As a preface, if you detect a hint of glee in the following post, it’s probably because I’m typing this post on my new laptop, and, in true yuppie form, I’m typing it up as I sip a coffee at Starbucks.

So as expected, I’ve incurred yet another delay on my way to Korea. This one isn’t half as serious as Transcriptgate, but here I am, waiting another ten days when I should only be waiting three.
I actually just got back to Markham from the Korean Consulate, which took around 3 hours roundtrip because of the rain; and we all know what rain does to highways. This is actually the third day in a row that I’ve driven to and from the consulate, each time feeling both enraged and despondent. I gather that the information that I’ve been given pertains only to the Korean-American Embassy, because procedures here in Toronto are really different. For example, I’ve had to order my fifth transcript for this entire procedure whereas my American counterparts would probably only need one.

A lot of people have been saying that it’s a sign that I’ve been delayed so much; that Canada doesn’t want me to leave. Well, I don’t particularly want to leave now either but I think that for (and I’m trying not to sound too melodramatic here) the good of my life, I should leave. Not only because my current home life feels somewhat poisonous, but more so that I’ve been convinced thoroughly by M that the exchange experience is a crucial one. I’m feeling it more and more everyday. The chance to live, work, travel and take care of myself, all by myself, is alluring and probably something that is long overdue for me. Most people experience this in university but since I was about a stone’s throw away from home at University of Toronto, I was always within grasp of my parents.

And I feel like I shouldn’t be backing down. As most of you know, and have pointed out on several occasions, I have something of a victim-complex. I know that others have gone through this before (at least that’s what my agent told me) and I know that lots of foreigners have trouble getting their visas so I shouldn’t feel too special. So I think that the only way to solve this complex is to really just be strong and push through and live it out. If I don’t, I feel like it’ll be a slippery slope of defeat after defeat, capitulation and capitulation, until I find that I’m 30 and living in my parent’s basement.

I think only one other person I’ve talked to has really understood what I mean when I say I don’t like to drag out goodbyes. I really dislike the feeling of having a last goodbye with someone, whether it be just a phone call or even spending a whole day together, and then seeing them the next day or the next week and have that awkward conversation. The feeling of finality, of closure and conclusion from the goodbye are suddenly wiped out and, again, to sound melodramatic, the grieving process is interrupted. Once I leave, I want to be gone.

Basically, it just sucks to always have people say, “you’re still here?”

Possibly the best (and gayest) ringtone ever?

Kors wasn’t too happy about a evening outfit made by (the now ex-contestants) Kelly and Daniel from the latest season of Project Runway. Even they didn’t look too happy about it:

See?

And his response?

“I mean… hellllloooo! Slutty, slutty, slutty!”

Instant classic.

I just went through one of the most painful experiences of my life – and paid for it.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t really have the body to need massages of any kind. I’m not a top ranking athlete that needs to be rubbed and chopped to keep in working order. The reason I’ve been going lately is because I’ve found out that the muscles in my neck and upper shoulders are tenser on the right side, therefore pulling my right shoulder up higher than my left, and massaging those muscles relaxes them and makes the condition not as bad.

So I’ve been going to an apparent “doctor” on these matters and he’s been giving me deep body massages that are nothing compared to the other relaxing massages I’ve had before. Today was my fifth appointment and never have I felt like all the fibres of my body were about to rip apart or like someone was stabbing me in the back with a dull screwdriver. In fact, I told the guy to ease up a couple of times and he would laugh and say okay but keep going at it; I’ll blame the language barrier. But laughing as he inflicted intense pain on my bones and muscles leads me to think that he enjoyed it a little more than he should have.

As I lay literally writhing in pain on the massage table, covered in pain-sweat, I began to think about what it would be like to actually be tortured. Would I fold because someone was poking my muscles or would I be able to hold out like Jack Bauer? What if someone was sticking bamboo chutes under my nails like Sayid did to Sawyer?

(skip to 4:20 for torture)

I’m not sure if I’m going to go back to that massage place anymore. I mean, at what point does pain stop being “for your own good” and just become torture? After all, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette. It’s all about finding that fine balance, right?

Waiting on Queen St. in the rain for Slumdog Millionaire

This will be the last post that I make about this year’s festival. I figured that it’s about time to wrap things up and leave it be, much like how most media outlets have dropped the festival like a hot potato and gone back to covering shootings, stabbings, and school lockdowns; you know, the daily grind.

Let’s crunch some TIFF numbers, shall we?

Movies watched: 13
Hours spent in lines: 19
Hours spent watching movies: 23.5

Charge to credit card for initial ticket purchase: $20.60 x 20 = $412.00 but subtract 10 tickets (7 for A, 3 for my friends) = $206.00 so total cost was $206.00 for my tickets.
Additional purchases: $13.89 (TIFF waterbottle), $6.54 (TIFF shopping bag), $45.50 (additional online tickets, one for M), $17.75 (gala screening event), = $60.43
Food: I don’t even know. Probably somewhere around $150 for the 10 days.
Transportation: Approximately $25.00

Total = $441.43

I’m not really sure what the point of this exercise was other than to make myself feel bad.

A and I will be indulging in our usual post-TIFF festivities by watching the movies that we missed at the festival (last year being Lust, Caution and Eastern Promises), this year starting with Burn After Reading.

Okay, the title is a bit of a misnomer but I’m a big fan of completion, so I’m doing this in honour of the previous two titles. And I should note that all the pictures used in all three posts are from the TIFF08 site.

Synecdoche, New York: This movie really fucked me up. In a bad way… but I think to that end, it becomes a good thing. Apparently a lot of reviews have called it “impenetrable”, which I have to say I agree with. Although my associate disliked the movie and fell asleep, I found that the movie was composed of so many witty and fast-paced vignettes that the two hours went by pretty fast until the end became very sombre and ponderous. A truly brutal look at the hopelessness of art, life, love, ambition (Kaufman tackles a lot of subjects), that cuts straight to the heart.

Il y a longtemps que je t’aime: I’ve never seen Kristin Scott Thomas act before but she was pretty fantastic. The story was very straightforward, never providing any twists or surprises but letting the characters, acting power and drama speak for themselves. The story of sisterly love so universal and touching despite being set against one of the most heinous decisions a person would ever have to make.

Detroit Metal City: The most hilarious movie I’ve seen in a long time. The exaggerated anime-like facial expressions, movements and actions were refreshing to see in live action with capable comedic actors, especially Ken’ichi Matsuyama, who plays both Shinichi and Johannes Krauser. Only some of the acting doesn’t really crossover well to North America, such as the super evil manager who keeps doing her high-pitched cackle, which got really old, really fast. The plot, unfortunately, falls apart towards the end, after the big showdown between Krauser and Jack Il Dark, but I don’t know if this is somehow related to the manga series or not.

The Biggest Chinese Restaurant In The World: I was turned off of the doc because of a review written in NOW Magazine that mostly bashed the film (despite giving it 3/5 Ns). What the reviewer, the myseterious “RS”, criticises about the actions of the subjects of the documentary, like how the employees are paid “slave-labour rates”, are completely misplaced and just plain wrong. Or at least he or she certainly missed the point of the documentary, instead taking a negative attitude because of his ethnocentric approach to both watching and reviewing the film. So it just goes to show that one can’t always trust critics (and probably should always almost not do so). I really liked the documentary compared to another Chinese documentary that I’ve seen called Up The Yangtze but probably because that was by a Chinese filmmaker and this one was by Europeans.

Sexykiller: Boobs, blood, and zombies. What more could anyone ask for? Director Miguel Marti clearly aims for the pulpy, b-movie and cult with all the references to Romero, Raimi and the other giants, but veers from that path and goes into genre parody mode (he said during Q&A that he loves the Scary Movie movies). I thought it was hilarious and amazingly fun. Macarena Gomez was electrifying to watch (in person, too!).

Slumdog Millionaire: Ah, the last movie of the festival for me and the winner of the C_____ People’s Choice Award, which apparently is the highest prize given out at the festival and an indicator of Oscar gold. Kinda typical of Toronto to have such a prestigious prize be selected by the great unwashed. I really liked the movie in all aspects, and noticed that the chase scenes cinematography was note-for-note the same as in the 28-series movies, but Boyle just replaced zombie apocalypse survivors with slum kids and the zombies with cops or mobsters. Amazing. MIA was also used to great effect on the soundtrack, which included music as diverse as Bollywood, classical Indian, and Western pop. The only thing that marred an otherwise great movie was some fromagey dialogue: “‘What will we survive on?’ ‘Love.’” “‘I thought we would only be together in death’”, etc. This is surprising coming from the apparent golden boy Simon Beaufoy but the cringeworthy moments were few and far between.

Here’s some more quick blurbs about the movies I’ve seen:

Valentino: The Last Emperor: I, to be honest, didn’t know much about Valentino before watching this documentary and had confused him with Yves Saint Laurent. So when Annia grabbed my arm and said “oh my god, that’s Valentino!” when he walked onto the balcony that was about five metres away from us, my only response was “I thought he was dead”. The film itself was pretty amazing too, despite the scandalous information that I’ve just found out that Valentino and Giancarlo aren’t even together anymore.

Vacation: I went into this movie, for some reason, expecting it to be like the excellent At The Death House Door, but instead we got the ponderous, slow and often dream-like Vacation, that dealt with the death penalty in a bipartisan manner, never really taking a stand, courtesy of second-time director, Hajime Kadoi. Like the previous Japanese film that I saw, this one could do with some serious editing too. My movie-mate complained that the whole thing felt stale and flat, that the characters were emotionless and thus hard to relate to. I somewhat agree but I appreciated it a little more in the Asian-style of filmmaking and not in a Hollywood mindset. It didn’t live up to what it could have been.

Ashes of Time Redux: This was one of the movies I was looking forward to most since I knew Wong Kar Wai would be in attendance and I’ve liked pretty much every movie of his that I’ve seen. I can’t really say much about it since I haven’t seen the original but I did really like the Redux. Dream-like, stunning performances all around, and sumptuous images courtesy of Chris Doyle, as per usual. Lovely.

Oh, it’s been a hectic week of TIFF and only now can I muster up the courage to recount the first three days.

Some quick reviews:

JCVD – Loved it. Probably my favourite of the festival so far, except for a strange ending that kind of marred it for me. Van Damme gives something like a tour de force performance as himself and it’s nice to see the guy working with a decent script after all these years because you can tell that he’s ready for it (and maybe always has been?). A sublime, soul-stirring monologue 3/4 of the way through the movie lifts this movie from b-movie status to something of a masterpiece.

Achilles and the Tortoise – I came into the movie expecting something different from what I was given and that always throws me off. I mean, it’s my fault for going in with preconceived notions but that’s besides the point. Takeshi Kitano certainly doesn’t fool around in this strange story about a painter with no talent who is supported by his loving wife, the only one who understands him. Little did I know, the story would also be soaked with the blood of at least half a dozen suicides and other strange bodily mutilations. The biggest problems, however, are that the movie could’ve done with some strong editing and that the whole philosophical principle of Achilles racing the Tortoise feels a bit murky as inspiration for the plot.

Thirty Two Films About Glenn Gould – This is a pretty old movie, so old, in fact, that a survey taker that I was talking to in line for another movie said that she had seen it on the CBC when she was younger. And the co-producer also mentioned during the initial introduction that he was (jokingly) “appalled” that this film was now being included in the “Open Vault” section of TIFF. The movie itself was so very unique, with segments that were just incredibly abstract (for its time) to others that were straightforward and relied on the incredible portrayal of Gould by Colm Feore. Filmed in the 80s, but still felt quite fresh.

Burn After Reading: Well, we didn’t get into this after 5 hours in the rain but I did get to see Tilda Swinton. And we did get a bunch of free shit too. Surprisingly, neither Annia or I are that upset that we missed the screening.

Sauna: I had high expectations for this movie based solely on the synopsis on the TIFF website that called it both existential and a really damn scary horror. I’ll admit that there was a fair bit of both and that the dialogue and atmosphere were great in the beginning but the plot fell completely apart near the end, from a gay subplot that sprang out of nowhere, to nonsensical demon-monsters, and finally with some uncharacteristic and anti-redemption motifs that didn’t sit right with me. The Q&A afterwards with the director, while hilarious in his no-bullshit approach, was also disappointing to learn how little they had actually thought about the plot development, symbolism, characterisation, etc. It did feel very much like The Virgin Spring in parts, but I think that might just be the Scandinavian setting, because the compliment seems way off base here.

Well, I must say that reading back on my post from a mere two weeks ago, I have to laugh at my starry-eyed naïveté. You’d think I would have learned from last year how intense the festival was but here we were being all unprepared as usual.

The 10-ticket packages went on sale August 29th and we went to the box office the same day at 6:00 pm. All sold out. We looked at the student packages as a last resort, because you have to buy them per day and you can see as many movies as you can on that day. All sold out. So we were forced to wait until September 3rd to buy single tickets per movie. We went to a Mexican restaurant where we decided, in extreme sorrow, to eat our feelings:

I had retitled this year’s TIFF experience as “TIFF FUCK”, which you will see again in my phone calendar later. And as I kept telling myself, and then dementedly started telling Annia every five minutes, TIFF IS WAR. So what better way to prepare than to have a strategic planning session last night at McDonalds, eating disgusting fast food in the ghettoest McDonalds of Scarborough. Here are the fruits of our labour:

Then I dropped her home at 10:30 pm and headed home to get to bed since we had to wake up at 5:00 am in the morning to get downtown to buy tickets.

I was a moron and overloaded on caffeine during the day so I had a lot of trouble sleeping this very important night. I was in bed by midnight but between having to get out of bed because of insomnia, 2:30 am phone calls from Korea, and the need to finalise my TIFF list, I didn’t get to sleep until about 3:00 am. And I woke up at 4:45 am. Witness my phone at the ungodly hour of my waking up:

Since I only slept for just under two hours, I didn’t even think my teeth warranted another brushing and so I tossed on some clothes, put on a hat to cover the bedhead, and made sure to bring sunglasses to cover up the “hung over” look, I sped to Annia’s place at 5:15 am at 100 km/h (making it in record time in only 12 minutes), then setting another record by getting to Roy Thomson Hall in about 20 minutes. We were set!

Lots of worrying and spiraling into hysteria happened while we waited until the 7:00 am box office opening time but as we saw the line grow exponentially behind us, with more than just a little hint of schadenfreude on my part (see what TIFF does to people?), things seemed to brighten up. This was especially true after we kept seeing people coming out of the tent smiling and holding huge stacks of tickets, at which point we felt better about our chances of getting the tickets we wanted. And look, after some scary system crash moments, we did:

So here is my final list of movies that I will be seeing, after much toil and hardship, at TIFF 08:

I am now officially excited.

Date: August 23, 2008
Location: Scotiabank Theatre

As a disclaimer, I’m probably the least qualified person to be reviewing a Woody Allen movie. The only movies I’ve seen of his have been Match Point (which I liked), 30 minutes of Annie Hall (which I didn’t like), and Curse of the Jade Scorpion (which was detestably boring). So I was a bit wary, to say the least, walking into the theatre but the movie had gotten good reviews and I love Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem so there was still enough to keep me watching.

If the film does one thing well (and it does a lot of things well), it’s the creation of a solid and believable atmosphere. From the wonderful bossa nova opening theme to the lush cityscapes saturated in that uniquely European/Mediterranean sun, the immersion is almost absolute despite an overwhelming absence of everyday Spanish folk.

Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem were the gems of the movie. It was so fun to watch their psychopathic-relationship interactions. Scarlett Johannsen was, however, not good for me. I’ve never really liked her as an actress and her smarmy, loopy, polygamist character definitely rubbed me the wrong way.
Another thing to note was the narration. The movie begins with a young man’s nasally voice describing in vivid detail the personality quirks of our two main characters, Vicky and Cristina. I have to say, the technique hit me pretty hard and I wasn’t sure how I liked it until I felt that it complimented the very narrative, story-telling style of the plot progression.
I wrote this post a long time ago and wasn’t able to finish it so I’m kind of finishing it by memory and now I think I’ll leave it at that for now. I’m woeful that my movie review posts haven’t been turning out like I thought they would.