Christmas Prep Done!

I think I am actually done, though I suppose I will get my wife an e-gift card.  I had temporarily forgotten that I had already bought Xmas cards at a dollar store, so that is checked off as well.

We don't have a lot of presents to exchange, but I did wrap them up last night.  There are a couple of presents to myself (books naturally...), and I went ahead and wrapped those as well, which I don't typically do.

I got the stocking stuffers on Monday, and I believe the last of the presents arrived in the mail on Sunday(!), though we may get a delayed package from my step-mom. 

The biggest difference is we didn't put up a tree because we were so sure the cats would mess around with it and knock it over.  However, I was in the basement looking for a few things to put out (no wooden nutcrackers, which they would chew to pieces!) and I came across some mini trees we used to put in the kids' rooms.  We put one of those out by the fireplace.  While the cats have definitely been messing with the ornaments, they have mostly left it alone, giving us some hope that next year we can put up the full tree (after the cats are out of their kitten phase).

 

 

Now I just need to turn this picture into a holiday card and send it around to everyone, and my holiday prep is in the books for 2025.  Happy holidays to anyone who has been following along on the blog.  A lot more to follow when I have some downtime later in the week...

 

Edit (12/25): I did manage to get the e-card out to a long list of friends (and former friends?) and former work colleagues.  I have to admit that the number of cards and e-cards I get from others is close to zero, and I often wonder if it is worth sending these around any longer.  On the other hand, the level of effort is relatively minimal once I have made the card, and this year I was particularly efficient.  And I was somewhat enthused to send around word that we added the kittens to the household.

 

It snowed on Monday, but nearly all of it is gone, so it isn't really a white Christmas after all.  I actually biked off to work on Wed., and I am seriously considering biking to Carlton to see Tokyo Godfathers.  It turns out that the version with subtitles is only playing once today at 6:55, so I will have to keep myself occupied with other things in the meantime.  Fortunately, I have a long list of things I have been putting off, including working on my year-end lists...  

So Many Movies!

I've been able to get out and see a lot of movies in the past few months.  This may be approaching the glory years of the mid 90s when there was a whole string of second run theatres, many along Bloor, and they even had their own publication listing all of the monthly movies at all of the theatres.  I generally avoid Cinema Clock these days, sticking with the Revue and Paradise and Carlton websites, as those are the places I go by far the most.  It's relatively rare for me to get over to TIFF, though I have been going more recently, now that they have this Naruse retrospective on.  I've been quite patient, lurking on the website, and about a week ago, I managed to get a ticket to Yearning.  Then on Wed., I was getting ready to listen to Dave Young over at the Rex, and I happened to check the TIFF website and a few tickets to Sound of the Mountain popped up, so I had to drop everything and try to book the best seat of the bunch (on my phone, no less!).  That was a bit stressful, but it worked out.  (And indeed, at that show and on the streetcar home, I finally wrote out the last of my Stratford piece.  Yea!  I'm fairly happy with the ending, but now I need to type up the whole thing and see how balanced it is.  I suspect I meander a bit too much, but maybe not...)

And just a few minutes ago I looked and the last two movies that caught my eye had a couple of seats open up.  In both cases, they are a bit too close to the screen, but given how hard it has been to book these screenings, I'll put up with it.  I'll be seeing Flowing on Jan. 2 and then Daughters, Wives and a Mother on Jan. 24 (after watching the Sondheim musical Company over at Theatre Centre, so that will make for a long day...).  I decided to check, and indeed I think the same person who cancelled Flowing also cancelled Lightning, so I got a ticket for that as well on Jan 3.  In the end, I will have seen 9 of Naruse's films, including several that appear to be quite difficult to source on DVD or Blu-Ray, including Yearning, Lightning and Scattered Clouds.  Having gone from 0 to 9 is a huge swing!  That's certainly the most films I've seen by a single director after excluding Hitchcock, Almodovar and Kurosawa.  I believe Naruse just edges out Jon Huston, though that might change when I finally get around to watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Beat the Devil.  What is particularly intriguing is that 1950s, Naruse's films covered topics such as infidelity, suicide, rape (with the perpetrator not being caught and punished!) and even abortion!  A lot of his films are pretty melodramatic to be sure, many of them being adaptations of novels aimed at women.

It's possible that this big push to see films (on the big screen) started at the tail end of 2024 when there was the huge Almodovar retrospective.  I have to admit that The Room Next Door was disappointing in some ways, though I did appreciate the shout out to Huston's The Dead, which I feel is a bit underappreciated in general.  I was pleased I managed to catch this on Monday.  (I had planned on rereading Joyce's story but instead read it immediately afterward.  Huston is generally quite faithful to the story, but there are a few changes, including making the Irish tenor a bit rougher and even a bit unpleasant at times (as he was battling a sore throat) and having the tenor join Gabriel and Gretta in their cab on the way over to their hotel, which is not in the film.)  The meditative ending is what elevates the story and the film.

I kind of forgot that last year, I went to see The Big Lebowski at Hot Docs on New Year's Eve, which is becoming a Toronto tradition (with people showing up in their bathrobes).  I see that it is on again this year on New Year's Eve, but the truth is that (for me) The Big Lebowski has not aged very well, and I have no intention of going again.  (It didn't help that the thing dragged because of some pre-show activities going on at Hot Docs, so then I couldn't go see this other thing at the Tranzac Club and I also had a very mediocre Thai meal for dinner.)  I'm much, much more likely to make watching Tokyo Godfathers a holiday tradition, having seen it first at the Revue, then at Carlton.  And I am fairly likely to try to see it on Christmas Day, as there is not that much else that will be open.)  I don't know that it is a tradition proper, but interestingly The Fox is showing The Apartment sometime next week, and the Paradise is playing it on New Year's Eve, so I plan on catching it right after work on New Year's Eve at the Paradise.

I haven't managed to see more than a handful of Atom Egoyan films, but I saw Exotica at TIFF (a few years back) and then Speaking Parts at Paradise.  Egoyan actually showed up at both screenings to give some general comments and then a Q & A at the end, which was very cool.

I certainly can't remember everything I've seen, but there was a screening of quite a few restored Kurosawa films at the Revue (and Ran at the Fox, though that was a bit disappointing).  Playtime at the Fox.  I also saw a few Wes Anderson films there.  I'm pretty sure I saw The Life Aquatic (loved the Bowie songs in Portuguese!) and The Royal Tenenbaums at the Fox and maybe Moonrise Kingdom.  I've kind of worked backwards with Wes Anderson, oddly never having seen Rushmore or Bottle Rocket.

I saw The Shining and Midnight Cowboy for the first time at Carlton.  I saw Wong Kar-wai's Chungking Express at Carlton, as well as In the Mood for Love.  I saw Linklater's Before Trilogy at the Revue in Feb.  I went ahead and watched Brazil again (mostly because Tom Stoppard just passed away) and enjoyed it more than the previous time, though I still think Sam Lowry is an absolute dolt at the police road block, so there are about 10 minutes of the film that I find really hard to watch.  Speaking of Gilliam films, I just saw 12 Monkeys again at the Carlton, slipping in just as the title sequence was wrapping up.  That was cutting it too close!  That's a pretty bleak film for sure.  And I saw Total Recall again, as well as The Matrix.  These movies really cry out to be seen on a bigger screen.

I managed to watch Akerman's Jeanne Dielman (and managed to sit through the entire thing without running to the washroom!), but I did not care for it at all.  It is absurdly over-rated.  I've seen it once is probably the best thing I can say about it.  I can pretty much guarantee if I had watched at home, I would have dropped it around the 40 minute mark.

In addition to seeing North by Northwest on 70 mm this past weekend, I managed to get a ticket to see Vertigo in 70 mm.  I've seen Rear Window a couple of times and North by Northwest three times on the big screen, but this will be the first time seeing Vertigo in the theatre, so that's exciting.

I've started watching more David Lynch films (after being really turned off by Eraserhead in college).  I saw Blue Velvet at TIFF and Wild at Heart at Carlton.  In Jan., I am planning on watching Mulholland Drive at Paradise.  So I only need to see Lost Highway (maybe at the Revue?) to catch up with the movies that I had expected to see at the movie theatre at Yonge-Dundas Square (but they changed the schedule on me!).

I finally got around to watching Thelma and Louise!  I saw Kajillionaire, which was really good.  This was a film that really got squelched by COVID.  It was shown as part of Queer Cinema Club over at Paradise.

I try to get to most of the Queer Cinema Club offerings, but I definitely have missed a few.  Can You Ever Forgive Her? and Guidance were both films I wouldn't have watched except for QCC.  Over time, I've now managed to watch 4 or so Fassbinder films, including most recently Fox and His Friends.  (This is another case where I have quite a lot on DVD but I really am trying to watch the films for the first time in a cinema...)

I just watched Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (yesterday in fact!).  I'm not sure I was actively avoiding it, but it wasn't that high on my list.  I thought there were some interesting parallels to Scorsese's After Hours.  Some people see these connections and others don't...  (It was a few years back that I managed to see Bringing Out the Dead again but wasn't able to swing After Hours.  I am waiting on my Blu-ray copy to arrive, but I definitely hope After Hours ends up at The Revue or Carlton...)

I don't watch nearly that many brand new movies, aside from Wake Up Dead Man, Honey Don't, the Running Man remake and Spinal Tap II.  (RIP Rob Reiner!)  But I did just catch Hamnet and thought that was pretty good, though longer than it needed to be (and more than a little emotionally manipulative...).  I'm likely to try to catch this Brazilian movie called The Secret Agent over the weekend.  We'll see.

Edit (12/20): I'm not sure if I should make a full list of all the movies that I would like to see (or rewatch) in a proper movie theatre, as it might be extremely long (like this partial list of plays I'd like to see), but there are a few that are top of mind, including Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well and Red Beard, as well as Amodovar's What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7, Huston's Key Largo, Lynch's Lost Highway and maybe Inland Empire, and Scorsese's After Hours (I just missed out at seeing this at TIFF but it seems like one that Carlton should run one of these days).  I suppose I am hoping for a Rohmer or an Ozu retrospective at TIFF, as these are probably the two most important directors that I have barely scratched the surface of their films, despite owning a huge number!  Bergman is sort of in that category as well, though I have seen four or five of his core films, so he and Fassbinder are basically in the same boat. 

Edit (12/25): I haven't introduced myself, but I am starting to recognize a few hardcore movie fans that are at all the key TIFF screenings.  I overhear them talking about how they have seen most of these movies for the second or third time, and how they are heading over to the Revue for additional movies.  (Yesterday, they were off to see Scrooged again.)  I think the main reason I don't is that, while I enjoy movies, I will almost always cut them first, when there is a conflict with a play or a concert, because they are essentially unchangeable and will be the same whenever I do finally watch them, unlike a live performance.  Granted, this may mean I need to watch them at home rather than on the big screen.  Last year there were mini-festivals at the Paradise for John Waters, and I only managed to get out to see Serial Mom (with Kathleen Turner), as well as for Mel Brook, and I only got out to see High Anxiety and Space Balls.  If I rated movies more highly, I would have found a way to get out to a few more.  Now that Paradise does seem to be screening more movies, I think I might sign up for a membership for 2026.  The Revue is still too far away, and I basically have written off The Fox.  Even though I suppose it would have paid off in the end, given how many Naruse movies I finally signed up for, I don't plan on getting a TIFF membership in 2026, though I would probably change my mind if they dp put on an Ozu or Rohmer retrospective.

Rough (Transit) Weekend

I'm back on the TTC, more or less full time, until the weather warms up and the streets are clear enough to cycle.  Now I did end up cycling a bit on Sat., though I hit a few chunks of ice on the "back roads" where traffic is much lighter (and they don't usually salt), so I did come reasonably close to wiping out.  I returned home on the major streets.  I may actually be able to bike on Wed. or Thurs.  It's supposed to be above freezing on Tues. as well, but I have to go out to the Theatre Centre, and I feel that is just pushing my luck.

Anyway, I biked back and forth from the Distillery because I was seeing Narnia (the Musical) at noon, and it was clearly going to take 40 or so minutes to get there on transit (and the preferred route was to take a bus along River St., which I have never taken, which didn't exactly instill a lot of confidence) versus 15-20 minutes on a bike.  In the end it took the upper limit, precisely because I had to slow down and watch for icy patches.  Interestingly, it felt colder coming back from the show, and the ride back was fairly unpleasant.

I did a couple of quick things at home and then decided I should go check out a few galleries, since I wasn't able to watch Wake Up Dead Man at a time that worked around my schedule.  However, had I known everything, I would definitely have planned things differently.  It wasn't until Castle Frank or so that they made a big announcement that Line 2 was completely shut down between St. George and Ossington!  Normally, I can live with Line 2 disruptions as long as the Broadview to Yonge stretch is open, but this time I was continuing on west.  I wanted to get over to Dufferin to get to Bau-Xi.  The shuttle bus was quite a nightmare.  It clearly added 20 minutes or so to the trip, and it was so crowded and uncomfortable.  I wasn't even able to get any reading done.  I only spent about 10 minutes at Bau-Xi.  I ended up leaving around 4:45, and I had no idea if I was going to make it over to 401 Richmond in time.  I actually let one bus go by, in order to take the Dufferin Express southbound.  The Dufferin Express wasn't really the problem, but then the Queen streetcar was pretty slow.  I made it to 401 Richmond around 5:30, and I was a bit steamed.  I would definitely have made it to both places by 5 pm had Line 2 not been compromised.  Fortunately, two or three galleries, including Gagne Contemporary, actually were open, so it wasn't a completely wasted trip.

Getting back was a huge struggle.  I decided I should try to take a streetcar across the city rather than deal with the replacement buses.  I rode up to College, only to just miss a streetcar.  Then I saw it turn down Spadina.  For some unclear reason, Carlton streetcars were diverting to Dundas.  The next streetcar (on College) was a Dundas car!  I didn't want to take the Dundas streetcar, so I hopped off as it also made the turn, and then the next Carlton car didn't stop, even though there were a bunch of us at the stop.  I was completely beside myself at this point and so angry with how badly and inconsistently the TTC and its drivers do things.  I figured I would just take the Spadina streetcar north and then walk over to St. George.  I sort of forgot that you can't be let out early (as on Bathurst) and you have to go all the way inside Spadina station.  Once there, I decided I might as well walk to Line 1 (which did have service at Spadina), take this south to St. George and then transfer back to Line 2.  As you might imagine, this took way, way more time than I had planned for, so I decided I would rather go straight on to Hirut, even though I would be early, rather than stopping off at home and be late.  (To top it all off, it was an extremely long wait for Line 2 to come, so it was pretty crap service all the way around.)

When I did get over to Woodbine, I needed to stop by the bank (as Hirut's cover charge is cash-only) and pick up a notebook and pen from Dollarama.  Fortunately, I had the time to do this.  Then I went in to Hirut and had their Ethiopian food, which is quite good fare, for a jazz club.  There was a septet playing.  I managed to get a lot of notes down in the notebook and a few more pages of the Stratford piece, which is starting to shape up.  At least getting home was generally easier, except the wait for the 72 bus was so long that I ended up walking the whole way down Pape.  Thanks for nothing, TTC!

On Sunday I had to get across the city again, but I figured I would take the Queen streetcar to Dufferin (and avoid Line 2).  However, there was a major problem with my plans.  As I was leaving, I scrambled around in my bag to make sure I had my phone.  I was totally sure I had my glasses in the bag as well (so didn't look for them when it would have been easy to fix), but this was not the case, however.  As I was already most of the way to Jimmie Simpson, I decided to go ahead and get my laps in, but then I would have to come home.  I cut it a bit short but still managed to get in 19 or 20 laps, which is a solid workout.  I made it back to the house, grabbed my glasses off the dining room table and turned back around.  I was reasonably fortunate that there was a 72 bus coming in only a few minutes.  (The vast, vast majority of the time I end up waiting 8 or more minutes, which is simply infuriating...)  I decided that the best course of action was to take Line 2 to Bay and hop off and catch a cab there, instead of at St. George where everyone would be looking for a cab.  This actually worked out pretty well, and I didn't have to order a cab after all.  I took the cab to Dovercourt.  I made it a couple of minutes late, but they held the movie about 5 minutes because of the huge TTC disruptions.  I was there to see My Night at Maud's, which is incredibly the first Eric Rohmer movie I've watched (even though I own most of his films on DVD!).  I recall that there was another Rohmer movie I wanted to see, but I just couldn't make it work.  I believe this was likely Pauline at the Beach, though it might have been Maud's.  At any rate, I'll try to catch Pauline the next time it comes around.  I thought Maud's was maybe a bit too intellectual in places, but it's probably as good a place as any to start with Rohmer.

I didn't have time to eat anything, and I had to hustle over to Dufferin because I had exactly 45 minutes to get to TIFF to see North by Northwest (in 70 mm!).  I was lucky that the next bus was a Dufferin Express, and I got down to King fairly quickly, though once again Dufferin to John seemed to take forever.  I made it with something like two minutes to spare, hit the john and then slipped into my seat just before the Rolex commercial.  The movie was great.  I actually saw a clean print in 2024 at Scotiabank.

I went to an Indian place for dinner, then dropped by work but only for about 30 minutes.  Then I went back out to Scotiabank to see Wake Up Dead Man.  It was an overly complex plot with a few moments that I would consider cheats (where they show the audience something that didn't happen).  For a few moments I thought they were claiming that the Monsignor had faked his own death a la Juliet (from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet) but that wasn't the path they went down fortunately.  So it was a long day of movies.  I took the streetcar back rather than deal with any further pain of breaks in the subway service.  I probably did try to fit too much in, given the vagaries of transit (and not being able to bike (much) in the winter). 

Did I learn my lesson?  No, because on Monday I went straight from Huston's The Dead at Paradise to a play reading session down on College.  Because I was at Dovercourt, which is almost exactly between Dufferin and Ossington, Google said the best transit route was just to walk it, so I did.  Go figure. 

 

Mikio Naruse at TIFF

As always, TIFF giveth and taketh.  I found out pretty late about a really interesting Naruse retrospective at TIFF.  There are 6 new prints at the heart of this retrospective (though I have to say the one for When a Woman Ascends the Stairs had quite a few moments it went out of focus, though maybe that was the projectionist's fault?).  But because TIFF lets its members book for free, and then there is no revenue with these films, they banish them to the tiny top floor theatres, and no one else can get in.  It is the silliest membership program out there, leading to so many people being shut out.  I simply cannot support this, and indeed the whole membership thing made far more sense pre-COVID.  And out of principle, I just don't imagine ever being a member again, until they change their position on members booking every film free.

That said, I have been able to book tickets to 4 films:
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
Scattered Clouds
Floating Clouds
Late Chrysanthemums

I will keep trying every night or so to see if a seat for Flowing, Yearning or Sound of the Mountain opens up, though generally this won't happen until 3 or 4 days before each screening.  Sigh.

I actually had to move a ticket for Public Consumption at Factory after Woman Ascends the Stairs opened up, but it was worth it.

I will go from knowing a bit about Naruse but never having seen any of his films to having seen some of his core films.  I actually have an awful lot of these on DVDs (mostly from the UK!), but I find it is better for me to watch in the theatre, as I am locked in and focus much more under those conditions.  (I mean as long as the sight lines aren't terrible as they are at the Fox.)