Day: September 2, 2006

I was stuck on a really long (eight and a half hour), occasionally miserable Amtrak train trip earlier today from Toronto to Syracuse, N.Y. The purpose was to visit my son Jett , 18, who started freshman classes here a week ago. I’d forgotten about the intense squalor of freshman dorm life — the constant aroma of leftover pizza, the pizza take-out boxes and empty bags of chips scattered about, the leftover chicken-wing bones on the floor, the communal bathrooms, the stanky T-shirts and grubby socks and athletic shorts on the floor, the general pig-trough vibe.

Saturday, 9.2.06, 6:45 pm — notice the incongruent “S” letter in the the “S.I. Newhouse Communications Center” banner over the main doorway. The original “S” was lost and the school replaced it, but the replacement letter uses the wrong font. Tens of millions being spent at this university and they get somehting like this wrong. It’s like wearing a perfect $750 Italian suit with one of the buttons being the wrong color.

It was raining hard for three or four hours during the train trip, and the roof of the car I was sitting in was leaking water in six or seven different spots. Hang in there, Amtrak! The U.S. border police stopped the train to check passports, etc. (which is normal) but they kept everyone waiting for an hour and 45 minutes (which is bullshit). The food car sold bad coffee, cheese danishes, chips, shit sandwiches and the like. Bored-out-of-their-minds passengers were lined up all through the trip.
The trip kept me out of internet reach from 7:45 am until 6 pm and when I finally arrived I didn’t feel like jumping online because every now and then life is about something other than jumping online. (I was tempted to write a measured response to David Poland‘s rave review of Stephen Frears’ The Queen but I guess I can wait.) I just wanted to hang and talk and roam the campus and take pictures.
Last night Jett and I ate some truly foul pizza at one of the joints on Marshall Street, and I mean pizza so bad that that the Food and Drug Adminstration agents should be called in to make arrests.

The Toronto Star‘s Peter Howell polls some smarty-pants types about their most impassioned wanna-sees at the Toronto Film Festival…but only three choices each. Shoulda been four or five, and Howell should have also asked for their gut reactions about films they can’t wait to not see…the biggest Toronto Film Festival turn-offs, sight unseen.
I love it, incidentally, that Variety ‘s Robert Koehler said that two of his hottest can’t-waits are films directed by Abderrahmane Sissako (a film called Bamako) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (one titled Syndromes and a Century). I’m not saying or hinting that Weerasethakul and Sissako aren’t formidable filmmakers, but Koehler is always paying attention to out-of-the-way filmmakers of their calibre, and a good thing, that…because if Koehler didn’t do this, who would?

A very Canadian, “hooray for our side” view of the must-sees at the Toronto Film Festival in the Toronto Globe & Mail. Strictly for local consumption, although I too am keenly interested in seeing Sarah Polley‘s Away from Her, her feature directing debut.) Peter Howell‘s annual what-journos-are-hot-to-see piece in the Toronto Star will probably offer a better sum-up.

“It’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment when Neil LaBute‘s remake of The Wicker Man completely jumps the tracks. For some, it will be the scene where Nicolas Cage, in dire need of transportation, turns a gun on a passing bicyclist and melodramatically commands: “Step. Away. From. The Bike.” For others, it will be the fight scene that ends with Cage delivering a karate kick to a feisty Leelee Sobieski . (Take that, bi-yotch!) But for most, the point of no return will arrive during an extended climactic sequence that calls for Cage to pad about in a tacky bear costume. It’s so hilarious, it’s almost, well, unbearable.” — Joe Leydon on his Moving Picture blog, wriring in a much more down to it and funnier than his Variety review.