Instead of College Park, this year’s southernmost TIFF box office is located at the brand spankin’ new AMC 24 at Yonge and Dundas. Which, mercifully, they’ve finally finishd construction on, since although it’s disconcerting enough emerging from a festival screening into a food court, I think it would somehow be worse to have to slog up three levels of escalators past nothing but drywall, scaffolding and surly staring contractors with Burton Cummings hair. I’m still not sold on the whole megaplex-as-festival-venue idea. The Scotia, at least, limits TIFF to the front four screens and manages to maintain the festival atmosphere while adding the more traditional moviegoing perks, like a snack bar, that you can’t enjoy at, say, Isabel Bader. Fortunately, I’m only at the AMC for three more screenings this week, although two of those are Midnight Madness flicks, which seem more incongruous at that location than anywhere else, although no more so, I guess, than The Memory of Angels.
Before I get going on that, was there a senior’s discount day that I wasn’t aware of? Because the 5:30 screening was a sea of grey hair (okay, considering the size of the AMC 1, “pond of grey hair” may be more appropriate), walkers, canes and at least one portable oxygen tank. And I had the great fortune of sitting next to this guy:
“So tell me again how you buy tickets? Wow, eighteen movies. I guess you must really love film, eh? You know, yesterday they told us this was sold out but then they also said to try again this morning and that’s how we got our tickets. Who are these seats reserved for? Really? The director is going to be here, too? Oh, that would be terrific, we can ask questions about the film then! You know, I’m from Montreal, that’s why I wanted to see this…” and then he went on to identify for his wife all the city landmarks as they appeared onscreen until I finally nudged him and made the finger-to-lips universal signal to shush although I’m hoping the look in my eyes also conveyed the addendum “Are you that bloody ignorant that you yammer all the way through every movie you go and see or is this the first time you’ve been in a movie theatre since The Sting? STFU!”
ANYHOW…La Mémoire des Anges (so identified in the program book and on my ticket yet not in the credits which were entirely in English) is an eighty-minute montage of clips from the National Film Board archives, exclusively from films set in or about Montreal between the depression and, say, Expo 67, the effect of which is not unlike flipping through your grandmother’s photo album and envisioning a time when all men looked sixty and were born wearing hats and women were prohibited by law from leaving the house without wearing white gloves and a pair of batwing-shaped glasses.
So it’s a sort of interesting compilation, especially as I’m a former resident of Montreal and it’s fascinating just how much of the architecture from sixty-odd years ago is still intact today. And it’s an at-times stunning portrayal of the pre-Quiet Revolution era, in which the Catholic church held sway over every aspect of private and public life in the province. But I’m stumped as to what the actual purpose of the movie is. It’s obviously not destined for theatrical release so…what? Promotional DVD sampler for the NFB library? A permanent exhibit for Tourism Montreal? As a sampler, it’s way too long. So I’m not even sure how I’m supposed to take it beyond “this is your grandfather’s Montreal.” Um, okay? (**1/2)
Monday, September 8, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
TIFF 2008 reviews: The Ghost
Okay, so you have a good day, then you have a bad day. I mean, come on, with eighteen screenings on my docket at TIFF this year, they can’t ALL be gems. And thus, my first stinker of the fest, The Ghost. I don’t have much to say about it, really, partly because I fell asleep a couple of times and can’t claim to have followed every minute of the setup. I couldn’t leave, though, because the director was sitting right behind me. On the plus side, the program book got the running time wrong, and it was about forty minutes shorter than I’d thought it would be.
Anyway, here’s the thing about foreign fest fare, as far as my programming picks are concerned. My theory is that we learn much more about foreign cultures through their genre pop culture than through any sort of official national cinema or adaptations of the country’s “classics.” By the very nature of inherent populist requirements, horror, thriller, comedy, sci-fi or what have you tap more deeply into a national culture’s touchstones than straight drama, which in my experience tends towards the “look at my potato” school of storytelling. This has been borne out through years at the festival: Iceland’s Jar City, Hong Kong’s PTU and Throw Down, Japan’s Sukiyaki Western Django…these films say more to me about the countries that produced them than all the Zhang, Bergman and Ray you can throw at me.
That said, the movie still has to stand on its own merits, thus my apathy or outright dislike of Macedonia’s Shadows, Austria’s Silent Resident and as of tonight, Russia’s The Ghost. Part of the problem I had with the flick, I suppose, was that it seemed to be structured around where one would think the major plot twist would happen, like the director was trying to ape American movies stylistically but couldn’t quite get the bat off his shoulder. Not helping things is the fact that the protagonist is a major douchebag throughout the first seventy minutes or thereabouts, so when his life turns criminally Kafkaesque, it’s hard to be 100% sympathetic to his plight. Anyway, like I said: they can’t all be gems. Hopefully I’ll have better luck tomorrow. (**)
Anyway, here’s the thing about foreign fest fare, as far as my programming picks are concerned. My theory is that we learn much more about foreign cultures through their genre pop culture than through any sort of official national cinema or adaptations of the country’s “classics.” By the very nature of inherent populist requirements, horror, thriller, comedy, sci-fi or what have you tap more deeply into a national culture’s touchstones than straight drama, which in my experience tends towards the “look at my potato” school of storytelling. This has been borne out through years at the festival: Iceland’s Jar City, Hong Kong’s PTU and Throw Down, Japan’s Sukiyaki Western Django…these films say more to me about the countries that produced them than all the Zhang, Bergman and Ray you can throw at me.
That said, the movie still has to stand on its own merits, thus my apathy or outright dislike of Macedonia’s Shadows, Austria’s Silent Resident and as of tonight, Russia’s The Ghost. Part of the problem I had with the flick, I suppose, was that it seemed to be structured around where one would think the major plot twist would happen, like the director was trying to ape American movies stylistically but couldn’t quite get the bat off his shoulder. Not helping things is the fact that the protagonist is a major douchebag throughout the first seventy minutes or thereabouts, so when his life turns criminally Kafkaesque, it’s hard to be 100% sympathetic to his plight. Anyway, like I said: they can’t all be gems. Hopefully I’ll have better luck tomorrow. (**)
TIFF 2008 reviews: It Might Get Loud
Next up was another of my fallback screening picks, and I’m still baffled as to how I managed to snag a ticket for what had to be one of the packed houses at the festival, Davis Guggenheim’s documentary It Might Get Loud. The concept is simple: three major rock guitarists, each from a different musical generation, having a creative summit on camera, crosscut with location shooting of their workspaces and vintage footage of The Early Years. Basic stuff, except that the three stars are Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. In all my years of the festival, I’ve never seen an audience so primed and jazzed by the presence of stars…you can have your Clooneys and Pitts, I have a hard time believing either of them have received such a split-the-sky thundering standing O the way the former Led Zeppelin axeman got by taking one step into the Ryerson auditorium.
As for the movie itself, It Might Get Loud is one of the great rock documentaries and a guitar nerd’s wet dream. The vintage footage of a teenage Page’s early TV appearances in pre-Yardbirds combos is reason enough to see the movie. However, these numbers also prompted some of the more annoying audience call-outs; the crowd had more than its share of paunchy longhaired ex-hippies, already primed to cheer every time Page’s name was even mentioned onscreen for the first half hour, and the hoot of “You’ve come a long way, Jimmy!” when the scratchy BBC footage played was just embarrassing.
The whole evening turned into kind of a blur for me. It’s easy to get lost in the riffage as your brain tries to process concepts like the three stars all jamming on the “I Will Follow” intro riff and turning a two chord repeating figure into a heavenly paean. So I’m left with random thoughts:
· The Edge deserves a lot better than to be saddled with that obnoxious goof as a lead singer. The U2 footage reaffirms my impression of Bono as a dingbat who’s probably always composing articles about himself in his head (“’Politicians are a funny breed,’ he mused, settling back in the limo on the way to the airport…yeah, that’s what he’ll write.”) In fact, one of the Edge’s big laugh lines happens when I’m pretty sure he’s doing an impression of Bono’s portentiousness.
· Jack White is a bundle of contradictions for me. On one hand he seems to let himself be defined by his shtick, be that the colour coordinated wardrobe or his ongoing claim that Meg is his sister (is that one of those ironic things, that by repeating the trope five years after it’s been revealed as false, it becomes funny again?), an impression backed up by the Raconteurs footage in which, stripped of such irrelevancies, he seems to put on a better show. On the other hand, he’s a fucking great guitarist and his love of the blues seems utterly genuine and not at all like white boy slumming.
· Jimmy Page is the epitome of cool. I’m not the biggest Zep fan—in fact, if I never hear “Stairway” again it’ll be far too soon—but Page just eats up the lens with charisma.
Anyway, it was a pretty magical night. I was in the third row, so my proximity to rock royalty was as good as it’s ever been, even including Lou Reed at last year’s fest. I think I’ve got to go practice now. (****)
TIFF 2008 reviews: JCVD
(now that I’m actually getting to the reviews part of my festival dispatches, I’m going to my annual 4-star ratings system, in honour of Roger Ebert, and if anyone knows if he made it to the fest this year, please give him my best. I’m also assuming that anyone logging into this blog has access to the tiff08.ca website and the film summaries contained therein so I’ll be skipping plot overviews for the most part.)
Reading over my past few entries, it’s embarrassingly obvious that I’ve been really negative this year. Yeah, there have been some hitches, but I’m willing to posit that one reason I’m so out of sorts is that my regular TIFF body rhythms are off. I’m pretty sure that every other year I’ve attended the festival I’ve attended a screening on opening night. This year with my backup tickets my first film wasn’t until Friday afternoon. So I was living in an emotional temporal stutter until I finally settled in for…a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? Well, yes and no.
If there exists a more self-excoriating film project by a major movie star, I have yet to see it. JCVD isn’t a joke. It’s not a take-the-piss approach to an actor’s image, a self-referential inside-Hollywood elbow in the ribs ode to a star’s image that comes off as manufactured and contrived as said star’s mainstream efforts. Nor can JCVD even be described as a comeback vehicle, as its goal is something different and almost unsettling: therapy.
The centerpiece of the film is a five-minute unbroken shot in which the drama freezes, the eponymous star floats up through the ceiling and, among unattended grip equipment, breaks the fourth wall to lay himself bare for the audience. No, not in a “Very nice, Mr. Keitel, now please put that away.” sort of way, but in an unsettlingly emotional purge, a paean to a career that tumbled from some relatively impressive heights to straight-to-DVD purgatory. Addressing the camera/audience directly, Van Damme unloads blame for his decline on himself, the business, himself, the pressures of stardom, himself, his own lack of willpower and himself again. He actually cries in this scene, and it doesn’t get a laugh, nor is he going for one. One wonders how many takes were required to get the shot in the can; if it was a first take I wouldn’t be surprised.
The fact that the monolog is delivered in French helps immeasurably. Actually, that could be said about the film as a whole—sample any of Van Damme’s “classic” actioners and one realizes that even a master thespian couldn’t put lipstick on the pig that tried to pass as expository dialogue (No Retreat No Surrender's "So. It is you. The son. Is it not?" still cracks me up). But here, freed from the constraints of The Prisoner ripoffs, illogically paradoxical science fiction and the toxicity of Rob Schneider, as well as using his native tongue. JCVD gives his first genuinely terrific performance, top to bottom. It’s all in the subtleties: asides that are anything but sly, resignation, fatigue…even in one of the few scenes in English, a custody battle flashback, his body language is priceless. If nothing else, only the most churlish critic could fault the star’s acting abilities here. Comparisons to Stallone’s work in Copland (for much the same reasons) are appropriate.
JCVD isn’t a perfect film. The sepia-toned photography is beautiful and evocative, but a little goes a long way to negligible effect. That to-the-camera shot goes on for about a minute longer than it really needs to (or maybe that’s the point). And the production might have shelled out a bit more for a proofreader to snag those typos in the subtitles which, I should point out, were white against white about 20% of the time. But overall, JCVD is a daring move by a star with nothing much left to lose and is all that much more powerful an experience as a result. (***1/2)
Reading over my past few entries, it’s embarrassingly obvious that I’ve been really negative this year. Yeah, there have been some hitches, but I’m willing to posit that one reason I’m so out of sorts is that my regular TIFF body rhythms are off. I’m pretty sure that every other year I’ve attended the festival I’ve attended a screening on opening night. This year with my backup tickets my first film wasn’t until Friday afternoon. So I was living in an emotional temporal stutter until I finally settled in for…a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie? Well, yes and no.
If there exists a more self-excoriating film project by a major movie star, I have yet to see it. JCVD isn’t a joke. It’s not a take-the-piss approach to an actor’s image, a self-referential inside-Hollywood elbow in the ribs ode to a star’s image that comes off as manufactured and contrived as said star’s mainstream efforts. Nor can JCVD even be described as a comeback vehicle, as its goal is something different and almost unsettling: therapy.
The centerpiece of the film is a five-minute unbroken shot in which the drama freezes, the eponymous star floats up through the ceiling and, among unattended grip equipment, breaks the fourth wall to lay himself bare for the audience. No, not in a “Very nice, Mr. Keitel, now please put that away.” sort of way, but in an unsettlingly emotional purge, a paean to a career that tumbled from some relatively impressive heights to straight-to-DVD purgatory. Addressing the camera/audience directly, Van Damme unloads blame for his decline on himself, the business, himself, the pressures of stardom, himself, his own lack of willpower and himself again. He actually cries in this scene, and it doesn’t get a laugh, nor is he going for one. One wonders how many takes were required to get the shot in the can; if it was a first take I wouldn’t be surprised.
The fact that the monolog is delivered in French helps immeasurably. Actually, that could be said about the film as a whole—sample any of Van Damme’s “classic” actioners and one realizes that even a master thespian couldn’t put lipstick on the pig that tried to pass as expository dialogue (No Retreat No Surrender's "So. It is you. The son. Is it not?" still cracks me up). But here, freed from the constraints of The Prisoner ripoffs, illogically paradoxical science fiction and the toxicity of Rob Schneider, as well as using his native tongue. JCVD gives his first genuinely terrific performance, top to bottom. It’s all in the subtleties: asides that are anything but sly, resignation, fatigue…even in one of the few scenes in English, a custody battle flashback, his body language is priceless. If nothing else, only the most churlish critic could fault the star’s acting abilities here. Comparisons to Stallone’s work in Copland (for much the same reasons) are appropriate.
JCVD isn’t a perfect film. The sepia-toned photography is beautiful and evocative, but a little goes a long way to negligible effect. That to-the-camera shot goes on for about a minute longer than it really needs to (or maybe that’s the point). And the production might have shelled out a bit more for a proofreader to snag those typos in the subtitles which, I should point out, were white against white about 20% of the time. But overall, JCVD is a daring move by a star with nothing much left to lose and is all that much more powerful an experience as a result. (***1/2)
Friday, September 5, 2008
The press needs an attitude adjustment
Okay, this insomnia, this waking up at 4:30 every morning no matter what time I turned out my lights the night before, this has really got to stop if I’m going to make it through this marathon.
First day of my vacation, and I’ve got two movies today: JCVD at 3:15 and It Might Get Loud at 9:15. Easing into things, I guess…tomorrow I’ve just got an evening show of The Ghost, and Monday is my first three-flick marathon.
More exhaustive fest coverage in the free weeklies yesterday. Glad to see that one of my gambles, My Mother, My Bride & I, is getting raves. Now included a Stella Artois pullout which features an easy-to-read schedule, a couple of glossy interviews and still more snarky promo. Seriously? In promotional material, should the first person singular pronoun appear quite so often? Who’s Barrett Hooper and why should we care that he’s got nothing to add to the tired “TIFF is the launching pad for Oscar season” meme? Does Glenn Sumi work for TIFF or Stella Artois? And if it’s the former, do the programmers mind that he calls some of their picks “stinkers”?
I’m not sure why the press coverage is bugging me so much this year. Part of it seems to be a tone of “cut ‘em down a peg” from outsiders but there’s plenty of pissing from inside the tent as well. Does TIFF have a few problems this year? Judging from what I saw and heard on ticket pickup day, sure, but can’t we put that crap on hold for ten days? Not to sound all Tracy Flick here, but can we have a little pep and spirit for the home team for at least a week?
First day of my vacation, and I’ve got two movies today: JCVD at 3:15 and It Might Get Loud at 9:15. Easing into things, I guess…tomorrow I’ve just got an evening show of The Ghost, and Monday is my first three-flick marathon.
More exhaustive fest coverage in the free weeklies yesterday. Glad to see that one of my gambles, My Mother, My Bride & I, is getting raves. Now included a Stella Artois pullout which features an easy-to-read schedule, a couple of glossy interviews and still more snarky promo. Seriously? In promotional material, should the first person singular pronoun appear quite so often? Who’s Barrett Hooper and why should we care that he’s got nothing to add to the tired “TIFF is the launching pad for Oscar season” meme? Does Glenn Sumi work for TIFF or Stella Artois? And if it’s the former, do the programmers mind that he calls some of their picks “stinkers”?
I’m not sure why the press coverage is bugging me so much this year. Part of it seems to be a tone of “cut ‘em down a peg” from outsiders but there’s plenty of pissing from inside the tent as well. Does TIFF have a few problems this year? Judging from what I saw and heard on ticket pickup day, sure, but can’t we put that crap on hold for ten days? Not to sound all Tracy Flick here, but can we have a little pep and spirit for the home team for at least a week?
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
My schedule and some strange/lame coverage
Okay, it’s all nailed down. Barring any impulse buys—which during the festival basically means I’ve got a four hour gap between movies and I’m debating whether to spend an hour and a half plus in transit back out to my place in the east end then back downtown or is it worth $20 to skip the trip and fill the gap with an Uzbek musical or Ghanaian murder mystery—I’ve got my schedule locked down. Made a couple of trades and picked up some extras for friends so here’s how I’m spending Friday through next Saturday:
JCVD
It Might Get Loud
The Ghost
La memoire des anges
Genova
White Night Wedding
Ashes of Time Redux
The Hurt Locker
Not Quite Hollywood
In conversation with Kathryn Bigelow
Plastic City
Adam Resurrected
The Burrowers
Firaaq
Achilles and the Tortoise
Chocolate
Martyrs
My Mother, My Bride & I
Realized I’m seeing fully half the Midnight Madness program, none of it at midnight. With my sleep cycle as wonky as it is, I daren’t risk the caffeine binges that would be required to make the witching hour shows. Though I may at least show up at 11 on Thursday to see if I can spot the eponymous Belgian meatloaf heading into the premiere of JCVD.
On another note, last year Time magazine had two huge features on the festival on consecutive weeks, one of which was a cover story (Canadian edition only, I imagine). Last week’s issue, the one with McCain on the cover, has this year’s coverage, and if you happen to have read the article, chime in on this would you, is it unnecessarily snarky and pissy this year? Comments about how the reduced number of features “allow[s] the bosses of the festival…to congratulate themselves for streamlining the event.” The whole article seems to be about how TIFF is the launching pad for Oscar season, which is hardly news to anyone, but the writer obviously had a hard time finding an angle. The main body of the article barely qualifies as news; it’s a glorified promo piece, down to the more in depth coverage of Brad Pitt’s latest career move and fleeting interest in the foreign fare that makes up the bulk of the screenings. There’s also a few pages on where to shop and dine if you’ve got money to set on fire, and a map of downtown that suggests to me that this article IS in the U.S. edition of the magazine, if only because the Gardner Expressway is referred to on the map as “Frederick G. Gardner.”
One more day of work then my vacation starts. Kickass, dude.
JCVD
It Might Get Loud
The Ghost
La memoire des anges
Genova
White Night Wedding
Ashes of Time Redux
The Hurt Locker
Not Quite Hollywood
In conversation with Kathryn Bigelow
Plastic City
Adam Resurrected
The Burrowers
Firaaq
Achilles and the Tortoise
Chocolate
Martyrs
My Mother, My Bride & I
Realized I’m seeing fully half the Midnight Madness program, none of it at midnight. With my sleep cycle as wonky as it is, I daren’t risk the caffeine binges that would be required to make the witching hour shows. Though I may at least show up at 11 on Thursday to see if I can spot the eponymous Belgian meatloaf heading into the premiere of JCVD.
On another note, last year Time magazine had two huge features on the festival on consecutive weeks, one of which was a cover story (Canadian edition only, I imagine). Last week’s issue, the one with McCain on the cover, has this year’s coverage, and if you happen to have read the article, chime in on this would you, is it unnecessarily snarky and pissy this year? Comments about how the reduced number of features “allow[s] the bosses of the festival…to congratulate themselves for streamlining the event.” The whole article seems to be about how TIFF is the launching pad for Oscar season, which is hardly news to anyone, but the writer obviously had a hard time finding an angle. The main body of the article barely qualifies as news; it’s a glorified promo piece, down to the more in depth coverage of Brad Pitt’s latest career move and fleeting interest in the foreign fare that makes up the bulk of the screenings. There’s also a few pages on where to shop and dine if you’ve got money to set on fire, and a map of downtown that suggests to me that this article IS in the U.S. edition of the magazine, if only because the Gardner Expressway is referred to on the map as “Frederick G. Gardner.”
One more day of work then my vacation starts. Kickass, dude.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Five hours in line and the rare stroke of luck
This may be the week for me to buy a lottery ticket.
You can probably tell from the tone of my last dispatch that I felt thoroughly screwed by fate, being in the very last ticket form bin to be processed. All Sunday night I was in a pretty foul mood, figuring I’d get none of my first picks and I’d be slogging through the festival seeing a bunch of also-rans. Any gems I came across by accident would be tainted…tainted, I tells ya.
So I’m up at 4:30 on Monday because I collapsed from exhaustion at quarter to ten the night before and apparently my body’s only got a certain number of hours REM in it each night, and I checked my email. And I got thirteen out of my top eighteen. Not only that, but I got some shows that I was 100% sure would be sold out, like the Genova SP and the premiere of Ashes of Time Redux. Adding curiosity, I got It Might Get Loud as a backup. Huh? That was a shot in the dark, if only because who knows if Jimmy Page, Jack White and the Edge will show up for opening night? So thirteen first picks, four second picks and one voucher. I did miss a few that I really wanted, but oh well, I’ll only see one Icelandic movie with “wedding” in the title this year.
Anyway, I head downtown a bit later than I’d planned and I get to Canada Life Square around nine…then all the way up the block to Gould and around the corner. And then the weird stories start. I’m right in front of a woman who not only got none of her first picks but none of her second picks either. She got an email saying, basically, “here’re ten vouchers.” What are the statistical possibilities of that happening without a computer foulup or some serious human error? The woman in front of me, on the other hand, got duplicate tix for the same show, with her first and second picks overlapping, so she had some exchanges to make as well.
Knowledge of the holy bin number turned out to be a strange shibboleth among the crowd. All morning, you could hear the furtive queries: “what bin were you?” My downbeat “eight” was always met with a mixture of horror and sympathy, followed by disbelief that I batted as well as I ultimately did. Two hours after arriving I finally picked up my tix. The volunteer cheerily noted “you did pretty well!” so I imagine he was seeing some of the horror stories first-hand. At this point, the exchange line was almost as long as the pickup line. I joined the second crowd and…stood almost perfectly still for another hour. THAT line wasn’t moving an iota. Word filtered back that they were letting up fifteen people every twenty minutes…or ten people every fifteen minutes…or thirty people every…whatever…and that a printer had broken down, and a volunteer was running someone’s tickets down from Manulife.
Finally I said screw it, I’ve gotta go. So I scooted up to Yonge and Eg to catch a noon showing of Babylon A.D. which aside from a botched ending (the leitmotif of high-concept action flicks this summer) was actually a pretty solid dystopic actioner with a European sensibility. Kassovitz is disowning the movie, saying the producers ruined a much smarter movie. I’ll be curious to see a director’s cut.
Anyhoo…back down to Canada Life Square and jaysis fookin’ ‘ell, the exchange line is just as long. Well, ye gotta do…so two hours later…I traded in my voucher and my passes to that long-titled Quebec film about the ’68 Expos as it’s been getting pans and Cold Lunch because I just can’t deal with dead kids that early in the festival (yes, I know the blurb says nothing about a dead kid but it’s implied) for a couple more Midnight Madness matinees and an early screening of The Ghost. Heard more tales of woe while in line…the guy who got two out of his top picks, the goof who didn’t know about the 1 PM cutoff for dropping off his form (actually, not much sympathy there, but then I’m anal about deadlines, especially when it comes to the TIFF), and NOBODY I talked to got Country Wedding though many people had it as a pick. Who knew that an Icelandic comedy would be the hot ticket item for opening night?
Heading up to the Box Office after work tomorrow to try and fill in some gaps, to try and trade one of my Achilles and the Tortoise tix for a second My Mother My Bride & I pass. Two more days of work, then Friday afternoon I plunge right in. Woo-hoo!
You can probably tell from the tone of my last dispatch that I felt thoroughly screwed by fate, being in the very last ticket form bin to be processed. All Sunday night I was in a pretty foul mood, figuring I’d get none of my first picks and I’d be slogging through the festival seeing a bunch of also-rans. Any gems I came across by accident would be tainted…tainted, I tells ya.
So I’m up at 4:30 on Monday because I collapsed from exhaustion at quarter to ten the night before and apparently my body’s only got a certain number of hours REM in it each night, and I checked my email. And I got thirteen out of my top eighteen. Not only that, but I got some shows that I was 100% sure would be sold out, like the Genova SP and the premiere of Ashes of Time Redux. Adding curiosity, I got It Might Get Loud as a backup. Huh? That was a shot in the dark, if only because who knows if Jimmy Page, Jack White and the Edge will show up for opening night? So thirteen first picks, four second picks and one voucher. I did miss a few that I really wanted, but oh well, I’ll only see one Icelandic movie with “wedding” in the title this year.
Anyway, I head downtown a bit later than I’d planned and I get to Canada Life Square around nine…then all the way up the block to Gould and around the corner. And then the weird stories start. I’m right in front of a woman who not only got none of her first picks but none of her second picks either. She got an email saying, basically, “here’re ten vouchers.” What are the statistical possibilities of that happening without a computer foulup or some serious human error? The woman in front of me, on the other hand, got duplicate tix for the same show, with her first and second picks overlapping, so she had some exchanges to make as well.
Knowledge of the holy bin number turned out to be a strange shibboleth among the crowd. All morning, you could hear the furtive queries: “what bin were you?” My downbeat “eight” was always met with a mixture of horror and sympathy, followed by disbelief that I batted as well as I ultimately did. Two hours after arriving I finally picked up my tix. The volunteer cheerily noted “you did pretty well!” so I imagine he was seeing some of the horror stories first-hand. At this point, the exchange line was almost as long as the pickup line. I joined the second crowd and…stood almost perfectly still for another hour. THAT line wasn’t moving an iota. Word filtered back that they were letting up fifteen people every twenty minutes…or ten people every fifteen minutes…or thirty people every…whatever…and that a printer had broken down, and a volunteer was running someone’s tickets down from Manulife.
Finally I said screw it, I’ve gotta go. So I scooted up to Yonge and Eg to catch a noon showing of Babylon A.D. which aside from a botched ending (the leitmotif of high-concept action flicks this summer) was actually a pretty solid dystopic actioner with a European sensibility. Kassovitz is disowning the movie, saying the producers ruined a much smarter movie. I’ll be curious to see a director’s cut.
Anyhoo…back down to Canada Life Square and jaysis fookin’ ‘ell, the exchange line is just as long. Well, ye gotta do…so two hours later…I traded in my voucher and my passes to that long-titled Quebec film about the ’68 Expos as it’s been getting pans and Cold Lunch because I just can’t deal with dead kids that early in the festival (yes, I know the blurb says nothing about a dead kid but it’s implied) for a couple more Midnight Madness matinees and an early screening of The Ghost. Heard more tales of woe while in line…the guy who got two out of his top picks, the goof who didn’t know about the 1 PM cutoff for dropping off his form (actually, not much sympathy there, but then I’m anal about deadlines, especially when it comes to the TIFF), and NOBODY I talked to got Country Wedding though many people had it as a pick. Who knew that an Icelandic comedy would be the hot ticket item for opening night?
Heading up to the Box Office after work tomorrow to try and fill in some gaps, to try and trade one of my Achilles and the Tortoise tix for a second My Mother My Bride & I pass. Two more days of work, then Friday afternoon I plunge right in. Woo-hoo!
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