It’s been a great day. This morning I booked our tickets for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). We had a pack of ten tickets so had to choose five. Because so many people go, you’re allocated a time when you can book and once you start selecting you only have an hour to choose all of your films. And you only have one shot at it. No pressure.
The program for the festival is immense. I went through it last week online, compiling a list of possibilities. I would have probably preferred to have the hard copy version to look at as online you start at A and work your way through to Z. There are a lot of films that begin with A so by the time you get to B, your tolerance has dropped and you just want to get to the bottom of the list. I had to go back and review all the As I’d written down and then culled them. I think I got it down to 38 films, then, after judicious pruning, about 17.
Geek that I am, I then put them into a spreadsheet with their times and dates so I could see which ones we could actually go to (what with Glen working during the day), and then I gave the list to Glen and he prioritised his favourites. I’d bolded mine. So, long story short, we had our list of 17 films.
So this morning, bang on 9am, I logged on to book our tickets. Of the top five on our list, I was able to book four of them. The fifth was only available at an afternoon time (3:30) so couldn’t choose that one. The sixth in our list I didn’t really like the look of so I went for the seventh and we got that. Only one of the films I looked at had a session that was completely sold out.
We are seeing:
- Only Lovers Left Alive – vampire film with Tilda Swinton
- Eastern Boys – you can probably guess what this one is about
- Gerontophilia – likewise
- Bad Words – comedy about a 40-year-old man entering the spelling bee competition for school students (lead actor is the guy who plays Michael in Arrested Development)
- Attila Marcel – French-language film from the director(?) of Triplets of Belleville. Looks quirky.
I want to see a few others but will have to wait until Sunday when single tickets go on sale then join the mad rush. The premieres are supposed to be worthwhile going to because of the “stars” on the red carpet, but I didn’t see which ones they were and it doesn’t really matter. Would rather be able to get in the theatre.
After that, I did some work and then Kevin came round and we went to the Ontario Science Centre to check out the Game On 2.0 exhibition. The exhibition is all about computer games, from Pong through to today. Totally hands-on (which explains all the broken machines that weren’t working) and you can play all sorts of games. A real nostalgia exhibition too. So many “old” people saying, “WOW, I had one of those Nintendo Game Boys” or, “Squeal! Pacman!”
We played Space Invaders, Street Fighter, Tetris, Bubble-bubble, Mario Cart (a really old one), Eden-something on the Kinect and another Super Mario Game. Was a lot of fun. Packed with kids and grown-up kids. There was also a virtual reality machine where you stand inside a big metal ball that spins so you can move in the game. We joined the queue but the guy came and told us it would be at least 72 minutes before we’d get a go. We decided not to wait. The exhibition closes on Monday so if you want to see it, go now! Well worth the trip. It was a shame Glen couldn’t come; he would have loved it.
We didn’t check out the rest of the science centre. I get the impression it’s a lot like Scitech, just bigger. Might go there again one day. Will see what the next exhibition is.
We were in the exhibition over lunch so by the time we got out it was about 2:30. Kevin took me to Korea Town for some food. I think he had a bibimbap while I had a japchae. Not bad food. And cheap too. Korea Town is also the place to go for karaoke so I think we’ll be heading there one night.
Back to our place to chill out for a while. Glen came home from work. Kev left about an hour later to go to his cousin’s wedding dress fitting. We went down Church St to meet Chris for all-you-can-eat sushi. The manager there is going to know us by sight before long, if he doesn’t all ready. We ate a lot of food. My stomach is quite full. Nice to chat, plenty to talk about. A great evening out (even with the light rain and the humid air).
Tomorrow we’re off to Quebec CIty. Luckily Glen checked our tickets because I was thinking we were going Air Canada from Toronto Pearson (an hour away by public transport) whereas we’re actually going by Porter from Downtown. Lucky!
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?