Oy vey, you probably don’t even want to hear about 48fps anymore. Ever since the first screenings of Peter Jackson’s new film, The Hobbit, the interwebs have been inundated with all kinds of opinions on the high frame rate employed on the film. Well, I wanted to put my two cents in. Why? Well, because this is the Internet and what else is the Internet for if not to intellectually masturbate all over a personal blog? Also, I feel like a lot of the talk surrounding this new “cinema” format has been either to extreme, too ignorant of the fact that this is the first film to ever use 48fps, or too technical in its praise or trashing of the format.

I went to see The Hobbit in 48fps 3D earlier today and the first thing I want to get out of the way is that it’s a shitty movie. No, not because of the 48fps, though that doesn’t help matters—I’ll get to exactly why in a moment—but because Jackson has done a remarkable job of taking a fun, light story, stretching it out to the point of lunacy, while draining the film of all stakes, urgency and even character. It’s a disaster of a film, and the thought that there are two more of these things to go fills me with a special kind of dread often reserved for the next Kevin James offering.

Now, onto the 48fps. Originally, even after seeing the film, I’d have argued that there is nothing inherently wrong with 48fps as a shooting format. Jen Yamato’s interview with James Kershwin delves into some of the science of higher frame rates. Now, some of the science Kershwin claims as solidly proven really isn’t. A lot of the theories involved are very difficult to pin down. The crux, though, may actually hold serious water, at least in terms of how we perceive cinema as an art form. That is to say, when we watch a fictional film we understand its unreality. That is a given. Our suspension of disbelief comes in part from how filmmakers use that inherent unreality to create what amount to illusions of believability. A film like Children of Men doesn’t actually resemble the world we see when we look outside, but it creates an engaging atmosphere that draws us in and feels believably real. Any good film can do this, or, conversely, go for surreality. The 24fps, with its motion-blur and other artifacts, is part of what makes this possible. 48fps gets in the way of this latitude by forcing things to look more real.

Kershwin discusses theories about how the brain perceives high frame rates, but what his argument ultimately comes down to is that the higher the frame rate, the more “real” the visuals look and thus the more they bump up against a sort of uncanny valley. Things look real, but also just off from actual reality, and this is unnerving. I can definitely buy into this theory, especially since I got exactly that unsettling feeling while watching The Hobbit. But I also don’t think it’s as simple as all that. Kershwin claims that the science soundly proves that despite some variations in viewers’ adaptability to the high frame rates, as a whole human beings will never be able to take it. This part of it I have a harder time accepting. Even as the movie wore on I became more accustomed to the format and it began to feel natural to the images being created on-screen.

But it was never full natural, and this is where I think there are a combination of factors at work. Part of it is the uncanny valley Kershwin describes, but much of it seemed to come from the filmmaking and not the frame rate itself. The most clear issue was the overall visual style and cinematography. To put it lightly, the film looks atrocious. The truth is, the Lord of the Rings films never had the best cinematography out there, and it’s quite possible, based on having seen the trailers in 24fps, that in the slower frame rate the film looks fine. All that says to me, though, is that 48fps requires a completely different approach to shooting and lighting. This makes sense. 48fps begs for a new language. A new cinematic approach.

For example, one of the things 48fps does is make lighting seem brighter. If you stick a key light on a person and just look at them, chances are it’ll look unnatural. Film that person at 24fps and the light doesn’t appear nearly as harsh. Well, 48fps makes things look more like they appear in reality, which also means that the lighting will look as harsh as if you were right there on set. There are many scenes in the film where in certain shots the lighting is just right, and despite the oddly smooth motion the film actually looks very good. But then the shot will change and the lighting will suddenly be too harsh, and what looked before like a believable fantasy film now looks like a stage drama with obvious sets and costumes. And it’s not that the sets and costumes look bad or cheap. They look great! Except they are lit so harshly that you feel like you’re in a soundstage with overly bright lamps overhead. From my perspective, this is less an inherent problem with 48fps, and more of a learning curve.

The place where the lighting issue was most clear to me was in the “Riddles In the Dark” sequence involving Gollum. The motion-capture and CGI technology has come a long way since 2003′s The Return of the King and Gollum looks better than ever. Not only that, but because the 48fps gives the film a more palpable and believable sense of depth and dimension, the perfectly textured and animated Gollum actually looks like he’s there on set. I swear, there are some shots I was almost convinced he was actually there. The effect is that good. Weirdly, though, in that same scene, the shots of Bilbo, while not as bad as at some other points in the film, look overlit and too much like that stageplay or BBC effect you’ve been hearing so much about. The biggest difference, so far as I could tell, was that Gollum has no real lighting. It’s all virtual. Added on when he is rendered. Bilbo, played by Martin Freeman, is lit with practical lights, on a set, and that’s exactly what it looks like. Maybe the quality of CGI still isn’t quite there to make the lighting look real or harsh enough, but whatever the case, the digital artists clearly “lit” Gollum in a manner that feels more natural to a film than a soap opera. In fact, almost all the CGI creations, even the ones that look a little less believable that Gollum are benefitted by the 48fps.

The other major problem in a 48fps film is the acting. When the image appears so real, false acting appears that much more false. There are several sequences involving all the dwarves where a couple of the actors feel like believable characters, but the rest come off as poor theatrical stage performers. This, combined with the British accents, is probably one of the reasons a lot of people are jumping to the BBC comparison, because that’s how it feels.

Similarly, bad sounds effects were more noticeable. What’s that? 48fps makes the film sound worse? Yup! Who knew? When everything looks so damn real, and when there’s less blur to hide the actual motion, rudimentary foley effects no longer sound like they’re coming from the objects they’re meant to.

Then there are the psychics. Again, the motion looks so smooth and realistic (once you get used to it) that any physics that don’t look real, well, they aren’t believable. When those dwarves are throwing plates all around the house and the plates seem to be defying gravity, well, unless there was some magic spell going on that I missed, it just felt like badly done plate-throwing physics. Bad effects. Again, 48fps, assuming it’s a neutral format and not inherently bad, is far less forgiving of these bits of fakery that 24fps can so easily mask.

And so we ask ourselves. Is 48fps the future? No. I doubt it. Is Kershwin right that 48fps can never work because our brains can’t handle the dissonance? I’m not sure, but I think I’d like to see a couple more movies done in 48fps before I can truly decide on that one. What is clear to me is that 48fps now exists. It’s a tool in the toolbox. I don’t think The Hobbit was the right film to try it on, though. For loads of reasons, but primarily the fact that Jackson underestimated the degree to which the realism of 48fps would undermine the unreality of even his most lavishly created soundstage sets. The best shots in the film, aside from the CGI ones, were often those shot outdoors, with the beautiful vistas and the characters more naturally lit.

So where should 48fps go from here? Well, I’d like to see it tested out in two specific areas. The first is in CGI. Somebody should do a computer animated film in 48fps. In fact, maybe James Cameron will be the saviour of the format when he does Avatar 2. The first film was already mostly an animated film trying to pass itself off as a real place. If the Gollum scene is any indication, Cameron could definitely “shoot” the sequel at a higher frame rate and thus enhance the illusion of physicality in his computer generated world. On the other end of the spectrum, it might be interesting to see a film entirely shot in the wilderness using 48fps. I would kill to see a big screen, HFR version of Planet Earth. Or, if you want to stick to films, maybe make something like Peter Weir’s epic survival story, The Way Back, which other than some sets at the beginning was shot entirely in the wilderness being portrayed. Match the reality of the content with the reality of the shooting locations and capture it through the reality of 48fps and you might be onto something.

Those are the kinds of experiments that should be done. I saw far too many people saying of the 48fps in The Hobbit that the format represented the death of cinema. I don’t believe that to be the case. The technology may never go anywhere, but it certainly won’t take over or even come close until filmmakers actually learn how to make films suitable for it. The Hobbit was not the film to do that, though it shows glimmers of possibility even still. At the very least, get me one of those nature docs in 48fps. Please. It would be incredible.

Together, Joanna and I dissect everything that is awful about the franchise and this film, as well as the moments that surprised us and in some cases shocked us. In about an hour of discussion we cover it all, from our fascination with RPatz, to our love of Michael Sheen and Lee Pace, to the depressing influence of the series on a generation of young girls, and even the terrifying pitfalls of CGI babies.

I won’t lie, I had fun watching the movie, though maybe not for the reasons the makers intended, and I think it provided for some good podcast fodder. Because bashing awful movies is always fun, no?

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the episode.

If you have any feedback on The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2, this episode, or the show in general, don’t hesitate to email me at coreyatad@gmail.com.

You can listen here:

Or download by right-clicking and pressing “save as.”

Or why not subscribe to the show via iTunes:

or RSS

Thanks for listening!

Note: In the episode, Joanna references this article from Pajiba featuring some of the best disdainful quotes from the biggest Twilight hater of them all, Mr. RPatz himself.

For this week’s episode, I was joined for the second time by Kristen Sales (@salesonfilm and writer at Who Got The Role) as well as Christopher Runyon (@CGRunyon and Cineffect). The discussion was long and wide-ranging. And when I say long, I mean it. Two whole hours of Cloud Atlas talk covering just about everything we could think of, from the qualities of the adaptation to the music to the acting to the thematic resonance or lack thereof. So settle in and enjoy the show.

If you have any feedback on Cloud Atlas, this episode, or the show in general, don’t hesitate to email me at coreyatad@gmail.com.

You can listen here:

Or download by right-clicking and pressing “save as.”

Or why not subscribe to the show via iTunes:

or RSS

Thanks for listening!

This week on The justAtadcast, I invited on two guests. Danny Bowes (@moviesbybowes) writes for his own blog, Movies by Bowes, as well as Tor.com. Andrew Parker (@AndrewJParker) is editor at Dorkshelf and also writes for Criticize This!. There’s a lot to discuss in Argo, from its classic Hollywood-style entertainment, to the flap over the film’s representation of Canada and the career arc of Mr. Ben Affleck, and we touch on all of it. Hope you enjoy the discussion.

If you have any feedback on Argo, this episode, or the show in general, don’t hesitate to email me at coreyatad@gmail.com.

You can listen here:

Or download by right-clicking and pressing “save as.”

Or why not subscribe to the show via iTunes:

or RSS

Thanks for listening!

I saw The Master twice. I’m biased immediately. In fact, I watch lots of movies twice, sometimes three times, sometimes even more, often seeing films multiple times in theatres. I also saw Looper twice. I saw The Dark Knight Rises five times, including three times in 15/70mm IMAX. I saw Paranorman twice, Brave twice, Prometheus twice, Moonrise Kingdom three times, The Avengers twice, Monsieur Lazhar twice, 21 Jump Street three times, The Cabin in the Woods twice, and that’s all re-watches in theatres and only this year so far. (To be fair, I work at a theatre, so most of these re-watches were free.) But why would I watch these movies so many times? What do I get out of re-watches?

Of course, there are many reasons I will re-watch films. In almost every case it’s a movie I enjoyed and would’ve wanted to see again at some point any way. For some of the films, like The Avengers, for example, a lot of it has to do with seeing the movie with a new group of friends who haven’t already seen it. Sometimes, as with The Dark Knight Rises, I just want to get the grand theatrical experience of it before it’s relegated to Blu-ray. Prometheus is a funny example of a film that I was mixed on and liked even less the second time, but I went for the re-watch just to soak in the beautiful 3D visuals. 21 Jump Street was so damn funny I wanted to see it again and again. I saw The Master twice because the first time through I felt I’d loved it, but in my mind I was still working through the thematic complexity of it all. A second viewing was necessary less for the seeing it again (though that was nice, too) but almost as an aide to my mental processing of the film, a process which also included reading various essays and have discussions with others who’d seen it.

Of course, none of this includes DVD and Blu-ray (or now Netflix streaming). I watched No Country for Old Men five times in the cinema, and I’ve watched it way more times at home. I can’t get enough of it. Some movies are like that. I only watched JJ Abrams’ Star Trek once in the theatre, but I’ve probably watched it close to fifteen times at home. But No Country and Star Trek are completely different films, and I’ll readily admit that my main reasons for re-watching each are completely different. I’ll watch No Country over and over because I find new depth in it each time out, whereas I re-watch Star Trek because it’s so damn fun and energetic.

One of the most common responses I hear to the amount of re-watching I do is that I’m crazy. That’s pretty much an across-the-board reaction. When it comes to cinephiles, though, I often hear another response: why would you re-watch a movie so many times when you could take that time to watch something you haven’t seen before?

Why don’t I watch something new? Well, I do watch new things. I watch new releases, I go to film festival, I watch classic films. I watch a lot. I could probably watch a lot more, and I know many people who do. There are people who almost never re-watch films, almost on principle, because they’d rather experience a new story or new characters every time they sit down to watch a movie. I understand where they’re coming from, and I respect them for it, but I just can’t do that.

I love re-watching films, and not just for all those specific reasons I stated above. Yes, some films benefit thematically from re-watches. Some films become more comprehensible the second time. Sometimes you pick up little details. Sometimes you just really like the characters and you want to see them again. At the core of it all, though, is one unshakeable impulse: I love to immerse myself in stories.

Watching and experiencing new stories is great. It exposes you to new ideas and new characters and new ways of thinking and it’s often just fun to expand your horizons, especially through film. But if that’s all I cared about, if all I wanted from cinema was to take in as many stories and narratives and character arcs as possible, I could probably get the same personal value by browsing random pages on Wikipedia all day (something I’ve been known to do, by the way). That’s not to diminish what other people gain from only watching films once, but for me, it’s just too much. Too much information, often going into my brain and getting lost in there. I’ve seen all sorts of films once, films I remember loving that one time, but now they exist as a sort of distant memory. I experienced them, took them in, but then I checked them off and filed them away. That’s valuable, but it’s not nearly fulfilling enough for me.

The best stories are the stories I want to live in. I want to be a part of them and make them a part of me. Re-watches do that for me. I’ve seen Back to the Future an ungodly number of times. Let’s pretend that it’s 50 times. At two hours long, that’s easily 49 other films I could’ve watched that I’d never seen. That would be a net loss for me, though. I love Back to the Future, and not just in an “oh yeah, I really loved that movie,” kind of way. No, I LOVE Back to the Future. I practically have the script memorized. The shots and edits and performances are burned in my brain. The musical score and even the soundtrack of songs from the 50s and 80s is often stuck in my head. Even the details surrounding the making of the film are planted in my brain, able to be recalled with hardly any effort. Back to the Future isn’t just some film I saw and really enjoyed, it’s a part of me. It’s a part of my soul. It’s who I am.

Stories are important to me, and my favourite method of taking them in is through cinema. Re-watching movies is re-living stories. I get different things out of re-watching each specific film, but it’s all for the same general goal. I want these stories to be more than just little nuggets in my memory. I want them to be my memory. They inform who I am and what I like and how I think and that’s true whether they’re as intellectually fulfilling as A Serious Man, as emotionally impacting as Magnolia or as viscerally exciting as Raiders of the Lost Ark. There are plenty more films I will see over my lifetime that I’ve never seen before, but when I walk into a film, what I invariably want most is another film like the ones I’ve talked about here, a film I can watch many times over and truly adopt as my own over time.

This week on The justAtadcast, I invited on two internet friends, cinephiles and writers. Kevin Ketchum (@Kevin_Ketchum) writes for Next Projection. Sam Fragoso (@SamFragoso) writes at his own site, Duke and the Movies, as well as Fan the Fire Magazine. We jumped right in to a lengthy discussion of the ins and outs of Looper. It’s another long episode, but Looper is a film that calls for that sort of discussion. We get into everything from the time travel mechanics, to the thematic weight of the film, as well as Rian Johnson’s style and his brilliant casting. We hope you enjoy the discussion.

If you have any feedback on Looper, this episode, or the show in general, don’t hesitate to email me at coreyatad@gmail.com.

You can listen here:

Or download by right-clicking and pressing “save as.”

Or why not subscribe to the show via iTunes:

or RSS

Thanks for listening!

This week on The justAtadcast, I invited on two writers and cinephiles I’ve gotten to know over Twitter. Daniel Carlson (@danielwcarlson) is Managing Editor at Pajiba and collates all his writing at his personal website. Kristen Sales tweets @salesonfilm and occasionally writes around the web. Together, we three dived right into The Master. The discussion is long—over 75 minutes—and we get pretty in-depth. It’s a spoiler-filled conversation about the film, but if you’ve seen the film and are itching to hear more dissection and theorizing about Paul Thomas Andersons’ latest, I think you’ve come to the right place. We had a lot of fun talking about the film, and hopefully you’ll enjoy listening.

You can listen here:

Or download by right-clicking and pressing “save as.”

Or why not subscribe to the show via iTunes:

or RSS

Thanks for listening!

Seeing so many films in so few days has its advantages and disadvantages. The most obvious are the disadvantages. I’m sure anyone who has seriously done a film festival has been subsequently asked by others, “can you even remember all the films you watch?” Well, yes. Yes, I can. But there is a kernel of truth to the question/accusation. Ask me which films I saw at TIFF’12 and I’m going to start drawing blanks. Remind me of a specific film and it’ll all come back to me, but when I consider them all in a group it’s difficult to separate one from the other. The other major disadvantage is the exhaustion. Watching twenty or thirty or fifty films in a little over a week sometimes sounds to people like an easy vacation. Sit back, in the dark, watch movies. Only, at a festival you aren’t usually there to watch films passively. The mind is constantly working and processing and that’s tiring, especially when hours get thrown out of whack and it becomes so hard to find time for a meal that you sometimes forget to eat at all. Watching a silly movie like Ghost Graduation might be okay when you’re exhausted, but what about when it’s a new Terrence Malick film? Was my reaction to that film too heavily influenced by the fact that I’d rather have been sleeping? It’s hard to say.

Still, the advantages are there. Seeing films with like-minded people is one of the best things about the experience. For the most part, the people who come to a movie at the festival WANT to be watching a movie at the festival. These aren’t the chatters or texters or other sorts of assholes who regular ruin the moviegoing experience. At TIFF, generally, it’s an appreciative audience of fellow film lovers. They’re respectful to the films and to the people around them. There’s also something to be said for being in a cinematic state of mind. Normally, throughout the year, I intersperse movies amongst all sorts of other things. During the festival it’s all movies all the time. My brain is set to movie-mode. That’s what I’m built to think about and process and enjoy. I could never do that year round, but for about eleven days per year it certainly works. And none of that touches on the chance to see films that either may never be released or may be months or years away from coming out. I saw The Loved Ones at Midnight Madness back in 2009, and it only got a release in the US this Summer, and is finally coming out on DVD here this month.

But enough thoughts about film festivals in general; let’s talk TIFF’12!

Some stats:

• I attended 30 ticketed events during TIFF’12 (29 feature films, 1 live reading.)
• I also watched 5 films at pre-TIFF press screenings, but I will only briefly mention them in this article.
• Of the 29 films, 3 were presented on 35mm, 1 on 70mm, 25 on 2K or 4K DCP.
• Only 1 film presentation had a serious projection problem.
• Of the various programmes, I saw 3 Midnight Madness, 5 Vanguard, 4 Masters, 1 Mavericks, 10 Special Presentation, 1 Gala Presentation, 2 Contemporary World Cinema, 2 Discovery, 2 TIFF Docs.
• In 30 shows I was “by myself” for only 3.
• The 29 feature films amount to approximately 3,070 minutes, or 51 hour and 10 minutes.
• Shortest film was Thale, longest film was Cloud Atlas.
• 7 films were under 90 minutes long.
• At 29 films I was forced to endure the godawful L’Oréal ad 30 times (due to a screw-up at Berberian Sound Studio.)
• In 9 days I ate poutine 2 times, street meat 4 times, popcorn 0 times, nachos 1 time, breakfast crêpe 1 time.
• I drank 7 cups of Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks, and 1 from Second Cup (the spice of life, I’m tellin’ you!)
• My cell phone died only 3 times during the fest.
• I wrote 10,047 words worth of TIFF’12 daily recaps for this blog.

But stats aren’t the only thing you’re after, right? I’m sure you all want to know what my favourite and least favourite films of the festival were, along with other notes on great performances and the like. You’re in luck. Just continue on to the next page to read all that fun stuff.

Also, here I’ll be providing an index of the daily recaps I wrote:

Day 0 – Intro

Day 1 - Jason Reitman’s Live Read of American Beauty, The End of Time

Day 2 - Rust and Bone, The Gatekeepers, Stories We Tell, Like Someone in Love

Day 3 - Frances Ha, The Master, Something in the Air

Day 4 - Cloud Atlas, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, the Deflowering of Eva van End, Hellbenders

Day 5 - At Any Price, EVERYDAY, Berberian Sound Studio

Day 6 - To the Wonder, Sightseers

Day 7 - Great Expectations, Lore, Thale, Motorway

Day 8 - Room 237, A Werewolf Boy, Come Out and Play

Day 9 - Much Ado About Nothing, Blancanieves, Ghost Graduation, Ginger and Rosa, The ABCs of Death

Don’t forget, though, there’s still some more TIFF’12 coverage yet to read.

Next Page: Best and Worst of TIFF’12—>

For my last day at TIFF I decided to go all out. I had four tickets, plus I planned on rushing one of two possible movies. It would be a long day, beginning with a movie at 11am and ending with a movie starting at midnight. I was also pretty confident that my line-up of films would be stronger than the last couple of days. As it turns out, I was right.

Much Ado About Nothing

It’s Joss Whedon’s world and we’re all living in it. He started off the year by finally seeing the release of The Cabin in the Woods, a brilliant comedy-horror film he co-wrote and produced. Then we got The Avengers, and I think that story is pretty well-known by now. Amazingly, during post-production on The Avengers, Whedon decided to shoot an adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado About Nothing.

Whedon gathered together a lot of his regular cast, including Alexis Denisof, Amy Acker, Nathan Fillion, Fran Kranz, Clark Gregg and Tom Lenk. In some ways it’s almost like a community theatre production of the play, which could be a bad thing, except that Whedon has a really strong grasp of how to bring the play into a modern comedic context, and his cast is damn good and know how to sell it.

One of the criticisms I’ve seen thrown at Much Ado About Nothing is that Whedon makes it much more of a slapstick, low-brow farce. It’s a funny charge considering Shakespeare himself was writing broad comedies for the masses, including all sorts of vulgarity, slapsticky and low-brow humour. The play IS a silly farce, and that’s how Whedon approaches it. That he modernizes those farcical rhythms is a testament to his understanding of both the original style of the play’s comedy, as well as how best to translate that comedy for an audience used to a much different style.

In fact, through all the productions and films of Shakespeare comedies I’ve seen, I’ve rarely laughed more than a chuckle. During Much Ado About Nothing there were points where I was practically in stitches, barely containing myself. And it wasn’t just the scenes of slapstick that did it, either. In many cases, the funniest scenes involved Shakespeare’s own words, and the hilarious delivery given them by the actors. Really, there’s nothing to complain about. It’s not the most professional production, and it does feel a little bit like a bunch of friends having a good time, but it really is a good time, and it’s one of the better films I saw at the festival this year.

After Much Ado, a few of us went to grab a bite to eat, and then it was onward to the Lightbox to see a silent film.

Blancanieves

Last year, one of the biggest films at TIFF was The Artist a black-and-white silent film paying homage to a long lost Hollywood. I quite enjoyed The Artist when I finally saw it, but I came away from it feeling like not only was it a fairly slight entertainment, it also failed to capture the very things that made silent films of the late 20s so great. Thankfully, another silent film has come around, this time from Spain, and it does almost everything right that The Artist did not.

Blancanieves translates in Spanish to Snow White, and that’s what the film is. It’s the third adaptation of Snow White to come out this year, and easily the best and most interesting. In this version, the character is set in the world of bullfighting. There are a number of clever changes to the story, including the evil stepmother using a fashion magazine to judge the fairest in the land. But really, it’s the style that makes the film beautiful.

Director Pablo Berger approaches silent cinema with reverence, but also with understanding of its greatest traits. Blancanieves doesn’t quite feel like a film made in the 20s, but it feels directly informed by the style of those films. There’s the expressionistic camerawork, the fairly high-contrast approach to light and shadow, the melodramatic-but-raw acting, and even the optical special effects. This method could be gimmick, but Berger makes it a part of the tone of the film. I do wish I had been more emotionally attached to the narrative of the film, but in some ways it plays much more through tone and mood to convey its fair tale story, not unlike Cocteau’s version of Beauty and the Beast. It’s a gorgeous piece of work and one I can’t wait to soak myself in again when hopefully it gets released.

From the silent film I decided to get in the rush line for a film all kinds of people recommended to me as one of the most fun films at the festival.

Ghost Graduation

Imagine, if you will, that instead those kids from The Breakfast Club walking away from detention having learned something about themselves and each other, they’d accidentally set the library on fire, died and been stuck haunting the school for twenty-five years. Throw in a high school teacher who’s able to see and talk to ghosts and you’ve got the premise of the new Spanish comedy, Ghost Graduation. The plot is slight, and the premise is silly, but the film is fantastic.

It’s difficult to explain what’s so great about Ghost Graduation without just saying everyone should find a way to see it if they can, but what it really comes down to is that the movie is fucking hilarious. More often than not, foreign language comedies just don’t translate all that well, especially with subtitles. The regional humour and wordplays are usually too specific. Ghost Graduation works even with English subs because most of its humour stems from John Hughes movies of old.

That’s not to say the film relies on references, though it has a number of funny ones. The film pays homage to those 80s classics, but it also borrows their style of humour. It’s all character-based, and situational, and any cultural references are ones anybody in North America would understand as well (like an ongoing joke about a character whose dream was to stay over at Michael Jackson’s house.) It’s the funniest film I saw at TIFF, even moreso than Sightseers, and though it’s not quite as brilliant as that film, it’s hard to argue with a film that has you laughing and smiling the whole way through.

Also, Ghost Graduation has already been acquired by Will Smith for an American remake. There’s a really good chance the film will translate well in a remake, but if there’s any way you can see the original, please do.

Anyway, from there it was back to the Lightbox to see one of my more anticipated films of the festival.

Ginger and Rosa

Elle Fanning is probably one of the best kid actors around. She’s been excellent in everything I’ve seen. For that reason I was quite excited for Ginger and Rosa. It helps that the film is a coming-of-age tale set in the early 60s with the cold war as a backdrop. The film basically lived up to my anticipation, though not without some reservations.

Ginger and Rosa is about two girls, Ginger and… Rosa, who were born on the same day, which also happens to be the day America dropped the bomb on Japan. Now, as teenagers in 1962, they’re coming out of their shell, Rosa moreso than Ginger. In fact, Rosa goes as far as to start a relationship with Ginger’s newly separated father.

Ginger is an interesting character in that she has these great ideal, she’s incredibly smart, she reads philosophy and wants to be e poet, but she also uses all of these intellectual methods to shield herself from the reality of her day-to-day life. It’s easier for her to confront the threat of nuclear apocalypse than to confront her father over this horrible thing he’s doing. It’s easier for her to go out and protest against the bomb than it is to have a meaningful, emotional conversation with her mother.

The cast of the film is almost uniformly great. The only weak link is Christina Hendricks, who does a decent job with a minimal role, but unwisely puts on a British accent that’s acceptable at best. Fanning is truly great as Ginger, and the rest of the actors, including turns from Timothy Spall, Anette Benning and Oliver Platt, are all great. The only other reservation I have about the film is its ending, which while admirable in its attempts at forgiveness, doesn’t feel justified given what Rosa and Ginger’s father were up to. Then again, maybe that’s the point. Also, it’s a pretty depressing film, which might not be the best way to end a festival.

Then again, it wasn’t my last film. No, I decided that my last film would be a Midnight Madness entry. Always a risk, but in this case I had a good feeling the risk would largely pay off.

The ABCs of Death

26 horror short films by 26 different directors, one for each letter of the alphabet. The great thing about anthology films, especially ones with so many little shorts, is that even when one short is bad you know it’ll be over soon and something good might be right around the corner. The ABCs of Death fits perfectly into that description. I’d say that of the 26 shorts, about two thirds were at least good, and maybe about 10 were really good or great.

Some of the highlights include: D is for Dogfight, which features a man fighting a dog. I have no idea how it was accomplished, but it looks brutal, and the twist ending is nice. A is for Apocalypse, the short from Nacho Vigalondo, was a bizarre and hilarious way to start everything off. F is for Fart is perhaps the weirdest sustained fart joke I’ve ever seen and I’m in awe of the people who made it. T is for Toilet is another super weird one, but it’s claymation and it’s hilarious. The undisputed best short in the film was Adam Wingard’s Q is for Quack, in which Wingard and his producer play themselves in a meta mock-doc about struggling to come up with a good idea for a short based on the worst letter in the alphabet. It wasn’t really a horror short, but it was amazingly funny and clever. The only sad part is that the last short, based on the letter Z, was basically the worst one in the whole anthology. Not the nicest way to end things.

All that being said, The ABCs of Death was overall a blast, and a really fun way to close out the festival.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @CoreyAtad, and be sure to keep an eye out for my big TIFF’12 Wrap-Up, which should be hitting the blog very soon.

I won’t make any bones about it. The back half of my TIFF’12 experience was not as great as the front. I mean, sure, I was still having a blast, but the films were mostly not as good. I attribute this to my front-loading  the films I most wanted to see in the hopes that I’d add in several films with great word-of-mouth for later. I did do that, but I was also still adding in random films that fit my schedule and looked decent. Either way, my Day 8 started very well, but took a sour turn.

Room 237

Not a documentary about The Shining, rather a documentary about obsessed fans who have wild theories about The Shining. I loved Room 237. It’s not the most polished documentary, or the most groundbreaking, or even the most broadly interesting, but for a huge fan of Kubrick’s classic horror film, Room 237 hits the sweet spot.

What works particularly well in the doc is the way we get to hear all these theories laid out without judgment. Many of them sound like total crackpots, but even the most crackpot theorizers have moments where what they’re saying makes sense on a thematic level. And maybe that what this documentary is really about: it’s people who have very good, very valid thematic interpretations of a work of art, but who have gone too far in finding extremely specific details to support similarly specific theories that fall into those themes. Sometimes it’s better to just step back and assess the work as a whole. Then again, sometimes it’s fun to listen to the crackpots. It’s entertaining, but every now and then they say something truly worth listening to.

My next film was recommended to me by a friend who said she’d cried during it. Well, who was I to argue with tears? (Well, maybe I should have.)

A Werewolf Boy

A teenage girl encounters a feral boy who the family then adopts. Oh, and the boy is actually a werewolf. Basically, it’s a girl and her dog movie. It’s also not good. I don’t want to bash it too much. I mean, really, it’s basically a kids movie that’s probably a bit too long for most kids. But yeah, it has that feel. And it’s not good.

From that disappointment it was on to another disappointment.

Come Out and Play

A horror movie directed by a mysterious man in a mask? Makinov is a guy clearly trying to establish a cult of personality. I was intrigued, at first, but the film he made doesn’t match up to the manifesto he provided before the film. Come Out and Play is about a couple who go to a small island on vacation only to find that all the adults are gone and the young kids are al that are left. Turns out the kids are possessed by some sort of insanity and have been killing all the adults. The premise is based on the idea that despite the kids being less powerful, the instinct to not kill children keeps the adults from truly protecting themselves.

Well, we basically know right from the beginning that the film will lead us to the point where the main characters throw all those moral impulses out the window and start killing these kids. That’s kind of awesome. The problem is that the film takes way too long to get there. By the time kids start getting killed it’s kind of fun, but it’s also too little too late. It’s a ton of build-up for only a small splash near the end. It’s well shot, and well made, but it just can’t sustain itself. Also, despite some allowances for horror movie logic, the characters in Come Out and Play make far too many idiotic decisions. How can we care about whether they’ll survive when they’re too stupid to deserve it?

So that was one really great movie followed by two duds. At some point during the day I had decided I wouldn’t add any more screenings beyond Day 9. There wasn’t too much more I wanted to see and I’d rather have the weekend off. So I was off the my bed to get ready for a long last day of TIFF’12.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @CoreyAtad, and check out my full TIFF’12 schedule at TIFFr.