Wilnervision!

July is giving way to August, and I can see the top of the rollercoaster just ahead; it won’t be long before the Toronto film festival completely takes over my life. But before we can get to that, we have to deal with a couple of very crowded weeks of releases — seriously, the 7th and the 14th are just insane with theatrical openings. I don’t know what the distributors are thinking, honestly.

Today, though, it’s positively placid out there, with only four films opening:

“Aliens in the Attic”: A bunch of kids are the world’s only hope when adorable CG aliens stage an invasion in their attic. Apparently one of the “High School Musical” cast is in this, so it will make money. No press screening, so no opening-day reviews. Darn.

“Fifty Dead Men Walking“: Kari Skogland’s IRA thriller is well-constructed, occasionally exciting, and utterly soulless. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, exactly, but it’s awfully hollow inside.

“Funny People”: Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen team up for Judd Apatow’s latest directorial effort, which is apparently a little more serious than “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up”. (It’s also two and a half hours long.) My hosting duties at Harbourfront prevented me from making the press screening; Rad and Adam were there, and their responses were mixed.

“Shrink“: Here’s a sentence I never thought I’d write: Jonas Pate’s twinkly multicharacter story of sad sacks in Los Angeles is watchable and well-assembled, buoyed by strong performances from Kevin Spacey and Robin Williams. Never lose your capacity to be surprised, kids.

And that’s the week in movies. I must now dive into next week’s deadlines — because there are a lot of them, and the clock is ticking.

If you pick up this week’s NOW, you’ll notice the film section is very, very small. Can’t be helped; there are only four movies opening tomorrow, and only two of them were screened before we went to press. Such is the way of the weekly.

I tried to fill the gap by talking to Kari Skogland, director of “Fifty Dead Men Walking” … but that got kind of weird. You’ll want to check out the audio clips, too.

This week’s Sympatico/MSN DVD column wallows in a flood of really great genre television — new collections of “Torchwood”, “Doctor Who”, “Dollhouse”, “Battlestar Galactica”, the original “Life on Mars” and “The Middleman” all hit the shelves yesterday, and there’s just so much ground to cover. So dive in!

One caveat: Though almost every worthwhile show of the last year is now on disc, Warner won’t release the second season of “Chuck” until September. Which is sad, because there’s some pretty awesome stuff in there, too.

A press release showed up this morning informing me that the third “Chronicles of Narnia” movie, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, has started shooting in Australia under the direction of Michael Apted.

Now, given how terribly misconceived last year’s “Prince Caspian” was, and how poorly Apted handled the James Bond franchise when he made “The World is Not Enough”, I am not exactly over the moon here. Then again, one could argue that the Bond films were already crippled by their own formula by the time “World” came along, so … ah, hell, I like Michael Apted, so whatever he has to do to make the next “Up” movie is fine by me.

But the real beloved-cult-novel news of the day is the announcement that a new version of Robert C. O’Brien’s “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH” is in development at Paramount. The director is Neil Burger, who hasn’t exactly impressed me with “The Illusionist” or “The Lucky Ones”, but the book is strong, so I’m hoping for something that’s at least competent.

Yup, that’s me. Pre-emptively judgmental all the way down …

Well, that was a short honeymoon — “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” got socked in the mouth in its second weekend by a 3D movie about secret-agent rodents.

The AP reports that “G-Force” took the top spot at the North American box office with a gross of $32.2 million, while “Half-Blood” made $30 million. (The fact that the Harry Potter movie runs an hour longer than the 88-minute “G-Force” surely factored in there somewhere.)

The Katherine Heigl-Gerard Butler romcom “The Ugly Truth” came in third with $27 million, a looooong way ahead of fourth-placer “Orphan”, which made just $12.8 million. I guess having the stupidest twist ever isn’t enough to conquer the world. But I bet it’ll do surprisingly well next weekend, as word-of-mouth turns it into the must-see comedy of the summer.

Scary kids are the focus of this week’s Sympatico/MSN gallery, because “Orphan” opened yesterday and … well … kids are terrifying. They keep sneaking off and doing stuff you don’t understand, with their twittering and their Face Books, they listen to that devil music, and they’re probably plotting to kill you the minute you deny them their Spaghetti-Os.

… yeah, it’s probably a good thing I don’t have children.I’d just stick ‘em in a Skinner box with a bunch of Spongebob DVDs and check back in five years. At least they’d be secure.

That midsummer thing where distributors start throwing out movies they picked up over the last year of festivals? Well, we’re still in the thick of it, with films from Cannes, Toronto and Sundance popping up everywhere … as well as the usual hard-to-market studio stuff. Shall we get to it?

“The Beaches of Agnes“: In which director Agnes Varda flips through her life and career and modestly decides she’s had a good run. This is a lovely little memoir, and if you don’t go to see it you will be the smaller for it. There, I said it.

“G-Force”: People of the world, I ask you: How can any movie where Tracy Morgan voices a talking guinea pig be bad? How? Well, Rad has a theory.

“The Girl from Monaco”: Anne Fontaine’s latest trifle tracks the love triangle that develops between a lawyer (Fabrice Luchini), a pretty young thing (Louise Bourgoin) and the lawyer’s bodyguard (Roschdy Zem). But as Adam and Susan both observe, Fontaine’s not that great at keeping all her balls in the air.

“Humpday“: Two straight guys decide to have sex with each other in order to affirm the strength of their heterosexual bond. “It’s beyond gay.” It’s also a very funny comedy of manners (and mores) from Seattle director Lynn Shelton. Do check it out.

“Orphan”: Poor Vera Farmiga — first she and Sam Rockwell got stuck with “Joshua”, and now she and Peter Sarsgaard have to deal with a creepy little girl who may or may not be eeeeevil. (My money’s on “may”.) Andrew liked it, with reservations.

“Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae”: It has the misfortune to open against one of the year’s best music movies (see below), but Stascha Bader’s exploration of the evolution of the reggae movement has its own merits, as Jason and Rad explain. Sadly, the film ends before it gets to the Lonely Island’s hotstepping “Ras Trent“.

“Soul Power“: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte brings Don King’s 1974 soul festival back to raucous, thrilling life in this amazing documentary. Throw down for James Brown! Get the shivers for Bill Withers! Um … take the elevata for Miriam Makeba! (Oh, just see the movie.)

“Surveillance“: David Lynch must love his daughter Jennifer very, very much if he’s still willing to let her steal shamelessly from his body of work after “Boxing Helena” … but all the love in the world can’t turn a hack into a visionary. Nice supporting work from French Stewart, though. He opens his eyes and everything!

“The Ugly Truth”: Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler square off in this rom-com that dares to suggest that men and women view relationships from vastly different perspectives. Take a look at Todd McCarthy’s Variety review, which somehow manages to hold Heigl in absolute contempt without ever coming right out and saying it. Now, that’s a brilliant piece of writing.

The casual reader of today’s NOW might conclude that all I do is interview people these days. It’s just the way the schedule crumbles; I sat down with Agnes Varda and Jeffrey Levy-Hinte when they came to TIFF almost a year ago.

“Humpday” stars Joshua Leonard and Alycia Delmore? That just happened last week. See, I don’t seem nearly as busy when you look at it that way … unless you’re in the room with me as I frantically try to turn all those audio files into stories.

Sorry, didn’t mean to get ahead of myself: I sat down with Agnes Varda last year. This Agnes Varda. That was kind of a big deal for me. Lovely woman, very entertaining. Kinda hard to distill into 400 words, though.

In other news, still loving the job.

My latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column is up, making a case for “Watchmen” and “Coraline” as screen adaptations that do justice to their source material in very different ways — one through absolute replication, and the other by bending the text to suit its needs, and coming up with something that feels just as true to the printed page as the other one.

We can argue about the “Watchmen” ending again, if you think it’s necessary. But I miss the squid.

TIFF announces its Wavelengths and Midnight Madness titles later this morning, so I’m crouched and ready, preparing to take that release and turn it into a news blurt for the NOW website.

I do love the Midnight Madness program; my very first festival experience as a member of the press was the midnight screening of “Hellbound: Hellraiser II” at the Bloor, all the way back in 1988, and I try to catch at least a couple of MM titles every year. As I was telling a friend yesterday, the year I don’t get excited about that series is the year I realize I’m officially old.

I’ll post a link to the piece when it goes up. Until then, just try to stay calm …

UPDATE: Here it is!