The Toronto Film Festival: Notes From Fresh Air

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Here, a crowd waits at the premiere of Creation, a film about Charles Darwin starring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Toronto Film Festival has a reputation for viewer-friendliness.It's not as splashy as Cannes (although every year, Toronto has its George Clooneys, Pedro Almodovars, and Penelope Cruzes) and it's not as "indie" and insider-y as Sundance (although there are plenty of movies still looking for distribution). But while it may be accessible to the ordinary moviegoer, the entertainment industry sees Toronto as the official start of the Oscar season.

It's also one of the places where Fresh Air looks for films to feature. As a Fresh Air producer, for a few years now, I've made the pilgrimage to Toronto to preview many of the films that will make it to theaters around the country in the next few months, looking for what might interest Terry Gross, our listeners, or both. With any luck, quite a few of the films this year will be good and interesting, and will eventually become the basis for equally good and interesting interviews you will hear on Fresh Air. And I'll be talking here at Monkey See about what I've been watching.

More than 300 movies will screen here in the next 10 days, and many of the films that the studios hope will garner Oscar buzz are premiered here. Doing well at the festival can provide films with a major push. For example, last year, Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire got applause at the official press and industry screening (and the crowds at these screenings are pretty tough) and received the audience award. Of course, it then went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture.

This year, Toronto may be even more important than usual: even though the Oscars are now going to a new ten-nominee format for Best Picture, the studios are releasing fewer films. So a film that gets great buzz here may have an even better chance to do well come Oscar time.

My goal is to get to as many pictures as I can, which can sometimes mean up to four or five a day. And that makes me a lightweight — a lot of the film critics see that many films on all ten days of the schedule. On my list, among others, are the new Pedro Almodovar film Broken Embraces, starring Penelope Cruz; Up In the Air, Jason Reitman's new film starring George Clooney and based on a Walter Kirn book; and A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers new film.

Some of these filmmakers already have strong histories at Toronto: Reitman's Juno and Thank You For Smoking did well here, and this is the Coens third film here in as many years, after Burn After Reading and No Country For Old Men.

I'll be checking in periodically during the next few days, letting you know about good films I see and interesting trends that emerge. I just hope I can stay awake through film number five.