So the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival has wrapped. The parties are over, the celebrities have left town (actually, they left several days ago), and red carpets are rolled up and sales at Starbucks have returned to normal. This year’s festival wasn’t without some grumbling though. I’ll get to that in a minute.

As you would have seen if you followed along with my blog during the fest, I graded each film as I saw it. It’s hard to do this, especially in the early days when you’re kind of making up the scale as you go, but I think it feels about right. Here’s a recap; there’s no ranking within each letter grade, they’re just alphabetical.

A: Slumdog Millionaire

A-: Lion’s Den; Waltz with Bashir

B+: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist; The Brothers Bloom

B: 24 City; A Christmas Tale; It Might Get Loud; Martyrs; New York, I Love You; Under Rich Earth

B-: Ghost, Is There Anybody There?; Me and Orson Welles; Miracle at St. Anna; Public Enemy Number One; Religulous; RocknRolla; Tokyo Sonata; Zack and Miri Make a Porno

C+: Acolytes; Fifty Dead Men Walking; Sauna; Synecdoche, New York; The Hurt Locker

C: Flash of Genius

C-: Birdsong; Deadgirl; Katia’s Sister

D: Not Quite Hollywood

I clearly wasn’t the only person who thought Slumdog Millionaire was the best movie at the festival. Yesterday the Danny Boyle film was named the Cadillac People’s Choice Award winner. That, however, is indicative of one of the problems people had with this year’s festival: the top films this year were already the top films elsewhere. Peter Howell writes in this morning’s Star:

Many of the films that drew attention and praise – The Wrestler, The Hurt Locker and Slumdog Millionaire among them – arrived with laurels already bestowed at the Venice and Telluride festivals. I can’t think of a single world premiere that really mattered at TIFF this year. The fest seemed like a giant second-run theatre.

Pair this with the fact that the Hollywood schmooze factor seemed to kick into overdrive this year — the screening of a vapid Paris Hilton (is that redundant?) documentary seemed to disappoint people, and I now know more people who attend parties and after-parties than who see any films — and people are starting to worry. There’s always been a mix of important films and celebrity worship at this festival, but it seems the latter is winning.

I suspect the two are unrelated, though. True film fans can shrug off all the red carpet bullshit as a necessary evil, but I suspect they’re less willing to accept that their festival will lose the relevance and reputation it’s acquired as a home for big, important films — the kickoff to Oscar season, if you will. Those film fans can take comfort knowing that there are still dozens of great small, independent and rewarding films screened at the festival each year, but to me the variety has always been a big draw, and the justification for the high ticket prices.

The afore-mentioned Star article offers some remedies, first among them to hold their ground against the likes of the Venice, Telluride and New York festivals. Here’s hoping Piers Handling, Noah Cowan and the rest of the festival organizers can tear their attention away from the Bell Lightbox long enough to do so.

[tags]tiff, tiff08, slumdog millionaire, bell lightbox[/tags]

Our final film, and one of the last screenings of the festival, was Miracle at St. Anna (tiff), Spike Lee’s latest effort. Given that we were pretty tired, and our asses were pretty sore, I didn’t relish the idea of sitting through a nearly-three-hour film, but it never felt that long. There was plenty to keep us occupied right from the opening scene.

If Spike Lee set out to add a film about black soldiers to the WWII canon, I think he accomplished his goal. This had all the right elements of action, humour and character with a little intrigue thrown in. I can’t say whether he faithfully recounted James McBride’s novel, but he delivered a good story in his own voice. There are some scenes that are just so quintessentially Spike Lee, like the portrait shot of the four soldiers glaring into the camera and peeling off one by one until the camera swings around and you see what they were looking at. Very Lee, and always interesting.

There was some mild overacting and an overly sappy ending, but overall this was a good way to close out the festival.

B-

[tags]tiff, tiff08, miracle at st anna[/tags]

Normally the Real to Reel programme is a big one for me at TIFF, as I’m a big fan of documentaries, but this year I chose only two. It Might Get Loud was all kinds of fun, but different than the kind of documentary I’d normally enjoy.

Under Rich Earth (tiff), on the other hand, is precisely the kind of documentary I like to watch. It grabbed you right away, something I wouldn’t necessarily expect from a story about mining politics in a small Ecuadorian village. I knew nothing about this story, despite it having a local connection: the mining company involved in the dispute is Canadian mining company Ascendant Copper Corporation. It centered on a series of recent confrontations between the villagers and paramilitaries (whom the villagers allege were hired by Ascendant, which the company denied), and from there spirals out to include politics, government corruption, economic pressures, PR, globalization and a host of other factors which the documentary maker just didn’t have time to go into, but did touch on in his Q&A afterward.

If you want to know more about the film and the topic, check out UnderRichEarth.com.

B

[tags]tiff, tiff08, under rich earth[/tags]

Also known as Domovoy (tiff) this was a decent little Russian assassin movie. Good story (if a wee bit predictable), slick action and a cool bad guy made it a respectable entry in this year’s lineup.

My biggest complaint was the music. It was bad, which I can deal with, but it was also unbelievably loud. Some shrill woman’s voice singing in Russian with the volume so high in the mix that several people in the theatre actually had to plug their ears, including Nellie. The rest of the sound was fine…dialogue, gun shots, cars, everything…but when the music came in it was like nails on a chalkboard. Hopefully they clean that up.

B-

[tags]tiff, tiff08, the ghost, domovoy[/tags]