Just me and my son today. We are headed in for a Midnight Madness screening. That's right, the film screens at midnight. The audiences in the Midnight Madness screenings are always a hoot. The film we're seeing is called "Symbol" and comes from Japan. It's the same director, Hitoshi Matsumoto, who did Dainipponjin (Big Man Japan), which we ( Read more... )

Yesterday Carolyn and I caught 2 screenings. The first film, Gigante, was from Uruguay. It tells the story of this lonely bored man who works security at a grocery store and who falls in love with a woman he views on his security cameras. It's a bit of a fractured love story, and the pacing is a bit slow, but there are true moments of affection ( Read more... )

Yesterday's film festival offering was Ondine, directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Colin Farrell. The whole family went down to see this one. The film is a fable, ostensibly about Selkies, but is mostly about new beginnings. It's a bit of a departure for Jordan. Shot in coastal, rough and ready Ireland, it's a somewhat subdued and slow piece ( Read more... )

Last night's film festival screening was a film from the Netherlands, The Last Days of Emma Blank. We really enjoyed the film. It's a dark comedy about a dying tyrannical matriarch who has basically enslaved her family with promises of putting them in her will. There are several laugh out loud moments, and the film takes an extremely dark turn ( Read more... )

It was quite the day yesterday. First, we headed out to Bakka Books for the Toronto launch of Tesseracts 13. That was fun. 9 contributors, myself included, showed up. Bakka sold quite a few copies, I think. The turnout was good. Here's a group shot of the contributors. I'm far right.


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Thursday, the first day of the festival, is generally slow. Only half a dozen films screen. The opening night Gala was Creation, starrring Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connolly. We chose, instead, to screen a Canadian film, Year of the Carnivore, directed by Sook-Yin Lee ( Read more... )

Ack! Why did I take Wake Forest ( Read more... )

Last night we went and watched The Watchmen, thus answering the question of who watches The Watchmen. Ahem. Anyhoo ( Read more... )

We went and saw Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" last night. Indeed, it is a good film with fine performances. There is not much plot, really. It plays out like a long character sketch. Mickey Rourke is very good. I'm not positive it is Oscar caliber, as I could envision a number of other actors pulling off the same role, but he is quite ( Read more... )

Yesterday Carolyn and I went to see the film Revolutionary Road, directed by Sam Mendes, and starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio ( Read more... )