The only time I’ve ever written movie reviews has been for The Strand but I’ve never done this before. I’m pretty excited about using my blog for this purpose even though I have no exposure and I don’t really think  people care about my opinion. The most important thing, however, is that I think it’d be a nice archive of films that I’ve seen and it’ll also force me to really analyse and contemplate films that I see instead of just letting them go in my brain and then melt out days later.

I’m going to try and not make the reviews sound too stuffy or too technical because, while I find those interesting sometimes, I usually find them pretty pretentious and annoying. So I guess I’ll try and strike up a delicate balance and only talk about those things if they have some direct bearing on my impression of the film. This new project is helped along by the fact that this is the first movie that I’ve seen alone in theatres since I don’t remember when, and I was able to concentrate far better without anyone else around.

Date: August 22, 2008
Location: AMC Yonge & Dundas

The most remarkable part of this movie is that it’s actually a made-for-TV movie for the British Channel 4. There are parts that kind of give that fact away, mostly indefinable, but I think it has something to do with the film stock? You know how watching a movie differs from watching a soap opera and both those are different from watching a sitcom. I don’t know what the actual technical reasons are, but I do know that they’re on different film. Upon further research just now, I see that it’s filmed in HDTV format so that settles that.

There are two aspects of this film that really stand out and those would be the cinematography and then the star performances by the all-but-unknown cast.

When you watch TV, you simply do not see compelling camera angles. Pretty much all the time In TV, the angles are designed to be simple and effective, mostly just to assist the script, which is pretty much always the focus. Director John Crowley turns this on its head by long stretches of silence or emotive close-ups accompanied by isolating shots, to give an example. One of my favourite moments is at the very beginning when Eric/Jack, the titular character known to the public as Boy A, receives a pair of really nice Nike Air Escapes from his sponsor and the camera, off-centre, simply focuses on his face on a plain white wall as he tries to express the shock of being treated kindly for the first time in his life. The editing wasn’t without fault, however, for sometimes when a long, steady shot to convey gravity would have done perfectly well, the filmmakers opted for jumpy, short cuts that smacked of its modern, TV origins.

Jack standing at an unknown beach that I actually really thought was Bournemouth until I saw the ferris wheel.

Considering my last couple of in-theatre movie-going experiences have featured comedic/over-the-top performances (Hell Boy II, The Dark Knight, Tropic Thunder), it was definitely refreshing to see ultra-realistic, down-to-earth performances. And not in that "reality TV-reality" type of reality but one that feels like you aren’t watching a movie at all. Andrew Garfield, who played Jack Burridge, had done nothing at all of note before this movie but certainly deserves bigger jobs after this (and looking at his IMDB, we will see that he has gotten his due). I think the real stand-out in the cast, though, is Peter Mullan, who plays Jack’s sponsor, Terry. As I watched, I kept thinking how I’d like to see him in more roles and that he could do really well with them, and I hope I do.

I know that I have more to say but I will stop rambling at this point because I’m really tired and this review is getting really messy. Post any thoughts if you’ve seen the movie too!

My sister is back from Oxford now so we went to pick her up at the airport last Wednesday. I was parked on the side of the road, like pretty much everyone who doesn’t want to pay for parking, so I pulled out my DS since the flight was slightly delayed. I kept looking up into the rearview mirror to see if any of the regular airport patrol cars that usually just chase people away. I look up and see a pretty serious looking cop standing beside my car. Shit.

"Are you winning?"
"Uh,–"
"Because you’re about to lose!"

He asks for my driver’s license and then comes back about five minutes later saying that he’s only going to give me a warning because I have a clean record and that he’s not going to "bust my chops". I feel pretty thankful; I mean just look at the warning ticket (picture 1):

Picture 1; Picture 2

I avoided a $112 fine and two demerit points. And you know what’s the worst thing? He says, "you know there’s a free parking lot just around the corner?". Of course I said I didn’t. It turns out that Pearson has established these "cell phone parking lots" that you can go to and wait absolutely free but the signs that they’ve posted everywhere call them "reduced rate" parking lots, so who in their right minds would go there? I mean that’s why there were at least twenty other cars waiting on the side of the road with me. I don’t know how corporations get away with misleading signs like that. Don’t get me started on the City of Toronto either; their parking signs are the absolute worst and most deliberately misleading. I know all about those. Just look at picture 2. I’m definitely cursed when it comes to parking.

I’m going to end up like this guy someday:

1. The flurry of calls we made to each other was both hilarious and frustrating.   2. The infamous meal of McDonalds sitting on the ground (Queen St. West) as we waited for Brangelina   3. Our modus operandi: Rush Line

An exciting thing has happened! The people at TIFF have released a big list of movies for this year’s festival. Annia and I got addicted to festival-going last year on a whim and ended up spending around $200 on movies and food for the week.

Despite the ever increasing commercialisation of the festival, there’s still a bunch of good opportunities to check out small films that never even get picked up for distribution (at least not in North America). For example, we attended a star-studded gala opening at Roy Thompson Hall for Blood Brothers but I haven’t read a single word about it since.

Anyway, this year me and my partner in crime are going for an organised assault, even if Annia has full-time work. We’re going to buy a packet of 10 passes and skip the rush line hideousness and even go back to elementary school and pack some food with us so we’re not always making Tim Horton’s runs.

Based on daily stalkings of this,this and this site too, I’ve been able to recognise a number of titles that have been in the media buzz news sites for a while. Here are some of the films I want to check out based purely on names of directors:

1. Achilles and the Tortoise – Takeshi Kitano  * 
2. Adoration – Atom Egoyan    
3. Appaloosa – Ed Harris    
4. Ashes of Time Redux – Wong Kar-wai    *
5. Burn After Reading – Joel Coen, Ethan Coen    *
6. Fifty Dead Men Walking – Kari Skogland    *
7. Gomorrah – Matteo Garrone    
8. Heaven on Earth – Deepa Mehta    *
9. It Might Get Loud – Davis Guggenheim
10. Rachel Getting Married – Jonathan Demme    *
11. Religulous – Larry Charles    *
12. Slumdog Millionaire – Danny Boyle    
13. Synecdoche, New York – Charlie Kaufman    *
14. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould – François Girard    *
15. Toronto Stories – Sook-Yin Lee, Sudz Sutherland, David Weaver, Aaron Woodley

* denotes a ‘must see’ film for me

I have a feeling I’ll either cut out a bunch of them (considering I can’t find descriptions for a few) and I’ll probably add a whole bunch of foreign films to the list after the Holy Grail is released on August 26th (as well as the full schedule of show times and locations).

It’s been a long road to this point of both my real life and my online life.

I’ll try not to wax philosophical here but every time I start a new blog, it feels like there was a massive change in my life, one way or another and I end up sounding too serious or too grave in the introductory post.

I started writing online in 2001 when I signed up for a LiveJournal account (username youthbridgade).  It was a cliquey, popularity-related affair due to experiences at Arts Camp. Shortly thereafter, I signed up for a Blogger account that ended up being my longest running journal, or at least it felt like it. I made several maundering posts a day and expected comments on each. It was called The Daily Satori (bandages.blogspot.com), an attempt at being a "serious writer" but actually was the exact opposite. My presence proliferated to the point of getting a xanga, deadjournal, and every other online journal I could get my hands on, for commenting purposes mostly. I even had a side, design-driven blog setup on my Rogers webspace. All my efforts, however, were angsty and stomach-churning drivel.

Finally, in 2005, I bought my own domain, called it Instinct Blues (instinctblues.com) after the White Stripes song and started trying to distance myself from my previous teenage rantings, putting more effort into writing cut and dry accounts of my day. Needless to say, it got really boring and I was eventually writing posts consisting solely of pictures so that readers wouldn’t get too weary. So after two years of that blog, I wanted to shift gears again and renamed and renewed the domain (at a really hefty price) to Charcoal Teeth (charcoalteeth.com). I didn’t touch the site once as I felt that all of my writing juices had severely dried up; and, indeed, the rest of my sites had fallen into sad disarray.

And now, especially with the advent of that new internet juggernaut, a lack of blogging willpower (or perhaps an overwhelming ennui with the blogosp– I mean, the online blogging community) led to small posts here and there in Note form on Facebook.

So why start writing again now? I guess it’s finally time, after an absence of almost two years, that I feel like I have things to say again. I hate to be one more drop in the bucket of an already saturated market of overseas ESL teachers blogging their experiences, but I think maybe I will need to start writing again — something that I haven’t felt in a long time. Who knows where we’ll go from there.