Preparing for battle

Last Tuesday, the catalog came out. The catalog is a full-colour breakdown of every film in the festival (this year, for example, there were 312 films listed).

My habit is to take the catalog and read each description, noting those films that interest me in any way. That process normally takes about five hours to do and cuts the number of films by 2/3.

From this long list, it's a process of looking at the schedule and trying to fit together a schedule that makes sense for the 10 days of the festival. I have a Festival Pass, which allows me to book a maximum of 50 films.

This year, I picked up the catalog at the new box office, in the mausoleum known as Toronto-Life Square. Located on the northeast corner of Yonge and Dundas, this is a truly appalling building. A large grey, Soviet-style mountain tarted up with video screens.

As it turned out, I had an appointment to give blood that day, so I walked over to the Canadian Blood Services building on College. Interestingly enough, as I was in the middle of my own donation, a TV crew came in and proceeded to set up around one of the other donors. Apparently they were from the Discovery Channel and were doing a piece on blood donations. It seemed terribly ironic to me that, as I was starting to read the catalog, that an actual "movie" was being recorded 10 feet away from my station.

The process of making this year's selection took about 10 hours in total. I dropped my list of picks off at the box office yesterday evening and I will find out which films I have on Labour Day (Monday).

Another year, another TIFF

As a long-time participant in the Toronto International Film Festival, I'm used to the organizers making changes every year -- theatres being added or removed; policies with respect to passes changing; the introduction of the Internet facilitating the selection process; etc.

This year, I am also introducing a change of my own. In the past, I had prepared a summary of my experiences at the "Festival". This typically took several weeks (if not months) to pull together notes & memories into a written report. Since this is now the age of Web 2.0 and social networking, I've decided to create this blog to record my own experiences, impressions and musings in "near" real time.

Hope you like it.