Requiem For A Day Off

Some selective editing and a dramatic score can completely change the flavour and intent of a film. Take Ferris Bueller's Day Off, cut everything except the most dramatic scenes and lines and overlay Lux Aeterna, best known as the theme music for Requiem for a Dream and you have an entirely different movie.

For a stunning mashup of Requiem for a Dream, check out the twisted version of Toy Story.

Timewasters

Campaigning is hard work – it takes a lot of effort to get enough people to vote for you. Just ask Michael Ignatieff. Oh… right.

So in lieu of anything trenchant or insightful to say, I present you with a list of things you can while away many an hour on the interweb. Don’t use these at work. Ha ha ha.

Ever wanted to be on The Simpsons or South Park? Well you can be, sort of. There are character generators for both – to the right is me as I would appear (for the most part) if I went to South Park to have myself a time.

Not the animated type? Then how about joining a ‘70’s Bollywood musical? If that's your dream, than it’s your lucky day! Bombay TV lets you subtitle your own mini-epic and email the masterpiece to your entire mailing list – ‘cause you know they want to see it.

Do you like those mosaics made up of thousands of smaller photos? If you thought they were ubiquitous before, now you can make your own with the Image Mosaic Generator which pulls the pics from Flickr and turns any photo you upload into a mosaic. Good, pointless fun.

Lastly, check out this fantastic mashup of the trailer for Requiem for a Dream and Toy Story II. Pure brilliance.

Lowered Expectations

I know they can’t all be winners, but some of our Toronto film fest picks have been major letdowns. First up, The Fountain, the much anticipated film from director Darren Aronofsky – his first since Requiem For a Dream. I was hyped for this movie as his last two have had such an impact on me.

When we saw Requiem on a big screen I was sweating by the end, the images were so powerful. The quick-cut scenes of heroin use have since been copied by advertising and parodied in The Simpsons. And Pi made me feel like my head had been turned inside out – I thought and talked about the patterns in the numbers for days. It was a secular religious experience. So admittedly, The Fountain had a high bar to clear.

To my disappointment, Aronofsky limboed under it, barely breaking a sweat. The Fountain follows Hugh Jackman over three time periods and characters – a Spanish conquistador, a cutting-edge medical researcher and a 26th century astronaut (according to the synopsis, but I don’t agree) – all searching for immortality in some fashion. It’s a sprawling narrative, beautifully shot, but somehow cold and uninvolving. The tale of the doctor trying to save his wife from cancer had its emotional moments, but the so-called astronaut floating through space in a snow globe while communing with a dead tree and apparitions of his past lives added nothing. A lot of style, but unfortunately lacking an equal amount of substance.

As an aside, there was no Q&A after the screening, which took place at the Ryerson Theatre – in fact nobody from the film showed up, despite Aronofsky and stars Rachel Weisz and Ellen Burstyn being in town for it’s premiere at the Elgin. Last weekend TIFF programmer Jesse Wente said Q&As for films that debut at the Elgin, which doesn’t allow them, would happen at their second showing. It didn’t, so we still hate the Elgin.

Following The Fountain, we headed over to the Paramount for another anticipated film on our list, Invisible Waves. In 2003 we saw Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang’s Last Life In the Universe, a surreal tale of an obsessive-compulsive, suicidal Japanese man hiding out in Bangkok with a free-spirited Thai woman. It was quirky and fun and a favourite from that year. An almost existential black comedy about a low level gangster who isn’t aware that his days are numbered, it was too slowly paced, with too little action. No Q&A for this one either.

Again, not a bad film, but not what I had been hoping for. I suppose they can’t all be winners.