It is, appropriately, five in the morning when I finish formatting and preparing some reviews that I'll be posting soon, and I look at the blog that I've just been editing and shuffling and planning for, and I realize that the next thing I publish will be the 500th entry since we went live in December of 2008.

It's an arbitrary number, but it's enough to make me realize that the past year has been particularly energizing for me as a critic and as an online writer in general.  Even after doing this for over a decade at Ain't It Cool, it wasn't really doing this, since whatever this is, it seems to evolve a little more each day, each event, each review.  And I'm really pleased with the way things are going so far.

I've met many of you on the streets of Toronto or on the subways or at press events or at screenings this week, and it's been nice, as always, to actually speak to the people who are out there reading all of this stuff I shovel onto the website, hoping some of it sticks, knowing that for every one thing I publish, there's three more things I wish I could publish at the same time.  I'm working as hard as I can, and it still doesn't seem hard enough, although no one's more critical than I am of my output.

I had a weird, sort of frustrating day, but when I heard about MCN's Kim Voynar, who had to be taken from the festival to the hospital, I realized that complaining when you're being paid to see movies and discuss them with the filmmaker, no matter how much walking or waiting or anything else is involved, is just plain ridiculous.  This is a great job I have, and I enjoy the conversation just as much today as I ever have.

I hope that whether this is the 500th of these blog entries that you've read or the first, that you'll make this a regular bookmark, and just know that all of this so far is warm-up.  We're just getting to the good stuff, and I'm hoping to really pack on the movies for the next three days so that you feel like you get a good picture of what's being offered here at the Toronto International Film Festival.

First up, a very interesting music documentary, and I'll have that for you in the next hour...

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