GregMO ROberts

After an exhausting Day 1, we shook our heads in recognition that we had 9 more days to go! Last night we got to see Bruce Willis really has the aura of a big movie star and Emily Blunt (loved that red dress). Joseph Gordon Levitt was around too, but we didn’t get a chance to ogle Robin on the red carpet – probably because Emily Blunt was so mesmerizing.

Kristen Stewart was rumored to be terrified of going in front of the media again after Pattinsongate, but she looked cute and smiled and waved when requested. Her film, On the Road, was delayed due to some technical problems with Jason Reitman’s American Beauty reading which was showing earlier, but that didn’t stop audiences from enjoying the warm night air.

Dredd ended up being a better movie than we expected, but not as good of a movie as we had hoped. It had its moments and some of the effects were really well done, but it was like shooting cardboard people at a shooting gallery as none of the cast really had much character development.

Day 2 ramps things up with 54 films having their premiere. Most notably will be Ben Affleck’s Argo, Paul Anderson’s The Master and Seven Psychopaths starring Colin Farrell, Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell. Big crowds are expected for Argo with an equally enthusiastic crowd for the midnight showing of Seven Psychopaths.

Some interesting facts about this year’s TIFF that we just came across. There are 372 movies showing in this year’s festival. Of those, 289 are feature films while another 83 are shorts. There were 4,143 submissions of films this year for the programmers to peruse before making their final 372 selections. 72 different countries have films showing with Canada representing 32 films this year. And the longest film of the festival is Japan’s Penance at 4.5 hours (far short of last years record 15 hours for The Story of Film: An Odyessy). In total, over 30,000 minutes of film will be shown in 10 days.

We dive deeper into our screening adventures on Day 3 when a total of 84 films are having screenings throughout the city.