Rockin' it at the Toronto film festival

A couple of power chords and a rim shot might be the best way to kick off this year's Toronto Film Festival, the biggest event of its kind in North America and, this year, one with a rock and roll heart.

Among the festival's more than 300 films, arriving in Canada from more than 60 countries, are three prestigious directors profiling three iconic acts: Davis Guggenheim's U2 documentary, "From the Sky Down," which will open the festival Thursday night; Cameron Crowe's "Pearl Jam Twenty" (the band itself is scheduled to play Toronto next Sunday and Sept. 12); and Jonathan Demme's "Neil Young Journeys," which commemorates solo shows Young performed in Toronto's Massey Hall in the spring.

There's a whole lot of deja vu involved in this year's Toronto, which in many ways starts the festival season for North Americans (the Telluride precedes it, but that Colorado festival is a boutique compared to Toronto, aka the Costco of film festivals). Crowe began his career as a Rolling Stone writer; Guggenheim premiered his guitar doc, "It Might Get Loud," which featured U2's The Edge, at Toronto 2008; and "Journeys" will be the third film that Young and Demme ("The Silence of the Lambs") have done together.

And then there's Brad Pitt: Driving stargazers mad will be the star of Alexander Payne's new baseball movie, "Moneyball," destined to be one of the highlights of a festival that will also premiere "50/50," the cancer comedy starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-

Levitt, and new projects from directors who've been keeping very low profiles -- Francis Ford Coppola, whose murder mystery "Twixt" is in the lineup, along with "Whit Stillman's Damsels in Distress," which marks Stillman's return after a 12-year absence, and "Union Square," from the long AWOL and much-missed Nancy Savoca ("Dogfight," "Household Saints").