It's an interesting week for film, with direct competition between two kinds of films—one that wants to make you feel like a kid again by bludgeoning you with special effects and nostalgic licence, and another that wants to make you feel like a kid again by simply recalling, well, what it was to be a kid. We refer to the big-screen adaptation of the lets-be-honest-it-was-pretty-terrible-but-now-amusing-in-a-kitsch-way Speed Racer (phew) and the release, finally, of the......

When we ran our Sprockets preview last week, we tried to give the piece a theme, and we couldn’t stick to it. In all honesty, we probably overstretched ourselves in trying to give a post on a children’s film festival a theme any grander than "children’s films," and when you get down to it, why bother? Trying to theme our introductory post to this year’s Hot Docs coverage, which will continue throughout the week,......