TIFF09 PREVIEW: For the Love of Film indeed …

September 10th is the day that friend/co-worker Chris Schobert and I head back up north for our third year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). We’ve done the middle three days (2007) and the last three days (2008), so we thought, “What the hell?”, let’s try our luck with the opening four. Rolling out of bed, speeding down the QEW, and landing at the box office hours before our first film wouldn’t quite be effective for this year’s journey, however. Being in TO for FaneXpo last weekend meant we could utilize the advance ticket lottery system, (you need to hand your picks in in person), for the first time and boy was it a necessity. We couldn’t get a couple of our picks as they sold out to earlier lottery winners, so we shudder at the thought of having just showed up to discover no good films were left, (good being a relative term, I’m sure the lesser known stuff we would have been seeing is good in its own rite).

So, our pre-selected films for the year are as follows:

Thursday, Sept 10, 2009
An Education from Lone Scherfig & Antichrist from Lars von Trier

Friday, Sept 11, 2009
Visage from Ming-liang Tsai & Cracks from Jordan Scott

Saturday, Sept 12, 2009
Das weiße Band (The White Ribbon) from Michael Haneke & Enter the Void from Gaspar Noé

Sunday, Sept 13, 2009
Up in the Air from Jason Reitman & The Road from John Hillcoat

So we have some spectacular directors on that list, some controversial works (Antichrist and Enter the Void especially), and our TIFF friend Reitman whose Juno was our first festival film two years ago. We do plan on adding to this list, (two films a day is child’s play—we like to be overworked), including, but not limited to, Midnight Madness screenings of Jennifer’s Body & Daybreakers, Almodóvar’s latest Broken Embraces, and the epic-looking Agora from Alejandro Amenábar.

Wish us luck and let the film watching, (and loving), commence …

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