We headed to Leicester Square this morning for free orange juice, coffee and pain au chocolat - oh, and to hear the line up for the Times BFI London London Film Festival, which is shaping up as pretty exciting stuff.
We already knew, of course, that Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox would open the Festival and Sam Taylor Wood's Nowhere Boy would close it. But now we can tell you that inbetween we'll see new films from, well, everyone!
George Clooney rules the Festival. In addition to his voice role in Fox, he will appear in two films: Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare At Goats (our reaction to that in Venice is here) and Jason Reitman's Up In The Air. His auld mucker Matt Damon will appear in Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (first reaction here), his Michael Clayton co-star Tilda Swinton is there in Jim Jarmusch's The LImits of Control, and his regular collaborators the Coen Brothers are bringing A Serious Man.
Elsewhere are much buzzed-about films like Lone Scherfig's An Education, Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock, Lee Daniels' Cannes hit Precious, John Hillcoat's The Road (our Venice reaction here), and Atom Egoyan's Chloe. And there's our homegrown Bunny and the Bull from director Paul King, and Mike Judge's comedy Extract.
Michael Haneke's bringing The White Ribbon, Gaspar Noe's bringing Enter the Void and Jacques Audiard will be there with another Cannes hit, A Prophet. Jean-Pierre Jenuet's bringing his action-y film Micmacs, and Todd Solondz will have Life During Wartime. Oh, and John Lasseter's Toy Story 2 will be screening in 3D, just in case you hadn't found something you like already.
This is only a fraction of the 191 feature films on offer; the full programme's over at the BFI's website, which will also be the place to book tickets.
The Times BFI London Film Festival runs from October 14-29 this year, and you may have to elbow past Empire to get into many of these screenings.