That was one-and-a-half days of utter and total torture that I have no desire to re-live. After clicking "Reload" on my inbox approximately one hundred times throughout the entire weekend and hearing about fellow festival goers crowe about scoring their first choices, I finally received a confirmation from the the TIFF box-office at 9:30pm this evening. Dreading the worst case scenario (like, say, receiving twenty-plus blank tickets), I initially peered at the results with
tremendous apprehension. Overall? I was freaking out over nothing. True, I didn't make it into Kim's Time, Maddin's Brand Upon the Brain!, Almodóvar's Volver, Inarritu's Babel, Field's Little Children, Mitchell's Shortbus, and Aronofsky's The Fountain, but matters could be much, much worse. And considering I was in the second-last box opened and still managed to obtain several first-choices, I am a thankful son-of-a-gun tonight. Plus, I will still be "rushing" several of those films above (I am hopeful for Almodóvar and Mitchell especially), although it looks like I might have to skip two of my most anticipated films of the year - the Field and Aronofsky features. It sucks, but at least they'll be releasing in the next few months. The world has bigger problems than me not seeing studio pictures a couple of weeks early.I'm not letting the disappointment of feeling those losses dull my excitement for films I will be seeing early like The Namesake (!!!), Breaking and Entering (by Anthony Minghella), Pan's Labyrinth (del Toro's next that has critics swooning), Rescue Dawn (by Werner Herzog), and The Fall (by Tarsem Singh, who pretty much re-defined eye candy with 2000's The Cell.) That's not mentioning the works by Branagh, Loach, Tsai, Panahi, Weerasethakul... That's a pretty damn good roster for coming in practically last in the advance draw.
Check out the list to the side to see the entire list, which I will be updating with grades throughout the fest. That is in addition to reviews, pictures, and other random observations about TIFF 2006.
Stay tuned...
5 comments:
Well, that's quite the list, I must say, and you're right, waiting one or two months for stuff like "The Fountain" is not such a tragic thing (you can bet my wait will be longer than that), so you are indeed a lucky sun of a gun (I'm feeling kind today).
Your excitement is infectious, but I want to be there as well, I'm so jealous!
PS: Our lists seem to have stopped again, dammit.
Well, although I'm over missing most of the biggies, I still can't let go of The Fountain just yet. Tomorrow I'll try my best at the box office to make that space in my schedule totally clear so I can rush it. At least I'll know that I tried.
Re: the lists, I know. I've been waiting so long to get to this point, but I've completely burnt out (especially with so much else going on.) I'll try to post through the next few weeks, but I don't think #1's going to arrive for a while.
I kind of don't like film festivals because most of the movies I want to see are the sorts that will be released soon anyway, but none of the ones like The Fountain or whatever ever appear at our festivals because they only want to premier at Toronto or whatever. It's stupid and I hate them forever.
Nevertheless, it looks like you got some great moviegoing coming up!
Completely jealous of you getting to see The Fall. I love the sound of that movie The Cell is a favourite of mine. Also jealous of you getting to see Bobby and Breaking and Entering.
And yay for you for getting to see Jindabyne! I can only hope you liked it as much as me. Suburban Mayhem was an interesting inclusion, considering there were (apparently) better Aussie films showing at TIFF than that.
I should clarify. At the Melbourne Internation Film Festival, one of THE biggest in the southern hemisphere, the biggest American films were Thank You For Smoking (out a week after the festival ended) and A Prairie Home Companion (out in a few weeks).
...maybe if we DID get movies like the ones Toronto has then I would be more enthusiastic about festivals.
I hear you, Glenn. I thank my lucky stars that I live in Toronto (well, so close to it, anyways.) This is only my fifth year festivaling, and I regret not getting into it earlier. Now I can't imagine not going every single year.
I definitely would not be excited to see Thank You For Smoking a week early. It looks like the programmers need to lobby filmmakers more effectively.
Suburban Mayhem received raves from two critics I like, so I'm looking forward to it. It was a backup selection truth be told (I think I had Babel as my first pick in that time slot.)
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