Finally — finally! — we get a break in the deluge of openings. This weekend sees just four films opening in Toronto: “Carlos“, which began its Lightbox run yesterday, and the three that follow:

“Paranormal Activity 2”: Edgar Wright just described it as a security-camera version of “Poltergeist”, which is endorsement enough for me. I’m seeing it this afternoon, and will link to my review as soon as it goes up.

“Score: A Hockey Musical”: Michael McGowan, who gave Canadians a tour of our national landmarks in “One Week”, goes even bigger with the pandering, turning our national sport into a full-on musical. Word out of TIFF was not enthusiastic, though Susan liked it; I’m sure I’ll see it eventually.

“Tibet in Song”: Susan has been a booster of Ngawang Choephel’s look at Tibet’s cultural resistance to Chinese occupation — expressed here through musical means — for nearly a year now, and with good reason; it’s an excellent documentary that deftly articulates the relationship between politics and creativity. If either of those elements interests you, this is worth your time.

Oh, and also “Jules and Jim” is playing a limited run at the Lightbox this week, and being that it’s one of the best movies in the history of ever, you should probably go see that before you see anything else. Just a thought, of course.

The last time I talked to Olivier Assayas, he’d brought his lovely generational drama “Summer Hours” to TIFF 2008. Two years later, he’s back with “Carlos”, a gargantuan biographical study of the terrorist superstar known as Carlos the Jackal.

We spoke about it at length for this week’s NOW, but that interview had to be condensed radically for space, so make sure you listen to the extensive audio clips that accompany the piece.

The five-and-a-half-hour version integrale of “Carlos” begins its exclusive Toronto engagement today at the Lightbox. Tickets are a whopping $25 per seating, making it an investment on two different levels. And as much as I admire Assayas, you might want to check out my review first before you commit yourself.

My MSN DVD column has yet to go up, so instead I’ll offer you a link to this excellent Scenic Routes piece on the AV Club, in which Mike D’Angelo demonstrates the brilliance of Werner Herzog’s documentary strategy with a single example from 2006’s “Grizzly Man”.

As always with AV Club stuff, make sure you read the comments as well as the story. Especially for this one, actually; they’re kind of brilliant.

“Jackass 3D” owned the weekend box office, earning $50 million in North America — more than double the take of “RED”, which pulled $22.5 million, and the strongest opening since “Inception” debuted with $60.5 million back in mid-July.

I’m not surprised that Johnny Knoxville and his pals topped the charts again — the previous “Jackass” movies both opened at number one, and the added appeal of 3D was bound to spike the gross … pun entirely intended.

But still, right? Fifty million dollars! That sure buys a lot of splints and unguent. And yes, I’m still planning to see it when I can find the time.

With “Nowhere Boy” opening just a week after what would have been John’s 70th birthday, it seemed like a good time to do an MSN Movies gallery on Beatles movies. But I put a little spin on it, focusing on movies about the Beatles that don’t actually feature the Fab Four. You have to keep these things interesting, you understand.

Go to it, scholars. Did I leave anything out? And don’t say “Forrest Gump”, because that was just cheap pandering to the boomers.

Wow, check it out. Not only do we have movies from the last three editions of TIFF coming out this week, but we’ve got Canadian Music Week and After Dark premieres, too. Kinda fabulous, really. Shall we get into it?

“Conviction“: Hilary Swank gets her Brockovich on in this true-life story of Betty Anne Waters, who put herself through law school to help her brother beat a murder rap. It’s a great story, but not when Tony Goldwyn’s treating it like a pre-fab Lifetime movie. Sam Rockwell’s terrific as the brother, though.

“Hereafter“: I love Clint Eastwood, I really do, but I’m finding it harder and harder to make excuses for the lazy, distracted product he’s churning out these days. This exercise in everybody-hurts muzziness isn’t as risible as “Gran Torino” or as banal as “Invictus” … but neither is it entertaining or interesting. And even a director as tolerant as Eastwood shouldn’t be printing takes when an actor flubs a line.

“I Spit on Your Grave”: The second most repugnant American exploitation film of the 1970s (after “Bloodsucking Freaks”, and we will not be debating this, thank you very much) gets upgraded for the age of sado-porn. Andrew has the most positive take on it I’ve yet encountered.

“Jackass 3D”: Once again, Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of idiots attempt to maim themselves for life — and this time, it’s in stereo-vision! You know, the diminished luminance might make some of the more vomity sequences easier to sit through …

“Lovely, Still”: Susan absolutely loved this Martin Landau-Ellen Burstyn romance when she saw it at the 2008 edition of TIFF; Jason, not so much. I shall wait for the DVD, which can’t be long in coming.

“Nowhere Boy“: The young days of John Lennon are fictionalized in Sam Taylor-Wood’s piercing character study and propelled by unimpeachable performances from Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff. Screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh also wrote the Ian Curtis biopic “Control”, so that should give you a sense of what to expect.

“RED“: Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, Richard Dreyfuss, Karl Urban and Mary-Louise Parker all in the same movie? And they’re all packing heat? Where do I line up? Oh, wait, I already did … and it was totally worth it .

“Stone“: In a perfect world, Edward Norton’s feature-length impersonation of Bubbles from “The Wire” would make audiences howl with laughter, leading them to shun John Curran’s insipid prison drama for the risible fraud that it is. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so some people are taking this seriously. Their loss, I guess.

“Tales from the Golden Age”: Okay, technically this Romanian anthology — which Andrew rather liked — opened at the Lightbox yesterday, but you can watch it on Netflix right now, so I was waiting until this piece about that went up on NOW Daily.

And now you know … the rest of the story.

Who’d I talk to for this week’s NOW? Who didn’t I talk to? (No, seriously, there must be someone I left out.)

There’s Clint Eastwood, Matt Damon and Peter Morgan, director, star and screenwriter of “Hereafter”; Sam Taylor-Wood and Aaron Johnson, director and star of the Young John Lennon biopic “Nowhere Boy”, and Karl Urban, who plays Bruce Willis’ CIA nemesis in “RED” and a youngish Leonard McCoy in the “Star Trek” reboot. Good folk, all of them. Even if that Eastwood fella isn’t exactly prone to introspection, as you’ll see if you read the piece.

Still, but I couldn’t hold it against him. He be in a bit of a creative slump, and he might not want to waste time on introspection, but Clint Eastwood is still the man. You’ll want to isten to the audio clips on that one, once they’re up; turns out the guy who made his bones playing heroes of few words is a goddamn raconteur.

Well, look at that: “The Social Network” held on to the top box-office slot for a second week! David Fincher’s acclaimed Facebook creation myth pulled in another $15.5 million to stay ahead of the $14.6 million opening of its closest competitor, “Life as We Know It”.

“Secretariat” came in a distant third with $12.6 million; that’s a shame, I’d hoped the critical dust-up between Andrew O’Hehir and Roger Ebert over the film’s subtext would encourage audiences to check out the source of the controversy.

… okay, not really. It’s a vile film and should be left alone to wither. But it would have been nice to see critical writing drive attendance. Although I suppose that’s happening with “The Social Network”, on some level, so I’ll stop griping now. Enjoy the holiday Monday!