bryant

I'm in Montreal! This is written post-first movie, of which more anon; there's a coffee shop with wireless across from the theater but I don't want to lose my place in line. I'll upload entries as I find time.

The trip up was pretty painless. The high point was the New York Italian-themed restaurant at a highway exit in the middle of Quebec farmland. Our hotel is small but charming, and it's an easy walk to Concordia University, where the festival takes place. It was a little disturbing seeing a "For Sale" sign on the hotel facade, but it hasn't been sold as of this weekend, thankfully.

The area reeks of college, in a fairly cool way. Lots of coffee shops and two comic book stores between hotel and University. There's a sushi buffet across the way from one of the venues, which I am sure I will not find time to visit. Alas.

Looks like lines will be varied in size; so far I've seen one short one and one long one. I hear Red vs. Blue is sold out, but nothing else seems to be. The audiences are exactly the sort of cinema fanatic/genre geek crossover you'd expect from a genre-oriented film festival. I like it.

If I were doing this again, I'd e-ticket the whole thing. The poor ticket desk had to print out our 26 tickets one at a time, which did not exactly endear us to the people behind us in line. There's a DVD retailer with a big booth across from the ticket booth, selling mostly anime videos, which I will check out later. Other than that merchandising is light. I will get pictures of the immense MegaBlock statues -- think Legos, but not.

My back is killing me, so that's it for now. More anon.