TIFF 2006 draws to a close. Best festival ever?

Today's podcast includes:

• A look back at the best and worst of the Toronto International Film Festival
• TIFF hands out its awards

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The full press release with all the award winners and honorable mentions is available on the TIFF website, but here's a quick look at what won and a few of my thoughts on each award.

Swarovski Cultural Innovation Award
This award went to Takva - A Man's Fear of God, and I'm pretty glad it did. Erkan Can's performance is inspiring, Takva is easily one of the best entires in the Visions programme. I would have liked to see some recognition for Rolf de Heer's Ten Canoes as well, but I won't argue with this one.

The People's Choice Award
Bella may have been a good choice for this award, but I'm still surprised. After all the hype over Borat, I seriously thought that it would contend for People's Choice. This probably demonstrates the fact that people who enjoyed Borat are probably the kind of people who don't vote for People's Choice. I would have given this award to Pan's Labyrinth, quite easily my favorite film at this year's festival.

Diesel Discovery Award
I'm not surprised that Reprise won, and to tell you the truth, it may have been the most deserving, but I am a little chuffed that 7 Ans wasn't getting any buzz for this award. Out of all the films in the Discovery programme, it was clearly one of the most interesting.

The Prize of the International Critics
This is the award that proves that the jury doesn't always get it right, and that buzz and politics is often more important than skill. Death of a President may have treaded on some controversial ground, and may have fused reality and fiction quite nicely, but it was in no way the best film at the festival. Pan's Labyrinth, again, was clearly better, and for a more jury-friendly choice, Apted's Amazing Grace or Almodovar's Volver could have been just as good.

Citytv Award for Best Canadian First Feature
I have no complaints in giving this one to Sur la Trace d'Igor Rizzi, though I did think Douglas Coupland's script in Everything's Gone Green could have pushed that one over the top.

Toronto-City Award for Best Canadian Feature Film
Most people could have easily predicted a win for Jennifer Baichwal's Manufactured Landscapes for this award just as the festival started, but I decided to skip out on the screening. Did I miss out? From what I heard, not really.

Short Cuts Canada Award
I am completely baffled by the fact that this award went to Giroux's Les Jours, because The Saddest Boy in the World is much more deserving. Did the jury actually watch any of Jamie Travis' films? That boy is bringing the life back into Canadian short film.

So the screenings are all done, the celebrities are leaving town, and all the exhausted festival-junkies are waking up to the fact that they've missed a whole lot of work during the ten days of vacation they took to watch movies.

The awards have been handed out, the tired volunteers are going home to take a much-needed nap, and I'm here to make a confession: I haven't reviewed every movie I watched during the festival. It just got a little too tiring to write a review on every single film I watched, so I only focused on the films that I thought I could quickly and adequately write about.

In an effort to make up for all of that, here's a look at some of the films I saw this festival and a brief line or two as to what I thought of them:

Fido: This Canadian film will appeal to all those fans of the zombie comedy, but it still doesn't come close to achieving the skill of Shaun of the Dead.

Mercy: Taebi's magical film is endearing, but falls short of being truly engaging.

Bella: People's Choice Award winner Bella is an excellent exercise in story-telling, with the flashbacks fitting quite well in the powerful narrative.

Summer Palace: Interweaving sexual exploration with social commentary, Ye Lou has crafted quite the controversial but engaging film.

Maati Maay: Not a typical South Asian film, Prevakal's film is an interesting take on the story within a story theme, and features a brilliant performance by Nandita Das.

Penelope: Reese Witherspoon and Christina Ricci share a wonderful on-screen relationship in this exciting fairy-tale.

Princess: It's not everyday that you see an animated film that deals with the porn industry so well: one of my festival highlights.

Kabul Express: Exemplifies everything that is wrong with big-budget Bollywood. There is very little redeeming about this shallow and uninteresting film

Shortbus: Sex. Lots and lots of sex. And intriguing as it is for John Cameron Mitchell to use sex as a narrative device, this is no Hedwig and the Angry Itch.

Takva: Erkan Can's performance in this film is nothing short of brilliant, and the film itself is a bright spot among many forgettable films at the festival.

So Yong Kim's first feature film, In Between Days, is a film that has Toronto at its heart. Shot and set in our city, the film tells a story of the immigrant experience that is so relevant in a city like ours.

Director So Yong Kim met me at the Sutton Place Hotel to talk about the film and her experiences in Toronto:

This film hits close to home: set in Toronto, filmed in Toronto, and starring Torontonians. So here's the big question...why Toronto?
Because there's a huge Korean community here, and we came here to do location scouting, and we met Jennifer Weiss who's a wonderful producer. She helped us out with locations and scouting and stuff like that. Also, there's certain parts of Toronto that reminded me a lot of Los Angeles, like Koreatown: you know, with all the strip malls, and the way it's all spread out. Especially in the North York area: that was just perfect. It just felt right for the setting and the stories for the characters.

How was the process of shooting in Toronto? Were the people here helpful and receptive?
The only permit we had to get was the public transportation permit, and that was really easy to get. We didn't have to pay for anything. I mean, we rode on so many buses for this film — you'll see it when you see the movie — we rode all over. Other locations we basically got donated. People were very open to the shooting. We shot it on video, so basically it was just our DP, Brad and I, and our sound guy, so we would just go in and leave, and try to make it as quiet and quick as possible.

Dealing with strong themes of urban alienation, how do you think that this film will resonate with a crowd as ethnically divers as Toronto's population?
I never know, I don't know. I hope people connect with the story and the characters, and they do somehow understand the story in a more personal way. I mean, it is a very intimate story and personal story for me, so I hope that it somehow touches somebody's heart in some way and make you think about yourself or somebody else who is in that situation.

You found Taegu in a nightclub here in Toronto, and the other actors are novices as well. How was it working with two relative unknowns as your leads?
I think it's an amazing experience to actually work with non-actors, because they're so open and they have no preconception of what they're supposed to "be like." It's like them playing pretty much themselves. What I do on the side is give them some lines, and some prompts like, "hey ask her if she wants to have sex with you," or "tell him that you think he's ugly." You know what I mean? And then they just put it in their own words and put their own personality into it. I think it makes the characters much more rich, and they have the added depth, rather than something that's written down.

-

So Yong Kim was born in Pusan, South Korea and immigrated to the United States. She studied painting, performance, and video art, earning her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has made video installations and short films, and produced Bradley Rust Gray's Salt (03). In Between Days (06) is her first feature film.

(Film Still: So & Brad)
(Director Bio: TIFFG)

Strongly suggesting that the "audience choice award" at the Toronto International Film Festival is not based on the actual ballots filled out by audience members, news of this year's winner, Bella, leaked almost an hour before the final screening of the film had even begun this afternoon.

Festivalgoers have long suspected that the ballots handed out at every screening at the festival were being shovelled into the nearest convenient furnace as soon as they are turned in, and TIFF's awkward timing with the Bella news may have inadvertently conceded the point. I was literally in the rush line at the Varsity with audience members hoping to get in to see the film when a Bella booster came around to announce the film's win and hand out celebratory postcards.

Now, the announcement has not yet reached the TIFF web site so this news must still be taken with a grain of salt. But the TIFF staff at the Varsity have confirmed that Bella is indeed the winner, and that the official announcement will be made prior to the film's final screening at 2:45 p.m.

I wonder if that final audience will be encouraged to vote or not.

One more day left in the festival, and I thought I'd venture out in the city to see how much the festival is actually impacting everyday Torontonians. And while most people I met were very excited about the economic and cultural impact of all the filmmakers and film enthusiasts meeting in our city, I realized that almost everyone I've spoken to were in the Yorkville area of downtown. In the interest of doing some research, I branched out into Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough to see what everyday people there thought of TIFF this year.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a good number of people were barely aware of the festival, and several did not know — or even care — that it was happening for the past ten days. Apparently, the festival really only attracts a very niche crowd, and that crowd can usually be found in the box between Dupont, Spadina, Queen, and Yonge, at least during the festival. Maybe the festival needs to do some more marketing? Or maybe, as one person told me, they just need to drop some ticket prices.

Ah, and I'll be wrapping up the festival in tomorrow's festival watch post, with some of my highlights and major disappointments.

And now for some movies:

Breaking and Entering
Anthony Minghella, United Kingdom
Minghella's newest film has a lot of good things going for it: a brilliant muted screen palette by cinematographer Benoit Delhomme, and fantastically haunting score by Gabriel Yared, excellent performances by main actors Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, and Jude Law, and a witty and impactful script by Minghella himself. Sadly, what the film lacks is a true sense of engagement with the audience, which will make this film incredibly hard to market to the normal theatre-going audience.

Breaking and Entering is a mature film dealing with very intense themes and ideas, and it is wonderfully captured by Minghella's vision. Despite the fact that the ending makes the film a lot less resonant, there are some wonderful moments in the movie. This won't be an easy sell at the box office because it is weighty and not necessarily very accessible, but in general, it is worth watching for the excellent filmmaking in general.

Chacun Sa Nuit
Jean-Marc Barr and Pascal Arnold, France
The premise of this movie is a little jarring at first: the whole narrative revolves around the very intimate relationship between a group of friends, at the center of which are a brother-sister pair that share a physically-intense and provocative bond. When the brother is murdered, his sister launches a campaign to find his killer, unearthing tales and secrets from the past of every member of the group.

Chacun Sa Nuit succeeds because Arnold and Barr know that this jarring effect is good for the audience. There is a lot of sex (a whole lot) in this film, but it is not just there for cursory effect: instead, it provides an added layer to the narrative. Nudity, in this sense, is but another costume for the characters to wear. And when you finally find out who the killer is, you're still left with questions of motivation, which is why Chacun Sa Nuit is such a good film. It will keep you thinking.

Amazing Grace
Michael Apted, United Kingdom
Screening as the closing gala of the festival tomorrow, Michael Apted's most recent movie is a fitting close to a large-scale festival: it is a sweeping period piece with grandiose performances and even loftier messages. Amazing Grace details William Wilberforce's struggle to abolish the slave trade in England, and it is just as powerful as Spielberg's Amistad, while just as decorative as Coppola's Marie Antoinette.

Easily my second favorite film at the festival after Pan's Labyrinth, Amazing Grace is kept moving by a performance by Ioan Gruffudd that is nothing short of perfect. The costuming and the set decor is extravagant yet elegant, and the issues are emotional yet political. There's very little you can say about what is wrong with this film, and if you had to rush any film this festival, do try and see this one as it closes off the festival. It will sweep you off your feet.

Sure, there may be celebrities everywhere, but often the most interesting people you meet at the Toronto International Film Festival are standing in front of you in line.

Who: Arif Karmali
From: Edmonton, Alberta
In Line For: The Last King of Scotland
Years at the Festival: Two

What are some of your best memories from festivals past?
Enjoying the great movies and talking to great directors and producers. The Q&A's are also a favorite because you can ask interesting questions, and really there's nobody else you can ask but the people who make the movies. That's something I really enjoy at the festival.

What are you looking forward to for this year's festival?
Looking forward to seeing a gala, hopefully. Maybe I'll go to one of the later ones, because there's still tickets available. But yeah, I'm looking forward to going to the big event where everyone gets on the red carpet: really experiencing that part of the festival.

Any other thoughts you have about the festival or Toronto?
I think it's a great city to hold a festival. It brings good exposure to Toronto, and it's an overall great experience. I think they need to reduce ticket prices. Twenty bucks a movie is a little bit high. If it's all about the arts, then it's all about the films and not about the money. Drop the ticket prices for the regular people.

Niki Karimi has built quite the resume in the Iranian film industry as an actress and also working with great directors like Abbas Kiarostami. Her second feature as a director, A Few Days Later..., is a bold film that is centered on repetition and daily routine, and had its world premiere here in Toronto.

There's lots to learn about Karimi on her website, but I had the chance to chat with her just before the first public screening of her movie and ask her a bit about the motivations that came behind it:

This film is essentially a character study about a woman in the process of thinking through a decision. What was the process in creating this story?
I can not tell you that it was really my intent to make a film like this, but this is the cinema that I like. I don't like the cinema that has too much of camera moving and all this. Also, one of the things that I like very much is the repetition of daily life. You know, the thing we do in the morning and then the day after you do the exact same thing and all this. I wanted to express all of my feelings as just three or four days of daily life.

The protagonist in this film takes her time to make decisions, unlike in most movies where decisions are made quickly. Does this thinking process, especially for a woman character, act as an empowering device for your audience?
The thing is that exactly what you are saying. When I see a film, I think, how can the decision making be like this: in our life we should think about what we want to do. And especially for the long time relationship she is involved with, and now suddenly the wife appears, and she needs to think about what she wants to do. Also, she wants to know about the man: what is his reaction when the wife comes back. And both of these need time. I love in stories, generally, I love this thinking part. It is exactly like life. And the first idea that made me make this film is struggling, and waiting, and thinking what we should do. I think it's very human.

Why is it important that you're here in Toronto, promoting the film?
It's my first time in Toronto, but I had heard about how it's a very big festival. But now I came and I wonder how big it really is. I have been to so many film festivals, but this festival is really great because so many things are happening, and there's a big market. And it has people who are a professional audience: not only directors, but writers, distributors, everybody. So, I love to know the reaction of Iranian society, but tonight is the screening, so I'm really looking forward to seeing how they react.

Tonight is the world premiere, and nobody has seen it before. We just finished with the technical things now. I don't consider my films for a special audience. I think some audiences, they like this, and some I know don't like this kind of thing. Because, when you turn TV on, or you have a DVD, your unconscious gets used to so many things: storytelling, commercials, actors, and so many things. And then, for sure, seeing these kinds of films needs that you are able to have a little bit of liking for this kind of film.

-

Niki Karimi was born in Tehran and started acting in elementary school. Her film debut was in Jamshid Heydari's Temptation (89) and she went on to star in many notable Iranian films, including Behruz Afkhami's The Bride (90), Dariush Mehrjui's Sara (94) and Pari (95), both of which earned her several awards, and Tahmineh Milani's Two Women (99), The Hidden Half (01) and The Fifth Reaction (03). In addition to work as a screenwriter and translator, she directed her first film, the documentary To Have or Not to Have, in 2001. Her fiction features are One Night (05) and A Few Days Later... (06).

(Film Still: Niki Karimi)
(Director Bio: TIFFG)

Day eight of the festival is usually the day where the lineups are a little shorter, the volunteers and staff are a little less talkative, and everyone is cranky and sick. It's easy to get sick if you're at the Toronto International Film Festival, because watching movies all day (and for some people like me, trying to juggle a full time job at the same time) makes you really tired and susceptible to bugs. Being at the festival, your sleeping and eating habits are usually altered enough to throw you out of your regular groove, and it's also often easy to forget that while you're in a theatre all day, the world is still spinning around you, and people are still living their lives.

So yeah, I'm a little sick. Which means my movie watching over the next few days might be a little light, maybe only about three a day. I hope you don't mind. The festival is bound to pick up a little steam for Friday and Saturday, so if you've got some time to kill this weekend, rest up now because the closing two days are usually full of fun.

And now for some movies:

Prague
Ole Christian Madsen, Denmark
This film may just be one of the sleeper hits of the festival. Sure, it seems on the surface as a pretty conventional drama about broken relationships, but it's this same sense of familiarity that makes Prague so impressive. Instead of boring the audience with a story that everyone has heard, director Ole Christian Madsen takes the story and tells it in way where even the city of Prague has a voice in the matter. This film has the ability to shake you up even when you're tired and need a nap.

Of course, part of the success of this film lies in the absolutely stunning performance by Mads Mikkelsen, who has clearly stood out in my mind as one of the best actors in the festival after his performances in Prague and After the Wedding. His portrayal of a man that takes personal tragedy and bottles it up in an effort to save his relationship is nothing short of brilliant, and it doesn't matter that you can't understand the Danish he speaks for part of the film. He'll still blow you away.

In Between Days
So Yong Kim, USA/Canada/South Korea
Filmed entirely in Toronto, set in Toronto, and using Torontonian actors, In Between Days explores a part of the city that is often ignored in most film: the ethnic enclaves that litter the city. Set in the Korean neighborhoods of North York, So Yong Kim's film looks at the suburban malaise that is prevalent among immigrant groups that never seem to find their place in the large expanse of the city.

The acting is strong and Toronto is quite nicely depicted as a cold, impersonal place, but the themes seem to be recycled and Kim never does manage to cover any new ground here. At times, the film does seem to drag, but in general, it is quite well-crafted. Nothing special, but definitely worth a look to see a side of Toronto that you normally don't see on the big screen.

The Fountain
Darren Aronofsky, USA
I can now fully understand why people of Venice could have been a little upset after watching Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain, and I blame the booing on the marketing team. After all, The Fountain — at least according to the trailers and the TV spots — is being marketed as this fantastic journey of immortality that stretches for over 1000 years, or as a love story that stretches beyond time. It is nothing like that. Instead, Aronofsky's film is more of a spiritual journey than a sci-fi/fantasy film, and if you go in expecting anything else, you will be disappointed.

That being said, The Fountain is quite impressive, with decent acting by the main characters, well-detailed visuals, and pretty exciting plot development. Sometimes, the film may seem a little surreal, but Aronofsky does pull off the time-shifting quite well. Vaguely reminiscent of Pi, The Fountain is not your everyday Hollywood blockbuster, but should do swift business in the box office in the first weekend because of the buzz. Maybe the marketing team actually got it right for the public and not for the festival circuit.

Who programs a film about a Hungarian guy hypnotizing a room full of people at ten o'clock in the morning on the seventh day of the film festival? The TIFF programmers, of course! Self-hypnosis aside, the mid-week doldrums are over and done with and it's time to look ahead at the last few days of TIFF '06.

Today's podcast includes:

• Reviews of Shortbus and The Fountain
• Quick picks for Friday and Saturday

DOWNLOAD THE SHOW (12 meg MP3 file)

The moviesTO podcast is sponsored by the Canadian Film Centre's Habitat New Media Lab. For more information, check out

www.cdnfilmcentre.com/training/newmedia.html

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Gather round, film farts, art aficionados and music maniacs, all! Tomorrow night, Peter Mettler will be dishing out an eight-hour treat at the Berkeley Church. The director, who is being honoured by this year's TIFF Canadian Retrospective, will be presenting Elsewhere, an evening of improvised audio-visual adventure.

With a slew of musical, tech and visual cronies in tow, the Canadian director of Gambling, Gods and LSD fame will be embarking on an "an uncharted live cinema journey through a multitude of interesting places and states." Hold on to them panties, dearly beloved, this is gonna be fun...

A grab-bag of audio treats and assorted eye candy will combine to create a one-time-only sensory mindtrip. Mettler has been known to have up to seven video inputs going at once, the sources of which run the gamut of visual stimuli. Bank instructional tapes, Joe Next Door's experimental videos, classic films, documentaries from the world over, Mettler's own footage, sports tapes...anything's fair game. The idea is to decontextualize Art, as well as everyday ho-hum imagery, and challenge our notions of entertainment. In doing so, Mettler hopes to reprogram the ways in which we engage with media and with each other.

In a recent interview with VJ Book, Mettler dubbed his approach "teledivinitry".

"It's to do with sensing or divining currents of meaning through the use of technology. Live mixing is a bit like going into a technological trance, letting things unfold and emerge while reacting to the things which are coming at you. I record the mixes on tape, because there's no way I can keep track of all that's happening. In reviewing it, I can start to see the imbedded narratives and surprising juxtapositions," he explains. "There is a logic within that is much different than anything the rational structuring mind would have come up with. I find that exercising associative perception can give you a finer appreciation of the relationship between things."

Musicians coming to put in their $0.02 are (in order of appearance, starting at 10pm):

-Evergreen Gamelan Club Ensemble of Toronto, an eight-piece outfit that perform a gamelan (a collection of bronze and wooden instruments indigenous to Indonesia).
-Martin Schutz of Switzerland, a master of both the acoustic and electric cello.
-Murcof aka Terrestre of Mexico, creator of classical-electronic music hybrids.
-Marc Weiser of Germany, the minimal techno third of audio-visual project Rechenzentrum.
-Telefunk Sound System, a local electronic live PA act.
-Adam Marshall, a homegrown dance music hero.
-Tom Kuo aka Task, local purveyor of organic, intelligent techno.

Yikes. With the Motor/Kim Simko/Junior Sanchez posse at Return to New York, Ghislain Poirier at the Drake, Peter Mettler and friends at the Berkeley Church and other random TIFF fete-ness, what's a girl to do?

Suck it up and vroom-vroom til 6am, I suppose.

Sigh. Yes, it's a tough life, 'tis.

What: Elsewhere
When: Friday, September 15, 10pm to 6am
Where: The Berkeley Church (315 Queen Street E)
Cost: $25 advance, $35 at the door. Available at Pages Bookstore, Soundscapes, Seekers Books, Shanti Baba, Rotate This, Play De Record.

Christian Volckman's new film Renaissance is visually like nothing you have ever seen before. He pushes the boundaries of animation and infuses the black and white film with a noir that is perfectly suited to the dystopian society he has created.

I got to talk to Volckman before his public screening in Toronto, and he shared some of his nervousness, but also tipped me off to a great place to find a nice strong espresso near the hotel. Awesome.

This film is definitely not like anything I have ever seen before. How did you conceive of the visual concept, or even just imagine having a film like this?
It's a long story. I was working on my short film, which was a short film using blue screen, and of course you create all the sets behind, painting image by image, some of the scenes. Mixed media kind of stuff. And then, I went to a festival and saw this guy (Mark Miance)working on black and white images using motion capture. It was not very sophisticated, but I saw that, and I said, I want to work on a film like that. I don't know what it's going to be, but that's what I want to work on. And then we lost sight of each other for one year, and I met him later on and he was still trying to build a studio. So we met with a producer, and we started to work with Mark, with some script writers, and that's how things started.

On the visual side, you start with a storyboard, and you think that you want this to happen, and you start creating your virtual sculptures. And then you put the lights on the characters — thats four years later, of course - and its funny that there's some things that come out of it that you don't control or didn't foresee. When you do the sculptures in 3D, its not like you're drawing. It's like your whole world exists on the machine, and then you have to light it like its real, like you're on a real set. You put the light on it, you put the framing, and that's how things go.

You grow with it: in the beginning you have ideas, it doesn't work, you find solutions. If you look very closely at the film, the beginning is not as good as the end. There's a real difference, and the story of the film is the story of its fabrication.

The film has a moral undertone, so how important was it to set it in a future, dystopian Paris instead of a current day situation?
Freedom of doing whatever you want: Paris was fun, because it had never been done before. Paris was fun because we got to play with the buildings and stuff like that. It's just exciting to try and create a world instead of analyze what's existing. I know just the theme of immortality, we thought that in fifty years it might be closer to a reality so it may be more relevant in 2054.

Why is it important to be showing your film here in Toronto? How has your experience with the film here been?
You have to ask Miramax! No, really. It is very important for me to be here in Toronto, because the market is good, and it's good on a business side, for my career. For me though, I don't believe in doing mainstream blockbusters, it's not my goal. I lived in America for a few years when I was in high school, I feel that I'm close to this area, this region. I mean, I still like the Hollywood movies: in France, there's still something weird about the situation right now. I really like being here in Toronto.

For my public screening downtown, I'm a little bit scared because you know it's difficult to get into this film, because it's a little bit different, and some people will react differently to it. The people in Toronto have been great so far though.

-

Christian Volckman was born in Avallon, France and studied drawing, painting and photography at l'Ecole Superieure des Arts Graphique in Paris. During his final year at university, he completed his first animated film, The Guinea Pig (94). He subsequently directed music videos and Maaz (99), an award-winning short. Renaissance (06) is his feature directorial debut.

(Film Still: Miramax)
(Director Bio: TIFFG)

The film centers on Tom Verde (Hugh Jackman) who works as a pioneering cancer researcher fighting for the cure to save his wife Izzie (Rachael Weisz) who is slowly dying from a brain tumor. Izzie meanwhile is exploring her own mortality through the writing of a book entitled "The Fountain" about a Spanish conquistador searching for the Mayan Tree of Life in order to defeat the menacing Inquisator and live forever with the Queen he loves.

Izzie's novel ties closely together with the reality around her and allows for the film to explore it's unique narrative structure. Even with solid performances by everyone involved in this film it is not an actor's dream script like Requiem but springs to life on it's concept and execution alone. With unarguably gorgeous cinematography in every frame and an amazing score by longtime Aronofsky collaborator Clint Mansell, the film oozes with an other worldly mood totally it's own.

I know this is not a film for everyone and some will probably dislike it or be confused by it's methods. This doesn't mean that this film is bad at all but like Aronofsky first feature Pi some audiences will shutdown at it's twisted sometimes perplexing spiritual take and some critics will certainly scoff at it's grandieur but you shouldn't let that stop you from seeing this film.

The Fountain like recent films "Adaptation", "Me and You and Everyone You Know" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" weaves a tale of romance in a bizzare way seldom seen on screens today. Out of all those examples it is however certainly at the bottom of the list but with 2006's lack luster offerings, I was glad to take a refreshing plunge into this film. If you are looking for a non traditional way to engage with love and loss at the movies then this is the perfect ticket for you.

Coming into the screening there had been almost no publicity. None of the local media (as far as I saw), had reviewed or even mentioned the film. Strange given it stars Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson who along with first time director David Von Ancken showed up to introduce it. Could this be because Icon Productions (read: Mel Gibson) is the financial backer. Is there a Mel boycott in effect?

Or perhaps the real explanation is that Seraphim Falls was a late addition to the TIFF lineup and few media got a chance to preview it. Whatever the reason, once the opening credits rolled I only became more perplexed.

The entire film is essentially Liam Neeson (and an assortment of cohorts) chasing Pierce Brosnan through snowy mountains and barren desert. Why the chase is happening isn't revealed until a hour and a half into the film.

Throughout the journey there are some particulary bizarre occurences:

1. Brosnan's character doesn't talk until 20 minutes in even though he's on camera almost the whole time. His entire dialogue during this period is made up of a series of grunts, gasps and screams.

2. This is clearly a role unlike many Brosnan has played before. There's one memorable scene involving an ambush, a knife and a dead horse.

3. Angelica Huston's appearance toward the end of the film brought chuckles from the audience. The film takes such a sidestep I can only wonder if the screenwriter started ingesting mushrooms before his job was done.

Overall, it's tough to say whether I'd recommend the film. I saw it with two friends. One walked out halfway through and the other kept threatening to do the same. But I wouldn't leave. I was hooked enough that I had to find out how it was going to end.

There's something about the rain that makes you want to watch a movie. It's hard to find something better than sitting in a theatre, watching a film that makes you laugh and smile and cry, when the skies outside are cloudy and gray. Of course, with theaters being kept at a ridiculously cold temperature, running straight from being in the rain into a cold theatre is sure to make you sick. I think I'm getting sick already.

With day seven all wrapped up, you can tell there's a kind of blah-ness that's settling in at the festival, with people all tired and all out of energy. I'm sure the energy will pick right up when Friday rolls around.

And now for some movies:

A Few Days Later...
Niki Karimi, Iran
Niki Karimi's newest film is bold and courageous in a very understated way. The story of an Iranian woman who is engaged in a very emotional decision-making process, A Few Days Later... tracks Shahrzad through her everyday daily routines with a poetry that is inspiring. Karimi's bold move was to create a film that relies on repetition and slowness to tell its story rather than significant plot conflict.

The film is exhilaratingly slow, so it's not for viewing when you're extremely tired, but the beauty of the film comes from this intricate pacing. Adequately portraying the emotional struggle of relationship decisions, A Few Days Later... feels real to anyone that is dealing with indecision and urban malaise.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Jonathan Levine, USA
My name is Sameer Vasta, I am a boy, and I love Mandy Lane. I really do. I love every part of Jonathan Levine's teenage slasher flick, which is not only the smartest murder-horror since Scream, but is also the most exciting as well. Predictable enough to fit the genre, but clever enough to make it unique, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane is gory and gruesome, but also witty and funny.

As the resident geek in high school, I always had a vivid contempt for the popular kids in school. But Mandy Lane is different, and you can't help but love her charm, her looks (even though she is grossly underage), and her not-so-innocent naiveté. Played delightfully by relative newcomer Amanda Heard (who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Scarlett Johansson), the title character is so endearing that you can fully understand why all the boys love her. I surely do.

Little Children
Todd Field, USA
How do you spell overrated? L-I-T-T-L-E C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N. Of course, Todd Field's newest film is not a bad one: in fact, it's pretty good. But it's definitely not worthy of the glowing praise and the best picture reviews that it is garnering. The themes of infidelity and social control are indeed interesting, but Little Children. feels too small to be dealing with big issues, despite the witty dialog and the excellent acting.

The Desperate Housewives-style narration is the first indication that Little Children would be better suited as a television mini-series than a long feature film. And long is definitely the operative word. Field would have done well to chop at least twenty minutes off this film to make it more effective. Overall, however, the film is a good one, but definitely not deserving of the over-applause that it has been getting.