Noel Murray and Scott Tobias of The AV Club share their picks from the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. They discuss Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist, which is animated from a script by Jacques Tati. Also: Darren Aronofsky's latest, Black Swan, which stars Natalie Portman as a ballerina struggling to find the passion to play the Black Swan in Swan Lake. In The Trip, director Michael Winterbottom supervises an impression-off between British comics Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon.
They also say they had a number of disappointments at the festival, including It's Kind of a Funny Story (despite a great turn from Zach Galifianakis) and Danny Boyle's latest, 127 Hours. They also didn't like the seriocomic Will Ferrel vehicle Everything Must Go.
Noel and Scott joined us from CIUT in Toronto - our thanks to the station and to Chris Berube, who engineered our session.
Samantha Bee is the Daily Show's longest-tenured correspondent, having joined the program in 2003. She's also the author of a new memoir, I Know I Am But What Are You?
Bee grew up in an unusual tripartite family, splitting time between a matronly grandmother, a conservative, re-married father and a bohemian, Wiccan mother. She met her husband, the Daily Show correspondent Jason Jones, while working in a Sailor Moon-themed stage show at the Canadian National Exposition.
She talked with us from New York City.
Looks like a couple of MaxFunsters are planning a meetup in the T-dot. If you live there, you should join in the planning. Who's inviting Dave Stieb?