From Thursday the 8th to Sunday the 18th, Noel Murray and I will be making
our annual pilgrimage to the Toronto Film Festival, so if any crimes take place
in Conway, Arkansas and Chicago, respectively, the cops will have to pin them
on someone else. Now that we have this blog, Noel and I will be able to post
our thoughts periodically throughout the 10 days about this glorious smorgasbord
of world cinema. Given the 300-plus films that are clouding the festival schedule,
we can only offer a sliver of the pie, but at a rate of four to five movies
a day, it’ll be a healthy one. I can’t speak to Noel’s projected
schedule, but after putting mine together over the weekend, I’m looking
forward to Auteur-fest ’05, with new films by David Cronenberg (A
History Of Violence), Tsai Ming-liang (The
Wayward Cloud), Lars Von Trier (Manderlay),
Cameron Crowe (Elizabethtown),
Michael Haneke (Hidden),
Hou Hsiao-hsien (Three
Times), Abel Fucking Ferrara (Mary),
Ang Lee (Brokeback
Mountain), Takeshi Kitano (Takeshis),
Park Chan-wook (Sympathy
For Lady Vengeance), Atom Egoyan (Where
The Truth Lies), the Dardenne brothers (L’Enfant),
Terry Gilliam (Tideland),
and Nick Park’s long-awaited Wallace
& Gromit movie.
(Pause for drool to collect…)
So between a sleepless stretch of five movies a day, late-night rap sessions
at Burgundy’s, and later-night poker games, Noel and I will find the
time to squeeze in some reports on the movies of tomorrow. And if any of you
readers happen to be at the festival, too, be sure to post some buzz magnets
in the comments section, because we’ll both be on the lookout for unknown
quantities.