TIFF 2006 #12: Celebrity Doppelgangers and The Wonders of a Full Night’s Sleep

Last night, and for the entire day beforehand, I was felled by PFS. Sore throat, fatigue, general malaise. Blah.

Then I got home yesterday, took a pile of vitamins and had ten hours of sleep.

This morning, PFS is history! Who knew? Sore throat’s gone, energy’s up and (knock on wood) I believe my PFS has departed PDQ. :-D

Going back to yesterday’s films…

I’m pleased to report that it was another fairly decent final day of TIFF for me, movie-wise. It’s always a huge bummer if your last day’s movies suck, but (thankfully) that wasn’t the case for me.

I began with the somewhat curious Day on Fire (6/8), which I didn’t fully understand yet still found totally interesting. Written and directed by Jay Anania, it isn’t so much a film in the standard-narrative sense, but more of a cinematic meditation (if you just gagged or rolled your eyes, I understand) that blends music, images and character…which is to say, it’s kind of weird and trippy. The film, which is visually spectacular, tracks the interactions between five different characters, whose lives intersect briefly and randomly multiple times before a tragic event. The most compelling of these characters, and the ones on whom much of the film’s success relies, are Najia (Carmen Chaplin) and Shira (Alyssa Sutherland), two strangers who strike up a life-changing friendship in a matter of hours. As I watched, I wished that Anania had chosen to focus solely on these two, since I found myself distracted and losing interest whenever any of the other three characters were getting screen time. Again, there was plenty about the film that I didn’t get – like what exactly was up with Martin Donovan’s character whom, for a while, I thought was supposed to be God or the Angel of Death (he’s neither, btw) – but it’s haunting.

And holy hell but is Carmen Chaplin (left) ever brilliant! I’d never heard of her before (and, yes, she comes from that Chaplin lineage), but she’s apparently prolific in French indie cinema. She was riveting – a feat given the film’s rather sparse dialogue. And, is just me, or does she bear a striking resemblance to one of my other film faves, Lena Headey (right)? It was a little uncanny and I remember thinking that they could very easily play sisters.

Next up was Margarethe von Trotta’s I Am the Other Woman (5/8), which was also a little confusing (coulda been my aforementioned fatigue, though). It follows the exploits of a lawyer (Katja Riemann), who’s leading a double life (possibly, a triple life) as a result of multiple-personality disorder. By day, strait-laced professional. At night, saucy sexpot who drops trou in half-a-second. Now, that sounds great and all, but the resulting film didn’t quite measure up to my expectations. I found my mind wandering and my eyelids getting droopy over and over again and, based on the twitters of “what? that’s it?” when the closing credits abruptly started, I wasn’t the only one who was left a tad unfulfilled by film’s end. von Trotta was slated to arrive for a post-film Q&A, but I opted to leave. Perhaps if I’d stayed I would have been able to better grasp whatever it was she was trying to say with the movie.

Movie #3 was the British slasher comedy Severance (6/8), which was being billed as The Office meets Deliverance. Not sure if I agree with that assessment, but the film is nonetheless outrageous and fun. The story centers on a group of arms-company employees (including Danny Dyer, Laura Harris and Toby Stephens) on a “team-building” jaunt to eastern Europe. Problems, and severed body parts, arise when they wind up stranded at a remote lodge where they’re promptly targeted for grisly deaths by…let’s just say some scary people. Unapologetically bloody and hugely entertaining, the film garnered a nice amount of audience participation and cheers, especially for Harris’ (literally) ass-kicking performance.

Last on the docket was Outsourced (6/8), a great little culture-clash comedy about a Seattle call-center manager (Josh Hamilton), whose department is outsourced to India and who must subsequently travel to a small Indian town to train the local replacement staff. While the core of the story – a fish out of water gradually learns to understand, accept and appreciate a vastly different environment – may not be new to movie audiences, the backdrop for the action (filmed on location) is, and the undeniable charm of the cast made the film a super way to close the door on TIFF 2006 for me. I left smiling and feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. One woman, who clearly LURRRRRRRVED the movie, stood up to congratulate the director and vowed to tell everyone she knew to go see it. Sadly, the flick doesn’t have a distributor yet, so if it pops up at a film fest near you, by all means check it out!

And then…TIFF 2006 was over. That’s it. The end.

Later today (or tomorrow), I’ll post all my final thoughts, award winners, random questions about this year’s fest and wishes for TIFF 2007.


Celebrity Sightings: Not a chance.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: My day was shameful. Crap from morning until night. Crappiest crap, though, was lunch – a bag of Garden Salsa SunChips + a root beer. Shameful!

Line Buzz: Variations on “I’m tired,” “I’m exhausted,” “this is my last movie” and the like. Most folks could barely remember what they’d seen over the past 10 days, let alone whether any of it was any good.

TIFF 2006 #11 1/2: Yeah, TIFF's Over, It's Late and I'm Germy and Exhausted...

...thus, I am making an executive decision to write my last-day entry tomorrow, after I've had a good, long night's sleep. I'll also be writing my TIFF '06 wrap-up, including the official fest awards along with my own.

In the meantime, feel free to post your own TIFF highlights: favourite films, least-favourite films, best place to get cheap food...whatever. Talk amongst yourselves.

And watch this space for entries #12 and 13. More TIFFing coming soon!

TIFF 2006 #11: Movie Cooties

Rats.

I think I’m getting PFS (Post-Festival Sickness).

My throat remains scratchy.

I remain zonked.

This is not good.

I hate PFS. And, if it really is PFS, it’s not even waiting until after my final screening to kick in this year. Evil! I am fighting its onset tooth and nail, dosing myself with plenty of vitamin C and zinc and trying my best to include some modicum of healthy eating (along with more than six hours of sleep these last couple of nights) so as to give my immune system some fuel as it goes into this near-annual battle. But I fear my efforts may be futile. At this point in the fest, there are just too many cinema cooties floating around to avoid. Moviegoers have been pushing themselves hard – staying out in the rain, dashing in and out of cold theatres, picking up germs elsewhere and then carting them along to screenings to share with the rest of us. It’s like we’re all going to movies in giant Petri dishes. I’ve heard people coughing up lungs, blowing noses and generally giving aural clues that they are perhaps less than well. If I had a biohazard suit, I might be tempted to wear it on days like this.

[Fest-goers, please feel free to post your own strategies for avoiding germs during TIFF.]

My scratchy throat and I began the day with the Austrian drama Falling (5/8), which follows five former school friends (now thirtysomething adults) as they reconnect while attending the funeral of one of their former teachers. The cast is made up of five actresses, and all are very good/convincing as their characters reveal secrets from the past and open up about the present. But those same characters are never really fleshed out, and I honestly can’t remember which one was which. I think Carmen was the actress. Alex was…the drunk brunette? And, while the action held my interest and the performances were solid, the film’s final five or six minutes were completely baffling. I have no idea what the final two or three scenes are supposed to mean, or why they were tacked on. If anyone knows, by all means say so.

After a quick hop to Tim Horton’s for a very pathetic lunch, my scratchy throat and I returned to the Paramount for film number two, the documentary American Hardcore (5/8), which examines the hardcore punk movement in America during the early 1980s. It features tons of rare archival footage and dozens of interviews with influential figures from the era but, not knowing much about hardcore punk rock beforehand, I was only seeing the film as a way to educate myself (as opposed to the hardcore hardcore fans in attendance). As such, it didn’t work for me on the same level it did for them. Sad when the only people you recognize out of the huge bunch of interviewees are Henry Rollins, Flea and Christine McCarthy (formerly Elise), who used to be on China Beach and 90210. The theater was barely half-full, and the audience demo was overwhelmingly male. I felt a smidge out of place.

My scratchy throat and I had just under two hours to kill, so we opted for an immune-boost smoothie from Jugo Juice + a bagel. Then we popped into TGH to check email before making our way to the last film for today, True North (6/8), a rather unsettling but well-done drama about a group of Scottish fishermen (including the always wonderful Peter Mullan), who decide to smuggle a group of Chinese immigrants into the country aboard their trawler. Not surprisingly, all does not go well. Aside from its hugely impressive on-location shooting (i.e., on a real trawler, on the real ocean, with really big waves and real actors trying not to fall overboard), the film’s plot is perfectly compact and finite, which I loved. It’s a small story about a big issue, and its intimacy made its point much more effective than if it had been a massive epic featuring a cast of thousands. It’s just a crew of four guys, one stowaway girl and cargo hold full of terrified human cargo.

I was a little out-of-sorts thereafter, not because of the scratchy throat or the movie’s content but because I was finished a TIFF day at 7 p.m. I came home and felt a little lost. Shouldn’t I be running back out the door for my next screening, I thought, or popping into some random fast-food outlet for a calorie-laden between-film snack? Is there a line I should be standing in? Something?

Nope.

So, as TIFF begins its official wind-down, so did I. It was nice to be able to sit down, read NOW, have dinner and watch some press conferences (Emilio Estevez actually started to cry during the PC for Bobby! Sharon Stone was typically Sharon Stone-y! The Dixie Chicks were plucky and fun!).

I also had a stern talk with my scratchy throat and requested that it vacate my premises by morning. We’ll see if it listens.


Celebrity Sightings: French actress Isild Le Besco, who was leaving the Paramount solo as I was arriving. And (this is how truly sad celeb sightings are at this point), Toronto’s own Marilyn Denis strolling in Yorkville! Yeah, baby! It’s all about the A-listers!

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: A Tim Horton’s Iced Capp + a leaden croissant.

Line Buzz: Only one film required standing in line today, but both the person in front of me and the person behind me opted to read books. In-theatre chatting was also non-existent, since I had empty seats beside me at all three screenings. Yep, it’s getting quiet and empty ‘round here.

Weather for Tomorrow: Mainly cloudy. High near 23C.

TIFF 2006 #10: Viggo…Is That You? Plus, I Want to Hug Shane Meadows and Amanda Peet (Together or Separately, I’m Not Fussy)

I must begin this entry by posing a question to anyone out there who’s been reading along here while TIFFing: did anybody attend the screening of Alatriste this afternoon at the Paramount? If you did, please post a comment and let me know if I saw whom I thought I saw exiting the venue earlier today: Viggo Mortensen.

Yes, that’s right Jennifer, I think I might have seen your Viggo. From behind, and from about 25 feet away (hence my uncertainty), but who else would be leaving the theater with a full camera crew – complete with lights and a sound guy – in tow? I was stuck in the heart of a serpentine line of people waiting for the next screening, so I was unable to scramble out for a better look. The subject of the crew’s attention seemed to be a man, about Viggo height and build, with Viggo-esque hair, walking briskly out past the concession stand. Was it him? I don’t know. I want to believe it was. If anyone knows for sure, please let us know!

Onwards to the movies…

My first screening of the day was Shane Meadows’ This is England (7/8…and it might still get a full pie because I’m not completely set on my rating and very tempted to bump it up a slice). I’ve seen every Shane Meadows film but one (Dead Man’s Shoes, simply because it didn’t fit in my sked when it played at TIFF) and have followed his career since his Romeo Brass and twentyfourseven days. So, his was one of my must-sees this fest and I’m delighted to say that I was not disappointed. Plenty of folks have been trumpeting the film’s merit, so allow me to chime in to say that this is not only my new favourite among his works, but I also think it’s his best film to date. It’s gorgeous to look at, brilliantly written and insanely compelling to watch. It tells the story of Shaun (Thomas Turgoose), a bullied 11-year-old boy, who falls in with a gang of skinheads in 1983. Initially a goofy group united through music and mischief, the boys (and girls) soon splinter with the return of the menacing and seriously militant Combo (Stephen Graham in a positively terrifying performance). I’ll save the details for my eventual review, but the film had me riveted from start to finish…which is not something I can say about most of the movies I’ve taken in this year.

And, seriously, how huggable is Shane Meadows? He’s so cuddly and adorable, and I lurrrrrve that accent. I just want him to read me bedtime stories while we eat cookies and milk. I was sitting in the fairly empty (considering) lobby of the Ryerson this morning before the start of the screening, eating my breakfast muffin and watching people stream in. As the crowds thinned, I heard Shane’s distinct voice chatting someone up and there he was. In the lobby, hanging out before heading in. It was all I could do not to be a squirrelly fangirl, but I did give it some serious thought. I refrained.

Next up was Breaking & Entering (5/8), the latest epic from Anthony Minghella. There’s a lot going on in this film, so here’s the shopping list: Jude Law is an architect named Will, whose firm is repeatedly targeted by young acrobatic thieves. One of those thieves is Miro (Rafi Gavron), a teenage refugee from Bosnia. Miro’s mother is Amira (Juliette Binoche), who’s befriended (and later bedded) by Will after he follows Miro home one night post-thwarted robbery. A whole bunch of relationships get really complicated. While all this is going on, the luminous Robin Wright Penn tries to carve out her own character (Will’s wife), but winds up underused, in my opinion. The movie was long and could have been about 15 minutes shorter, but it was fine overall. Not amazing, not terrible. Just fine.

I’m going to preface this next blurb by saying that I adore Amanda Peet. I think she’s a supremely underrated actress whose career is practically screaming out for a meaty dramatic role…one through which she could totally knock the socks off the moviegoing public (see also: Elizabeth Banks). Perhaps her gig on the new TV series Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip will do that, but I suspect not.

Her newest film, the teeny indie Griffin & Phoenix (4/8), was my third film of the day and, sadly, it was disappointing. Peet co-stars with Dermot Mulroney as a pair of terminally ill people who fall in love. Now, revealing their illnesses to you is not a spoiler, since it’s obvious from about minute seven of the movie that both characters aren’t long for this world. So, with the cosmic clock ticking, the pair set out to do fun things like hop on freight trains or paint water towers…but so what? The movie didn’t connect with me at all, and I found myself much more annoyed than engaged. It’s too bad, too, because Peet does some nicely nuanced work here, being more vulnerable and sweet and, yes, huggable than she’s ever been in a film before. At least she managed to rise above the material.

I treated myself to a deeeeeelicious Jugo Juice smoothie (Copa Banana, in case you’re curious) + some less-delicious take-out spaghetti for dinner, then headed to the Cumberland for my last film, White Palms (5/8). The story is based on actual events, and follows a young Hungarian gymnast from his childhood training at the hands of a ruthless coach, to his own coaching job guiding a Canadian champion (Canadian Olympic gold medalist Kyle Shewfelt) decades later. The film jumps back and forth in time, but the sequences in the past (when the main character is a boy) were far more interesting than those featuring him as an adult. And the final 15 minutes seemed to drag on needlessly in order to show off creative editing. Perhaps I would have enjoyed that more had it not been the end of my filmgoing day. Perhaps not.

I am mildly alarmed because my throat is kind of scratchy tonight. Scratchy in that “hey everybody! I feel a cold coming on!” way. I do NOT want to get sick. No PFS for me, please! At least, not until Sunday. I have taken extra vitamin C tonight just in case, but I’m sure the past two days of rain + my poor diet + cooties everywhere + total lack of rest will = PFS shortly.


Celebrity Sightings: As is usually the case at this point, the pickings are getting slim. Today it was only Shane Meadows and Kyle Shewfeldt.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: The aforementioned breakfast muffin – triple chocolate – which was not only bad for me, but extremely messy.

Line Buzz: Lots of so-so rumblings about the much-ballyhooed D.O.A.P. and the non-ballyhooed The Last Winter; good buzz on Black Book.

Weather for Tomorrow: Partly cloudy. High near 22C.

TIFF 2006 #9: Is There a Doc in the House?

Before I begin: an announcement!

The official TIFF page at the 'Pie has now been updated to include most of the entries previously posted on this blog, so if you wanna wander over (but make sure you come back here!) to see Linda's phancy formatting and photo selections, please do!

Now...

Today’s film selections were mostly documentaries, and today’s weather was mostly rainy. Line-ups at outdoor theaters were on the damp side, and filmgoers learned that a seemingly innocuous steady mist can gradually result in rather effective soakage.

I started the day with Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing (7/8), Barbara Kopple and Cecilia Peck’s multi-year doc that follows the Chicks from their infamous Shepherd’s Bush concert and anti-Bush statement, through the sometimes scary/sometimes frustrating/sometimes infuriating repercussions thereof that took place in the three and a half years since. It’s also a really great examination of female solidarity and the power of friendship, as Natalie, Martie and Emily weather the political storm, ridiculous protests and almost-constant media attention. An absolute must-see for fans, who will no doubt love love love it, the film is nonetheless totally accessible to all audiences regardless of their level of Chicks fandom. I’ve always liked the group, but don’t own any of their albums and have never seen one of their live shows. After seeing the film and witnessing their unflappable pluck, though, I plan to get to shopping.

It was also nice to have Kopple and Peck intro the movie. They explained that their schedule wouldn’t permit them to return for a Q&A, but they both gave lovely little speeches before the film started.

One doc followed another, so the second film today was Blindsight (6/8), in which director Lucy Walker – who, by the way, is absolutely STUNNING – embarks on a Mount Everest climb alongside a group of blind Tibetan youths, school teacher Sabriye Tenberken and blind U.S. climber Erik Weihenmayer, along with a support team made up of other climbers and a team doctor. While the documentary itself seemed kind of choppy and could have used an extra half-hour or so, the story it tells is a fantastic one. It’s extremely moving (the woman sitting next to me was sobbing in that gasping-for-air kind of way almost throughout) and inspirational (which sounds cheesy, but it’s true). Walker, Tenberken and one of the blind students were all in attendance, and their genuine joy at being in Toronto and having the film shown was infectious. Unsurprisingly, they were given a standing ovation.

There was a quick trip home to have a snack before heading to my final film (yes, thank goodness, only three today!), Starter For Ten (5/8), which I was very excited about seeing – hello, James MacAvoy! – but which turned out to be kind of a letdown. The story follows a sort-of-geeky university student (MacAvoy) in his quest to be “clever.” More specifically, it follows him onto his school’s “University Challenge” team (think: quiz show), and tracks his rocky courtships of two of his classmates. I don’t know why the film didn’t really do it for me. Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe my fatigue prevented me from being fully engaged. Or maybe it was just kind of a meh movie. I can’t be certain, but it was nice to see James MacAvoy in person once again.

Then I dashed to meet my friend from Washington for a coffee and some fest chat before heading home for the night…and, once again proving the effects of lack of sleep, MISSING MY SUBWAY STOP completely. I was so dopey as I rode home that I actually went right past my stop and had to walk back. I really need more than five hours a night it seems. Perhaps tonight I’ll aim for 6 ½…

Oh, and as I posted in the comments section of last night’s entry: yet ANOTHER scutigera scurried across my wall tonight! RIGHT in front of my face, as if to taunt me. It’s the damned humid weather and constant rain. I wish the bugs, and the weather, would go away.

And I hope that scutigera is the one from last night and not a SECOND one. Eep!


Celebrity Sightings: Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck, James MacAvoy.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: Alas, I did not have a single piece of fruit today. Instead, I had a leaden muffin and mint-cip ice cream. Not together.

Line Buzz: Everyone and their cousin is raving about Sarah Polley’s directorial debut, Away From Her…except one woman I met who didn’t like it at all and said it romanticized Alzheimer’s disease. So there you go.

Weather for Tomorrow: Rain? Again? Really? Crap. High near 18C.

TIFF 2006 #8: Walkout #2, Jessica Lange…and It Wasn’t the Same Movie!

I am sitting on an ice pack as I type this. Why? Because today was five-movie day, and my ass is sore. More specifically, the joint between my thigh bone and my pelvis is sore. (My chiropractor is welcome to chime in with the name of that joint at any time.) This is what I get for sitting my bony behind down on the unevenly padded Ryerson seats for three of those movies today, and planting it on their cement walls in between.

I was hoping to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight (i.e., before 1 a.m.) but it’s just not gonna happen. Why? Because of the sore joint and because one of THESE (Angela, do not click this link!) scurried out from under my couch and behind my radiator a short while ago. My heart rate is still slowly creeping back down to normal. For the uninitiated, that’s what my friend Angela and I call a “scutigera” and, quite frankly, they’re terrifying. Totally harmless but terrifying. They’re usually about an inch and a bit long (in the body) with suuuuper-long, hair-like legs (as shown) that make them look like giant running hairballs. They come out when it’s humid (or, like today, when it’s pouring rain and very damp) and they ALWAYS do it at night. Usually just before I head to bed. I have hermetically sealed my apartment with all manner of protective sealants, but I live in an old building that houses these scutigeras and lord knows what else in its walls, so my efforts are futile. They keep finding their way in. I actually think they do it to taunt me.

Anyway, normally I kill the scutigeras (scutigeri?), but this one slipped past me. And then d*i*s*a*p*p*e*a*r*e*d. omg! I have no idea where it went, but I am praying with all my might that it somehow regretted its decision to promenade around my abode and retreated back through the crack through which it came. But my failed killshot means an anxiety-ridden sleep as I try my best not to imagine it crawling up into my bed and onto my pillow in the middle of the night.

Or, worse, lying in bed and worrying about accidentally stepping on it in bare feet if I have to pee in the dark.

In addition to the sore bum, the physical effects of my lack of sleep are starting to manifest themselves. Aside from being perpetually drowsy, this maddening movie pace is starting to screw with my brain. Today, as I approached the entrance for my 8:45 a.m. movie (yes, that was the start time!), instead of reaching for my ticket to hand to the ushers, I actually reached for my Metropass as though I were boarding a subway or bus. I’m floating in and out of coherency, and find myself desperately trying to stay awake in movies that are anything but fascinating.

Given my profound weariness tonight, and the fact that I simply don’t have the stamina to write at length about the five movies I saw today, I’m going to borrow a page from the Five Word Movie Review philosophy. Here, then, with another tip of the hat to the Margaret Cho Blog Brevity Law ™is a rundown of mes filmes d’aujourd’hui:

Movie #1: Summer ’04 (5/8)
Sex on a family holiday. (German film about the blossoming sexuality of a 12-year-old, and the repercussions for her boyfriend’s randy mum…who decides to have some fun with a new stranger in the area. It was okay, but I was sleepy.)

Movie #2: Bonneville (4/8)
Old boys on the side. (Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Joan Allen embark on a cross-country road trip that’s laden with clichés and lameness. I actually groaned out loud at one point because it was being so over-the-top melodramatic.)

Movie #3: Catch a Fire (6/8)
From coal mines to anti-apartheid. (Great film from director Phillip Noyce about Patrick Chamusso, played by Derek Luke – a South African coal-mine worker whose brutal treatment by the police leads him to become a member of the ANC. Huge standing ovation, and tears, at the end when Noyce and his actors brought the real Patrick Chamusso onstage for the Q&A.)

Movie #4: Quelques jours en septembre
Vickie gets bored and leaves. (Seriously, what was this film about? No idea. I know it had Juliette Binoche in it, and that she was doing some serious overacting but, 55 minutes in, I still had no clue what was going on so I high-tailed it outta there. And, evidently, I wasn’t the first.)

Movie #5: The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (6/8)
Scientist gets bad radiation poisoning. (Paddy Considine stars as a Soviet nuclear-reactor staffer who’s accidentally exposed to a MASSIVE dose of radiation and who subsequently tries to sell 100g of uranium on the black market in order to provide for his family before he literally decomposes.)

Man, I am wiped. Thank goodness tomorrow is a comparably empty three-movie day.

And still no sign of that freakin’ scutigera. Dammit!


Celebrity Sightings: Derek Luke, Phillip Noyce, Patrick Chamusso, Juliette Binoche, Paddy Considine and Jason Flemyng.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: Every single thing I ate today was crap. All of it. A day filled with crap from start to finish. McDonald’s for breakfast and lunch, a Tim Horton’s Iced Capp and cookies for an afternoon snack and a maple frappucino from Starbucks for dinner. I am ashamed. Tomorrow, I will eat a piece of fruit at some point, I promise.

Line Buzz: Good buzz for The Last King of Scotland, True North and Outsourced.

Weather for Tomorrow: Rain AGAIN. (Come ON, Mother Nature!) High near 19C.

TIFF 2006 #7: Where Has the Rogers Cable 10 Festival Coverage Gone???

I’d like to begin today’s entry by asking the above question. Seriously, what happened? Used to be, Rogers would air wall-to-wall, 24-hour coverage of the fest for its entire duration. You could turn on cable 10 at any hour of the night or day and be treated to a press conference, symposium session, random interviews or tons of red-carpet shenanigans. It was all TIFF, all the time, for ten days straight. And it was FABULOUS.

But this year, not so much.

This year, the coverage has been scaled back to near non-existent status. They’ve gone from airing just about every press conference available to airing two per day and then repeating those two, like, six times in four hours. And I know it’s about four hours because they’ve also cut down on Rushes, Reel to Real and all extraneous happenings. No more symposiums. This year, TIFF coverage has been relegated to a few hours per day, and the programming in those hours is a repetitive loop. Last night, over the course of maybe 2 ½ hours, they ran the press conference for Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show three times! This morning I turned it on, hoping for something new, and it was an episode of Goldhawk Live! What the hell?!

So I ask: why? Who made that call? Who thought it would be a great idea to take one of the greatest television resources during TIFF and trim it down to nothing? Apparently, press conferences are now available through Rogers’ “on-demand” service, but guess what? Plenty of people don’t have that service. I know I don’t. Do hotels here get it? I dunno. but if they don’t then Rogers is also giving the finger to a ton of visiting press and industry folks…many of whom have complimented the coverage in years past. And that kind of sucks.

But onto movies…

First up today was Werner Herzog’s new drama Rescue Dawn (6/8), which stars Christian Bale as real-life PoW Dieter Dengler, an American navy pilot captured and tortured in Laos during the Vietnam War. The film co-stars Steve Zahn (in a wonderfully strong non-Steve Zahnian role) and Jeremy Davies as two of Dengler’s fellow prisoners, who conspire with him to escape. Like Bale’s last TIFF flick, The Machinist, this one required him and his fellow cast members to lose a dramatic amount of weight. Davies, for one, looks frighteningly emaciated. The movie was pretty good, sticking to the standard PoW format (capture, torture, adjustment to camp life, etc.), and the fact that the story is based on true events makes it strangely effective and unbelievable.

Before the film started, the random TIFF staffer assigned to intro the film said very clearly that there would not be any Q&A, since no one from the film was in attendance. Cut to the end of the film, as the closing credits begin, when a voice came over the P.A. system to say that there would be a Q&A if we wanted to stick around. So many of us did, and were treated (?) to Jeremy Davies being dragged onstage after his presence must have been detected in the theater. He looked like answering questions was the last thing he wanted to be doing, and he spoke so softly and mumbly that it was sometimes hard to understand what he was saying. It felt very thrown-together, and I kind of felt bad that he was being forced to stand up there when it seemed like he’d much rather have been napping somewhere else.

Next on the card was 10 Items or Less (7/8), the newest film from writer-director Brad Silberling, whose Moonlight Mile was my absolute favourite film of TIFF 2002. While this one didn’t quite live up to the festivial magnificence of its predecessor (and, really, how could it?), it was still really, really good. It’s essentially a two-person character study about the day-long friendship that develops between a big-time movie star (Morgan Freeman) and the spirited grocery store clerk (Paz Vega) he meets while researching a project. Both Freeman and Vega were excellent, and the movie – like MM -- was quietly affecting. It was funny and touching, and it had a sublimely perfect ending. Since it was the film’s world premiere, and the first time the actors were seeing it (as per Brad’s introductory speech), both Freeman and Vega were there, which was nice for a 3:30 afternoon screening.

In line beforehand, I also chatted with two TIFF first-timers, who were there for their very first TIFF film ever. I congratulated them on this new adventure.

My last film of the day was also the one I was looking forward to least. I picked it only because I didn’t get a ticket to Little Children. So, instead, I went to see Scott Caan’s sophomore directorial effort The Dog Problem (4/8).

The screening experience didn’t get off to a great start because, even though I arrived almost an hour before the scheduled start time and had foolishly assumed the film wouldn’t be much of a draw, the line already stretched around the corner onto Church Street. I was shocked! There was also a rush line, which was even more amazing. Who knew? I thought this one would be poorly attended, but no. There was actually a CROWD.

The movie was supposed to start at 8:30 p.m. When I looked at my watch and saw that it was 8:25 p.m. and there was no sign of us being let in, I knew we’d be very late. And we were. They finally let us in just before 9, and the movie didn’t start until around 9:15. Sadly, it was just as meh as Caan’s first film, Dallas 362. After the world’s longest and most needlessly elaborate opening-credits sequence (seriously, it just went on and on and ONNNNN), the film unfolded to tell the story of Solo (Giovanni Ribisi) on a quest to do…something. Find meaning in his life. Get money. Get a girl. Get a dog. The latter provides the impetus for the action, and the dog was actually the best thing about the whole film. Supporting players included Caan, as Solo’s best friend, and Lynn Collins, as the stripper who winds up entangled in Solo’s life. Not much happens in the film, but holy hell is it ever WORDY. Characters take pages and pages to say anything, and after a while the relentless banter (much of it empty and repetitive) got annoying.

But that Scott Caan is one likable fellow, I tell you. Because, once again, he held court for a highly entertaining Q&A alongside Ribisi and co-star Mena Suvari (who plays a very Paris Hilton-esque rich girl turned dog trainer). They were funny and self-deprecating, and they made it worth my while to stick around.

The day’s done and now I am supremely sleeeeee-PEEEEEEE. Tomorrow is my five-movie day and I am afeared that I won’t make it. Five movies, back to back, starting at 8:45 a.m. and ending just before 11 p.m.

Oh, and just because Mother Nature sometimes likes to make me cry, the forecast for tomorrow is rain, and four of those five movies will feature outdoor line-ups.

Damn.


Celebrity Sightings: Jeremy Davies, Paz Vega, Morgan Freeman, Brad Silberling, Scott Caan, Giovanni Ribisi, Mena Suvari.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: While not technically “crap” because of its nutritional value, my breakfast of a GeniSoy protein bar was decidedly disappointing.

Line Buzz: Still more good word on Babel.

Weather for Tomorrow: RAIN. Boo! High near 18C.

TIFF 2006 #6: An In-Line Examination of Human Behaviour at TIFF – Forget Obnoxious Man, Meet the Army of the Odiously Obnoxious

Several entries ago, I commented on juxtaposition at TIFF, and today I had the most blindingly perfect example of it, courtesy of the line-ups before my second and third films of the day. One was horrible; the other was delightful. One was mean and malicious and ugly; the other was fun and relaxed and had free snacks.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I regret to post that I skipped my first film of the day today. I had a ticket for the 9 a.m. screening of The Ugly Duckling and Me, a computer-animated kids’ movie that had an adorable program-book picture, but I was so tired this morning that I opted for an extra hour of sleep + a nutritious breakfast instead. I was kind of bummed to skip a film so early in the fest, but was nonetheless grateful for the comparably less-hectic morning.

So, after my mango-pineapple-strawberry smoothie + big bowl of Grape Nuts Trail Mix Crunch cereal (with extra pecans, cashews and dried cranberries added in by me), I headed to the Bader for my first actual screening of the day: the action-adventure movie Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker (5/8), which is based on the popular book series. The movie itself – about a British teen (Alex Pettyfer) who becomes an agent for MI-6 – was okay, if a little heavy on the endless chase sequences, but the pre-screening entertainment was unprecedented.

This year, it seems like screenings are becoming events. Earlier in the festival, Sacha Baron Cohen made a Vegas-worthy spectacle of his entrance to the world premiere of Borat, arriving in character on a giant wooden horse being pulled by several women.

Well, before Alex Rider, everyone outside the theater was treated to a stunt show, complete with a multitude of red lights, a smoke machine, thumping music and about a dozen youths staging fake fight sequences, climbing on buildings and leaping wherever there was space to leap. It was pretty cool! (Special thanks to my friend Heather for the accompanying photo, which she snapped as we walked into the theater.)

Next up would be Paris, je t’aime (6/8), a series of 18 (?) shorts about love in Paris, directed by 21 well-known directors. When I arrived at the Ryerson, the rush line was surprisingly long – I guess the draw of so many filmmakers dramatically increased its appeal. Anyway, I queued up alongside Lee sister #3, who’d arrived early and who was third in line.

Unfortunately for us both, the group of six people behind us were the Army of the Odiously Obnoxious. Here’s why:

Given the length of the rush line, several people without tickets decided to be proactive about getting some. One young woman in a red hooded sweatshirt fashioned a sign that read “Need 1 or 2 tickets” and began walking along the ticket-holders line to see if anyone had an extra ticket they wanted to sell. When she made her way past us, one of the lieutenants in the Army of the Odiously Obnoxious – an über-slick (in a lame way) Euro-trashy ass in his late-20s – said, “I’ll sell you one.” He took her aside and, based on the fact that she left shortly thereafter empty handed, must have asked for a seriously marked-up price. She, in turn, must have given him a lecture about scalping, because he returned to his fellow Army brats and started mocking her, saying that someone without a ticket shouldn’t be so picky about having to pay extra. Then he went on and on, and his friends (all of whom were in their late-20s or early-30s) laughed uproariously, chimed in and then they started making fun of the young woman. They made fun of her sign, her desire to see the movie, her efforts…and then they called her back over.

In my head, I was silently telling her not to come back, because I just knew this wouldn’t end well.

So the repellent lieutenant kept calling her until she slowly wandered back. “Come on, I’ll sell it to you for $5,” he said to her as his friends snickered. (Seriously, these idiots were behaving like high-school bullies picking on a outsider to such a degree that I thought I must have somehow landed in the middle of a co-ed version of Mean Girls). So, the young woman came over and asked him, “Are you serious?”

He assured her he was and, because she was wisely skeptical, she said, “Are you really serious?”

And he looked at her, scoffed and said, “$5? Do you think I’m serious? I’ll sell it to you for $80.” And then started laughing at her as she walked away. His friends laughed, too. The young woman, rightfully pissed, walked off…and these ASSHOLES just kept laughing at her! Loudly, so that she – and everyone else – could hear them. I was tempted to just turn around, call the young woman back and GIVE her my ticket for free for having to put up with these jerks’ obnoxious assholery. What is WRONG with people?! But, like a cowardly twit, I did nothing because I knew we’d still have to stand with these people for another 20 minutes, but I still feel awful about it. It was like I was suddenly ten years old and afraid of the bigger kids. Sometimes, you know when the universe is testing your mettle. I know mine was being tested there…and I failed. I spent much of the film wishing I’d said something to shut the asses up and feeling totally ashamed of being a passive observer. The only thing that made me feel better was knowing that the same universe that was testing me and sighing would likely punish the Army in some karmically glorious way.

Despite being emotionally distracted, I managed to enjoy Paris…, which featured a whole whack of great little vignettes and only one that was truly confounding (from director Christopher Doyle). Among the standouts were the Coen brothers’ look at love in transit starring Steve Buscemi; Gurinder Chadha’s cross-cultural romance between a British boy and a Muslim girl; Tom Tykwer’s uniquely stylized and circular love story involving an aspiring actress (Natalie Portman) and her blind boyfriend; and Alexander Payne’s sweetly poignant district 14 travelogue, narrated by an American tourist (Margo Martindale) on her first Paris holiday.

I stuck around the Ryerson after the screening to witness the fandemonium preceding the world premiere of The Last Kiss. I didn’t have a ticket to the movie, and had some time to kill before my next screening, so I stood behind the throngs of photographers, fans and hugely overzealous stalkers to watch the cast arrive. Everyone was there – Zach Braff, Rachel Bilson, Jacinda Barrett, Schuyler Fisk and director Tony Goldwyn, along with Fisher Stevens, director Paul Haggis and actor Gabriel Macht – and the crowd went nuts for Zach and Rachel. So nuts, in fact, that I got my first glimpse of what psychotic adult fanboys look like at full throttle. There were several of them, all doughy oafs in their 20s or 30s (a few were older…which made them even creepier), and they were SCREAMING for Rachel Bilson as if their lives depended on her acknowledging them. I mean SCREAMING her name.

RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAACHELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

They were running back and forth around the crowd, trying to squeeze through to get her to autograph photos that they will either: 1) sell on eBay, or 2) keep and use for fantasy purposes. *shudder* These guys were scary in their pursuit of her, and I suddenly felt glad that there were steel gates and security guards keeping folks at a distance. Zach signed a ton of autographs, posed for pictures and was extremely generous with his eager fans, which was nice.

Oh, and en route to the Varsity from the Ryerson (a route which took me through College Park), I saw Chantal Kreviazuk and a chapeau'd Raine Maida, who were trying to find their way through CP to Yonge Street and the red-carpet entrance to the One X One gala, which taking place upstairs at the Carlu. So that’s the second time in less than 48 hours that I’ve seen them. Freaky.

Also nice was my line-up experience for my final film of the day. This time, instead of the Army of the Odiously Obnoxious, I wound up behind a trio of lovely individuals, who were not only friendly and chatty, but who brought me a bag of free popcorn from the bookstore downstairs (which had been handing out the wee bags to customers and store visitors)! Free snacks, just delivered without me even asking! I told them about the Army, and then thanked them for being at the other end of the line-up spectrum, citing the snack gesture as the source for some inevitable good karma coming their way.

The movie was The Pleasure of Your Company (7/8), a wonderfully sharp romantic-comedy written and directed by Michael Ian Black. Given MIB’s aridly dry sense of humour, it was no surprise that the movie was brilliantly written and funny. It stars Jason Biggs as a guy whose girlfriend drops dead the moment after he makes the world’s most embarrassing marriage proposal. So, after a year of idealized mourning and the relentless pleading of his best friend to get on with his life, he makes a spur of the moment decision at a diner to propose to his waitress (Isla Fisher). All that happens within the first 10 minutes or so, and the remainder of the film follows the duo and their assorted friends and family as they cope with the repercussions of her actually saying “yes” to his on-the-spot marriage offer. The leads were great, the supporting cast was wonderful and the whole movie was refreshingly smart.

The post-film Q&A was just as good, with Michael Ian Black and several cast members fielding questions and answering in their signature style (i.e., funny!).

And that concludes day four for me. Good grief, it's 12:30 a.m. AGAIN! Thank goodness it's a bit of a later start tomorrow, with my first film not scheduled util 10:15.


Celebrity Sightings: Alex Pettyfer, Alexander Payne, Margo Martindale, Zach Braff, Rachel Bilson, Jacinda Barrett, Tony Goldwyn, Schuyler Fisk, Fisher Stevens, Gabriel Macht, Paul Haggis, Jason Biggs, Michael Ian Black and Michael Weston.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: Three (two fresh, one very stale) Tim Horton’s triple-chocolate cookies.

Line Buzz: It was hard to get any buzz around the Army, but I did hear from a couple of people later on that Babel was excellent.

Weather for Tomorrow: Partly cloudy. High near 17C.

A Warm Welcome to Our TIFF-ly Visitors!

Just wanted to take a moment to welcome all the web surfers and fellow bloggers who have been swinging by this blog during TIFF this year. I'm sure some traffic is flowing here from the TIFF Blogs page at the festival's official website, but a glance at the site meter reveals all sorts of wild referrals, so feel free to stay a spell or post a comment as you roll on through. Enjoy your stay!

TIFF 2006 #5: Women Who Rock (or Don't)...and Zombies!

TIFF #5: Women and Zombies

You know what’s worse than standing outside in line during a heavy downpour?

Sitting in a cold theater, soaking wet, with hundreds of other wet people in wet clothes, after the downpour.

:-/

That’s how my day began. Literally the SECOND I stepped off the streetcar to walk to the Ryerson, it started to rain. And then it started to rain heavily. And then it poured. About 15 minutes later, they let us into the theater. I’d like to point out that, throughout my time in line, I didn’t see a single volunteer. No one patrolling the line or making themselves available to answer questions. I’m sure it’s because they were all huddled in the covered area near the main entrance (which is where they were all standing as we filed in). Babies! This would also be a good time for a brief chat about line etiquette – namely, have some. The forecast is calling for rain on Tuesday and Wednesday, so this plight of the damp filmgoer is likely to resurface mid-week, and it might be nice to remember:

* If it’s pouring, and you have a giant golf umbrella, and the people in front of you or behind you have nothing, offer to share. I tried sharing my average-sized umbrella with the Wisconsin couple in front of me, but it just wound up getting us all wet and keeping none of us dry.

* In a line-up full of umbrellas, try to give your neighbours appropriate umbrella clearance (in terms of space) so as to avoid constantly knocking into one another and knocking more water on those around you. Now is not the time for shoulder-to-shoulder positioning. This particular point is something that needed to be shared with the petite woman who was behind me in line this morning, and who kept tilting her umbrella down so that the water that had collected on top trickled down onto my pants. Thanks.

* And one for TIFF: hey! If it’s pouring rain and it’s the first show of the day – i.e., there’s nothing happening inside the theater because it’s, you know, 8 a.m., LET US IN.

My first film today was Volver* (6/8), the new film from Pedro Almodóvar. The story centers on a family of women, led by Raimunda (Penélope Cruz), who cope with things like death, murder, incest and old secrets that reveal new truths. I have to admit that, despite the quality of the film and Cruz’s fantastic performance, I was having a really hard time staying awake. I suspect it has a lot to do with my (very late) bedtime and (very early) morning rise today, but I found my eyelids getting heavy throughout the film and I kind of wished it was about 15 minutes shorter. I know I missed a few key pieces of dialogue because I was snapped out of my pre-full-on-snooze haze by laughter several times.

[If, like I did, you’re wondering how to properly pronounce Volver, allow me to tell you: it’s pronounced vol-VEHR. Preferably with a rolling R. A plea: if anyone went to see Babel, please feel free to inform me how that titled if meant to be said. So far, in watching TV coverage, I’ve heard it pronounced BAY-bul, BAH-bul and, my favourite, buh-BELLE.]

Immediately thereafter, I got back in line – sans precipitation this time, thank goodness! – at the same theater for another female-driven film called Penelope (6/8). It was a surprisingly delightful and brilliantly colorful fable about the titular character (Christina Ricci), who was born with the nose and ears of a pig as a result of a centuries-old family curse, and who embarks on a quest to find love and acceptance. Along with a nicely understated performance from Ricci, the film featured a stellar list of supporting players (including James McAvoy, Catherine O’Hara, Richard E. Grant, Dawn French and Reese Witherspoon) who, not surprisingly, also turned in great work.

The audience, who clearly loved the movie, were thrilled when four of the actors – Ricci, McAvoy, Peter Dinklage (yay!) and Simon Woods – turned up for the post-film Q&A. It’s rare for gala participants to attend the repeat screenings of their films (which this was), so someone in the crowd stood up at one point and thanked them for coming. It was a nice midday treat.

A quick (or not-so quick) dash to the Paramount, and then the third film of the day, Fido** (6/8), a Canadian comedy that I heard one fest-goer describe as Far From Heaven meets Shaun of the Dead. It’s actually a fairly accurate assessment. The movie presents a fictional suburban 1950s society where zombies have been turned into servants and pets, and it follows one such zombie (Billy Connolly, in a dialogue-free role) as he joins a family (which includes parents Carrie-Anne Moss and Dylan Baker). It’s very dry but it wasn’t quite as amazing as I’d been led to believe based on line buzz.

[**By the way, on the topic of pronunciation once again, I’ve been calling the above film FEE-do, as if it were a French art film. Just because it’s fun.]

Last up was the Brittany Murphy romantic comedy Love and Other Disasters (4/8), which I found somewhat disappointing. Directed by Alek Keshishian (remember him? he directed Madonna’s Truth or Dare doc back in 1991), the film centers on Jacks (Murphy), who works in Vogue’s London office and tries to find love for herself and her gay best friend (Matthew Rhys). Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy the movie as much as I’d hoped. They decided to have Brittany’s character purposely speak in a half-American/half-English accent…which was written into the movie but which felt suspiciously like a way to cover for a flopsy accent from its lead actress. Dunno. But the situations and the characters felt completely staged and kind of forced to me – the movie didn’t flow as much as it lurched from one predetermined cliché to the next. Only a scene in its final 10 minutes – which was unexpected and wildly funny – redeemed it somewhat. Somewhat.

And, really, that was my day. There wasn’t a huge amount of running around (mainly because three of my four films were at the same location) or dramatic incidents, so there’s not too much to write about. I could go into more detail about the films, but I’m going to opt for a pre-midnight bedtime today instead.


Celebrity Sightings: Christina Ricci, James McAvoy, Peter Dinklage, Simon Woods, Brittany Murphy, Alek Keshishian, Matthew Rhys and Santiago Cabrera.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: A McDonald’s blueberry muffin.

Line Buzz: Not much buzzing today, mainly because one of my films had no line (I went straight in upon arrival), one line was in the pouring rain so chatter was nonexistent, and the other two had people I knew, so we chatted about other stuff instead.

Weather for Tomorrow: Mainly sunny. High near 17C.

TIFF 2006 #4: Cuts

Okay, so it’s after 1 a.m., I’m just sitting down to write this blog entry, and I’m beyond pooped. It was a day of mad running around, poor nutrition and very warm weather. So, in order to maintain the level of quality of the TIFF diary, I’m making an executive decision and invoking the Margaret Cho Blog Brevity Law ™ which, as per last year’s creation of the law, states that I may drastically shorten my rambling if it’s really late. I will, however, try to revise and expand upon today’s goings-on tomorrow night, when I should be home by 9pm. So, check back later tomorrow night for the full scoop.

For now, may I present: highlights!

First off, karma did, indeed, lay the smackdown on Obnoxious Man last night – 25 minutes into the film, the projector at the Borat screening broke! You should have seen my face when my friend Lee Sister #3 (or #1, depending on which way you’re counting) informed me of this news today. UTTER GLEE! I mean, I feel bad for the hundreds of other patrons who suffered as a result of Obnoxious Man’s heinous faux-pas, but so goes karma. For more, check out the comments section from two entries ago, where Matt has very kindly offered a link to a recap of the night’s technical glitches.

The haircut this morning was lovely. I went to the Aveda Institute downtown and had a lovely young woman named Laura snipping away. I’d been warned in advance that the process could be quite slow, and that the cut itself could take two hours (since the cuts are done by students who must, in turn, run everything past an advisor before beginning), but it took less time than I thought – I was in and out in under two hours. Plus, a free relaxing massage, and all for only $14!

Three movies today. Without further adieu:

Time (4/8), a Korean drama/thriller about a young woman (Park Ji-yun) who believes her boyfriend has grown tired of her looks. So, she takes off, dramatically alters her face through radical plastic surgery so that she’s now played by a different actress (Sung Hyun-ah), poses as a different person, returns to re-woo her devastated boyfriend…only to discover he’s mourning the loss of her original self (whom he believes is missing). It was okay, but it started getting really repetitive about 45 minutes in. Oh, and it was also repetitive.

Next was a heavy but terrific little drama about teen suicide from New Zealand. It was called 2:37 (7/8), it featured some amazing performances from its young cast and was written and directed by a 19-year-old, who explained – in surprising detail – the fact that he wrote the film after his own unsuccessful suicide attempt. The story follows a half dozen high schoolers through the course of a day, which ends with one student’s on-campus suicide. We see their assorted problems, ranging from incontinence to closeted homosexuality to an unexpected pregnancy, and watch as they all melt down. It was cleverly laid out, so that – despite the film’s opening dealing with the discovery of the body – the identity of the student who dies isn’t revealed until the very end. All in all, very well done…though my friend Lee Sister #3 felt the director was overly self-involved and needlessly rambly during his Q&A.

Oh, and before this film began, I also heard the funniest exchange between a woman climbing the dark stairs inside the theater, and her friend, who was trying to direct her.

“Bev?”

“Over here.”

“I can’t see you.”

“I know.”

“Am I close?”

The third movie of the day will likely wind up being my favourite at TIFF 2006. Much in the same way that I saw Imagine Me & You on the first Friday night of TIFF 2005, and knew that it would be my fave of that fest, this one had me at hello. It was the documentary Summercamp! (8/8 – a full pie!), which follows a bunch of Illinois kids to sleep-away camp for three weeks. It was FANTASTIC! It was simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking – I laughed for much of the film, sniffled at other times, and was near bawling at one particularly poignant and completely unexpected moment. I won’t spoil it for you, but if you have it scheduled for later in the week (Angela, I’m looking at you ;-)), bring Kleenex. (Look for Angela’s comments on the film later in the week! ;-))

The screening also had the BEST introduction I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing at any of the 16 (17?) TIFFs I’ve attending. The co-directors were there, along with a number of the counselors from the featured camp, all dressed in wild and crazy camp-esque gear (funny hats, bright colored and mismatched clothes, necklaces that had blinking lights, etc.), and they had us all stand up for a SING-ALONG! Plus pre-song stretching! It was great! And the post-film Q&A was just as good. They all trucked back onstage and, just like when I went to see Spellbound several fests ago, the directors revealed that a couple of the young campers (Holly and Cameron…whose names will only mean something to you after you see the movie) WERE THERE! OMG! Huge, huge applause from the audience.

Then it was time for the big Star! Schmooze party. In short, special thanks to my friend Greg, who was my “date” for the night and who made sure I was never alone. We got there just after 9pm, wandered a lot, ran into a few people we knew, I ate a bunch of really great food (they had tons of delicious food stations…which was good since I hadn’t eaten since my power bar around 2:30 p.m.), and then found an ideal spot for celeb sighting! Amid the plethora of less-interesting Canadian talent who wandered past (look everyone! it’s Gordonn Pinsent and the overly Botoxed stylist guy from Canada’s Next Top Model!), we came within inches of Samuel L. Jackson, Billy Connolly, Eugene Levy, Dylan Baker (oddly, MUCH less creepy in person!), Tom Sizemore (we were hoping for a meltdown, but alas no), Paulo Costanzo (yawn), Chantal Kreviazuk and husband Raine Maida, Sarah Polley, Julie Christie, John Abraham (the Bollywood star) and…drumroll please…Brittany Snow.

For those of you who just said, “Who?”, I say: for shame!

As many of you know, and many of you will now learn, I loved the show American Dreams. LOVED IT. It was heartwarming and comforting and sweet and moving and brilliantly written. I wanted to take the whole Pryor family and put them in my cupboard so that I could spend time with them whenever I wanted. It was an amazing television drama cancelled well before its time.

Well, Brittany Snow played the show’s cute-as-a-button young heroine, Meg Pryor. (She was also recently in John Tucker Must Die, but I’m not holding that against her.) I tell you, it was all I could do not to run over and hug her and ask her whether Vanessa Lengies tagged along for old time's sake. Needless to say, I refrained, and opted to internalize my fangurl tendencies. (Seriously, though, of everyone we saw, I was most excited about seeing her. Greg can attest to that.)

Then, as predicted in yesterday’s forecast, a massive thunderstorm hit , rain poured down, people fled for tent coverage and tried not to step into the ever-growing puddles of water that were forming everywhere. We left just before 11:30 p.m. feeling pretty satisfied at the star wattage we encountered, considering we didn’t have access to the V.I.P. area where everyone of note had been herded.

Okay, it’s after 1:30 a.m. now and I need to sleep. Gotta be up early for Volver first thing tomorrow. *yawn*


Celebrity Sightings: See above for the surprisingly beefy who’s-who list! Sam Jackson, people! Right there!

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: Almost everything. A stale blueberry danish for breakfast, a power bar for lunch and two mini Smores chocolate bars for dinner (until arrival at the Schmooze).

Line Buzz: Lots of good buzz for 12:08 East of Bucharest, Fido and Penelope, which I have on deck tomorrow.

Weather for Tomorrow: Showers in the morning. Partly cloudy in the afternoon. High near 18C.

TIFF 2006 #3: Day One… And a New TIFF Record!

It’s movie time!

It’s new TIFF record time!

And it’s “Vickie Discovers Something New About Herself” time!

To begin…

Today was the official start of the film festival, when line-ups move from the box offices at College Park and the Manulife Centre to the actual theaters, and when the city’s movie-mad population magically increases several times over.

I noticed this morning that music seems to be the prevailing theme among the programmed films this year and, more specifically, among the ones I’ve selected to see myself. Along with the Dixie Chicks doc, Shut Up & Sing, I have tickets for The Magic Flute (Kenneth Branagh’s version of the Mozart opera…see post-mortem below), American Hardcore (which is about punk, not porn), and La Tourneuse de pages (a thriller about a piano player and her page turner…again, mini-review below). TIFF, meanwhile, is also featuring a couple of music-themed documentaries (the ones I’ve already listed + The U.S. vs. John Lennon and Kurt Cobain: About a Son), along with a half-dozen international productions celebrating, in theme or content, the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. Toronto is also hosting the world premiere of El Cantante, the Jennifer Lopez/Marc Anthony biography of singer Hector Lavoe, which promises to wind up more of a media maelstrom than anything else. And those are just the ones that immediately spring to mind. I’m sure there are others featuring musician protagonists or storylines involving music in some way, like the Bollywood offering, Never Say Goodbye.

But, in what’s been the most unexpected TIFF musical coincidence, it’s been announced that Beyoncé and John Mayer will both be performing live, for free, in downtown Toronto on the last two days of the fest. Whaaa…? I mean, the performances have nothing to do with the film festival, but the timing of the gigs – put on to celebrate the opening of a downtown music store – couldn’t be more perfect.

To continue…

Today, I simultaneously set a new TIFF record AND learned something new about myself.

My first film of TIFF 2006 was the aforementioned The Magic Flute, which fell into the category of movies I selected simply because there was nothing else screening at that time. It was screening at the Elgin at 2pm and, since today was plenty sunny, I decided to arrive just before 1:30pm so as to minimize my baking time. Besides, I reasoned, the Elgin is a massive theater and the screening isn’t sold out, so even if the line is huge I’ll still get in and get a decent seat.

Well, the ticket-holders line was huge, but I took my place. And then waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. For no clear reason, they held the line outside until almost 1:55pm, so I was melting by the time we started to shuffle into the theater.

[I’d like to use this moment to add an item to my list of festival DOs and DON’Ts: if it’s sunny and you know you’re going to be waiting in line for any length of time, bring sunscreen.]

Thankfully, the theater is still massive and there were PLENTY of good seats. So, I sat down and started cooling my core body temperature down to normal. This screening marked a TIFF first for me, because the world premiere of the film was happening simultaneously in Toronto and Venice…so we were treated to a lengthy videotaped message from director Kenneth Branagh, who clearly got “Italy” in the continental coin toss between the two fests. He encouraged us, repeatedly, to have a fantastic time.

I’m sorry to say that I did not. I tried. I really did. For almost 45 minutes I sat there, slowly turning to stone (okay, that’s an exaggeration, but it felt like that’s what was happening), trying my best to get into the movie in some way while seat back after seat back flipped up as other audience members walked out. But I couldn’t get into it. I just couldn’t. I was bored silly. My mind was wandering. I started thinking about all the other things I could be doing, and better ways in which my time could be spent. I thought about snacks, or watching TV or writing this blog entry. And then I realized that I should probably just get up and leave after 45 minutes because, really, the film still had another 90 minutes to go and there was no way I was going to stay to the end anyway.

And that’s when I learned something new about myself: I don’t like watching operas on film. Not that I’m particularly fond of them in person, either, but there you go. By leaving my first film of the festival well before its halfway mark, I also set a new TIFF record (for myself) for Earliest Walkout of the Festival. I consider it a “glass is half full” way of looking at the situation.

I had a few hours to kill so I came home to relax and have a proper meal before heading out to my second film of the day, La Tourneuse de pages. Once again, though, we were kept outside in line until four minutes (?!) before the scheduled start time…which, of course, meant the movie started almost 20 minutes late. As an added treat, I’m fairly certain that I had Parents of Obnoxious Man standing behind me in line. They were about the right age, THEY SPOKE ALL IN CAPS JUST LIKE OBNOXIOUS MAN DID and they rambled on and on and on and on (loudly) about NOTHING. Sadly, there was no refuge to be had in front of me, since there stood Questionable Hygiene Man, whose aromatic majesty did not in any way delight my senses. *sigh*

But Tourneuse (6/8) turned out to be worth the wait! It was a fantastic little gem! A taut and tidy psychological thriller and revenge yarn, about a young woman named Mélanie (Déborah François), who decides to totally screw over the renowned pianist (Catherine Frot), who ruined her dreams as a girl. The movie was filled with wonderfully tense moments and a terrific performance from François, who has very little dialogue but a face that says “I am *so* going to f**k with your life in a very bad way!” almost constantly. (And it never hurts to throw a little HoYay! into the picture, which was an unexpected treat.) Bouncy and adorable director Denis Dercourt was in attendance and was just as engaging as his film, making for a fine end to an otherwise less-than-fine first day of moviegoing.

To conclude…flutes and opera? No. Revenge and HoYay? Yay!

Tomorrow, the Schmooze party and, even scarier, a new haircut. ==:-o

Celebrity Sightings: None yet.

Crappiest Crap I Consumed Today: Shockingly, none yet! The unexpected break after Flute is likely the reason, since I had time to eat actual food.

Line Buzz: Everyone and their cousin seems to want to see Borat. Plus, some early, non-line good buzz on Little Children, Summer ‘04 and, not surprisingly, Volver.

Weather for Tomorrow: Partly cloudy w/ a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. High of 26C, w/ a humidex of 32C. Yikes!

TIFF 2006 #2: Nightmares in the TIFFverse

Today I encountered one of my TIFF nightmares live and in person.

Anyone who’s read my diaries in either of the past two years knows how I feel about frequent TIFF press-conference moderator Henri Béhar. You know that I find him beeeeYOND creepy, extremely pompous and more than a little obnoxious. (He’s probably more obnoxious than yesterday’s Obnoxious Man when you factor in consistent obnoxiousness spread out over time.) He wields his moderation powers with little flair but plenty of haughtiness, and he often seems like he wants the press corps to bow at his feet (which many do). At the same time, he’s quite the sycophant when given the right celebrity panel member.

Anyway…

Today, at the Varsity Cinema, I saw him. In the flesh. Out in the open. Out in the daytime. LIVE. And, for a moment before I recognized him, I thought, “That little old woman has a rather unique sense of style.”

Then it hit me. OMG. That’s Henri Béhar! AND HE HAS A PAGEBOY HAIRCUT!

Words cannot accurately convey what a sight he was to behold, so you may behold him yourself – FINALLY! after two years of image searches!

BEHOLD!

You’ll note the hair, and his uncanny resemblance to someone’s grandmother.

I did not approach him. I did not make direct eye contact. I feared that I might turn into a pillar of salt or, worse, that he’d somehow know that I write snarky things about him every September and kill me with the sheer force of his self-importance. I ran away.

In other news, I neglected to mention yesterday that, for the first time ever, I have been invited to the CHUM/City Star! Schmooze Party. For the non-Toronto readers, this is an annual TIFF shindig that’s grown in scope in recent years. It’s a big, fat party held at the CHUM/City HQ, a great old building that houses MuchMusic, Bravo!, Space and other specialty networks. The party is televised, live, on the first Friday night of each festival. And, this year, I’ll be lost somewhere in that sea of industry types, hangers-on, poseurs and assorted Canadian talent.

Aside from my inherent anxiety about going solo (ticket admits one only, alas) to an event of this size, and my fear that it’s going to be like a giant school dance where I wind up weeping alone in a corner while all the cool kids live it up, I’m greatly afeared that it will turn out to be a big waste of time and energy. Past experience tells me it’s a distinct possibility.

For years, the annual TIFF BBQ at Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre was THE party to attend. Celebs crowded the property, security was insanely tight and you actually had to be bused in from the city. So, many of us TIFF regulars would sigh and wonder how or when we might be able to participate in its picnic-like magnificence. It was like a movie-fan’s utopia, where you could chat nonchalantly with Whoopi Goldberg or Sharon Stone or various members of the Sutherland clan while you ate your gourmet hamburger or corn-on-the-cob.

Then, one year, I won tickets to the BBQ. This was IT! I’d finally managed access to the inner fest circle! Oh, what a time I would have!

Sadly, the whole thing was hugely underwhelming. There was nary a celeb to be seen, the place was jam-packed with people, long lines abounded at every cramped food station, it was hot and humid, and I felt like I was wearing a big sign that read “INTERLOPER,” given the decidedly chilly reception I received from most people I met. Not only that, but attending the BBQ meant I had to skip three movies that day, so lost out on the tickets I’d paid for AND had a crappy time to boot.

Given that, I’m wary of the Schmooze. I’ve been promised a good time by my publicist pals, so I’m hoping it delivers. If nothing else, it’s spurred me to get a much-needed haircut. So, you know, that’s cool.

I realized I also neglected to list some of the films I have on deck, which range from the highly anticipated to the “yeah, I just picked this just because it fit.” Among the ones I’m excited about: Volver, Griffin & Phoenix (because I ♥ Amanda Peet!), Severance, Summer ’04, Fido, This is England, Starter For Ten, Blindsight and the Dixie Chicks documentary. I couldn’t snag tickets to a number of films I wanted to see, like Little Children or the now must-have film, D.O.A.P. Among my “fit” movies, which I’m not terribly excited about but which I hope prove to be delightful surprises, are The Dog Problem**, Falling and 2:37.

Though, I know that by time the festival winds down, all the films will melt into a blur anyway, so there you go.

** The Dog Problem is the new film directed by Scott Caan. If you recall, back on day eight of TIFF 2003, I went to see his first film, Dallas 362, which was meh…but the post-film Q&A was fantastic and redeemed the whole evening. So, even if this one blows, perhaps Caan will attend and entertain the audience after the closing credits.

TIFF 2006 #1: So Cute...So Rude...

I’m getting things underway a little late this year because, really, how many times can you be expected to read about the splendor of the program book, the inane ticket lottery and the flurry of box numbers before you actually slip into unconsciousness out of sheer boredom? (If you desperately need a fix, you can always revisit the diaries from previous festivals, links to which can be found here. Or just check out the blog archives from September 2005.) So, my apologies if you were somehow anxiously anticipating details of where my order landed (box 2 of 40) or which box was drawn first (#22) or how many tickets I scored as a result (33 of my 35 picks). Scintillating though those details might have been, I’ve decided less is more where needless pre-fest rambling is concerned.

That said, here’s some needless pre-fest rambling…

[Note: Starting in a day or so, this diary also appears, in its entirety and with plenty of pretty pictures!, over at Moviepie’s TIFF Diary main page. Updates appear here first, every night, though.]

Today was ticket-exchange day, but this entry has less to do with exchanging tickets than it does with the fascinating juxtapositions that occur frequently during the festival. Sometimes it means seeing a horrible movie right before a cinematic masterpiece; sometimes it means winding up in a seat between someone who smells horrible and someone who’s fresh as a daisy; and sometimes, like today, it means seeing The Cutest Thing EVER within 90 minutes of seeing The Rudest Thing EVER.

First, the cute. So ridiculously cute that it was physically painful. In line this morning, a few people behind me, was a young woman with a tiny, flopsy black lab puppy on a big red leash. (AWWWWWWW!) But, even cuter was the fact that the puppy was wearing a green smock that read “Future Guide Dog in Training” on it! (Seriously, AWWWWWWW!) [The dog at left, though adorable, is not the dog I saw...the puppy in line was much smaller, and its smock was much bigger.] I told her that the wee dog was, hands down, the absolute cutest thing I have ever seen in a film festival line-up. And I meant it.

About an hour-and-a-half later came the monumentally rude. To preface this short tale: in line, right in front of the cute puppy and its handler, stood a guy I’m going to call Obnoxious Man, because he was so odious that he took obnoxiousness to a practically superhuman level. He was a doughy businessman-looking guy in his late-20s or early-30s, and everything he said was ALL IN CAPS BECAUSE HE’S IMPORTANT. Well, Obnoxious Man was lined up because he desperately, DESPERATELY wanted a ticket to the Borat movie. He was sweating, he wanted a ticket that badly. And he made sure we all knew how much he wanted one.

So, while waiting for the box office to open, Obnoxious Man struck up a conversation with the TIFF volunteer assigned to Line Patrol this morning – a pleasant and unassuming older woman, perhaps in her 60s?, with a France-French (as opposed to Québecois-French) accent. Obnoxious Man told her about his all-consuming desire for the Borat ticket, and she shared with him that she, too, really wants to see that film, but (since both screenings are sold out) that she kept checking all day yesterday to see if anyone had returned any. They hadn’t, there were no Borat tickets in the system and she thought Obnoxious Man’s chances might be slim.

Cut to 90 minutes later, about 15 minutes after the box office opened and the moment Obnoxious Man emerged from his ticket-exchange experience. I was standing outside waiting for a festbuddy to finish his order, and Obnoxious Man – clearly pleased with himself – strode out gleefully and headed directly over to the TIFF volunteer with whom he’d been chatting. I kid you not, this is what he did: he took a ticket, held it up in front of her face and said, “Read it and WEEP!”

It was a ticket to the Borat movie.

In that instant, with that dumb-ass (not to mention offensive) move, Obnoxious Man guaranteed himself a festival’s worth of seriously bad TIFF karma. I mean, who does that? Who GLOATS??? And who gloats over Borat??? To a volunteer, who’s friendly and doing a good job and working for free, of all people??? You’re just asking for a karmic bitchslap! The ticket-procuring process is hard enough on everyone as it is, so getting a ticket to a film that you know someone else desperately wants is usually a time for modesty, humility, apology and encouragement (“Oh, really? You wanted this one? Oh. Wow, I guess I just got lucky or something. That’s weird because that never happens to me. You can always try the rush line, though. Or try same-day! Someone might return a ticket tomorrow, so don’t give up!”). It is not a time for schoolyard taunting. Dumbass.

So, if anything goes awry at either of the Borat screenings, now you’ll know why. If the film breaks or the print doesn’t show up or Sacha Baron Cohen gets food poisoning or a plague of locusts descends on the theater, blame Obnoxious Man and his big, fat thumbing of the nose to festival courtesy and good manners. The universe frowns on the unapologetically impolite, and may just crap all over Obnoxious Man in the coming days. Stand clear.

Chocolate Milk and Cell Phone Pranks: A SIFF 2006 Wrap-up

My annual almost month-long celebration called SIFF (Seattle International Film Festival to those of you not in the know) has, once again, ended. This year was a little bittersweet, as I "only" saw 19 films (the lowest total in several years). Blame the fact that the first week I had to work tons of overtime at my "real" (paying the bills) job, including all through Memorial Weekend, and had to miss a large handful of screenings that I already had tickets for. Drat! And then I had the gumption to actually take a week's vacation towards the end of the fest. (At least I got to see a bear on that vacation, which is better than a movie... it's real life!) So, alas, SIFF '06 was more meager than most. But still, much fun was to be had! Here's my wrap-up:

My favorite SIFF movies of 2006:

Gypo - A quirky, sometimes funny, sometimes enraging and disturbing, and occasionally (surprisingly!) sexy Dogma 95 film, the first from the UK. The same tale is told from the perspective of three characters: A harried but kind wife and mother (and grandmother), her working-class, bitter and racist husband, and a young, pretty Roma refugee who comes into their lives.

C.R.A.Z.Y. - This Canadian 70s coming-of-age film swept the Genies recently, and I can see why. Zac is one of 5 brothers in a wonderfully rich cinematic family. He struggles with his dad, his brothers, and his sexuality. Audience laughs and cries with him.

49 Up - The latest installment of Michael Apted's every-7-years interviews with real-life Brits that were first interviewed in 1964 at the age of 7. Now square into middle age, the folks that still talk with Apted (of 14 original kids, 12 still participate) are mainly happy, forgoeing dreams for reality. Such an amazing "big picture" of humanity's life cycle, it makes you want to burst into tears.

Best promotional tie-in:

After the movie Expiration Date, a locally-made flick about a guy who fears he will be killed on his 25th birthday by a milk truck, we all had a treat waiting for us as we left the theater. Smith Brothers Dairy (who were the good sports to feature their "menacing" trucks in the film) gave everyone a little carton of chocolate milk to enjoy as we filed out! Nice touch, by the way, with the milkmen wearing traditional white outfits (which I never before thought of as creepy, but now I don't know...).

Best Q&A following a film:

Paul Dinello, who directed and starred in Strangers With Candy, was treated like a rock star by the audience. He gamefully answered questions from the crowd, until someone asked an Amy Sedaris question. He suddenly brightened and said, "I don't know... why don't we call her?" He whipped out his cell phone and said, "I know she is up... she's writing her book..." He put the phone on speaker as it rang, and when she answered, the audience freaked out. It was very charming. Someone asked if she was planning on auctioning off her "fatty" suits from the movie on Ebay, and she said she had five of them hanging in her closet, and that they were all stained (audience screams with delight). After that call, someone yelled, "Call Steven!" Paul said, "Oh, he's on vacation with his family in Charlotte... but let's try!" Steven Colbert did not answer his phone, but after the beep, he'll have a very surprising message I'm sure of a sold-out audience of 700 screaming in his ear from three time zones away.

Comments to the fest itself:

* Be more daring on Opening Night, like with last year's Me and You and Everyone We Know. This year's The Illusionist was back to good old crap-tastic Hollywood stinkiness.

* Cute T-shirts and schwag this year (especially the lunch box, and wrap-around t-shirt design). However, tread carefully on another such cartoony theme for next year... The marketing is starting to look a little repetitious, especially with Bumbershoot often having similar themes. I'm just sayin'.

* The new ticket system was AWESOME, despite occasional printer trouble at various venues. I was able to pick up my tickets for the whole week at the first box office I went to. VERY cool.

* Is the Egyptian's sound system muddy, or is it just me?

* Expanding screenings to the Eastside (but still showing the flicks in Seattle as well) was a great idea! I have several friends who live/work on the Eastside who took advantage of these screenings, and thanked the heavens that they didn't have to sit in traffic to attend a few SIFF flicks.

* The live-music events were kind of pricey... Specifically $20 for The Unknown with Portastatic. The whole thing was about an hour. How about $12 or $15 bucks if you know it will run short? Especially since us regular folks are already priced-out of the mega-expensive Opening and Closing Night events.

* Overall, maybe it was my choices, but I saw very few stinkers or disappointing movies this year... good job! I can't wait until next year!

MY Super Bowl vs. THE Super Bowl: A Conundrum

Everyone who knows me knows my obsession with the Oscars. "It's Linda's Super Bowl!" they mock. "It's my Super Bowl!" I proclaim happily. So how the heck do I suddenly find myself on a plane this upcoming Oscar Sunday on my way to a stoopid business trip? I will be missing my favorite gathering of the year, the Oscar party with my movie pals, where we place bets, eat junk food, scoff at fashions, roll our eyes at objectional winners and presenters, and yes, even occasionally cry at a good speech. Instead, I'll be sitting alone in a hotel room in Vegas, "watching" the Oscars with my friends over free long-distance minutes on a borrowed cell phone. But, shockingly, I'm ashamed to admit, this whole thing was my fault.

In December, my boss made his first threats: "You need to go for a week-long training conference, and soon! Guess what? There's a session in Chicago the first week of February! Book a flight. Now."

Chicago? In February? At an airport hotel? I whined. I scratched. My rainy and mossy Seattle self shuddered at the thought of being frozen into a popsicle in the famously harsh Midwestern winter. Then a lightbulb illuminated above my head with a cartoony "Ding!"

"Why, I CAN'T fly out that Sunday! That's SUPER BOWL Sunday!" Jokingly, I added, "I mean, what if the SEAHAWKS are in the Super Bowl this year? That would SUCK if I was on a plane to Chicago!"

Now, I haven't paid attention to the Seahawks since their last heyday in the mid-80s, before I morphed into an adult who is known to sometimes steam with fury at the idea of athletes getting paychecks in the multi-millions, and demanding (and getting) new stadiums with taxpayers' money. Don't even get me started on that. But my pleas and non-stop complaining ended up having an effect. The vice president of the company, who apparently loves me, came up with a compromise. "It's your lucky day..." my boss said to me a week or two later. "The VP found another conference for you to attend. It's in Vegas in March."

"Yesssssss...." I said, closing my eyes, hissing with under-the-breath Napoleon-Dynamite enthusiasm. Victory! Score! And did the Seahawks freakishly even make it to the Super Bowl? Heck, yes they did! Even if they lost to the Pittsburgh "Stealers", I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

It wasn't until I booked my flight for my post Super-Bowl business trip that a horrible realization dawned on me. First day of conference? March 6th. Flight to Las Vegas? Sunday, March 5th. Oscar Sunday.

Crap! Crappity crap crap. CRAP.

If I could kick myself in the ass, I would.

So, the Oscars will be a little different this year for me. No, it's alright... I'll be fine, really <**sniff!**>. My abrupt and urgent idea of moving the party to Vegas ended up petering out, as my pals either were broke or couldn't take time off. Instead, I've decided to make a nest on the hotel bed, and surround myself with junk food and periodically order room service on my company's dime. Maybe I'll wander down to the hotel bar, and get liquored up. I'll be that person—you know, the one whom people quietly sidle away from as I yell slurring at the TV, "Tell that girl to wear a bra! Her boobs are all floppy!" Then I'll stumble outside and fall into the pool. As I drift floating on my back, I'll look up and see the desert stars and think I'm actually an astronaut in space. The next morning I'll be fished out, just in time for my first day of the training conference. Yes.... It'll be good times in Vegas, mark my words.

‘Tis the season to avoid the multiplex!

Okay, my movie-going friends, the holiday movie season is upon us and with it comes a huge number of winter blockbusters mixed in with a whole whack of Oscar-bait offerings. You’ve been inundated with ads and commercials and merchandising tie-ins for giant gorillas and noble lions and wacky families, and – sometime between December 19th and January 3rd – you’re likely going to find yourself tempted to head to a theater to see what all the fuss has been about.

I’m here with a caveat, dear film lover: don’t. If you love movies and relish the experience of sitting in a darkened theater as magical images unspool before your eyes, stay home. Seriously. Your trip to the local multiplex will, I promise you, be more stressful, irritating and infuriating than humanly tolerable right now. Why? Because this is the prime time of year for everyone and their ill-mannered cousin to pack the kids into the minivan and lumber to the movies with their boorish behavior in tow.

I don’t know why, but it seems that this time of year always brings out the worst in the movie-going public. Or, perhaps, brings out the worst members of the movie-going public. These are the people who see films at theaters only once a year, or who (it seems) have never actually been in public with other people before. How else to explain the stupid things they say and do, and how wildly inappropriate they become once they’ve paid for their tickets and bought their trough-load of concession snacks?

You’re going to get the BFFs. Not the “best friends forever,” the Big Fat Families. You know the ones. It’s usually mom and dad and about four (or more) children ranging in age from 12 down to the newborn who will, without question, scream and cry throughout the film despite its parents’ assurances that their angelic infant always sleeps through everything. They’re the ones where said children are inevitably horribly behaved – and that horrible behavior quickly escalates once the parents decide to leave the kids alone at Harry Potter while they go see something else. The BFFs can be counted upon to engage in ridiculously complex snack-distribution rituals once the movie has actually started. This usually involves assorted rugrats arguing over popcorn and candy while mom and dad try to figure out a diplomatic way to make sure everyone gets his or her fair share. All of this, and much more, will take place in the row directly in front of, or behind, you…guaranteeing that your blood pressure will rise in direct proportion to how moronic the BFFs are. Good luck.

Failing the BFFs are the PALS – the Perpetually Audibly Limited Seniors. They’re the select members of the over-65 crowd whose hearing difficulties result in them talking, loudly, throughout the film in order to get clarification (on character, plot, dialogue, whatever) or voice opinions or complain about how the hard seats are aggravating their bursitis. They usually flock to the theaters at this time of year, either with the kids and grandkids or as an outing with other PALS, and you’re likely to find them at The Serious Oscar Contender films. While not nearly as problematic as the BFFs, you may want to steer clear of the PALS if you encounter them at movies like Brokeback Mountain. Trust me.

In addition to the rest of the usual suspects who can get one’s blood boiling at any time of the year – like the ASKs (Annoying Seat Kickers), LUGs (Large Unruly Groups), ESPs (Extremely Smelly People) and the always exasperating CPUs (Cell Phone Users) – you’ll find no group more hated or more prolific than the FCCs (F**king Chatty Cathies). They’re the ones who talk. A lot. Before the movie starts. During the trailers. During the credits. And then all through the movie. Members of this repellent species are evidently under the assumption that they’re not actually out at a movie, but that they’re really sitting in their massive, 300-seat living room. Alone. So they can talk and talk and talk and talk all they want at completely unacceptable volume levels. Sure, you’ll politely ask them to please keep it down…or to please be quiet…or to please, for the love of humanity, shut their freakin’ pieholes, but it won’t work. And, even if it does, the FCCs are like roaches – where there’s one, there’s many. So you might stomp out a few when you go see The Chronicles of Narnia, but a dozen more will spring up at King Kong or The Family Stone or Rumor Has It.

And, really, God help you if you’re going to see Cheaper By the Dozen 2, where you’re likely to suffer through not only a mediocre movie, but also every single one of the groups listed above.

So, my advice to you? Rent some DVDs. Or, if you really must go to a theater, avoid anything that was released after December 2nd. Check out “smaller” movies – foreign films or stuff you’ve never heard of. Let the uninformed masses queue up for Fun With Dick and Jane while you wander into, say, Down to the Bone or Transamerica or Good Night and Good Luck. Hell, even a matinee of the little-seen Aeon Flux will be emptier, more civilized and more enjoyable than 10 minutes of fighting for peace and quiet at Memoirs of a Geisha.

Narnia, Penguins, and the Christian Right

Going in to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I had some lingering hesitations. The Christian Right, with more than a little help from the media, reminded us all over and over that this movie was probably the most Christian thing since wafers, wine, and The Passion of the Christ. Praise be! Churches are buying out the multiplexes! It is Family Approved! Narnia, before anyone even saw it, had been endorsed by God himself! (At least his self-proclaimed mouthpieces.)

Having the Christian Right endorse something is just about the best way to get me to run the other direction, but I'll admit I was curious. Heck, Tilda Swinton was in it, playing the White Witch!

You see, in my mind, there is a big difference between Narnia and The Passion. One is about kids, a big kitty, and a fantasy world of good and evil. The Passion is about, well, Jesus Christ. Now I know that C.S. Lewis made it no secret that his story was a Christian parable, but it is also an interpretation. I don't remember the talking beavers in the Bible. I could argue just as much about The Matrix (Neo is the chosen one, he had a "virgin" test tube birth, he has been expected by his followers, he dies and comes back more powerful than ever before to lead his people). Heck, I'd almost say that The Matrix is more obviously Christian (despite the black pleather and machine guns) than Narnia.

I have to admit I love it best when the Christian Right bellows something to the masses that doesn't quite make as much sense as they'd hoped. For instance, I had heard that the Christian Right took full credit for the success of the recent crowd-pleasing documentary hit March of the Penguins. "That there penguin movie is a good example of Family Values!" they crowed, encouraging the masses to go see it. After I finally saw the film (and enjoyed it), I was pleased to find that they had endorsed a movie where the dad penguin stays home to birth the baby, mom leave immediately to go and eat non-stop for three months, the parents are monogamous (for a year, then go their separate ways), and sometimes there is carnage where desperate childless penguins try to steal or kill the babies of others. And did you hear the recently revived story about the monogamous gay penguins, Roy and Silo, at the Central Park Zoo? (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4352011/). They've stuck it out longer than many of their "straight" penguin pals.

Though I hardly ever agree with them, and constantly find them bafflingly infuriating, pushy, bigoted, and small-minded, I have to admit the Christian Right can be unintentionally entertaining. And, because of that, I say to the Christian Right: God Bless 'em! (even if they don't say the same about me).