• Kenneth Branagh's semi-autobiographical "Belfast," a black-and-white family drama about the Northern Ireland city during the tumult of the late 1960s, on Saturday won the Toronto International Film Festival's People's Choice Award. The festival's top honor, voted on by festivalgoers, is widely viewed as an Oscar harbinger. The previous nine winners -- and 13 of the last 14 -- have all gone on to secure a best-picture Oscar nomination. Those include best-picture winners "12 Years a Slave," "Green Book" and last year's pick, Chloe Zhoe's "Nomadland." "Belfast," which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, draws from Branagh's childhood in Belfast. Starring Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds, it'll be released by Focus Features on Nov. 12. The festival's slate of about 100 feature films was down from the typical 250 because of the pandemic, but it included many of the fall's most-anticipated films -- including Denis Villeneuve's sci-fi spectacle "Dune," Jane Campion's Western melodrama "The Power of the Dog" and Pablo Larrain's Princess Diana biopic, "Spencer."
• Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and short story writer, has been given a down-home honor -- a marker on the Mississippi Writers Trail, which was recently placed at the Clarksdale Carnegie Public Library. Ford, a native of Jackson, first won acclaim with his first two novels, "A Piece of My Heart," and "The Ultimate Good Luck." Later, "The Sportsman" was named one of Time Magazine's Top 100 novels published since the magazine's inception. Ford wrote it while living in rural Coahoma County, and he used the book's protagonist in future novels, including "Independence Day," for which he won the Pulitzer and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1996. "Our library here in little Clarksdale, Mississippi, is just so pleased to pay tribute and to honor one of the most well-known greatest writers of all times, a native Mississippian, a novelist, a short story writer, and a Pulitzer Prize Winner," Mary Caradine, interim director of the Carnegie Public Library of Clarksdale and Coahoma County, said in a news release. "Mr. Ford's achievements are known far and wide." Craig Ray, director of Visit Mississippi, added, "Richard Ford is a true international author and cultural essayist who brings a rich view of the Southern experience to his readers. ... Mississippi has an enviable literary tradition, and we are happy to add this name to the list of authors who have contributed to that great legacy."