TIFF Day 1: sweat, threat, and a blessedly silent Jim Carrey

When Marshall McLuhan came up with his famous Understanding Media theory that film is a “hot” medium, he was not actually talking about the sticky, sweaty experience of watching films at the Toronto International Film Festival at the beginning of September every year. He was laying out an argument that film doesn’t demand as much active engagement as some other art forms. Supposedly, audiences passively lie back and let cinematic stories wash over them, without mentally working