Documentaries steal spotlight at Toronto Film fest (Reuters)

TORONTO (Reuters) – They're not exactly squeezing Brad Pitt and George Clooney out onto the street, but documentaries are grabbing a larger share of the spotlight than usual at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.

In addition to festival opener "From the Sky Down" -- the U2 documentary by Davis Guggenheim -- documentary royalty such as Werner Herzog, Morgan Spurlock, Wim Wenders and Alex Gibney will all unspool premieres over the next week.

"We've opened up more seats in our theaters for documentaries than ever before and put them in bigger venues than ever before," said Thom Powers, documentary programer for the festival.

"It reflects the ever growing presence and importance of documentary in the culture on a number of different levels."

Several blocks away from U2's red carpet premiere on Thursday, more than one thousand people crammed in to a festival theater for the world premiere of "Into the Abyss", a documentary by "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" director Herzog.

Spurlock, who gained fame with 2004's "Super Size Me", will premiere his latest offering, "Comic Con: Episode IV - A Fan's Hope" about the wildly popular annual pop culture conference in San Diego.

Wenders will unveil "Pina" about influential dance choreographer Pina Bausch, while Gibney will premier "The Last Gladiators", which examines the world of hockey fighters.

With the U.S. election year looming, Nick Broomfield's "Sarah Palin - You Betcha!" -- billed as a quest for the "real" Sarah Palin in her home state of Alaska -- promises to be a big draw.

Once largely relegated to public television and repertory theaters, the nonfiction format has enjoyed increasing commercial popularity in recent years, giving celebrity status to documentary directors who in the past would likely be toiling in obscurity.

Past box office hits such as Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Guggenheim's Al Gore film "An Inconvenient Truth" have shown the commercial possibilities of the format, while the relatively low budgets are appealing to producers.

"INTO THE ABYSS"

Herzog, one of the true rock stars of the format, received a standing ovation even before the lights dimmed on Thursday.

"Into the Abyss" follows the filmmaker as he interviews the main players in a triple murder that took place in tiny Conroe, Texas, ten years ago.

Initially focusing on the two men imprisoned for the murder -- including one scheduled to be executed 8 days after the interview -- Herzog broadens his focus to include family and friends of both the victims and the killers, as well as prison officials who deal closely with the condemned.

Unlike many crime documentaries, Herzog does not seek to right a perceived injustice, and while his opposition to capital punishment is made clear early on, he insists the film is not meant as a call for change.

"It's not an issue film. It's an underlying thing going on throughout the entire film, but it's not an activist film against the death penalty," Herzog said in an interview.

Rather, he uses his conversational interview style -- which can veer into bluntness, such as when he tells the condemned Michael Perry that "When I talk to you, it does not necessarily mean that I have to like you" -- to uncover telling details about both the victims and killers' pasts, and the often harsh realities of rural life in east Texas.

"That's one of the aspects of the film: the crimes are monstrous, but the perpetrators are not monstrous, they're just human, and I allow them to be very human," he said.

Herzog, who has alternated between documentary and fiction films for nearly 50 years, said he thinks the rising popularity of documentaries is tied to the increasing use of technologies and trends that blur the line between fantasy and reality.

"We have unbelievably powerful new tools (like) virtual reality, video games, imaginary personalties on Facebook... We have digital effects in movies which create credible dinosaurs... and so-called reality TV, which of course is all scripted," he said.

"Documentaries have a capacity and have a task to redefine our relationship with reality and this is why probably a lot of people are moving in the direction of documentaries."

(Reporting by Cameron French, editing by Christine Kearney)

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Murdoch's wife leaps into global spotlight (AFP)

SHANGHAI (AFP) – Wendi Deng, who has emerged as an unlikely heroine after leaping to defend her 80-year-old husband Rupert Murdoch from a pie-wielding protester, has a reputation for fierce loyalty and ambition.

Her full-blooded swing at her husband's assailant during a British parliamentary hearing on the News of the World phone hacking scandal has catapulted the former volleyball player into the global spotlight.

But even before that, the Chinese-born American was known as a formidable operator at the heart of one of the world's most powerful families.

Although she holds no formal role in the company, Deng remains a constant presence at her husband's side and is said to take an active interest in his business affairs.

The couple's two young daughters will inherit a large stake in Murdoch's News Corporation -- a huge media conglomerate that owns newspapers and television companies around the world, including Fox and Sky TV.

Deng, who at 42 is 38 years Murdoch's junior, met her media tycoon husband while working at his Star Television company in Hong Kong, where former colleagues have described her as an expert networker with big ambitions.

Born in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou in 1968 -- at the height of the Cultural Revolution -- she left China aged 19 to study in the United States, where she befriended an American couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry.

Deng initially lived in the couple's California home, but moved out after Joyce discovered that she and Jake were having an affair.

The pair were married, but divorced after less than three years together, during which time Deng took US citizenship.

After graduating from Yale School of Management in 1996, she took an internship with Star, where she met her future husband -- then still married to his second wife, Anna -- at a company cocktail party.

In 1999, the pair were married in the United States aboard a private yacht that Murdoch had reportedly bought for his retirement.

The couple now live in New York with daughters Grace and Chloe, who will inherit a huge fortune after their father changed his will in 2005 to give them an equal interest with his adult children in the family's News Corp. holding.

Under that deal, Deng will become the most powerful player in the family trust when Murdoch dies because she will act as guardian to her two children until they can claim their inheritance at the age of 30.

At the hearing Tuesday -- a day her husband called the most humble in his life -- she sat directly behind the News Corp. chairman and chief executive, regularly reaching over to give him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

Pictures of Deng in an eye-catching bright pink jacket and pencil skirt dominated the front pages of British newspapers on Wednesday, along with praise for her lightning reactions.

The Daily Mail tabloid called her the "hero of the hour" for springing into action, clouting Murdoch's attacker on the head and managing to push the plate of gunk he was carrying back into his face.

Opposition parliamentarian Tom Watson, who played a key role in bringing revelations about phone hacking by the News of the World to light, finished the session with the words: "Mr Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook."

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