Treading water in Toronto - Part two

Day 6 (Black Tuesday)

Call it a hunch, but my Spidey-sense started tingling at 8:45 this morning during my screening of The Quickie. Perhaps it was because the movie was boring, or maybe it was because I couldn't bear Lesley Ann Warren's stab at a Russian accent, but this was the first film I ditched this year. By the time I made it to the press office to check my mailbox, the WTC-Pentagon attacks had just happened, and a small group of people had gathered around the office television to watch CNN in stunned silence. I walked by with my headphones on and assumed they were just transfixed by clips from a new Jerry Bruckheimer film. It wasn't for eight hours or so that I realized the Festival had canceled the rest of its screenings for the day, and with good reason. Who cares about movies during a tragedy like that? Had it really happened just a handful of hours after seeing Amélie, one of the most beautiful and uplifting movies I've seen in years? And did I really laugh out loud during that film at a character who dies when somebody jumps off a roof and lands on them? Number of the Day: One gazillion (the number of times I watched, slack-jawed, as the second plane slammed into the building).

Day 7 (Coincidence day)

I had two early films scheduled this morning but couldn't tear myself away from the television until Birthday Girl (opens 2/22), a movie about a devious Russian mail-order bride (Nicole Kidman) that features people being held hostage at knifepoint (and there's a scene at an airport, to boot). One couldn't watch From Hell (10/19), a brilliant take on the Jack the Ripper story with Johnny Depp and Heather Graham, without thinking of the people aboard the hijacked planes being attacked like so many Whitechapel prostitutes. And to top it off, both Sidewalks of New York (11/23) and Revolution #9 were both set in Manhattan and featured numerous shots of what the skyline used to look like. The former is a romantic comedy from writer/director/producer/star Ed Burns while the latter stylishly shows a man (Michael Risley) sinking deeper and deeper into a serious mental illness while his fiancée (Adrienne Shelly) does her best to make everyone think he's still husband material. NOTD: 11, 93, 175, 77 ('nuff said).

Day 8 (Hatfield-McCoy day)

A lot of Festival attendees have been saying they feel weird watching comedies since the terrorist attack, but something as hysterical as Chicken Rice War could slap a smile on the face of even the weariest person. It's set in a Singapore hawkers' center, where a zoning error has placed two chicken rice stands right next to each other. The occupants --- Famous Wong's Chicken Rice and Only Chan's Chicken Rice --- have been at war for several generations and fiercely guard their secret recipes for the popular dish, but things may change when Fenson Wong (Pierre Png) and Audrey Chan (Lum May Yee) are cast in their university's experimental production of Romeo and Juliet. Family feuds could also be found in How Harry Became a Tree, a film referred to as "a comedy of the absurd," by its distributor, who also pointed out the picture was based on a Chinese fable, set in Ireland, directed by a native of Belgrade and co-produced by Italy, France, Ireland and England. Colm Meany plays the titular Harry, a cabbage farmer in 1924 (because cabbage is going to be the country's crop of the future) who is in constant battle with a fellow Skillet resident (Adrian Dunbar) who owns most of the town's businesses and serves as the local matchmaker. When his latest import takes to Harry's son Gus (Cillian Murphy), all hell breaks loose, and Harry's nightmare (in which he becomes a tree and is chopped down to be made into coffins) comes one step closer to coming true. NOTD: 2 (the number of Brian Eno songs heard in films that could be butting heads in next year's Oscar competition for Best Foreign Film --- Mexico's And Your Mother, Too and Italy's The Son's Room).

Day 9 (Deviant day)

There might not be movies more bizarre (at least sexually) than the three films I saw today. The Piano Teacher, Michael Haneke's multiple award-winner from this year's Cannes Festival, features a stunning performance from Isabelle Huppert, who plays a woman that, among other disturbing things, goes to the private video booths of the local adult bookstore and watches blow job flicks while sniffing discarded tissues left from previous occupants. And that's before she starts having a really creepy affair with one of her students (Benoît Magimel). In other words, it's not really a good first date film. Previous Cannes champ Shohei Imamura's latest isn't any less peculiar, but Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (spring 2002) is a whole lot funnier. It's about a down-and-out married man (Koji Yakusho) who, while looking for a new job, spots a woman (Mitsuko Baisho) shoplifting, follows her home and has an impromptu round of the bouncy-bouncy. So far, so good, but as the session reaches its apex, she suddenly screams, "It's welling up!" before blasting buckets of water from her crotch. I'm not sure which is more odd --- the woman going off like Old Faithful or the man deciding he'll stick around to help with her "problem." Claire Denis has never won any awards at Cannes, but that sure didn't stop her from making a dark, sexual film. Trouble Every Day (3/1) tells the story of two people (Vincent Gallo and Béatrice Dalle) who have a strange illness that makes them want to have sex and then violently kill their partners by sinking their teeth into them...and not in a friendly vampire way, either. It's very graphic, very disturbing and, like most of Denis' work, quite beautiful. NOTD: 3 (the minutes of silence observed by the Festival at 12:30 PM).

Day 10 (Scary day)

I'm sure this will come as a shock to many of you, but I'll admit it --- I'm as shallow as they come. The only reason I wanted to see Hell House was because the title sounded cool. Turns out it isn't even a horror film but rather a documentary about a church in Texas that, for the last ten Halloweens, has put on an incredibly popular haunted-house-type thing for the public to enjoy. As paying customers walk through, they don't see mummies and boogeymen, but graphic scenes portraying the ills of Harry Potter books, homosexuality and the "morning after" pill. The best documentaries make you feel oodles and oodles smarter than the misguided morons you watch on the screen, and Hell House sure does the trick, even if it's still a little scary that people like this still exist. Also spooky were two new films from Trainspotting's Danny Boyle, but not because of their content. Strumpet and Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise are frighteningly good, but due to their short running times (72 and 76 minutes, respectively), you probably won't find either showing up in theatres (although both could land on BBC America soon). The former is a rock-and-roll fairytale starring Christopher Eccleston as a lunatic poet who meets a guitar-playing hitchhiker (Jenna G). The duo becomes the biggest thing since the Beatles, but not before hitting a few funny potholes along the way. The latter is about a completely whacked-out salesman (Timothy Spall) who would rather die than not hawk his wares. Imagine Trainspotting's Begbie, but replace his itch for mayhem with a lust for selling vacuum cleaners. Both films are shot on digital video and mark a clear return to Boyle's punk roots after that misstep called The Beach. NOTD: Over 100 (the number of times Eccleston's character uses the F-word in Strumpet's first five minutes).

Day 11 (Bonus day)

There haven't been screenings in Toronto on this day since 1996, but with Tuesday's attack and the canceled screenings attendant thereto, the Festival folks decided to show a bunch of films today, but not before announcing the winners of the various awards. As predicted last week, Amélie took home the Audience Award (won by American Beauty and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the last two years), and Chicken Rice War nabbed the Discovery Award for best first feature film, marking the first time ever my picks won the top categories. After taking in 59 films and over 100 hours of cinema, it's impossible not to notice the pall cast over the Festival by the events of September 11, 2001. Feeling the subway rumble under your feet at the Royal Ontario Museum was no longer exhilarating but unnerving. Hearing two or three cell phones ring within minutes of each other used to be annoying but now makes you wonder if something else has happened.