NXNE may be over for another year, but its cinematic legacy lives on, with “Stones in Exile” hitting DVD this week and “This Movie is Broken” opening in Toronto tomorrow. Which is why this week’s issue of NOW finds me sitting down with Bruce McDonald, director of the Broken Social Scene movie — and of last year’s “Pontypool”, which you really should see if you haven’t caught up to it yet.

But it’s not all rock; I also talked to Jay and Mark Duplass, about their new comedy-drama “Cyrus”, also opening tomorrow. That conversation was much too wide-ranging to fit into a 500-word space, so you’ll definitely want to play the audio clips on that one.

Oh, and here’s my “Knight and Day” review, as promised. Please heed its warnings.

Well, that was inevitable: “Toy Story 3” shot to the top of the charts with a $109 million opening weekend, the best-ever opening for a Pixar movie and one of the biggest debuts for an animated feature.

Last week’s top title, “The Karate Kid”, took second with $29 million, while “Jonah Hex”, the week’s only other major debut, came eighth with a feeble $5.09 million.

After all the wonderful things they’ve delivered, I can’t begrudge Pixar the success on “Toy Story 3”; I just wish this one had been a little stronger, and a little more original. As I tried to articulate in my NOW review, it’s not a bad movie, or anything; it’s just somewhat hollow and unnecessary — a contractual obligation, where the previous sequel was an organic and essential continuation of the story. I’m not enthusiastic about the upcoming sequels to “Cars” and “Monsters, Inc.”, either.

Oh, yeah. They’re happening.

The average moviegoer has probably never read an issue of “Jonah Hex”, let alone even heard of the character. But that didn’t stop Warner from bringing DC Comics’ weird Western hero to the big screen, hoping to hit that sweet spot of fanboy support and popular success.

We won’t know how badly it tanks until the box-office results come in tomorrow, but putting it up against “Toy Story 3” is a pretty clear sign that the studio isn’t expecting much from it any more.

Now, I found “Jonah Hex” perversely fascinating, myself; I spent the whole picture trying to suss out what the movie must have been like before someone tried to “fix” it in post-production, but I can’t imagine that’ll be a draw for too many people.

Anyway, my larger point is: Sometimes a second- or third-tier comic-book character can hit huge on the big screen despite being virtually unknown to the moviegoing public. I expand on this in my latest MSN Movies gallery, which looks at eight other marginal properties that preceded the good mister Hex to Hollywoodland.

One word, man: “Blade”. Mother-lovin’ “Blade”.

There’s a lot of stuff opening this week, and believe me when I tell you I was rooting for it all. But it just didn’t pan out. Read on and see …

“Holy Rollers“: Kevin Asch’s true-crime thriller about the Hasidic Jews who ran an ecstacy-smuggling ring from Amsterdam to Brooklyn in the late 1980s makes the mistake of focusing on the crime instead of the culture, wasting interesting performances from Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Bartha in the process. It won’t lose anything on DVD.

“Jonah Hex”: I could see a lot of potential in this bizarre comic-book Western, which stars Josh Brolin as DC’s mutilated bounty hunter. It comes very close to working more often than not — but I’d advise you to wait until the inevitable director’s cut hits DVD, because I’d wager dollars to doughnuts it’ll be longer, weirder and considerably funnier than the shredded theatrical version. John Malkovich will still look like he’s got a potato stuck in his neck, though.

“Journey from Zanskar“: Frederick Marx, one of the producers of “Hoop Dreams”, follows a pair of monks as they try to bring a dozen or so children from a tiny village in Northern India to a Tibetan school several hundred dangerous miles to the south. The filmmaking may be on the clumsy side, but the story will keep you watching.

“Toy Story 3“: Disney forces Pixar to go through the motions in this expertly crafted but narratively pointless sequel, which simultaneously tries to wrap up the story of Woody and Buzz and reposition the property for a new generation. It’s worth seeing for the spectacular animation, but the heart’s just not there this time around.

“Winter’s Bone”: Yes, it was acclaimed at Sundance and it continues to garner strong support from certain critical corners, but I found Debra Granik’s hardscrabble thriller to be merely average once I got past the exotic veneer of the setting — with the exception of Jennifer Lawrence’s strong turn in the lead. Susan and Adam are similarly reserved in their praise.

“Year of the Carnivore”: Sook-Yin Lee plays out her fascination with sexual insecurity at feature length with this tedious, affected comedy about a young woman trying to educate herself in the ways of the icky, awkward flesh. Cristin Milioti is a hell of a sport, but that’s about the best thing I can say here. Susan is somewhat more gentle.

Also noteworthy: Michael Stasko’s “Iodine“, making its Toronto debut tonight at the Toronto Underground Cinema with an encore screening next Wednesday. And TIFF Cinematheque kicks off its Robin Wood tribute tonight with Howard Hawks’ “Rio Bravo”, preceded by Laurel and Hardy in Leo McCarey’s 1929 silent “Wrong Again”. Need something to watch? You could certainly do worse.

The latest issue of NOW finds me in musical mode, reviewing several of the films screening at NXNE and chatting with Broken Social Scene’s Brendan Canning about his participation in one of them, Bruce McDonald’s “This Movie is Broken“. (My interview with McDonald will run next week, when the movie opens.)

I also spoke to veteran character actor Ray Wise about his performance in “Iodine”, an indie making its bow at the Toronto Underground Cinema tomorrow night. And yes, we talked about the maddening inconsistencies of “Reaper”; if you think you were frustrated by that show’s inability to get out of second gear, imagine what it must have been like to work on it.

Sorry about the lack of audio on these, by the way; phoners just don’t compress to MP3 streams as well as face-to-face conversations. Which is a shame, because Ray Wise has the second-best phone voice of anyone I’ve ever talked to — the first being this guy, of course.

This is why I don’t make a living as a box-office predictor: I would not have thought “The Karate Kid” would stomp all over “The A-Team” in their opening weekend, with the family drama pulling in $56 million to the action update’s $26 million. Maybe there’s something to the whole graceful art of leg-sweeping after all.

Honestly, though? I was under the impression that “The A-Team” was a fairly heavily anticipated picture, while “The Karate Kid” was the less desired remake of the two. But I’m not entirely sure where I got that impression, unless it was that one issue of Entertainment Weekly. Obviously, neither of us is as tight with the zeitgeist as we used to be.

It’s also worth pointing out that both movies pulled in more than last week’s top release — when “Shrek Forever After” topped the charts last weekend, it rolled over all the new openers with just $25.3 million, and the weekend was deemed a scary predictor of a bad summer. Hollywood will be jumping for joy with this week’s bigger, burlier numbers … though now I’m worried they’ll rush to put Jaden Smith into everything currently in development.

Hey, maybe it’s not too late for M. Night Shyamalan to digitally insert him into “The Last Airbender”. At the very least, it’d address some of those nagging diversity issues …