Back from the East and Film Fest Rundown

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body's work's expir'd.


Town Clock be damned! It'll always be the Ice Cream Clock to me.

I'm back from Halifax and with one week to go before school I'm living the life of Riley. I'm doing as little as possible until school/film fest starts. As for the trip, we stopped in Quebec City on the drive down, and made the drive back in 16 hours! So you can understand why that would make a person not want to do anything for a while.

Halifax is a great town for a person in their early twenties. There are 5 major universities in or within an hour of the city. As a result the town has a lot of bars. I'd be lying if I said I didn't drink much while I was there... And I'd be telling you the truth if I said I spent most of my waking hours imbibing alcohol of some kind. A good way to end the summer.


The banner that sums up my current mind set.

In the nearly 10 years since I've been back in Toronto there is one thing above all else that I've really , really missed about Halifax. The greatest culinary invention of all time : The Donair.


As disgusting as that looks, you have no idea how damn good it is.

What the hell is a donair? Not to be confused with the doner kebab, A donair is a lot like a gyro, but it is far superior. Wikipedia has this to say about the donair.

A variation on the doner kebab known as a Donair was introduced in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in the early 1970s. A restaurant called The King Of Donair claims to have been the first to serve this version in 1973. The meat in this version is sliced from a loaf made from a combination of ground beef, flour or bread crumbs, and various spices, while the sauce is made from evaporated milk, sugar, vinegar, and sometimes garlic. The meat and sauce are served rolled in pita bread with condiments such as tomato and onion. This version of the donair is very popular in the Eastern provinces of Canada, with many fast food pizza restaurants also featuring donairs on the menu. Many of them also offer a donair pizza featuring all of the donair ingredients served on a pizza crust.

Sadly, there is only one place(that I know of) in Toronto to find real Maritime donairs, and it's sub-par at best. But if you want to try one there is a Greco Express on Adelaide Street across the street from the North side of First Canadian Place in downtown Toronto. Nothing beats the real thing though.

Donairs aside, the trip was great. Saw family and friends who I hadn't seen in a long time, I hope I can get down there again soon.

Now onto the film festival.



I only get up at 4:30 am for two reasons. One, If I'm going on a trip somewhere and have to get an early start, or two it's time to buy Toronto Film Festival Tickets!

Yesterday was the latter. 4:30 am is truly an ungodly hour. If you went to sleep at midnight... waking up has fun times written all over it. I actually arrived at the Main Street subway station before it was even open and had to wait around for 30 minutes. When I finally did get down to the Manulife Centre at about 6 am, there were already about 50 people in line ahead of me. Now normally everything goes smoothly at this point... the box office opens at 7 am and people buy their tickets. I've done this 4 years in a row now, but this day wouldn't be the same.

I guess the genius who came up with online ticket sales decided that putting everything related to buying tickets on one system would be a good idea. This meant that at 7 am on September 7th, one computer system would be charged with taking Phone orders, online orders and in person box office sales all at once. Long story short, the network didn't have enough bandwidth and I didn't get my tickets until nearly 9 o'clock.

My unlucky friends who decided to buy tickets online, were forced to go downtown later in the day because the official Toronto Film Festival website went down because of the web traffic. What is worse is that because of this fuck up they weren't able to get tickets for some of the shows they wanted, and I'm sure they weren't the only ones. So next year Toronto Film Festival people..Pleasese get your act together. I got my tickets though, so my early start was not in vain.

Here is a collage of the ticket excitement!

So far I have tickets to :

Banlieue 13
Harsh Times
Seven Swords
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance
Walk the Line
The Notorious Bettie Page
SPL

With the help of some procured press passes I'll also be seeing press screenings of :

A History of Violence
Where the Truth Lies
Revolver

These are my pics, the bad thing about film festivals though is that for every great movie you see you're going to miss about 3 other great ones. There is just too little time and too many movies, and with school starting next week time will be at a premium.

I plan to review every movie I see both here and over at Empire Movies so check back for updates in the coming 2 weeks.

Now to do a whole lot of nothing.

- Will   Wednesday, September 07, 2005