Day 8 - THE FOUNTAIN and EXILED

Geez. You can tell that the festival is winding down when a waiting line that usually consists of ten or twelve people is suddenly just you.
After my early morning box-office routine, it was back home for some much-needed rest before my screenings. My first one wasn't until 3pm so it was a very welcome switch...maybe next year I'll look into trying to avoid morning screenings as much as possible. But I digress. 

So to begin with we had THE FOUNTAIN, the new film from director Daren Aronofsky who is most well known for REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. I watched this movie with three other friends, all of us rather film literate, and I'm sorry to admit that none of us completely understood what we had just watched. The film is interesting, gorgeous looking, and has a lovely (if not repetitive) musical score that leads you through the story. But I really could have done with a Kaiser Soze-like explanation scene just to sum things up. At first it seems like the characters played by Rachael Weisz and Hugh Jackman have been alive for 1000 years...but that doesn't add up in the end. Are there cliffs' notes I can read? I heard that THE FOUNTAIN was booed when it premiered at The Venice Film Festival last week. I don't know if booing is in order, but a DVD commentary track certainly is.

From there it was off to The Elephant & Castle for dinner before hopping down to The Visa Screening Room for THE EXILED. I gotta be honest, the film was cool and all but it really didn't do a whole lot for me. From what I understand, it's part of a series by director Johnie To...and something tells me that I'd get a few plot holes filled in by seeing those other films in the series. there were some fun action sequences, some funny lines...but at the end of it I just shrugged and headed home. It was a last-minute pickup anyway, so no worries.

We're in the home stretch folks. I have five left to go, hopefully I can end it out with a bang. 

Hey Isn't That? : Johnnie To

Dude You Gotta Try This!: Elephant & Castle on Yonge & Gerrard does a decent fish and chips.

I'm Hearing Good Things: They're mostly in hindsight now, but BLACK SHEEP and PAN'S LABYRINTH

Do I Need a Coat?: Friday will be mostly cloudy with a daytime high of 18 degrees.