Midnight Madness kicked off at the Toronto International Film Festival tonight with the zero hour premiere of JCVD, Mabrouk El Mechri's Being John Malkovichesque look into the mind and machismo of has-been ass-kicker Jean-Claude Van Damme. When the Muscles from Brussels stumbles into a hostage situation, life collides with art (well, none of JCVD's previous films could really be called "art," could they?) in a mindbending mashup of the actor vs. the ideal.

The expectant crowd which had circled the block around the Ryerson Theatre for this year's opening show was disappointed by the announcement that the Bringer of Van Dammage would not be attending the screening, due to an ongoing film shoot in Thailand. Van Damme did, however, record a brief, cutesey intro monologue which was piped into the Ryerson on video before the feature film.

moviesTO returns with host Matthew Brown and special guest star Matthew Price, your guides for the Toronto International Film Festival 2008! Join us as we investigate the musts, must-nots, and many madnesses of the movie extravaganza about to lay claim to Toronto for ten star-filled, film-obsessed days in September.



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It's one of the nasty realities of Hollywood: sometimes, great movies get lost in the deal-making shuffle. Mark Palansky's feature film debut, Penelope, premiered at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, only to sit on the shelf for the next year and a half after its distributing studio, IFC, decided not to put it out there.

This sort of thing happens all the time with movies lacking an obvious marketing angle, or with movies that just aren't that good; Penelope might qualify for the former, but certainly not the latter. In this case, the protracted delay in release happened because IFC's mission statement changed shortly after purchasing the film, when they decided to focus their efforts on marketing smaller independent films.

When I boarded the subway yesterday morning (Christie Station, known to me as The One Without A Starbucks) and saw the headlines splashed all over the Metro and the Star - "TTC drivers in crisis!" - it was fairly hard to crawl out from under my Monday morning blahs to do anything other than conjure some surly words I would hurl at any TTC employee who dared suggest to me that his or her grief was on par with a soldier just back from Afghanistan.

Later in the day, though, I started really thinking about the issue. Yes, I would personally describe my feelings towards the majority of the TTC employees who have served me in the past ten years as being something akin to outright loathing - never, of course, suggesting that the majority represents the total, and that there aren't some truly outstanding drivers, operators, and other staff members in the organization. Let's face it: the TTC is the ultimate example of a system we only notice when it doesn't work. Although there have been literally thousands of days when a TTC staffer hasn't screamed at me for taking a digital photo on an RT platform, the only day that counts to me is the day when one of them did.

Last night, Toronto played host to one of the ultra-exclusive sneak preview prints of Paul Thomas Anderson's new film, There Will Be Blood. Tickets for this screening came and went in the blink of an eye, though the Varsity did their level best to widen the field by moving the screening to their largest theatre at some point yesterday (it was originally scheduled to run in cinema 4).

The film received thrilled cheers as it started, and an entirely different sort of applause when it ended - a feat in and of itself, given the unrepentently nasty nature of the content.

Happy holidays everyone! In lieu of the standard Top Ten lists currently proliferating across the entire filmic critical community, here's a snapshot of the best moments of the year in Toronto film:

Favourite moment: The overwhelming standing ovation for Juno at its premiere on September 8 at the Ryerson Theatre. It didn't hurt that the entire principal cast - all of them fabulous, but chaired by the tiny Canadian, Ellen Page, and my personal lifelong crush Allison Janney - was in attendance. It's been a long time since I've seen a movie get that much love all at once, and yes, backlash notwithstanding I'm still willing to call it one of the three best films of the year.

Runner up: The look of dazed stupefaction on the faces of audience members leaving Let's All Hate Toronto, one of this spring's hottest Hot Docs tickets, and the hardest to require. Who thought a film so insta-trendy would turn out to be so phenomenally underwhelming?

And a third: Accidentally riding my bike through one of The Incredible Hulk's smashed-up downtown exteriors... during a shot. Please, Hulk, don't smash me!

Take care everyone, and remember to enjoy responsibly.