We all drive selfishly or obnoxiously from time to time. But there’s another kind of driver who’s in a whole ‘nother league. The mark of a truly loathsome driver is one who doesn’t even realize that he/she is blocking others or causing traffic jams or whatever. They’re so fixated on their own needs or frustrations that it never even occurs to them that they’re making things difficult for others. In a word, they’re sociopaths.

I say this every year before the Toronto and Sundance film festivals, and nobody ever listens. I’ve just listed roughly 60 films that I’d really like to see in Toronto next month, and I’ll be very impressed with myself if I wind up seeing half of them. One obvious remedy is to catch some of these in New York or Los Angeles before Telluride/Toronto begins. I’m therefore begging all L.A.-based publicists representing these films to please screen some of them for select L.A. critics and columnists. Doing so will obviously provide time to tap out reviews that will be a little more thoughtful and won’t be adversely influenced by furious, gut-instinct, teeth-chattering deadlines.

With the the major U.S. studios doubling down on bullshit CG comic-book fantasy destruction porn, it’s a glorious thing to be facing a Toronto Film Festival that will be showing roughly 62 intelligent, quality-calibre films aimed at people like myself. I’m not exaggerating — I’ve scanned the final list and that’s how many films I’d like to see up there. As usual I won’t be able to fit in much more than 30, and more likely 25 or so. I will have seen at least a few of these at Telluride when Toronto begins, but if I wasn’t doing Telluride the following would be my early picks with unmissable powershot films in bold italic:

Gala Presentations (9): The Art of the Steal (d: Jonathan Sobol); August: Osage County (d: John Wells); The Fifth Estate (d: Bill Condon), Life of Crime (d: Daniel Schecter); Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom (d: Peter Chadwick); Parkland (d: Peter Landesman); The Railway Man (d: Jonathan Teplitzky); Rush (d: Ron Howard); Words and Pictures (d: Fred Schepisi).

Today’s announcement of the full 2013 Toronto Film Festival slate confirms what I was told and reported on 8.5, which is that three presumed Telluride Film Festival headliners — J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost, Joel and Ethan Coen‘s Inside Llewyn Davis and Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska — will not make the trek to Toronto. No one will know for sure if these three will play Telluride until 8.28, but if confirmed it’ll certainly be a huge feather in Tom Luddy and Gary Meyer‘s cap. It will also launch a relatively new fall-festival phenomenon — the Oscar-contending, Telluride-only, Toronto-blowoff movie. I presume this has happened before, but have three Telluride heavy-hitters ever skipped Toronto en masse?