Matilda is a woman created from my imagination, Bogdan’s imagination, from other characters reactions towards her and, also, from Marius Panduru’s look, from the constant development of the story and from our solutions we found with each step in order to build our ideas. Matilda is a tired person, aged before her time, who doesn’t trust anybody and whom nobody trusts either.

Without any info on the run time, I'm not entirely sure how much Michael Winterbottom will strip away from The Trip. The six episode BBC sitcom starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon will be shown at TIFF probably in a two-hour form, allowing it to be shopped to the same territories that may have picked up Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.

As promising as The Last Exorcism is - there's enough good stuff going on in The Last Exorcism for us to recommend seeing it - ultimately the final reel goes way too far off the rails for the film to be considered anything other than a decent but somewhat disappointing fright flick.

Writer/director Neil Marshall's Centurion, which had its Canadian premiere earlier this summer at the Fantasia Festival, is a solid - if not completely original - historical action film depicting a decimated Roman Legion's survivors fighting and fleeing for their lives from a mythical Pict sect bent on revenge after one of the Romans kills the son of the Pict leader.

Finally it has arrived. Less than a month before it preems theatrically (Magnolia is certainly not going to go the old VOD for one month route) and three weeks or so before it hits Venice, Casey Affleck's I'm Still Here -- a mocku experimental performance piece film that mixes faux and non-fiction is bound to be compared to a pair of Sacha Baron Cohen films that we're all too familiar with. The trailer obviously doesn't reveal what form this takes -- and at this point I'm more curious if Phoenix will complete the cycle on Letterman and how much longer will he run with this public performance?

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World plays like the NES video games of yesteryear: side-scrolling, tongue in cheek action games where much of the humor is intended for the built-in fans but is accessible to all.

The Fantasia Festival's 2010 edition, its 14th, was a resounding success, with more sellout screenings than ever and special events that can only be considered coups. One of those special events was The Complete Metropolis - Restored Original Cut that was screened before yet another sold-out crowd at the 3000-seat Place-des-Arts and featured a new score composed by renowned silent-film composer Gabriel Thibodeau and performed live by a 13-piece orchestra.

Jake West has a knack for painting a set red, so to speak, and for 88 of Doghouse's 89-minute running time (minus the credits) viewers are treated to the best British horror comedy in years. If not for that one minute, Doghouse could have been the perfect crossover genre film.

Iconic director Ken Russell was in town to receive a lifetime achievement award from Fantasia for his 50-plus years in the business, a career that has spawned many genre classics including Altered States, Gothic, and The Lair of the White Worm. But it was the little-seen and hard to find The Devils from 1971 that proved to be Russell's most controversial work, and Fantasia managed to snag a copy to be screened on Russell's big night. In the video, Russell discusses the true story behind the film and receives his award with the grace befitting one of the great filmmakers of all time.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of classic splatter-comedy Re-Animator, Fantasia hosted a midnight screening of a 35mm print of the film, followed by a mammoth Q&A session presided over by director Stuart Gordon, actor Jeffrey (Dr. Herbert West) Combs, and screenwriter Dennis Paoli. We were there to capture the festivities on video.

Sundance has Cooper, Cannes has Frémaux and Venice has Mueller, but in Toronto they have a duo splitting the festival director responsibilities. It sort of makes sense when you've got four to five times the amount of titles that Cannes has. One part of the tag team is Cameron Bailey with whom I got a chance to throw some questions at within the context of today's first release of titles.

As a result of a bizarre 2009 production year, TIFF is the happy recipient of some premium titles which include the world premieres to some of my most anticipated films this year in: Mike Mill's Beginners, John Cameron Mitchell's Rabbit Hole, Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go, Andrucha Waddington's Lope and Rowan Joffe's Brighton Rock. Then we have titles that are coming from this year's Sundance, Cannes or both (Blue Valentine picks up the trifecta honor) and then we have titles that come to us from out of nowhere with Michael Winterbottom's The Trip and Richard Ayoade's debut film, Submarine.

What we do know from the list below is that along with Black Swan, we have Barney's Version, The King's Speech, Potiche and The Town heading to Venice. The Debt is likely to debut there as well, joining Helen Mirren in The Tempest, but for some reason I'm seeing it more as a Telluride item. Among the world premieres that will service the Toronto public well, we have a pair of buyer titles in Little White Lies and The Conspirator and we have the shot in the streets of Toronto, Casino Jack (no longer being called Bagman). Among the off the radar selections, I'd say not many were expecting Emilio Estevez's The Way, Barry Blaustein's Peep World, David M. Rosenthal's Janie Jones.

Here's this morning's press conference where Toronto Int. Film Festival co-directors Cameron Bailey & Piers Handling introduced the majority of the titles that will make up this year's stellar Gala and Special Presentations section.

Guaranteed to be one of the most controversial films in years, A Serbian Film is nothing if not intense in its brutal imagery and fervent in its social commentary. Thankfully, director/producer/co-screenwriter Srdjan Spasojevic, co-screenwriter Aleksandar Radivojevic, and producer Nikola Pantelic were on hand to explain some of that commentary at the film's Canadian premiere at Fantasia. We were there and managed to capture some of it for posterity.

Short of having the filmmakers attend every screening and explain it to them, audiences would have no idea, save for perhaps the title, that this piece of transgressive cinema has a deeper meaning than the atrocities they're witnessing up on the screen.

Lemmy is a film that is more the story of an individualistic and fascinating man than it is a "Motorhead documentary". Co-director Wes Orshoski was on hand to host the Canadian premiere of his and Greg Olliver's doc and we managed to capture some footage.

Co-directors Greg Olliver and Wes Orshoski wisely zero in on the man himself and have created Lemmy, a documentary about Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister, a fascinating individual in his own right who just happens to be the singer/bass player of Motorhead. Lemmy Kilmister is a man who doesn't see the glass as half empty or half full, as long as he gets to drink it and order another one.

The Godfather of Gore is a loving tribute to a gentleman who single-handedly - and more or less by accident - changed the face of horror films.

After a year on the festival circuit and a ton of rave reviews, writer/director Kerry Prior and his splatter comedy The Revenant made its way to Fantasia, and we were there to capture some of his post-screening Q&A session.