9-9-2007
I have insomnia. Or, perhaps, not insomnia but some kind of freaky sleep situation where I can’t fall asleep at night and I can’t stay asleep in the morning. For the past few days, my body’s decided to wake me around 6:30am, regardless of when I hit the hay the night before, and then keep me awake. This is making me very, very, very tired. I find myself slipping into drowsiness over and over again at my screenings yet, when I get home and get ready for bed, suddenly I get my second wind and could not be more awake.
Anyway…
I feel the need to invoke the much-loved (by me) Margaret Cho Blog Brevity Law™ tonight. For those unfamiliar with this law, it allows me – the blogger – to keep my entry super-short because I’m writing it at an unholy hour and desperately need to go to bed… even if I won’t actually sleep much while there. Perhaps Eric will make up for my lack of prose tonight with a lengthy tome on how he spent his Sunday.
Here, then, in a nutshell, is my day:
Movie #1: XXY (6/8), an Argentinian drama about a teenaged hermaphrodite (Inés Efron), who’d been raised as a girl but who’s coming to terms with her sexuality and being urged to essentially choose a gender. Gorgeously shot and nicely acted, the film was languid and somewhat somber (definitely not a happy-go-lucky flick) and really made me want to take a nap.
Movie #2: The Orphanage (6/8), a fun “horror” movie about a woman (Belén Rueda, whom some may recall I *lurrrrrved* in The Sea Inside) who decides to reopen the long-closed orphanage she lived in as a child… only to discover that it’s, like, super-haunted by a whole gaggle of little-kid ghosts. I had been worried that the film would traumatize me, but it was actually not that scary at all. In fact, and this may very well be due to screwed-up hormones as a result of my sleep deprivation, it actually made me cry (?!) with its poignant ending.
I skipped Movie #3 (Les Chansons d’Amour) in order to spend the afternoon hanging out with Eric and Dan. We had lunch at Terroni and then wandered Yorkville for a while. I took them through the Four Seasons, and then we went on a photo tour of Queen’s Park and the University of Toronto… where Eric engaged in inappropriate touching with assorted statues, monuments, stationary objects and a post. Fun!
Movie #4: Aaron Eckhart’s Bill, my first walkout of TIFF 2007. I will preface this blurb by saying that Eric had told me earlier in the afternoon that he’d read the screenplay for Bill a few years ago and thought it was absolutely terrible. Much to my dismay, the finished product was just as awful. Painful, hammy overacting from Eckhart – as a married schlub unhappy with his life – did the movie in for me. I just could not watch him. A number of the cast members showed up for the screening, but I didn’t want to hear what any of them had to say so, 45 minutes in, I ran for the door.
Btw, TIFF organizers, what the HELL is with the rows and rows and rows of “reserved” seating at the screenings this year? Bill was showing at the Varsity 8 tonight, and the last TEN ROWS of the center section were completely blocked off, so paying customers were forced to sit on the flanks and in the front, while heaven knows who planted their bums in the plum seats. That didn’t seem fair, and more than a few patrons voiced their displeasure with the practice.
Celebrity Sightings: Aaron Eckhart, Jessica Alba, Elizabeth Banks, Kristin Wiig (yaaaaaay!), Timothy Olyphant, Fisher Stevens.
Roger Ebert Sightings: No, but that’s okay.
Random Factoid of the Day: Belén Rueda used to be a talk-show host in Spain.
Weather For Tomorrow: Perfect weather! Partly cloudy, high of 23ºC.
Line Buzz: Numerous raves for Boy A, some good buzz on Chaos and a positive review of Fugitive Pieces.
