Heath Ledger at press conference

Shekhar Kapur, Heath Ledger, Djimon Hounsou

Kate Hudson at press conference

Kate Hudson (left); Wes Bentley -- at the Gala! (Someone buy this man a suit)

Above and below:
Alessandro Nivola & Frances McDormand
Photocall for Laurel Canyon

View from the outside, looking in...

Cronenberg & friend

Above and below, Ralph Fiennes

 

Above and below, Gabriel Byrne

Get off at Pearson and have to wait a while for my luggage. I don't find the transportation options labelled at all well, but somehow I luck into the correct bus (to take me to the subway) on my first try, and it's just about ready to pull away. I'm very glad of that because, while I was hoping that Toronto might prove a bit cooler than Toronto, in fact it was in the 90s when I got there, just has it been when I left--and the less walking and waiting, especially while carrying luggage, the better. When I get to the subway, there is also a train waiting, so I'm a little ahead of schedule. I consider trying to change trains downtown and go straight to Eaton Centre to check for tickets, but decide that will be just too difficult with all of my bags, and go to Anne's instead. Her directions are good, and I arrive at her door pulling my suitcase with the camera bag stacked on it, and my old, heavy laptop slung over my shoulder. After a warm greeting by two girls, a large dog, and a husband, Anne and I exchange hugs and I find out her thinking is running along the same lines as mine: we still have time to get to Eaton Centre before the box office closes. She gives them a quick call and there are indeed still tickets for the second screening of "Try Seventeen" on Thursday afternoon. I drop my bags and we head back to the subway. I haven't been to the Eaton Centre in years, and I'm saddened to realize that Eaton's itself is no more. But I get happy quite quickly when those tickets are in my hand. I also pick up a programme, and a ticket to the only movie that my brain has retained the name of that is showing on Monday morning: The Four Feathers. I wonder if I should wait and study the schedule, but I know the next morning will be chaotic, and also tickets are cheaper if you don't wait until the day of, so I go ahead with that one.

Anne and I start to get to know each other a bit on the subway back--we had only met on an Elijah list, and really only begun exchanging off-list e-mails when she posted that she was thinking of going to the film festival. I had known, from the first minute the film was announced, that I wanted to go, whether Elijah did or not. After my experience seeing "Ash Wednesday" at Tribeca, I knew I had to be among the first to see this one, too. We shared our meagre knowledge of film festivals (Anne's from a friend who attends TIFF regularly, mine from what I'd seen at Tribeca and heard about the Chicago one), and tried every way we could think of to get tickets to the premiere screening of Try Seventeen: I tried for the coupon books (sold out), she tried to get a friend to stand in line for us (didn't work out), she tried going to the box office after work the day the tickets went on sale (line was more than 3 hours long), I tried a ticket broker (it wasn't a big enough event for him to bother with). So, there I was in Toronto, with no ticket for the big premiere, and every expectation that this time, unlike Tribeca, Elijah would be there.

I wasn't totally upset about the possibility of standing in the "rush" line for tickets--it seemed quite possible, and maybe probable, that Elijah would arrive at the last minute, after the actual ticketholders were seated. I might have a better chance to get photos from the rush line. But part of your head telling you that doesn't drown out the rest of it yelling "you came all this way and you have no ticket!"

Well, anyway! Sunday night I stayed with Anne and her family, and we had a lovely dinner out followed by watching "Chain of Fools", which she hadn't seen. Fun, as always. Up latish talking, but not TOO late because Anne had to teach in the morning, her husband (Tom), had to work, the girls had to go to school, and I had a ticket to a 9AM show.

*  *  *  *  *  Monday  *  *   *  *  *

So, a little before 8AM on Monday, Anne and I go to the subway station, where she gets on a train and I take a cab downtown. I drop my bags at my hotel, which I'm pretty sure is walking distance to the theatres. Duh. I walk half a block, turn the corner--and there is the Uptown, where Try Seventeen will premiere the following day, and where I am going that morning. I think about coffee and a bagel, but it's 8AM and people are already in line for the 9AM movies--and not just the rush line, but the *ticketholder's* line. So straight into line I get, and as always happens in lines, end up talking to the lovely people around me. (I'm really getting into this film festival thing, thanks to you-know-who. I just bought tickets for the Chicago one in October!) It turns out that what I *should* be seeing at 9 is "L'Idole", which I get out my programme to read the description of, and see the most *gorgeous* photo of LeeLee Sobieski. Rats! Serves me right for not studying the programme more, but I was a bit fixated on a *different* movie... I also hear a LOT of buzz about "White Oleander," which is odd--usually the film fest vets ignore the "big" films and talk up the little ones, but literally everyone was talking about "White Oleander" and most especially the performances of Michelle Pfeiffer and Alison Lohman. Mental note: go see that one or rent the DVD soonest.

Soon enough, it's time to go in, and my new friends head to "L'Idole" while I wander in to "Four Feathers." Mine is in the HUGE theatre, so I manage a fairly central, aisle seat with no problems. Since it's the second screening, there are no celebs or anything, and while I'm waiting for the movie to start, I read that day's Festival Daily paper--and find out that "Laurel Canyon" has already had its premiere, is showing again today, and had tickets as of this morning! Gosh, I hope there are still some by the time I get out of MY movie...  As a Balehead of LONG standing, I'm mortified that I didn't realize his latest movie was premiering, nor did I realize that the Frances McDormand movie being talked about in line was "Laurel Canyon"!

So, Four Feathers...  Not bad. And I wasn't expecting much, so it was a pleasant surprise to like it. I didn't think there was anything new to add to this story, having liked the older versions, and I pretty much still think that way.  Heath was up to the task Harry Faversham, and I must say, he did a good job with no big star-turns or other unpleasant surprises. He spent a lot of the movie without his trademark good looks, which was also a hopeful sign. Kate Hudson was also quite good in her role, as was Wes Bentley. But the one place the movie improved wa in Djimon Hounsou as Abou, the North African, which is a really marvellous character *and* performance. The other changes that director Shekhar Kapur tries to make, in showing us the problems with British colonialism, don't quite take wing--of course he can't go too far in that vein or it will ruin the story and our sympathy for the lead, so he does it in such a restrained manner that it can be ignored completely. Still, as I said, not bad at all.

No Q&A since this was a second screening and no-one chose to do it, so I'm off to the box office, fingers crossed and breath held--and yes! There are tickets to "Laurel Canyon" left. I don't have to give up my long-standing Balehead status. Not to mention the fact that I'll be seeing my second Christian Bale movie in less than two months (now if only they would release "Equilibrium"). After a quick break to check into my hotel and grab a coke and a breakfast bar, take a look at what's on the "all TIFF all the time" channel on cable, and wash my face, it's back in line for the afternoon show.

So, "Laurel Canyon." I hadn't heard about it in so long I'd forgotten it entirely--lost it somewhere between "Reign of Fire" and "Equilibrium," but I'm really glad I caught up with it here.

Frances McDormand plays a Jane, 40-something record producer, still a with-it, sexy rock chick way past the point when society has said she shouldn't be. And Jane's son, Sam (Christian Bale) has rebelled against this the way all children of free spirits do: he's become a conservative, a recent Harvard grad with a psychology degree. He and his fiancee Alex (Kate Beckinsale), who is working on her thesis for her double MD and Ph.D., have come to stay in Jane's empty house for a few months, since Sam has found a  job nearby. Only the house isn't empty, because Jane is still there with her latest project, a band whose name escapes me. The lead singer, Ian (Alessandro Nivola, who does his own singing) is, besides her protege, her lover. The free and easy lifestyle of both Jane and the bandmates, all of whom seem to come and go at random from the house, seems expressly designed to irritate the uptight Sam. But it's Alex who works at home every day while Sam is at his new clinic, and who would seem to have the most to lose by this arrangement. But instead of being inconvenienced, she's at first intrigued and then absorbed by this totally foreign lifestyle. She becomes involved with both Jane and Ian in ways she probably couldn't have imagined before she got to California, while Sam on his part struggles with a growing affection for a coworker at the clinic, and the feeling that he is losing his fiancee to the very lifestyle that he's rebelled against his entire life.

Director Lisa Cholodenko did attend this second screening of "Laurel Canyon" along with Alessandro Nivola (who is apparently British, or at least does an extremely good impression thereof), but Frances McDormand had already left by the time I saw the movie. I can't specifically remember what was asked or answered afterward--I think she just spoke for a few moments. But I would highly recommend this movie of hers, which I think is her second as a director. Yes, Christian and Frances are *brilliant*, as always, but Kate Beckinsale is also a wonder, and I was totally transfixed by Alessandro Nivola as the hedonistic young singer who yet as more depth than expected.

OK, too early go to bed, even though I'm getting up at dawn--what do I do now? How about head down to the Roy Thomson Hall to try to get   photos at the Gala for the premiere of Cronenberg's "Spider?" Yeah, sounded like a good idea. And I got there in plenty of time, but I was clueless, so by the time I had figured out all the angles and where I might best shoot from--and really, unless you have a digital camera or videocamera with a separate viewscreen that angles down so you can hold it over your head and shoot, or you come prepared with a step-stool, there's no good way for a fan to shoot the arrivals--I was pretty well wedged in right behind the 3 rows of "real" press.

All is relatively calm at first and people pick a spot and stand in it, so I'm hopeful I can get *something*. Then Cronenberg and guest (never did find out who he is, nor did WireImage seem to know) arrive, and I see the light--it's every woman for herself. The  shot at left is the best I got of David. Strangely enough, I got more of the two I wanted to see--Ralph Fiennes and Gabriel Byrne--than I did of the rest, since they stayed and talked for a LONG time to the television media. Pretty much everyone blew past the still photographers, so I was standing behind 3 rows of quite annoyed people by the end of the evening.

Strangely enough, the biggest commotion was caused by the arrival of Usher, who isn't in the movie at all. He chose to arrive via the red capret--other celebrities often seemed to choose to come in with the hoi polloi when they weren't involved in the movie. I was happy I'd seen "Faculty" or I'd have no idea who the attractive young black man was... But he DID stop and pose for the still cameras, so he was a popular boy. Also not in the movie but arriving on the red carpet was Willem Peterson (I managed only one shot, in which he is unrecognizeable).

The photo of Miranda Richardson at left is pretty abysmal, but it's the best I managed, over the shoulder of the local reporter who was interviewing someone else (Ralph or Gabriel, I believe).

After I shot the arrivals and they began to let in the "rush" line, I headed back to the subway and thence my hotel. I  had to be up at dawn.... I thought I'd maybe try the Gala thing one other evening, but this one attempt was so stressful, that I never tried it again. We'll see if I do it in Chicago for the first night Gala honouring Pierce Brosnan...