Toronto Film Festival

[cinemabon]

Johann! What's the buzz in Toronto? I see Robert Redford is there. Are you?

[Johann]

I'm here in Toronto but the festival so far seems quite lame.

I went to Roy Thompson Hall last night to check out the red carpet and it was like watching a losing team arrive at an airport.

The gala was for SCORE: THE HOCKEY MUSICAL, a film that the bonehead TIFF folks thought would be a spectacular film to open the festival.
I've only seen clips, but it's horrifyingly bad. Truly embarrassing. We're told it's supposed to be funny (or charming) but what I watched in clips was anything but. There were maybe 100 people at the fences to see celebs? I don't even know if citizens are aware the festival is on.

They should've had Meltdown: the history of the financial crisis premiere here. (it actually premiered last night on CBC- a 4 part barnburner of a doc)

This year's festival is supposed to have Clint Eastwood and Nicole Kidman arrive, but I know I won't get a chance to see either one of 'em I gather.

I'm not a TIFF supporter anymore. I boycott it actually. Corporate to the extreme. They claim to be a festival of the people when it's light years from that. Cadillacs drive all the stars around- you can see Cadillacs all over downtown with the TIFF markings. VISA has all of these human bikes all over downtown too- you know, the ones that you ride in like a rickshaw that are powered by human legs. Royal Bank has giant ads everywhere saying how proud they are to be TIFF major sponsor, etc etc etc

I found out that less than 1200 people were given accreditation last year. I was denied even though I've been accredited for Vancouver previously. So here's some advice: become a corporate ad flack and you'll get accreditation for TIFF.
Passion for cinema and years of writing about it doesn't mean jack shit. They'll string you along for 3 agonizing months and then drop you with an impersonal e-mail (no phone call, no in-person explanation) that says "Due to lack of red carpet space, we cannot grant your accreditation request".
Does it matter that you won't even be ON the red carpet? No.
Actually, it does. They CHOOSE who they want to have access to the ivory tower movie folks.

So, no coverage from me in Toronto. EVER. This festival stung me badly before I even had a chance to praise it...

[Johann]

Robert DeNiro & Ed Norton were here last night to promote their latest film.
Big crowds out to catch a glimpse of those two- and there were way more people going to Metro Hall/Roy Thompson Hall than yesterday.
The fest just opened Fri.
At Yonge & Dundas square I tried to win free tickets to a movie but that was a total joke.
Here's how giant the suckitude is for YDS this year (last year was really rockin'- free screenings, free swag, roller derby (for Drew Barrymore's WHIP IT, free concerts, etc..). None of that this year. Here's what happened with the winning tickets joke:

they had a portable Bell telephone kiosk, with blackberry's tethered to it. They told the *tiny* crowd that the first 8 peeps to the phones can play for free tickets to a movie. I was one of the 8. On "go" we had to search the tiff website/slash/movielover/slash whatever and tell them what the first screening was for the next day.
NO ONE could do it.
We were standing there for like, 10 minutes trying to figure out the fucking Blackberry. I don't think any of us had ever used one before.
The guy who won was actually a guy with HIS OWN Blackberry- he was allowed to play! I thought that was suspicious, but whatever.
I'm pretty fast with typing or searching the net so I thought I had a good shot.
NOPE.
I'm never in my whole life gonna buy a Blackberry.
My hands aren't huge but they aren't small either- to type URL's on that thing was harder than Ron Jeremy in "Salsa Sluts".
Then, there was no "slash" key- and I complained about it. The girl working there said "I can't help you cheat" I'm like "Cheat?! I just wanna know how the fucking thing WORKS!" She laughed. I was not impressed. Seriously- the minutes kept ticking by and no one had completed this "simple task". Finally the Dude with his own Blackberry did it and I walked away annoyed.
They should've asked people to play who already own a blackberry. Then I wouldn't have been so annoyed. I wouldn't have went to try.
After the little contest the girl who said she couldn't help me cheat slid the face of the blackberry I was using up. "SEE?" she said.
I said "How am I supposed to know that the face slides up? I've never used one of those things in my life!!"
She just laughed. Weirdo.

Catherine Deneuve was here yesterday too. Would've been amazing to see her in the flesh.

[oscar jubis]

Thanks a lot for your comments and anecdotes. Industry festivals like Toronto and Sundance can be a pain in the ass. They are indeed elitist and corporate to the core. The only sane way to approach them is to avoid the red carpets and watch the little arty films that play in the periphery which you might never get the chance to watch again.

[Johann]

Today was the first day of the festival that has any degree of excitement.
It's the first day the public was allowed into the brand-new cinema hub: the Bell Lightbox, barely complete in construction- they literally just completed the building in time for tiff.

And I had the thrill of a lifetime because I was in the presence of the Fairchild-Curtis 160 degree lens that was HAL 9000's eye in 2001: A Space Odyssey. No photos were allowed, but I was able to convince a mega media cameraman to take my photo with it/through it!
Yes, my facebook profile pic tomorrow will be ME, as seen through HAL's eye! I've already seen how it will look- and it's AWESOME.
I felt like a God walking out of the Lightbox...
Touched by Kubrick's Genius once again, only this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. FREE. I pinched myself..
Travis Bickle's driver's license from Taxi Driver was on display, along with Claudia Cardinale's dress from The Leopard, a dress from Bertolucci's The Conformist (both also had the original posters from those films with them) and the helmet from Cronenberg's Videodrome. Very cool exhibit. I wish you all could see it.
Speaking of posters:
Giant original of Bicycle Thieves (with the original camera used to shoot de Sica's film- an antique that looks like an accordian), a giant Grand Illusion, originals from these classics: Tati's Playtime, La Dolce Vita, Annie Hall, Star Wars (a foreign one w/ C-3PO), Pulp Fiction, Jaws, Breathless, Persona, Rasho-Mon (sic), Cinema Paradiso, Pickpocket, The Passion of Joan of Arc (gorgeous!), Battle of Algiers, Vertigo, In the Mood For Love (amazing one-sheet), Gone With The Wind and scores of others. I marvelled for over an hour at that shit. Pure cinema history, that was.

My friend Guy Maddin's 11-channel video installation was awesome as well (he IS a friend- on facebook!). It was called HAUNTINGS I & HAUNTINGS II.
There's much more to write about this grand opening at the Bell Lightbox (I'm going again tomorrow to take what photos I can).

Roger Ebert was in town yesterday and I had no clue about it or I would have gone to the theatre to see him.
Media can really suck in this town...
It's a block party at King street today. Fefe Dobson and K'Naan are performing. (Yawn)

[Johann]

I never believed in fate until yesterday.
Why? I met and got Werner Herzog's autograph outside the Fairmont Royal York hotel yesterday.
I was walking east on front street (past the hotel) when I stop in my tracks.
I see Master Werner Herzog chatting with one of the doormen and I halt in my tracks and say out loud: "OH MY GOD"
I had my AGO notebook and a pen on me so I walked right up to him and said "Mr. Herzog, would you sign my book?"
He did. (I'll post a pic of it on facebook). The only thing I could say while time stood still was "I can't believe you're standing in front of me!"
He laughed, looked up and handed me my book and went back to talking with the doorman.
He never said a word to me. And I'm so upset I didn't have my camera on me. He would've let me take his picture with him.
If being photographed through one of Kubrick's lenses wasn't enough, meeting Werner Herzog was beyond awesome.
That's fucking FATE. I didn't even know he was scheduled to be in toronto. No premiere from him as far as I knew.
He was wearing a sharp beige suit. He's also a tall man- I had to look up to his face (I'm 5'8").
Not bad for a guy who's not covering Toronto, EH?? That pen will never write again. I have a pen that Werner Herzog used to sign a book of mine- that's two filmmakers signatures now in that notebook! Kevin Smith and Herzog! HUZZAH

Dream come true. I say it's fate because when I walked away from Herzog I looked at my watch to mark the time and it was 5:14 PM.
That time may not mean anything to you but to me it's big. My birthday is May 14.
I took that triple awesome whammy yesterday as a sign from a higher power, laugh all you want.

[Johann]

Here's the link to my duo of Kubrick shots:


http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=7010187&id=622980066&saved#!/photo.php?pid=7010187&id=622980066&ref=fbx_album

[Johann]

I've been to the TIFF Bell Lightbox several times since it's opening and I thought I'd pass along some more info.

The gallery space in the Lightbox which houses the current "ESSENTIAL CINEMA" exhibition (until October 23/2010) is temperature controlled and will have a huge exhibition for filmmaker Tim Burton right after the Essential Cinema run.

I learned from one of the staff that George Lucas has refused to allow the original print of Star Wars to be screened along with the 99 other films in the Essential 100. TIFF staffers are amazed that he wouldn't want his film to be included in the series of screenings of all 100 films.
(Lawrence of Arabia and 2001: A Space Odyssey will be screened in their original 70mm formats!)
Lucas is so uncomfortable with people seeing the ORIGINAL cut of Star Wars that he won't play nice with others.
Won't grant permission to show it.
Just for that fact alone I think Star Wars should be scrapped from the list. Fuck him.
If you don't honor cinema history when people are giving serious due to your work, then piss off. Stay on your fucking San Simeon ranch.
JAWS is being screened in all it's original glory, why doesn't Spielberg lean on his pal? This ain't no one-off series here.
This is the 100 ESSENTIAL FILMS of ALL-TIME (according to TIFF, and I do have some issues with their list, as any cinephile would and should..)

The gallery housing all of the film history artifacts is glorious. It's called WUNDERKAMMER, (Cabinet of Curiosities) and as much as I boycott TIFF, they really did a fantastic job with this exhibition. Everything is framed and mounted, presented in easy-to-view, easy-to-read displays. The camera that Vittorio de Sica used to shoot Bicycle Thieves is a real antique! They hauled that big contraption all over Rome!

Something that gave me pause was the placard that describes the Kubrick 160 degree lens. It says that it is BELIEVED to be the lens used for HAL's eye. They are not 100% certain. It is on loan from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I don't know, it seems to be the lens to me.
But Stanley Kubrick owned more than one lens...it's possible it's not the lens.

Until Sept. 19th Guy Maddin had his silent Super 8 (DVD transferred) HAUNTINGS II projected from the fifth floor windows of the Lightbox at night, all night. The images faced North, and I stopped in my tracks one night while walking by it. It really was HAUNTING, seeing those black and white images, billowing curtains...shadowy characters. It was something you felt in your SOUL. Hard to describe.

Michael Nyman created a 64-minute film (2010) called "NYman with a Movie Camera", a single-channel video with sound. The artist was present opening day to screen it and it played nightly at 8PM until Sept. 19th (a couple days ago). I should have went to see it.
Man With a Movie Camera is on the Essential 100 list at #9!


The gift shop is awesome too.
the TIFF logo is on everything- it's a corporate brand itself!
MOLESKINE (my favorite notebook maker) has made all kinds of journals and notebooks with the TIFF logo stamped on them all.
Too bad they charge TWICE AS MUCH for the same notebook without the tiff logo at Chapters! $30 for a small notebook????
I worship Moleskine, but cripes man, I wish they'd stop putting their grubby mitts in my fuckin' pockets...

It's also worth mentioning that the original script (old as the hills!) for F.W. Murnau's SUNRISE is on display, complete with Murnau's own handwriting on the pages. The original posters for Altman's Nashville and Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity were pretty sweet too.

If you're a film buff, the TIFF Bell Lightbox is a place to visit without question.

[Johann]

I should also mention that Atom Egoyan's "8 and a Half Screens" is playing until Oct 3rd on the third floor of the Lightbox, a 4-minute looped installation that takes a crucial scene from Fellini's Masterpiece 8 1/2 and splits it onto 8 and one-half movie screens. I haven't seen it yet. But I defintely will. I'm an Egoyan fan. (and I'm also a friend of a lady my age who used to babysit for Egoyan! Small world!)

I'll post another thread to discuss the merits of TIFF's Essential Cinema list soon. Slumdog Millionaire? one of the 100???
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon?? why??? Amelie? Yes, it's a great foreign film. But ESSENTIAL? Um, no.
OLDBOY?

Much to say.

[Johann]

I went to the Bell Lightbox Essential Cinema exhibition for the umpteenth time yesterday and what do I find out when I get there?
That they shut it down!
A WEEK EARLY!
Why? What the fuck?!

I asked a staffer why it's gone and they say that the TIFF people decided to shut it down early in order to better prepare for the Tim Burton exhibition. I'm sure glad I got to the exhibit as many times as I did. If I had to wait until the final week, I'd be steaming mad that it was shut down early.
Tim Burton is a Genius. No question. You won't hear me knock him too much. However, he is not more important than cinema history itself.
Whoever decided to close the essential cinema exhibition early needs his peepee whacked.
You don't set in stone dates for important exhibitions and then change them on a whim.
Some people plan their lives around this shit. I wanted one more good look at all of the artifacts and.....DENIED.
An exhibition like that is once-in-a-lifetime. I really loved it. That's my idea of cinephilia, what they had on display there.
Really tremendous.
My hat's off to the folks who put it together and a middle finger for the folks who shut it down early.

Something really cool as well: yesterday I saw Atom Egoyan on the corner of Dundas and Victoria engaged in a deep conversation with someone.
I'm guessing he just left the AMC after seeing a movie? I was going to talk to him but I didn't want to interrupt his *seemingly* in-depth conversation. No one recognized him. Tons of people walking around and no one recognized him. Gotta be a film buff to do that, I guess..

[oscar jubis]

I hear you, man.

[Johann]

Thanks Oscar. If you lived in Toronto you'd see Atom Egoyan in person every now and then.
His last film with Liam Neeson had scenes shot at Allan Gardens, which is a 2 minute walk north from my place- end of the street, actually.

And some GREAT news: today I won two free tix to Michael Nyman Band Live with Man With a Movie Camera on the 23rd.
I pick the tix up tomorrow. Thanks Toronto Star! All I had to do was RSVP....awesome. I get to see Vertov's classic on the big screen with the Michael Nyman Band. Hell Yeah.
Should I post about it on this thread or the Man With a Movie Camera thread?

[oscar jubis]

Great EVENT you'll be attending. Very much looking forward to your report.Wherever you post , I'll find it. Thanks, Johann.

[Johann]

Great. I just posted some stuff in the Classic Film forum