Kate Winslet Killed a Chicken, and 5 Other Stories You'll Be Talking About Today

Happy Thursday! Also in today's edition of The Broadsheet: A flurry of deals descend on Toronto, including the latest from Luc Besson and Lynn Shelton... Snoop Dogg is set to play a pimping bluesman... Your next Hollywood culture war may be brewing... and more.

· Everybody loves to pretend they weren't paying attention to the news when they are nominated for awards. But Kate Winslet, nominated for an Emmy this year for Mildred Pierce, has a story I admire too much to disbelieve: "I was in England, and I was doing some really great daylong cookery classes with my best friend," Winslet told reporters this week during a satellite interview for Contagion. "And my best friend and I, that particular day, we happened to be doing a butchery class. And, literally, as the e-mail came through telling me that I had been nominated and that we had received 21 nominations overall -- I am not kidding you -- I was hacking up a chicken. Isn't that great? I just love that story." [AP]

· In the first of a flurry of U.S distribution deals to hit the Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday, Andrea Arnold's spotty adaptation of Wuthering Heights was acquired by Oscilloscope Laboratories. [Press release]

· And then later on in the day, Lynn Shelton's dramedy Your Sister's Sister, featuring Mark Duplass, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt, went to IFC Films. [Press release]

· And then later in the day, Luc Besson's biopic The Lady, featuring what is said to be an Oscar-caliber performance from Michelle Yeoh as imprisoned Burmese pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi, went to Cohen Media Group. [Deadline]

· Snoop Dogg is booked to play the title role in The Legend of Fillmore Slim, a biopic about the bluesman who also happened to be one of San Francisco's most infamous pimps in the 1960s and '70s. If this doesn't have "future Bad Movie We Love" written all over it, then nothing does. [Deadline]

· A conservative critic who has not seen the TIFF-premiering Chloe Moretz film Hick but has read a review would just like to take a moment to protest her character's rape and degradation in the movie. "Unfortunately, it is these dark impulses that Hollywood returns to all too often," writes Warner Todd Huston. "Hick has not yet found a distributor and let's hope it doesn't." Right? Then we can all make broad, uninformed complaints about a film we haven't seen! Great idea, pal. [Big Hollywood]