TIFF 2013: The process

I'm doing TIFF 2013 in a big way, and I decided it would be interesting to document my experience.

Last year I finally dived into TIFF for the first time. I had been wanting to "do" the festival for years, but never found (i.e. made) the time. My son had just moved out to start university, and I was feeling sad about the empty nest, so this was a good way to distract me. I bought a package of 10 tickets and ended up seeing 9 films (one of the films I picked wound up clashing with a family dinner, so I sold it to an old high school friend). It was exhausting but I loved it, and decided to go bigger this year.

The process is somewhat complex. I started off by buying a package of 20 tickets in early July. That was just confirming how many films I wanted to see, before the programme was available. On August 20th the programme came out, and I started doing my homework. First I read through the movie summaries in the 264-page programme book, folding over the page corner for each film that sounded worth seeing. That took a few hours, and when I was done I had about 60 films identified. Now I had to sort those films in the order I wanted to see them. Of course that called for an Excel spreadsheet! I filled in the title of each film, along with its screening times (filtering out those that conflicted with a few events already in my calendar). I reread the description of those films, watched trailers where I could find them online, and read reviews where web sites and local papers offered their recommendations. My friend Nina was interested in coming to a few films with me, so I shared my list with her and she told me her preferences, and I adjusted some rankings to merge her picks into my list. In the end I had a mostly-sorted list of 62 films!

Why so much preparation? On August 30th at 9am it was my turn to select my films via the TIFF web site, and once I made my first pick I had just 1 hour to complete my selections. For each film I had to check availability, check for conflicts on my schedule (including films I had already chosen), pick a screening time, add it to my cart, and then add it to my Google calendar to block out the time. I included the running time of the film and which theatre it was showing at, so that if two films were showing in rapid succession, I could decide if there was enough time to get from one theatre to the next.

In the end it took me 45 minutes to make my picks: 17 films, 3 with Nina, to use up my 20 tickets. The availability was much better than last year, when my 10 selections took me down to #17 on my list. This year my first 11 picks were all available (including Nina's top 3), and I wound up with 17 of my top 21 choices. Only 2 films were sold out when I tried to get a ticket for them; two others were available but conflicted with earlier choices. I'll be seeing 17 films in 11 days, but the schedule really isn't insane. There are a few days with 3 films, but enough time to get around and get fed in between. I'm very excited.

I have written a short review of each film I saw over the week and a half of the festival. Here's the final list, sorted in order of how much I enjoyed each film:

1. Labor Day (Wow)
2. How I Live Now (Wonderful)
3. Tim's Vermeer (Fabulous)
4. Prisoners (Really Excellent)
5. The Right Kind of Wrong (Really Good)
6. Sunshine On Leith (Very Good) 
7. Words and Pictures (Very Good) 
8. Half of a Yellow Sun (Quite Good)
9. The Railway Man (Quite Good) 
10. The Double (Very Weird, but Compelling)
11. Giraffida (Pretty Good)
12. Beyond The Edge (Pretty Good)
13. The Dinner (Pretty Good)
14. Break Loose (Not Bad)
15. Parkland (Fair)
16. Omar (Fair)
17. Under The Skin (Weird)

Figuring Out Whom To Vote For is Hard

I figured out my choice for mayor weeks ago. While I was intrigued by Sarah Thompson, I was less impressed with her after seeing her in a few debates. Joey Pants seems like a hell of a nice guy, and I can support most of his platform, but it's clear he's far out of the running. In some elections I would still vote for him, but not this time. I find Rob Ford so intensely objectionable that I am quite upset at the thought of him being our next mayor, and representing Toronto. His statements about HIV, Asians, bicycle riders and the homeless astonish and horrify me. I think he is a rude, ignorant loud mouth who is completely unqualified to be mayor, and I'm shocked at the level of support he has gathered.

So I'm voting for George Smitherman for Mayor, and not even holding my nose to do so. I think he is a smart, capable man who will represent Toronto well and do his best to improve things in the city. I think he deserves some of the blame for the eHealth mess, and I think he has gone far enough in accepting responsibility for that.

So that's the easy choice. I still have to figure out who is the best choice for City Councilor and School Trustee. In my ward there are 10 candidates for Councilor and 6 candidates for School Trustee. It's much harder to learn about these candidates, with little or no TV coverage, and not much in the newspapers either. I've had a few come to my door, and I've looked at their web sites. Some of them have robo-called me, which I don't enjoy. That has helped me narrow down my choices to 2 or 3 in each contest, but I haven't been able to settle on one candidate yet.

Last night I attended a Town hall meeting with all the City Councilor candidates for Ward 10. It was held at B'nai Brith seniors residence, so the audience was mostly older Jewish people, which tilted the conversation towards their concerns. The meeting lasted only an hour, so with 10 candidates there was only time for opening & closing statements and a couple of questions, which focused on affordable housing and city funding of events that are perceived as being hateful towards Israel. Each of the candidates made a point of claiming their "Holocaust points" with the audience, citing their parents or grandparents who either perished in or survived the Holocaust. I found that pretty distasteful, though maybe with this audience it was important for them to do. Nancy Oomen was the only obviously non-Jewish candidate (I'm guessing the other 9 are all Jewish, though I'm not certain of that), and she tried to keep pace by telling us that she was raised in the Netherlands, which tried to help the Jews during WWII, and was an environment tolerant of all races and religions. I can see the importance of showing a community that you can represent them, but all the pandering went too far for me. There was some bickering over the time each candidate got to speak, and an elderly man made a fuss over the lack of Russian translation, disrupting the meeting for a few minutes.

At the end of the meeting I managed to ask my top 2 Councilor picks who they support for mayor. Brian Shifman wouldn't answer the question, except to say that he can work with whoever is mayor. That's nice, but I still want to know who would be his choice. James Pasternak was good enough to tell me his choice, but since it's Ford I'm now far less impressed with him. So probably Shifman gets my vote, though I may be disappointed enough in his smart political move to refuse to name his choice for mayor that I may vote for Eric Plant, who seems like a sharp young guy, but is unlikely to crack the top 3. My guess is the race is among Oomen, Pasternak and Shifman.

For school trustee I'm still unclear. I'm in Ward 5 (and why are there different ward numbers for Councilor and School trustee?). I'm probably stuck between Robin Shugar and Howard Kaplan, but I don't feel like I really know either well enough to be sure. Shugar has lined herself up with Pasternak, and has robo-called me a few times. That may be enough to shove me to Kaplan's side. It's sad that I'll make this decision based on so little real data. I'm not likely to go out of my way enough to track down the candidates for a live conversation, and I haven't been able to find any all-candidates meetings for this race.

Banned From My Own Gym!

I have been banned from my gym for today and most of tomorrow. No, I haven't been behaving badly (no worse than usual at least). I've been convinced by my staff to compete at our SummerSweatFest competition Thursday evening, and that means it wouldn't be fair for me to be around the gym while they're setting for it. So I get a couple of days off, which I actually desperately need right now anyway.

Don't get the wrong idea here; I am not a serious competition climber. I'm a V1/V2 boulderer, and generally finish very close to the bottom of the Men's Recreational division, able to do perhaps a quarter of all the problems in a given comp. The point of my competing tomorrow is really to set an example for those who think they are not good enough to enter a competition. If you can do the white problems and some of the yellow ones in our gym, you'll be able to do enough of the comp problems to keep you busy for a while, and you'll have a lot of fun. These comps are friendly and the other climbers will be very supportive. If you have ever even wondered what a bouldering competition is like, come on out and "compete" Thursday evening. Think of it as a chance to come have fun bouldering with an enthusiastic group of like-minded individuals.

As added incentive, there will be some raffle prizes for the Youth & Recreational divisions, generously donated by some of our sponsors. We'll have about a dozen prizes to give out, so the odds are decent. Those in the Open category will be competing for a cash prize funded by their registration fees.

Full details about the comp are available at http://summersweatfest.com/comps.php.
We encourage you to register in advance and print out your scorecard. If this will be your first visit to our gym, you can save time by bringing a completed waiver form (signed by your parent if you are under 18). Waiver forms are available for download from http://truenorthclimbing.com/content/waivers.