29 days and counting; going live

The festival announced thirteen Asian titles today...that's a very odd sentence for some reason, reading it back. Hmmm. Plenty more good stuff, though. With twenty tickets I'm hoping to hit a few more countries cinematically this year; 2007 had me dipping my toes into Macedonia and Mongolia for the first time, albeit, reading back last year's blog entries, without thrilling success. I had really hoped to see The Voyeurs last year but couldn't work it into my schedule and in 2006 Never Say Goodbye was sold out by the time I tried to score tix, and that was probably my biggest missed-flick regret of the festival along with Grbavica. So this year, I have the goal of definitely seeing something from India, and Firaaq looks like the one. There's a new Takeshi Kitano as well, but the writeup on the TIFF site says it's the third part of a trilogy and I haven't seen the first two, nor am I even quite sure what they are. As well, I have to admit I may have passed through my Takeshi phase; Fireworks (Hana-Bi) blew me away when I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen in Ottawa, and I think Brother is a grossly underrated part of his oeuvre, but I find myself struggling with his other recent work. Maybe. I don't know. The Sky Crawlers sounds pretty sweet, and who knows, maybe I'll finally crack that anime mental block I've got with something by a master.

So the list is filling up. Thirteen days 'til the film list goes online and twenty days until that glorious day, what for me is like Christmas and...um...okay I guess that's the only holiday that comes with presents, so Christmas and mumblemumble rolled into one, the day the program book is released and I can freak out over a spreadsheet for three hours trying to figure out a program of first and second picks. Good times. And I really mean that without irony, that's one of my favorite nights of the year.

Also sent the link to this new journal into the TIFF site for hopeful inclusion in the "Your Blogs" section. The past couple of years I was working off my MySpace page but that's generally sort of falling into disrepair anyway, so a clean start seemed in order. Hopefully my Paul Gross snark of a couple of weeks back hasn't disqualified me from inclusion this year, but anyhow if you're reading this linked from the TIFF site, hi there, good to see you, and I'll be updating more and more frequently. It'll be mainly about the fest, but also the summer's-nearly-over blockbuster roundup is on deck, as are planned posts (in rough form currently) about the Toronto moviegoing experience in general, not to mention the other current countdown of the late summer, FanExpo, which is a mere sixteen days off.

Rain tomorrow, they say. I really hope so.