I just got back from our second day of covering the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto. It’s interesting to see this festival growing with leaps and bounds every year, in large part because documentaries have been growing in popularity and gaining mainstream recognition. We only managed to catch one film each night unfortunately, mainly because some of the movies we wanted to see were rather popular with other festivalgoers and we didn’t want to risk waiting in the rush lines. Last night we caught Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, an HBO doc about the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where cases of prisoner humiliation and abuse were exposed with a series of photographs that leaked to the press. Despite its short running time, I thought this was a gripping and fascinating movie that explored a lot of issues related to the treatment of prisoners of war.

Tonight we saw Zoo, aka the horse sex documentary. I was surprised this didn’t attract a bigger crowd considering the film had so much buzz at Sundance, but as it turns out, it wasn’t really worth all the hype anyway. It was just plain weird, not only in terms of subject matter but also the approach they took in telling the story. (We’ll have more discussion about these movies on tomorrow’s Film Junk podcast.) We were also hoping to see both Helvetica and Manufacturing Dissent, but they seem to be the two movies at the festival getting the most attention (the latter is a documentary about Michael Moore… ’nuff said). And of course, we couldn’t leave without indulging in some of Toronto’s delectable street meat… err, street tofu. You can’t beat those veggie dogs (what did you think I was talking about?).

Other than that, it was a beautiful weekend, and the weather was gorgeous. Here in St. Catharines, after the snow melts we have about one month of beautiful spring weather before the thick humidity sets in and it becomes unbearable to go outside again. Needless to say, the neighbourhood was abuzz with rollerbladers, lawn mowers and car washers… and students sitting on couches out on their front lawns. I don’t think I’ll ever understand that.

I watched the first few episodes of Tim Minear’s new series Drive this week, and surprisingly found myself starting to get hooked. The basic premise involves an illegal cross country road race, with a secretive organization blackmailing people into participating every year. It sounds silly, and by all accounts it shouldn’t work. But I think the thing that really keeps me watching is Nathan Fillion (Firefly, Slither), who seems to bring the same likable qualities to every character he plays. It was also cool to see Dylan Baker on the show too. Drive combines elements of The Amazing Race, Mad Max, The Running Man and Lost. But don’t let my praise fool you… this show doesn’t stand a chance! I don’t know why people even bother bringing their shows to Fox when it’s only going to get replaced with some cheesy reality show within a matter of weeks. Anyone want to place predictions on how many more episodes will see the light of day? (I’m guessing 2.)