Awake: 9:30 a.m.*
Movies: 11:45 a.m.: The Bothersome Man (B+); 2:30 p.m.: 2:37 (incomplete, leaning towards B-/C+); 5:45 p.m.: Babel (B); 9:00 p.m.: Stranger Than Fiction (B+); midnight: The Host (B+)
Food: 113 g container of strawberry yogurt; two-thirds of large bucket of French fries (with Cajun seasoning and a side of gravy); jumbo hot dog (with mustard, onions, hot peppers and sweet corn relish); two slices veggie pizza
Drink: 2 533 ml cans of gingerale; large Coke; 533 ml can of Dr. Pepper
Gum:2 squares Orbit White spearmint; 2 squares Eclipse spearmint
Music: iPod shuffle
Print Media: Toronto's alt-weeklies Now and Eye; the daily Festival News
TV: none
Conversations: the usual crowd**
Bedtime: 3:30 a.m.
*An uncommonly late start for TIFF, but I knew I'd be dead for the whole fest if I didn't sleep in a little on the first full day. This will probably be the case again tomorrow, after seeing a midnight show.
Movie notes: The Bothersome Man combines a fairly well-worn pastiche of several "individual versus utopia" stories with some deadpan Northern European comedy of the Aki Karusimaki/Roy Andersson variety, topped with a pinch of Groundhog Day. A dude dies, his soul is sent to very pleasant city where everyone's consumer needs are met, but nothing has any real taste or smell; then our man revolts, in ways little and big. Nothing dramatically new here, but it's paced well and plotted well, and very smart about what people might do in such a land of bland. (In short, they decorate.) This is one of those movies where everything depends on the ending, and though The Bothersome Man finishes fine, it doesn't quite hit the emotional peak it needs. … 2:37 follows six Australian suburban high school students on the day that one of them … does something. I assume it's suicide, but I had to leave with 10 minutes to go in order to make another movie. (Note to festival organizers: Please don't start movies 10 minutes late. Note to the filmmaker: If you saw me leaving right after the most shocking revelation of the movie, it doesn't mean I was offended or that I can't handle the truth or anything. I actually stayed a few minutes longer than I meant to, just in case you were watching me.) 2:37 is basically a potboiler with pretensions of social relevance, and the potboiler stuff is fairly involving. Which of these impossibly troubled teens will snuffeth? And can first-time director Murali K. Thalluri zoom in any closer on their spotty faces? But it all would've been more effective at a slightly lower pitch. Maybe one of two of these teens could just be depressed in a normal teenage way, rather than bearing up under the burden of terrible secrets. What's with all the extreme turmoil at the fest this year? Is it an Iraq War thing? Everyday problems don't matter anymore? … Speaking of extreme turmoil, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu's Babel is, like his 21 Grams, a gut-wrenching, at times brilliantly cinematic exploration of souls in increasingly ridiculous torment. This time it's a set of connected-unbeknownst-to-themselves folks–stretching from Japan to Morocco to the Mexican/U.S. border–who fall into one crisis after another until the movie finally just gives up and rolls credits, with a few patchy explanations. Babel contains some of the strongest filmmaking we're likely to see this year, which makes it all the more frustrating that Innaritu and his usual screenwriting partner Guillermo Arriaga can't close the deal. … Stranger Than Fiction has Will Ferrell playing a nebbishy IRS auditor who discovers that he's a character in a novel, and that his writer has decided to kill him off. So he consults a lit professor (Dustin Hoffman, entertaining as always) who gives him some hints on ways to enjoy his story while it lasts: namely cozying up to free-spirited baker Maggie Gylenhaal. So, yeah, live and love, you boring common folk. This is essentially a Charlie Kaufmann-style picture with cleaner lines and less depth, but it's zippy and likeable, and Ferrell and Gyllenhaal's romance is surprisingly affecting. Also, the Spoon-heavy soundtrack is terrific. … The Host is Godzilla meets Close Encounters meets the current breed of blackly comic Korean thrillers, which should make it unassailably awesome. But if I can assail just a little, it's worth noting that the movie isn't exactly taut. The monster attacks don't come quite often enough, and the last third is almost eaten alive by plotholes. Mitigating factor: the monster may be a metaphor.
**Jim Ridley on Babel: "Fuck Guillermo Arriaga in my opinion."