Getting a jump on next year?

Someone might want to tell the Brass Rail to update their sign. In between messages of "Go Jays Go" and "Very Satisfying Lap Dances" the news ticker on the facade of the strip club also reads "Welcome Toronto Film Festival".

Fame and fortune cookies

We admit it. We're mildly excited about tonight's premiere of Survivor: China. Even though this is the 15th edition of television's most enduringly absurd reality show, and we became bored with its predictable formula, oh, about seven seasons ago.

Fortune says: Enjoy this cookie while watching 16 Americans starve on national television.

Still, we can't help feeling a little thrill each time a new one comes around because maybe this time will be different. Maybe this will be another Borneo, or Panama, or even All-Stars. But if we get any whiff of another Fiji, we'll be flipping channels before the first torch is snuffed.

CBS and Global Television have been trying to build excitement for this season because of its location in China's Jiang Xi province -- they're calling it the first time a major American television show is set "in the most mysterious place on Earth." But will producers take true advantage of the location and play up its Eastern exotica, or will this be like every other edition of Survivor -- a fortune-cookie version of Chinese culture?

The signs are not good. If you were walking by the corner of Yonge and Queen Sts. yesterday, chances are you were handed -- guess what? -- a fortune cookie, branded by the show and by food-court fixture Manchu Wok. Again today, a blond woman in a red satin Chinese brocade top (she wasn't fooling anybody) was handing out the cookies outside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Sigh. At least we can feel relieved, not slighted, that there has yet to be a Survivor: Canada. This only means we can avoid having to shield our eyes during a cringe-worthy season of Mounties, igloos and moose burgers.

Book from the heart

The Munk Centre at the University of Toronto has been host to many publishing events over the years. But, it seems safe to say, none has been nearer and dearer to the heart of patron benefactor, mining mogul Peter Munk, than Wednesday evening's launch for Kasztner's Train: The True Story of Rezso Kasztner, Unknown Hero of the Holocaust.

The book, by former publisher Anna Porter, is the story of a Budapest Jew who negotiated with Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann for more than 1,600 Hungarian Jews to receive safe passage to Switzerland in 1944, thereby escaping almost certain death in Hitler's extermination camps.

Munk, 17 at the time, and 13 relatives were on that train. Speaking in praise of Kasztner and Porter's book, Munk speculated that there probably wasn't a bigger group of family members to escape the Holocaust in similar fashion.

Vit Wagner

Seacrest (scratched) out

Poor Ryan Seacrest just can't get a break in Toronto. First he's panned for his disappearing act as host of the Emmys on Sunday, and now a poster of him is defaced in St. George station.

The pillar ad, featuring a closeup shot of Seacrest's face to promote his show on the renamed E! channel has had both eyes gouged out. To add insult to injury, some mean soul has written "Nerd!" above his face.

Mr. Seacrest, we wish to apologise, on behalf of all Torontonians, for this incident. But privately, we congratulate the vandal on not choosing stronger, more bleep-worthy slurs to scrawl.

MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS

Ryan Seacrest deserves some dignity.

And on the 11th day Sketch rested

Another film fest has come and gone but we're still here...at least we will be tomorrow. We're all TIFFed out at the moment. Bring on the Emmys!

TGIFF

Friday's Fan is up and rarin' to be read. Read Tim Lai's handiwork here.

A hole lotta detours

RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR

Hmm. How can we make this any more obtrusive to festival traffic?

We foolishly thought we might be able to make it through TIFF without someone digging up the corner of Avenue Rd. and Bloor St., a rite that has become more predictable than the Capistrano swallows.

But noooo ... the diggers were back yesterday with their backhoes and shovels, making their annual nuisance of themselves.

But hey -- why should they wait when nobody else is? Did the condo builder who has blocked one lane of Bloor east of Avenue really have to take this week to dig a giant hole?

It’s like the Caddyshack gopher is trying to gatecrash TIFF.

Most annoying of all is the broken section of sidewalk on Bloor, in front of a shuttered Pizza Hut. Rather than fix the gaping hole, someone has put two planks -- one plywood, one iron -- over the jagged hole for people to walk over. But both planks are warped, making passage difficult and noisy. And it’s right near the Hotel InterContinental, where foot traffic has increase tenfold with stargazers.

It all looks like hell, right during the festival that has done more to draw world attention to Toronto than any other event.

Do the builders and diggers of this city have it in for TIFF? And does anyone at city hall still engage in planning, or do they confine themselves to taxing and shrugging?
-Peter Howell

Win-Lose Situation

TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR

Ready for a nap? Julian Schnabel gets cozy on the carpet.

Julian Schnabel, lying prone on the floor for his interview, wearing what looks like a pair of pyjamas, muses on how he was probably going to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes instead of best director for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but lost out in last-minute horse-trading. He knows how these things work, because he was on the jury himself one year and he figures they would have only flown in his entire cast if he was going to win the best pic award.

Just in case you missed it...

Your daily TIFF fan fix. Pace yourself, there's a reason we dole them out one at a time.

No-show at TIFF

The films are good, the parties are glitzy, the lineups long. It's been business as usual at TIFF. But when the lights go down in all those inevitably crowded theatres, there is one thing that's conspicuously absent: those 15-second promos, set to New Agey music, that inform you you're at the XX edition of the Toronto International Film Festival, before giving a shout out to the sponsors.

We suspect this is to give more prominence to the festival's major sponsor, Bell, and its ad for the newly christened, under-construction Lightbox. But this is no substitute: Where's the slick production that borders on fromage? Where's the rousing score that some years would send a chill down our spine? The only thing this static, forgettable advertisement has going for it is a few seconds of "I Feel it All" by commercial queen Feist.

Bring back the old promos — and, while we're at it, a TIFF poster worth hanging on our wall. Like Leonard Cohen's "For Anne," we didn't know how much we had till it was gone.

Dressing the part

As any good film fest fashionista knows, sartorial choices should reflect the screening. Here, some tips to have you wearing the right duds (even if the movie is a dud).

1. Red carpet look The goal here is to have the paparazzi give you a second glance as you stroll up to the gala. The outfit starts with the shoes, at least according actress Kristen Booth, but working the red carpet - or its immediate vicinity - means a pulled-together formal look from top to bottom.

2.You can obviously go a bit more casual for a second and subsequent screening, especially if it’s in the daytime. No one expects a ballgown at 10 a.m., unless you just haven’t been home to change from the gala before (this is not recommended)

3. The Tiffster look is often sported by the blase industry types, cinema students and occasional jaded reporter who seemingly throws on any old thing (which usually involves skinny jeans) and slouches off to yet another screening with a bored look that took years to perfect and bed-head that took hours to coif.

4. Cultural couture is an homage, generally by a person originally from a certain part of the world, a movie from that same part of the world. For example, a friend is planning to wear sari for Thursday’s screening of Richie Mehta’s directorial debut Amal, which is set in India.

5. The die-hard fan is dressed more for an expedition than a festival. You can spot them by their huge knapsacks or shoulderbags filled with the essentials (snacks, pashmina, program guide, headlamp) and their sensible footwear and comfy clothes. Accessory: expensive camera for stargazing.

6. Similar to number 4 is the movie-specific look, such as two teenage boys spotted in full zombie garb for Saturday’s Midnight Madness screening of George Romero’s Diary of the Dead.

Did we miss anything?

There's a Facebook application for everything...

Someone in FB-land has developed an application for Festers to pick and track their movie choices.

From the developers:

The Toronto Film Festival Application provides you with easy access to film festival schedules and lets your organize with your friends which movies you want to see.

What's that you say? It would have been helpful to have learned about this at the beginning of the festival, instead of more than halfway through?

We at Sketch say better late than never, and also that we need to post something Facebook-related in order to justify the amount of company time we spend changing our profile pics and writing witty status updates.

Tuesday's TIFF fan is full of grace

It's Tuesday, and time for another fan profile by the Star's Tim Lai.

No More Tiers

As anyone who's really TIFF-ing knows, standing in lineups gives a lot of time for contemplation. At least contemplation about lines, and exactly what your position in one means.

STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR

Category 3: Patiently waiting outside the Manulife Centre.

It's very obvious there is a hierarchy at play here. The higher up you are on the ladder of importance, the quicker you'll get in. So far, we've noticed at least four categories:

1. The Really Very Important People: They keep red carpet manufacturers in business.
2. The Somewhat Very Important People: They get to stand alongside the red carpet and ask all the questions or get priority access to seats.
3. The Ticket Holders: They paid for the privilege of scrambling for seats.
4. The Rushers: They are the wishful thinkers. If we feel like it, we might let you into the screening.

The Elgin, as always rechristened the Visa Screening Room, adds another category: The platinum and gold Visa Card Holders, who stand in a line parallel to the Ticket Holders, and get to make faces at the plebs as they're whisked indoors first. Some of them even get free refreshments.

But there's one lineup for which we're all equals: the restroom.

TIFF fan for a Monday afternoon

Check out Tim Lai's latest victim TIFF fan of the day.