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".

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.

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.

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.

Waiting games

Tip to festers: take a page from the Boy Scout founder Robert Baden-Powell and Be Prepared.

The festival is all about hurry up and wait, so pack something to keep yourself occupied whilst waiting in line or in the audience. Stargazing only tends to be worthwhile during the galas, so consider taking up knitting or bring a manicure kit along (helps to break the ice if you offer a mani to the person sitting next to you).

Not content with straining their eyes by staring at movie screens for hours on end, the audience members at today's screening of Santosh Sivan's Before the Rains, seemed determined to stare at tiny tv screens on their phones or to pore over festival guides.

But for one exhausted Star staffer, the wait for the main attraction was perfect for catching a much-needed cat nap.