Flying out to the Palm Springs International Film Festival tomorrow, to join my FIPRESCI colleagues in a twelve-day parade of subtitles.

Seriously: Our jury is tasked with screening all the national submissions for the Best Foreign-Language Oscar. You can find a rough list here, though there have been some changes; only fifty-five of the titles on that page are still eligible for our award.

And yes, fifty-five films in twelve days might be a daunting task, but the festival thoughtfully sent us a package of screeners back in December, so I’m arriving prepared. If I’ve got the math right, I’ll have to see less than twenty films at the festival, which leaves me a little time to catch a few non-competing titles.

I’m particularly eager to see David Lynch’s “Inland Empire”, even if it does run three hours, and Michael Verhoeven — who guaranteed himself a place in cinema heaven with “The Nasty Girl” back in 1991, but hasn’t been seen much since — is coming with his new documentary, “Unknown Soldier”. Those are the top two on my personal wanna-see list, though of course I remain open to recommendations.

I’ll do my best to post frequent updates — with photos, even! — so check back whenever you can.

Oh, and Metro’s finally put all my holiday movie reviews on its main review page, here. So that’s nice.