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 Three

Yesterday, while waiting in line to see Juno, I ran into a young lady that works in a studio in LA and travels to festivals for most of the year. Asking her what she thought of the festival this year, she said, "I love Toronto because at this festival, I actually make friends. Everywhere else in the world, I make excellent business contacts, but when I come to Toronto, I make friends. Something about this city makes people much nicer and happier." True story.

So while everyone is extolling the friendship potential of our city, PR teams in our city are doing everything they can to make sure that Toronto is also known as a great place to buy and see film as well.

The result of one such PR campaign is the swarms of skinny and lanky men running around town in tiny yellow shorts and fuzzy yellow headbands handing out boxes of orange Tic Tacs. The campaign is for the aforementioned Juno (which is a film I highly recommend) starring Canadians Michael Cera and Ellen Page, and seems to be doing quite well. I ran into at least eight people at Ryerson yesterday that offered me orange Tic Tacs.

If skinny Toronto men in tight yellow shorts aren't your thing, and if you're set on using your weekend in order to do some celeb stalking, here are some of the big names that will be arriving in town today:

• Evan Rachel Wood
• Brad Pitt
• Casey Affleck
• Timothy Olyphant
• Gael Garcia Bernal
• Naomi Watts
• Viggo Mortensen
• David Cronenberg
• Roy Dupuis
• Paolo Barzman
• Paul Haggis
• Jennifer Garner
• Michael Cera
• Maria Bello
• Amitabh Bachchan
• Preity Zinta
• Joel and Ethan Coen
• Carrie-Anne Moss
• Romeo Dallaire
• Don Cheadle

Those of you reading this blog post might be interested to learn that the Toronto International Film Festival is highly interested in tapping the interest of people like you: film fans on the web and participating in social networks. If you do get the chance, drop by the Royal Ontario Museum today at 1:30pm for a special TIFF discussion entitled Social Networks: Connecting Filmmakers to Audiences.

Celebrated Canadian filmmaker Mira Nair will be bringing together some of the biggest names in Indian cinema — Santosh Sivan, Vishal Bharadwaj and Farhan Akhtar — at the Isabel Bader Theatre at 3pm for a special presentation entitled Four Views on AIDS in India.

And now, a short (100-word) look at a short:

Loudly, Death Unties
Remarkably well-shot with stunning visual and emotional textures, Sheila and Nicholas Pye's Loudly, Death Unties is a daring film where every movement tells a story, and every story resonates within the hollows of the viewer's mind. Young Chanel Haykin's portrayal of the banshee child is hauntingly evocative and pleasantly unsettling, and all eleven minutes of the film will leave you with goose bumps and twisted thoughts. Part performance art and part intricately composed phtography, Loudly, Death Unties is a breathtaking piece of cinema from the Toronto filmmakers.

Sheila and Nicholas Pye's Loudly, Death Unties screens as part of the Short Cuts Canada Programme 1 at the festival today.

(Image: Still from Sheila and Nicholas Pye's Loudly, Death Unties.)