Toronto is doing what Toronto does every September, turning into a wall-to-wall parade of stars, screenings and Oscar chatter. This year the Los Angeles Times set up its own portrait studio at RBC House, and the guest list reads like a festival highlight reel.

Michelle Yeoh and Sebastian Stan are among the names the LA Times says have walked through so far, with more expected as the festival runs its course through the weekend. Stan showed up in connection with his new film "Fjord," where he shares screen space with Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, who also sat for the studio's cameras.

Courteney Cox and David Harbour turned up too, though the report doesn't tie either appearance to a specific title screening at TIFF this year. Patricia Arquette came in for "Evil Genius," one of the festival's competition entries generating early word of mouth.

There's a sports angle in the mix as well. Soccer star Megan Rapinoe and director Rebecca Huntt appeared together, presumably tied to the documentary simply titled "Rapinoe," which traces the retired US women's national team forward's career and the noise around it.

None of this is red carpet in the traditional sense. It's the quieter, more controlled cousin of it, the kind of portrait session festivals use to generate the images that end up on magazine covers and awards-season retrospectives months down the line. But it's also a decent barometer of who's actually in Toronto and getting talked about, which matters once the industry starts handing out precursor prizes in the coming weeks.

TIFF has built a reputation over the past decade as an unofficial launchpad for the awards conversation that runs through winter. A strong reception here for "Fjord" or "Evil Genius" can shape how distributors position them for the rest of the year, and how voters approach them once ballots start going out. Mungiu's involvement alone gives "Fjord" a certain festival pedigree, given his history with Cannes and international art-house circuits.

The LA Times says its studio coverage will keep running through the rest of TIFF, with the site adding portraits and video interviews as the festival continues. Given the names already through the door, in a festival edition that's barely a few days old, it's fair to expect the list to keep growing before Toronto wraps and the films start heading toward wider theatrical rollouts, festival juries finish deliberating, and the real test of audience reaction begins.