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Now that this year’s crop of Oscar nominees have been announced, you can go to the movies with even more excitement (or even more of a cynical, critical eye, depending on your mood). Some of the nominees are at the TIFF Bell Lightbox this week, including Wim Wenders’ Best Documentary nominee Pina, a 3D dance film about legendary choreographer Pina Bausch. Also playing are philosophical auteur Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and equally philosophical auteur Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, both of which are nominated for Best Picture. Canada’s Monsieur Lazhar is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, and also plays at TIFF this week (quite frequently too, so you can arrange your schedule to catch it).

Oscars aside, there’s plenty of other good stuff at TIFF this week, as usual. Hope, the 1970 Turkish neorealist drama, screens as part of the retrospective currently underway on Turkish filmmaker Yilmaz Güney. Also part of the retrospective are this week’s The Herd and Yol, the latter of which will be introduced by Ercument Akan, film curator and organizer of the Güney series.

Also, don’t forget about the currently on-going series on cold war science fiction films, “Attack the Bloc: Cold War Science Fiction from Behind the Iron Curtain”, which, this week, features Tarkovsky’s Solaris and Stalker, as well as the unlikely 2-part teenage space adventure film  Moscow-Cassiopeia / Adolescents in the Universe. But what sounds like the most entertaining premise is that of Ferat Vampire, a 1982 Czech film about a race car company whose cars run on the blood of their drivers.

Fans of the divisive and bombastic Nicholas Cage may be excited to know that the TIFF Bell Lightbox kicks off a retrospective on the thespian’s work this week, starting with 1983′s Valley Girl, in which Cage tries to score a girl way out of his league… and how could he fail, with that charming way of his?

Visit the TIFF Bell Lightbox site for details on screening dates, times, and tickets.

Original artwork by Bennett O’Brian.