Media Attention: Year and Lightning Rod

media attention: The truth is, there's almost never a common thread to find yeah, maybe one year there are more comedies than dramas, or documentaries have a really strong showing, or a legitimate masterpiece emerges and acts as a lightning rod for media attention, according to NOW Magazine. And some years, it just feels like a random assortment of features and documentaries of varying quality. Rating NNNNEvery year, TIFF delivers the list of features and shorts that made it to Canada's Top Ten, and every year movie critics struggle to find a unifying theme among the winners or at least to tease out a few interesting connections. Which isn't to say there aren't some good choices in this year's CTT. Kyle Rideout's Adventures In Public School, which is the first film to be screened at the Lightbox January 12, 8 30 pm; repeating January 13, noon is a delight an idiosyncratic goof on the high-school comedy featuring a great performance by Daniel Doheny as a home-schooled Vancouver genius who enrols himself in public school to chase his dream girl Siobhan Williams and another one by Judy Greer as his twitchy, overprotective mom. And Ava January 18, 6 pm; January 19, 3 pm marks the feature debut of Tehran-born, Montreal-based filmmaker Sadaf Foroughi, who brings a sharp eye to a study of an Iranian teenager Mahour Jabbari trying to define herself in a society and a home that would really rather she didn't. Kathleen Hepburn's Never Steady, Never Still January 16, 6 pm; January 17, 2 30 pm similarly marries a great script with terrific performances, but here it's in the service of a more dramatic tale of an Alberta mother Shirley Henderson and her adult son Th odore Pellerin struggling through very different personal crises. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.