So now that the fest has gotten underway, I’m going to try to update this blog as much as I can. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done – we’re going to have some pretty late nights and some pretty hectic days and we’ve got guests coming to join us through this weekend so I don’t know what I can guarantee. I’ll definitely be twittering quite a bit and you can follow me on twitter here. I will try to get in some quick reactions to films and celeb sightings and so on here when I can though.
Today’s been great – we arrived to find the apartment that we rented is even better than we’d expected – the photos didn’t really do this place justice, and the location is phenomenal – we’re just three blocks from Ryerson where most of our screenings are. We also found out that the place has a gym and a rooftop terrace with bbq – not that we have tons of extra time, but hitting the gym once or twice this week will certainly make us feel better about all that sitting around and eating crap food that goes along with festivaling.
Tonight we saw O’Horten, a really great little Norwegian flick by Bent Hamer – a great start to the festival for us – it was such a charming, quirky, fun little movie. Will definitely have to look up some of this director’s other work.
Next up was a film we (and it seems everyone else at the fest) were really looking forward to, JCVD. What a great film – Jean Claude Van Damme plays himself in a Being John Malcovich-ish self-aware reality where he riffs on his own career and persona and turns in a performance that you really just need to see to believe – I’ll never look at the “Muscles from Brussels” the same again.