were Gavin O'Connor's cop drama "Pride and Glory," starring Norton and Farrell; Rod Lurie's Washington journalism tale "Nothing but the Truth," with Beckinsale, David Schwimmer and Angela Bassett; and Adria Petty's nonfiction Hilton chronicle "Paris, Not France."

A roundup of entertainment headlines for Friday: Bono kicks off the Toronto International Film Festival. ( Los Angeles Times ) Mel Gibson is developing a movie about a Jewish hero. ( Los Angeles Times ) Michael J. Fox's "Back to the Future Part II" Nike sneakers are coming to EBay to help fight Parkinson's disease. ( Los Angeles Times ) Movie review: "Contagion" makes the spread of a global pandemic seem more than plausible. ( Los Angeles Times )

To begin to understand director Lee Daniels, you can start by looking closely at the living room of the broken-down Harlem apartment created for Claireece "Precious" Jones, the obese, illiterate, abused teenager at the center of his emotionally raw new drama, "Precious." There you'll see remnants of the West Philly apartment in the tough neighborhood where Daniels grew up. The fabric on the walls is the same, the worn couch a replica, a framed photo of his late father hangs on the wall; and the memories, the ones that refuse to leave him alone, linger in the stairways, color the scenes.

What's happening the next few weeks: * The Stratford Festival of Canada continues its 2000 season through Nov. 5. Still playing in repertory are "Hamlet," "The Three Musketeers," "Fiddler on the Roof," "Tartuffe," "As You Like It," "The Diary of Anne Frank," "The Importance of Being Earnest," "Patience" (through Oct. 13), "Titus Andronicus" and "Elizabeth Rex" (through Sept. 30), "Medea" (through Oct. 1) and "Oscar Remembered" (through Sept. 29).

THE Toronto International Film Festival promises a higher number of world and international premieres than ever before. The 30th edition of the festival will also present a slate of Chinese films in honor of 100 years of cinema in China, as well as the 35th anniversary of Canada's diplomatic relations with the country. The festival -- counted among Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Sundance as one of the world's most influential -- will screen 335 films over 10 days after it kicks off Sept. 8.

The greatest thing about being at a film festival isn't just having the opportunity to see movies all day and night. It's having the chance to see connections between different films that you might not have noticed if you weren't in the middle of such a great cinematic smorgasbord. For example, two movies I saw this week at the Toronto International Film Festival appear totally different at first glance, but under the surface they have striking similarities. (Both are commercial challenges, so don't expect either one to pop up at your local multiplex next month.

"I'm not going to Toronto!" screamed actress Rebecca Pidgeon during David Mamet's "The Spanish Prisoner," and this city's film festival audience nearly fell out of its collective seat. Of course, when Michael Moore's book tour actually did get to Toronto toward the end of his film "The Big One," the gleeful outburst was just about the same. So: Are Toronto International Film Festival audiences soft? It's hard to say, but they certainly go to the movies.

When it comes to New Zealand-born actress Melanie Lynskey, it seems that audiences have never quite grasped the thread of her career, starting with her big-screen debut as a murderously besotted teenager in Peter Jackson's 1994 film "Heavenly Creatures" -- Lynskey was plucked straight from her high school classroom for the part -- up to her recurring role as a kooky neighbor on the hit CBS sitcom "Two and a Half Men." "People don't even connect them all really, like, 'Oh, that's you?

The Toronto International Film Festival is famous for its star-studded, Oscar-caliber lineup, but it showcases films featuring stellar turns from lesser - known performers too. Before the festival's conclusion Sunday, The Times' film staff caught up with some of the players poised to break out of this year's pack. As many stars have found, it can take a small film to finally move an actor from the side to center stage. "The First Grader," which rests heavily on Naomie Harris' slim shoulders, may be that film for her. The role of Teacher Jane — a headmistress in a rural Kenyan school who puts her job, her marriage and indeed her life on the line to fight for an 84-year-old's right to an education — captivated the 34-year-old actress when she read the script, based on a true story.

There was no comfort zone at the Toronto International Film Festival this year: The films were edgy, and the filmmakers were even edgier — but in a completely different way. Actors took dark turns as well. There was everyday dark, like Will Ferrell as a newly unemployed alcoholic in "Everything Must Go. " Nightmare dark, like Javier Bardem as a dying father in "Biutiful," Nicole Kidman as a grieving mother in "Rabbit Hole" and Robin Wright as a suspected traitor in "The Conspirator.

Kevin Spacey thought he understood Jack Abramoff — until he began visiting the disgraced lobbyist in prison. "I read what everyone read about him, and then I started reaching out to him, and it was two different people," Spacey recalled. "On the one hand he's funny, almost comedian-like funny, and you can see how he owned a room. And then you look at what they said about him and he's the devil incarnate. And then there's the facts. " Spacey plays the colorful, morally compromised lobbyist in "Casino Jack," a film about the K Street scandal that will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday, and is emerging as one of the festival's hotter entries.

John Carpenter needed a break. It was 2001, and his latest film, the outer space thriller "Ghosts of Mars," had just flopped — at the box office and with critics. Creatively stymied and just plain exhausted by Hollywood and the moviemaking process, the director decided it was time to step away from the camera. "I'd always sworn to myself when it stopped being fun I'd stop, and it stopped," Carpenter said over a recent lunch of pasta and Winstons in Beverly Hills. "I was really burned out. And it doesn't help when your movie tanks.

Four years ago, a controversial British film called "Death of a President" stormed into the Toronto International Film Festival. The media was abuzz about its premise, which imagined that George W. Bush had been assassinated and Dick Cheney had ascended to the presidency. It became the hottest ticket of the festival that year and inspired intense debate about the limits of artistic and political expression — before fizzling in commercial release. Toronto, the preeminent North American gathering for top-tier filmmakers that starts Thursday and runs through next weekend, generates more heat and contention than almost any other festival.

"The Disappearance of Alice Creed" opens with a bravura, wordless sequence in which two men plan and carry out the abduction of a young woman. From there the film takes place solely in an apartment and an abandoned building with a cast of only three performers. As the men attempt to extract a ransom from the woman's wealthy father, their clockwork plan spins off-course. "It was entirely on purpose," said writer-director J Blakeson of the film's terse, oblique simplicity.

"The Disappearance of Alice Creed" opens with a bravura, wordless sequence in which two men plan and carry out the abduction of a young woman. From there the film takes place solely in an apartment and an abandoned building with a cast of only three performers. As the men attempt to extract a ransom from the woman's wealthy father, their clockwork plan spins off-course. "It was entirely on purpose," said writer-director J Blakeson of the film's terse, oblique simplicity.

The roiling geopolitical caldron is the raison d'etre for an international filmmakers' caucus to be held Saturday at the Palm Springs International Film Festival as directors, writers and actors hash over the last year's events and discuss how they've affected the business and their art. The caucus will substitute this year for the festival's customary international filmmakers' panel, said festival program director Jennifer Stark.

Drew Barrymore, the onetime "E.T." moppet, wild child and scion of Hollywood, has over the last 15 years made herself the poster child for post-feminism girl power. Through a series of shiny comedies ("Charlie's Angels," "Never Been Kissed," "He's Just Not That Into You") in which she starred -- and increasingly produced with her business partner and best friend Nancy Juvonen -- the 34-year-old Barrymore has preached a bouncy, politics-free, up-with-girls, follow-your-dreams mantra.

It's the film festival that recently brought us "The Wrestler," "The Hurt Locker" and "The Visitor." But this year's Toronto International Film Festival delivered a departure: indifference. Along with the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto stands out as a must-visit destination for movie distributors looking to buy new, highbrow works. Yet as successful as the festival has been in premiering any number of art-house breakouts in recent years, the shopper silence at the just-concluded Canadian gathering was deafening.