Ready for One Eye

Our TIFF email just arrived. Being 36 boxes back didn’t hurt us too badly at all, as we got four of our 1st picks and one 2nd pick:

  1. The Ape (tiff), so we miss The Trotsky
  2. Triage (tiff), so we miss Up In The Air
  3. Valhalla Rising (tiff), so we miss The Road
  4. Accident (tiff), so we miss Whip It
  5. Leslie, My Name Is Evil (tiff), so we miss The Front Line

Whip It was the only first choice we missed, and normally I would never first a film that’s so obviously going to be in theatres soon, but I think the idea of spending a couple of hours with Drew Barrymore messed with our judgment. We put The Road and Up in the Air second for the same reason: they’ll obviously have a wide release, and soon.

All in all I feel great about our picks, but I’m especially glad that we changed our minds last-minute and went with Valhalla Rising. My only complaint now is that we could only do five, but I’m sure I’ll get over it when I’m sitting in St-Germain having a croissant.

That'll teach us to not leave things 'til the last minute

Box 48 of 54 was drawn for the TIFF advance draw. Since we’re in box 30 that means we’ll be the 36th box counted, 2/3 of the way back. Could be trouble, but I think we’ll get most or all of what we asked for. This could be bad, though, if I have to get in line Thursday morning. My work schedule isn’t very forgiving right now so it could be a while before I get down to the box office, and who knows what’ll be left. Brooding Korean thinkpiece, anyone?

"Could you go a bit slower with the clicks there?"

deliriumtremens

Here’s what we’ve done with our last 24 hours:

  • Went to work. Okay, well, this was mostly me. Just needed to catch up from last week and get a head start on the coming one.
  • Saw District 9 (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the Varsity, which was excellent. Good film all around, but what blew me away was how not-fake everything looked. Tons of social, racial and economic commentary too. Highly recommended if you’re into that sort of thing.
  • Had dinner at Volo, quaffed a couple of beers (two of which you can see above, including my Delirium Tremens) and watched the parade of interesting up and down Yonge Street.
  • Dropped our TIFF picks in box #30. We switched our picks at the (almost) last minute, ditching the Peter Berg documentary and adding Valhalla Rising. Watch the trailer and you’ll see why. It looks like Braveheart, but more violent and less cheesy. And Danish.
  • Scooted out to Liberty Village and bought (well, ordered) a new couch at West Elm, then had lunch at The Brazen Head.

Now, happily, we’re done for the day and can relax with bad movies (Nellie’s watching Hallowe’en 6 as I type this) and France planning.

Shortlisted

From the short list of 28 films we’ve now made our 1st and 2nd choices for the five films we’ll see. Here they are:

  1. The Ape (Apan) (tiff) or The Trotsky (tiff)
  2. Triage (tiff) or Up In The Air (tiff)
  3. The Road (tiff) or Peter Berg Presents: King’s Ransom (tiff)
  4. Whip It (tiff) or Accident (Yi Ngoi) (tiff)
  5. Leslie, My Name Is Evil (tiff) or The Front Line (La Prima Linea) (tiff)

We feel pretty good about those picks. The Peter Berg one seems a little out of place, but we wanted one documentary and Nellie has a sentimental attachment to the Gretzky story. “I lived through that!” is what she said, I believe.

Too bad we only have time to see five, but whatever happens I think it’ll be a solid five.

[UPDATE] Changed our third selection to Valhalla Rising (tiff) as our first choice, and The Road as second choice.

Hey, "fucdown" works too

I’m copying this from my brother (who, in turn, got it from Scienceblogs). The idea is to find five Google searches that return your blog as the first hit. It didn’t take me long at all to come up with these:

  1. girlfriend du jour
  2. skirl tiff
  3. fieramosca toronto orecchiette
  4. nellie lake oesa
  5. coniption fit tim adam

That last one might be cheating because ‘conniption’ is purposely misspelled both on my blog and in the search, but I didn’t see no rulebook.

[tags]fucdown, girlfriend du jour, skirl, tiff, fieramosca[/tags]