It's hard to imagine a film like With Your Permission being made in America, even as an indie film. The film, directed by Danish actress/director Paprika Steen (who appears in another film playing at TIFF this year, Lars von Trier's Erik Nietzsche: The Early Years), deals with the subject of spousal abuse, but it's not, for the most part, an overly heavy film. I know, I know -- there's nothing funny about spousal abuse. And yet, there are very funny moments in this film that allow it to be entertaining, in spite of its potentially weighty subject matter.

For one thing, the spousal abuse in With Your Permission isn't dealt with the way you'd expect, especially at a film fest, where things tend to lean toward the oh-so-serious side of the spectrum. The victim in this case is Jan (Lars Brygmann), a slight, middle-aged man with longish hair who spends his days ruling his workplace, a "gourmet restaurant" -- really, the restaurant on a ferry between Denmark and Sweden -- with a fist so tightly wrapped around the rulebook he makes the bureaucrats at the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles seem downright laid-back by comparison.

I reported this morning in my column about the Toronto International Film Festival that I thought James Spooner, director of newly announced TIFF addition White Lies, Black Sheep, was probably the same guy who directed Afropunk, a doc about black kids in the punk scene, which played TIFF in 2003. I received confirmation this afternoon from Spooner that he is indeed also the director of White Lies, Black Sheep, and he very kindly pointed me to the trailer above and to his MySpace page.

White Lies, according to the film's MySpace page, picks up where Afropunk left off, further exploring issues of race and racism through the story of Ajamu Talib (AJ), a black rocker who straightens his hair and hangs out on the predominantly white NY rock scene; AJ discovers that race is an issue -- in both deeper and more subtle ways -- than he realized. His friends see him as "black, but not really black," and AJ has to figure out just who he is and what his place is in this white world he's chosen as his community.

An official website for the film is forthcoming, and we'll bring you more info on White Lies, Black Sheep as we have it. From the trailer, I'd say it looks like an interesting addition to TIFFs Vanguard section. Any Afropunk fans out there who want to chime in with their thoughts on Spooner's newest film?

The Toronto International Film Festival is still a couple weeks off, but the sales are already starting. indieWIRE is reporting that Love Comes Lately, which we just wrote about this morning, has been acquired by Fortissimo Films for "worldwide sales rights outside Germany." The film, directed by Jan Schuette, has this synopsis up on the prodco's website:

"Though approaching his eighties, Max Kohn shows no signs of slowing down. He pursues his love life – both real and imagined – with youthful vigor, thereby risking his relationship to Reisel, the woman he loves but neglects. LOVE COMES LATELY is a film about imagined longings and the dream of love; about death and sex. It speaks of New York, its immigrants and the timelessness of the city."

According to indieWIRE, the film is based on a series of short stories by Polish author Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978. The film's cast includes Otto Kaunig as Max Kohn, Rhea Perlman as Reisel, Elizabeth Pena and Barbara Hershey. No word on what the film sold for; hopefully Fortissimo will get a trailer out for the film pronto, so that we can have a closer look. We'll be keeping a weather eye out for ongoing news on TIFF films, including sales, official websites, posters and trailers, so check back for updates.

If you're a film geek like me, you're sitting on pins and needles waiting for the full Toronto International Film Festival schedule to be announced. I'm skipping out on the fest this year because I just put my kids through a 2,000 mile move (though I will be at Telluride giving you all the coverage you can handle from there), but that doesn't mean I'm not pumped up about Cinematical's TIFF coverage, which will be extensive.

The start of the fest seems ages away, and the full schedule isn't even announced for six more days -- stop teasing us already! (Yes, as a kid I did try to scope out the hidden locations of Christmas gifts well before the big day -- I've never liked surprises. What can I say, I'm a control freak.) In the meantime, here's something to whet your appetite: The TIFF Blogs are up and running at full steam. A little sampling of what you can find there:

The Full Frame Documentary Film Fest programmer Phoebe Brush shares her picks from the Real to Reel section with the group. Since docs are one of my own fave genres, I was especially interested in what Phoebe has to say about the TIFF selections. Phoebe's picks are The Dictator Hunter by Klaartje Quirijns (about the brutal regime of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad) Weijun Chen's Please Vote for Me, which played Silverdocs in June, where it won the Sterling Feature competition, and Encounters at the End of the World, which Werner Herzog fans and fanatics will no doubt be lining up to see in droves.

Other TIFF docs that we're especially interested in include Darfur Now, Hollywood Chinese, A Jihad for Love, and My Enemy's Enemy. Scott Weinberg and I saw My Kid Could Paint That at Sundance, and I'd recommend that one for a great doc to see and then talk about over late-night ales at a pub or a 2AM pizza slice.

Midnight Madness is always one of the most fun parts of TIFF, and Scott Weinberg will once again be Cinematical's Man at Midnight, bringing you all the hottest horror reviews and on-the-scene action from those always-zany midnight crowds. Over on the Midnight Madness Blog, MM programmer Colin Geddes gives you a sneak pick at one of the most-anticpated films in the Midnight section, Fumihiko Sori's Vexille. Geddes points all you anime fans to the film's official website, which is streaming the first 12 minutes of the film. Vexille premieres at TIFF on Sunday, September 9 at Midnight Madness.

Other Midnight Madness coverage we're itching to bring you: Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django, The Diary of the Dead, Mother of Tears, and Stuck.

TIFF is one of the few places where you can really sink your teeth into some Canadian film, and there are some hot films from Canada in this year's lineup, including David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises, which stars one of my other secret movie star boyfriends, Viggo Mortenson. I stood about 10 feet away from The Viggo at last year's TIFF while waiting to interview Laura Linney, and I can attest that he is even better-looking in person -- the man just radiates "movie star" -- but I must confess that I prefer him all dirty and bearded as Aragorn to golden and glowing for press interviews. Other notable Canadian offerings that we'll try to cover: Francois Girard's Silk, Bruce Sweeney's American Venus, Ernie Barbarash's They Wait, and Martin Gero's Young People F*cking (that one just because ... well, because the title alone intrigues us).

That's enough to get us excited for the fest, now we just need to see the full lineup and start counting down the days. Let us know what you're hot to see us cover at Toronto. And hey, indie filmmakers -- if you have a film at TIFF you'd like us to check out, let us know. Some of my own fave fest finds would've gotten lost in the shuffle if a filmmaker hadn't contacted me to let me know about it. Also, please get your film listed on IMDb and get an easy-to-find official website up! The more we can find out about your film, the more likely it will be to stand out from the slew of films we have to sort through to decide what to cover, so help us out a little here, will ya?