Review: From Up On Poppy Hill

I love seeing at least one or two animated movies during TIFF. For one thing while an indie that has yet to secure North American distribution may not have had a final theatre-friendly cut to take the running time down to 100 minutes or less, most animated movies fall within a fairly comfortable running time for the knees and the bladder. The director tends not to spend too much time in scenes where a character is merely pondering or taking a moment, as that is hundreds and thousands of additional hours of drawing.

From Up On Poppy Hill did not disappoint in this area. The pacing of the story was excellent, but you did have time to get to know the characters. Umi, the female lead is introduced to us through her daily duties at home. Throughout the entire film the theme of duty keeps returning and we see how that affects Umi, and Shun the male lead.

The way Goro Miyazaki uses the animation of wind so keep a sense of movement in scenes where the characters may be standing still is fantastic. The contrast in the  colour palette in the school clubhouse compared to Umi’s house really makes us feel as if she is taking a step into another world as she starts to interact with Shun and his friends.

The story for Up On Poppy Hill is based on a manga geared towards teenage girls, so there is an element of the melodramatic, but it is nice to have an animated film with a female lead. This was a great first film for me to start off TIFF11.

He does more than drive

If you enjoyed Nicholas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising because of the minimalist script, intense close up shots of the delicious male lead and the sudden and vicious bursts of violence then you may love Drive. From the first time you see Gosling behind the wheel you know that Refn is taking you somewhere entirely different. Carey Mulligan plays the perfect gamine with a taste for bad boys-her face kind of reminds me of Michelle Williams without the emotional miles on her. The main cast is round out by Albert Brooks who is at times lovable and terrifying; Ron Perlman who gets out from behind prosthetics and gets to chew a little scenery, and Bryan Cranston, an adorable man in real life who has cornered the market on playing busted and beleaguered.
The story is much like a q&a session with Refn-entertaining but not entirely expected. Go see it.

Highlights so far

So far I really enjoyed Up on Poppy Hill, The Artist, Pearl Jam Twenty, Drive, Take This Waltz, God Bless America, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Shame, The Lady, Countdown and Like Crazy.

hitRECord

Drink Until 4am 2011

List of places that will be serving until 4am for TIFF11 http://thestar.blogs.com/tiff/2011/09/where-to-drink-in-the-wee-hours-legally-during-tiff.html

First World Problems

So the line was long and the site was crashy. Welcome to TIFF.

Good news – if not getting a hard ticket to a movie is the worst thing that happened to you today you got yourself what I like to call first world problems. Celebrate that.

Better news – you can still get a ticket that movie if you really really really want it.

1. If you are rich you can get a ticket from a scalper. Yes this is a little old school, and yes there are bound to be fraudsters murderers and perverts as you navigate through craigslist or twitter to get your obscenely marked up ticket, but people do it every year.

2. If you have a Visa Infinite card but are not rich enough to pay over $400 for a $40 ticket then you can try to buy your ticket through them. Go to https://visainfinite.ca/offers.html – there may be more seats available at some point before the festival starts.

3. If you are not rich and do not have a fancy high fee credit card you can wait. Like take the day off of your real life, be that work, parenting, whatever and camp the fuck out in line as long as it takes so you are among the first ten people in the rush line. How long you will have to wait varies from film to film, and you have to be logical and think that if a movie you want to see is at night or on a weekend even more people can wait for rush so you will have to go even earlier to be at the front of the line. I waited for Juno in the rush line for about 3 hours and I was still not near the front of the line. I got in, but if you want a popular screening you may need to wait at least that long if not much longer.

4. Be incredibly lucky. Sometimes they release tickets that you can buy online the same day. You need to wake up early and keep trying to order.  The challenge here is there is no guarantee that additional tickets will be released the morning of the screening and there is even less of a guarantee that the site will be operational at any point in the day.

If you are poor, or lazy or forgetful and not so ridiculously good looking that people just give you things because you ask then you are still screwed. Better luck next year.