Curious about the dazzling lineup at this year's Toronto International Film Festival? Your faithful RT editors Alex Vo and Jen Yamato have headed north and will be reporting to you directly from the festival grounds in Toronto. Rejoice!

We've got a busy Thursday ahead of us -- Day One of the festival means plenty of scrambling for press badges and theater lines, since we didn't have the foresight to leisurely mosey into town days early like some vets on the festival circuit. Jeffrey Wells has been in Toronto long enough already to gauge the press screening lowdown and get himself into a pre-festival party. Way to make us feel like slackers, Jeff.




Also making every journalist in town feel lazy is the inimitable Roger Ebert, who isn't letting a little thing like recovering from surgery get in the way of traveling to Canada and going through Customs (45 minutes today, people) to do what we're all here to do: watch movies. Well, that and sign his new book of collected works, Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert (he'll be at Toronto's Theatre Books on Monday from 3:30 -- 4:30).

Roger E. will probably have one of the festival's new priority press badges, anointed with a special "P" that lets buyers and a select group of "priority" journalists into a particular screening ahead of the crowd, while the rest of 'em -- online critics, I suppose? -- must make a mad dash as room allows 15 minutes before a screening. Festival programmers have offset this Cannes-esque division and labeling of importance by adding more press screenings for a number of films; we'll keep you posted with the riveting news of just which critics and outlets earn evil eyes from the journo masses by flaunting their "P" passes during the fest.




But oh yes, there will be films. Toronto has been known as the "festival of festivals," meaning that here, audiences get the best of American and international cinema -- films that have already debuted at Sundance, Cannes, Venice, Telluride. But its September placement also makes TIFF a prime showcase for the prestige pictures of award season. And don't forget the added promise of smaller, previously unseen works. Here are some titles we're especially looking forward to seeing (for the second time, in some cases) in no particular order:

Rendition (dir. Gavin Hood)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik)
Lars and the Real Girl (dir. Craig Gillespie)
Elizabeth: The Golden Age (dir. Shekhar Kapur)
Sleuth (dir. Kenneth Branagh)
Honeydripper (dir. John Sayles)
Juno (dir. Jason Reitman)
Lou Reed's Berlin (dir. Julian Schnabel)
I'm Not There (dir. Todd Haynes)
Margot at the Wedding (dir. Noah Baumbach)
Control (dir. Anton Corbijn)
Sukiyaki Western Django (dir. Takashi Miike)
Diary of the Dead (dir. George Romero)
Lust, Caution (dir. Ang Lee)
The Brave One (dir. Neil Jordan)
Atonement (dir. Joe Wright)
Run, Fat Boy, Run (dir. David Schwimmer)
Cassandra's Dream (dir. Woody Allen)
Captain Mike Across America (dir. Michael Moore)
Michael Clayton (dir. Tony Gilroy)
Young People F*cking (dir. Martin Gero)
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (dir. Cristian Mungiu)
No Country For Old Men (dir. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)
Across the Universe (dir. Julie Taymor)
Death Defying Acts (dir. Gillian Armstrong)
Reservation Road (dir. Terry George)
Battle in Seattle (dir. Stuart Townshend)


Check back often for more updates from the Toronto International Film Festival, eh?