Amid Toronto's buzz and hustle, Oscar bait

Inquirer movie critic Steven Rea is at the Toronto International Film Festival. These are excerpts from his blog, "On Movies Online," at http://go.philly.com/onmovies.

Sept. 5

. Pity the poor Torontonian who just wants to get from work to home, or buy a pair of Classic Fits at the Gap - the one at the corner of Bay and Bloor. Every street in this posh Yorkville district seems to be under construction, there are giant holes in the ground and steel skeletons going up every other block to make way for new lux condos, swankier hotels, sleeker boutiques (no recession in this part of town!). And down on King Street, the Bell Lightbox is being erected future headquarters and screen venue for the Toronto International Film Festival.

In the meantime, TIFF '08 goes on with press and industry events, news conferences, and

Reese Witherspoon

lookalikes (pretty sure it wasn't really her) at the Sutton Place Hotel. Day One of the Toronto International Film Festival: Italian journos scurrying to get their accreditation, film buyers from Britain, festival programmers from San Francisco, Japanese entertainment reporters, studio execs, publicists, directors, everyone running to the Varsity complex, where a dozen screens are turned over to the credentialed throng from 8:30 in the morning till the cows come home.

First screening was

RocknRolla

,

Guy Ritchie

's remake of the last Guy Ritchie movie - English thugs and mob types playing cross and doublecross, shooting guns and lookin' cool while the camera whirls and dives and flashes fast-forward around colorful corners of London Town.

300

hunk

Gerard Butler

(soon to be shooting a new movie in Philly) stars, and

Thandie Newton

looks lovely, and

Tom Wilkinson

goes slumming, playing an old-school, no-class gangster. Engaging for a while, but then, well, you can't help but start wondering if Mr.

Madonna

has no other tricks up his sleeve. . . .

As triple-crossing con artist pictures go,

The Brothers Bloom

, with

Adrian Brody

and

Mark Ruffalo

as scamming siblings and

Rachel Weisz

as their mark (or is she?), goes from charming to UNBELIEVABLY ANNOYING in less time than it takes to buy a sandwich at the Varsity concession stand. Which is not long - they're efficient here in Canada.

Sept. 6

. See

The Duchess

at the super-fancy screening room (leather sofas, side tables with lamps, butlers with cigars - OK, maybe not) at the new Hazelton Hotel, which seems to have supplanted the Four Seasons down the block as the top spot for fans to gawk, scream and try for autographs, while Toronto bike cops pretend to check the crowd but are really checking out the "talent" breezing in and out ringed by flacks.

Keira Knightley

is fitted in an amazing array of 18th-century Euro-noble couture in this based-on-the-true-story of

Georgiana Spencer

, the Duchess of Devonshire.

Ralph Fiennes

is drolly despicable as the stuffy, randy Duke, and

Hayley Atwell

hangs in there as the woman who becomes his mistress - and kind of becomes the Duchess' too.

Head down Yonge Street to the new, gigantic AMC Yonge Dundas 24. . . It's a little jarring to see a modest, blown-up-to-35mm indie that will end up at the Ritz Bourse when it gets to Philly debuting in a cavernous, multi-tiered, giant-screen theater totally sold out, and that's the deal here: 700 TIFF-goers packed in to see

Kelly Reichardt

's heartbreaking

Wendy and Lucy

. Reichardt made the sublime

Old Joy

, and this is another shambling Pacific Northwest tale, but a sadder one:

Michelle Williams

as a neo-hobo, sleeping in her car, shoplifting for food, with only her golden brown mutt, Lucy, for company. Williams is amazing, totally convincing, as Wendy's world falls apart: her car breaks down and she loses her dog, stuck in a small, busted-down Oregon town. Jeez, I need a good comedy.

Sept. 7

. You hope for it to happen, and then, finally, it does: a movie that rocks you to the core, inspires, delights, shocks, compels, surprises. That's what

Danny Boyle

's

Slumdog Millionaire

did Saturday morning: two separate rounds of applause at the end. The film, to be released by Fox Searchlight in November, tells the story of an Indian street urchin who grows up and gets on

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

- and improbably keeps answering the questions correctly.

Like a Bollywood Dickens tale, directed by Brit Boyle with the same flash and panache he brought to

Trainspotting

and

28 Days Later

,

Slumdog

is a love story, a look at a culture of vast wealth and brutal poverty

. . . Oscars, here they come.