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.

The Draft

People always ask me how I make my picks. Then they regret it because the process ends up taking so long to explain their eyes glaze over before I’m finished explaining.
So to keep it (somewhat) brief.
Directors – ones I liked before get on the maybe list for sure.

Actors – not just the talented and lovely like Ryan Gosling and Juno Temple but also frequent festival favourites. My list includes Mads Mikkelsen , Viggo Mortensen, Aaron Eckhart, and Kristen Scott Thomas.

Release Date – the Entertainment Weekly fall movie preview comes out around the same time my drop off coupons arrive in the mail. It lists the known release dates for many films between September and December and I occasionally drop an early pick if the movie is coming out very soon after the festival.

Distribution – if the film does not have a North American distributor listed in the Programme book it may or may not be released anywhere you can see it anytime soon. I tend to go for UK picks that may only end up airing on BBC but are actually awesome films, like The Trip, Mr. In-Between and The Last Hangman.

Programmer - year over year you will find that you may love films that were selected by the same programmer. If your sensibilities align with one or two it makes the elimination process easier. I tend to love the picks of Jane Schoettle and end up with at least 25% of her films in my final list.

And finally the schedule – when the actual times and dates come out inevitably I have many of my first picks in the same time slot. I have to go through all of the filter/narrowing options listed above to make my final selections. One must also consider the likelihood of waking up for a 9 AM film when building a schedule. Many bars are serving until 4 AM during TIFF – jus’ sayin’.  And even if you can wake up, you need to pick something that can keep you awake. Previous early morning picks include Easy Money, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and No Country for Old Men. Gunshots or music are good for keeping you up in the morning.

We need to talk

The first announcements came out today about TIFF11, and I’m already excited. The first film to go on my short list is We Need to Talk about Kevin. If you don’t think you will be interested in yet another movie about a couple dealing with a challenging child you need to pick up  a copy of Lionel Shriver’s book, We Need To Talk About Kevin. I can’t wait to see what Tilda Swinton does with her performance as the mother in this film. In the book you see the development of her very unique child entirely from her point of view, so when things take a turn you have to wonder if she just an unreliable narrator – or if she is right in having concerns about the titular Kevin.

Festival Prep – The Workout

Based on my totally non-scientific research process which involves looking around me in lines and theatres I can conclude that the majority of the hardcore (20 or more films) TIFF attendees are not necessarily in peak physical condition.
This is ok. TIFF goers engage in an activity that involves sitting alone in the dark. As long as you don’t start texting like a total douche during the film for at least 96 minutes at a stretch no once can see your muffin top.
Attending more than 20 films can be physically grueling if you do not prepare. You need to be able to wait, move up and down stairs and sit.
This is more punishing on a body than it sounds.
You need to wait, most often standing, usually outdoors. Including the ticket pick up and drop off process you may spend as much time waiting in lines as you do watching films. Your body will get stiff, your back will get sore and your feet will swell. On hot days you will start to sweat. You will not smell your best. You can train for this. If you have a Wii Fit, dust off the balance board and do the simple tests – the stillness test will tell you if you heavily favour one side and you can attempt to balance your weight better while in line. If you do not have a Wii Fit go to the house of a friend who does – get on, use their Mii to do the simple test and ruin their Wii age. This isn’t worth the 5 minutes to create an avatar. Practice standing still.
You need to move up and down stairs. This will be challenge for a couple of reasons. One, you are most likely not in peak physical condition (see intro). Two, you will have to move up or down stairs immediately after standing still or sitting with limited time to stretch, groan, let your joints pop or adjust yourself. You can train for this. Occasionally take the stairs or walk (left) on an escalator in the months leading up to the festival.
You need to sit. If you are a hardcore TIFF goer you have already been training for this one all year. Just keep doing what you are doing.
Happy Festival.

How Big is Your Package?

Every year after the festival is over I am exhausted. All I want is to sit quietly with my legs elevated wearing some sort of beer hat device full of 50 while minions rub my sore festival knees and my dry hobbit feet.

Every year after the festival I also wish I had seen just one more movie. Last year The King’s Speech and Super were on my list of festival regrets, along with the three bar night that started with me leaving Blue Valentine early and missing the QandA so that I would have enough time to get to the bathroom and get a coffee before getting back to the Ryerson to see Kaboom. Araki can be entertaining, but one must always make room for more Gosling. Always. More. Gosling.

End tangent.

You will never see everything you want, but if you plan, you will get to see what you need to get you through until Christmas. Many high-profile ‘good quality’ festival movies will be released just before the end of December so if you miss out on a Black Swan or a Precious because they are Galas with limited public screenings it’s not the end of the world.

Unless you are taking part or all of the week off to dedicate to seeing movies anything more than 10 to 15 films will be pretty tough. Even with the extra Sunday it’s a lot – and weekend screenings are always more crowded and likely to run late due to timing and traffic issues that slow the programmers and talent down when it comes to intros. Whether you go with a programmer choice pack, choose your own adventure option or some combination of both you still need time for bodily functions and travel time between theatres. Options are limited in the evenings for the first few days because of the amount of tough-to-get premium screenings and high profile North American premieres.

For the semi-pro crowd who take a couple of days off and locals that have flexible work schedules (or absentee managers) you can try for 15 to 20, but the high end of that range will still require some creative scheduling, a lucky draw in the ticket lottery and an ability to enjoy a broad range of films.

If you are planning to dedicate the week (and your life and back and feet) to the festival then you can go for 20 or more up to the ultimate hardcore 50 film pass. I still have yet to meet anyone that is not paid in some way to see movies for their day job that sees over 45 films, but like the unicorn I must believe they exist. A pale and magical creature that needs neither daylight or sustenance and simply lives on the dust illuminated by the projectionist during a film.

Good luck, and as always be VERY patient with the TIFF site when trying to purchase.

Sold Out

Visa Screening Room weekday evening pack sold out.

Sold out

Double-date gala pack sold out.

Sold Out

Visa screening room opening weekend pack sold out.

Too Big. FAIL

If you google ‘biggest film festivals’ TIFF will be referenced in most of the top ten results returned. It may not be the largest or most influential festival in the world, but the combination of over 300 films, and the automatic Oscar-bait tag that can be attached to the Cadillac People’s Choice winner makes TIFF a destination for filmmakers and film lovers around the world.

When it comes to web browsers, that’s another story.

I checked out the tiff.net against some of the other ‘big’ festival landing pages using a selection of free web tools and confirmed what the decidedly sluggish response times my Mac, Macbook, PC laptop and iPhone have been telling me for years. The site is not optimized for the web. While this adds weight to my previously posted conspiracy theory (see Why Lines and Not Online) I take no pleasure in having one more reason to deplore the poor performance of the TIFF site. We are just six months away from TIFF 2011 and I for one hope that the powers decouple the entrance point for festival attendees from the bloated .net landing page. With the advent of the Lightbox the previously (and in hindsight blessedly) disconnected web experience for the festival customers has become more integrated, with more cohesive branding, but has trapped visitor and film lover information in the miasma of the corporate homepage.

TIFF please think of your audience. I understand the importance of a unified web identity, but if you can’t fix the entire site in time for the festival, break off the TIFF film listing and schedule portion and try to make some basic improvements for fall 2011. I shudder to think what it is like for visitors to the city trying to access the site on a personal smart phone or tablet using sketchy hotel wifi.

Compared to Venice, Telluride, Sundance and Cannes TIFF.net is the slowest to load – and when compared to the fastest of the bunch (Bella Venezia!) the TIFF site takes more than twice as long to load. Using one of the measurement tools TIFF.net was the only site to generate the message “Processing was stopped because maximum objects size exceeded”. The site was actually so bloated and slow it exceeded the threshold set so that the tool would not erroneously measure time to download video files. Loosely translated – TOO BIG. FAIL.

Suggestions below in no particular order. Note these will not fix all of the problems, but it’s a start.

Either go back to one image per film or engage a service for hosted content management, if only for festival content. Cannes is using Akamai and while their homepage is the only one of the sites I measured that is as image-heavy as the TIFF landing page their pages still load MUCH faster thanks to image caching. And really if I want additional pictures or a trailer I’ll go to tofilmfest.ca.

Separate the web experience for people who know nothing about the organization, and those who just want to give you their money if they could just get to a page showing them what movies are showing that day. No need to take ‘not for profit’ so literally.

Mobilize the nerds. The Lightbox is in the middle of what once was the garment district, and now is home to many large and small agencies and vendors of online solutions. Many of these people attend your festival, follow your twitter, like you on Facebook and eat lunch at Canteen when they can get a seat. Just ask for help.