Yes another year of the Toronto Film Festival has passed by and this year it was amazing!
I have been very busy but I have a few more things to post still. Stay tuned!
I got to see Hostel and all I can say is WOW. Eli Roth was there and is quite possibly the coolest person ever. I will have the review up soon but if you need your fix now check out www.twitchfilm.com

I Went down to the Elgin and Roy Thomas Hall to get some Celeb Sightings, hope you Enjoy.

Thumbsucker

"Dude woahhh the flashes"

And this is from Where The Truth Lies, Atom Egoyan's new film.






Rachel Blanchard looks crazy...beautiful that is.

Harsh Times Review
by Craig Macrae

Harsh Times is an emotional roller coaster that allows you to laugh, cry and feel pain in your stomach. It shows you the terrifying, devastating self-destruction of the human mind. Christian Bale plays Jim an unemployed ex. Ranger who is trying to become a police officer. He suffers from post dramatic stress syndrome, from his combat duties in the Gulf War and makes you hope that these kinds of guys aren’t actually becoming police officers. If they are…I now know why LAPD has a bad rap. Christian Bale is joined by Six Feet Under’s Freddy Rodriguez and Desperate House Wife’s Eva Longoria. Freddy does an incredible job portraying Bale’s unemployed friend who is trying to turn his life around but can’t without getting out from under the influence of Jim. Eva plays his gorgeous wife and even though it is a fairly small part she does a very good job of playing the wife who wants her husband to start acting like a husband and get a job/life. Eva plays a successful lawyer so it is quite funny to the audience who know what Bale and Freddy are doing behind her back. And in one of the great scenes where she finds out what they are doing instead of looking for jobs just goes to show that you should always hang up the phone after you leave a message on an answering machine.

David Ayer is the director of this fantastic film and you may remember seeing his credit on another film that debuted at the Toronto Film Festival, Training Days. He wrote the screen play for that and now has stepped into the director’s chair. He said in the Q&A after the movie that he is now in love with directing and wants to continue. So if he continues writing scripts like Training Day and Harsh Times he should have no problem finding directorially positions. David also said that he builds his movies around one question, for Training Day it was “What would happen if one man said no”, and for Harsh Times it was “What would it be like to kill you best friend”.

The film is a journey and one that is not always pleasant. Bale and Freddy are both in search of jobs but as they search they keep going through the rough neighborhoods in South Central L.A (where David Ayer grew up). Ayer has taken some of his life experiences and brought them to life on screen. Living here in Toronto I tend to think that I am safe. But I do know there are bad parts here too, but some of the things that are shown in this movie, it’s almost surreal to think that this can be happening anywhere. Harsh Times is a dark film but one that in my opinion ends on a positive note. Now I know those who have seen the movie may not agree with that statement but, as Ayer said, when there is a rapid dog on the loose in your neighborhood, you have to put it down.

Go and see this movie if you have the chance. It has some amazing cinematography and the editing is very well down especially when Bale goes into his “Gulf War fits”. David Ayer after the movie also said that he used many different forms of tape stock to film the movie. The opening scene was actually down with night vision on a consumer camera (looked a bit like Paris’s you know what), but a lot of the movie was filmed in super 16 mm and then digitally processed in post production so that everything flowed together. Digital, super 16 and some 32 mm, it’s the new age of mixing and matching to get the best possible product on screen and David Ayer has certainly done that with Harsh Times.

Yes we saw her...and damnnnnnnnnn.

Oh and the Movie Harsh times is amazing!!!

That is all for now...

So we were walking by Ryerson and who happens to come out but the one and only Anthony Hopkins. Now this picture has got to be one of the best, it shows him at his best...crazzzzzzzzzy.


And a pic from the happening place in Yorkville, Remy's. We were there to check out the Brooklyn Lobster party and Danny Aiello was there doing an interview.



In other news we did not get into the Revolver screening because their were too many press and not enough seats. We were first in line down at the Varsity in the press rush line and still were unable to check it out. So hopefully there will be another showing or we will catch it in theatres.

We did get to get out Evil Aliens. It was a last minute thing that and thought why don't we check out this campy splatter movie and dear god....Jake West the director is nuts. So much gore and blood flying all over the place, legs being pulled off, aliens doing their infamous "probbing" if you know what I mean, and just about anything you could think of death wise...was done. But it was a lot of fun and it is getting a limited release in the U.S and then DVD next year.

Banlieue 13 aka District 13
http://www.banlieue13-lefilm.com

All I can say is wow!
I just got back from midnight madness at the 30th annual Toronto Film Festival and it was one of the best movie experiences of my life. Banlieue 13 was so much fun and just a great way to start off the festival for me. It was a high impact, unbelievable ride through the roof tops and undergrounds of District 13 (the bad part of Paris in 2010). An army of men controlled by the coke snorting kingpin, Taha, played by co-screenwriter Bibi Naceri (an amazing job if I do say so myself) is running the District and not even the cops want anything to do with him. This walled in community is over run with drugs, violence...well just think Escape from New York. And the only two guys that can say the city are a ghetto vigilante Leito (David Belle) and Damien (Cyril Raffaelli). They are an unlikely pairing but are forced to work together to save Leito sister and make sure a bomb doesn't blow up "accidently" and kill 2 million people. Luc Besson has outdown himself and it really shows that he took a movie like Ong Bak and said to himself "hey wait a minute I can make that ten times better".
The movie has some great music as well to go along with the amazing action and you never really have a dull moment. From the first chase scene where you are literally gasping at how amazing these moves are to the final dramatic ending, its a ride that you are going to want to check out. I know this is the only the first movie I have seen at the fest so far...but it could be this years Kontroll for me. Only time will tell and there is still a lot of movies left to see.

And if you are interested in the actual sport of what this movie portrays it is called Parkour, an urban freestyle in which peole attempt to surmount all obstables in their path at top speeds with maximum fluidity, check out this website.
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/parkour/parkourenglish/page21.html

Well the Toronto Film Festival started off with a Bang last night. Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang that is. The Ryerson Theatre was a buzz with the duo of Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. walked the red carpet to their opening night premiere. Now the festival has been going on for one day now but tons of celebrites will be in town this week. As well there is so many movies to see its almost impossible to figure out which to go too.

I will be checking out The Presidents Last Bang, Banlieue 13, Seven Swords, Harsh Times, Revolver and possibly A History of Violence. And that is just this weekend!

The Festival is always a busy time of the year and you know that Torontoians are die hard film fanatics when they are waiting in line for 4 hours just to buy tickets to movies that may or may not have already sold out. And if they did miss their film its time for the Rush lines and who knows how long you have to stand there to get in. All and all it should be an exciting weekend.

What can you say? Its Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) and its gonna be crazy!


Umm lets see David Cronenberg...even though I wish he would go back to make people's heads explode I think this is going to be a great movie.


Yes its Guy Richie's newest offering and Madonna isn't in it!


Seven Swords...cool.
Twitchfilm has been talking about this movie for a while, I must see it.


Elisha Cuthbert in The Quiet...nuff said.


SPL (Midnight Madness)
TIFF website: Yen (who has also appeared in Iron Monkey, Blade II and Hero) performs some of the most intense action sequences in recent cinema. Amongst them is the first onscreen showdown between Yen and Hung, an exciting brawl for those familiar with the two icons.
Well you now have me interested.


Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
I don't know I think I just like the name.


Banlieue 13 (Midnight Madness)
Paris, 2010. The city’s landscape has been divided by massive walls that isolate so-called dangerous ghetto areas, protecting the city’s elite from the disenfranchised. Vice rules in these walled-in communities and law enforcement only exists at the barrier’s checkpoints.
Cool. I like the looks of this picture.

And I think this will be very Cool movie as well:

Harsh Times
Don't mind me... this is my opportunity to put Eva Longoria on the website and I am taking it...

Yep...what was I saying? Oh ya the movie...what was it called again....

Anymore Info- just check out the offical site.

http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2005/home.asp

Well its that time of year again! The 2005 Toronto Film Festival is here and wow is there a lot of stars and movies to see. I will try and have updates to tell you exactly what is going on in Toronto and what I see. It should be a lot of fun and I can't wait.

http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2005/home.asp

Also check out
www.twitchfilm.com for all the latest news!