A heavy dose of the queue factor
BLOGGING THE FEST
Yesterday’s highlights from Murray White’s daily festival blog (thestar.blogs.com/filmfest):
’ Tis the season.
Hey, film fest is all about superstars and indulgence, glamorous soirees and captivating art, right? Ahem. My first meander into fest central in Yorkville revealed the more pervasive reality: Festival = line- ups.
Snaking along the eastern wall of the Manulife Centre, a thick line- up of ticketholders waited and hoped that their vouchers would yield something they actually want to see. Doors opened at 8 a. m. By 2 p. m., the line was still daunting — “ though it’s actually moving quickly,” said a hopeful volunteer, directing traffic.” And it was still mayhem at the box office inside.
In related postings, festivalgoer John Leeson added:
“ I gather this is the first year they offer online advance ticket purchasing. It was a disaster. What it provided was a complement to 12 hours of solid busy phone signals: 12 hours of ( first) ‘out of memory’ errors, then page unreachable.
“ Occasionaly ( very occasionally) one could get past that and fill out an order form, to be followed by an inevitable timeout . . . At $20 per individual ticket, surely there should be a better infrastructure.” Do those boys and girls even know they’re here? Only a handful of the massive corps of international scribes had offered up any news or comment yesterday. A scan of the morning headlines yielded a story in the Chicago Tribune
offering five reasons why Toronto is the film fest that matters. We were also noticed by the Contra Costa Times — a suburban San Francisco paper that puts high school football on the front page. Martin Scorsese scores first big- ticket sale Entertainment industry bible Variety had some hard news before the fest even began. Apparently, Martin Scorcese’s fourhour documentary, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, has been acquired by a distributor, Emerging Pictures.
Already the main industry venue for acquisitions in North America, Toronto’s complement of buyers and sellers grew by 40 per cent this year over last. Not bad at all.