The Los Angeles Film Festival kicks off this week downtown with an eclectic slate of alternative stimulation. Run by Film Independent, the LAFF has a more chill, familial air than Sundance, and unlike Sundance, you can usually get tickets.

Woody Allen's wry observations rang through and eventually hit my funny bone in his farcical, free-spirited new film, To Rome With Love.

There's just a massive creative-fatigue-miasma hanging over the film business these days, a sense the establishment has sucked all the air out of the business (as well as the financing) and that your options are limited.

With the open bar at the filmmaker's lounge closing its taps, and the jury announcing its winners, the Los Angles Film Festival has at last sadly come to a close.

The final treat of the L.A. Film Festival was talking to the incomparable comedian David Cross, one of the stars of Todd Berger's terrorist-attack dark comedy It's a Disaster, as well as Dr. Tobias Funke on Arrested Development.