1) I haven't seen a bad film yet at the 2006 Toronto festival, but I haven't experienced the ecstatic highs of last year, either, when "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada," "Brokeback Mountain," "Cache," "A History of Violence," "Capote," "51 Birch Street" and a few others made it feel like a cinematic renaissance was sweeping town in just a few days.
2) The official festival trailers before every film that I (and many others) complained about last year are vastly improved this time, mainly because the one with the festival logo itself lasts only about five seconds. That's a merciful relief to those of us who see it so many times.
But by this point in the fest, some are beginning to protest the Motorola sponsorship trailers that show a few seconds from various unbelievably inane "short films" shot on cell phones. At the "Red Road" screening this morning, a woman loudly blurted out: "I hate these things!" People laughed in approval. At another press/industry screening (I forget which one now), somebody in the dark proclaimed: "These are so bad! The critics agreed.
3) An amusing pass-time for regulars waiting for movies to start has been to guess the significance of the festival's poster image, the outline of a face with two red swatches where the eyes should be. In the animated trailer, the red things are wings that flutter down and alight on the eyeless visage like a crimson butterfly. But to me, the guy looks like Oedipus with buckets of FX blood gushing out of his sockets. Or maybe he's Mercury, and the victim of some artistic confusion about the where the ankles are located. Some new kind of trendy rose-tinted glasses for sale on Bloor Street, perhaps? Or a Scotsman? Another critic told me she thought it was supposed to represent what your eyeballs feel like after watching four or five movies at a stretch for several days.
If you have any interpretations of your own, please leave a comment!
Canadians are smart; they recognize that men with thick, bushy eyebrows are exceptionally talented in their respective fields. Martin Scorsese. Philip Roth. Sam the Eagle.
I thought it was just some guy with bushy eyebrows. Or maybe, just maybe, his eyes have viewed such wonderful films at the festival, they have sprouted wings of their own, which they will use to burst free from his head (which ties in to your gushing blood/Oedipus idea) and fly to a time and place high and far away (blue, heavenly background) in which such great movies are screened all the time.
It's gotta be Martin Scorsese.
I think they're two huge bushy eye-brows, and honour the glorious nation of Kazakhstan.
I suggest strongly that you try to catch the world premiere of Cheech, a canadian film from Quebec which I saw on a preview screening in Montreal. It's in French and I don't know how the dark humor in it will play with subtitles, but the movie is great, at all times both sad and cheerful, and filled with wonderful performances.
He's a hockey fan who sees nothing except the Detroit Red Wings.
From the way his head his shaped he looks like one of Jim Henson's muppets. Maybe a new addition to the Sesame Street ouvre.
All these people can complain. But they are all there. As far as I'm concerned my complaint means more, that I'm not there.
Let your eyes take flight. But first you'll have to trust us, surrender your eyes to us. You know what I mean, jellybean?
"Red wings give you eyes!"
This is what happens when the designers aren't allowed to work in any cute film references. No film strips/frames, no reels, no projectors, no clap boards! I don't know what it means, but I'm pretty sure Guillermo Del Toro can use him in his next film.
Oedipus & Mercury are the best guesses, but I believe it is an insatiable Fury from the Gates of Hades, hastening towards an assinine and irresponsible movie industry. Having mucked about the Underworld, Tisiphone arrives in Toronto to deliver the Final Solution to Kirby Dick, in the form of a fair-usage 23-skidoo clause. Kirby fumbles, leaving the Copyright Nuke to be smuggled off by performance artists' for site-specific installations.