It’s weird to turn on the TV or look at the Toronto newspapers, all of which are covering the film festival in endless detail yet seem to be attending one in an alternate universe to the one I’m in. Of course, this is because they have the time, the inclination, and the staff to cover things like the red carpet premieres, when people line up for hours to catch a glimpse of this or that performer getting from the limo into the theater where their movie is about to show. The amount of press trying to get onto the red carpet has gotten so out of hand that the festival has just announced a lottery policy: get there three hours in advance and you can be entered in a drawing under which you might be able to win a chance to stick a microphone in someone’s face.

Real people, on the other hand, spend their days hanging outside the fronts of hotels where stars are rumored to be staying. Unfortunately I have business in these hotels, and I tell you, it’s not fun exiting into a crowd of stargazers and seeing the disappointment on their faces as they register that I Am Nobody.

But I’m here to see movies, and occasionally it’s possible to squeeze a few in amidst the round of interviews and roundtables and interviews. I was surprised at how much I liked Gasper Noe’s Enter the Void, which can best be described as 160 minutes of a dead junkie’s soul roaming nighttime Tokyo seeking redemption. I was disappointed by Whip It, Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut set in the world of roller derby. Much better were Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, aka Heath Ledger’s Last Movie and the Coen Brothers’ weird A Serious Man. (Well, aren’t all the Coens’ movies kinda weird? Yes, but this is the weirdest yet.)

The breakout discovery of the festival so far seems to be The Trotsky, a smart and very funny comedy with a perfectly cast Jay Barushel as a teenager who thinks he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky. You don’t have to know much about the real Trotsky to enjoy the movie, which will hopefully get a US distribution deal despite being a Canadian feature. (I don’t know why more Canadian films don’t get released in the US. Except for the ones from Quebec, they’re in English.)

As for the films I’ve missed—well, I’m trying not to think about those. I just came back from trying to see Capitalism: A Love Story, the new Michael Moore documentary, at one of the public screenings, but gave up after I realized I would have to stand in line for at least an hour with no guarantee of getting a seat. It opens in Buffalo first weekend in October, so I guess I can wait that long.