parabola.ca » TIFF 2006

Another Year, Another TIFF

Steve — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 02:17:42 +0000

As expected, I didn’t have much time to update on my TIFF adventures during the week. In the past I thought it was odd they didn’t have films on the Sunday to fill out the final weekend, but I can definitely appreciate the breather after a busy week before returning to the usual routine. So, recaps & such will all be happening after the fact.

TIFF Lineup : Day 2

Steve — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 18:38:57 +0000

Brand Upon the Brain!

I happened to be awake right at 7 this morning, when new batches of tickets are available. I decided to check the status of Brand, and it was available! This is probably the film that most intrigued me in this year’s lineup, so I immediately ordered a ticket even though it meant spending more $$ since my vouchers can only be exchanged in person. But there’s no way any tix would be left by the time I got downtown, plus it saves me the uncertainty of the Rush line.

Honestly I’ve never seen a Guy Maddin film, but he seems to be held in high regard. There was just something about the footage for this movie and the description of a warped story that grabbed my attention. Then there’s the fact that it’s a silent movie that will be accompanied by live music — how retro and unique nowadays! Should be a very interesting experience.

Candy

Heroin, love, tragedy. This raw-looking Australian movie starring Heath Ledger will probably be a disturbing and sombre life lesson.

The Host

The Host has apparently been smashing all kinds of records at the Korean box office. I don’t really know much about it, but I kept seeing samplings of reviews along the lines of “despite the massive hype, it really is that good”. Plus it has the coveted first Friday night Midnight Madness showing of the Festival. IMDB has it categorized as action, comedy, drama, fantasy, horror, sci-fi and thriller. Looks like there will be something for everyone tonight.

Fido

Steve — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 18:21:05 +0000

What’s wrong boy? Is Timmy in trouble?

An excellent start to the Film Festival! Fido proved to be a hilarious satire with an enjoyable story. If there was one worry I had going in, it was that it would turn out to be a funny premise stretched too far. But that wasn’t an issue, as the movie moves along nicely while packing in the laughs. Also an impressive amount of gore/violence; not necessarily Shaun of the Dead level here, but it didn’t back away at times when you thought it might … probably expectations set by Hollywood fare. There were also more than a few instances of “Oh no, that’s so wrong! But so funny!”.

Billy Connolly was great as the title zombie, an impressive performance through grunting, acting with the eyes, and zombie mannerisms. Carrie-Anne Moss nicely pulled off the slightly twisted, 50s-era housewife, a much different role than I’m used to seeing her play.

The crowed really seemed to enjoy it and was generous with the applause. Great show!

As for Borat … we knew that when we were an hour early for Fido and the rush line for Borat had apparently already formed hours earlier, there was no shot. Oh well, I’ll catch it later. As it turned out, the poor folks who did get in only saw about 20 minutes of the movie before the projector broke down. In a strange twist, Michael Moore was in the audience and even tried fixing it since he used to work as a projectionist! The showing has been rescheduled to tonight at midnight, which probably doesn’t please fans who also planned on seeing The Host.

Today's TIFF Lineup

Steve — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 20:27:50 +0000

Before each day’s showings, I’ll try and give a little background as to why I selected the films I did. I may not get around to writing up actual reviews afterwards – the sheer volume would overwhelm my output capabilities – but I’ll try and indicate whether the movies lived up to expectations or not.

Fido

The latest in alternative takes on the zombie genre, and it’s Canadian to boot! The funny premise — zombies as “house pets and domestic workers” in a ’50s suburban setting — sounds like an extension of the final bit of Shaun of the Dean mixed with Leave it to Beaver. Cast includes Carrie-Ann Moss.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

I obviously didn’t know what I was getting into when I added this to my list. I’m aware of Da Ali G Show, but have never seen it … and in particular, the character of Kazakhstani reporter Borat Sagdiyev. The trailer was LOL funny, so I thought this would be perfect to see with the Midnight Madness crowd! But it seems like Borat is some sort of phenomenon, and showings for this movie were some of the first to sell-out. I didn’t have any luck with the advance draw, so Mike and I are planning on trying the Rush line tonight after Fido. But with so many people out there pleading for Borat tickets, I don’t think an hour before showtime (which is when Fido ends) will be good enough to get a decent spot in the Rush line. We shall see.

TIFF Schedule Redux

Steve — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 01:11:50 +0000

What was I saying about unlucky box number 13? How the Film Festival advance draw works is that orders are placed in boxes as they turned in. Once the deadline passes, they pick a numbered box at random and start filling selections from there, and then move on to the next box in order. There were 40 boxes this year, and #22 was selected. So yeah, our picks had to wait until they came back around to #13.

I still ended up with most of my first choices, but understandably the more in-demand films were scarce by that point. Here’s what I didn’t get from my original schedule: Borat, Brand Upon the Brain!, The Last Kiss, The Fountain, Kurt Cobain About a Son, Jade Warrior, and Cashback. If your first choice is sold out and you’ve specified an optional second choice around the same time, they’ll try and fill that. From that process I picked up Candy, King and the Clown, Short Cuts Canada Programme 3, and Princess. Any unused tickets are given as vouchers to be exchanged for real tickets later on, and I ended up with 6 of these.

On Monday morning, a holiday here, I got up early and arrived at the box office to pick up my order at around 8:15 am. It opened at 10, and there were probably about 150 people in front of me. Once they started handed out the packages, it only took 15 minutes to get to the head of the line. The real reason for getting there so early was because we then had the chance to exchange tickets & vouchers — a nice little bonus before individual tix went on sale to the public early this morning. This lineup took about 90 minutes, but at the end of it I was able to get:

tickets for the second showing of The Fountain for Sven, Mandy, and I from 3 of the vouchers
switched up showtimes of Monkey Warfare …
… to use 1 voucher on the same showtime of Cashback as Sven and Mandy
the same for Mike from his package, except for seeing Cashback

The leaves me with 2 vouchers, and I’m hoping to get use them to get into the original Borat and Brand Upon the Brain screenings I wanted. I’ll give the Rush lines a shot for the first time … I’m anticipating both will be pretty hard to get into, but hopefully it turns out well.

Finally, it would have been cool to see The Last Kiss early and with a bunch of the cast likely present. But it opens up in theatres on the 15th anyway and I don’t have any movies scheduled that day, so Sakina and I (and possibly Xiaoxin) are planning on just going then.

So all told, besides whatever happens with the last two vouchers, my schedule now looks like this.

A Schedule … In Theory

Steve — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:34:31 +0000

After a few tiring evenings involving trips to & from downtown, finally determining my top ranked films, and coordinating selections with a few people, I arrived at a hypothetical schedule which you can view here. After work today I dropped off order packages for Mike and myself, including some selections on behalf of Sven & Mandy, and all that’s left to do is await the results of the advance ticket draw. We’re in box lucky number 13!

I’ll have a few words to say about the thinking behind my selections as the festival gets under way.

… return to Parabola’s TIFF database …

Full Schedule Out Today

Steve — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 12:32:11 +0000

I know I owe a number of folks e-mail replies … I’ve just been a little single-minded with doing pTIFFdb-related tasks. I will get to them soon!

Today the official Film Festival schedule is released, so look for all the showtime info to be appearing here later on. I still have a number of titles to review myself before I can really dive into scheduling. I was going to post something on my selection strategies, but just haven’t had the time to write something up. But if you check out some of the blog entries linked to at tiffreviews.com, many of the points made are similar to my own process.

Off to work …

… return to Parabola’s TIFF database …

Day of Rest?

Steve — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 18:26:50 +0000

Just a few small updates today for pTIFFdb. Some new showtime info has found its way online: tiffreviews.com reports on times for titles from Arclight Films and the Canadian film Acts of Imagination; I came across ones for Khadak, Summercamp!, and Tales of the Rat Fink.

Against my original intentions, I added some hacks explicitly for Internet Explorer. There’s still the reality that it has the vast majority of market share, and what it was doing to my ‘previous’ and ‘next’ film links was just horrendous. I think I’ve fixed that issue and a couple of other annoyances. If I may rant for a moment, I encourage IE users out there to check out Firefox. It’s a painless process to install, and IE will still be on your computer if you want to go back to it (but you probably won’t!).

As for the rest of the day, I plan on relaxing and read up as much as possible about the Film Fest titles (and watch trailers where available). Now that I’ve built this system for ranking films and selecting showtimes, it’s about time I used it to narrow things down for my own selections!

… return to Parabola’s TIFF database …

Start Selecting Your Showtimes

Steve — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 19:46:12 +0000

Showtime options (the few that we know of, anyway) are now available when viewing film profiles. Users who are logged in will be able to save these to ‘My Showtimes’.

This update also adds a ‘My Showtimes’ filter that registered users can choose from when listing films. The effect is that only films for which you’ve saved a showtime will be displayed — use this to generate your own personalized schedule.

You can also flag ‘My Showtimes’ in any listing. They will show up with a checkmark beside them and will be highlighted yellow. So if you are not also using the ‘My Showtimes’ filter, you can see where your saved showtimes appear in the bigger picture. I envision this being helpful when filling gaps in your schedule.

I also want to mention that a handful of new showtimes have been added. These are courtesy of tiffreviews.com, from this post. You’ll note that tiffreviews.com and some other sites are being linked to from pTIFFdb; I’ll have more to say in another post about these links you should check out.

… return to Parabola’s TIFF database …

Showtimes Showing Up

Steve — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 05:24:53 +0000

Just a small update tonight, in terms of external facing aspects of pTIFFdb: I’ve entered the showtimes for the Galas and the screenings at the Elgin Theatre. This enables a couple new ways to search, incorporating date & time as well as the venue. I will soon be adding this info to individual film profiles and allowing registered users to save their planned showtimes.

… return to Parabola’s TIFF database …