Hello Friends of THE NEON!
I made it to Toronto. With very little sleep, I ran right to registration and picked up my pass and catalog…which I looked at very quickly and made my first picks. The Toronto International Film Festival (which I’ll refer to now as TIFF) officially begins tomorrow night. That said, industry screenings begin tomorrow morning. Each day, my pass allows me to see 2 public screenings and numerous industry screenings. (The public screenings are more fun…they’re filled with film lovers…and the filmmakers and stars often attend those screenings.) Only a handful of tickets for those public screenings are put aside for people who have passes like mine…and we can only collect them 48 hours in advance. This means that I’ll be up every morning at 6:00 so I can leave my apartment and get in line by 7:00. At 8:00, I’ll hopefully be one of the first people in line so I can get the tickets I want….then I’m off to screenings for the rest of the day.
Each day, I’ll see 3, 4 or sometimes even 5 films (that’s a rarity, though…my eyes can only handle so much).
I just returned from grabbing a beer and plotting my next few days. I picked up some local publications and started to assess the buzz about any films that I might need to see, and my initial plan of attack is in place. With over 300 films to chose from, the scheduling can become madness…and I love it.
Thanks for checking in with my blog. One film I’ll be seeing tomorrow (Thursday night) is Jim Jarmusch’s new vampire film (not a genre I really like…but my favorite actress is the star – TILDA SWINTON). Tune in again (and each day thereafter) to read about each of the films I’m seeing (and each of the stars I see flitting around).
More soon,
Jonathan
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