A quiet has settled over Yorkville. The un-credentialed public, with whom I should be hanging out, seem to have more profitable ways to spend a Tuesday morning. The line ups have been short and filled only with the kind of wide-eyed movie fiends who wear black, know the synopses of all 300 movies playing and buy their tickets in packs of 10.
For $40, I was granted two tickets to The Sun Also Rises, which may or may not have anything to do with Hemingway but definitely is being produced by Jiang Wen. Wen is described on the TIFF website as being at the helm of Chinese New Wave. I'll be happy to give you my thoughts on the movement once I learn to distinguish it from Chinese Old Wave.
I then went to spend some time waiting for celebrities to walk in and out of the Four Seasons while sitting on concrete plant holders. To my right, a lovely woman named Anne who wore an angel pin on the left side of her blue sweater. This was her first festival and she was waiting with an old film Pentax point and shoot that she said had never taken a bad picture. To my left were about six teenage girls wearing sweatshirts. Two wore black sunglasses with D&G printed on the side.
No one had seen any celebrities yet, but a girl named Amanda was pulled out her cybershot to show off the pics she snapped at premieres. In the shadow at the corner of one picture, she said, were Brangelina. She got a good one of George Clooney close up, a little blurry though. Now she's waiting for Ewan McGregor.
I respect that.
"I've been in love with Ewan McGregor since I was 15," I said. "Hmm. Moulin Rouge," she said. "No man. Star Wars."
At least it wasn't Trainspotting.