Editor's Note: We will have some reviews at TIFF from Abe and Matt. Meanwhile Baby Clyde will be offering daily diaries. Hope you enjoy!
En route to TIFF!It’s a long-accepted fact in my office that for the first two weeks of September I will be away. No phone calls. No emails. No invoices. I’ll be travelling to Canada to spend 10 days in dark theatres watching the newest Oscar Bait all by myself and doing my very best to avoid speaking to anyone else whilst I’m there. Only this time I'm skipping the last bit as I'll be taking directly to you beloved readers. Nathanial has persuaded me to keep a TIFF diary to keep you abreast of all my festival adventures; He may regret it.
So here I am back for the first time since 2019. It was of course Covid-19 that kept me away for the last couple of years, but it was only on planning this trip that I remembered the Coronavirus was nothing compared to the travails of the TIFF ticketing system...
Lockdown was a breeze compared to the horror of the arrivals hall at Pearson International (Officially the worst airport in the world).
But I arrived safe and sound if a little late. Not only was my flight from London delayed but instead of arriving on Thursday as usual I bunked off the first day to relive my childhood 80's fantasy by attending a "Kids from Fame" 40th Anniversary concert in Birmingham the night before! It was deffo worth it just to meet Valerie Landsburg. Still 4 hours sleep, and a 7-hour flight are not conducive to attentive film watching. Luckily, my only film of Friday evening was the World Premier of Billy Eichner's comedy Bros a movie that more than held my attention despite the jetlag. I learnt my lesson a few years back when on my first evening in town I went to a late showing of Portrait of a Lady on Fire and promptly slept through the entire thing.
Film of the Day - With zero competition the only possible winner is... Bros. But it very well may have made the top spot anyway. An uproarious, kinda meta queer Rom-com with killer one liners and hilarious cameos that cleverly harnesses Eichner’s' innate too muchness and uses it as a serious plot point. Pity it peters out towards the end, relying on conventional romantic comedy tropes in a film that is so unconventional in many other ways. P.S. I, too, am leaving all my money to Cher when I die.
Oscar Buzz If this takes off there is the definite possibility of 'Bridesmaids' type token comedy Original Screenplay nod, but the big push should be for Original Song. Unfortunately, the song in question is actually integral to the plot and not played over the closing credits so we can safely assume his won't happen.
Ts Madison talking Bros (from her Instagram account)Star Spotting One of the most fun aspects of TIFF is the random star spotting you do. In previous years I've been hugged by Grace Jones, bumped headfirst into Darren Criss (He was very nice about it), and had Ruth Negga throw her arms around me in the mistaken belief that we'd met before. Last night it was the just the whole Bros cast coming out on stage.
Instead of listening in to Ts Madison and company I had to head home. By the time I made it to bed I it was around 6am GMT. A good night’s sleep is in order as I have 5 films planned for tomorrow. Wish me luck!