The Toronto International Film Festival got going with a face-smashing, belly-laughing gangster caper from a director best known as Madonna's husband.

TORONTO - What if they gave a film festival and only half of Hollywood came?

Can a nebbish see history? Does a human zero such as the hero of "I Served the King of England" understand when he's living in epochal times and rise to meet its expectations? Or does he just muddle through, making good choices, bad choices, and really bad choices?

What motivates Nicolas Cage to kill in "Bangkok Dangerous"? He's playing a mercenary on assignment in Thailand, but the notion of a payday doesn't thrill him. The killing isn't a turn-on, either; he offs his targets with unwavering lassitude. Assassin or sleepwalker, who can say? It seems like a nasty Ambien reaction.

"The Romance of Astrée and Céladon" is Éric Rohmer's ode to lolling about. The movie is set among the knolls, clearings, and forests of the French hinterlands, and the 88-year-old Rohmer is obviously in love. Yet his enthusiasm for playing outside is more infectious than the amateur troupe of women and men he's assembled for this adaptation of Honoré d'Urfé ...

AP - new york (AP) ? Justin Timberlake, Miley Cyrus and Charlize Theron were among the celebrities who appeared at the fifth annual Fashion Rocks concert celebrating the relationship between music and fashion.

Reuters - Tobey Maguire and Sam Raimi, star and director of the "Spider-Man" films, aim to spin more webs for Sony's Columbia Pictures.

When exactly should we stop thinking of Ludivine Sagnier as a girl? For one thing, she's almost 30. For another, she carries her curves unlike any girl I know. But I see where Claude Chabrol is coming from with "A Girl Cut in Two." If you're a 78-year-old man, as Chabrol is, or a gentleman in his 50s, as the ...

Film News: Lionsgate's Cage film pulls in $2.7 million Friday -- Lionsgate's English-language remake "Bangkok Dangerous," toplining Nicolas Cage, led the box office with $2.7 million in what was a tepid first Friday of the fall box office season.

Nearly 30 film festivals have already been held in 2008 around Boston and within a few hours of the city, but the rich menu does not let up once summer is over. If anything, it picks up steam in the fall.