guy ritchie

The top 10 forgotten films of TIFF

How could a rom-com musical starring Steve Buscemi and Mandy Moore go wrong? Ten films that vanished after the fest

no-image

The high price of celebrity—in divorce court

How might Mel Gibson’s split stack up against some of the biggest celebrity divorces?

no-image

Hey, and Madonna could play the Sunken Goddess. . .

It’s only Day One, and already the strange encounters of the TIFF kind have begun. Outside the press office at the Sutton Place Hotel, I was ambushed by an ardent blonde who gave me her card, which described her as a “novelist and executive director” with Fireflower Communications. She asked me if I knew where she could find the party tonight for the premiere of Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla, starring Gerald Butler. She said she wanted to get her novel to Butler because he’d be perfect for the lead.  Checked out her Fireflower website, which described the novel this way: “Ascension and the end of time upon them, star-crossed lovers the Goddess and the King clash again on the spiritual battlefield of a mysterious Caribbean island, last secret outpost of Atlantis the Fallen. . . ” Hmmm. Tough pitch to make at a party for a director who’s worried about his new movie and his frayed marriage to Madonna. Guess I should have told her to look up Toronto’s Sturla Gunnarsson. After all, he cast Butler, the “Hot Scot,” in Beowulf and Grendel.