Toronto double-dipper Gerard Butler joined his director and co-star, a rather hirsute Ralph Fiennes, along with Jessica Chastain and Brian Cox for the Coriolanus leg of his personal TIFF-apalooza yesterday September 12. Butler, exhausted, but still gregarious, charming and gorgeous and company did a press conference in the morning (mere hours, possibly even minutes, after he closed his eyes after the festivities surrounding Machine Gun Preacher the night before, then it was a day of non-stop interviews before the Coriolanus premiere at the Elgin Theater’s Visa Screening Room.

Following the premiere it was off to Toronto’s SoHo House for the after party where the cast was joined by other TIFF attendees like Abbie Cornish, Tahar Rahim and various industry types.

Coriolanus is based on the Shakespeare play of the same name in which a banished hero of Rome, Caius Martius Coriolanus (Fiennes) allies with a sworn enemy, Tullus Aufidius (Butler) to take his revenge on the city. The film stars, along with Cox and Chastain, the ethereal Vanessa Redgrave who has already been tipped for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance as Coriolanus’ mother, Volumnia.Coriolanus will get an awards qualifying run in December before opening wide in January.  Enjoy the pics!

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Surrounded by the enormous crowds that typically turn out for a movie starring Gerard Butler, Marc Forster’s Machine Gun Preacher had a gala red carpet premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival Sunday night, September 11. Walking the red carpet were the director and his stars Butler, Michelle Monaghan, Michael Shannon and Madeline Carroll. The man on whose life the film is based, Sam Childers, made the trip to Canada along with his wife Lynne, who are portrayed in the film by Butler and Monaghan.

Some accounts have accused Butler of “mugging” for the cameras, as if that’s a bad thing. The man takes so much time, every time, that he appears at these things, to let his fans know he appreciates them almost as they appreciate him, I can imagine it must be exhausting, but in my opinion, it was probably just nerves. Machine Gun Preacher is an important film, for Forster, for Childers, for everyone involved, but especially for Butler who acted in as well as produced it. While it’s not the first time he’s done that, this project has been an affair of the heart from the beginning. He still becomes emotional when talking about his experience. His fans have been hoping the project lends his career the gravitas needed to take him to the next level.

Apparently he needn’t have worried. The audience in Toronto stayed glued to their seats until the final credits rolled and then gave the film and the filmmakers a standing ovation.

Enjoy the pics!

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Photos: Dominic Chan/WENN

I know it was only a couple of days ago that we gave you all of those fantastic stills and new clips for Marc Forster’s Machine Gun Preacher, but they’ve released yet another one. I’m gonna be a blubbering mess when it’s over I just know it. *shakes fist at Gerard Butler*.

This one is called “Bug You There?” and features Madeline Carroll as Sam and Lynne Childers’ (Butler, Michelle Monaghan) daughter Sara.

Last night in Toronto, Butler and Monaghan attended the Creative Coalition Awards where Monaghan was honored with the “Spotlight” Award. Today, fearless leader gets to go to the TIFF premiere of Machine Gun Preacher. I tried to overnight myself to her house up in the Great White North, but FedEx wouldn’t ship live cargo and I needed the airholes in the box.

(BTW, anyone notice anything familiar about these pics? Why aren’t there rumors swirling around Butler and Monaghan? Probably because she’s happily married with baby. But there is nothing different about the way these two people appear in these pics. People are so silly).

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Photo: Dominic Chan/WENN

Gerard Butler is in Toronto and seems to be everywhere. It’s making stalking extremely difficult but never impossible. He, along with Rhys Ilfan, Juliette Lewis, Anna Kendrick and the biotch whose tummy he’s touching Michelle Monaghan are all at The Creative Coalition’s 2011 Spotlight Initiative Awards at the 26th Annual Toronto International Film Festival at The Roosevelt Room. This all went down last night while I was peeing myself for being so close to George Clooney. These two should just get a room and get it over with.

Tonight Gerard premieres Machine Gun Preacher at Roy Thomson Hall. I’ll be there, but like Killer Elite I’ll be the biotch in the balcony angry-like because I can’t get closer to him. Unless of course I hang outside beforehand to catch him on the red carpet which means I risk losing my seat and missing the movie altogether. Decisions, decisions.

Enjoy the pictures. Gerard is looking mighty fine these days.

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Photos: Dominic Chan/WENN

Artists for Peace and Justice is a fundraising organization founded in 2009 by director Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby, The Next Three Days) to encourage peace and social justice by addressing issues of poverty, independence and autonomy around the world. Their immediate goal has been to build schools serving the poorest areas of Haiti and those hardest hit by the earthquake, and providing not only an education but hot meals, potable water and regular medical care to the children living in those areas. To that end, they’ve already established the Academy for Peace and Justice, the first free secondary school in Port-au-Prince. This year, the Academy marked the end of their first year with a graduation ceremony for its 7th grade students.

Since the word “artists” is right there in the title, it should come as no surprise that a lot of APJ’s board members are in the entertainment industry. They know something about a good party and APJ throws some of the best. Their event at Cannes, held for the third year in a row during the annual film festival, already rivals the big AMFAR event held every year for glitz and glamour.  For the second year, they’ve added a big blow-out in Toronto during its film festival. Last year, APJ has raised over $300,000 at TIFF.

Last night, Haggis along with APJ Board of Directors member Gerard Butler (also in town to promote Machine Gun Preacher and Coriolanus - had to get that in there) and popular CBC television personality George Stroumboulopoulos (great video found here)  hosted the event at Toronto’s AME restaurant/night club. Also in attendance was APJ Board of Directors member David Belle. All proceeds from the $150 (Canadian) entrance fee will go to APJ’s health, education and dignity initiatives.

There’s another big “do” today so maybe we’ll get pics of that as well!

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Toronto is buzzing with celebrities for the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and the most important ones (in my horny estimation) are Kiefer Sutherland and Gerard Butler. Of course people are going crazy because Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are also here (although they do nothing for my loins).

Brad and Angelina were here for Brad’s film Moneyball, a film about baseball and it’s getting a lot of positive buzz at TIFF.

Gerard Butler is doing double duty at TIFF this year premiering two films: Machine Gun Preacher and Corolianus. The pictures of him exiting his limo are hysterical. I would love to see what’s on the other side of the camera greeting him.

Kiefer Sutherland is here for his movie Melancholia but I’m personally hoping to get a whiff of him as I hear from several very reliable sources that he smells mighty fine.

I’ll be at Machine Gun Preacher this weekend and down in the heart of the buzz today. Check back here for (hopefully) lots of great pictures.

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Photos: Dominic Chan/WENN

I’m doing the demented poodle dance ( and I’m sure you’re doing the Kevin McAllister face-slap in surprise) over these new pics from Marc Forster’s Machine Gun Preacher.  The stills, from our friends at Relativity Media,  feature Gerard Butler as Sam Childers and our first real look at Academy Award nominated Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) as Childers’ best friend, Donnie. Anyone playing the home version of our “Six Degrees of Butler” Game should know that Shannon has another movie playing TIFF, Take Shelter with Jessica Chastain, who starred with Butler and Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus, which will have its North American premiere at TIFF.

The film is based on the true story of a drug-dealing biker who finds religion and consequently feels called to Africa, initially to help build houses, but ends up founding an orphanage and rescuing 100′s of “child soldiers” kidnapped by Sudanese rebels. I love the pics of G with the kids, particularly the still from a scene featured at the end of the trailer. Butler told Chicago’s Windy City Live that that was a particularly poignant scene to film and represents something of a defining moment for the journey that Sam is on.

The clip, from the folks at Relativity via MovieWeb.com gives us the first good look at Michelle Monaghan as Sam’s wife, Lynne. The clip is short, but it provides a glimpse into what the Childers’ relationship is like and I can imagine in the film it packs an emotional punch.

There’s also a pic, from Entertainment Tonight, of Butler with a very big gun *cough*.  

Machine Gun Preacher has a gala screening at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto during TIFF on Sunday September 11 and opens in NY and LA on September 23 before going wide(r) on September 30. (Get your tickets early and often!)

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Here’s a newer look at the trailer for Marc Forster’s Machine Gun Preacher. It comes from Virgin Produces and is a shorter version of the original released by Relativity last month. It’s probably designed as a television spot since it’s the right length. In any case, I’m bringing it to you here because I want to keep thumping the tub for this movie.

Butler spoke to the LA Times recently about what filming Machine Gun Preacher meant to him:

“I feel every emotion. I haven’t talked much about this movie in a while, and I did the other day, and I just started crying. I cried for about five minutes. Preacher forced Butler to examine his own demons as he embodied the violent, rageful Childers, a rural Pennsylvania native who transformed his drug-riddled, crime-filled life after finding God. Childers’ born-again experience led him to becoming a preacher in his hometown before traveling to Africa, where he came upon hundreds of children orphaned at the hands of the Lord’s Resistance Army, which was staging a violent campaign throughout Uganda, Sudan and the Congo. The atrocities propelled Childers to found an orphanage in Sudan in 1998 that now houses more than 200 children and feeds more than 1,000.  “A lot of the feelings I felt with Sam, the violence and the craziness, being out of control and not knowing how to live your life, I had all that,” says Butler, who remade himself as an actor after his unhappiness with his first career as a lawyer led him to use alcohol and drugs. “Did I go around stabbing people and shooting people? No. Did I end up in Africa building an orphanage? No. But I did have a massive transformation in my life where I sorted everything out.”

Machine Gun Preacher will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival then opens in a limited release on September 23. It begins a wider platform release on September 30.

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