Film blogs are sure to be a buzz-influencing force at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which opens tonight and runs through the 19th. And they better be, especially after the apparent runaround bloggers — including Spout’s own Karina Longworth — were getting from the TIFF press office last month regarding credentials. Alex Billington of FirstShowing even arrived in T.O. only to find that the festival had still not decided if he should be given a badge (he was eventually granted credentials).

Anyway, Karina will be reporting through the fest’s run, but I want to first share what some other bloggers are writing as the fest begins. Check it all out after the jump:

• Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical kicks off the fest with an admittedly inadequate preview:
  

  this brief rundown doesn’t do the roster justice because the roster is jam-packed with notable films. We can only guess how the bad economy and cinematic struggling will affect future years, but for now, there’s a theme for every taste. I mean, you’ve got to love a festival that gives you psychic military men, feminist horror, intellectual pursuits, blind screenwriters, Hugh Hefner, and quite possibly the last documentary from Michael Moore all in one week.

• David Poland at The Hot Blog expects this year’s fest to be better than usual:
  

  I am looking forward to TIFF this year. Somehow, it feels busy, but not as insane as in year’s past. Perhaps it is that some of the heat, represented by the big studios and the Oscar pushes of year’s past, is gone. But for me, it’s about the movies and the amazing amount of talent here this year. It feels more like we are heading into a “pure” festival than it has in years.

• Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail is one of those bloggers getting his first taste of TIFF this year:
  

  Today, I will be venturing to my first ever Toronto International Film Festival to experience it with my very own senses! Though that’s very good news, there is some mildly bad news: I haven’t even left Brooklyn yet and I already feel like I’m behind in my posting. For the record, I plan to deliver at least one recap a day, though hopefully there will be more updates along the way with some added goodies.

• Contrast that with Roger Ebert at Roger Ebert’s Journal, who has had to rethink his traditional coverage to be more immediate:
  

  The first year I was here, I was one of four members of the American press. These days, with half the audience members filing daily blogs and twittering immediately after a film is over, it’s simply all part of the festival process.

  So that brings me around to my latest approach. Yes, I will write about specific films when my response is particularly strong (after the world premiere of “Juno,” for example)…

• Craig Kennedy at Living in Cinema explains the kind of coverage we can expect from him from afar:
  

  although it’s the movie of 2009 I’m anticipating more than any other, I won’t be reading or writing a word about the reaction to A Serious Man at Toronto. I don’t care what anyone thinks, least of all overstressed and overloaded festival critics. Same thing goes for most of the other high profile films making their world premieres over the next 10 days…the basic plan is to ignore the stuff we all already want to see and focus on bringing some surprises to your attention. To that end, I’ve got a list of around 30 lower profile world premieres that I’ll be watching reviews of and hopefully some unexpected gems will crop up along the way.

• Glenn Kenny at Some Came Running gives us one of our first “the wifi here sucks” posts during the fest — before even arriving. He seems to have deleted the post from his blog but it’s still in RSS feeds:
  

  …and I’m not even in Toronto. It takes me ten to twenty to sometimes thirty minutes to piggyback on whatever hapless network that Airport’s gonna hitch me on to at any given session. And then there’s the probability of my plug falling out of its outlet leaving me with less than full power. What do the internet gods expect of me, that I go into my actual goddamn office and do my work? I’m losing patience with this arrangement, quite frankly, and when I finally figure out what to do with my white male middle class rage about it, watch the fuck out, world….!!!!

• Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere gives us the kind of personally detailed coverage that’s basically just him thinking out loud while browsing the screening calendar (and yes, elsewhere he makes his own obligatory gripe about the wifi and weather):
  

  I’ve seen Jennifer’s Body and wouldn’t submit again with a knife at my back. I’ve seen Antichrist, of course, but I’m thinking I might watch it again in deference to that basically-bullshit, contrarian-for-its-own-sake Larry Gross argument (i.e., the Cannes critics over-reacted). I saw Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces in Cannes and loved it 90% (”I didn’t want it to end…it just won’t stop caressing and knocking you out.”) so I may duck into this if the second Antichrist viewing is too much to take.

• John Foote at ScreenRant gives us the kind of personally detailed coverage that may be a little too personal:
  

  My girls come down on Saturday each year. My girls of course are my wife Sherri, my oldest girl Aurora, 17, and my little girl Ariana, 9…The girls will come and turn my room upside down in a few hours, have a swim, shop, and so some star searching. They may get to see me for a couple of hours, they may not, but when I come in the room to sleep that night, they are there, and for a few hours we are together… and that is all that counts.

• Anne Thompson at Thompson on Hollywood gives us the kind of personally detailed coverage that makes you feel like you’re there (”I’m checked in. Not enough hangers.”), but she also comments on the more important stuff:
  

  IndieWIRE tracks tracks 145 movies for sale here. Yikes. How many will get sold? A handful. Truth is, most of the studio subsids and bigger indie distribs could use another Oscar picture. But few of the films here will fall in that category—no matter how wonderful they are. Most will go DIY route.

• S.T. VanAirsdale at Movieline looks at the 6 TIFF films that should start a bidding war:
  

  Whether you believe it’s the best of times or the worst of times for independent film (and the studios’ boutique variations thereof), dollars will exchange hands over the next 10 days at the Toronto International Film Festival. But whose dollars, and whose hands? It’s pretty much folly to go cherry-picking the few higher-profile buys out of the fest’s scores of titles available for acquisition — but hey, follies are fun!

• Dave Karger at Entertainment Weekly’s OscarWatch looks at the TIFF films that will be Oscar contenders next year:
  

  I’ve screened about 15 of the festival films already; based on what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard, here are the three or four best bets among the Toronto crop in each major category. (I’m focusing on films that already have distribution, since most acquisitions are likely to be released next year.)

• Mike D’Angelo at Not Coming to a Theater Near You explains why we must read as many outlets as possible for all the TIFF coverage:
  

  “What are you seeing today?” It’s a ubiquitous question at every film festival, and at most of the big competitive events – Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Venice – the answer, however it’s phrased, generally amounts to “The same damn movies you are, and everybody else is.” Not so at the Toronto International Film Festival, which sprawls across the annual cinematic landscape like nothing else. With a mammoth program – 271 features this year, plus 64 shorts – that runs the gamut from star-studded Oscar bait to the most difficult and abstruse art fare, TIFF allows you to customize whatever festival experience you like from most of a given year’s notable work; it’s entirely possible to watch five pictures a day for over a week and still have little to no overlap with another attendee who’s putting in just as much legwork.

• Steven Zeitchik at Risky Biz Blog tackles the story every mainstream outlet is addressing: the Juno reunion. He seems to think it’s a competition to see which of the trio (Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody and Ellen Page) comes out of the fest with the most success:
  

  The early money is on Reitman to win the who-can-best-prove-Juno-was-not-an-anomaly sweepstakes, if only because he had the early Telluride jump — and because, with a pretty strong critical reception and a likable Clooney, the movie seems likely to play to critics and audiences, the elusive, Juno-esque grail.

• Erik Davis at Cinematical premieres a poster, noting how necessary good marketing is with so many films competing for attention:
  

  Whenever your small-ish film is getting ready to enter a big, congested film festival, you need to get creative in order to get the word out there — which is exactly what the folks behind the indie flick Kirot did with this fantastical upside down/sideways poster featuring a gun-toting Olga Kurylenko