indieWIRE has info on two major European festival announcements this morning: the films selected for Rotterdam’s Tiger competition for early-career filmmakers; and “the first 21 films” slotted in Berlin’s Panorama program. The Berlin lineup includes Julie Delpy’s latest directorial effort, The Countess, a period piece starring the director and William Hurt; Pedro, the docudrama about the Real World San Francisco cast member who died of AIDS which premiered at Toronto last year; and two Sundance entries, Tom DiCillio’s Doors doc When You’re Strange and White Lightnin’, the “dancing outlaw” film scripted by VICE guys Shane Smith and Eddy Moretti.

Meanwhile, in Rotterdam, 14 films while vie for the award given to first and second time filmmakers. Among them: Michael Imperioli, best known as sometime-screenwriter, sometime-junkie Christopher Moltisanti on The Sopranos, whose The Hungry Ghosts will open the festival; and films from Chile, Indonesia, Iran, Taiwan and Turkey. The remainder of the festival’s lineup will be announced on January 15, six day before screenings get underway.

The 2008 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival begins today, and Kevin Kelly and I will be there for the next ten days reporting back. What follows is not exactly an iron-clad preview of our Toronto coverage––in addition to some of the films below, I’m definitely planning to see new works by Claire Denis, Agnes Varda, Jonathan Demme and Richard Linklater, and would of course recommend that anyone on the ground see some of my favorites from past festivals, including Medicine for Melancholy and A Christmas Tale. This is more of a list of predictions of what everyone else is going to be talking about, while I’m pushing my glasses up my nose and rushing to to the next screening of the a South Korean movie about drunken lonliness. Enjoy! If you have your own predictions for what will catch fire in Ontario, let us know in the comments.

1. Zach and Miri Make a Porno (TIFF screening info)

Obviously, anything with “porno” in the title has a certain automatic contingent (hello, Google searchers! Sorry to disappoint!) But then, so does anything with the credit “written and directed by Kevin Smith.” And then there’s the leading man. Some perspective: Smith’s last three films have grossed an average of $26 million each; the last three films starring Seth Rogen have grossed an average of $117 million each. With Jay and Silent Bob finally retired (we think/hope), and Rogen in tow for the usual, MPAA-baiting Smithism, Porno could––however ironically––become what Jersey Girl was supposed to be: the tipping point that expands the Smith fan base beyond the longtime Clerks faithful.

2. Slumdog Millionaire (TIFF screening info)

Crowdpleasers make me itch. But then, to borrow a line from David Fincher, I’m an asshole. Assuming you are not, you might be interested to know that Slumdog Millionaire shows all the symptoms of becoming The Next Juno. Like Juno, Slumdog premiered in a TBA slot at Telluride, where reaction from all but our own Kevin Buist was enthusiastic, even hyperbolically so. Also ike Juno, it’s a music-fueled piece of pop art in which young love results from unlikely circumstances. And, thanks to Warner Brothers’ loss of faith in this tier of the distribution market, it’s now being distributed by Fox Searchlight––just like Juno. If looking for The Next Juno is now part of our jobs, at least Searchlight is taking all the arduous work out of it.

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Nanette Burstein’s American Teen has become ubiquitous since its Sundance premiere, both on the festival circuit and, thanks to a poster carefully calibrated to target Gen X nostalgia, online. Its title suggests a wishful universality, as if to say, “This is it! This is an unfiltered portrait of averageness!” Certainly, its semi-rural Indiana location was chosen for its middleness, both geographically and demographically––or, at least, to conform to a coastal idea of what middleness looks like. Certainly, in choosing to focus on a cross-section of subjects playing into our media-fed concepts of high school stereotypes, Burstein manages to show life at the same high school from a variety of different angles, whilst simultaneously playing up the idea that all American Teens are––really––hopelessly insecure dreamers stuck in a variety of systems and strictures that they’re desperate to break out of. But everyone prevails, because that’s what (totally mythic) average Americans do –– it’s, like, rugged individualism!

Much has been made in regards to Burstein’s alleged “manipulation” of her subjects and their lives: did she recreate email/text message exchanges or the reactions they caused? Does it matter if she did? I’ve seen the film twice, and neither time did these shot-reverse shot depictions of near-instant communication seem to get in the way of a larger truth.

But there are other elements of American Teen’s construction which are troubling––not because they came after-the-fact and weren’t produced organically in real life, but because Burstein either isn’t aware of or has made a conscious decision to ignore the very fact of “non-fiction” filmmaking that her subjects and their peers are likely most exposed to: MTV’s various reality shows, including True Life, The Real World, and, especially, Laguna Beach and The Hills.

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After the de rigeur delay at JFK (during which I learned of Tim Russert’s death via a single muted TV in an airport bar otherwise given over to Holland vs. France madness), I arrived in Vegas around 9:30 and went straight to The Palms, homebase of CineVegas and the hotel at which, as a member of the Shorts jury, I have been graciously sequestered

This is only my second trip to the city, but it seems like The Palms is a bit of an anomaly. Of course, a casino is a casino is a casino––there’s no getting around the frosty air-conditioned air, the sense of time having stopped at permanent midnight, the carefully calibrated spectacle apparently meant to foster the illusion that all spending and gambling losses are imaginary (or, at least, less than earth-shatteringly consequential). But at The Palms there are no grandmother types pumping coins into slots, no middle American families crowded around a buffet, no foreign tourists spending obscene amounts of money on luxury kitsch. A spacious, multi-tower complex set several blocks off The Strip, it attracts an almost uniquely young crowd, more or less demographically synonymous with the Real World season that would seem to inspire their tourism. Here the film festival is hidden in plain site, planted in part of the casino’s multiplex and injected into the hotel’s culture; the average Palms guest, if not oblivious, then certainly at least blinded somewhat by the MTV-approved moral suicide mission for which they took the long weekend.

The idea that such an environment could play host to serious films playing to serious cineastes who take it all very seriously might seem incongruous, but so far––and I write this having not seen a single film other than the shorts I’m jurying, though I plan to hit two screenings tonight––this contradiction just seems really exciting. Last night, at the CineVegas 10th Anniversary party, I had conversations about Carlos Reygadas, the degree of wink to the horror element of Baghead, Los Angeles’ newish Silent Movie Theater, and Ronnie Bronstein. Variety’s Robert Koehler valiantly argued the case that CineVegas is the preeminent discovery festival for “semi-narrative and non-narrative” film in North America. Janet Pierson convinced me that I have to see a SXSW 2008 selection that I missed called The Wild Horse Redemption, which she described as “cowboy porn about these felons who become horse whisperers” (hot, right?)

And all of this took place about five paces away from a heavily-bodyguarded Britney Spears.

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