Last night I chose my films for TIFF 2017. As in previous years I bought a large package (30 tickets), which I'm sharing with my friend Nina and my cousins Barry & Debby. I put in the usual several hours of homework reading all the reviews in the huge program guide, and built my usual super-duper Excel spreadsheet ranking the films, with the screening times and length of each film included to help when I start picking & scheduling.
I logged in to my TIFF Ticketmaster account at my appointed hour (9pm). At least I thought I had logged in to my account, but I could not find the button to start choosing films for my package. After a few minutes I figured out that TIFF/Ticketmaster had created a new account for me for this year, and I had logged into last year's account. I think I now have 9 distinct Ticketmaster accounts for a wide variety of ticketing I've done for sports and other entertainment over the past few years!
So I'm in, and I see the list of films and I start going down my list. Barry and Debby are heading out of town partway through the festival, so their picks are all compressed at the front end, and I suddenly realize that most of their choices are either Gala Screenings (more expensive events that can't be selected from my package of 30 regular tickets) or Press/Industry screenings that are not open to the general public. The P&I screenings are noted in the online program, but the Gala screenings are harder to notice - a new flaw in this year's web site, IMHO. So now I'm madly texting Barry to come up with alternate picks (he's at a show downtown that is at intermission, so he has only a few minutes to deal with this), while continuing to choose films from my list. I made the same error of trying to choose a Gala screening on one film, and had another film at the top of my list despite all its screenings conflicting with other things in my calendar! This all got me a little rattled, but in the end Barry came up with a few more picks, and as I worked my way down my list I actually was able to get tickets for 18 of the top 20 films on my list.
Here is what I saw at this year's festiuval, in chronological order. I have enjoyed almost every film a fair bit (with the sole exception of Human Traces which was not so great); titles in bold are highly recommended:
- The Upside
- The Cured
- Mom & Dad preceded by Great Choice
- Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond - the story of Jim Carrey & Andy Kaufman with a very special, contractually obligated mention of Tony Clifton
- Public Schooled
- Breathe
- The Shape of Water
- Human Traces
- Mudbound
- Downsizing
- The Mountain Between Us
- Black Cop
- Battle of the Sexes
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
- Sergio & Sergei
- Jane
- The Death of Stalin
- The Big Bad Fox & Other Tales
As I worked my way through the schedule, I noticed some themes emerging, pretty much in pairs of films:
- 2 films about a quadriplegic finding reasons to enjoy life (The Upside and Breathe)
- 2 documentaries, both using old footage thought to have been lost forever mixed with recent interviews, one with the longest title in my list, the other with the shortest (Jim & Andy: the Great Beyond - the story of Jim Carrey & Andy Kaufman with a very special, contractually obligated mention of Tony Clifton and Jane)
- 2 films about racial conflict (Mudbound and Black Cop)
- 2 films about monsters that explored how society treats those seen as "other" (The Cured and The Shape of Water)
And finally,
Previous years at TIFF:
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