That was the fest that was

An image from "The Host": It all depends on how you look at it.

I kinda wish I'd had girish's Toronto. I saw some great stuff -- "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema" being my favorites, and was also impressed with "Volver," "Shortbus," "The Wind That Shakes the Barley" and a few others. Not bad, but (as I wrote earlier) not as overwhelming as last year. I steered away from most of the big commercial titles (except for "Borat"!) and concentrated on some of the high-profile foreign and "specialty" films, including some that had attracted attention at Cannes. In other words, titles I thought readers of Scanners would be particularly interested in.

Girish, on the other hand, followed his bliss and... well, here's his assessment of his Own Private Toronto:

Of the eight TIFFs I’ve attended, I think this year’s was probably the strongest. Unlike last year, I took my laptop with me and fully expected to blog the fest, but it turned out that many of the films I saw were not so casually bloggable. I’m still trying to figure out how to think about many of them.

Of the twenty-five films I saw in Toronto, there were two flat-out masterpieces: Jia Zhang-ke’s Chinese diptych "Still Life"/"Dong"; and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s "Syndromes And A Century" from Thailand. Other favorites: Pedro Costa’s "Colossal Youth" (Portugal); Alain Resnais’s "Coeurs" (France); Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s "Climates" (Turkey); Abderrehmane Sissako’s "Bamako" (Mali); Sophie Fiennes’ "The Pervert’s Guide To Cinema" (UK); Hong Sang-Soo’s "Woman On The Beach" (S. Korea); Bong Joon-Ho’s "The Host" (S. Korea); Jafar Panahi’s "Offside" (Iran); etc.

I had most of those on my "want to see" list, but they got bumped by other screenings or time I spent blogging from the fest. I'm hoping I'll be able to catch up with many of these (and I'll have to look up that Mali film in the catalog).

So, out of the "10 days, 352 films, and 27,747 minutes" of the 2006 TIFF, has anybody else had time to digest/recover? How was your Toronto?

3 Comments

By Christopher Long on September 28, 2006 10:49 PM

Holy cow, sounds like Girish and I saw a lot of the same movies and had similar reactions. Here was my take on the festival (if you allow the posting of URLs in the comments):

http://www.dvdtown.com/announcement/dvdtownreportsfromthetorontoin/4006

I thought "Offside" was a masterpiece. And "Colossal Youth" is the movie I have thought about the most in the weeks since the festival ended. And I haven't laughed as hard at any movie in years as I did at John Waters in "This Filthy World."

By Randy on September 29, 2006 4:59 AM

This was only my second year doing TIFF, and overall I preferred this year's experience to last year's. (I saw a few complete stinkers last year -- "Neverwas"? Exactly -- but managed to avoid them this year.)

I managed not to see ANY of the movies that Girish mentioned; I guess there's some titles to look forward to over the next year. Of the 35 movies I saw, the most satisfying ones were some of the biggest titles: I loved "Shortbus", "Borat", "The Fountain", "Dixie Chicks: Shut Up And Sing", "Volver".

And I really don't think I would trade the singular experience of Guy Maddin's "Brand Upon the Brain!" (and its live foley artists, musicians, narrator, and castrato) for anything. (And I'm sure the Toronto audience was better, more appreciative, than the NYFF audience will be!!)

By Famous on October 3, 2006 8:08 PM

For the second year in a row I had a fantastic time at TIFF, with next to no movies that disappointed. This was my sixth year enjoying these ten days in September, and every year I seem to take more and more from sharing my hometown with so many movielovers.

Inevitably, some of the must-see's got past me, and I haven't set foot in a theatre since the fest ended (I usually call this the TIFF hangover), but I still had a blast and can't wait until next year's festival.