The Scotiaplex (i.e., Scotiabank Cineplex) is the site for all the Toronto Film Festival press & industry screenings. Let me tell you, things were really, really bad over there today. Bad thing #1: A climate of near suffocation if you happened to catch the 12:30 screening of Paul Verhoeven‘s Elle, which was shown in a theatre (#2) with zero air conditioning. Bad thing #2: The Scotiaplex’s three-story-tall escalator wasn’t working and under repair. Management waits until hundreds upon hundreds of journalists descend on this place for TIFF and then the escalator needs urgent repair? Not two weeks or two months earlier but on opening day? Bad thing #3: Last year TIFF provided temporary wifi for journalists and industry types in the upstairs lounge area, which is right off the main lobby, but no TIFF wifi this year. A Scotiaplex employee told me TIFF just isn’t on the case. I asked the TIFF press office about this a couple of hours ago, but no reply thus far.

Engineers doing what they can to re-activate the Scotiaplex escalator earlier today.