If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Day 7. 9:00AM -- Although I've probably only slept for 4 hours, felt so luxurious to have a leisurely wake-up! After the late night dancing at the City to City Party, I needed to rest up. After all, tonight is our annual Karaoke shindig, my favourite night of the Festival.
The Brass Teapot is the stunning debut by director Ramaa Mosley. An already distinguished director of music videos, commercials, and short films, Mosley for the first time stretches her wings and reveals her potential as a director of serious independent films.
During a Toronto film festival press conference for Cloud Atlas on Sunday, star Tom Hanks used a question about the power of celebrity as an opportunity to formally lodge a complaint with event organizers.
It's an amazing feeling speaking to people and being able to answer the question "do you have something in the festival?" with a resounding YES. Though I've been doing this for a better part of a decade, I can't help but feel I'm really starting, officially, now.
Most confounding film of the T.I.F.F.: Terrence Malick's To the Wonder, which features maddeningly little dialogue and makes you wonder whether you are missing the point of the film.
While this year's best-picture winner may in fact have played at TIFF 2012, there was no huge critical groundswell around a realistic contender, the way there was last year.
Success! The City to City Mumbai Party was happening, happy guests flooding out into the streets decked out in our gift scarves. Cleaning up and heading home. In the line-up for tomorrow: the most important event to date -- Cameron's super secret, surprise Karaoke Night! Now should I get him to sing "Purple Rain" again or "When Doves Cry"?
Filmmaker Eran Riklis admits that while "films can't change the world, they can make you think." At a moment when we are wondering just what people are capable of when enraged by a YouTube video, Zaytoun is the antidote to the poison of violence.
It's easy to mock the feelings it evokes, but that's a shallow reading of a much deeper film. Cloud Atlas is one of the best films I've seen this year and one of the most satisfying.
Reincarnated, the new documentary on Snoop Dogg, is a fascinating in-depth account of what happens when a famous OG (original gangsta) really becomes an middle-aged OG.
Even with the ongoing physical self-abuse, selective punishment and viewer sympathy, The Brass Teapot eventually evolves into a heartwarming narrative that explores universal truths about choices made that can turn disastrous.
As film-festival days go, this was a good one, with five films that I could recommend to anyone. Well, OK, so I would have to think about who my audience was before sending them off to see Martin McDonagh's bloody funny Seven Psychopaths -- and particularly The Iceman.
Reincarnated doc, which debuted to a standing ovation at the Toronto International Film Festival, is not an ambiguous experience. The film explores both Snoop's life and his journey through Jamaica -- from writing and recording a reggae album (also called Reincarnated) to meeting Bunny Wailer to his baptism at a ceremony in the Nyabinghi Temple -- all done with a deft and sometimes brutally honest hand.
There are literally hundreds of movies up here at the Toronto International Film Festival. So the idea of a singular theme emerging seems unlikely. And yet, on my first day of press screenings here, I saw two films that focused on people in 12-step programs.
I'm sure Baumbach must hate all the comparisons to Girls. Sure, there's overlap -- basically Frances and friends are the same privileged-but-broke whites from good colleges -- but a few years older, so being at loose ends ups the ante.
The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival kicked off on Thursday with all the glitz, glamour and fanfare one has come to expect of the internationally renowned film fest, which this year added a masala twist to the lineup of films with a spotlight on Mumbai.
