TIFF '12 Preview: Thursday the 6th

I'll eventually be compiling these into one big omnibus preview piece for Ain't It Cool News, but in the meantime here's the day-by-day preview of the hell that is trying to narrow a list of 101 picks into a workable, non-life-threatening 11-day schedule. Yes, I said 101 picks... this year's TIFF program is flat out ridiculous. I've never had a more laughably named 'short list'.

Thursday Sept 6th:

• Things kick off with a bang as the opening night Gala is Rian Johnson's existential dilemma of a time travel thriller, Looper.
• Kinshasa Kids is a semi-doc about Congolese children thrown out onto the streets because of suspected witchcraft, only some of them form a band instead of moping (there's a lot of this in the program this year, by the way, where the lines between fiction and documentary are deliberately blurred.)
• The 3D restoration of Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder gets a test drive.
• Rust and Bone stars Marion Cotillard and Bullhead's Matthias Schoenaerts as broken, damaged people trying to rebuild their lives. I can't think of two actors I'd rather see tackle that kind of material.
• A doc on counter-culture illustrator Tomi Ungerer tells us that Far Out Isn't Far Enough.
• Motorcycle Diaries' Walter Salles brings us his long-awaited adaptation of Kerouac's On the Road, with Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund and Viggo Mortensen along for the ride.
• And Midnight Madness hits the ground running with Dredd 3D, the plot of which sounds suspiciously like a riff on The Raid. Frankly, if it's as hard core as a Judge Dredd movie should be (and which all the early reports say it is), I'm OK with that.