Last TIFF ....

Last line up of TIFF and I'm back @AMC. What luck! We're ushered into a cinema to wait in what one TIFF volunteer calls a virtual line. Am early and nab a prime spot. Two seats down from me a moviegoer is serenaded by her partner. He sings "Happy Birthday" to her. A couple of other moviegoers join in. Seems tickets to TIFF were a birthday present. This afternoon's movie is Blood of My Blood. As we wait, a pair of moviegoers watch Sex in the City 2 on a smartphone. After a short wait, we're ushered into another cinema. The ritual jostling of seats begins, then everyone settles in for the movie.

The verdict:

Blood of My Blood was an interesting last film for me. Slow to start, but packs a huge emotional punch at the end. Lovely to see parts of Lisboa again.

-Debra Black

Color of the Ocean: Deeply disturbing but fabulous

Color of the Ocean was a deeply disturbing film set in the Canary Islands about a father and son who arrive there as illegal residents and about the lengths they'll go to achieve a new life.

The film is also about those who help and hinder them, as well as the people they, in turn, touch.

The film leaves many questions unanswered, prompting much discussion by the couple sitting behind me on the Dundas Streetcar.

Overall, a fabulous film!

Tomorrow, back in line in the afternoon.

-- Debra Black

All TIFF'ed out in the second-best row

Second to last lineup for this year's TIFF. I've seen 11 movies in eight days.

With one more tomorrow back here at AMC. Tonight, I'm seeing Colour of the Ocean at a 9 p.m. screening.

People here are patiently waiting munching on pretzels, and emailing or texting on their smartphones. Some chat about movies; others have a glazed, seen-too-many-movies look. A man and woman hug and kiss near the back of the line.

Think I'm movied-TIFFed out.

Plots of movies are all blurring together, as are lineups. Feel like I have spent the past eight days in a never ending, perpetually moving line.

And then suddenly a TIFF volunteer shouts above the din to alert us that it's time to enter the cinema. Finally in and the chaos of finding seats begins. 

"Is that seat free?" asks one fan to other movie goers in the row ahead of me. They say it is. He makes himself at home and sits happily.

"This is the best row " he tells them.

Hmm, if only I'd known. Too late for me to move. Guess I'm stuck in second-best row - just behind the best.

-- Debra Black

Photos: Star photog is TIFFified, TIFF'd OUT and just plain old TIFF'd

TIFF photoblog

This year's installment of TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) is winding up, but my days of endless hours waiting in line to get to the photo pool area of a red carpet, or running from hotel room to hotel room to hotel room for my 30, sometimes allotted, second photo-op, are done. After eight straight days of TIFF, I'm TIFFified, TIFF'd OUT and just plain old TIFF'd.

I'll openly admit it's not one of my favorite annual events, but it does have its moments.

My experience, this year at least, seem to gather a theme. Considering it is a film festival, and one of the most important in the world (at least for the industry and celebrity magazines), music seem to be the current I got caught up in. The fact I had seen 3 of the 4 artists I shot, as a paying fan and not in the photo pit for the customary 3 song limit), was an added bonus.

I jumped from Bono and The Edge, whom I just saw weeks ago at Rogers Centre when they played the rescheduled dates from last year's interrupted 360 tour - it was my virgin U2 show always kicking myself for not having gone in 86 when I had a golden opportunity, to Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols) to Pearl Jam to a songwriter I, personally, feel is a musical god, our very own Neil Young.

-Rick Madonik, Staff Photographer

TIFF Photoblog

There continues to be parts of the old "punker" in Johnny Rotten these days. Certainly more subdued, as age is prone to do, but his rebel ways continue as the interview room smells like an ashtray after numerous back-to-back sessions and continual smoking by the musician/Rick Madonik photo

 

Small movies have big impact at TIFF

... and sometimes get bigger in the process. Canadian director Craig Goodwill’s 38-minute short Patch Town, which had its world premiere at the fest, is going to become a full-length feature film, thanks to a deal with Montreal-based Suki Films. Patch Town is a musical version of the age-old question kids ask their parents about where babies come from, starring Lisa Ray (Water, Cooking With Stella) and a very funny Rob Ramsay. Christopher Bond (Evil Dead: The Musical) handled the music.

The story follows a now-grown teen (Ramsay) abandoned after he was “born” in a cabbage-patch Soviet-style factory. Many of those involved from the short will work on the feature, including writers Christopher Bond and Trevor Martin and producers Catherine Gourdier and David Sparkes.

Linda Barnard

50 signatures and counting: Autograph collector still busy TIFFing

Veronica Jennings has had a busy TIFF.

When the Star caught up with the 30-year-old autograph collector earlier in the festival, the Niagara Falls resident had already met Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Viggo Mortensen, Paul Giamatti, Clive Owen and Robert De Niro.

One week later, Jennings is still hitting the premieres, press conferences and anywhere else she thinks a celebrity might be hiding. Reached on her cell Friday, outside Roy Thomson Hall, Jennings provided an update on the autographs and photos she’s gotten with celebrities.

The total? More than 50 people, including: Emile Hirsch, Alexis Bledel, Nicolas Cage, Gene Simmons, Katie Couric, Ewan McGregor, Heather Graham, Kiefer Sutherland, Kathy Griffin, Anna Kendrick, Seth Rogen, Sarah Polley, Gerard Butler, Sarah Silverman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Jordan Knight.

-Wendy Gillis

 

Veronica Jennings/Photo by Wendy Gillis

Emily Blunt film gets a distribution deal

Good news for Your Sister's Sister, the very funny, quirkily insightful film from Humpday's Lynn Shelton. It's landed a distribution deal with IFC Films and should hit theatres in the coming months. Mark Duplass, Rosemarie Dewitt and Emily Blunt star in this largely improvised three hander about a strange weekend at an isolated cabin. I really enjoyed this one and so did the rest of the audience at the world premiere at the Ryerson Theatre Saturday.

Linda Barnard

Raunchy observations at TIFF

The subject of American director Tanya Wexler’s oh-so-British sex farce, Hysteria generated a few raunchy observations at Thursday’s press conference, following the film’s premiere at TIFF.

The supposedly true story of the invention of the personal electric vibrator in Victorian London by a young doctor who treated women with numerous emotional problems by stimulating their genitals to produce “paroxysms”, is a winner, judging from audience reactions to festival screenings. It stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, Hugh Dancy and Jonathan Pryce.

“What were you doing down there?” Dancy was asked at the presser.

“Acting!” he replied.

Dancy, like most who’ve commented on the film, was astonished to learn how ignorant Victorian men, even trained physicians like the characters he and Pryce play, were of female sexuality. Or were they?

“These medical men were seriously, and without any irony, diagnosing a non-existent condition, doing what they were doing manually, and failing to see that there might be anything sexual about it.”

-Greg Quill

Pretty as a picture

Original art of stills from the TIFF program book is on display in the downstairs lounge of the Hyatt on King St. W. It includes Carole Freeman's Paul Williams Still Alive acrylic on mylar for $1,800. The art is inspired by some of the docs at TIFF this year. Other pieces include Deepa Mehta, a divine-looking David Cronenberg and Bono snuggling a lamb.

Linda Barnard

'Always Brando' fascinating, well-acted

A conversation with TIFF programmer Rasha Salti led me to Always Brando, a film from Tunisian director Ridha Béhi that's having its world premiere at TIFF. A picture-within-a-picture, it's both Béhi's drama about a young Tunisian actor, Anis Raache, who is a dead ringer for the young Marlon Brando and Béhi's negotiations with the reclusive actor to appear in the film. They met, Brando had agreed to sign on and the died just months before shooting was to start in Tunisia in 2004. The movie is also an exploration via Anis's bit part in an American drama about Atlantis being shot in his village and how the seductive lure of Hollywood can make people engage in self-destructive behaviours. Fascinating and well acted, Always Brando screens again Friday at 2 p.m. at the AMC.

-Linda Barnard