by SARAH ROWLAND

Nothing says VIP like a brightly coloured shoestring with an all-access status symbol dangling from your neck. So get out your lams, we're kicking off the fall movie breakdown with a preview of the best festivals and events this side of winter.

Fest bets

First up is IMAGE + NATION gay and lesbian festival (Sept. 23-Oct. 3), which comes out swingin' with Hellbent. This opening night film is being billed as the first ever gay slasher. The fest will also showcase a retrospective of Bruce La Bruce's work. Along with his classics, the Canadian queen of 'core screen will present his latest movie Raspberry Reich, a slapstick German caper about a kidnapping gone wrong. Those silly captors don't realize their victim is worthless because his wealthy father disowned him when he came out.

No to be outdone, the Festival of Nouveau Cinema (Oct. 14-24) will have its share of prestigious guests. The 33rd edition welcomes Catherine Breillat. The ballsy French filmmaker will be promoting her new film, Anatomie de l'enfer (Anatomy of Hell). Breillat's most recent sexually explicit onscreen venture is based on her book Pornocracy, which is about a hot hetro chick still reeling from the rejection of an even hotter gay man.

Cinémathèque québécoise will pay homage to legendary German actor Bruno Ganz (Sept. 15-Oct. 2) who's been getting a lot of buzz over his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in his final hours in the wartime thriller, Downfall. CQ will also host a Guy Maddin retrospective (Sept. 29-Oct. 7).

If you're still thirsty for blood from Fantasia, Festival Spasm, the third annual horror and sci-fi pogrom (Oct. 26-31) has been busily collecting trashin', gashin' flicks just for you. Check out www.spasm.ca.

Meanwhile, the seventh annual Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (Nov. 11-21) continues its accumulation of the very best in reality reels from around the world (www.ridm.qc.ca).

Fiction Depiction

The trend of stars depicting historical figures doesn't let up. For instance, Gael García Bernal, as Cuban revolutionary leader Ché Guevara, hops on a Hog and goes across South America in The Motorcycle Diaries (Oct. 1). Jamie Foxx has garnered good reviews for his portrayal of Ray Charles in the aptly titled Ray (Oct. 29). In Kinsey (late November), Liam Neeson stars as the infamous doctor who wrote Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, a controversial book in 1948 and now a controversial movie in 2004. And Johnny Depp, who rarely picks boring movies, takes on the fairytale role of Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie, in Finding Neverland (Nov. 12). No word yet on whether Keith Richards will inspire his portrayal but let's hope so.

Che-ching

Do you hear that? That's the sound of Indonesian children working overtime, making bobbleheads and Happy Meal action figures.

From the people who made Shrek comes the sure-to-be-a- blockbuster animation Shark Tale (Oct. 1) and it boasts an all-star voice-over cast. Will Smith plays a fasttalking guppie who thinks he's too cool for his own school. Robert De Niro is a powerful loan shark whose son, played by Jack Black, is afraid to come out of the closet about his vegetarianism. Could be funny. File this one under guilty pleasure.

Speaking of spin-off products, South Park mavens Trey Parker and Matt Stone co-directed Team America: World Police (Oct. 15), a Bush-whacking supermarionation piss-take on America's war on terrorism. The best part is it will be out just in time for the presidential election, making its release just controversial enough clean up at the box office and toy stores.

From the Motherland

In the Euro portion of autumn viewing suggestions we have Dear Frankie (TBA), a sweet Scottish family drama about a deaf boy yearning for a father figure. Desperate to fill the lad's paternal void, his mother invents a fictional sailor dad who writes letters from abroad. But one thing she doesn't count on is that the made-up ship actually exists. Yeah, director Shona Auerbach's awarding-winning U.S./U.K. production is designed to jerk your tears but the acting is so superb you'll just have to lick your wounds and call it a day.

Ingmar Bergman is retiring a champ with what he says will be his last film. Saraband (this fall) reunites the divorcees in his 1973 classic Scenes From a Marriage. Italian director Sergio Castellitto's Don't Move (this fall) involves an emotionally damaged wretch (Penélope Cruz) desperately clinging to her doomed relationship. This is said to be the Spanish superstar's critical equivalent to Charlize Theron's Monster.

Miscellaneous perhaps

Whether the following movies are hits or misses is anybody's guess. Come Halloween, Seed of Chucky (Nov. 10) examines the challenges of raising a child in these weary times when killer dolls are so susceptible to peer pressure. If that's not scary enough, Sarah Michelle Gellar stars in the remake of Japan's Ju-On: The Grudge (Oct. 22), which will be refurbished by the original director, Takashi Shimizu. The former vampire slayer takes on a mother/son ghost team who haunt all those who come into contact with the house where they were slain by daddy dearest.

Next is I Heart Huckabees (late October). After seeing the trailer for this existential comedy starring Judd Law, Naomi Watts and Dustin Hoffman, I'm no closer to knowing what this film is about but I think that's the joke. That and Hoffman's wicked bowl cut. And there's The Yes Men, (mid-October) a documentary that sounds too absurd not to be a joke within a joke, though the pranksters behind it claim it's real. The gist is a team of anti-corporate activists pose as members of the World Trade Organization and make insane speeches about how poor people should be made to recycle their burgers up to 10 times and it's okay to use violence against fruit pickers as long as prices stay low and trade is free. The scary thing is no one at these global conferences ever questions their proposals.

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