Day 1 at the TIFF

Standing in line at the festival, my dad and I had our gameplan for the Elgin. We had the hottest ticket of the night, the world premiere of Canadian director Guy Maddin’s attempt to bring silent film back in Brand Upon the Brain! with 11 members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.


The Elgin is historic and beautiful. I jumped out of the car to join the already forming line just over an hour before the show. In front of me, a Bay Street banker type power woman name Fay chats me up about the French Riviera. She was waiting for her photographer husband Ray to show up. We decide that we'll both go to the Cannes next year, her husband shows up and they skip the line.

Others are buzzing about last night's midnight madness at Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. British comedian Sacha Cohen, better known as Ali G, showed up with goats and villagers on the red carpet. The projector breaking down after 15 minutes, director Michael Moore trys to fix broken projector, Michael Moore fails to fix projector.

Behind me are some college kids and a festival guest (they all have these passes with green lanyards). They’re pissed about Visa, being the official sponsor of the screening room in Elgin, allowing its gold and platinum members to enter first.

“What fucking bullshit elitism!”

It makes sense to me that Visa would let its members have special treatment. After all, they are shelling out X-amount (a couple million at least) to sponsor the festival and they are just taking advantage to give some TLC to their precious Gold and Platinum (fee-paying) card holders.

Economically speaking it's good that VISA sponsors, art needs money. Any film needs a whole lot of money, from production to distribution. Though the VISA policy at the Elgin is pretty elitist, at least it's just at one screening room. Now what confuses me the most is why Bell Canada, the official sponsor, isn't cashing in on this. They could sell a lot of cellphones or something with the line skip incentive.

It's 4am and I'm exhausted from my first TIFF day, will write about Brand Upon the Brain! and The Host in the morning.

What Torontonians call the Most Wonderful Time of the Year....

That's right, and it's not Christmas. It's just like us Canadians to celebrate during the time when maple leaves turn red and we welcome the world to our town during the Toronto International Film Festival. After Labour Day it's all film fest talk and rage in town. Lucky for me this year, my trip to Hong Kong has been postponed tentatively to Christmas time so I'm hitting the TIFF.



Though my noble father has denied me a press pass, I will nevertheless venture on my own. For the first time this year, the TIFF is offering online sales so no more standing in long lines on Yonge street. Wednesday morning at 6:30 am I dutifully woke up to click refresh repetedly on my computer at the TIFF website. Still had to wait pretty long, but it paid off as I got all the films I wanted/could afford. This year I'll be hitting Guy Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain!, Korean horror hit The Host, South African's youth culture in burger name film Bunny Chow, and French New Wave Paris Je t'aime.

Depending time I'll try to rush a few more. The beauty of this festival is that a) it's public b) rush tickets are almost always available if you show up an hour early c) meeting & talking to perfect strangers in line. The weather's cool, the sun is shining, I'm super excited and it sure feels a lot like Christmas!

UPDATE: Maybe it is Christmas in Toronto. My blog has been listed by the official TIFF site as a festivalgoer-blog!

Let the blogging begin...

At some point I'll do a summer wrapup, but right now it's high time to blog on the Toronto International Film Festival. I'm back in town and going to see some films. I would appreciate any feedback about this blog and to know what everyone's been up to (your summer wrapup). I've quit facebook, so here's where it's going to be from now on. Check back often before school starts I'll be blogging and making changes before the madness of senior year begins.

Bye bye facebook

Today said goodbye to a good friend, Facebook. I've decided to somewhat quit: not as in cancel my account, but I will not use it anymore to post things and will keep actions minimal. A couple reasons: 1) I now have a blog 2) Privacy issues, I might need a job at some point 3) Facebook's new face-lift

The facebook has finally pushed me over the edge this time. What was once harmless cyber narcissism has turned into all-out-creepiness when facebook added its News Feed feature this week, which allows the user to see every change which has occurred within their network (ex. has now friended so-and-so, or John is now single)

Of course, the facebook community is in complete havoc. With slogans thrown around like the "panopticon" and "big brother facebook" along with student groups for and against facebook nouveau, Harvard alum-creator Mark Zuckerburger wrote this blog entry to try to console the angry college (and high school) students:

Stalking isn’t cool; but being able to know what’s going on in your friends’ lives is. This is information people used to dig for on a daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so people can learn about the people they care about

That's the thing, what I enjoyed the most about Facebook was the dig. I felt like I was secretly gossiping, and with the information organized, all my fun is gone. I don't know Mark, but summarizing people's facebook activity makes me feel like a creep. Facebook was once a guilty treasure chest filled with social secrets for you to discover, Zuckerburger has taken away his business' most valuable asset by giving us a roadmap to greet us upon login.

Marky Mark also notes that the privacy features haven't been removed, and that our lives online are still intact despite appearences. I think people will still use facebook, but not to the extent they use to. With so many options (most notably MySpace), Facebook might be in some serious trouble, both as a business and once harmless fun.

A blog is born!

I have finally started my own blog after much contemplation, procrastination, and finally creation. Thanks for peer pressuring me friends. Here's looking at you, blogosphere!