I feel moderately so-so about the 2010 Toronto Film Festival, based on the lineup announced so far. But I’m not, to be honest, feeling that old drooly-mouthed sensation. When I go to Toronto I want a nice ripe spotlight feeling — “this is it! right here! nowhere else!” — and all I’m getting from the current lineup is a kind of pretty-good, very-promising, B-plus (or possibly A-minus) response. All this means, I’m presuming, is that the light switch hasn’t been turned on yet.

I want to see William Monahan‘s London Boulevard there. I’ve said before that I want Terrence Malick to stop pissing around and show The Tree of Life there. I’d like Edward Zwick‘s Love and Other Drugs to make an appearance, at least for Anne Hathaway ‘s sake. I’d like to see David O. Russell‘s The Fighter show up. And now that you mention it I wouldn’t mind seeing Doug Liman‘s slightly re-edited Fair Game.

In my view the current power-groove submissons are (1) Robert Redford‘s The Conspirator (the script for which I’ve read and voiced admiration for), (2) John Cameron Mitchell‘s Rabbit Hole, although I’m a bit nervous about that title, (3) Julian Schnabael‘s Miral (which a friend is seeing this week in LA, by the way), (4) Alejandro Gonz√°lez Inarritu ‘s Biutiful, (5) Tony Goldwyn‘s Conviction , (6) Mark Romanek‘s Never Let Me Go, (7) Darren Aronofsky‘s Black Swan, (8) Ben Affleck‘s The Town, (9) John Madden‘s The Debt, (10) Tom Hooper‘s The King’s Speech, (11) Susanne Bier‘s A Better World, and (12) George Huckenlooper‘s Casino Jack, which I saw an early cut of last year, and quite liked.