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TIFF: Short cuts

The cast of the Oscar-favorite film, "Home for Purim." "For Your Consideration" -- Christopher Guest is blessed with the finest comedic stock company since the heyday of Preston Sturges. Guest, Catherine O'Hara (Goddess of Funny), Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Harry…

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TIFF: Borat R US

View image O, say, can you see Borat? For what he is? The New York Times headline about all the political films in this year's TIFF was: "At the Toronto Film Festival, Liberal Politics As Usual." David M. Halfbinger of…

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TIFF: The war over there

View image Christian Bale in Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn." For the first half of Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn," the fictionalized movie based on his documentary 1997 "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," I wasn't sure if Herzog had tamed the commercial…

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TIFF: What's missing here?

View image The ManuLife Center (glowing beacon in the middle of the shot), where most of the Toronto Film Festival press and industry screenings are held. The hallway of the Varsity Cinemas, with theaters on both sides. What's missing from…

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TIFF: The Pervert's Guide to Cinema

Slavoj Zizek in the wake of Melanie Daniels, crossing Bodega Bay in a small motorboat. At 150 minutes, in three parts, "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema" (catchy title, no?) is probably the fastest-moving, most shamelessly enjoyable film I've seen in…

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TIFF: What Is This Thing Called Sex?

Come blow your horn: Justin Bond sings "We All Get It in the End" at the end of "Shortbus." The camera soars over a wonderfully colorful handmade model of New York City, popping into one window after another. At the…

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TIFF: Death and the Madre

View image Three Women of "Volver": Sister, niece/daughter, sister. The dry east wind that howls through the little village in La Mancha where Pedro Almodovar was born, and where his latest film "Volver" begins, brings with it unease, fire and…

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TIFF: Tower to nowhere

Wandering, lost, in the desert of "Babel." "Babel" is the very model of a modern major motion picture about the inter-connectedness of people around the globe, speaking different languages in different countries and socio-political situations. The problem is that it…

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TIFF: Sex, sex, sex

TORONTO -- The camera soars over a wonderfully colorful handmade model of New York City, popping into one window after another. At the tip of Lower Manhattan is a blood-red scar with two square lesions: Ground Zero. "Shortbus," John Cameron…

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TIFF: Monsters & suicide

TORONTO -- "The Host" (2007) (or "Gue-mool," which sounds better) is a South Korean monster movie in which a mutant amphibious creature swims beneath the Han River, scampers among the girders beneath its bridges, prowls its sewers, and occasionally leaps onto…