Each year, my head explodes when the Melbourne International Film Festival Guide comes out. It really does literally explode, clear off my shoulders.

And today is the day.

THANK YOU to whoever at the film festival listened to the requests for everything to be listed on the same page. I know I, for one, filled out hundreds of individual response slips with responses like PLEASE LIST THINGS PROPERLY, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD written on them in red pen. Last year, it was like a computer game. It was like a quest. It was a feat of mental gymnastics just to get to the movie in time.

If you look closely at this photo, you can see "PLEASE FIX FESTIVAL PROGRAMME" written in red pen. This is one of the forty-seven versions of the same request that I wrote (literally - I saw forty-seven films and I filled in a form for each of them). Like so:

Which brings me to the problem with having a full festival pass: it enables you to go to everything. And yes, if you go to twenty films over 19 days, you have justified the $300 ticket, BUT...

If someone says "Buy this credit card for three hundred bucks - now, go to your favourite shop. The credit card is unlimited."

What are you going to do?

You're going to go completely bezerk and buy as much stuff as you can. You'll be buying things in a size 24 JUST IN CASE YOU MEET SOMEONE who is a size 24.

So, you want to see EVERYTHING (with a few exceptions, the sight of which fill you with enormous relief) because you CAN.

Greed, I suppose, is what I'm describing. Film greed. One very time-consuming sin.

Let the games begin....