My sixth film was my first dud. It was the first film where, in the latter part of the showing, I found myself thinking, “Is this going to end soon? My butt hurts.” I have spent a lot of time thinking about it, since, because I think the message of the film makes me annoyed.
The film is called The Militant (or El Lugar Del Hijo, which Google translates as “The Place of the Child”), and it’s an Uruguayan film.
My fifth film was a drama called 1982. It’s a small, indie film by a relatively new director named Tommy Oliver. I must confess that I can’t quite remember what lead me to choose this film — it’s not foreign (except in the sense that, yes, Philadelphia is in a foreign country) and it’s not a documentary. It’s also a film where addiction is at the centre of the story, and I think I learned from watching Flight at the beginning of the year that I lack empathy for addict characters in film. But, whatever led me to choose this film, I chose it, and when Sunday night rolled around, I went off to the theatre to watch it. It was also a World Premiere, and those are always kinda neat.
My fourth TIFF film was a documentary called Mission: Congo. Its opening night was on Friday, but I caught it at its second showing on Saturday night. I caught it immediately after Bad Hair.
Mission: Congo kinda skewers US televangelist Pat Robertson and since the film’s premier a number of articles have been written in places like The Huffington Post, Indiewire, The Daily Beast, and The Guardian. In the Q&A, afterward, we learned that Robertson’s organization is considering legal action. That’s always fun.
This is rilly rilly deep in that way that only TED talks know how to be.
My third film of the festival is a Venezuelan flick called Bad Hair (or Pelo Malo). Not a very happy-making film, that. It’s funny: after the film ended, I kept comparing it in my mind to Ma Vie En Rose — it feels to me like the opposite film. Warning: spoilers.
My second TIFF film was a documentary called The Square (or Al Midan): the titular square being Tahrir Square in Cairo. The film is directed by the woman who directed Control Room, Jehane Noujaim. It’s a slick, well-produced documentary and it would not surprise me if it became a contender for an Academy Award.
As an aside, the screening took place at the Bloor Cinema (now called the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema) and I think it might well be the first time I’ve been in that theatre in ten years.
The film, itself, documented about 30 months of the Egyptian revolution, starting in January, 2011 and ending with the unseating of President Morsi this past July (talk about up-to-the-minute relevance).
Another Toronto International Film Festival has started up, and today I not only went in to the box office to grab my tickets, I also had my first film.
I probably say this every year, but one of the things I really like about the festival is getting to see films that I’m unlikely to see any other way. Some people who go to the TIFF seem to want to sit in the same room with a celebrity, so they’re going for the major Hollywood releases. Me, I’d rather get tickets to smaller, more independent flicks that aren’t likely to come to cinemas. Usually the films I pick are foreign, or they’re documentaries. This year, once ticket selection started, I headed right for the Contemporary World Cinema track and found most of my choices, there.
Tonight’s showing was actually a set of five short African films: two very short films (11 minutes and 15 minutes) and three longer pieces (20, 25 and 33 minutes). Over the last few years, I’ve caught some really interesting African films in the last few TIFFs — I don’t get many opportunities to catch African cinema, so a sampling like this was pretty sweet.
I popped in to FanExpo yesterday, and I got to see the final, printed issues of Holmes Inc #4. Keiren was staffing the Comic Book Bootcamp booth, and had a number of issues available (but not as many as she expected due to the printer having a slight case of being terrible and unreliable. And boy was she smack-talking them).
I’ve been seeing all the plaintive Facebook updates that Keiren Smith has been making as she’s been doing the work-intensive assemblage of the final Holmes Inc., 4 book. If I’ve been following her updates correctly, it looks like she tipped over, caught fire and sank into the swamp. Or something. But because she’s awesome, it looks like the book is going to be ready in time for Fan Expo this weekend.
there is no neutrality when bigotry is the status quo.
— N.K. Jemisin, “Time to pick a side.”
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