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"TORONTO \u2014 It wasn\u2019t too many years ago that someone first called the Toronto International Film Festival the unofficial start of the Oscar season, a moniker that rings especially true when considering that the last seven Best Picture winners made the trip to Canada.\nThat\u2019s an impressive streak, but also a depressing reality if you\u2019re an entertainment journalist: If Thursday is the starting gun and the Feb. 22 Academy Awards is the finish line, that means there are 172 news cycles to go \u2014 a span that covers six months \u2014 before any of us gets a \u201Creal\u201D vacation.\nSEE ALSO: 5 Movies That Need a TV Reboot\nBut it also means that from now through the holidays, movie theaters will lure us in with an endless march of cerebral dramas, taut thrillers and daring documentaries starring A-list actors guided by our best auteurs. Yep, it\u2019s back-to-school time at the cinema, too.\nAnd in that sense, Toronto is the annual fraternity pledge rush, replete with a harrowing hazing ritual. The Toronto International Film Festival \u2014 everyone writes and hashtags it #TIFF, but don\u2019t call it \u201Ctiff\u201D out loud \u2014 will showcase more than 200 movies over 11 days. \nThink about that a minute.\nIf you landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport in time to make the first screening and optimized your schedule to fit in as many movies as possible \u2014 say, between four and six per day \u2014 you might, might see close to a quarter of them. In the Theoretical Universe, where all the films are shown in a 24-hour loop and you never slept or ate or even peed or anything else, just endlessly watched movies, you\u2019d still be lucky to catch roughly half.\nYes, TIFF is a beast. \nBut it\u2019s a big, beautiful, benevolent beast, one that showers us with cinematic gifts that have the potential to keep on giving for a lifetime. Look no further than Toronto\u2019s Best Picture winners, in reverse chronology: 12 Years a Slave, Argo, The Artist, The King\u2019s Speech, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men.\nMashable will be in Toronto for the long haul, studiously checking out as many movies as we can fit in our Calendar app and letting you know what\u2019s worth checking out over the coming months, as these films are released. \nHere\u2019s what we\u2019ve got our eye on as we pack our bags:\nJon Stewart gets really, really serious\nThe Daily Show host knows funny-political on TV, but can he do serious-political at the movies? \nStewart took last summer off to direct Rosewater, the true story for which he not only wrote the screenplay, but in which he also had a hand. After Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari appeared on The Daily Show, he was imprisoned in Tehran, accused of spying in part because of his segment. Bahari wrote about his ordeal in the memoir Then They Came for Me, which Stewart later adapted for his filmmaking debut. Rosewater was first shown at the Telluride Film Festival, and while early reviews stand between mixed and measured, the word around Hollywood is that Stewart\u2019s film is very good. We\u2019ll see how it stands up under the bright lights of a big Toronto audience. \nThe big Telluride rivalry\n\nA scene from the 2014 Telluride Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado.Image: Vivien KillileaSpeaking of Telluride \u2014 which some might argue is now the true beginning of Oscar season \u2014 this year begins a new wrinkle in the budding rivalry between the Colorado mountain town\u2019s little movie thingy and TIFF\u2019s mammoth endeavor.\nTelluride ended Monday, after scooping Toronto on major awards-contender titles like Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon; The Imitation Game with Benedict Cumberbatch; and Michael Keaton in the fame examination Birdman. Often, films like these will book big slots at Toronto, then \u201Csneak\u201D at Telluride. It's been going on for years.\nIn response, Toronto this year began shoving any film that hit Telluride off of its opening weekend and into the back of the festival line. Publicists have been trying to get around this by calling Toronto screenings the \u201Cinternational\u201D premieres, but you can't fool Canadians that easily.\nMeanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the Venice Film Festival is also going on \u2014 and a short shuttle flight away, the upcoming New York Film Festival has been gaining steam in recent years, capped by this year\u2019s world premiere of David Fincher\u2019s thriller Gone Girl, starring Ben Affleck. (That\u2019s what happens when you come up with a good idea, Canada; someone comes along and steals it. It\u2019s the American way. Ahem, health care?)\nBut TIFF still has its Oscars streak going for it. Though some of those aforementioned Best Picture winners made stops at other festivals, those festivals can\u2019t claim to have shown that many in a row. A streak is a streak. We\u2019ll soon see if it remains unbroken.\nCaptain America is giving the orders now ... like \u201CAction!\u201D and \u201CCut!\u201D\n\nThe first image from Chris Evans' directorial debut, \"Before We Go.\"Chris Evans wants to direct. \nTo be fair, every actor wants to direct \u2014 making millions by professionally pretending clearly isn\u2019t as fulfilling as it used to be \u2014 and he got a legitimate first shot at it with Before We Go, a romance in which he and Alice Eve play strangers who bond after missing their train at Grand Central Station. \nThe film premieres Sept. 12, when we find out whether Cap has the leadership skills to shed the shield and pick up the megaphone.\nIs our tech making us into mute monsters?\nJason Reitman, the director of Juno and writer/director of Up in the Air \u2014 two movies that gifted us with uncomfortable self-examination, wrapped in a warm blanket of indie charm \u2014 kinda whiffed with Labor Day, his last effort. But everyone\u2019s rooting for Reitman to make a comeback with Men, Women &amp; Children \u2026 to a point. \nThat\u2019s because this film looks like an uncomfortable self-examination of our relationship with technology, and how it\u2019s utterly shattered our relationships with one another. \u201CDiscover How Little You Know About the People You Know\u201D is the tagline, and the teaser trailer, which came out in August, looks like some kind of horrible dystopian nightmare, except for the part where it looks like our lives right now:\n\nDid you notice that no one said a word? Yeah, spooky. It premieres Saturday, and Mashable will be there, phone out. (I mean OFF, phone off.)\nSo. Many. Movies for sale\nWhile most of us race around trying to see movies, a powerful Hollywood subculture will be racing around trying to buy movies. \nThat\u2019s right \u2014 Toronto is a market festival, after all, much more than it was just a handful of years ago. Distributors will be sending acquisitions executives to screenings, then into meetings with producers and sales agents, each seeking the ideal match of vision and marketing might.\nYou\u2019d be surprised by the A-list power that resides in the films still seeking distribution. Jennifer Aniston as an emotionally disturbed woman in Cake; Ben Stiller, Naomi Watts and Adam Driver in the mid-life crisis dramedy While We\u2019re Young; Adam Sandler in the magical realism tale The Cobbler; and Kevin Costner and Octavia Spencer in the racially charged Black and White, to name a few still-homeless titles.\nThat\u2019s by no means a bad sign for these films, many of which were produced and prepped for festival sale. But it does mean a lot of bleary-eyed executives will find themselves in late-night bidding wars instead of enjoying Toronto\u2019s many glitzy after-parties.\nDon't shed a tear for them \u2014 or for us journalists. We're at TIFF. (Ooh, but don't call it that. At least not out loud.)\nWhat Toronto title are you most looking forward to seeing in the theater? Let us know in the comments."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/09/04/toronto-international-film-festival-2014/>