Because so much press who come to the Toronto International Film Festival are only here for the first half of the fest or less (the wimps), the star power and interview opportunities for the big films are heavily centered on the opening weekend. There’s so much that you could be doing that any commitment means forsaking a half dozen others (not to mention all the movies you could be seeing).

So it’s more than a little irritating to be sitting at a press roundtable with eight or nine other journalists waiting for an interviewee who never shows up. Granted, there’s a lot of partying that goes on here, even when the Festival isn’t going on, and a performer with a bent for carousing is likely to be sorely tempted.

But there’s a bright side to everything, and when a table of entertainment reporters is left to their own devices for a half hour or so, gossip is sure to ensue.

Topics on this occasion include what our missing interviewee found to do that was better than talking to us (if we guessed right, I have to say it’s a choice I would have made too); how much everyone dislikes the press conferences moderated by the big-headed journalist who seems intent on turning them into his own version of Inside the Actor’s Studio, to the point where no one else can get any questions in; the amazing things actors will say to you and expect you to keep off the record; and a list of what celebrities are secret smokers – rather a lot of them. (My favorite is the actress who, knowing that the Golden Globes has a policy of not photographing any backstage smoking, always keeps a cigarette in her hands, just to keep the photographers away.)

I would give names, but of course then I would have to kill you.

After a morning of listening to actors and actresses and writers and directors doing a rather good job of making the stories they've already told a dozen times this weekend sound spontaneous (that’s why they get paid the big bucks!), it’s time to get back to the serious business of watching more movies.

The first film here that I genuinely like is The Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, pictured above. Like all of the films from the Makhmalbaf family (headed by father Mohsen, the renowned Iranian director who runs a film school in which, unless I am mistaken, all of the pupils are his own family members), this slice-of-life story set in Afghanistan uses non-professional actors, mostly children. The title refers to the giant statue of Buddha that was destroyed by the Taliban. In a village nearby, where people live in caves hewn out of what looks like an endless expanse of rock, a little girl wants to go to school like her neighbor. The biggest obstacles are getting money to buy a pen and notebook, and a group of local boys who enjoy playing that they are Taliban warriors – not good news when they catch her with a substitute pen, a lipstick stolen from her mother. As her father did in Kandahar, this youngest Makhmalbaf captures both the gorgeously bleak landscapes of this region while capturing our hearts for a little while with a small human story.

On the opposite scale of realism is Nightwatching, the first feature from maverick director Peter Greenaway since his six-hour epic The Tulse Luper Suitcases. Perhaps because of the failure of that project to find an audience (shown in Toronto in 2004, it has yet to be distributed theatrically or on DVD, either in full form or in the condensed A Life in Suitcases version Greenaway prepared in 2005), the new film is relatively more conventional, telling an essentially linear story that recalls his The Draughtsman’s Contract. But it’s still pure Greenaway, from its large sets crammed with period detail to its obsession with the history of painting, particularly that of the Dutch master Rembrant, whose dark palate is mirrored in the film’s design. Though overlong at 140 minutes, it’s also a fascinating history of an artist who thought he could stand up to the power brokers of his time, and paid the price for it. Hopefully it will find a US distributor this week.

One of my favorite films of the past decade was Songs from the Second Floor, by a Swedish filmmaker who has the distinction of being called the best maker of television commercials by no less than Ingmar Bergman. (It’s hard to imagine Bergman watching a lot of TV, isn’t it?) Roy Andersson didn’t start out to make commercials; he got into it as a sideline after a spell making films in the early 1970s, and stuck with it though most of the next three decades. A brief description of songs is impossible, other than to call it a comic vision of apocalypse; better to say that it can be watched in brief segments, and that it’s funny in ways you can’t quite put your finger on. All of which is true of Andersson’s new You, the Living, and thank god we didn’t have to wait thirty more years for it! The theater was packed and the laughter was loud.

It’s a lazy habit to approach the vast menu at Toronto by going to films from directors whose previous work you enjoyed. But as in the case with You the Living, it’s usually an effective strategy. I decided to see The Visitor knowing nothing about it other than that it’s a new film by Thomas McCarthy, writer-director of the wonderful The Station Agent. But what more would you need to know? The leading actor is Richard Jenkins, whose face you would recognize even if you can’t place the name (he was the dead father on “Six Feet Under”). It’s a touching story of a man who is changed by his experiences with an immigrant couple, and if it eventually delivers a different emotional response from Station Agent, it does so with just as much grace and conviction.

A big change at TIFF this year is that the press screenings are scheduled much later in to the night. I’m tempted to catch Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, which will let about a few minutes before two a.m. But there’s a new Werner Herzog documentary showing at 9 am, and I don’t want to be falling asleep in theaters tomorrow!