There's an interesting conversation going on over at Hollywood Elsewhere about Sasha Baron Cohen's upcoming film, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, and whether the film is too intellectual for the average moviegoer. Jeff Wells notes that the awareness level of the film in the average movie-goer is not great, even though it's receiving lots of buzz from industry types and critics since it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. Wells speculates some on why the movie isn't buzzing well with average joes, and wonders whether part of the reason might be that people are hearing that the film basically makes Middle Americans look like a bunch of racist, homophobic dorks.

There's been some interesting discussion in the comments, partly on whether Middle America will be interested in seeing a film that basically mocks them out, and partly on whether Sacha Baron Cohen should have delved into other groups like the Black Panthers or Nation of Islam and gotten them talking about the "white devils," to be more balanced. Maybe Cohen will tackle offending those folks in a future film; I certainly wouldn't put it past him. I saw Borat at Toronto (both at the premiere, when the projector famously broke 15 minutes into sold-out screening, and the following night all the way through), and I laughed non-stop, even when I was cringing at the way Cohen is able to elicit the most amazing responses out of the subjects he encounters in the film.

When I cover a film festival, I usually do a small handful of interviews for various publications. In nearly every case, the sit-down is with a young filmmaker or some indie actors. When I was asked if I'd like to spend a half-hour with the Midnight Madness Guru for the Toronto International Film Festival, I figured it'd be a whole lot of fun. I mean... the guy's job is to pick through the world's newest wierd movies and pick his ten favorites! Now that's a guy you want to drink a coffee with! Here now is a conversation between Colin Geddes, filmmaker J.T. Petty and yours truly. And I had to snip about 35% of this chat session because it often devolved into a really nerdy conversation between three hardcore genre geeks. Obviously it was a lot of fun.

Cinematical: How important is a "midnight movie" slate to a festival like Toronto?

Colin Geddes: The Midnight Madness category was originally devised as a spot for films that didn't really "fit in" with a traditional festival agenda. We're talking back in, say, 1988, when genre films didn't necessarily "belong" at a film festival. So the category gave us a chance to introduce quality genre films to an appreciative audience. Plus these movies often work as a "gateway" for new audience members. With the festival being so huge, it's sometimes overwhelming. And if you're an 18-year-old kid coming to Toronto, like I was, where are you going to start? You're probably going to start in the horror stuff, the weird stuff. The rest of the film festival gets the "art," and I get the "fun." And the art. And what we see now is that, of all the different slates, Midnight Madness is one that almost always sells out, ticket-wise. From an industry standpoint, these are quite often the films that sold -- and seen.

Cine: And they're not always horror films either. You have seven or eight of 'em, but then something like Borat makes the cut as well...

CG: Yeah, it's a mixed bag. Now, Borat is an outrageous comedy, but I also knew it would it would bring a lot of attention, and it's great to have that kind of "hook" sometimes. If I can get an 18-year-old kid who'll come and see Borat, and then he comes back to see The Host from Korea or Princess from Denmark, I've done my job there. Borat is kind of the "anchor." On the other hand, I like to take a chance with one or two selections. Two years ago I programmed Calvaire (The Ordeal), which was ... an out-there film. Half the audience was truly perplexed by that one, but it's an excellent film and precisely the kind of title we like to "introduce" to our viewers. This year we have J.T. Petty's S&MAN, which is in a similar vein. Something that's going to be confrontational; something that might divide audiences.

Cine: Something that's going to get people talking. ...

Note: This review originally ran during the Toronto International Film Festival. It is being rerun now in conjunction with the film's opening this weekend. - ed

A child being sexually molested by a trusted adult is bad enough; when the molester is the Catholic priest from the parish the child has grown up with, the horror is magnified that much more. Not only is there all the usual shattering of trust and innocence that is the inevitable fallout of a child victimized by a predator, but the child's spiritual faith is shattered as well. In her powerful documentary Deliver Us From Evil, Amy Berg delves headfirst into the murky waters of pedophilia in the Catholic priesthood and the Church's culpability in covering it up, as told through the stories of three of the hundreds of victims of Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady, known to the families who trusted him as "Father Ollie."

What makes Berg's film both amazing and incredibly wrenching is that she was able to interview Father O'Grady extensively for the film. Almost as if he's using the camera as his own private confessional booth, O'Grady talks candidly about his problem -- being sexually attracted to children -- and how he used the position of spiritual trust granted him by the Church's authority to molest and rape the children of his parishes. You can't help but be chilled watching O'Grady -- an innocuous-looking older man now, with white hair and twinkling eyes, smile as he talks about getting sexually aroused by young children in their underwear, and smirk as he discusses being forgiven his sins by confessing them to another priest, as if his victims were chalkboards he could scribble all over and then erase.

Over at The Hollywood Reporter on her Risky Business Blog, Anne Thompson informs us that all the buzz after the LA premiere of The Queen was about Helen Mirren and an inevitable Oscar win, and notes that the Miramax folks on hand looked like "deer in headlights" at the chatter. No one wants to be the early front-runner for the Oscars, then you have to try to sustain momentum over a long while.

Thompson gives the film a detailed, positive write-up, which might just be enough to compel me to see it. When first I heard "movie about the Queen after Diana died," I thought "Lifetime Movie." I'm glad to hear that the end result sounds pretty good, because I do like Helen Mirren a lot. However, of the actresses that seem most likely to garner a Best Actress Oscar nod, my chips are still on either Kate Winslet for Little Children or Annette Bening for Running With Scissors -- both powerful performances. I'm still holding out hope that Maggie Gyllenhaal might get some love for her performance in Sherrybaby, too. And don't discount the possibility of Penelope Cruz for Volver, which will surely be a front-runner for Best Foreign Pic and might just get a Best Director nod to boot.

Yeah, I know, it's early to be talking about Oscar buzz, and really, who cares, anyhow? And yet, Cinematical and every other film industry site out there will relentlessly cover the Oscars, won't we? Who's in front? Who's going to get a nom? Who will have the best cleavage? The hottest date? Okay, so those of you who care (and heck, even those of you who don't): Who's your early pick for Best Actress? Will it be Mirren as the dowdy Queen? Kate Winslet as the depressed stay-at-home-mom/adultress? Bening as the tragical nutcase of a mother? Cruz as the woman whose dead mother comes back? Or will someone else come from behind and leap into a nomination and maybe even a win?

Deliver Us From Evil, director Amy Berg's scathing indictment of Father Oliver O'Grady, a pedophiliac priest who was transferred around northern California for over 20 years while he preyed on young children in his parishes, has created quite a furor in Los Angles and revived interest in the actions of Cardinal Roger Mahony, who directly supervised O'Grady for five of the years he was actively molesting young children. In the film, O'Grady, who now lives in Ireland after being deported from the United States upon completion of a prison sentence for the molestation of two young boys, says that he was able to abuse children for so long in part because of the actions of Cardinal Mahony, who now heads the Los Angeles Archdiocese -- the largest in the country.

William Hodgman, top deputy of the target crimes division in Los Angeles, said in the report in the New York Times that the doc "will fuel ongoing consideration as to whether Cardinal Mahony and others engaged in criminal activity." Michael Hennigan, an attorney for the archdiocese, fired back that "If Mr. Hodgman is suggesting in any way that the cardinal is the subject of a criminal investigation, he is being irresponsible and in our judgment is committing prosecutorial misconduct."

Some days, when you're on week two of the head cold/flu bug/plague from hell and your head feels like it's going to explode from some point directly behind your right eyeball, your ability to come up with a witty blog post title gets diminished. I figure lots of other people out there are sick too -- at least I know they are here in Seattle, because the Safeway keeps running out of and restocking the Theraflu and Triaminic, and they've added a great big display of Kleenex, Gatorade and chicken noodle soup at the front of the store. When you're feeling crummy, the one thing you can do to pass the time is sit your ass on the couch, wrap up in your favorite warm and fuzzy blankie, zone out on cold medicine and internet-surf. And we, dear Cinematical readers, are here to serve you in your hour of need. You don't have to think too hard about which other film sites to check out. Just read on, we've rounded up some of the coolest film stuff out there for you right here. And there's nothing like a big group hug to make you feel better, right? So read on ...

Last month at TIFF, I reviewed a film called Out of the Blue, about the massacre that took place in the quiet town of Aramoana, New Zealand in 1990. David Gray, a lifelong resident of the town whose mental health had been deteriorating for some time, snapped and killed 13 of his neighbors, including four young children. The film is extraordinarily well-done and handles the events of that awful day with considerable restraint; even so, it was difficult for me to watch, and I wasn't a part of the tragedy. Director Robert Sarkies, a New Zealander who lived in a town near Aramoana at the time of the massacre, was very aware of the need to be sensitive in making this film, and as part of the process he met with residents, allowed representatives of the victims to read the script before filming began, and agreed to the conditions the people of Aramoana requested, including that he not film within the town itself.

When Sarkies spoke before the screening of his film at TIFF about working with the people of Aramoana in the making of Out of the Blue, and noted that, for the most part, the people who thought the film shouldn't be made were people who weren't directly impacted by the tragedy. Several of the actual survivors, in fact, met with the actors who were playing them. The New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification has given the film an "R15" rating, and Chief Censor Bill Hastings has added a descriptive note that "violence and content may disturb."

Not many directors could take a film built around the theme of death and make it as funny, thoughtful, and deeply meaningful as Pedro Almodóvar has with Volver, now officially Spain's nominee for the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture. The film revolves around three generations of women: Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) and her daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) live with Raimunda's husband, an unemployed laborer who spends his spare time checking out his daughter's blossoming body. Raimunda's sister, Sole (Lola Dueñas) supports herself by running an unlicensed beauty shop out of her apartment. As we meet Raimunda, Sole and Paula, they are at the cemetery cleaning the graves of Raimunda and Sole's parents, who died in a fire.

In La Mancha, where Raimunda's parents lived, the east wind blows incessantly, driving people to the brink of insanity. This is a superstitious culture, where the dead are respected, graves are kept clean and tombstones well-polished, and the dead occasionally walk among the living -- especially if they have unfinished business. When Raimunda and Sole go to visit their elderly aunt, they are surprised to find that she refers to their dead mother, Irene, as though she has just seen her. It doesn't take long for Abuela Irene (Carmen Maura) to appear to Sole and Paula, though she conceals her presence from Raimunda. It is with Raimunda, and with Raimunda and Sole's friend Agustina (Blanca Portillo) that Abuela Irene has unfinished business to resolve.

Perhaps I'm just tired of watching films about whiny almost-30-year-old guys who don't want to grow up, or perhaps it's just that I'm tired of seeing Zach Braff do the angsty, existential thing. Whatever the case, Braff can't be solely blamed for The Last Kiss. Unlike Garden State, which he also wrote and directed, in The Last Kiss Braff only wears his acting hat. The film, directed by Tony Goldwyn off a screenplay by Paul Haggis (who's capable of much better), is a remake of 2001 Italian flick L' Ultimo bacio.

In The Last Kiss, Braff has the misfortune to play Michael, an architect with a gorgeous, perfect, long-time girlfriend, Jenna (Jacinda Barrett), who has just found out she's pregnant. The unexpected pregnancy sends Michael into a quiet state of freak-out which he carefully conceals, pasting on enthusiastic smiles for Jenna, her parents and their friends. He assures Jenna he's happy about the pregnancy (although impending fatherhood isn't quite enough to boost him past his marriage phobia), and that he'll love her pregnant body. Meanwhile, under the surface, he just wants to run screaming for the nearest exit back to adolescent freedom.

If you've been paying attention to the news over the past several years, you've heard the term "outsourced" -- the phenomena of companies taking jobs in the United States and transitioning entire divisions to countries like India, where they can pay a fraction of the payroll and overhead to get the same job done. In Outsourced, directed by John Jeffcoat, Todd (Josh Hamilton), a customer service manager, finds himself in the odd position of being sent to India to train his replacement, after the order fulfillment division of his company is outsourced there. It's nothing personal, says his manager, Dave (Matt Smith, who perfectly deadpans the role of the ruthless boss). The added irony is that the company Todd works for sells kitschy bits of Americana -- plaster of paris bald eagles to farmers in the heartland, "cheesehead" hats to folks in Wisconsin -- and that their customers will now be purchasing their American pride collectibles through workers sitting at desks half a world away.

Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), a litle girl caught up in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, seeks escape from the fear and dreariness of her life -- and is drawn into in a fantasy world as dangerous as the real one she wants to leave behind. Ofelia's father is dead, and her mother, Carmen (Ariadna Gil) has married Captain Vidal (Sergei López), a tyrannical man who rules his remote outpost and his new family with a brutal iron fist. Carmen is pregnant with Vidal's child, and his sole concern is that the baby be delivered safely. Ofelia and Carmen are, to him, mere inconveniences to put up with along the path to him having a son.

Canadian actress Lisa Ray has had a very busy couple of years. After starring in 2002's Bollywood/Hollywood, directed by Deepa Mehta, Ray filmed Ball & Chain in 2004, Water (Canada's entry for Best Foreign Film, also directed by Mehta) and Seeking Fear in 2005, and Quarter Life Crisis and A Stone's Throw in 2006. A Stone's Throw, the directorial debut of producer Camelia Frieberg, played at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Ray graciously sat down with Cinematical to talk about the film and what's up next for her. Ray had just flown in the night before, to catch the end of the fest and spend some downtime visiting her parents in Toronto.

Due to everyone's wild and crazy film festival schedule, our final video roundtable from Toronto was shot at 8AM near the end of the fest, as we were getting close to seeing a cumulative total of over 50 films. An 8AM shoot was fine for former East Coast Editor Martha Fischer, who is an early riser anyhow, but James Rocchi and I could barely prop our eyelids open. So while I can't promise that we're exactly coherent, we did manage to talk about some films we were each wrapping the fest with. Maybe next festival we'll shoot a roundtable at the hotel bar after a day full of screenings followed by a few rounds of drinks. For now, though, you can download the final roundtable from TIFF here (79.2MB, 12:16 minutes ) or watch it over on Netscape.

I have a lot of admiration for screenwriters. They are the unsung heroes of the film business; without their stories, no film would ever be made. Being a writer is hard, anxious and often lonely work. You stare at the blank screen. It waits to be filled, it must be filled, and so you start to write, praying that the end result is worth the effort you give to it. I've started and not finished countless screenplays whose stories just wouldn't go anywhere, written and completed eight full drafts of an absolutely dreadful romantic comedy and, through various writing groups I've belonged to over the years, read a lot of developing screenplays that will, thankfully, never see the light of day. I'm such a geek, in fact, that I often read the scripts for films I love, over and over again, just to feel rhythm of the words on the page, and to get a sense for how those words translated into the finished film on the screen.

As so often happens, Anne Thompson at The Hollywood Reporter has written an astute piece on screenwriting that is so obvious it seems it should be carved into granite above the entrance to every studio in Hollywood: Great writing makes for great movies. The film with which Thompson explores this hypothesis is Stranger Than Fiction, which debuted at Toronto (sadly, I missed it there), and she makes her point about great writing by enumerating how many big stars wanted to be in the film based on the script alone. Some truly great films have come out of a script that speaks its truth to actors so purely and loudly that they simply must see the film get made. They'll work for scale, drop other projects, shuffle their schedules around, all for the sake of that golden opportunity to be in a film so good that it demands to be made, whatever the sacrifice. When critics and cinephiles bemoan the dismal quality of so many films sludging their way out of Hollywood, very often what we are really bemoaning is the lack of originality in storytelling, the lack of passion in penning that story, and mostly, the lack of truth that seems to permeate so many films.

Indie film Smother is getting underway with Liv Tyler, Dax Shepard and Diane Keaton signed to the flick. Inferno Distribution will finance and produce the pic with Jay Roach's Everyman Pictures. The script was penned by Tim Rasmussen and Vince Di Meglio, and is about a 30-something guy who is fired from his job just as his wife wants to have a baby and his overbearing mother moves in with them. Di Meglio will make his directorial debut with the film. The scribes have another project in IMDb listed as Untitled Rasmussen and Di Meglio Project, about a "Southern father meeting his three daughters ethnically diverse boyfriends for the first time at Thanksgiving." That project has been sold to Warner Bros and David Dobkin (Shanghai Knights, Wedding Crashers) attached to direct.

The Pleasure of Your Company, which premiered at Toronto, has been picked up by MGM for North American distribution. The romantic comedy, written and helmed by Michael Ian Black, stars Jason Biggs (American Pie) and Isla Fisher (Wedding Crashers, I Heart Huckabees). MGM also recently acquired Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, and is set to distrib The Weinstein Company's Bobby and Harsh Times.

Speaking of the Weinsteins, TWC has also pegged Tony Leondis to helm animated CG pic Igor, which will focus on a mad scientist's assistant. Script is being written by Chris McKenna. Leondis previously scribed other animated flicks including The Prince of Egypt and Home on the Range.

Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont, currently listed on IMDb as writing and directing an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, has optioned rights to the book Rescue Me, He's Wearing a Moose Hat : and 40 Other Dates Over 50, a comedic memoir by Sherry Halperin about her misadventures reentering the dating world after being widowed at the age of 51. Halperin will co-produce on the project.

(Ed's note: All links to Variety and The Hollywood Reporter stories require a subscription to read the full piece, but you can get a free 14-day trial from Variety.)