We’ve had the sun and the moon with this week’s solar eclipse.

Now the Toronto International Film Festival brings on the stars: hundreds of celebrities are heading to town for its annual movie fête, Sept. 7 to 17.

Among them are Hollywood and global talents Jennifer Lawrence, George Clooney, Emma Stone, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, Idris Elba, Helen Mirren, Javier Bardem, Kate Winslet, Gael Garcia Bernal, Nicole Kidman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Octavia Spencer, Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, Andrew Garfield, Halle Berry, Brie Larson, Jessica Chastain, Daniel Craig, Dame Judi Dench, Jake Gyllenhaal, Willem Dafoe, Colin Farrell, Gary Oldman, Saoirse Ronan and many, many more.

Funny folk are coming, too: Louis C.K., Jim Carrey, Kevin Hart, Sarah Silverman, Steve Carell, Eddie Izzard, Ben Stiller, Kristen Wiig and Greta Gerwig, to name just some.

Noted musicians Drake, Eric Clapton, Eminem, Grace Jones, Mary J. Blige and members of the Tragically Hip will also feature prominently at TIFF 2017. So will sports stars, among them basketball greats Vince Carter and Cory Joseph, both former Toronto Raptors players.

Jim Carrey, Drake and the Hip are also part of the huge TIFF contingent of Canadian talent, with other notables including Sarah Polley, Tatiana Maslany, Donald Sutherland, Rachel McAdams, Sarah Gadon, Paul Gross, Molly Parker and Ellen Page.

“The talent are coming here and (TIFF) is clearly one of the top festivals in the year,” TIFF director/CEO Piers Handling said in an interview.

“The talent go where they need to be and Toronto is seen as one of the essential festivals in the world to be at.”

TIFF announced the above star guests and several hundred other boldfaced visitors Tuesday as it also unveiled the final titles of its 2017 lineup, the 45 features of the Discovery program of new filmmakers. This completes selections for a festival that will be slightly larger than predicted.

There will be 255 features at this year’s fest, down 41 films or 14 per cent from the 296 of last year. TIFF had said it would be cutting 60 films, or 20 per cent of its features, responding to perennial complaints that it had grown too big to navigate.

“We didn’t want to get bogged down just on the number,” said TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey. “We wanted to really find the films that we loved the most and put together a program that worked for us and for our audience. So that’s where we landed.”

There will also be fewer short films: 84 as opposed to 101 last year, a drop of 17 per cent.

Despite having a smaller festival this year, TIFF will have more world premieres than last year: 147, compared to 139 in 2016. Many of the rest will be international or North American premieres.

The films are slotted into 13 programs this year, down from 16 last year. TIFF has dropped the Vanguard and City to City sections, and it has rolled TIFF Kids into other programs.

This year’s longest TIFF film, the doc Ex Libris: The New York Public Library clocks in at 197 minutes, a full half-hour shorter than last year’s marathon champ, The Woman Who Left.

Full details of TIFF’s selections are at tiff.net.

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