Spain reveres its flamenco tradition; Ireland won hearts with Riverdance. What form of national expression does England bring to the global table? Morris dancing - a folk-infused activity whose practitioners hop backwards and forwards waving handkerchiefs.

But what England also has is a genius for poking fun at itself, in particular its more eccentric cultural legacies. "Morris: A Life With Bells On" continues that gift in the finest traditions of "This Is Spinal Tap" and "The Full Monty."

The film's premiere in London's West End is like no other I’ve ever seen: The usual red carpet has been replaced by green Astroturf bedecked with straw bales, milk churns and a couple of dozen morris dancers hopping away. What is your favorite mockumentary? "Spinal Tap," "Borat," or maybe "Best In Show?" Tell us below.

Yet, despite a paltry half-millon dollar budget and a production base set on a chicken farm, ex-investment banker and first-time filmmaker Chaz Oldham managed to recruit seasoned talent including the venerable British actor Sir Derek Jacobi, French star Dominic Pinon and Naomie Harris, who joined the production straight from the premiere of "Pirates of the Caribbean."

The exceptional script of this British-made mockumentary follows a documentary crew on the story of Britain’s finest morris dancer Derecq Twist - a man determined to go beyond the boundaries of dance who inevitably falls foul of the ultra-conservative guardians of the dance.

International fascination with the film has been high, with 120,000 hits in a peak week on the movie’s website and fourth place from 248 entries at Seattle Film Festival. Hopes are high to lure a U.S. distributor on board.

The English are polarized about the prospect of morris dancing at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics in 2012. Some believe we should flaunt it, others would rather curl up and die than present it to the world.

Last word on the subject of morris dancing goes to Sir Derek Jacobi, whose talent in turn was discovered by another peer of the English acting realm, Sir Laurence Olivier:

“When you say ‘morris dancing’ usually people smile - never too maliciously but there’s a hint of malice behind their smiles. But it is so essentially English that the other half who are smiling are really genuinely fond of it and rather proud that its something that is so essentially English, nowhere else in the world will you see it, it’s ours and we mustn’t let it die.”

Designer Tom Ford has made the move from runway to the big screen with a flourish with his directorial debut “A Single Man,”  a highly stylized account of a gay college professor dealing with the loss of his lover.

Colin Firth has sparked Oscar buzz with his performance, which won him the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival, and the Weinstein Company bought distribution rights for the movie at Toronto. That means the public will soon get their own chance to judge whether designer-turned-director Ford is as successful behind the camera as he was in bringing sexy silhouettes to the catwalk.

The former creative head at Gucci isn’t the only one to find a second calling in the movies. He joins a long list of "hyphen" directors - musicians, journalists and artists who have switched careers to become filmmakers.

Singers alone could fill up a list. Madonna made her directorial debut last year with "Filth and Wisdom," which was received with about as much as enthusiasm as her earlier attempts at acting, while heavy metal rocker Rob Zombie, who revived the "Halloween" franchise and is reportedly lined up to remake "The Blob," has made a name in horror films.

To be sure, some have been far more successful than others. One of the most notable crossovers of late has been British artist and Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen, who made a splash at Cannes last year with "Hunger." His picture about an IRA hunger striker won the Camera d'Or for best first feature film at the fest.

Former entertainment journalist and film critic Rod Lurie, who broke out with his 2000 film “The Contender” starring Joan Allen as a Vice President nominee under scrutiny, has also developed credibility as a director of political films.

The most successful crossover of all? Perhaps Woody Allen, who started out as a stand-up comic before taking up position behind the camera. But you tell us, who do you think are the best film directors to cross over from other fields? Tell us in the comments below.

"This Is It," the documentary that follows pop star Michael Jackson in the months before his death, will have a global launch in 25 cities on October 27-28, according to the film’s distributor. Are you planning to watch the Michael Jackson documentary? Tell us what you think about the movie in the comments below.

A 6 p.m. PT event in Los Angeles on October 27 will launch premieres of “This Is It” worldwide. Simultaneous debuts will be staged in 15 cities, including London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Johannesburg and Seoul, Sony Pictures said.

The documentary chronicles Jackson’s rehearsals for concerts that were scheduled to have taken place this past summer at London’s O2 Arena.

Directed by Jackson’s choreographer and creative director Kenny Ortega, the film draws on more than 100 hours of footage shot between March and June.

The public will be able to view the film, which will have a two-week run in theaters, three hours after the red-carpet premieres. Tickets go on sale September 27.

Director and screenwriter Nora Ephron, best known for writing "Sleepless in Seattle", brings together culinary queens from different generations in "Julie and Julia." - iconic U.S chef Julia Child and her modern-day disciple Julie Powell.

The film centres on publications by both women: "My life in France" is Child’s autobiography, chronicling the beginnings of her journey into cooking and writing the bestselling book "Mastering the art of French Cooking."

"Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen," is 30-year-old New Yorker Julie Powell's compendium of blogs about working her way through all the recipes in Child’s classic cookbook while holding down a steady job.

Much like Child’s signature recipe for potato dauphinois, the film delivers overlapping layers, dividing the action between the lives of the two women. Ephron doesn't try to set up the two women as equals, as there is doubtless a discrepancy between their achievements. Instead, the film offers an account of how Child’s example transformed, somewhat unexpectedly, the life of a woman born more almost seventy years later.

It is a rehabilitation of sorts for Child, whom I had easily dismissed during my college years as a relic from an age of unemancipated femininity. Just as Child’s story pulled Julie into a whirlwind of cooking and writing, the film "Julie & Julia" took me on a journey into the life of a 20th century American icon.

As a young girl, I felt trapped between my mother’s liberal American values and my conservative Greek father’s beliefs at the other end. Even though my mother was and is culinary star, I spent most of my youth avoiding the kitchen, a space I associated with female subjugation.

So, when I began my studies at Smith College in Massachusetts - an independent liberal arts college for women whose famous alumnae span the political spectrum from first ladies Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush to influential feminists like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan as well as Child - I found myself looking for role models that appeared more subversive.

This, in spite of the fact that just one year before I began my freshman year Julia was still cooking on air aged 84. Even though Julia’s name seemed to emerge and remerge on campus, I never thought more about her accomplishments. Hers was a story I preferred to escape than pursue.

Watching Nora Ephron’s film changed this and became the trigger that led me on my own journey to explore Child’s uncompromising and fearless character. After watching Ephrons’ film I realized that Julia worked hard to overcome obstacles and pursue her two creative passions: cooking and writing.

I also realized that Child is not that different from many of the women I already admired. She pushed her way into the elite Cordon Bleu cooking school with little knowledge of French at a time when the majority of chefs worldwide were male.

Julia Child saw her life as a work in progress: she presented the first live cooking show in America, "The French Chef" in 1963, aged 50, wrote eight cookbooks and presented TV specials well into the 1990s when she was in her eighth decade.

In researching Julia Child’s life, I turned to other Smith alum Gail Wescott who interviewed Child as she was moving out of her Massachusetts home to live the last chapter of her life in assisted living center close to Los Angeles.

Wescott remembers her interviewee aged 90 telling her that she STILL had one book in her and it was going to be the memoir of her life in France with her loving husband Paul. (This book was later published as "My Life in France," co-written with her grandnephew Alex Prud’ homme.)

Wescott told me, "In this moment, Julia Child became a role model well beyond her iconic culinary achievements. She was someone about to enter her 90s who was still totally engaged with life, who still had another story she wanted to tell."

If you’ve ever been fired or found yourself to be the casualty of a corporate downsizing, George Clooney’s latest film “Up in the Air” could ring all too true.

Clooney stars as a so-called “career transition consultant” who crisscrosses the country firing people in the Jason Reitman film, which has been generating buzz at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. 

Are you ready to watch films about the recession or is the stress still too close to home? Share your comments below.

Toronto, which started September 10 and runs until September 19, is one of the key fall film festivals that can shape the race for film awards.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who does his job with a remote coolness and revels in racking up air miles. But his elite business traveler status comes under threat when a new colleague proposes firing people via video conferences instead of in person.

The drama is the third film directed by Reitman, who was behind “Thank You for Smoking” and indie hit “Juno,” and is one of a number of films at Toronto this year to reflect on the fallout of the economic turmoil.

But while films like Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” take a provocative look, “Up in the Air” angles for a more introspective examination that goes beyond the pain of job loss.

“The connective tissue is that this is a movie about a man who is searching for purpose in his life, and what seems to be the most heartbreaking result of losing your job is people in the middle of their life searching for purpose,” Reitman told reporters at a press conference during the festival.

Reitman said he started writing the script as a satire, but over the six years it took him to write the movie, the world changed. He realized what once were humorous scenes about people getting fired weren’t funny anymore and decided to take a dramatic approach.

If the film gives off an air of authenticity, that’s because Reitman took out an ad seeking real people who were out of work and filmed those who responded talking about what it was like to lose their job. He said there was a “heartbreaking” response and he ended up featuring 25 real voices in the film.

Clooney said that while working on the film, which is one of two movies he has at Toronto, it became clear that it was less a comedy and much more about real people, and it suddenly felt more timely than ever.

“We ended up I think, fortunately, being able to tell a story that’s sort of important to talk about right now,” he told reporters at a press conference.

For his part, he's earned glowing reviews for his performance. “Clooney has scarcely ever been more magnetic onscreen than he is here as Ryan Bingham,” industry magazine Variety said, while Reitman referred to Clooney’s turn as one his most “vulnerable” performances to date.

We’ll be watching to see if viewers think the same. Like the rest of the films in the Toronto line-up, “Up in the Air” is in contention for the People’s Choice Award at the festival, which is voted on by festival audiences and will be announced September 19.

For more on the Toronto Film Festival, watch The Screening Room on CNN at the following times: Wednesday 23 September: 0930, 1730, Saturday 26 September: 0930, 1800, 2130, Sunday 27 September: 0630, 1830, Monday 28 September: 0400 (all times GMT)

Toronto is recognized universally as being the start of awards season and the place where studios launch their Oscar campaigns. You can always tell which films they’re going to push by the relative lavishness of the parties. My suspicions were aroused last year by the oyster mountain at Fox Searchlight’s "Slumdog Millionaire" party.

I felt the same inkling at the Blackberry/Lionsgate "Precious" party, as foie gras crostini were pressed on me, that we will be seeing much more of this fine film and in particular Mo'Nique's much talked about performance.

Film festivals can often start with a bang and slowly fizzle until all that is left are some straggly-looking journalists sitting around eating stale sandwiches and trying to file copy on ancient laptops.

But this year, the Toronto International Film Festival flipped things around launching on a low-key note with Jon Amiel’s Charles Darwin biopic "Creation" starring couple Jennifer Connolly and Paul Bettany. Despite good reviews, film has failed, thus far, to secure a U.S. distributor or much coverage.

Things only really started to get going at the weekend with the premiere of Iraq war satire “The Men Who Stare at Goats,” starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges (aka "The Dude"). The weekend's other big hitter was and "Up in the Air," also starring Clooney, which had critics raving and the Oscar pundits buzzing.

Clooney walked the carpet for both films with a bandaged hand, which he also had at Venice; but declined to do any other interviews, which is a shame because I imagine interviewing him would be fun.

"Capitalism: A Love Story" had its first public outing on Sunday to the usual Michael Moore film love/hate reception. However you feel about Moore, the film is certainly entertaining and speaks to the despair of America's working class during tough economic times. Moore has sympathy: "It’s crazy," he tells me, "We live in a democracy. There’s supposed to be some kind of equitable distribution of something here. It’s not set up for just a few to be calling the shots and everyone else scrambling for what’s left."

The festival is also careful to make things fun for the city it calls home, showcasing various events in public space Yonge-Dundas Square. A crowd of blood covered zombies lurched there through the city to greet horror icon George Romero, with one over-zealous zombie drooling blue goo onto our cameraman’s white sneaker.

The day after, the square was taken over by a roller derby to celebrate actress Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut "Whip It," which drew crowds of press and onlookers eager for Barrymore and star Ellen Page to recreate their recent smooch in Marie Claire magazine.

LONDON, England – Like Scarlett Johansson and millions more women in their late 20s and 30s, I am saddened to find my world a little smaller today: Pancreatic cancer has stolen one of my generation’s most loved movie idols from us.

Though he’d had supporting roles in films such as Francis Ford Coppola’s "The Outsiders," Patrick Swayze caught my tweenage attention in 1987 as Johnny Castle in sleeper-hit-turned-seminal chick flick, "Dirty Dancing."

We watched it repeatedly at sleepovers, munching popcorn and sipping soda as his hips wiggled across our TV screens. We cooed and sighed at the dance moves; we cheered when he uttered his most famous line: “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

"Dirty Dancing" worked for two main reasons: the on-screen chemistry between its young stars sizzled; while Castle’s bad-boy charms masked a character who was, like the man who played him, decent and genuine –- the man described in a statement by his co-star Jennifer Grey as "a cowboy with a tender heart."

The lessons "Dirty Dancing" taught us weren’t new: to stay true to oneself; not to judge people on their appearances; that anything can be achieved if one puts one's mind to it; and, most importantly, as Johnny Castle says in the film, that "there are people willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them." But they were put across with an old-school charm, a deftness and a grace that harked back to a more innocent time.

In interviews, Swayze was always gracious when recalling the film that brought him fame and, while he yearned for variety in his work, unlike so many cynical movie hacks and fans, he never denigrated the genre that brought him fortune.

That might be another reason why Swayze's fans stayed so loyal, both to "Dirty Dancing" in particular, and to him.

While "Ghost" and a stream of action flicks followed, it's "Dirty Dancing" that I'll treasure most fondly: a somehow timeless setting in the Catskills, a watermelon, and a startlingly unremarkable girl who falls in love with a hearththrob from the wrong side of town.

As he said in the film, "It's a feeling … a heartbeat."

It was during the post-war years that Sarajevo Film Festival became a major event in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Since then, it has grown into the Balkan region's most important film event and a significant film industry destination. It now draws more than 100,000 people each year, a long way from its humble beginnings in a besieged city back in 1995.

This year's festival presented 232 films from 53 countries screened over nine days.

The festival also draws some of the biggest names in the international arena. Last year, Kevin Spacey, Juliette Binoche, Nick Nolte, Mike Leigh, Charlie Kaufman, Jia Khang-ke and Nuri Bilge Ceylan attended among others, filling Sarajevo locals with the hope that their city can be significant in peaceful times too.

This year, the glamour was less evident, likely due to the recession. But Gillian Anderson and Mickey Rourke made an appearance. Rourke spent few days at the Festival and few dollars around the city, buying some traditional Bosnian linen in the historic center.

Sarajevo is arguably the leading showcase for films from south-east Europe and this year there was a real sense of local patriotism. Winner of the top prize, the “Heart of Sarajevo,” was a Serbian war drama, “Ordinary People” by director Vladimir Perisic. A number of other award-winners also explored aspects of the war in the former Yugoslavia, including short film “The Party” by Croatian Dalibor Matanic.

Sarajevo has established itself as the regional center, not only for competing filmmakers, but also for co-operation. Most of the films coming out of the Balkans international co-productions, which not only benefits the industry but brings a co-operative spirit to a region formerly known mostly for its troubles.

The idea of shooting a feature film in less than a week is enough to leave the most seasoned filmmaker in a state of panic.

But that's exactly the challenge British director Shane Meadow set himself with latest film “Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee,” shot in just five days.

The improvised comedy starring long-time Meadows collaborator, Paddy Considine and real-life rapper Scor-zay-zee, premiered to positive reviews at Edinburgh International Film Festival earlier this year. It follows failed musician, Le Donk, as he struggles to reclaim his life after his pregnant girlfriend walks out on him.

BAFTA-winner Meadows recently said filmmakers should adopt a “punk mentality” if they want to follow in his footsteps.

"It’s not about someone stumping up £2 million [for a film] and putting pressure on you - it’s about smaller characters and crazy ideas," he said in an interview with Wired magazine.

The director has introduced his very own moviemaking dogma "Five day features," with long-time producer Mark Herbert who also serves as the head of Warp Films.

The only rule of the “movement” is that films are shot in five days or less and he hopes it will promote the idea that working under restrictions is good for creativity.

“The 'Donk' DVD and website will be a working manifesto of how to do it," Meadows said. "In the end, people are going to have to get off their ar**s and do it themselves."

Further details of the project will be announced on Meadows'  official Web site in the near future.

"Le Donk & Scor-Zay-Zee" is released in the UK on 9 October and will be available on DVD from 26 October.

VENICE, Italy (CNN) - The bigger the star, the lower the press are prepared to sink in order to get their attention.

An Italian man took off his clothes - down to his boxers - and asked George Clooney for a kiss at a press conference at the Venice Film Festival.

Security seemed reluctant to drag the man, who had an officially accredited badge, away.

"It's hard when you take a big chance and it doesn't work," Clooney grinned in response. "It's always really embarrassing when you take one big swing for the fence and it falls flat ... It was a good try though."

"Have you ever heard the David Niven joke," continued Clooney, "Wasn't it his line at the Oscars one year when he said the biggest laugh he'd ever get is by taking off his clothes and showing us his shortcomings."

Clooney is in Venice to promote Iraq war satire "The Men Who Stare at Goats," which is screening at the Lido.

The film, about a U.S. military unit that experiments with paranormal powers, co-stars Ewan McGregor, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges.