A look at the news and events surrounding the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.

Day Ten

The Toronto International Film Festival is officially over; well, it will be at the end of the day today. It has been a crazy ten days, and I'm hoping everyone had a great time. I sure did. Of course, none of the fun and the folly of the festival could have been possible without the hard work of all the volunteers.

Before every film screening, there's an ad by NBC Universal thanking the volunteers for their support during the festival. Most people will lend their applause in thanks during the ad, but there was one P&I screening where I found myself being the only one clapping. The guy next to me glared and said: "Why are you clapping? They're only doing it for the free movie passes, so there's no real reason to thank them."

At that, I intensified my applause to make up for the idiots like the man next to me in the audience. What that man didn't realize is that without the hundreds of volunteers around us, TIFF would be a logistical nightmare and wouldn't be as successful as it is now. Free movies passes are definitely not thanks enough for the people who work tirelessly in order to bring the film festival to our city.

Oddly enough, DAINIPPONJIN is probably the best overall film screened at Midnight Madness this year - but that doesn't make it the best Midnight Madness film. Every year, the programme will screen a movie that is in fact above its station (last year it was Princess). Midnight films live and die on over-the-top antics and their geek-cool cred, but rarely can they be mistaken for "real" movies.

With DAINIPPONJIN, I'm not so sure. The flick is a subtle and sharp-minded comedy along the lines of Beat Takeshi's work (Takeshi is in the main body of the festival this year with Glory to the Filmmaker). DAINIPPONJIN is hilarious, a story of a low-key shlubb whose "job" is to serve Japan as a local superhero. Daisato (Hitoshi Matsumoto, who also directed) is having a documentary made about him, in which he describes his seemingly menial existence, while occasionally making detours to power plants to be "powered up" into a gigantic, Hulk-style monster-slayer in purple underwear.

It's a zesty piece of filmmaking, I'm just not sure it's right for this programme.

A look at the news and events surrounding the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, and a very quick look at one Canadian short film every day.

Day Nine

The Toronto International Film Festival has been around for as long as most of us can remember, but it is still young at 31 years old when compared to some festivals like Cannes. While Cannes is still noted as the premiere film festival in the world, Toronto comes a close second in they eyes of most cineastes, showing how quickly the Toronto festival has grown and evolved in a few years. Which brings me to wonder: what are we, in Toronto, going to do in less than 20 years when TIFF turns 50?

Colin Geddes, Midnight Madness programmer extraordinaire, differs from his TIFF programming committee brethren in one significant way. For the rest of them, as the week goes on, they start looking worse and worse; Piers Handling looked like he'd been hit by a truck when he was presenting a film at the Elgin last night, and Noah Cowan's programming assistant has been getting more face time in front of the movies than her boss. Colin, on the other hand, just looks like he's having more and more fun. Tonight, presenting Wilson Yip's martial arts action pic Flash Point at the Ryerson, Geddes looked like exactly what he was: a martial arts freak in hog heaven.

Yip was in attendance before the screaming, slathering crowd; he and Geddes had also received an e-mail from the movie's star and action choreographer, Donnie Yen, just prior to showtime, which they read to the audience before letting the mayhem unfold onscreen. Yen promised a new breed of MMA (mixed martial arts) action, and in this regard, he did not disappoint.

A look at the news and events surrounding the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, and a very quick look at one Canadian short film every day.

Day Eight

Sometimes, after watching a Canadian movie at the film festival, I wonder about films that have come before it: the director's previous work, the previous attempts at the same story, or just the obscure references that were made in the movie. And while some of us pretend to know it all when it comes to Canadian cinema, it is almost impossible to have seen every film that has graced every screen in our country. This is where the Film Reference Library comes in handy.

A look at the news and events surrounding the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival, and a very quick look at one Canadian short film every day.

Day Seven

The Toronto International Film Festival is not only a place for big films to get bought and big filmmakers to gain prestige. It is, as evidenced by the films in the Canada First! programme, also a place for new and upcoming filmmakers to showcase their talents to a worldwide audience. One of those films, Richie Mehta's Amal, was also a previous winner of the Telefilm Canada Pitch This! competition in 2005, a competition where young aspiring filmmakers work with industry veterans to pitch their projects and vie to win $10,000 for the development of their new film.