Holy memory lane, Batman. I should not be allowed to get nostalgic while sitting at my laptop on a Saturday night.

It was bad enough when one of the few high school friends I’m sporadically in touch with made a weblog post referencing the premier Fireman’s Fair in the area where we grew up, which apparently closes tonight. I have about a thousand childhood and high school memories tied up in that fairground, some treasured and some still rather mortifying to this day. I didn’t know it was going on this week, and it’s strange to imagine all those lights and sounds going on without me, when it used to be the highlight of my summer. Pittsburgh does not have proper small-town fairs at all, and I feel the lack of them every summer.

But then remembering that part of town made me remember my art teacher, Evelyn, who lived a few blocks away. I took her art classes weekly for several years in my adolescence. I’m afraid I was never any good, and I was rather a source of frustration to her since I plodded along stubbornly doing pastels of cute animals or watercolor still life fruit bowls, and couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with an original piece of art to save my life no matter how long I stayed in her classes. But I still loved the time I spent there every week, with other kids around my age who liked drawing too and didn’t ostracize me the way the kids at school did.

It was okay in her house to be a little nerdy, and it was okay to put on loud music and dance around and be silly, and to make a mess with paint, and to go out in the backyard and just lie around in the grass in the sun if you didn’t feel like making art that day. And if you did, Evelyn would always help you do what you wanted to do but better, even if you were not given to having actual artistic talent, like me. Her small, cluttered, colorful, vibrant house was a refuge during some fairly awful years in my life.

I’d never thought to Google her before, but this evening I’ve discovered she has a web site, and going through it I found all sorts of paintings I remember seeing on her walls, or half-completed in her living room, or the Halloween paintings she’d bring out and prop up around the house in October while she played a tape of “spooky” sound effects she’d recorded herself on a decrepit old tape recorder. And there are paintings of people I knew as a child, and places near and dear to my heart. Man.

I’m about twelve years old again right now, and so happy to be seeing these old familiar paintings and Evelyn’s familiar face (though she apparently hasn’t aged in about thirty years). Much as the place where I grew up mostly makes me crazy, there were some really good people and some wonderful memories there, and it’s nice to stumble across them.

In the spirit of last year’s TIFF schedule post, which was useful for Len and me if boring for everyone else, here’s what we’ve got for tickets this year now that the pre-ordering dust has settled.

Pre-selection was once again less than optimal, with Len sick and fuzzy-headed and not able to focus on rating movies for long. Fortunately by now I know his tastes pretty well, and he did have a few things he knew he wanted to see, so I focused on those and I think we’ll both be happy with the outcome. There are probably a few gems I missed that he would have found if he’d been well enough to go through all the descriptions, but such is life. There are only so many movies a person can see out of the 275-ish features playing in 10 days. (That said, I am still kicking myself greatly for not moving heaven and earth to catch Pan’s Labyrinth last year, and am hoping not to discover that I overlooked something similarly amazing this year.)

We’ll arrive Wednesday night, hopefully before the box office closes so we can wait in the very long line for our tickets. Get some food, wander around the city a bit, get some sleep. I am half pondering checking what’s playing the non-festival theaters, or better yet heading over to see what Reg has playing at the Cineforum, but probably we’d be better served to stick with walking around and maybe hitting up the World’s Biggest Bookstore. And loading up on cough medicine, since I am determined not to make a nuisance of myself coughing during every movie despite still being lingeringly sick.

Thursday the movies don’t start until early evening, so I don’t know what we’ll do with the rest of the day. More wandering around enjoying the city, most likely. I was betting on lunch at the Living Well, but a quick Google has just revealed that they’re closed. So perhaps we will mourn and try to find good baked brie somewhere else, instead. Then in the evening we got all three of our first choices. We’ll start off the festival with a Portuguese documentary, Fados, about the social history of Portuguese fado music. This one was not a top pick, but it does look interesting, and also had the virtue of being the only thing playing early enough to let us get to the 8:15 movie. It’s not like I’ve ever met a documentary I didn’t like, except possibly James Ellroy’s Feast of Death. So after that, Le Cèdre penché, a French-Canadian feature that sounds quite intriguing. And then just to make the first day completely awesome, we’ll do Midnight Madness with the new Dario Argento, the final movie in the Suspiria trilogy. The only thing more awesomely terrible than Dario Argento is Dario Argento with the Midnight Madness crowd. I am a little bummed I don’t have time for a Suspiria reviewing before we leave, though.

Friday will start off bright and early with You, the Living, a Swiss/German/French/Danish/Norwegian production that sounds like it will do an excellent job of fulfilling my black comedy quota. Then The Mourning Forest, which took the Grand Jury prize at Cannes is generally one of the foreign selections I’m most looking forward to. Though it’s going to be a weird juxtaposition with the first one. Then we have a bit of a break before Hollywood Chinese, a documentary about Chinese representation in Hollywood films. I like my meta-documentaries, so this one ought to do the trick nicely. Next up will be a Dutch documentary, The Dictator Hunter, and then we can round out the evening with a set of short films. Unless more tickets go on sale for the evening showing of Ang Lee’s new movie; right now it’s sold out, but I am haunting the website just in case.

Saturday we have tickets for the morning showing of Persepolis, which is likely to be one of the highlights of the festival for me since I love the source material so much. Then we’ll see Disengagement, which I’m looking forward to since Amos Gitai is on my list of filmmakers I should really be much more familiar with, and then one of Len’s top picks, a Brazilian film called Mutum. We’ll spend the evening seeing Children of the Sun because I wither and die if I don’t see a documentary every day, and also because I’m somewhat fascinated with the kibbutzim. To my dismay, we did not get in to the evening’s Wavelengths experimental program, but maybe we’ll go rush it , or else have a late dinner and some caffeine. Since we will need to get in shape for another Midnight Madness that promises to be awesome - George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead.

Sunday morning may be a bummer; we didn’t get into either our first choice, the new David Cronenberg, or our second choice, the Ang Lee. I’m pondering trying to talk Len into rushing one or the other. On the other hand, it might be nice to sleep in after the late-night Romero-fest. If we do that, our first movie isn’t until noon - Ex Drummer, which is quite possibly going to be really awful. Or else it’s going to be hysterically funny. Hard to tell which. Afterwards we’ll do the new Guy Maddin, My Winnipeg. I find Guy Maddin sort of hit or miss, but this one sounds lovely, and as a bonus will fulfill my documentary quota for the day. Then we’ll have some experimental Wavelengths shorts, and then a Danish black comedy, With Your Permission. The script-writer is the same guy responsible for one of my all-time TIFF favorites, Adam’s Apples, so I am hoping for really good things from this one.

Monday is a bit messy; either I filled out the forms screwily for this day, or we had bad luck and hit a couple of movies where there was only one ticket left. Which wouldn’t be surprising since it seems to be Wavelengths that screwed us up, and a lot of people seem to have had trouble with Wavelengths. We’re either going to have to split up and do different movies, try to find something else we can both go to, or chuck it all and just go out to dinner or something. We’ll both see the new Coen Brothers movie, No Country For Old Men , first thing. Then Heavy Metal in Baghdad for our early afternoon selection. Then things get weird, but I think either we’ll go see Trumbo together, or split up and I’ll see Unfinished Stories while Len sees that evening’s Wavelengths program. Either way, if we feel up to it we have Midnight Madness tickets for Stuck. I had really wanted to see The Savages for my Philip Seymour Hoffman fix, but no such luck.

Tuesday we only have four movies, so I’m not quite sure whether we’ll panic and try to fit in a fifth, or take it easy. It’s shaping up to be a pretty good if documentary-heavy day, though. We’ll start off with Obscene, a documentary about Barney Rosset, and then Jihad for Love, a documentary about gay Muslims. Then yet an other documentary, Operation Filmmaker, that Len and I both had in our top picks. Sadly, we did not get tickets for Dr. Plonk, which looked bizarre enough to be on my not-to-be-missed list. But we’ll round out the day with the first screening of Gus Van Sant’s newest movie, so all will be well.

Wednesday we’ll start off with another French-Canadian movie, Continental, and then Carl Bessai’s Normal. Then a set of Canadian short films, because apparently Wednesday is our designated Canada Day. Then we’ll go American for the rest of the day with Married Life, and to my great delight, we’ll round out the day with the first showing of Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan movie, which I have been waiting to see for what feels like decades, as I am a major Todd Haynes fan.

Thursday appears to be one of those “I forgot to schedule any English-language features” day, so thank god for short films. We’ll start off with a French coming-of-age movie, Naissance, and then some short films. Then another French movie, the adaptation of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which ought to be great with Julian Schnabel directing. Then Pink, which ought to be interesting - I haven’t seen much Greek film. Maybe not any, that I can recall right now. We’ll finish up with a Spanish thriller, me.

Friday we’ll start off with Hana Mahkmalbaf’s Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame, then see Gael Garcia Bernal’s directorial debut, Deficit. In the afternoon we have an Australian film with Franka Potente, Romulus, My Father. I did a last minute flip-flop making this one first choice over some short films, and I’m glad I did since we have some other short films but no other Australian movies. In the evening we’ve got Bela Tarr’s The Man From London, and a documentary about the music recording process, Here is What Is.

Saturday will be sad for being the last day, but we’re oddly back-loaded with lots of great directors at the end of the week for some reason. So we’ll run through Werner Herzog, Gregg Araki, and Sidney Lumet. Then we’ll dip back down a bit into the somewhat more mediocre (but hey, there’s Aaron Eckhart so it’ll be okay) with Alan Ball, before finishing up the festival with Takeshi Kitano. I hope some of them will stick around for Q&As even though it’s the last day. But even if they don’t, that may be the most fantastically-directed films I will ever in my life see in one day.

And then I will come home and collapse.

Quick note: We are back from Toronto, the TIFF rocked as always, and I think our last day was the single best 24 hours of film I have ever watched - Herzog, Lumet, Araki, Kitano, and Alan Ball, all in a row.  Fantastic.

Notes to come when I unpack my movie notebook.  I am devoting the rest of this evening to unpacking and playing with the cats, who clearly do not approve of being left for so long.

TIFF Notes, Days 1-2. We didn’t have internet access this year, so I didn’t get to do the play-by-play and am reconstructing from my notes, which are considerably shorter, more cryptic, and in some places completely incomprehensible even to me.

Thursday, September 6:
First day of TIFF 07! It’s a half-day for the festival, so Len slept in while I headed over to the box office to pick up a few last-minute tickets I’d ordered online to supplement the gaps in our Festival Pass schedule. I spent an excruciating half hour behind a very snooty French guy who was infuriated at not getting the movies he wanted, and was generally being irritating. Movies picked up, pre-TIFF slacking, and sturdy-sneaker-shopping accomplished, we headed down Yonge to see what was new since last year. Had dinner at the Indian/Nepalese restaurant we’ve meant for years to try out. Everything was insanely good and this place is going in our rotation for restaurants to eat at when we’re near the Ryerson and have time for a sit-down meal.

Movie 1: Fados, sort of a documentary about Portuguese Fado music. I don’t really know whether to count it as a documentary - there wasn’t any cultural context or history for the music, just a series of the songs sung by the fado masters, strung together in a row, usually with interpretive dance and/or pictures of Portugal. It was lovely and the music was lovely, and I intend to track down some of these artists and buy some of their albums, but it was really a documentary for the people who already knew and loved the music. I wanted more context. The director, Carlos Saura, was a charmer at his Q+A, so enthusiastic and chatting so quickly that his interpreter couldn’t keep up. We had to cut out of the Q+A a bit early to make it to the next movie, though. And then we still didn’t make it because we cut it too close. We suck. So it was only a two-movie day. But the second was…

Movie 2: Mother of Tears, directed by Dario Argento. About which I can’t really say anything except that if the idea of the 20-years-delayed final movie in the Suspiria trilogy makes you as happy as it makes me, you will not be disappointed. Whereas if you don’t know what I’m talking about, this is not the movie for you. But I suspect I was at the only screening in the world that happened at 12:05 a.m. on Dario Argento’s birthday with both him and his daughter present, so the audience got to sing “Happy Birthday” to Dario. And then afterwards to listen to a very jetlagged Dario and Asia babble about the many lesbians and monkeys in the movie. When I have the energy, I enjoy the Midnight Madness screenings immensely. My slightly loopy notes, scrawled at 2 a.m. after returning to the hotel, read: “Gory, funny, exactly what you’d expect. Have to go back and re-watch Suspiria. You have to love a movie where the final triumph of the heroine revolves around exposing the villainess’ breasts. Also, Asia clearly adores her father. And wears awesome stripper shoes.”

Friday, September 7:

Movie 3: You, the Living (Swedish). I didn’t see this director’s earlier movie Songs from the Second Floor, but had heard good things about it. And I have a weird fondness for Nordic black comedies anyway, so this slightly surreal movie about the lives of the people living in and around an apartment/office building seemed like a good bet. It was very funny, although I’m finding that a week later my memory’s a bit faded. I remember a few specific uproariously funny moments, especially in the first few minutes of the film, but it doesn’t seem to have stood out in my mind among the 40-odd movies we’d see before the festival was done. I thoroughly enjoyed it while watching it, though. Len described it afterwards as what would have happened if Bunuel had directed Happiness instead of Todd Solondz, which is probably a fair description, although with less molestation.

Movie 4: The Mourning Forest, a Japanese film about an old man and his retirement-home caregiver taking a trip into the woods to mourn his dead wife. I’d seen some good advance press for this, and I generally love the Japanese films I’ve seen, so I thought this was going to be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, it did not go over well with either of us. Len hated the pacing and lack of plot, without compensating great character development. I had to watch half the movie out of the corner of my eyes because it had so much of the shaky handheld Blair Witch camerawork style that gives me horrible motion sickness, so I don’t think I can really evaluate it fairly. I wasn’t overly impressed with what I did see, though.

Break for lunch, another place new to use - the Healthy Greek, on Queen St. Len developed a weird shawarma addiction on this trip, so we tried a ton of different places, and I think this was my favorite. Everything looked great, tasted great, and was cheap and fast with friendly service. What’s not to love? This will probably be a go-to from now on when we have Scotiabank movies.

Movie 5: Hollywood Chinese, a documentary about Chinese-American representations in Hollywood film. I don’t have good notes on this one, except that it was interesting and fun but I wish they had been able to go more in-depth in some of the issues. But I liked it, as I always like documentaries about film and specifically about minority representations in film. And as an extra bonus, the director was accompanied by Nancy Kwan for his Q&A. Since I spent a fair amount of my childhood adoring Nancy Kwan after watching Flower Drum Song forty or fifty times too many, I got a big kick out of her being there, and thought she had some interesting things to say about the arc of her career and the choices she had open to her.

Movie 6: The Dictator Hunter, a Dutch documentary about a human rights lawyer working to bring brutal dictator Hissan Habre, of Chad, to court for his crimes, with the help of a political refugee from Chad who had been tortured under Habre’s regime and is now living in America. It was a really excellent film about a subject I didn’t know much about, and I’m glad I watched it. But weirdly enough, there were two little scenes that made me want to watch a movie that wasn’t actually on the screen. One brief interview with the political refugee’s wife back in her village in Chad, talking about her situation taking care of her ten children without her husband, missing him and struggling to keep things together, but also knowing that even if they are ever able to get visas for the family to be together, they would have nothing and no way to support the large family in America. And the other scene was one of the rare moments when the human rights lawyer was home with his family, quizzing his young son on details about the horrifying events taking place in Chad, and mentioning offhandedly that his family gets death threats and now requires constant bodyguards, but he tries not to think about it. Which seemed an awfully easy thing for him to say when he’s usually halfway across the world, and it’s his wife and kid left behind with the bodyguards, knowing way more about the horrors of war than a kid that age should. I decided what I really want to see is a documentary about the wives of these two men who are always an ocean away, doing critical work but having to leave them behind and unsupported while they do it. Maybe someone else will make that documentary one day.
Movie 7: A short film programme, Short Cuts Programme 1 - the usual mix of different styles and moods, a lot of good stuff. Peter Lynch’s “A Short Film about Falling” was probably my favorite here. “Automoto” was fun, too.

Ate a granola bar in line and then came home and crashed, no energy for actual dinner.

TIFF Notes, Days 3-4. We didn’t have internet access this year, so I didn’t get to do the play-by-play and am reconstructing from my notes, which are considerably shorter, more cryptic, and in some places completely incomprehensible even to me.

Saturday, September 8:
Movie 8: Persepolis, based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novels about growing up in pre- and post-revolution Iran. I’m not really objective here because I’ve loved the source material for a long time, but this wound up being one of my festival favorites for the year. They kept the look and feel of Satrapi’s work while doing some great stylistic things that couldn’t be done on the page. It was moving and funny and while there was one segment that had me worried the movie was suddenly going to bog down in weepy melodrama, it mostly avoided the worrisome pitfall and all was well.

Movie 9: Disengagement, by Amos Gitai. At the time I thought it was okay but nothing more, and by now I can barely remember anything about it except that Juliette Binoche was quite good and that there was some irritating business in the first half with an opera singer that seemed totally disconnected from everything else. And as a musical fan, it takes a lot for me to be annoyed by a barely-related-to-the-story musical interlude. My notes from that day read “Disappointing - unsympathetic characters who behave weirdly out of character as the plot dictates. Still, had some lovely individual moments.” I suppose it says something not-too-good about the movie that right now I can’t remember any of those lovely moments, just various annoying ones.

Movie 10: Mutum, a Brazilian movie I’m surprised to find I don’t have notes on, because I really enjoyed both the storytelling and the beautiful filming. It was a coming-of-age story about a little boy growing up in rural Brazil. I do recall enjoying it greatly, and making a mental note to track down the source novel at some point, if it’s available in English translation.

Movie 11: Children of the Sun, a documentary about the first generation of children born into Israel’s kibbutzim, how they were raised and the sorts of families they went on to raise themselves. I thought it was fascinating, but then I’m a wee bit over-interested in the kibbutzim. Probably two kibbutz movies in two years (including last year’s wonderful Sweet Mud) is enough, though, and we’ll lay off the kibbutz movies for a while now.

Movie 12: Wavelengths program, experimental shorts. I always come out of these feeling like they were pretty but I had no idea what the hell was going on, and that was pretty much true this year too.

Movie 13: George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, complete with large numbers of audience members dressed up as zombies. This one was fun - sort of Dawn of the Dead updated for the blog-and-Youtube generation, and with the satire slanted more toward politics than consumerism. I liked it more than I expected to. Plus, George turns out to do a pretty good Q+A.

Sunday, September 9:

Sadly movie-less morning, as both the Cronenberg and Ang Lee movies had sold out. We thought about getting up early and trying to get same-day or rush tickets at the box office, but were both so wiped out after our six-movie day that we opted for sleeping in instead.

Movie 14: Ex-Drummer, a completely bizarre Belgian anarchist punk comedy. Sort of. Except for where the end gets all horrible and violent and not funny. This was one of those things that just happened to fit into a slot in our schedule although it wasn’t near the top of our list, and going into it I told Len it was going to be completely bizarre, but I was unsure whether it would be bizarre in an awesome way or bizarre in a horrible way. The problem is that coming out of it, and even now a week later, I’m still not sure which it was. I think possibly the first half was awesome and the second half was horrible. Not one I’d really go around recommending to most people. The director does a good Q+A, though - I retrospectively liked the movie better from hearing him talk about it.

And then we food-poisoned ourselves with bad curry, and had to skip two movies to go back to our hotel and lie around feeling awful. But we did perk up enough for one more movie:

Movie 15: With Your Permission, another of my forays into the world of Nordic black comedy - Danish, this time. Mostly I wanted to see this one because the screenwriter, Anders Thomas Jensen, also wrote a really wonderful movie we saw at TIFF 2005, Adam’s Apples. This one wasn’t as good, unfortunately, but it was still well worth watching. The first half is a pretty funny and well-written story about some admittedly un-funny topics, with a man trying to get out of a bad marriage to his abusive wife, and then suddenly it flips and becomes a predictable melodrama about how they solve all their problems and live happily ever after. Eh. Each half was probably okay on its own, but sort of betrayed the other half’s integrity, and they didn’t really make the tone shift work.

If I wait any longer to write up the rest of my TIFF notes thoroughly, I will never get them written. So here we go, all in one fell swoop, as incoherently as I wrote them in my notebook while rushing madly from movie to movie with occasional shawarma breaks, without links for now but I will try to add them later: TIFF, days 5-whatever.

Monday, September 10:

Movie 16: No Country For Old Men (Coen Brothers): I’m not usually the biggest fan of Western-inspired movies, but the Coen Brothers’ particular brand of deadpan humor absolutely kills me. This wasn’t particularly deep or life-altering, but a lot of fun, apart from the horrible woman behind me talking to characters loudly - “You left your suitcase!” “He’s gonna shoot you!”. And then laughing randomly at totally inappropriate moments. Hate.

Movie 17: Heavy Metal In Baghdad: Metal band documentary. Len saw a rough cut perviously but this followed the story further as Iraq’s only heavy metal band is forced to leave the country one by one and then try to make new lives and get back together again to play metal. Very good - funny and moving. Can’t speak for the music. I know shit about non-glam metal. Really compelling.

Movie 18: Unfinished stories. Sort of Iranian proto-Altman film, stories of interconnected women in Iran. Good movie (if frustrating because of things deliberately left ambiguous and unanswered), but terrible subtitling. Lots of typos, several dramatic declarations of “I sewer to God!” that kept breaking the movie’s flow. Still good - this director’s first film, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for him in the future. Awful Q+A, though - bad questions, unhelpful answers, generally painful.

(Brief inter-movie break for dinner at a Chinese restaurant where “funny tasting chicken” was on the menu.)

Movie 19: Trumbo: Documentary about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Really good, interesting- made me want to read the play it’s based on. I’d like to know more about this guy’s work and life. Sadly (or not), memory of film mostly eclipsed by memory of how awesome Donald Sutherland was at the Q+A, smacking down stupid questions and telling funny rambling stories.

Movie 20: Stuck. Like any midnight madness TIFF movie, plenty of blood and random nudity and people being injured in horrible ways. Okay, but nothing special. Possibly because Mena Suvari annoys the crap out of me and I am predisposed not to like anything she stars in.

Tuesday, September 11:

Movie 21: Obscene: A nice companion piece to Trumbo. Documentary about Barney Rosset, a publisher of 50s-60s “indecent” novels and beatnik art. Good as far as it went, would have liked more depth.

Movie 22: Jihad for Love: Sort of a Muslim “Trembling Before G_d” (by the same producers, actually) - documentary exploring the lives of gay Muslims around the world, particularly in Islamic countries. Good, and heartbreaking - first thing at the festival to make me cry.

Movie 23: Operation Filmmaker: One of those documentaries I’m fond of where the movie starts out as one thing, but the filmmaker gets drawn into the lives of the people he/she is filming and the movie becomes something else when the objectivity breaks down. Follows an Iraqi film student brought to Prague to intern on a film set, a not-particularly-well-thought-out idea of the filmmakers’, and what happens to him when he doesn’t want to go back and turns to the filmmakers for help finding asylum outside of Iraq. So far, probably the most thought-provoking thing I’ve seen here, and the one that will stick with me longest. Lots of interesting stuff on the relationship between documentarian and subjects and their responsibilities to each other, American-Iraqi relationship, liberal-conservative relations, war refugees, etc. Reminded me a bit of Stevie.

Movie 24: Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant). Very stylistically reminiscent of Elephant - same slow, dreamy exploration of teenage lives, but underlaid with thick underlying tension. Visually lovely, great music, good acting from mostly nonprofessional cast. Very good.

Wednesday, September 12:

Movie 25: Continental, A Film Without Guns: A man vanishes inexplicably, and the film follows what happens to his grieving wife, the man who takes his place at work, and two other characters who get to know these two in varying ways. Follows the way their lives intersect and fail to intersect. Enjoyable and well-acted. Pity the deliberately vague ending induced many really stupid audience questions.

Movie 26: Normal: A study of the losses of several families when one family’s son is killed. The plot/writing were only semi-engaging, but it was really wonderfully acted and worth watching. I continue to feel like something is not quite right with Carl Bessai’s films, though. Not sure what it is that doesn’t sit well with me.

Movie 27: Short film programs. Good mix, no standouts.

Movie 28: Married Life. Sort of a dark comedy about relationships, but sadly it’s one of those cases where the dark aspects got watered down by the commercial aspects of the project. Once you sign Pierce Brosnan as your lead, you’re probably not going to be able to get away with too much darkness. Entertaining, but mostly made me wish for what it could have been in other hands. Patricia Clarkson amazing as always, though. Worth it for that alone.

Movie 29: I’m Not There (Todd Haynes). Not sure how I feel about this one as art - needs a second viewing, I think. As entertainment, I loved it completely once I settled into the shifting style. Len hated it violently, alas, so if I do that second viewing it will probably be on my own, one day in the far future.

Thursday, September 13:

Movie 30: Short program. Good program, fun Q+A - the directors all decided to get into it and ask each other questions, which was fun.

Movie 31: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Based on the memoir I’ve been meaning to read forever. Really excellent - second tear-inducing movie. Lovely filming and use of subjective perspective made it much more than your typical biopic about some guy who deals with a crippling disability. I’ll be recommending this one highly to people.

Movie 32: Pink. Not quite sure what to make of this weird little Greek film. Not much happened plot-wise, which is fine with me if there are great characters or strong dialogue or intriguing visuals. All of these were good but not great here. Some of the visuals reminded me a bit of Michel Gondry, but more toned down, which isn’t as much fun.

Movie 33: Me. Strange spanish story about a caretaker who comes to Mallorca to replace the old caretaker, who had the same name and left under mysterious circumstances. Sort of a mystery, sort of a comedy, sort of suspense, sort of a romance, but not really any of these things. It’s all mood and lighting, very little plot or character. I liked it, but I was in exactly the right mood for it - under other circumstances I might just have been annoyed. I’ll be looking out for this director. Sadly, this one caused many, many dumb audience questions.

Friday, September 14:

Movie 34: Buddha Collapsed In Shame. The latest of many movies I’ve seen from the Makhmalbaf family, who I find sort of fascinating. Follows an Iranian girl through a day as she tries to overcome several economic, personal, political, social barries to going to school, like the boy who lives in the next cave over, whose ability to read letters she envies. Fanatastic - one of my favorites of the festival.

Movie 35: Deficit. Gael Garcia Bernal’s first directing gig. Good study of class and race in Mexico. Good movie - horrible squeeing Bernal fangirl crowd.

Movie 36: Romulus, My Father. Australian adaptation of what is apparently a well known Australian memoir. Fine, but pretty straightforward boy-grows-up story - nothing of the standout quality I expect at TIFF.

Movie 37: The Man From London (Bela Tarr). Don’t know what to make of this one; needs a re-viewing, and perhaps more examination of Tarr’s work in general. Really great unbroken 10-minute first shot setting up interesting story then 2 hours where everything is mysterious and nothing happens. Then something interesting happens, but it’s offscreen. Then the movie ends. I think I wasn’t in the right mood, because I could see what he was after and was just getting frustrated. I’ll try this again sometime in a better frame of mind.

Movie 38: Here Is What Is. All about the studio recording process - pretty much studio porn for Len. I enjoyed it, but a lot of it was over my head. Not sure I’d go around recommending it willy-nilly, but it was fun. The audience wins the “absolute dumbest question of the TIFF” award for asking whether the profiled recording engineer (Daniel Lanois, who was there for Q+A) had ever considered suggesting that Bono watch Battlestar Galactica to get back to writing political music. Ugh.

Saturday, September 15:

Movie 39: Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog). Herzog is awesome. Herzog documentaries are awesome. What more to say? Great study of the people and landscapes of a research station in Antarctica.

Movie 40: Smiley Face (Gregg Araki): a Gregg Araki stoner comedy is a weird concept, and it’s certainly not going on my all-time favorite list like Mysterious Skin. But it was extremely fun and funny. And perhaps some poor innocent unsuspecting soul will see it, think he makes funny stoner comedies, and go rent “Nowhere.” And I will laugh.

Movie 41: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (Sidney Lumet). Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke as brothers who fuck up a robbery and get into deeper trouble as they try to get out. Good performances, tense, generally enjoyable.

Movie 42: Nothing is Private (Alan Ball). This one left me speechless, sobbing hysterically and yet with an aching stomach from laughing so hard at some parts. Absolutely searing, and brutal portrayal of an adolescent girl dealing with growing up in a world where almost every man she comes across wants something from her sexually, but also a ruthlessly funny portrayal of screwed-up patriotism, misguided parenting, and teenage social interactions. This felt true to me in a very visceral way that I’m not sure any other movie about adolescent female sexuality ever has. I don’t know what to do with this - it was probably the best thing I saw, but I don’t think I can actually recommend to most people that they watch it. I’ve got no idea if this one will ever come out, given the subject matter (though it was not actually graphically sexual), but I’ll be interested to see what kind of press it gets if it does.

Movie 43: Glory to the Filmmaker (Takeshi Kitano). I try to end the festival with something sort of meta-film-related, and this may have been the most meta thing I’ve ever seen. There is no explaining Takeshi Kitano, really. But this was surreal and completely inexplicable and hysterically funny.