film recommendations from TIFF'09

I just spent the past week at the Toronto International Film Festival. This is a really quick list of films I saw & my impressions.
You can look up the basic blurb on these & other films at http://tiff.net

Excellent:

Creation (aka Nature) -- bio of Charles Darwin during the period he was writing Origin of Species; picked up by Canadian distributor but USA distributors a bit cagey owing to fears of reaction from "religious right" (hey, it's all good publicity) -- this is great & I plan to see it again

The Road -- good adaptation of the post-apocalyptic Cormac McCarthy novel; Viggo Mortensen carries this one & does a great job; bleak of course but not totally unbearable; may be a bit difficult emotionally for parents of young children; even better on the second viewing

Chloe -- Atom Egoyan's latest & one of his best; widespread audience reaction at end was "holy shit!"; excellent cast, story, directing

Pretty Good:

Harry Brown -- Michael Caine is excellent as an elderly vigilante in the London projects; a bit too gory for my usual taste

Up In The Air -- not your usual Hollywood treatment; George Clooney & supporting cast are very good

Whip It -- coming of age meets roller derby; purely entertaining, nothing profound here; it's fun

The Invention of Lying -- great premise, well done, perhaps a little dragged out but good overall, especially if you enjoy Ricky Gervais

A Single Man -- it's obvious why Colin Firth won the acting accolade at Venice for this one; adapted from an Isherwood story

OK:

Bright Star -- bio of John Keats (he's dead by age 25 so you know this can't end well); Jane Campion can do better than this

Don't waste your money:

Leaves of Grass -- pure shite, don't bother; waste of a good cast; degenerates into something similar to Straw Dogs (remember that piece of crap?)

Like I said, a pretty good festival -- 9 of 10 films were OK or better. There was only one I'd have walked out of if I wasn't boxed in the middle of a row.

TIFF is a fun festival, one of the few truly accessible to the filmgoing public. While their ticketing system is truly arcane & frustrating with it, once you clear that hurdle the event itself is great. This was my 5th year attending with a friend, & I recommend it to anyone who loves films. The chance to hear director & cast in Q&A sessions is unique. There are plenty of associated free events & of course Toronto has a plethora of galleries, museums, restaurants &c to add to the general enjoyment.

Added to which we had great weather!

where have I been?

Not in here, that's for sure.

At times this year it's felt like I lived on another planet. Work issues simply never stopped. Added to which I played good fairy godmother to my staff & they took all their vacation in the summer. Well, that's about to change!

In less than 2 weeks, I'll be off to TIFF, for the 3rd year in a row. A friend and I go down & share a room at the Delta Chelsea, right in the centre of things. Ideal location, really, in spite of the fact that there was a murder last year while we were there. Thankfully, not on our floor. I guess that's Toronto for you. Our first American city.

Great program listings, including a new David Cronenberg, a new Denys Arcand, and a new Paul Haggis. Not to mention that one of my favourite actors, Viggo Mortensen, will be in town. Always nice to see him there -- he always has something intelligent to say. And the Cronenberg-Mortensen pairing is becoming legend.

I'm royally ticked with TIFF's management, though. They are as obtuse and disorganized as ever, and becoming ever more media-oriented. This was always touted as a "people's festival", but their scheduling and ticketing practices are becoming less public-friendly all the time. They revel in gamesmanship. Perhaps we should start calling them RIFF (Rip-off International Film Festival)...just a thought.

Take the final schedule announcement, a bare week and a half before the festival starts. There's little doubt in anyone's mind who's been to TIFF that they have their near-final draft when their web-site goes live in July. They then dole out the schedule in dribs & drabs. Not only that, they certainly have the final schedule when they put their galas on sale in mid-to-late August. There is no reason, other than mind games with the public, that they could not put up their whole schedule at least a week before they do, although even that is much too late for most non-industry attendees to schedule their travel & accommodations.

Then there's the ticket "lottery". They have a limited number of seats made available for this arcane & nonsensical process in the last week of August. For which you pay extra, as much as double if you're from out of town. Just another shell game, where they're supposedly enhancing your festival-going experience by creating suspense. pffffffffft

And finally, there's the gala and newly price-hiked VISA screening room tickets. These go on sale on the Internet, on a web-site that's notoriously unstable & hard to get onto when they upload it at a specific time. There are many, many people who find that although they have prepared to get in then, it is simply impossible. And the phone? Completely tied up for more than an hour (possibly more, but I stopped re-dialling at that point). If they aren't able or willing to staff phones better, why offer that as an "option"? I'm even more ticked since this nonsense resulted in me missing gala tickets for "Eastern Promises". So now they want me & everyone else to hang around their site waiting for them to dole out a few more. And they call this public-friendly?

Even with all this, I really enjoy being at TIFF. The events are great. It's sort of like travelling to New Zealand. Wonderful when you get there, but an incredible pain in the ass on the trip. Especially when you have to transfer through LA & negotiate US Customs (for TIFF, read "wait until the last possible second for program announcements & endure the cutesy lottery & lame web-sales site").

You'll notice I only briefly touched on cost. More on that subject later.