This is really quite shameful, I have to admit. Three months since I've last blogged?? Crazy. And it's not as though things were uneventful. I guess since the opposite was true, it led to me being unable to blog consistently. So...what to do? Well, I'm going to post the latest happenings first, and then back it up a bit to catch up on things I think are worth sharing.
Another ten days of frantic film festing have come and gone. This year was different from the previous two. Since I couldn't make it to the first two volunteer recruiting sessions, and circumstances beyond my control resulted in my being a little late to the third (details in the following blog), my choices of shifts became really limited. So I decided to take a couple of shifts at the Ryerson, as well as some REALLY early morning and mid-morning/early-aft shifts at the new box office. This meant using up some valuable vacation days. But hey, if I have them, I might as well use them. I ended up living a sort of double life: one where I was always smiley and looking for people who were in need of help, and the other where I was at my desk, doing the usual validation stuff. It really was kind of challenging, switching gears every few days. But the best part was being downtown for almost a week, walking around the concrete jungle. If I didn't establish myself as a city girl before, I have now. My geekiest moment? Becoming giddy when I was finally able to cross the intersection diagonally during the "Scramble". I know, it's sad.
Okay, down to the business of films. I was able to catch 6.5 films this year. The "half" was "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist", where I was seat-guarding for almost an hour into the film before they pulled me out. From what I saw, it was fantastic, and now I have to catch the rest of it when it opens next month (and so do you!). As for the rest:
Blindness - What happens when everyone suddenly goes blind? Society basically falls apart. The saddest part is that it's most likely true, if it were to happen in real life. One of the bleakest and most disturbing movies I've seen, but it was captured really well. The majority of the cast was there when I saw it, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Don McKellar, Sandra Oh (who's in the film for about five seconds), Gael Garcia Bernal, and others. What really blew my mind later on was that I found out one of the box office supervisors that I worked with was in the film. I quizzed her endlessly on which scenes she was in, where the film was shot (Guelph), what Julianne Moore was like, and other such useless things. If I get to see the film again, I'll be watching like a hawk for the three seconds that they didn't cut her out of, and listening for her one line, off camera.
Religulous - In a word, hilarious. I believe Bill Maher is sincere (occasionally) when he asks people of all faiths his questions about how they can such faith in something that contradicts itself constantly or has no actual proof that it happened. He really does want to know why, because he doesn't know what to believe. He does ridicule some people relentlessly, but sometimes they're just asking for it. Definitely worth seeing, even if you hate his guts. Apparently, people were protesting outside the Ryerson before the screening, walking around in circles with placards. One of the volunteer captains is a friend from high school, and he was hoping that there would be enough Bill Maher fans clogging up the red carpet area so that the protesters couldn't walk around anymore.
$9.99 - A stop motion animated film that's NOT meant for children. A number of short stories are linked together with the premise that a guy who's looking for the meaning of life finds it in a book he orders for $9.99. It's also an Israeli/Australian production, with Geoffrey Rush as one of the voices. He was at the screening, and I couldn't remind my friend of where she'd seen him before until I said "Pirates of the Caribbean". The highlight was getting his autograph on my ticket stub and a really dark cell phone photo with him. If only my pen didn't decide to stop working...
The Brothers Bloom - I think my favourite of the bunch. A good old caper flick with two brothers who grow up to be con men, an eccentric heiress who's the target for one and the romantic interest for the other, a virtually silent Japanese accomplice with an affinity for explosives (the funniest character by far), and the most incredible fashion I've seen in a film that makes it impossible to place it in an era. The majority of the humour takes place in the background, so keep your eyes open. I got a few grainy cell phone shots of backs and foreheads on the red carpet and at the back door, but I can tell you who's in each one. Highly recommended when it comes to theatres.
The Heart of Jenin - An incredible documentary. In 2005, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy was accidentally killed by Israeli soldiers when they thought his toy gun was a real one. Instead of retribution, the boy's father decided to donate his son's organs to children in the area, at the suggestion of a Christian nurse. The recipients included an Orthodox Jewish girl (kidney), a Bedouin boy (kidney), and a Druze girl (heart). They followed the children whose lives were saved, as well as the father, who tries to make a difference in a difficult situation. The hardest part was the struggle the father endured just to travel around to visit the children that his son's organs saved. Really compelling.
The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World - The title pretty much says it all. Certified by Guinness, it shows how a woman came to build a culinary empire. In the middle of a restaurant that can hold 5,000 people, the film examines the lives of the people who eat and work there. The poverty that some of the employees were trying to escape from is stunning: one waitress gave up all of her own scholastic dreams in order to earn money to send her sister to medical school. It's not a complete downer - there are a lot of light hearted moments. And if you're squeemish, look away when they start talking about how to kill a duck.
This year's festival was great not just because of the films I saw, but also because of a lot of the interesting people I met during my shifts. I've noticed over the years that there's always a staggering number of Korean volunteers. I asked one of them, who was here since January to learn English, if it there were advertisements in Korea to be film fest volunteers in Toronto. She said no, she had heard about it by word of mouth, and she honestly thought she was the only one who knew about it. I met a Filipino girl who's studying journalism at Ryerson who spent her life in different countries around the world. Her favourite place? India, where she lived for three years. I ran into even more familiar faces at the volunteer and staff party. It was the first time I didn't feel awkward or bored, and I actually had to force myself to leave early so I wouldn't be dead at my desk the next day.
People ask me why I volunteer at this thing. The people, the stars, and the films add up to this really great experience that lasts for a week and a half each year. And now I have a Korean connection. It has just moved up my travel list.
"When I grow up, I wanna be famous, I wanna be a star, I wanna be in movies"
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