Rachel Weisz

Pirates of the Emerald City—Disney rebrands Oz as its own Magic Kingdom

From Shania Twain and Frédéric Thiébaud to the Huffington Post and AOL–this year’s best love stories

Between Peter Jackson’s muddle and Michael Haneke’s mastery, a gem from Winnipeg offers a blast of pure entertainment

Saturday morning kick-starts with a brisk interview with Rachel Weisz, who tears up the screen in The Brothers Bloom. It seems worth talking to her just to be able to say to a beautiful actress: “We met once before, in Budapest. . .”, then to watch her dark eyes search for some hint recognition. I explain we did another brief interview in Hungary on the set of Sunshine, produced by Hungarian-Canadian Robert Lantos. That was a decade ago, long before she won an Oscar for The Constant Gardener. Weisz tells me she had just run into Ralph Fiennes, her co-star in Sunshine, and is a bit taken aback that he didn’t seemed as pixilated by this chance encounter as she was. It must be tough being a star, running into other stars you’ve known in another life, neither of you knowing quite how to act.

Saw a couple of delicious movies today, or yesterday I suppose, now that it’s past midnight. Both are American movies with some profile: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and The Brothers Bloom so already I’m beginning to question my early grouchy impressions that this year’s line-up of prominent films looks weak. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist stars Canadian puppy Michael Cera (Juno) as a heartbroken New York teen who has devoted himself to making brilliant mix-tapes for the stuck-up vixen who dumped him. One night, after playing a gig with his band—as the only hetero kid in a gay punk band called the Jerk Offs—he stumbles into a relationship with her infinitely more mature best friend (Kat Dennings). And they ride around New York all night, hoping to end up at a secret concert by a cult band called Where’s Fluffy.