This year marks the first time GATW has ever covered the Toronto International Film Festival. All my comrades are holding down the site while I’m here in Canada watching movies and interviewing some of the coolest people in cinema (all reviews and interview pieces to follow). I’m going to attempt to do a daily recap every day that I’m here. It’s pretty busy, but I’d like for you to see what we’re covering.

There was one small bump in the road I had to handle before I flew out from Dallas: I left my passport in Austin. Here’s the thing, I moved to Austin about a week and a half ago. So that meant I drove to Dallas - from Austin - and back in the same day. Luckily for this guy, my good buddy Luke Mullen (@ldmullen) met me halfway in Waco to bring me my passport. My numb butt and achey back (over 4 1/2 hours of driving will make any butt go numb) thanked him with Rudy’s BBQ.

I flew out on Friday at 6:30AM and arrived in Toronto around 10:30AM, picked up my badge (which now has a creepy photo of me forever on it), and met up with the kindest young lass in Canada, Jenn Mair. You see, Jenn is letting me sleep on her futon during my TIFF run here. It’s really nice to know good people.

The first film I saw here was Matt Reeves’ LET ME IN, which is a remake to the 2008 Swedish film, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN. To get to that screening, I took the subway, which was a first for me. I’m all grown up now, I guess. My complete thoughts on LET ME IN will be up here soon.

After LET ME IN, I caught the last 45 minutes of THE TOWN’s press conference. Yes, Ben Affleck and Jon Hamm are dreamy in person. Jeremy Renner, Chris Cooper, Blake Lively, and some of the other cast and crew were also there. I didn’t get a whole lot out of the conference, mainly because, well, some journalists were asking Ben Affleck questions about his hair. There are a few bad apples in every patch. My pal Katey Rich did get some good out of it - you can read here coverage over at Cinema Blend.

The second and last film I saw was Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s IT’S KIND OF A FUNNY STORY, an adaptation of Ned Vizzini’s novel of the same name. I must add - this is my favorite book.

Here’s some photos I took of my first day:

The wonderful Katey Rich from CinemaBlend.com

The wonderful Pete Sciretta from Slashfilm.com

The wonderful (and very, very funny) James Rocchi from MSNMovies.com