Tonight, the Toronto International Film Festival kicked off with its opening night feature, the premiere of Jeremy Podeswa's Fugitive Pieces about a boy found hiding in Poland after watching his family slaughtered by Nazis and who spends the rest of his life wondering what happened to his sister. Apparently, it's the tenth film by Toronto producer Robert Lantos to open TIFF.
Today, my work begins in earnest as the insanely crowded TIFF press screenings kick off. While most critics and journalist will probably be cramming into the Varsity to see Fugitive Pieces at 9AM or Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage (if they haven't seen it yet), I'll instead be catching Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven at 9AM. As a fan of this Turkish-German filmmaker's previous movie Head On (and moreso with each viewing), I'm really excited to see what he does next, as it's once again likely to give us a unique and specialized look at the Turkish community of Germany.
After that, I'll be checking out Amos Gitai's Disengagement starring Juliet Binoche, which I know next to nothing about, although you can read about it by clicking on the title.
It's really just a time-filler to keep me busy until the main event, which will be my first chance to see Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (Focus Features), his follow-up to the Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, at 2pm. Although I've heard that early reviews are mixed, I'm really looking forward to this because I loved Lee's early Chinese films The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman and his leading man Tony Leung is simply one of the best actors ON THE GLOBE. Anyone who disagrees with me should go watch him in Hero or In the Mood for Love.
Hope to have a review of that one shortly afterwards, but I'm also looking forward to finally seeing Anton Corbjin's musical biopic Control (The Weinstein Co.) since I'm such a ginormous Joy Division fan. I'm also crossing my fingers that I can catch Grant Gee's doc about the band (simply called Joy Division) later in the week as well.
Tomorrow night, I've also graciously been given a ticket to catch the TIFF premiere of the animated film Persepolis at the Elgin Theatre Visa Screening Room at 9pm, and I might have to go back to the hotel and get dressed up for that one. The French animated film about life in Iran is based on a duo of notable autobiographical graphic novels by the film's co-director Marjane Satrapi.
While half of me wants to try to get a ticket for Dario Argento's The Mother of Tears , which kicks off the festival's Midnight Madness track, I also realize that seeing five movies on the first day is going to leave me exhausted, and trying to squeeze one more movie in after midnight might make it hard to wake up the next morning to see Gavin Hood's Rendition.
Unfortunately, I'm going to completely miss Michael Moore's documentary about his 2004 US Tour, Captain Mike Across America (to be distributed by The Weinstein Company) and will have to see if I can catch a public screening later.
Strange and Completely Irrelevent Toronto Trivia of the Day: The classic '70s sitcom "Laverne and Shirley" is shown in Toronto as "Laverne DiFazio and Shirley Feeney" as if listing their last names would differentiate it from all the other sitcoms that feature someone named "Laverne."
