# of movies so far: 9
# of cell phones ringing during a movie so far: 0
# of times HTML outwits me by inserting extra line breaks into my posts: 1
On day three all of my screenings were at the Bader, the Rom or Cumberland, which made it an easy day. With the Freedom March happening at Queens Park, there was lots going on in the neighbourhood and the intervals between movies were pleasantly aromatic.
Pick of the day: Arsy Versy screening with The Inventions of Dr. Nakamats is my top pick so far. Arsy Versy is a short film about a guy who photographs bats, and the film is set to the soundtrack of Space Odyssey 2001. It was whimsical and quirky, just how I like 'em. The Inventions is about the Japanese Thomas Edison, this wacky, creative and completely egomaniacal character named Dr. Nakamats who holds thousands of patents and is planning on living until 144. I was sitting up on the side seats at the Bader so I had a birds eye view of him spontaneously shuffling onto the stage before the movie, uninvited, unintroduced. He took the mic, looked at the audience, and said something that sounded like "look at camera A" but it might have been Japanese. Confused laughter spread through the crowd. Then he left the stage.
The movie was great - Japan always looks wonderful on the big screen. The layout and design of the titles and credits was enough to give me a doc-on.
BUT. I hate it when characters who speak broken English are subtitled, and the subtitles blatantly do not translate what they are saying. Example. Dr. Nakamats: "After two days I shall become 80 years old." Subtitle: "In two days I turn 80." Come on.
After the movie the Doctor came back on stage, handed out some magic business cards to the audience and was presented with an award from Hot Docs for being...an inventor? I didn't really catch what the award was but I thought it was thoughtful of Hot Docs. After the movie I overheard some insider telling their friend that Dr. Nakamats refused to come unless he was to be receiving an award!
Disappointments of the day: A tie between Anne Perry (zzz) and The Parking Lot Movie. I overheard one of the festival programmers telling the director before the movie that this was her favorite film of the whole festival, and I walked away wondering how many films she has actually seen.
Disaster of the day: Disorder, which played for about 15 minutes before anyone realized there was supposed to be subtitles and the movie was restarted. Then, and I'm not sure how much this affected anyone else, but one of my contact lenses fell out. It just couldn't handle the stress of seeing 5 movies in one day and it gave up, tumbling onto my lap and hopefully to a better place. It gave the rest of the movie and even more abstract quality, and led to a couple of awkward run ins after the movie where I had to pretend I knew who I was talking to.
I ended the day at Lee's Palace at the Yeasayer show. I know, I know, not a movie, but there are other things in life, you know.
Day four is going to be all over the place, I'll be back to let you know!
First you beg for comments, then you don't reply to the comment...what sort of audience interaction is that??
ReplyDeleteWhat I learned today is that if I actually buckle and decide to bring an umbrella with me, I won't feel so much as a drop.
For what it's worth, I was not at all impressed by The Parking Lot Movie. I'm starting to think I'm in the minority, but let me know whatcha think when you do finally see it.
uh oh...was i begging?
ReplyDeleteparking lot: see above. i was underwhelmed.
too bad i missed everything is going fine. i also missed bhutto due to timing issues. did you see that one?
going to post about yesterday now!