Dear Gossips,

It’s a brand new school year, we’re back from a brief break and just in time for the gossip gold rush. The Venice Film Festival has been underway for a few days, Telluride was happening this past weekend, TIFF kicks off on Thursday, New York Fashion Week as well, VMAs are next week, and then it’s the Emmys on September 15, just as the film festival is winding down in Toronto. Which means… well… a few things.

First and foremost, it’s high visibility for so many celebrities, and this year in particular, it’s legacy celebrities – big names, real movie stars, all of them out there parading themselves from one red carpet to the next. Sarah and I will both be covering TIFF here at LaineyGossip and over on Substack at The Squawk. Sarah’s new Squawk post about her TIFF schedule will be published today.

I’ve been reporting on TIFF, in person, since 2007. And I don’t remember standing ovations ever being a main storyline here. In Cannes, for sure. And more and more it’s a thing in Venice. But at TIFF we don’t pump out a lot of standing ovation headlines – but I wonder if that will change because of how excessive the ovations have been at the other festivals. Everyone seems to be getting a standing ovation and the length of the ovations are being measured so precisely, who’s the one with the stopwatch getting the exact number?

The last film making headlines for the ovation is Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door starring Oscar winner Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton. Pedro himself has won two Oscars but never the directing Oscar and this apparently has been his ambition. So he’s going for it this time with his first English-language film and it’s getting strong reviews coming out of Venice, accompanied by an enormous 18-minute standing ovation. If a standing ovation is basically the baseline at this point, and 18-minutes is considered mega…

Does that mean a short standing ovation is a flop? The standing ovation for George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s Wolfs was only four minutes long. Seeing as how these audiences are giving away standing ovations like flyers on the Vegas strip, someone on Twitter compared the short ovation to throwing rotten eggs, LOL.

But here comes the Oscar buzz for The Room Next Door. Tilda Swinton seems to be the one leading that conversation, and it’s a crowded one because so many women this year are being hyped for nominations including the two stars of this film, Angelina Jolie for Maria, Saoirse Ronan for Blitz (both of whom were in Telluride this weekend), Amy Adams for Nightbitch, Karla Sofía Gascón for Emilia Pérez, Mikey Madison in Anora, and of course Lady Gaga in Joker: Folie à Deux. A tight race is what we want. And tight races mean that festivals are that much more important for generating buzz.

The Room Next Door will next be screening at TIFF. Here are Julianne and Tilda at the gala in Venice last night reacting to their ovation. This cracked me up – hand and finger hearts, appreciate the effort, but terrible execution. Tilda in particular is killing me with her pinch.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey

Tilda Swinton Gossip

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