As soon as the final announcements for the Toronto International Film Festival were released on Tuesday, people across the city began beavering away at their own festival schedules. While ticket package holders scramble for information on this year’s titles — besides reading on, they can browse EYE WEEKLY’s inaugural batch of reviews online at www.eyeweekly.com, with much more to come starting Aug. 28 — before the ticket submission deadline on Aug. 29, the city’s celebrity hunters plan their missions with a doggedness that might’ve impressed Rommel.

As we all know, it’s hard work standing outside Roy Thomson Hall, the Four Seasons or the Brant House at all hours of the day and night waiting to take a picture of a cocaine addict struggling to get into or out of a rented Prius. Things have gotten even tougher now that everyone and her brother-in-law are taking up real estate on sidewalks that, until the recent dawning of the Age of TMZ, were only lightly populated. The challenge now is venturing where E-Talk Daily cameras fear to tread in search of the perfect (and possibly private) celebrity encounter. Having pored over the 500-plus guest list for TIFF ’08, our team of psychics — Kasha, Jo-Jo and “Jimmy Fingers” — have determined where some of the most coveted and least expected sightings are about to take place:

George Clooney (here for the Gala premiere of the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading): haggling with merchants over Wii Fit prices in several Yonge Street electronics stores.

Gerard Butler (here for the Special Presentation of Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla): loitering outside the Avenue Road entrance to Curves.

Anne Hathaway (here for the Gala premiere of Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married): heading into a changing room with more than the maximum five items in the Bloor Street H&M.

The Edge (here for It Might Get Loud, a doc on the history of the electric guitar): Gabby’s.

LeBron James (here for high-school b-ball doc More Than a Game and an invitational slam-dunk competition): your mother’s house.

Unfortunately, the rest of our work yielded mostly unintelligible gibberish and an address in Parkdale that’s somehow linked to Alec Baldwin. But what can be divulged with more confidence are the names of some of the most hotly anticipated films.

The latest announcements included several additions to the program of Galas and Special Presentations (which better be plenty special now that flicks at the VISA Screening Room in the Elgin have the same “premium” ticket price of $37.38 as the Galas at Roy Thomson Hall). Joining previously announced Galas such as The Duchess and Rachel Getting Married are the fresh-from-Venice bow of Burn After Reading, the world premiere of The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (starring Bryce Dallas Howard and based on a rediscovered screenplay by Tennessee Williams), Rod Lurie’s political thriller Nothing But the Truth and the Edward Norton/Colin Farrell cop drama Pride and Glory.

The Special section now includes a work-in-­progress screening of New York, I Love You, the Big Apple equivalent to the recent omnibus hit Paris, je t’aime — its truly bizarre array of contributors ranges from Fatih Akin and Andrei Zvyagintsev to Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman. A new film by Paul Schrader (Holocaust drama Adam Resurrected, starring Jeff Goldblum and Willem Dafoe) also shows up in Masters and 25 more titles were added to the Contemporary World Cinema section, including Five Dollars a Day (with Christopher Walken as a dying hustler), Sugar (a Sundance fave by the Half Nelson team of Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden) and Wendy and Lucy (another heartbreaker by Old Joy maker Kelly Reichardt and starring Michelle Williams).

Then, of course, there’s all the other stuff that has been attracting good word of mouth and is infinitely worthy of your consideration. Among the Cannes faves are the Italian crime epic Gomorrah, Steven Soderbergh’s 258-minute long Che (shown here in two parts rather than all at once — what, are we lightweights?) and Arnaud Desplechin’s sprawling family dramedy Un Conte de Noel. Lower in profile but even higher in our esteem out of the Riviera batch are 24 City (a fascinating doc-fiction merger by Chinese master Jia Zhang-ke), Terence Davies’ comeback Of Time and the City and the indescribably odd Slovakian doc Blind Loves.

Buzz among the cool kids continues to build for Midnight Madness opener JCVD (the Van Dammage starts now!), Vinyan (a reputedly riveting second feature by Calvaire director Fabrice Du Welz) and Birdsong (a biblically minded slow-mo wonder by Catalan filmmaker Albert Serra, co-starring Cinema Scope publisher Mark Peranson as Joseph!). Of the Canadian selections, there have been many favourable whispers about Philippe Falardeau’s C’est pas moi, je le jure!, Bruce McDonald’s very freshly shot Pontypool and the animated Canada First opener Edison & Leo.

Obviously, you’ll have a lot to ponder as you wait for the stars’ cars to pull up outside the Hazelton Hotel or — the savvier choice — your mother’s house.