Festival Time

So, it's festival time again and I'm up late trying to make my picks which are due by 1:00 PM tomorrow. Not that I'm guaranteed to get my first choice picks, but I've been incredibly lucky the past few years, which, of course, makes me think this is the year that my second choice picks will be more important or even relevant...

I blogged last year a bit about the festival and I'm always faced with the what-kind-of-festival-do-I-want-to-have question when trying to make my selections from the 350 plus films they're showing.

Do I go for the avante guard? Foreign films? Base it on trying to stick to one theatre for a few films in a row, rather than dashing around Toronto? Do I try to maximize the number of celebrities I see? I mean, is seeing The Assassination of Jesse James only a week or so before it's released, but seeing Brad Pitt in the flesh during the introductions, worth passing up on Alan Ball's new movie Nothing is Private? How does one decide these things?

And to get more absurd, do I choose to see Michael Clayton, which opens Oct 5 (in NY, LA and Toronto) but have a possible Clooney sighting -- he is going to be in town, but will he show for the second screening? -- or see My Kid Could Paint That, a documentary about a six year old girl whose paintings sell for big bucks. I'll see Michael Clayton regardless of the festival, which makes me think I should go for the documentary... And what about the new Elizabeth film which looks amazing... Is it worth missing Jason Reitman's (Thank you for not Smoking) new film Juno that starts Michael Cera who's in Superbad right now??? And the only other screening of Juno is the same time as the new Coen brothers' film No Country for Old Men.

A few films in the festival, I want to see regardless of the fact they're opening in theatres soon. First is Across the Universe, mostly because it just looks so cool and if it gets reviewed badly I don't want the reviews to spoil my possible amazing movie-going experience. Of course, seeing a trippy film like that at 9:00 in the morning may not be so trippy... The other is Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg's new film. It's the film that Toronto's NOW Magazine picked as "THE FILM" of this year's festival, plus the reviewer seemed to think that it'll get slashed to pieces once the US censors see it... And I'd rather see it uncut.

So, back to my picking... Must get this done... I know. Tough life.