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Ryan Gosling’s involvement with La La Land started with a night of drinks and movie talk with writer-director Damien Chazelle, whom, he met through a common friend, producer Marc Platt. “we talked a lot about film in general, and Damien has a very infectious love of movies”, he told us in Toronto When Chazelle emailed Gosling the theme song for La La Land, the deal was closed.

Working with writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos  to build the sad-sack bachelor David, the protagonist of the dystopian love story The Lobster, Colin Farrell was given a mantra of sorts: “(Lanthimos) mentioned the word soft and I just got softer and softer and softer”, he told us in Cannes. “Until he texted me one night and said ‘stop eating now!’” Round, contained to the point of apathy and, yes, very soft, Farrell infuses David with a sort of militant sadness that cuts across Lanthimos’ tale of a society where being single is a crime punishable by a sort of death – becoming an animal.

Every year, Dubai International Film Festival (DIFF) presents a program of classic movies in addition to a slew of new ones, and this year it treated festivalgoers to a beach screening of A Fistful of Dollars, in a new copy restored thanks to a grant by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA. )The screening was attended by over 450 cinema lovers, who cheered enthusiastically upon hearing about the HFPA’s contribution to restoring 84 classics.

A Road to Mother is set during one of the most tragic periods in the history of  the former USSR republic of Kazakhstan. Director, Akan Satayev tells a story of the power of a mother’s love which endures challenges of the turbulent times.

Two twin sisters - excellent singers – never leave each other’s side. Nor could they, since they are Siamese twins, attached at the hip.

Casey Affleck, Manchester By The Sea. Hand-picked first by Matt Damon – who was originally going to direct the movie – and later by writer-director Kenneth Lonergan to play Lee Chandler, the prodigal son of Manchester –By-Sea, self-exiled to Boston after a life-changing event, Casey Affleck relied on his passion for the material to compose his complex performance.

Our 2017 Cecil B. deMille recipient is an accomplished singer, besides, of course, being an extraordinary actress.

Emma Stone has been a fan of the musicals – on stage and on screen – since she was, by her own reckoning, “very young. ” “My mom was a huge Les Mis fan and she played it in the house and explained what that was all about”, she told us at the Toronto Film Festival.

We first noticed Hailee Steinfeld in the Coen Brothers’ True Grit, all of 13 years old and standing her own opposite acting giants like Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin and Matt Damon. In writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen she offers a bravura performance of a different kind, exploring and exposing the emotional chaos of a very smart, very bright teenager in the punishing universe of high school.

In a key scene from Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply, Lily Collins’ Marla Mabrey, a young would-be star under contract with the powerful Howard Hughes (played by Beatty), plays the piano and sings a tune she had composed. Lily, daughter of popstar Phil Collins, was, she admitted, “very nervous.