TORONTO -- As the national anthem proclaims: "O Canada." Although it's more like "Oh, Canada!" this week and next.

The Toronto International Film Festival got under way yesterday, turning "The Dark Knight" and other summer sensations into mere memories.

This is where many fall and holiday movies have their world premieres, where the seeds of Oscar campaigns are planted, watered and fertilized with movie Miracle-Gro, where sleepers such as "Juno" awaken and where bad or mediocre movies happen to good people.

Imagine five look-alike Heinz Fields, with every seat filled, plus a few stragglers in the parking lots still sucking down the last drops of beer. That's how many admissions -- 340,000 plus -- the festival expects this year.

That number reflects both the public and industry, with film critics looking for this year's "No Country for Old Men," distributors hunting for another "Diary of the Dead" or "Thank You for Smoking," and regular folks simply aiming to have a good time in the dark or daylight.

Although there has been some grumbling that the festival has "gone Hollywood" in recent years, it still opens with a Canadian film and this year will count 29 Canadian features and 38 Canadian shorts among its overall roster of 249 features and 63 shorts.

The finalists emerged from 4,209 submissions and represent 64 countries. Three dozen screens scattered around the city, in conventional theaters, on university campuses and in buildings housing shops, restaurants and other tenants, will flicker with films through Sept. 13.

It's the Super Bowl of festivals, with hotel rooms at a premium, restaurants, bars and coffee shops jammed with visitors, and all the movies, star-gazing, sightseeing, shopping, dining and drinking that the exchange rate will allow.

The festival opened last night with "Passchendaele," starring, written, directed and produced by Canadian filmmaker Paul Gross.

Set during World War I, it tells the story of a soldier who is brutally wounded in France and returns home to Calgary emotionally and physically scarred. While in a military hospital, he falls in love with a nurse and feels compelled to return to the battlefield to protect her younger brother, now fighting in Europe.

"Passchendaele" kicks off 18 galas at Roy Thomson Hall, a 2,800-seat theater that will be turned into a slice of Hollywood heaven for the next 10 days. The red carpet will be rolled out for tonight's "The Secret Life of Bees" gala at 6:30, with "Burn After Reading" guaranteed to set the crowd on fire at 9:30 p.m.

"Burn After Reading" is the latest Coen brothers movie, and it not only stars Brad Pitt, scheduled to promote the movie in Toronto, but also George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and John Malkovich. Wherever Pitt goes, people, paparazzi and free publicity follow.

As usual, there is a Pittsburgh connection to the festival, and this year it's "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," directed by Kevin Smith, starring Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks, and set and filmed in Monroeville and other Pittsburgh locales. Word has it that tickets for the first public screening are "beyond scarce," indicating widespread interest, curiosity or both.

"The Road," also filmed in Western Pennsylvania earlier this year, will not be screening in Toronto, but star Viggo Mortensen is expected to promote "Appaloosa," a Western directed by Ed Harris.

Mortensen also appears in a fest movie called "Good," based on the play by CP Taylor, about a German literature professor in the 1930s who writes a novel advocating compassionate euthanasia and unexpectedly comes to the attention of the Nazi party.

The list of notable guests runs more than two pages long and includes such names as Peter O'Toole, Gerard Butler, Matt Damon, Guy Ritchie, Greg Kinnear, Debra Winger, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Hudson, Julianne Moore, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rachel McAdams, Queen Latifah, Rachel Weisz and Zac Efron.

It doesn't get much bigger or better than this.