"Toronto has achieved a kind of perfect-storm status," says Focus Features chief James Schamus, whose "Brokeback Mountain" and "Pride & Prejudice" broke through at last year's fest. "It really does launch the fall and the very crowded Oscar season." Because it's open to the public, "there is an enormous awareness."

Part of that awareness comes from the influx of international journalists, lured in part by the parade of movie stars who turn the lobby entrance of the Four Seasons in trendy Yorkville into paparazzi central for 10 days. Among the A-list attendees expected: Tom Hanks, Russell Crowe, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Winslet, Penelope Cruz, Peter O'Toole, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn.

Cameron Crowe rocked the fest with 2000's "Almost Famous." But last year, his wistful homecoming elegy "Elizabethtown" was stamped DOA before its end credits had rolled.

Some year-end Oscar candidates practically sell themselves with rock-solid concepts and top-tier directors. But many films could benefit from northern exposure. Titles that require the Toronto touch: Sony is making a rare fest visit with "All the King's Men" and "Stranger Than Fiction," an offbeat fantasy with Ferrell as an IRS auditor who hears the voice of Emma Thompson narrating his life in his head.

Something as strange as "Fiction," even if it is directed by academy fave Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball," "Finding Neverland"), "needs a little TLC," says Sony marketing chief Valerie Van Galder. "It's hard to describe in ads, but it's a real crowd-pleaser. The audiences in Toronto are open-minded enough not to expect to see "Talladega Nights."" Douglas McGrath, director and writer of "Infamous," knew there might be a problem ever since he heard another movie would probe the complex psyche of author Truman Capote as he investigated the murder of a Kansas family for his masterwork, "In Cold Blood."

But the starkly minimalist "Capote," starring Oscar best-actor winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, is last year's Toronto. "Infamous," starring British actor Toby Jones as Capote, may cover the same fertile ground of triumph and decline. But its embellishments allow for more humor, overt sexuality between the writer and convicted killer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig) and context, especially his socialite gal pals.

"We would have wanted to go to Toronto even if the other film hadn't existed," says McGrath, who hasn't seen Capote. "It just makes people more curious to see ours." When Todd Field came to Toronto in 2001, he brought his first feature directorial effort, an intimate small-town revenge drama "In the Bedroom," starring Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson. The festival crowds wept and raved, and the movie collected five Oscar nominations.

"I would be a liar if I said that's something I haven't thought about," says the filmmaker, who switches to satirizing suburban anxieties in the often humorous, sometimes shocking "Little Children," with Winslet, Patrick Wilson and Jennifer Connelly as young parents in a web of dreams and desires.

"It's framed as a fable," says Field, though one that features a convicted sexual predator who is more a mystery than he was in the source novel. "I hope people have a chance to have a conversation with the film. All these characters have impulses and appetites. You accept them because of their appearance or social status. Until you see what their aberrant behavior is." You know him, don't you? "The Breakfast Club," "The Mighty Ducks," Charlie Sheen's brother, Martin Sheen's son. Where has Estevez been for the past decade or so? Besides directing TV episodes, the writer/director has been crafting a script about that night in June 1968 when Sirhan Sirhan shot Robert F. Kennedy at L.A.'s Ambassador Hotel, focusing on the everyday people who witnessed the tragedy.

His Robert Altman-esque ensemble piece, "Bobby," was compelling enough to attract one of fall's most stellar casts: Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Fishburne, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy and even Estevez's ex-fiancee Demi Moore and her husband, Ashton Kutcher.

"The faces of the cast, those are our landscapes," he says. "I hope we've accomplished a love letter to Bobby Kennedy and America. I was 6 at the time and remember the gravitas of it. Now, we have a plethora of politicians but an absence of leadership. We are starved for it. I finished writing it right before 9/11, and it's even more relevant."

Estevez concedes there might be more than a few jokes cracked at his expense when a former Brat Packer tackles such a demanding project. "I follow the blogs, and there are a lot of backhanded compliments," he says. "I get it. But it can't help but rub off on you. I've been so off the radar, so dismissed by the media, the critics. I don't know what to expect. I just want to get the movie out there." The troubled continent is not just a cause du jour embraced by such stars as Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie. After the success of "Hotel Rwanda" and "The Constant Gardener," Africa has become the hot spot of choice for message-minded movies.

At least three festival entries with Oscar hopes venture to Africa. The multi-layered "Babel," directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("21 Grams"), unfolds in Morocco as well as Mexico and Tokyo with an international cast led by Pitt. "The Last King of Scotland" revisits the terrifying '70s reign of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, brought to mad, magnetic life by Forest Whitaker. "Catch a Fire" is a political thriller based on the true story of a South African refinery worker (Derek Luke) who rebels against the system after being accused of a bombing.

"When we had "The Constant Gardener," they all said people aren't interested in Africa," he says. "Now the American public is paying more attention to the continent that, for a variety of reasons, has been off limits to our consciousness. I wish there were 20 more set there." As the stylish provocateur of Spanish cinema, Pedro Almodovar made an early splash with his garish palettes, surreal situations and flamboyant sexcapades. But he has grown into a sophisticated one-of-a-kind artist, and "Volver" is a funny-sad tribute to female fortitude with hints of Hitchcock and Fellini. No-good husbands, inconvenient bodies, disease, family secrets, loyal friendships, ghosts and, most of all, motherly devotion find their way into this heartfelt ensemble piece.

It's up to Almodovar's native country to decide whether to submit "Volver" for a foreign-language Oscar. But the lyrical storytelling, along with an on-fire Cruz in Sophia Loren-Anna Magnani earth-mama mode, has Sony Pictures Classics thinking best film, too. "Every couple years a foreign-language film is nominated in major categories," says co-president Michael Barker. Toronto can give a push, as it did with Sony's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in 2000.

Toronto and Oscars have gone steady since 1999, when "American Beauty" came out of the festival smelling like a rose and went on to win five statuettes, including best picture. It makes sense that someone would eventually premiere a film there about the Oscars.

And that someone is Christopher Guest, who previously brought his faux docs "Waiting for Guffman" (1996) and "Best in Show" (2000) to town with enthusiastic results.

The improv impresario gathers his usual suspects (including Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Harry Shearer and Parker Posey) along with a few choice newcomers (British funnyman Ricky Gervais) to spoof the ritual of the Academy Awards in "For Your Consideration."

"It's about the turmoil people go through during the awards season when this craziness begins," says Guest, whose 2003 folk-music frolic, "A Mighty Wind," earned a best-song bid. "It's a very interesting psychological state of mind."

It's even more interesting when an over-the-hill screen vamp (O'Hara) hears a rumor that her role as a Jewish matriarch in a low-budget melodrama set in the '40s South, "Home for Purim," might land her a best-actress spot. Soon, her co-stars (Shearer and Posey) are bitten by the Oscar bug, too.

As for the chance that "For Your Consideration" might garner its own Oscar nomination, Guest says, "It would be a huge irony, but it's not why I got into this. Awards shows are not my favorite pastime."

However, he will say that O'Hara's poignant portrait of a fading sexpot deserves all the attention it can muster. "In the world of serious comedy, Catherine is quite revered. It's really the best work she's done, extremely deep and extremely funny."

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