Free Tickets for All: AFI FEST

Headline premieres, starry showings, and zero-dollar tickets mark the Hollywood-stravaganza's calendar.

Cinephiles across SoCalandia can be forgiven for going a bit slack-jawed, each October, when they again hear the news they recall from the year before: Tickets to AFI FEST are totally free.

AFI FEST, as in the film festival that premieres and spotlights and breaks-out big movie after big movie. The very festival marquee-level stars venture to, nightly, to Q&A and walk read carpets and wave from their seat in the theaters.

Whatever is small potatoes in this world, AFI FEST presented by Audi is on the opposite side of the small-potatodom spectrum, at least in terms of high-wattage works and above-the-title performers.

Tommy Lee Jones is one such actor in this year's crop; his hardscrabble Western "The Homesman" is the Centerpiece Gala film. Look for it at the Dolby Theatre on Tuesday, Nov. 11.

"The Gambler," starring Mark Wahlberg, gets its World Premiere during the festival, and the much-fawned-over (we're trying to allay "buzzy" for the time-being) film "Foxcatcher" closes the Nov. 6 through 13 festival out.

"A Most Violent Year" is the fest's World Premiere opener, and it, too, qualifies in the fawned-up, buzz-big departments. As does Ms. Sophia Loren, who shall be specially tributed.

The fest, by the by, spreads beyond the Dolby, to theaters up and down Hollywood Boulevard. So you and your free ticket may find your movie-lovin' self standing inside the TCL Chinese Theatres or the Egyptian or the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which is the glittery (we're trying to allay "see-and-be-seen" for the time-being) hub for the whole shebang.

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And the whole shebang revs up on Friday, Oct. 24 when those free -- free free free hooray they're free* -- tickets go on sale online to the general public. It's year six for doing so, Audi is lending the free oomph, and if you haven't seen a caboodle of celebrities and cinephiles stir it up, Tinseltown-style over a fourth of November, well...

You've never done AFI. It's buzzy and see-and-be-seen, both, a big thing that makes one want to summon oft-used terms that really apply.

* you totally got that they're free, right? Aces.

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