Dear Gossips,
We are getting closer and closer to festival season. The Venice Film Festival kicks off next Wednesday. The Toronto International Film Festival begins two weeks from today on September 7. It’ll be interesting to see which celebrities show up to support their films – with waivers, of course, from SAG-AFTRA. Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, for example, is a project that has been granted a waiver from the union so its stars are eligible to attend. Same goes for Michael Mann’s Ferrari, starring Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz. A waiver, however, does not guarantee attendance though because the actors could choose to not participate for the optics. Bradley Cooper, for example, technically could show up in Venice as the director of Maestro but he reportedly will skip it in solidarity.
But film festivals aren’t just about western and Hollywood projects. A major movie star is coming to TIFF. The Movie Emperor, if you will. Andy Lau has been the box office King of the East for 30 years. His new film, The Movie Emperor, will have its world premiere in Toronto and he’ll be part of TIFF’s In Conversation series.
The Movie Emperor is about a “movie star seeking relevance via a film festival-baiting art-house role”, very meta.
For the uninitiated, there is no overstating Andy Lau’s popularity in global cinema. He is a HUGE deal and even if you don’t know him, you know him – because he originated the Matt Damon character in The Departed, which was the Hollywood version Infernal Affairs, one of the greatest crime sagas in Hong Kong film history. Andy’s co-star in Infernal Affairs was, of course, Tony Leung. And for the uninitiated who need a western comparison, they’re like George Clooney and Brad Pitt. They’re also still working together.
Here are Andy and Tony just last week at the press conference for their latest project, The Gold Finger.
Tony’s wife, Carina Lau, just posted an Infernal Affairs throwback a few days ago celebrating their decades-long partnership:
LEGENDS!
And one of them is coming to TIFF.
Yours in gossip,
Lainey