It begins.

So here we are, TIFF again, bigfooting the city's cultural scene (and most of its media). Not a bad thing; lots of fun stuff goes down, and TIFF has expanded its reach into the art world as well, throwing cash at places like Gallery TPW and MOCCA to mount exhibitions that don't put them out of pocket one penny (always a boon in the ever-fraught world of art funding.)

Anyway, the opening gala is tonight, but you can't get into that, so why not go check the openings of TIFF-tangentials you can see? TPW has a sweet minor work by William Kentridge that riffs off the Melies' masterpiece Journey to the Moon, open now, while MOCCA hosts a side project to its main event -- David Hoffos mesmerising "Scenes from the House Dream" -- called HEAVENHELL, a redux of a notorious Kurosawa scene on multiple screens. Opens tomorrow night; see you there. 

Oh, and hey, Douglas Gordon goes one better and is actually coming into town next week after his double-up of his near-static 24-Hour Psycho (literally, the Hitchcock classic slowed down to a full day's length) is installed in the Bell Lightbox. Funny to think that was made in 1993, and I've seen it here in Toronto twice already. Gordon's more recent work -- involving multiple screens and, in some cases, elephants -- is more enthralling, partly because it's actually dynamic (not, ahem, static) but his "Psycho's" a milestone worth seeing. For a few minutes, anyway.

Oh, and apropos of nothing (mostly): 24-second Psycho, a goofy (and mercifully brief) response