Best Bets: "Contagion," Fashion Week and Toronto Film Festival
(CBS) Get those SARS masks out. This may well be a bad week in entertainment for germophobes.
That's because Steven Soderbergh's star-filled movie"Contagion" open on Friday.
The action thriller about a fast-moving virus of epidemic proportions stars Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Laurence Fishburne, John Hawkes, Josie Ho, Demetri Martin, Jennifer Ehle, Bryan Cranston, Elliott Gould, and Sanaa Lathan.
In promotional interviews, Soderbergh has joked that he had no trouble recruiting top-flight talent for his death-riddled film because the shooting commitment for each character was so short.
Other highlights for film this week are the opening Thursday of the Toronto Film Festival, a North American showcase for this year's Oscar-worthy films, and the awarding of the prestigious Golden Lion at the conclusion Saturday of the Venice Film Festival.
On TV, it will be a week of farewells. Audiences are saying goodbye to Vincent Chase and the gang Sunday during the series finale for the HBO hit "Entourage."
In eight seasons, the show followed the escapades of A-list actor Chase and his childhood friends from New York. It received more than two dozen prime-time Emmy nominations, including four consecutive Best Supporting Actor nods for Jeremy Piven (he won three times) and three for Kevin Dillon.
Denis Leary's post 9/11 firefighter drama "Rescue Me" also ends this week on FX. The poignant final episode Wednesday looks at the 10th anniversary of the Twin Towers attacks.
"Keeping Up with the Kardashians" closes its sixth season on E! on Thursday and the "Rachel Zoe Project" launches a new season on Bravo Tuesday with the title fashion stylist six months pregnant.
Most fashionistas won't be watching much TV this week, because they will be too busy checking out the spring 2012 collections shown during New York Fashion Week, which starts Thursday with the annual "Fashion's Night Out" shopping extravaganza.
A lot of the books publishers are releasing this week concern the Sept. 11 terrorist attack and its upcoming 10th anniversary.
Among them are "We're Not Leaving," Benjamin J. Luft's compilation of stories from first responders, due out today, and "Black Banners," a memoir by former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan about his terrorism investiugatons. It will be published on Saturday.