Although Best For Film Towers is still rooted in dreary old London (we’re talking to both Howl and Count Duckula about an upgrade), our intrepid scribbler Hannah is overseas soaking up the celluloid glamour of the Toronto International Film Festival. Ever wanted to know how well Canadians queue? Well, your luck’s in…

Since 1982 the state of Texas has executed 473 people, and is currently holding 334 people on death row. While California has the highest death row population in the US, it’s Texas that has the highest rate of execution – and it’s here that legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog travelled to make his mesmerising documentary, Into The Abyss.

There’s no such thing as a predictable superhero casting – all the best Avengers, X-Men and otherwise pumped-up persons are unlikely characters who stumble into their crime-fighting alter egos just as unexpectedly as do the actors cast to play them. With so many A-list actors now boasting a brush with superheroism on their CVs, we’ve come up with a few new suggestions…

After the recent announcement that Tom Hooper, current king of the world after The King’s Speech Oscar success, has been linked to a big screen adaptation of long-running musical The Glums (sorry, Les Miserables), we thought we should cast a light on some other musicals waiting for a safe pair of cinematic hands to lead them gently into cinema screens near you

Takeshi Kitano’s film about the Japanese yakuza may possess all the ingredients – violence, family loyalty and a strict hierarchy – but each wincingly gruesome scene is also strangely hilarious, leaving you laughing at the screen as you watch from behind your hands.

Direct from Geneva’s Black Movie Festival comes our review of The Tiger Factory, a triumph of Malaysian neo-realism (nope, we didn’t either) which will make you question the limits of your self-reliance and the exact situation in which you could be persuaded to milk a pig of its semen.

What do you mean, you’d never heard of the Black Movie Festival? Alright, neither had we. But our intrepid field reporter Hannah has, and she’s got the low-down on possibly the best place in Switzerland to get your daily dose of Yakuza action.

BFF: defenders of the weak, trumpeters of the down-trodden, makers of wild, unsubstantiated claims and lovers of Ben Affleck. That’s right. It’s a heady mix.