2005viff

Festival Diary: Vacation Day 2, Festival N/A

Day Two -- September 18th, 2005

VIFF Film Count: 1
Non-Festival Movie Count: 7

9:30am -- An odd bit of loneliness strikes me at this hour in the morning, possibly because waking up alone in a hotel room on a sunday morning is something I'm not used to. This is something that I'm sure I will get used to, although I didn't have this feeling last year when sleeping on Oz's couch. Then again, Oz was always fun to pester in the morning when he was barely awake!

This is a pretty nice hotel room for what it is...room is small, it's boring and I'm hoping to be out of it as much as humanly possible. The TV is absolute crap with only a few channels working, but here's hoping it at least gets latenight (which is about the only thing I watch besides "The OC" and "Gilmore Girls")

Today is another round of moviegoing, with "Just Like Heaven" down at the Paramount, followed by "An Unfinished Life" at Tinseltown and then a double bill of "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and "My Summer of Love" down at the Ridge. One part of me is tempted to head home later tonight....

(Cutting myself off)

All of a sudden, I patched into a very weak internet connection from my hotel room! Well this is exciting...I can check email, which is very important. I just tested the browser and it is very slow when loading multiple pages. But hey, I'll take it! I feel like Richard Gilmore after his first foray into the wireless world. I'm sure if this is the case from the 9th floor of my hotel room, then I should have no problem patching into another network closer to town.

11:26pm - I LOVE The Ridge. I love love love LOVE The Ridge. It's my new favorite theater in Vancouver, but I'll get to that in a moment. The WIFI connection is much better on my balcony, and it's nice and cool, so methinks I will be doing a majority of my writing and emailin' out here!
I love to walk all over this city. After waking up and fiddling around with my WIFI connection, I plugged in my awesome Sigur Ros CD "Takk" (an Icelandic mood music that would go great with some Album Leaf music) and I started walking downtown to the Paramount to catch a screening of "Just Like Heaven". The weather was very good; a bit overcast but balmy temperature, so I decided to go without the jacket. Ten minutes into my walk and getting onto Granville, I realized I had made the right decision as I was getting pretty darn warm. As I got over the bridge, I found myself at the brand spankin' new Vancity Theater to have a look at the surroundings and was awestruck by the beauty of the outside. I was unable to get inside to visit the media office (the staff infront were unsure if the office was open; I'm thinking the fine people there were taking a little break) but no worries as I will be more than present there when I return to Vancouver on friday.

Still having a bit of time before my screening, I waltzed on over to the Lottery/Ticketmaster kiosk at Pacific Centre to get my Arcade Fire tickets. I did my usual AF thing and cranked "Funeral" right after grabbing my ticket, and yes, that CD is always on me (yes, I'm a crazy one).

Oooh, The Ebert Show is on. I'll be back...

(Aah, Ebert show done and back onto the balcony where it's nice and cool to continue writing.) After downing some delicious Beef, Bacon and Cheddar melts at Arby's, I trucked on over to the Paramount, my first visit to the new downtown megaplex after the Capitol 6 -- one of my favorite cinemas in Vancouver if for no other reason its 1000+ seat Cinema One was the reason I wrote a lengthy article for the decline of cinemas -- closed so the Paramount could open. And while I am definately not eating my words on my first visit to the place, it is a bit nicer and more elegant looking than the average megaplex in suburbia. One of the major drawbacks is a huge esclatator climb, especially to the higher level where five of the smaller screens are located. That said, the seats ARE very comfortable and a bit wider than your typical Silvercity Megaplex cinema.

But anyway, I found "Just Like Heaven" to be an effective romantic comedy that is far from original, but still contains interesting characters, some really funny scenes and a good amount of chemistry between Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo. She's cute, he's likeable and it just kind of works, and it kind of reminded me of the old classic days of Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart. So yeah, it worked on me.

Aftewards, I walked on down to the Tinseltown to catch a matinee sneak preview of Lasse Hallstrom's "An Unfinished Life" which has been sitting on the soon-to-be-gone Miramax shelf for over two years now, mostly because of poor marketing in the past and the studio's inability to find a proper time to release it. A shame, because I found this one to be Hallstrom's best work yet from his endless contract to Miramax. The small town setting is beautifully photographed, and the performances by Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman, Jennifer Lopez and newcomer Becca Gardner (as Lopez' daughter) are all solid. The story, involving the reunion of an estranged family unit and an abusive ex-husband is stronger than you might expect.
As that screening ended, I decided to try something I had never done before; to walk all the way from Tinseltown to the Ridge theatre, which is a few miles apart from each other. As previously mentioned, I love to walk all over the place but I wasn't sure if I was able to handle it. The walk did take nearly an hour but it was worth it to sit in the gorgeous, 830 seat Ridge to see a double feature of "Me and You and Everyone We Know" and "My Summer of Love".
I had seen "Me and You" twice before -- it is currently within my top 5 of the year -- and this was my first time seeing it with a larger audience. And this reminded me why I don't like it at all. Snickering laughter throughout; mostly the kind of laughter where people are reacting to surprise by laughing at the screen. There was a guy two rows behind me that kept remarking OUT LOUD to his wife and she kept silencing him (this I don't get..she quietly goes "shh" instead of saying "Honey, you HAVE to stop talking since it is irritating. And that guy two rows infront of you is pointing a gun at you.") which drove me nuts. Now normally I love the moviegoing experience to have a communal way for people to come together for a movie, but the amount of laughter directed at the movie, even if it was laughing with, was still uncalled for. I then followed it up with a much quiter screening of the Brit import "My Summer of Love", a terrific film about two teenage girls who create an interesting relationship over the course of the summer. Great acting, especially from Paddy Considine as the religious freak show brother to one of the girls.

Now, it must be said that the experience of watching this at The Ridge was phenomanal. I have been here before, but it is always a treat to get that first glance of the auditorium, with rows and rows and rows of seats. But the real joy is the picture and video. There is true, state-of-the-art projectors and sound systems installed and I could not find a single visual or audio problem with the films whatsoever. Focus and framing were sharp as a tack, and the sound was alive and open, even for such small films. This and the Granville Cinema #7 downtown are by far the best VIFF venues you can visit during the fest.

Phew! Late, tired and I'm about to turn in. Back to Victoria to work for a few days, then back I come for the three week run of endless movies and losing sleep.
Until then,
Jason
efilmcritic.com

posted by Jason Whyte @ 12:45 AM