In a tiff.
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) wrapped up yesterday, which means I now have some time in my life to post to this site. And to sleep. Thanks for sticking around during the lull.
A few thoughts on TIFF this year.
A lot of you have been asking, so here’s a list of ten films that really stood out for me at the festival:
- Disgrace
- Flame & Ctiron
- Hunger
- Lymelife
- Medicine for Melancholy
- O’Horten
- Pudge
- Slumdog Millionaire
- Synechdoche, New York
- Us Chickens
Thirty-seven feature films and twenty-three short films later, I’ve come to the conclusion that this year’s festival — when it comes to the quality of the content — was good, but not great. Media outlets around North America are being quick to decry TIFF08 as a weak festival, but I wouldn’t go that far.
Sure, there weren’t as many Oscar standouts, and sure, the festival seemed to be catering more to Hollywood glitz and glam than smaller inspired filmmaking, but there were still many excellent films that screened at TIFF that audiences won’t get to see anywhere else.
I won’t keep talking about the festival here because you can check out all my coverage on blogTO, where I wrote a daily festival update and also reviewed film. Check out the blogTO TIFF08 section for more updates from me and all the other people covering TIFF for the blog.
Oh, and for those of you that have seen Lymelife and liked the music in it, co-writer Steven Martini gave me a copy of the demo CD for The Spaceship Martini (who did the music in the film) and it’s all kinds of awesome. Get me to play it for you next time you see me.