TIFF celebrity worship embarrassing
Re TIFF, glam 40th, Sept. 10 Hooray for Hollywood? Not a chance. I don’t think the Toronto International Film Festival is anything to celebrate. In fact it’s an embarrassment.
I’m ashamed as a Canadian and a Torontonian at the way we’re expected to go so nutty over all those so-called Hollywood Alisters who come to Toronto for TIFF.
The Star, which is symbolic of the local media, is utterly parochial and provincial when it comes to the film festival. No genuinely great city gives a damn whether Matt Damon, Johnny Depp or Susan Sarandon are in town.
The local obsession with TIFF is similar to the frenzy over hosting the Olympics; it’s about a pathetic desire to be so-called “world class,” a concept I’ve never really understood. I don’t see a lot of glamour in this.
Let’s face it, TIFF has become an American film festival that, for all sorts of different reasons, just happens to take place north of the border. Yes, Canadian and other international cinema plays a part, but it’s the Hollywood star system and the U.S. film industry that dominate.
TIFF was much better when it was known as Festival of Festivals, without all the glitz and hype.
To make matters worse, why are we inconveniencing thousands of people by shutting down part of King Street for this? Andrew van Velzen, Toronto Is it just me or is anyone else sick to death of all the TIFF coverage? I enjoy movies and go quite regularly, but all this fawning and worshipping of “celebrities” is rather sickening. George Clooney is in town — so what? Helen Mirren passed by — be still my heart.
It’s wonderful that Toronto hosts one of the biggest film festivals in the world, but our unbridled celebrity worship and fascination with every minute detail of the lives of these “stars” suggests that perhaps we are not quite as sophisticated as we think we are.
Yes, I would like to read reviews of these movies, but I don’t want pages and pages of celebrity trivia. Enough please; there are enough trashy tabloids at the checkout counters to feed the needs of the celebrity obsessed. I thought the Star was a more serious newspaper. Maurice Parker, North York
Not sure why you bother to print articles about the Jenners and the Kardashians. They get far too much media coverage for doing virtually nothing for society. I never read or listen to any article about them. I wish you wouldn’t support them by publishing articles about them. John Matthew, Port Hope, Ont.