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Director Desiree Lim's feature The House is a thoughtful take on grief, death, and forgiveness. In the film, ex-Wall Street banker Jean Kaneko (Natalie Skye) hopes to find peace and solitude in a friend's empty mansion after quitting her job in the wake of the financial collapse; what she find instead is a home full of restless (yet highly communicative) spirits. The  film was just featured as part of the Vancouver Women in Film Festival after its premier at the the Vancouver Asian Film Festival,  and is set to screen next at the Newport Beach Film Festival in April and at Toronto's The Female Eye Film Festival in June.

Read more on Director Desiree Lim talks about her supernatural thriller, The House...

Let's start the weekly round-up with Grimm.

Grimm's ratings dropped a little this week, but the show still won the 18-49 demo in its timeslot, finishing ahead of CSI: NY, Fringe and Supernatural, and rising by a full frakking ratings point (1.8) after Chuck (0.8). Wake up, Chuck.

Hitfix visited the set in Portland recently and posted a lengthy report. Here is a snippet:

Sasha Roiz on how his character will develop later in the series: "I’m not a Grimm descendent, but I'm a descendent of a long line that dates back just as Grimm does and we have a bit of a history and a past, so my line is a royal line and that will slowly unfold throughout the series."Collider has a longer interview with Sasha and Reggie Lee (more at the link):

It’s nice to see your character – like the main character – has the duality.

Vancouver, Canada – Providing a forum for independent North American Asian filmmakers, the upcoming Vancouver Asian Film Festival (Vaff) will offer audiences a diverse selection of shorts and full features.

Celebrating its 15th year, the festival’s theme for 2011, ‘Love Letters to Vancouver’, ties in with the city of Vancouver’s 125th birthday celebration. The plywood background for the program guide cover may seem familiar because it was inspired after the Canucks riot when everyone wrote their ‘Love Letters’ to the city on the plywood covering broken windows and doors.

With almost 60 films and over 60 diverse Asian filmmakers, actors and special guests scheduled to attend this year’s festival, this is the largest Vancouver Asian Film festival to date.

Here are a few Vaff 2011 films we are looking forward to:

The Opening Night Presentation – Almost Perfect

Directed by award winning writer/director Bertha Bay-Sa Pan

Thursday, Nov 3 at 7:00pm

Vancouver...

The 2010 Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival will celebrate its 14th year as Canada's longest-running and largest showcase of contemporary cinema by East Asian and Southeast Asian moviemakers from Canada and around the world. From November 9 to 15, 2010, the festival will present more than 50 films and videos from 12 countries, including Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Canada and the U.S.

The festival is starting with an advanced screening of Ip Man 2, but the big gala opener is Twitch favourite Martial Arts Feel Good Comedy Gallants starring a host of old school kung fu veterans, not the least of which is Bruce Leung (Recently seen as Kung Fu Hustle's villain) and the iconic Teddy Robbin (who is used here to magnificent effect (and pictured above) as the brusque and womanizing Martial Arts Master.)

The rest of the festivals offerings are outlined below from the festivals press release:

Galas...