Amir here, with a sore throat after a few hours of screaming in excitement. Like Oscar nomination morning, 'TIFF lineup announcement day' (what a mouthful)  is marked on my calendar in prominent colours every year. It's a day that brings a combination of excitement, endless 'what-to-watch?'  dilemmas, and the dread of having to plan a 40 film a week schedule while still attending to unwanted obstacles like eating and sleeping and day jobs. If you followed this morning's press conference by the festival's directors, you know that only about a quarter of the films that will eventually grace the screens were named and the actual schedule isn't even out yet, but such is the nature of festival going. It gets you going long before the curtains are raised.

TIFF's opening night film: Bill Condon's The Fifth Estate

Naturally, for a festival that screens nearly 300 films every year, the list is an eclectic mix of hotly anticipated Oscar players, critically acclaimed titles from other festivals earlier in the year and auteur titles that have slipped under the radar so far. It is among this latter bunch, for instance, where my most anticipated film of the year, Sylvain Chomet's live action debut Attila Marcel, showed up in the announcement this morning, greeted by a shriek that had my poor co-workers jumping in their seats.

One mild surprise came in the words "World Premiere" that preceded the not-so surprising inclusion of 12 Years a Slave. [more...]