After holding back for about a month's time, today at 10:00 a.m. EST, Cameron Bailey and Piers Handling will announce the first wave of films to be part of the 35th festival edition and with Venice releasing their list tomorrow, TIFF will measure up by throwing out some huge red-carpet titles (25 to be exact). Tweeted by Bailey, 8 Gala World Premiere titles and 17 Special Presentation World Premiere titles are expected to be mentioned at the press conference.
You'd think a festival with 300 + film title offerings would pretty much covers all bases, but I think there'll be more broken hearts than usual as a result of the unbalanced production year that was 2009. Like a vintage year for wine, Toronto International Film Festival co-directors Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey should see in 2010, a significantly higher number of World and North American premieres (loads from Cannes and Venice) than previous years for the 35th edition.
Call this a post-Oscars afterthought, but I think the inaugural 2005 blacklist for un-produced screenplays is working out to be a fairly good predictor/barometer in discriminating the output of quality films and misfires.