s summer depressingly draws to a close and fall rears its ugly head, most Torontonians find themselves slowly collapsing into a state of comatose dissatisfaction. The days of wasted sunny afternoons and hastily approved vacations are almost over, but fortunately there is a bright light approaching to ease our collective autumnal blues: The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival. Movie stars will soon be stalking our streets and drinking our alcohol. Studios will premiere all of their latest prestige pictures in hopes of generating that ever-irritating Oscar Buzz. From September 4-13, our fine city will feel like a slightly less warm and drug-addled Los Angeles…drink it up while you can. It's going to be a long ass winter.

The Festival Program will be released to the public tomorrow and with it will come a slew of hype and a unstoppable rush to buy tickets for the best titles before they disappear. It's far too early to accurately predict what the best movies will be to emerge from this year's fest (last year I assumed that Across The Universe would be good…oh, how terribly wrong I was), but for now we can discuss a few of the intriguing titles that will be hitting the streets of Toronto.

The opening night movie is a project that is hoped to be the pride of Canadian filmmaking in 2008 Paul Gross' Passchendaele. The film will tell the story of an infamous World War I battle with heroic Canadian soldiers that will attempt to rouse up patriotism from the audience through slow motion gunplay and aggressively sentimental music. The hype surrounding the movie is huge, but I'm finding it hard to get excited, particularly considering the fact that Gross' last film as a direct was Men With Brooms. Paul Gross is definitely a good actor (just take a look at Slings And Arrows), but that doesn't mean he can direct. Exactly why did he get the biggest budget in the history of Canadian film?