Progress report from TIFF: Hello, I must be going

Hey, didn't I just get here? Then how come it's already time to start packing? Alas, it's no longer feasible, for various reasons, for me to stay until the very end of the Toronto Film Festival. I'll have a more detailed wrap-up to offer after I return to my H-Town home base. To tide over my readers (both of you) until then, here are links to my Variety reviews of Men at Lunch, Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp (pictured above) and The Tortoise, An Incarnation.

TIFF 2012 Wanna-See No. 2: Men at Lunch

Reason No. 1: Ever since I first glimpsed the above iconic photograph years ago, I've wondered: Geez, who were those guys? And what were they doing up there? Reason No. 2: Director Seán Ó Cualáin obviously had the same questions on his mind -- and discovered, while making Men at Lunch, that many of these dudes were Irish immigrants. Which, being an Irish immigrant's son, does not surprise me at all.