Coens, Barrymore set for TIFF

Adaptations of two novels — one classic, one recent — were among the latest titles unveiled for the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday.

The festival will screen Dorian Gray, Oliver Parker’s retelling of Oscar Wilde’s famed novel, and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, Rebecca Miller’s film version of her own 2008 novel, about a middle-aged woman’s reflections on her life and sexuality after her husband has an affair. Robin Wright Penn and Alan Arkin star with Keanu Reeves, Blake Lively, Julianne Moore and Monica Bellucci.

Ben Barnes stars in Gray, alongside Colin Firth. Both films will play in TIFF’s gala program.

The festival also announced several of its special presentations. Nicolas Cage stars in Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, an apparent remake of the 1992 film starring Harvey Keitel, while another crime story, Brit director Daniel Barber’s Harry Brown, has Michael Caine playing a vigilante in what is billed as an urban version of a classic western.

Cillian Murphy (The Wind That Shakes the Barley) returns to TIFF this year in the gangster comedy Perrier’s Bounty from Ireland’s Ian Fitzgibbon, and the Coen Brothers are back for their third festival in a row with A Serious Man, a laugher about a Jewish academic and his crisis of faith. The Coens screened their No Country for Old Men in the same program in 2007, followed by last year’s comedy Burn After Reading.

Michael Moore makes his third visit to TIFF with his newest documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, while Drew Barrymore makes her directorial debut with Whip It, a comedy starring Canadian indie darling Ellen Page (Juno).

Also in the lineup is Women Without Men from Shirin Neshat and Triage from Danis Tanovic.

TIFF runs Sept. 10-19.