A.V. Club Blog

For this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, I’ll be structuring my blog posts a little differently, to give a better sense of the total sensory overload experience that a 10-day film fest can be. Each day—starting Friday—I’ll be putting up a tote board for the day before. Movies consumed, music consumed, food consumed, drink consumed, print media consumed, even conversations consumed. Plus annotations for any of those items that might be interesting. (Which’ll be the movies, mostly). I’m also going to give every movie a knee-jerk A.V. Club grade, subject to change when the official review gets filed. So look for all that, Friday morning and every morning for the following week—if I’m diligent enough.

When it comes to “conversations consumed,” that’ll mostly be taking place among my core circle of critic and cineaste cronies. Besides my friend and TIFF roommate Scott Tobias, that group includes Nashville Scene’s Jim Ridley, Time Out New York’s Josh Rothkopf, Philadelphia City Paper’s Sam Adams, Esquire’s (and others’) Mike D’Angelo, Cyprus Mail’s Theo Panayides, The Washington Times’ Victor Morton, upstate New York film prof Michael Sicinski, Gay City News’ Steve Erickson, industry vet (and voting Motion Picture Academy member!) Ken Rudolph, freelance scribe J. Robert Parks, Columbus film programmer Chris Stults, and erstwhile New York cineastes Missy Schwartz, Jeremy Heilman and Charles Odell. I hope I’m not forgetting anyone.

Anyway, follow those links during and after the fest, and you should find some comprehensive coverage. Also be sure to check the following daily: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, David Poland, Jeffrey Wells and Greencine; and though they won’t be totally Toronto-focused, it never hurts to pop by The Reeler and ScreenGrab too. Between the times I’m immersing myself in actual films, I’ll be hitting all those sites, looking for corroboration.

That’s it. Check back here Friday to see whether I went for the noodle bowl or the hot dog for dinner on day one. Also beer? Wine? Beerwine (wine made from the finest beer)?