I have learned the art of party crashing having crashed 3 parties this year. OK, so it's a bit easier in my case because I have friends on the inside, but ... indeed ... they too have not been officially invited and yet, still magically show up to drink and dine on hors d'eouvres.

As a supplementary skill I've learned as a result, is the art of bullshit. And I don't mean bullshit as in, "Do you know who I am?" because that never works. More like, "I sent my RSVP in late/last minute, that could be why I'm not on the list." Bat the eyes and smile (for the ladies). For guys, show up talking on your cellphone looking like you're talking to someone who couldn't make it to the party but that you're meeting someone inside. This also works for the ladies who refuse to use their feminine wiles in this case.

I've also learned/ realized that I'm now addicted to coffee thanks to the Starbucks promotion team walking around with coffee canisters strapped to their backs.

I've learned that some people take themselves WAY too seriously. Granted, I understand that in order to be taken seriously, you should act like you're serious, but come on, it's a movie. And I'm not talking about the artists who create the product, I'm talking about audience members.

Yesterday, in the rain while supporting my stargazing friend hoping to get Annette Benning's autograph, I spoke to a volunteer, who apparently also doubled as crowd control and outdoor bouncers if the fans/spectators got too rowdy. A fight nearly broke out among the spectator's circle as Annette was ushered into Roy Thomson Hall. She mused that during the Orlando Bloom movie, she was fearing for her life as the crowd pushed and prodded their way against the rails and each other. She was not looking too too forward to the Justin Timberlake film.

I've learned that stars are just people who want to be left alone. Sure they're thankful for the support and probably would spend some time talking to their fans, except that there are just so many of them. "If I give you one, I have to give to everybody else!" as the old Lays chip commercial goes. A director once said, "It is overwhelming to even attempt to speak to everyone because you want to take the time out to get to know each individual." She was nice.

I've learned some people are hard of hearing, but they hear themselves just fine. There is always one in every theatre who, when the moderator says, "Last Question" seems to ask the same question posed previously.

I've learned that you can't please or be all things to everyone because someone along the line will find fault in what you're doing. After all, it's easy to criticize but hard to offer solutions.

I also learned the Letteri at Spadina and Queen has an open wireless connection.

Hmm ... what else? Anything you learned?

Black Sun is not your typical "talking head" documentary. Not even once do we see the film's subject. Rather, first-time director Gary Tarn provides images of people and places that are often hazy, sometimes kaleidoscopic while Hughes de Montalembert narrates his life post-blindness. The result is a fascinating, if sometimes uneven, addition to the genre.

De Montalembert tells us that when he had sight he didn't know any blind people, at least not socially, and asks, "Where are the blind people?" His answer is, "Society has dumped them into a dark pit," and this film pulls the audience into that pit, the mind of a person robbed of sight, though it is not as dark as we would imagine.

De Montalembert existence is not a world of total darkness; he can see light but not shapes or images. As he describes this, the camera creeps through a haze of colours without form, approximating the artist's sensations. In stark detail the artist describes the sensations as his brain tried to compensate for a lost sense. He talks of his brain "taking over...wanting to see images..." until his mind would begin to produce "visions" that seemed real. He could be talking to a person and suddenly disturbing or erotic images would form unbidden; strong images that made normal conversation both bizarre and unsettling.

While de Montalembert continues, Tarn, the director, does his best to put pictures to a blind man's mind and is, for the most part successful. We see a New York street - lamp posts, cars, scaffolding - that seems unordinary to a person with sight, but for a blind man is littered with obstacles and possible danger. We see what the blind can not and de Montalembert draws us into his world, not asking for sympathy, but, as an artist, "creating vision".

Where the film succeeds best is in de Montalembert's anecdotes. He spins tales of the day he suddenly decided to travel alone to Indonesia and takes us along on his sightless journey. He tells of friends confessing secrets that they would have never revealed when he had sight and of a jealous peer who wouldn't have dared to leave his gorgeous wife alone with a man who has vision but feels no threat in a sightless man. "It's a typical male reaction. Blindness equals castration," observes a wry de Montalembert suggesting that nothing could be further from the truth.

There are times when audience members may loose interest, as when de Montalembert talks of quantum physics and Plank theory, and perhaps sections like this could have been excised from the film. However, one could argue that Tarn is to be congratulated for refusing to dumb down the material for his audience. We are treated as intelligent, thoughtful adults.

How do we use our sight? Do most of us forget how valuable it is unless it's taken away? Are there any truly accurate observations or are our senses wholly subjective? When blinded, Hughes de Montalembert talks of "making films in (his) head" and this engaging project expands our perceptions of a mind without sight. Even better, it shows us how one person can not only endure, but flourish in a new reality.

Prepare yourself for a rare indulgence - a film that's 85 minutes of pure, adrenalin-pumping, permenently-affixed-grin FUN that doesn't kowtow to Hollywood conventions. Wallace and Gromit's first full-length feature is a cracking rush of blood to the spine that leaves you tingling with pleasure from the sheer enjoyment of it all.

For the uninitiated, Wallace and Gromit are a man and dog claymation duo who first appeared in the short film A Grand Day Out (1989). It introduced audiences to Wallace, a sweater-wearing, cheese-loving, inventor of Rube-Goldberg contraptions, and Gromit, an intelligent pooch who spends most of his time extracting Wallace from complex but hilarious situations.

More shorts followed and now, after more than two painstaking years up to their elbows in clay, the incredibly patient crew at Aardman Animation has produced Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Were-Rabbit. The result is nothing less than a stop-motion masterpiece and if Oscar doesn't kiss the malleable licorice-like lips of W&G with a best animated feature award then it would prove to be a miscarriage of justice on par with the Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction fiasco.

We are introduced to Wallace and Gromit in an action-packed opening sequence which sets the tone of the film: the pliable pair are alerted in the dead of night by one of many of the trademark unnecessarily complicated but entertaining contraptions and must spring into action as dynamic pest controllers. They rescue their neighbours' gardens from voracious rabbits that do their utmost to consume the village's prized vegetables. Sound mundane? Hardly.

This beginning flings the audience into the appealing realm of Wallace and Gromit films: a carnival of motion that combines gut-bursting dialogue with an endless string of slapstick and sight gags at a pace that seems impossible to maintain but, remarkably, gallops without mercy from start to finish. This is Man O' War of the animation set.

And not only is it hilarious, Curse of the Were-Rabbit could be the most unrelenting adventure film to leap out of the gate since Raiders of the Lost Ark. There is a scene in which Gromit has lassoed the titular were-rabbit to a truck (and, yes, this dog can drive) and what follows is a chase over, under, and through back yards and gardens in a sequence to rival any endured by Indiana Jones.

If you can spare a moment between your laughter and thrill-induced amazement, you may attempt to take note of the incredible detail put into every frame of this film. Look at the specks of dust on a windshield or the fine hairs of the were-rabbit and your mind will reel when you remember that everything you see onscreen was created by hand, most of it moulded out of clay. Amazing.

With the past year's crop of mediocre computer-generated offerings exposing that the animation revolution heralded by Toy Story has begun a descent into uninspiring formula - yes, I'm pointing fingers at you, Madagascar and you, Robots - it's wonderful to once again be amused, thrilled, and enthralled by an animated feature. Lacking a single bone of inflated ego in their bodies, here's to hoping that Wallace and Gromit (with the slight aid of the band at Aardman) keep providing giddy pleasures to equal Curse of the Were-Rabbit. "Smashing!"

Click here to listen to the MP3!

I was a wordy kid. There are hilarious videotapes of me before the age of ten where I am spouting off full-throttled verbiage with the alacrity of Alex Trebek. Still, the key to every single thing that I said before I turned twelve is a matter of style over substance: the words might have been big, but they were still expressing the mental space of a child.

The big problem when adults write for children (in any medium) is the enormous temptation to write the youngsters with the presence of mind of grown-ups. This temptation was apparently too much for Twelve and Holding's screenwriter, Anthony S. Cipriano, who has created a trio of 12-year-olds who speak and behave less like 12-year-olds than any 12-year-olds I've ever met. We get it: it's supposed to be a movie about kids, for adults, and thereby, Cipriano is just using the kids as cyphers to get his meaning across. The only problem with that is that we as an audience just can't believe it.

Would Jacob (Conor Donovan), whose twin brother was murdered by schoolyard bullies who are now in prison, really have the courage to take a taxi ride all the way across town just to confront his brother's killers? Would Malee (Zoe Weizenbaum), having determined that a hunky construction worker (Jeremy Renner) is her soul mate, really have the guts to get dressed up, walk over to the construction site, and ask the man to a picnic lunch? Would Leonard (Jesse Camacho), in the real world, have the presence of mind to execute a detailed trap and confine his overweight mother in the basement just to prove a point to her about healthier eating habits? Of course not. The reality is that the lives of children this age are almost eternally ruled by fear, uncertainty, and a basic lack of working knowledge of how to get any of the above things done. This is out-and-out fantasy, and there's nothing wrong with that. The only real problem is that the tone Twelve and Holding strikes is so serious, and the plot points it unfolds so grave, that it's difficult to see these things as fantasy. And if they're not fantasy, they're just unbelievable.

It's a shame, because there's a lot going on here of great worth, even past the various unlikelihoods of the writing. The performances from all three leads - Camacho, Weizenbaum, and Donovan in a dual role as both brothers - are startlingly naturalistic and well-formed. From a thematic level, too, the film is aiming for the triple crown: it deals (in the Jacob story) with the origins, expressions and mindlessness of youth violence, and (in the Malee story) with the paradoxical pulls between a young girl's concepts of romance and the realities of her maturing body's sexual presence, and (in the Leonard story) with the ever-increasing reality that every parent in the United States who feeds their children a plate of fried chicken every night for dinner should probably be in prison for child abuse. These are important, contemporary themes regarding the "tween" culture which should be explored in our films and other media, and director Michael Cuesta does a workmanlike job of delivering the goods, never failing to subvert audience expectation by showing us just how nasty some of these situations can be. There's a lot of great stuff here. Renner's performance as the construction worker, particularly, is nothing short of superb, and his and Malee's storyline wraps up the most successfully of the trio, if only because Renner succeeds so brilliantly at completely bait-and-switching us regarding his character's motivations. It's brilliant.

Twelve and Holding is the sort of movie that needs to be made, but better. It feels like a prototype for something really brave and innovative that might one day successfully plumb the depths of the current trials of tweenhood. I hope it's not the last of its kind.

Title aside, there's very little sympathy at play for Lee Geum-ja (Lee Yeong-ae), the heroine of Sympathy for Lady Vengeance; if anything, the film is fairly resolute in its unwillingness to show revenge as having any kind of cleansing, reaffirming effect. It's just more violence, and ultimately pointless. That the various characters in the film engage in vengeance with varying levels of glee (which we, as an audience, are expected to share to the same varying degrees), is fairly beside the point. Geum-ja never finds her absolution, so neither should we.

This makes for a revenge picture that walks a very fine line, funny in parts, darkly serious in others. There are rape scenes played for laughs (a bulldog-ish female prisoner who forces other inmates to service her orally) and death scenes played for shock (videotaped evidence of kidnap victims' final moments) and everything in between (one unclassifiable sequence where the Bad Guy is shown to be a bad guy because, after finishing his rice, he throws his wife over the table and bangs her hard enough from behind to move all of the dishes from one side of the table to the other). It's actually quite remarkable, because it's been a long time since I've seen a film that's so willing to be so many different things at once, rather than sticking to one easily-identifiable (and thereby digestible) tone. That the various necessary tonal shifts work so well is a great credit to director Park Chan-wook, who is both having fun with the frame of the vengeance picture, and trying to subvert it.

Lee's performance in the lead role is marvellous, and quite affecting; there are two separate, extremely long takes of just her face in the final reel of the picture, where we realize just how far we've come with this character, and how much further she has yet to go. There's also a menagerie of whimsical supporting characters, from a bible-thumping devotee of Geum-ja to a coterie of female inmates, each with their own story to tell. There's a gormless pair of Australian parents and a love-struck busboy. And in the final reel, there's a phalanx of grieving parents, to whom Geum-ja has delivered the ultimate opportunity for revenge... and who must then determine how they're going to go about satisfying it.

Park does wonderful things with his camera, enjoying a painterly approach to the visual style that heightens the fun in some cases, and cranks up the opera in others. This is a very musical picture, with endless concertos and fugues rifling through the soundtrack as Geum-ja undertakes her semi-tragic destiny. It's lovely to look at and sticks with you afterwards, but is most interesting in its willingness to take us all the way down the road to redemption, and then not give it to us. No Sympathy to be had here, but plenty of fun on the way.

Douches Froides is one of the most clumsily-made films I've ever seen at the Toronto International Film Festival. Usually, when a fest film is bad, it's at least bad in an interesting way; Froides is anything but. It's so unbelievably bland that one becomes mystified upon contemplating why anyone would have made this movie in the first place. It's drab, boring, and ultimately pointless. It's an after-school special with the goofy charm taken out, and moderate nudity put in. No, on second thought, it's not even that good.

The story is such an unabashed cliche that one actually becomes embarassed for the filmmakers while watching it unspool. Mickael (Johan Libereau) is a healthy, upstanding young athlete. He has a girlfriend, Vanessa (Salome Stevenin), whom he loves, although their relationship seems to consist of little more than sneaking into various athletic facilities and having a go at each other. Mickael begins training with the new rich boy in town, Clement (Pierre Perrier), and eventually, Clement gets tossed into Mickael and Vanessa's sex life. Surprise surprise, Mickael can't handle it after the fact, and freaks out at Vanessa for being a slut. End of miserable, misbegotten story.

There are unsettling elements surrounding Mickael's judo training (he is forced to lose 7 kilograms in a matter of weeks, to qualify for his weight class), but these are not dealt with as anything more than mere plot elements, to move the story towards that moment where Mickael's opinion of Vanessa slips from madonna to whore. Otherwise, this film is not about much of anything; it's amazing just how pedestrian the overall storyline really is. The kids go to a party. The judo team capers in the shower. Mickael's parents have a fight. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Admittedly, that one crucial moment in the film - the two minutes where Mickael and Clement are wrestling one another in the abandoned gym, only to have Vanessa pulled into the mix, which ultimately leads to a provocative sequence of faceless bodies tumbling over one another before finally succumbing to fleshy lust - works better than anything on either side of it. It's restrained while still being erotic, and rather surprisingly true to the teenage experience, in ways that the rest of the film can never be. It feels so cataclysmically at odds with the ineptitude surounding it that the love scene may just as well have come out of an entirely different movie. We have seen nothing so far that indicates that first-time director Antony Cordier, who makes such elemental mistakes as eyeline direction errors and failures to maintain continuity of action, has anything like this up his sleeve. One deep breath later, the scene's gone, and we're plunged back into a film so numb that the audience climbs out of the theatre gasping for breath, as though having been smothered. Douches Froides is a cold shower, all right, in all the wrong ways. What a colossal misfire.

Of course, it had to be raining in Toronto friday, as we braced ourselves for The Toronto International Film Festival's final weekend, and a return to our normal lives we've been so successfully avoiding.

This is absolutely depressing

Among the volunteer's who have been working hard every night during the gala screenings, mid-week brought upon the realization that in all the velcro backing and popcorn sweeping, many of us had wallets full of pink slips we'd yet to use to get in to actual MOVIES at the various theatres around the city. Realizing you have extra and giving them away to friends with time on their hands may not be as good as actually going to screenings, but hey, it's good to help out your friends. This is all about community.

I did try to attend a morning screening of Dave Chapelle's Block Party, shot by music video and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind director Michael Gondry, prompted by stories of an extremely drunk and leacherous Gondry at a previous night's party. (Favorite volunteer joke of the day becomes, in a french accent, "How would you like to feel the eternal sunshine of my tongue down your throat?")

I over-sleep a 7am wakeup for the 9am screening by, oh, about five and a half hours.

A more successful morning follows, and I make it down to the paramount for a screening of Mike Mill's debut feature, Thumbsucker. The film's selling points are killer cameos by Keanu Reeves as the protagonist's spiritual orthodontist, and Vince Vaughn as a teacher who tries a bit too hard to fit in with his own debate club, as well as a soundtrack that seemlessly blends the exalted choir-rock of The Polyphonic Spree, with some of Elliot Smith's final recordings. More than the sum of these parts, however, this movie is an honest look at varying forms of middle American addiction, compulsion and obsession, and the fear that drives them. Worth seeing.

Two more galas to work, and by this point it's almost mechanical. I no longer know what films I am working until I arrive. The dog-head face masks theatre patrons are wearing to friday's first gala suggests something of The Wallace and Gromit variety, or that I truly dipped too mightely into the Jagermeister at last night's party for Metal: A Headbanger's Journey.

Talk now turns to the volunteer wrap party this Saturday night, where we will all be able to blow off some steam, and weep collectively (or rejoice, depending on the experience), at another film festival come to pass. I will hang up these dress pants I have been wearing for the last nine days, realizing there may not be another excuse to wear them for an entire year.

Absolutely depressing.

We haven't been alone in devoting overwhelming page real estate to the festival. All the usual suspects - the Globe, the Star, the Post, Now, Eye, Dose - have all been in on the act, as have a number of perhaps lesser well known blogs and other online media outfits.

Of course, what separates the big media players from the blogs, or shall we say citizen journalism is not only money and resources (people, equipment etcetera) but perhaps most importantly access. We here at blogTO applied for media accreditation to this year's TIFF and were denied. Upon appeal, we even made note that the White House - a conservative bastion some might say - have granted bloggers media access, so why not a supposedly forward thinking and culture-friendly organization like the Toronto International Film Festival? Upon further review, our application was again refused. A terse form letter played the role of explanation.

Despite the setback, we've given TIFF our best efforts. Without access, we were not able to see as many films as hoped, we didn't get to eat shrimp at many of the parties and we certainly didn't get a seat at any of the press conferences.

Neither did many of the other bloggers and online outfits who covered TIFF this year. Torontoist unveiled the TIFFist. Indiewire covered the deals. Sweetspot apparently did something - including a promotion with Polish Beauty Bar - but it's beyond me where you can find it online. And tons of individual bloggers such as Chris Nolan also weighed in with their thoughts and reviews.

It almost leads me to wonder whether the media accredited priviledged are starting to feel a bit of pressure, or at the very least be forced to think about the online medium as something more than a channel to repurpose their print content. To this point, the Star broke out their first real blog. (real being the key term for those of you who remember Wakestock) They also asked illustrator extraordinaire Chris Hutsul do create a Midnight Madness comic.

Which reminds me of a conversation I has a number of months ago with a writer from Toronto Life (more on that next week). He asked me what the point was in having a blog? Who has time to read it? Besides, isn't everything already covered by traditional media?

As noted during the introduction of the film, In Her Shoes is not the project that springs to mind when one thinks of Curtis Hansen (who made the fantastic L.A. Confidential). Because Hansen found relevance and importance in the questions presented in the script, his engagement with the characters brought a level of sincerity and attention not often found in works in this genre (which I would describe as a comedic family drama).

Based on the novel by Jennifer Weiner, the story involves two sisters, the plain 'smart one' Rose (Toni Collette), and the sexy blond 'dumb one' Maggie (Cameron Diaz), whose mentally unstable mother died during their childhood. One is hard working (guess who) and the other can't hold down a job and relies on her looks to get by; the only thing the sisters seem to share is shoe size.

Maggie is kicked out of her parents' house by their evil step-mother (who constantly kvells about her own daughter), and responsible Rose must take her in. Thoughtless Maggie seduces Rose's boss (who Rose had slept with the night previous) and she walks in on them. Rose reaches breaking point, and demands that Maggie get out. Maggie, with nowhere left to go, rifles through her drawers at her dad's house looking for cash. While searching stumbles across old cards and letters from a grandmother she didn't know she had hidden in her dad's desk, conveniently still sealed in the envelopes with a clearly labeled return address.

Maggie decides to visit her mysterious grandmother Ella (Shirley MacLaine) in Miami. While she's out of the picture, Rose takes time of from lawyering to walk dogs, and begins a relationship with Simon (Mark Feuerstein, who you might recognize from short-run sitcoms like 'Good Morning Miami' or 'Conrad Bloom', or possibly not). Simon is perfect, and they eventually get engaged, but Rose is increasingly troubled by her sister's disappearance. Meanwhile, Ella and her quirky friends at the active old people's residence are busy teaching Maggie a thing or two about life, responsibility, and how to read poetry despite her dyslexia.

There is nothing particularly original in this plot, and there are weaknesses in the script that temper the success of the film, however, as I mentioned before, the whole project is made better under Hansen's eyes. This could have very easily been another forgettable chick flick, and in other hands probably would have been.

Stereotypes abound in this film, and Hansen's careful casting mitigates this - he selects actors who bring charm and quirkiness to roles that doubtless fall flat on the page. Francine Beers in particular is knowing and adorable as Ella's sharp-tongued best friend Mrs Lefkowitz. Diaz, Collette and MacLaine bring gravitas to essentially simple characters, giving their family conflicts an edgier, more realistic feel and hint at greater complexity and depth in the roles.

Unfortunately the male characters don't quite fare so well. Simon is given no characteristics other than the boyfriend every girl wishes they had - he's kind, considerate, attentive, sensitive, emotional, cute and a successful lawyer. Conflict arises between he and Rose because she's not being completely honest with him. He's not an individual, he's a list, though Feuerstein gives Simon the kind of Jew-next-door appeal Charlotte and Miranda's boyfriends tended to in Sex and the City. Richard Burgi as Rose's insensitive boss could easily have been cribbed from Daniel Cleaver in Bridget Jones' Diary, except that he's granted a reprieve from total caddishness in a scene where he confesses he was a fat kid.

Hansen never allows these weaker elements to overwhelm the film. He focuses his attention on his actresses and the threads of the story that complicate the surface stereotypes. During the scenes where Rose and Maggie argue, I found myself thinking of my relationship with my own sister. When Maggie begins to grow and change, you find yourself pulling for her, rather than waiting expectantly for the inevitable conclusion. And when resolution arrives, tying up all the loose ends, was I rolling my eyes at the schmaltz? No. To be honest, I was a little ver klempt.

Is this film going to change your life? Probably not. And I doubt it will be a contender for any awards (though Shirley MacLaine might pull a best supporting from somewhere). However, if you're looking for something a little more intelligent than the average chick flick, something you can watch with your sister or your boyfriend or your mom, this is a film you need to check out. You get to feel all warm and fuzzy inside without that slimy after-taste that comes from phone-commercial level cheese.

There's a startlingly beautiful moment in The Notorious Bettie Page, where Bettie is alone in the woods with a photographer for one of her frequent bikini modelling shoots, and mentions that she's been thinking that there's no real reason why she should be keeping the bathing suit on at all. With typical carefree immodesty, Bettie doffs her top and then her bottom and stands up out of the foliage, facing the photographer head-on, resplendent in her natural beauty looking for all the world like a goddess of feminine empowerment. The photographer blushes and gently reprimands her. He directs her to turn away from the camera. "We can't show... that," he admonishes. He can't even bring himself to say the word "vagina," let alone photograph one.

Ah, innocent times! By the end of the picture, a Bettie Page fan is telling the now-retired Bettie about the relative tameness of her photographs compared to the more modern forms of erotica, and we believe it. It's this sense of the sweetness of Bettie's time and place in history that makes The Notorious Bettie Page so much fun. The film never aims to preach or sermonize, never makes Bettie's photography feel smutty, never would even think to demonize Bettie herself - because the film is very precisely telling us that such considerations miss the point of the Bettie Page icon altogether. She wasn't an image of transgressive sexuality at all, but rather one of freedom, self-confidence and innocence. When Bettie stopped feeling like she could be those things, she stopped taking the photographs. End of story.

That synopsis is really the only problem with Bettie Page: ultimately, it comes off feeling a bit slight. This is undoubtedly part of the point as well. Mary Harron could very easily have made a lengthy, ponderous biopic about Page; she chose instead to make a loving homage to not just Page herself, but the small slice of the 1950s where America teetered on the brink of the fundamental change between postwar innocence and pre-Vietnam revolution. I was left wanting more to chew on from the Bettie Page story, and at 90 minutes, the film is too short. Still, it's dandy while it's there. Page is an absolutely gorgeous picture, lovingly enshrining the look and feel of 1950s black and white filmmaking, while exploring the moment where we as a culture went wrong with our feelings about nudity and erotica. It's a delicate balance to hold, but Harron's approach is nothing if not well thought out. This is a very smartly-made film.

When I first heard that Gretchen Mol was going to be playing Page, I thought it couldn't be done, from body type on down. Now, I'm simply flabbergasted by the degree to which Mol succeeds in her mimicry. Without ever explaining why Page's smile unfolds the way it does when she's winking at the camera, she captures the visual perfectly. More importantly, she fills in the blank spaces: we all have seen those few, frozen moments of Page, the undying pinup images, but Mol sketches the moments that lead up to each photograph, and the moments afterwards, like a master craftsperson building a ladder to get in and out of a house with no door. She accesses Page beautifully. Mol brings to her performance a wealth of subtly-etched anxieties, shows in Page an intelligence about herself that ultimately leads her to question why she does the things she does. Mol is occasionally laugh-out-loud hilarious at it, and occasionally fairly heartbreaking. It's a tremendous performance.

There's another moment in this film, very near the end. Bettie has been sitting outside the Senate hearings on pornography for the duration of the picture (the rest of the narrative has been told in flashback), waiting for her turn to testify. Finally, a court official arrives and tells her that her testimony will not be required. Taking a moment to adjust to this news - she has been waiting twelve hours - Bettie looks up at the official and politely asks, "Will I need to come back tomorrow?" Because, of course, she would come back; would wait another twelve hours if she was asked to, because she is both hopelessly beaten by them, and yet forgivingly patient with them as well. She knows herself. In that single line, and that single look, Mol and Harron convey everything you need to know about Bettie Page. Defeated and invincible, and ready to leave the cameras behind.

Little Athens is a film that has seemed to slip underneath the radar of most critics and subsequently most festival goers. When I saw this film on Monday afternoon the theatre was half empty. Shameful. This is an absolutely brilliant film - one that needs to be seen by as many people as possible. Toronto, you have a chance to redeem yourself as Little Athens screens tonight at 9 PM at Varsity Cinema.

After I saw Little Athens I quickly logged on to IMDB.com to see what others were saying about it. Not a single vote was posted. Three days later, there are 31 votes...and Little Athens holds a user rating of 8.5 out of 10! It is easily the best film I have seen at the festival thus far; and I am hoping that some distributor has enough sense to get this puppy into theatres as soon as possible.

Little Athens is the second feature from Tom Zuber - a smart young man who, apparently, holds two graduate degrees from respected universities and also co-founded an entertainment law firm outside of Los Angeles. He is clearly talented - the writing in this film is sharp and witty without coming across as overly structured. However, I think that much of the credit should be given to Anne McCarthy and Jay Scully, the casting directors of the film. They managed to wrangle and sign some of the most impressive talents I have seen. In a movie like this, where special effects are all but absent and a genre heading is far removed, the cast is the most important vehicle for translating story to the audience. All members of the cast, I am happy to say, were firing on all cylinders during this production.

This movie follows a colorful mosaic of characters through small-town America - we see these people bump and lurch lethargically toward nothing in particular. Many of them are stuck in dead end jobs, and the reputations they developed in high school seem to precede and haunt them daily (the frightening effect of growing up in a small suburban town). With its young cast and its focus on the dark side of existence, Little Athens draws parallels to some other stellar films that have come before it - namely, Bully and Kids. But the parallels are only superficial. Little Athens contains so much more genuine and gut-busting humor. I found myself laughing out loud several times - a practice that has become rare since I developed a horrific bout of halitosis.

Little Athens screens tonight at 9PM. Run to Varsity Cinemas. Even if this sucker is sold out, stick yourself in the rush line. Even if no rush tickets are up for grabs, steal a shirt from a frail volunteer and sneak into the theatre. Even if the volunteer has terrible body odor and the shirt you stole to sneak into the movie smells a horrible smell...sit down, relax, and enjoy this wonderful movie. It will be worth it.

I'm so glad I didn't.

For fans of Egoyan's work, or dare I say it for fans of quality films in general, you won't be disappointed. Aside from perhaps Capote this is the best film I've seen all week. And the viewing was double the fun because Egoyan himself showed up to introduce it and take part in the Q&A afterwards.

I won't get into the nitty gritty of the script. You can get a synopsis and watch the trailer elsewhere. What I will say is that it's ludicrous that this film has been slapped an NC-17 rating by the Motion Picture Association of America. This is completely unjustifed.

As the Ryerson audience and Egoyan himself professed, there exists plenty of films that have been far more graphic but spared the NC-17 kiss of death. So what happed with Where the Truth Lies? Egoyan chalked it up to the current political and social climate south of the border (the neo-cons) but offered that had the film featured less well known stars, it likely would have escaped unharmed.

As for what will become of this film, Egoyan promised Where the Truth Lies will be out in October, uncensored, in other words the same cut that TIFF audiences were treated to. Should you want to watch an MPAA friendly version, Egoyan promised: " You will never see the cut version, unless you want to rent it from a Blockbuster in Middle America in two years time."

Hyun-Jung gets dumped by her longtime boyfriend only to quickly marry a gentleman who has pursued her relentlessly. But what exactly is the reason she married him for? Because she needed the attention he was willing to give her? To quiet the worries of her family? Does she actually love him, or was it just so she wouldn't end up alone? While Hyun-Jung makes the right decisions for herself at the time, her short-sightedness soon catches up in sacrifices, lies and selfishness.

What I liked about it was there was no real beginning and end. As life, this film is a snapshot of this woman's journey into coming to terms with maturing in her relationships. Where the film lacks, lead actress Moon So-ri (Oasis) picks it up. Regarded as the best actress in South Korea today, the film in the hands of a lesser seasoned professional may not have come across as emotionally genuine as it was.

Before its screening, director Kang Yi-Kwan in attendence, instructed the audience through his interpretor, to think about what kind of person you are when you watch this film. Perhaps my being in that mindset made me far more reflective and thereby appreciating her journey.

During the Q & A, Kang's inspiration for the film was derived from a night out drinking with his buddies. When they were younger, the topics included women and sex. Now older, the topics matured into how to keep relationships alive and how to hold them together.

A fine effort for first time director and brilliant performance from Moon So-ri.

Lucid must have seemed like a great idea at the screenwriting stage. As a finished film, it shows one of those classic disconnects between theory and practice (pre-production and production). The film seems to be predicated upon the belief that the audience cannot possibly guess its "twist" before the film deigns to tell us; more accurately, it is probably founded on the assumption that its audience will take everything that is put on screen at face value, simply by virtue of that it is on screen. That's a pretty massive error in judgment. The only way to really hide in plain sight like this is to make sure that what you're putting on screen makes absolute logical sense, so that we can't possibly guess that what we're seeing might not be real... and unfortunately, there are a few too many elements of Lucid that scream "TWIST!!!" long before the film gets around to admitting to it.

The result is a very large chunk of the film (say, about 60%) where we have already figured out what is going on, but where the film is still coyly attempting to mislead us. That makes for a very annoying portion of film. This is a shame, because the other parts - the introductory twenty or twenty-five minutes, and the last fifteen minutes or so - are actually rather enjoyable. Lucid isn't really a bad movie; it's just badly conceived.

We initially see our leading man, Joel (Jonas Chernick, who co-wrote the script with director Sean Garrity... and it shows, in the earnest dedication to the arc of Joel's character), caught in a graphic sexual tryst at the family cottage, by his wife and young daughter. Joel's a therapist of some sort, and while trying to put his life back together post-crisis (his relationship with his daughter being the particularly sticky point), he takes on a trio of new patients. Sophie (Lindy Booth, a Canadian Lauren Ambrose) is a druggie. Chandra (Michelle Nolden) is a delusional hypochondriac. And of course there's the violent wing-nut Victor, who, because this is a Canadian feature film, is played by Callum Keith Rennie, who by law must appear in every Canadian feature film in which Sarah Polley does not appear.

Things start to unravel as Joel begins to get muddled up in his patients' lives, all of whom are having increasing difficulty separating waking life and dream life - a problem that also seems to be afflicting Joel's daughter, but in reverse. Joel himself is an insomniac, which can't be helping matters, and when you throw this many people who are potentially sleepwalking through existence together in one place without acknowledging the improbabilities of such a grouping, you're getting into pretty hefty screenwriting trouble. Besides, all the little "clues" as to what's really going on (an impossible answering machine message, a daughter with a predilection for running into traffic, an elevator that won't open) are hardly subtle.

Nevertheless, the film wraps up rather neatly, thanks in large part to workmanlike performances from the lead actors, which make the maximum effort to sidestep the inherent difficulties of playing characters under these circumstances. Director Garrity's use of camera is loose and effortless, which keeps the film from becoming too bogged down in itself, even when the tone seems to be shifting wildly from comedy to pathos within a single scene. Visuals are well-managed without being obtrusive, adding edge to the multitudes of insomniac sequences.

It must have seemed like a great idea, all right, but underestimating an audience is a dangerous business. Lucid might be better consumed when drowsy.