''Thank you very much for inviting us,'' George Clooney told the crowd before the Friday night premiere of his lawyer-thriller Michael Clayton, as the 2007 Toronto Film Festival launched into its all-important big first weekend. ''And thank you for letting me show up a day before Brad Pitt.'' Packing a one-two Friday-Saturday premiere-night punch, the Ocean's boys surely upped the early star wattage of the prestige fest's opening days — Pitt dropped in the next evening for the premiere of his long, Terence Malick-ian Western, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford — but there was more than enough buzz to go around, with big movies premiering one on top of another and a celebrity quotient that felt perhaps a little higher than usual.

THE AUDIENCE BUZZ
Friday saw the premieres of both the Reese Witherspoon-Jake Gyllenhaal drama Rendition and Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, his NC-17-rated followup to Brokeback Mountain. Chatter about both movies was divided, but the situation brightened considerably for Lust on Saturday, when Ang Lee went missing from the Toronto press schedule for a while because he was actually called back to Venice as the surprise winner of that festival's best picture award.

On Saturday, in addition to Jesse James, there was Juno, a comedy crowd-pleaser that got the complimentary Little Miss Sunshine comparisons rolling. The film stars Jason Bateman, Jennifer Garner, Michael Cera, and X-Men: The Last Stand's Ellen Page (as the sassy, hyperarticulate, knocked-up 16-year-old of the title), and it's the second feature by Thank You for Smoking director Jason Reitman. All the actors — and, seemingly, just about everybody who got in to see it — were talking up the screenplay by first-timer Diablo Cody. ''You know how they sometimes sell movie scripts as books?'' said Superbad's sweet-natured Cera. ''They should probably do that with this one, if the movie does well. You could tell it's a special script right away; it read really easily.'' The day also included the unveilings of the Coen brothers' relentlessly great adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's chase novel, No Country for Old Men, the David Cronenberg-Viggo Mortensen Russian-gangster picture, Eastern Promises, and Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball's often disturbing directorial debut, Nothing Is Private.

Then, on Sunday, the Cate Blanchett period sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age screened to underwhelmed press in the morning, while another female-driven vehicle — the film adaptation of Karen Joy Fowler's novel The Jane Austen Book Club — premiered in a prestigious Gala slot in the evening. ''My main hope,'' said Robin Swicord, a first-time director and well-respected Hollywood screenwriter (Memoirs of a Geisha), ''is that as I walk across the stage to introduce the actors before the movie, I don't fall off my high heels.'' As of press time, we don't know how Swicord managed, but our fingers were crossed for her.

THE HOT PARTY
At the Michael Clayton after-shindig on Friday, party people marveled over the skill and complexity of writer/director Tony Gilroy's '70s-style conspiracy-thriller feature debut ... while hot young women tried to talk their way past security into the party's VIP section, where Clooney — sporting some facial grizzle — spent some time busting up Clive Owen in the corner. Not too far away, Tilda Swinton — who plays a sympathetic sort of villain in Clayton — looked tickled by all the to-do of riding behind a superstar like Clooney on the festival circuit. She also downplayed her own star power. ''If I have any celebrity credentials at all, it has to do with my friends,'' she said. ''I'm a reflector.''

THE TOUGHEST TICKET
On Sunday afternoon, an auditorium full of festival-goers were treated to 20 minutes of Religulous, director Larry Charles's documentary followup to his smash hit Borat. The film — buzzed-about for months now — features HBO's Bill Maher, as he travels around the world asking questions and cracking jokes about the ''big three'' religions. The audience howled as Maher went cheerfully head-to-head with Vatican scholars, Jews for Jesus, polygamist wives, truckers at a truckers' chapel, the proprietor of an Islamic clothing store in London, and the guy who plays Jesus at a religious theme park in Florida, among other true believers. (Religulous still lacks a release date.)

The highlight of the afternoon, though, might've been the chat with Maher and Charles that followed, as they explained what they were up to. ''Mitt Romney says, 'Yes, we need a person of faith in the White House,''' Maher noted. ''And this movie is here to say, 'Why? Why is faith good? Why do we need a person of faith?' We don't. We need a person of doubt. We need a person of great doubt who says, 'I don't know what would happen if I invaded Iraq — let's examine that first!''' The crowd loved it, and during the audience Q&A somebody asked Maher if, because he was taking on such a touchy subject, he feared for his personal safety. ''No,'' he laughed. ''It's a comedy!''