And I talked to a couple of festival goers this afternoon who were convinced that it was the best film of the festival and the frontrunner for People's Choice Award. It might pull a Life Is Beautiful.

And it sounds like those people were right. Though I read that Green Book won last year? So.

I think The Favorite has to be watched in the right company. I can't imagine watching it alone and having nowhere for my confused side-eye to go.

And it sounds like those people were right. Though I read that Green Book won last year? So.

Yep. TIFF audience loves films with social messages that manage to be both funny and feel-good, which fits both Jojo and Green Book. I think Jojo Rabbit is a more interesting film, but whether it appeals to an individual person will depend a lot on one's tolerance of whimsy. It'll divide opinions when it comes out, as previous TIFF winners did (Green Book, Three Billboards).

The runners-up for People's Choice Award were Marriage Story and Parasite, which were my 2 favourite films for the festival. So the people were not completely smoking the crack. :) Personally, I would consider Jojo a middle of the pack film out of mostly excellent movies I saw during the fest.

My top 10 (out of... good Lord, 34 films, that I saw during TIFF):

Parasite
Marriage Story
Portrait of Lady on Fire
Knives Out
Uncut Gems
La Belle Epoque
The Cave
Bad Education
Dolemite Is My Name
Ford v Ferrari

I also saw Joker, which has an amazing central performance by Joaquin Phoenix and is beautifully shot, but which I did not like much. I'm already annoyed at all the award conversation and discourse it's gonna generate.

Did you see A Hidden Life, Vonnie?

I think The Favorite has to be watched in the right company. I can't imagine watching it alone and having nowhere for my confused side-eye to go.

Yeah. I mean, it really fascinated me in a lot of moments, but there were others ... Rachel Weisz plays a better bully than I would have thought.

Did you see A Hidden Life, Vonnie?

I did! I made the fatal mistake of scheduling this 3 hour movie in the afternoon post lunch, and... was very sleepy for the first hour, heh. Malick's moody, contemplative style did not help the matters much. It does build up to something very moving in the last hour, and I cried a great deal, but honestly it did not need to be 3 hours long. I mean, he was able to make something beautiful and poetic that lasted 90 economical minutes early in his career (Days of Heaven, still my favourite of his). I kinda wish he'd hold back a bit and go back to something like that.

Atropa might appreciate this: Are Mary Poppins and Pennywise the same species?

Not just Atropa. It's surprising the number of parallels that show up!

An outstanding profile of Bong Joon Ho up at Vulture: [link]

The bit about Weinstein's attempt to wrestle the final cut of Snowpiercer from Bong's hands in particular is DELIGHTFUL.

Bong remembers one fateful meeting in Tribeca when he and Weinstein watched the movie together. "Wow, you are a genius," he would say. "Let's cut out the dialogue."

Bong was at a loss: Cutting 25 minutes felt like taking out a major organ. Without the dialogue, the movie became incoherent; character motivation made no sense. That day, he managed to save one scene, the moment when a train guard guts a fish in front of the rebels as a show of intimidation. Bong and his cinematographer loved that shot. "Harvey hated it. Why fish? We need action!" Bong remembers. "I had a headache in that moment: What do I do? So suddenly, I said, 'Harvey, this shot means something to me.' "

"Oh, Bong? What?" Bong-as-Harvey booms.

"It's something personal," Bong replies. "My father was a fisherman. I'm dedicating this shot to my father."

Weinstein relents immediately: "You should have said something earlier, Bong! Family is the most important. You have the shot."

"I said, 'Thank you,'" Bong says, laughing. "It was a fucking lie. My father was not a fisherman."

The fish is possibly my favourite weird detail in all of Snowpiercer (a movie filled to brim with weird details), so that made me cackle like a hyena. And I loved the part that covered his early career in Korea. Bong and I are contemporaries, and I remember those daily demonstrations and tear gas smell like it was yesterday. (It's a sense memory inextricable from my adolescence. Like, I developed phantom stinging in the back of my throat just from reading the profile. Or maybe it's allergies, heh.)

Parasite opens in limited release in New York and parts of LA this weekend, followed by an extreeeeeeamly slow rollout elsewhere. You can find out when it will play in your city here: [link]

Pittsburgh doesn't even have a showtime scheduled, but I'm hoping it'll come here by November. I am chomping at bits to see it again. Have I mentioned that it's my favourite film of the year? I cannot wait for all of you to see it so that we could yell about it together.

None for Seattle yet, either. Damn it (though maybe it's for the best that it's not here yet, seeing as I'm still recovering from kidney stone removal and couldn't sit through a movie). I really, really want to see it.

Great profile. He's such a brilliant director.