“Speaking of Iraq, now serves a good time to mention that HeavyMetalinBaghdad.com is open for donations to help Iraqi metal band Acrassicauda to escape from Syria before they’re deported. They’re trying to raise $20,000, and frankly, we think the band are worth every penny.”

If you can, please donate.

“It’s not been a week since the Toronto International Film Festival left us, and this week’s new releases make it hard for us to move on with a couple of TIFF premieres leading the way.”

The best thing Paul Haggis has ever given us (indirectly) is this McSweeney’s column. Oh, sure, you could argue Due South, or his work on Casino Royale, but the best thing about Due South was the jangly guitar theme and Casino Royale’s last act is almost hilariously bad.

It’s a shame about Casino Royale, though. It’s amazing up to that bit.

I’ve made it through another festival, admittedly one in which I was felled by the foul but inevitable “festival cold” roughly a week early (I got it on the first Saturday of the festival rather than the last) and this year I chose to put all of my day-to-day work on Torontoist. That’s not to say reviews and interviews from the festival won’t appear elsewhere, of course.

TIFF 2007 Preview: Special Presentations, Real To Reel And Canada First! – A review of Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Definitely my favourite documentary of the festival and certainly one of my favourite films.

TIFF 2007 Preview: Vanguard, Short Cuts Canada – A review of Help Me Eros and a selection from the Short Cuts Canada programme. Reviewing the Canadian shorts is one of my favourite tasks of the festival each year and although I utterly despised an (otherwise highly rated) short this year the rest were pretty okay.

TIFF 2007: No Fugitive Peace From The Festival – The festival begins!

TIFF 2007: Lust, Control – Reviews of Captain Mike Across America; Control and Lust, Caution.

TIFF 2007: Heavy Metal In Toronto – An interview with Suroosh Alvi, co-founder of Vice Magazine and co-director of Heavy Metal in Baghdad.

TIFF 2007: You, The Dead – Reviews of You, The Living and Diary of the Dead.

TIFF 2007: Erik Nietzsche Into The Wild – Reviews of Juno and Erik Nietzsche The Early Years.

TIFF 2007: Pixel Projections – Coverage of the Into the Pixel exhibition, held as part of the film festival’s Future Projections programme.

TIFF 2007: Run, Filmmaker, Run – Reviews of Operation Filmmaker and Run, Fat Boy, Run.

TIFF 2007: Cassandra’s Smiley Face – A review of Smiley Face.

TIFF 2007: The Rambow Fragments – Reviews of Son of Rambow and The Tracey Fragments (two of my favourite films of the festival) and Mad Detective.

TIFF 2007: Hirsute And The “Many Martys” Theory – An interview with A.J. Bond, director of Hirsute, the best short I saw at the festival.

TIFF 2007: Sukiyaki Western Django – A review of Sukiyaki Western Django, and the festival ends!

“There’s more to downloadable content than just the Wii, Xbox 360 and (much maligned) Playstation 3′s download services. Valve’s PC-based Steam system has already released many excellent and reasonably priced classic and original titles, including recently the brilliant turn-based strategy title X-COM: Terror From the Deep for only $4.95 US.”

Including reviews of the id Super Pack, Galaga ’90, Devil’s Crush, Super Metroid, Track & Field and Space Giraffe.

I’ve been pretty quiet about the Space Giraffe review because it’s not entirely positive and I don’t want to get put on Jeff Minter’s enemies list.

Well, not yet, anyway.