“Well, we’re suffering from our “festival cold” two weeks after the festival ended, which is kind of odd. It probably isn’t even a festival cold at all, just a lame cold we didn’t catch from a visiting celebrity or hot-shot Hollywood producer. Actually, wait, god knows what you could catch from those people, so forget our complaint.”

I think it was developing a MySpace that made me ill, honestly.

“Urgh, with only a week since TIFF ended, who wants to talk about film again now? Paradoxically, we wanted to talk about TIFF again yesterday, but we’re fickle like that – perhaps now it’s just the realisation that most of our Film Fridays are only going to talk about films that played at this year’s TIFF. Instead we’ll lead with something from last year’s TIFF and probably one of the most welcome releases we can think of in recent memory – Sukiyaki Western Django.”

My return to Film Friday after a short sabbatical! The title is a obscure reference; Kyu Sakamoto’s early 60s hit “Ue o muite aruko” (“[I] shall walk looking up”) which was retitled Sukiyaki for overseas markets.

My third festival has passed without major incident; this year I didn’t even catch a cold (touch wood) so things went pretty well, by all accounts! If there were any disappointments, it was that due to scheduling conflicts I managed to miss a lot of my most hotly anticipated films, such as Pontypool, Hunger and The Wrestler. But I’ll be able to see them all sooner rather than later, I’m sure.

TIFF 2008: Preview – A review of the Coens’ lamentable Burn After Reading, and a general preview of the rest of the fest.

TIFF 2008: A Film With Jean-Claude Van Damme In It – Reviews of JCVD and Treeless Mountain.

TIFF 2008: Horizontal Cuts – Reviews of Vinyan, Wavelengths: Horizontal Boundaries and Short Cuts Canada Programme 1.

TIFF 2008: Trips with Bashir – Reviews of All Around Us, Waltz with Bashir, Wavelengths: Trips, and Short Cuts Canada Programme 2.

TIFF 2008: Plastic Girl – Reviews of Deadgirl and Plastic City.

TIFF 2008: The Burrowers Bloom – Reviews of A Film with Me in It, Short Cuts Canada Programme 3, The Brothers Bloom, and The Burrowers.

TIFF 2008: Tears for Liverpool – Reviews of Short Cuts Canada Programme 4, Liverpool, and Tears for Sale.

TIFF 2008: The City Masters – Reviews of The Dungeon Masters and 24 City.

TIFF 2008: Good – A review of Good.

TIFF 2008: Tony Log – A review of of Tony Manero and Eden Log.

Talking TIFF With Cameron Bailey – This year I decided to end my coverage with a sort of “post-mortem” with festival co-director Cameron Bailey – his answers are smooth indeed! Some of the best commentary is in the (ahem) comments though, where people are discussing their own experience of the festival at length.

“Los Angeles may be a town known for the highest excesses of rock n’ roll debauchery (with legendarily wayward rock acts such as Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses synonymous with the city) but Activision’s headquarters – a dull grey box located in sleepy Santa Monica – is hardly the most thrilling place in the world to get my hands on with Guitar Hero World Tour for the first time.”

As they’ve lobbed my E3 preview of Guitar Hero World Tour up online, now is as good a time as any to link to it!

There’s a small mistake in both the online and print editions of this article (you can read this preview in issues 111 of PSW, with more pictures of me, like the one above, in it) in that it lists PSW’s deputy editor Barry Keating as the author, apparently the fault of a nameless sub editor.

Oh well, such is life; at least I can set the record straight here. I wrote this preview and had fun doing so. Guitar Hero World Tour’s drums really are superb and I can’t wait to get my hands on them again.

“Even though I wasn’t born until nearly 40 years after the end of World War II, whenever I hear the Colonel Bogey March I can’t help but sing the song about how Hitler’s only got one ball. And I wonder, does it still have any resonance with the younger generation? Do they recognise it? Is it still sung in playgrounds, or would they think I’ve just written down something unnecessarily crude about one of the 20th century’s greatest monsters – if they even know who Hitler is? Well, whatever they think, the fact I remember gives the second stage of Major Minor’s Majestic March a very lewd and subversive feel.”

A preview of Nana-On Sha’s latest game from E3′s tiny (and lame) show floor!