Article: "King's Speech' nabs TIFF audience award " by Etan Vlessing (The Hollywood Reporter)

The odds on Colin Firth grabbing the best actor Oscar shortened Sunday as Tom Hooper's "The King's Speech" picked up the top audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Firth was edged out last year at the Academy Awards with his "A Single Man" nomination. But his star turn in the uplifting British drama as King George VI will give Firth bragging rights as the awards season gets underway post-Toronto.

Toronto festival director Piers Handling branded "The King's Speech" one of his "personal favorites" in this year's lineup, and praised the performances of Firth and fellow actors Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush.

"It is a very, very moving story," he said of Hooper's portrait of the father of Queen Elizabeth II.

"The King's Speech" will look to follow a host of TIFF titles like "Precious," "Slumdog Millionaire," "No Country for Old Men," "Crash," and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" that rode goodwill from Toronto with the top audience award trophy to Oscar success.

The 2010 class of Oscar contenders coming out of Toronto also includes Ben Affleck's "The Town," John Cameron Mitchell's "Rabbit Hole" and past Oscar winners and their latest films, including Darren Aronofky's "Black Swan," starring Natalie Portman, and Danny Boyle's survival film "127 Hours," which stars James Franco. MORE

"Colin Firth and star-studded cast deliver a British history lesson" by Richard Rogers and Vanessa Thorpe (The Guardian)

An American theatrical phenomenon is staking its first claim on London's west end today in a performance in which all of the many actors involved, from Colin Firth to Juliet Stevenson, Sir Ben Kingsley and Sir Ian McKellen, will be happily upstaged by an unlikely rival – British history.

Firth is leading a host of talented names on stage at the Prince of Wales Theatre in the first British version of The People Speak, a show that aims to breath new life into the past by bringing audiences some of the most significant passages from recorded history.
Stars of the stage and screen will be joined by actresses Kelly Macdonald and Saffron Burrows, poet Benjamin Zephaniah, novelist Arundhati Roy and comedians Omid Djalili and Mark Steel, as Firth tests out the British appetite for a brand that has become as important to popular history in America as the BBC's television series Who Do You Think You Are?

"The People Speak is the perfect response to the abject misery of my history class as a schoolboy," said Firth. "Considering the immense riches that history offers us in terms of the best and worst of human behaviour – corruption, sexual deviation, rebellion and the struggle for power – there is no reason why history should be dry.'
The performance, which will be filmed by the History Channel..MORE