Thank god I can get onto the Tederick.com back end through the One Zone without logging in. I have no idea why that is and I can't imagine it's particularly intelligent from a security standpoint, but whatever, free wi-fi anywhere downtown for blogging purposes only. I'll take it.

So I think I may have made a big mistake. Did not sleep last night pretty much at all thanks to opening night jitters and a cat who, very literally, came within an inch of losing her life to my enraged hands after the 4th or 5th time trying to shut her up at four in the morning. I scheduled my only midnight-to-9 a.m. turnaround on the first Friday because I figured my body clock wouldn't be reset yet and getting up at 7:30 would be no problem. WRONGO. I am suffering serious braindeath here.

But them's the lumps.

Yesterday was pretty fucking terrific all around. I spent the afternoon in Trinity Bellwoods reading comic books and just chilling out thinking about life; I'm also really enjoying reading Nausea, which I'll finish today so that I can start Warrior's Camera tomorrow (it has become a semi-annual tradition to read books about Kurosawa during the film festival). I also ran into someone that I only ever see during the film festival - not at a festival venue, nowhere near one actually, so it was weird that it happened today and not on any of the other days of the year. (Plus: I hate that guy.)

I got home to a bit of meanspirited fucking-around by a certain TGS member who shall remain nameless, but that's girls for you. Doing it just to do it. Otherwise yesterday was tip top. I cruised down to the Elgin at 7:00 and ran into Sonomi (!) in line, so we hung out for a spell and that was pretty cool - haven't seen her in a solid 2 years or more and she's about to vanish to France for a long term stay, too. Some other former Bexites were about but there wasn't much to say other than "hey, you know Bex - so do I!"

Persepolis was my first film of the fest and it was pretty damn good. Animation was gorgeous and it maintained a pretty solid balance between the sheer awfulness of life in Iran and the wry sense of humour with which one, I suppose, is able to survive such things. It didn't so much conclude as just stop dead, which was a problem, and the last act didn't work nearly as well as the first two, but I'm giving it a pass overall if for nothing other than the fact that in the middle of this movie, an old woman actually maps out the meaning of life in about three sentences, and you go "oh yeah: that's really fucking obvious."

Then it was up to the Ryerson for the opening Midnight, and so shitty a Midnight I have rarely seen before. Holy mother of god, Mother of Tears is fucking awful. You kept wanting it to break out into full-on pornography (that was certainly the feel of the thing, between the Z-grade acting and the laboured dialogue) but aside from some titty shots from the Evil Witch Trying To Take Down Rome, no joy. Oh, plus: there was a fire drill right in the middle of the movie. A fucking voice comes over the P.A. system in the balcony of the Ryerson and says "we are about to test the fire alarm, don't evacuate the building," and then a horrible BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP goes off for the next three minutes. With director and star in attendance. Oh Colin. I suspect these opening Midnights might just be cursed. But it was still fun to just be back in the venue... plus I saw someone that I had the world's biggest festival crush on last year (festival crushes differ from regular crushes because they're, you know, festive), and was sort of surprised by how... well, I guess I was just surprised to be surprised. It all seems so long ago. I can't believe how much has changed in a single stupid year, while still feeling like there's so much further to go.

Now I'm sitting outside the Ryerson waiting for Glory to the Filmmaker! to let in, and I can't believe I actually had enough time to get all the way to the end of this entry with no problems.