Photo by Let Ideas Compete, used under Creative Commons license

TIFF reviews: The Hunt, Sightseers

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I must say, it feels weird to have wrapped up our 2010 TIFF on Tuesday, just five days after it opened and three days after our first screening. It was a strategic move, of course, and a wise one, but I’m having trouble processing all the #TIFF12 tweets when — in my mind — it finished days ago.

4. The Hunt

There was a lot of buzz around The Hunt (tiff) following Mads Mikkelsen’s best actor award at Cannes. For the most part I’d say the film lived up to it. Mikkelsen was the best part about it, though I found all the others actors — especially the marvellous young Annika Wedderkopp — to be outstanding as well. The film was rather emotionally manipulative, but in this case I think that wasn’t without a purpose…there’s never any ambiguity about Mikkelsen’s character’s innocence — and I think the raw emotion was meant to drive the viewer toward feelings of empathy rather than suspicion.

Mikkelsen, writer Tobias Lindholm, and director/co-writer Thomas Vinterberg stuck around for a long, honest Q&A after the film. There was a slight air of anti-Americanism in their comments, but only as it related to American filmmaking. Methinks an American studio has pissed off one of Mikkelsen or Vinterberg in the past.

Whatever the studio issues, this was the (co-) top film of the festival for me: 8/10.

5. Sightseers

Sightseers (tiff) made it into our schedule pretty much on the strength of the one-line description: “a frumpy Bonnie & Clyde”. There was no way to avoid it after that.

It was a dark, dark, dark comedy. Kind of a murderous love story set against stunning English vistas, if that makes any sense.

Also, the film was followed by one of the best Q&A’s we’ve ever seen…an even mix of cheeky, hilarious questions and serious film backstory/genesis questions. Which were, in turn, met with consistently hilarious responses from director Ben Wheatly and actress Alice Lowe, who was a revelation. I would have stayed there and listened to them answer questions for another hours. Stupid next movie.

This was, then, the other top film of the festival for me: 8/10.

.:.

Photo by Let Ideas Compete, used under Creative Commons license

Photo by Thalita Carvalho, used under Creative Commons license

TIFF reviews: No One Lives, Much Ado About Nothing, I Declare War

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

And thus endeth this year’s sprint: three films in 18 hours. I understand that’s not much of a sprint compared to some TIFF schedules — or even our own from past years — but in a year where we only see five films, it’s about as sprinty as it gets.

1. No One Lives

We began our festival (if you don’t count the Jason Reitman live read of American Beauty) with a Midnight Madness screening: No One Lives (tiff). As with many films in the MM programme, it was insanely, almost comically violent. The plot was…well, basically, it did what it said on the tin. It killed a lot of people without a whole lot of backstory, and provided the kind of over-the-top kill methods and lazy dialogue you expect from a genre film.

6.5/10

2. Much Ado About Nothing

Since we didn’t get home until 2AM and didn’t get to sleep until after 3, we were a little tired this morning when we rolled out of bed 9AM. Still, there was nothing keeping Nellie from a screening of a Joss Whedon film. Personally I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to see this one — Much Ado About Nothing (tiff) is far from a favourite Shakespeare play — but since the premiere was only yesterday there was still a chance Whedon would stick around to attend today’s screening and answer some questions, I had to go along with including this in this year’s picks. When we arrived an hour before showtime we found a long line disproportionately populated with Serenity t-shirts.

So, the film itself was fine. Like I said, I’m not particularly in love with that play, and Whedon didn’t adapt any of the language, but he did a good job of adding to it with little bits of physicality — fist bumps, a girlish lounging pose, a long tumbling scene, Nathan Fillion (full stop) — that cracked the audience up. The black and white looked great too, though I admit the sameness numbed me a little and I drifted off for a few moments through the middle.

Happily for Nellie, Joss Whedon was indeed there. He said a few words before the film, and returned at the end, both times to standing ovations. Also, a surprise: many of the cast members were in attendance. They answered questions, told funny anecdotes, and were probably delighted that the Whedonverse references to kept to a minimum (only one guy made reference to another show/film, leading into his question by stating “Browncoats forever”). We also learned more about how this was filmed: just after finishing The Avengers he invited the cast to film this in his home; they did so, over twelve days (afternoons, really; he edited The Avengers during the mornings) just two and a half weeks after he approached the actors. That’s not much time to get ready for a Shakespeare play set in someone’s house. And, apparently Clark Gregg was a last minute fill-in (after initially declining) and had only a day to prepare. I’m glad we got to hear those stories and learn a little more about the film and how it was made.

All in all, while I can say that I didn’t love it, I certainly didn’t dislike it either. For sheer effort of getting it made, I’d give it a 7.5/10.

3. I Declare War

I Declare War (tiff) was a film populated entirely by kids. No adults, just kids. And, sadly, it wasn’t quite what Nellie or I were expecting: there was more fantasy and less actual escalation than we expected. It was decent, but not great.

6/10

.:.

Photo by Thalita Carvalho, used under Creative Commons license

Order

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

So, for some reason Nellie was all worried that’d not officially celebrated my birthday this year. Birthdays are a big deal to her, and she had a pretty awesome one this year. Meanwhile, I kind of don’t care about birthdays, and anyway we spent my birthday in Amsterdam, so I don’t feel as if I got robbed somehow. Nonetheless, she was determined to impose at least a minor celebration on me. She asked me to pick out a place for a good dinner. I chose Bestellen.

First though: a drink. Or two. We stopped at Loire, another first-time visit for us, for a little wine. We were actually really impressed with the menu; if we didn’t already have reservations elsewhere we’d have stayed for dinner. But we did, so we didn’t, and instead ordered some charcuterie and a little wine: sparkling rosé and Chablis for Nellie, and Sancerre, Vouvray, and a white Côtes du Rhône. We summoned an Uber car and made plans to return to Loire for dinner some night.

We pulled up to Bestellen right on time, and liked it immediately: laid-back vibe, friendly greetings, good music (Radiohead, Dan Auerbach, Oasis, early Dylan, etc.) and a giant painting of meat on the wall. That’s right: a meat mural.

We settled in to our table and our server Chris began leading us through the evening. We started with cocktails:

  • Nellie: The Scarlet (white wine, elderflower liquor, cucumber, mint, lemon)
  • Dan: The Hunter (Buffalo Trace bourbon, cherry heering, moonshine cherry)

With those gone the first course arrived:

  • Nellie: heirloom tomatoes and watermelon (with purple basil, garlic chips, and chili oil; paired with a a white whine that neither of us can remember)
  • Dan: seared scallops (in parsley root puree, lobster mushrooms, and brown butter; paired with a Muscadet)

Then, the main event: we shared the 32oz côte de bœuf (accompanied by string beans, lentils, shallots, and mint, as well as ontario corn, crispy shallots, and tarragon) which came with two huge bones full of roasted marrow.

Hard to believe we were both vegetarian not so long ago.

Anyway, at Chris’ recommendation we’d decided to pair this with a 2002 Nichols “Whispering Pines” Pinot Noir. Much like the Sea Smoke Pinot we’d had in Arizona, we discovered that an older vintage of tougher, coastal-California could stand up to a hunk of meat like this one. It was a splurge, but it was worth it.

We opted to take much of the steak home, partly so that we could enjoy it again the following day, and partly to leave room for dessert: sticky toffee pudding. Nellie got a glass of Bugey-Cerdon bubbly to go with it; I ordered the barrel-aged Negroni.

We also ordered a menu item we’d only ever seen on Stone Road Grille‘s menu before:a six-pack of beer for the kitchen. Being where we were (on College, but with more of an Ossington feel) it was a sixer of PBR, but the guys in the kitchen gave us a happy wave as they downed their cans.

On my actual birthday we toured Amsterdam, tried some fantastic beer places, and met a crazy/eccentric American ex-Senator, and I thought that made for a pretty goddamn good way to celebrate. But last night was pretty good too.

Photo by Profound Whatever, used under Creative Commons license

"Brad, for 14 years I've been a whore for the advertising industry. The only way I could save myself now is if I start firebombing."

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

We just came from one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen at TIFF. As Cameron Bailey (who kicked off the evening) said, it was truly an unrepeatable event.

A couple of days ago director Jason Reitman, who’s gotten into the habit of staging live readings of scripts of great movies (he’s done The Princess Bride, Reservoir Dogs, The Apartment, and others) with actors who weren’t in the actual films, announced that he’d be putting together a live reading to kick off this year’s film festival. It may sound like a boring concept, but it actually seemed like a completely different thing for us to try at TIFF in this, our eleventh year. So we bought tickets.

The film he selected? American Beauty (imdb). The participants? None other than George Stroumboulopoulos, Paul Scheer (who was a last-minute stand-in for Woody Harrelson), Mae Whitman, Nick Kroll, Sarah Gadon, Adam Driver, Christina Hendricks, and (as Mr. Reitman introduced him) Bryan motherfucking Cranston. That’s right: the lead parts were read by Joan Holloway and Walter goddamn White.

It was fantastic. Just, just, just wonderful to watch. I’ve watched American Beauty many times, but I think I only realized tonight how funny it was. And seeing the actors live, especially the ones who could crack the audience up just by adding a look or a nod or a gesture to their reading, added a new texture. Adam Driver (if you watch Girls you know who he is) was great as an understated Ricky Fitts, and the others did a great job (poor Strombo was rather out of his league but stayed in the game), but the true stars were Hendricks* and Cranston. They were so expressive and emotive that I could have watched them do it again just for fun. What a treat.

It was very nearly the perfect TIFF evening, except that when we left a thousand people were losing their tiny little minds because Kristen Stewart was walking down the red carpet outside our theatre for the premiere of On The Road (tiff). It’s the creepy, eNowbsessed part of TIFF that I know is a necessary evil, but to step into the middle of it immediately after took some shine off of what had been an almost transcendent festival moment.

Still, I forget the red carpet bullshit pretty quickly, while that table read will absolutely stick in my favourite TIFF memories ever.

*And I’m not just saying that because I’m deeply in love with her

.:.

Photo by Profound Whatever, used under Creative Commons license

Mauvais Echo

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

I feel so bad.

Every year, Nellie’s favourite weekend is the weekend we go camping somewhere in Ontario. Last year it was Presqu’ile; the year before that it was Algonquin. This year we decided to try Bon Echo.

However, I could tell this year was getting off to a bad start when I woke up Friday morning feeling ill. Sure, it was partly from being out until 2:30 the night before, but I knew it was also because I had a cold coming on. I hoped I’d get better as the weekend wore on; I was wrong.

Anyway, we were late getting out of the city, which meant we got caught in the massive Friday afternoon flight from the city. And then we got stuck in about 90 minutes of crawling traffic problems around Pickering. We’d hoped to get to our campsite by 2PM; instead, we arrived around 7:30. Knowing we didn’t have much light left Nellie began setting up the tent while I carted our gear from the car to our site, a few hundred feet away. After my arms snapped off I joined her at the tent.

We had a pretty sweet spot…far from the main hubbub of the (very busy) park, in a little gully and therefore more or less out of sight of the sites on either site (note: this gully would have sucked if it had rained) and with an amazing view across Mazinaw Lake to Mazinaw rock, the cliffs that rise above it.

We got everything set up for dinner (roasted Cumbrae’s hot dogs, and Nellie improvised some camping nachos) and had a cold beer by the fire. Yup, cold: even at midnight, I was more than warm enough, and I was wearing shorts. I didn’t even sleep in the sleeping bag; it was beautiful all night.

Anyway, we got up the next morning, went for a little stroll, and rented a canoe so we could paddle along the cliff walls. We didn’t see any of the pictographs which are apparently there, but we did see the large Walt Whitman tribute carved into the rock. We could also tell how deep the lake is, both when canoeing in the shadow of the cliffs where the water was pitch black and later when we went for a swim — we stepped off a rock near our campsite; it was at least eight feet deep just one stride out.

After our swim we had bacon and biscuits for breakfast, but shortly after that I knew that I had to go home. I hated to say it; Nellie really wanted to stay another night. We were also considering going back to Bat Lake to see our friends Kaylea and Matt, but I’d still have been miserable, and I would’ve gotten all of them sick too. So we drove home. We dropped our gear and returned our car and scarfed some food and made our TIFF picks and then I went to bed for twelve hours. Nellie spent that night eating camping food and drinking camping beer; she half-threatened to set up one of our camping chairs. I’d have been fine with that, but if she’d started gathering kindling I’d have worried a little.

Next year we’ll try again. But either we’re parking in the site or we’re carrying less crap. So mote it be.

Photo by Paul Henman, used under Creative Commons License

A brave new world without dual-colored markers

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

We began attending the Toronto International Film Festival back in 2002. Being beginners, we took the easy road: the Visa Screening room, where you just show up at the same theatre at the same time for eight consecutive nights and watch whatever they put in front of you. We saw a few good ones and a few that were utter crap, so in 2003 we decided to try our hand at picking our films. This meant entering the lottery process.

The lottery was a complicated procedure: on Monday you were given a schedule, two colored markers, an envelope, and — if you wanted to shell out the extra bucks — a detailed programme book describing each film. You made two selections for each movie you’d purchased, coloring your first choice green and your second choice yellow, and dropped your completed form in a numbered box. Friday at noon you’d find out which box had been selected. On Monday — Labour Day — you’d line up somewhere (College Park, for most of my early years) stupid-ass early because you didn’t know how lucky or screwed you were. It was common to see people who’d drawn a late box, and therefore got few or none of the movies they’d wanted, sprawled out on a food court table or park bench poring furiously over schedules and programme books, hurriedly making hail-mary picks. It was nerve-wracking, but excited. Over the years they introduced email alerts to at least let people know in advance whether they needed to line up for replacement tickets, or whether all was well, which gave a lot of people back their holiday, but still kept people on pins and needles until the email arrived.

This was our tenth year taking part in the lottery. Only twice have we missed any picks, and it didn’t hurt us either time — we went 13/15 one year and 14/15 a few years later; every other year we’ve batted a thousand. But this year we cheated. We became donors.

See, donors get preferential treatment at lottery time. Sure, you get a lot of other TIFF-related perks too, but this was the big draw for us: having our picks processed before the rest of the lottery entrants. So we made our donation and waited for our early access window (more on that in a minute) and felt pretty smug.

However, the anti-smugness gods made themselves known when we, not thinking clearly, booked a camping trip on the weekend in which the donor-selection windows would fall. So, when it came time for us to log on to the TIFF website and make our picks (no more colored markers or envelope drop-offs or waiting-for-email stress!) we would be four hours away in a tent with (obviously) no internet connection. Son. Of. A Bitch. Oh well; we knew we’d get home early enough on Sunday that we could still make our picks before the bulk of the lottery entrants.

As (bad) luck would have it we’d end up back in the city earlier than we planned, so we were able to make our picks just a few hours after our intended window. The new process was incredibly easy, and using tiffr to make our picks is even easier (if a little more unwieldy) than when I used to scrape the TIFF website’s entire schedule and convert it to a spreadsheet. Anyway, all that to say: we got all five of our top picks this year, and the selection process took maybe three minutes. Awesome work, TIFF.

Just to be clear: the only reason we’re going to see Much Ado About Nothing is because Joss Whedon is directing it, and if there’s so much as a 1% chance she could be in the same room as her Messiah — even though it’s not the premiere — Nellie’s not passing that up. We’ve been burned **cough Young Adam cough** by this kind of thing **cough Diggers cough** before, so let’s hope it works out a little better this time.

.:.

Photo by Paul Henman, used under Creative Commons license

"If I grew up on a farm, and was retarded, Bruges might impress me but I didn't, so it doesn't."

Dan Dickinson2 Comments

I’ve noticed something: I only remember to blog about movies when I watch a good movie. Hence:

  • In Bruges (imdb | rotten tomatoes), something we’ve been meaning to see since it premiered at TIFF several years ago, was quite funny. Probably more so since we’ve actually been to Bruges and didn’t really care for it.
  • Retreat (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was better than I expected for a film I’d never heard of and found randomly on TMN. I like the Cillian Murphy almost as much as I dislike the Thandie Newton, so it was balanced up until Jamie Bell appeared. On the whole: pretty good.
  • I’ve never seen the original version of The Thing, but we had the remake (imdb | rotten tomatoes) recorded on the PVR and a couple of hours to kill, and so that happened. It was rubbish.

.:.

This weekend was broken up more or less by what we were drinking at the time:

Friday: Foreign Affair Riesling, Fielding Pinot Gris, Norm Hardie Pinot Noir, and Hamelin Bay Rampant Red (which made us regret not getting down to Hamelin Bay last fall whilst in the Margaret River) at REDS; Cattail Creek Four Mile Creek Riesling, Weingut Hirsch Gruner Veltliner, Argiolas Costera Cannonau, Ca del Monte Valpolicella Ripasso, Bilogia  Tempranillo, Indigena Garnaxta, and something else I don’t remember at Midfield

Saturday: Weihenstephaner Kristall, Beau’s Lugtread, Blanche de Chambly, La Trappe Tripel, and a sunburn at Against The Grain Urban Tavern; a bottle of Hidden Bench 2008 Terroir Caché with dinner (after which I felt like crap, though I don’t blame the wine)

Sunday: an ill-advised Rickard’s White on the temporary on-Yonge-Street patio at the Firkin on Yonge (!); bottles of Kacaba 2008 Syrah and Daniel Lenko 2008 Unoaked Chardonnay when our friend Kaylea dropped in for an impromptu visit; a bottle of Norm Hardie 2010 County Chardonnay with dinner.

 

"If liberals are so fuckin' smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I like The Newsroom.

There, I said it.

I know most critics seem to dislike it, even if Dan Rather and the general public do not. I know it’s preachy and dumbed-down (though that may be a self-referential snipe). I know Aaron Sorkin’s worn a loose misogynist label ever since his interview with Sarah Nicole Prickett, and I know he radiates full-on malice (see what I did there?) against the internet, and specifically blogs.

But the show had me pretty much from this scene…which, by the way, is how the series opens. So yeah.

I shouldn’t be surprised that I like it, I suppose. I loved The West Wing (the first few seasons, anyway) and The Social Network. I liked Moneyball just fine. Sports Night is one of my all-time favourite series, and The Newsroom is a fuzzy photocopy of the character list: Will McAvoy is an amalgam of Dan and Casey; Mac is Dana; Charlie is Isaac; Leona is Luther; Maggie is Natalie; Jim is Jeremy. And I’m so sorry for that last sentence; really, only people very familiar with both shows will understand what just happened.

But let’s be clear: the show mostly appeals to the preachy liberal in me, even as Sorkin writes his disdain for preachy liberals — see title of blog post. I want to believe that someone in the American news media recognizes the morass into which their industry has sunk and wants to climb out of it, that someone really would step up and — as Sorkin writes it — speak truth to stupid. But it doesn’t really look like that’s happening.

Back to The Daily Show for me, then.

.:.

Photo (of a newsroom, not The Newsroom, obviously) by Alan Cleaver, used under Creative Commons license

Gimme that nucleated glassware

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Last Friday Nellie and I finally tried the new beer joint which replaced Duggan’s, the late lamented brewpub at the end of our street. It’s called the Six Pints Specialty Beer Co. Beer Academy (ratebeer). Six Pints is a joint venture between Granville Island Brewery (from BC) and Creemore (from ON), which are in turn owned by Molson Coors. This place has a couple of purposes: to act as a museum about beer (hence the “academy” portion of the name); to test out new potential commercial offerings; and to be a straight-up bar.

We skipped the museum portion of the building and went straight to the bar. First of all, the room is quite nice. Duggan’s always felt awkward and a little cavernous; this room feels intimate and comfortable. I can’t describe it any way other than that. Anyway, we started with two flights of three small glasses. We tried the four standard house brews (Kolsch, Dortmunder, IPA, and porter) and a special altbier, and opted to fill our sixth slot with Creemore’s Kellerbier, which we both quite like. The Kolsch and Dortmunder were excellent; the alt, IPA and porter were all good but not great.

We each picked one for a follow-up glass (Nellie: IPA; me: alt) and called it a night. They also sell cold beer from their retail store, so we took four (the Kolsch and IPA as well as a dunkel weiss and Belgian brown) home to have over the weekend.

Not only will this become a regular stop-in for a pint, it’s become a grocery run on the way home. Killer.