About Movies: Atlantic Film Festival Blog

I am somewhat saddened that due to a conflation of poor planning, vacation timing, parenthood, and crap at the office, that I won’t be seeing nearly as many films this year at the Atlantic Film Festival as I have in past years.

However, my weekly poker pal Carsten (no, you can’t call him Bu’)–one of who’s hats is that of freelance film reviewer–is covering the festival this year for The Coast, Halifax’s free weekly. (Think “Echo”, “Now”, “The Eye”, etc). That makes him a fully accredited media member of the festival, and I think means he gets to spend two weeks sleeping in, watching movies, and going to fabulous parties. (I think that’s pretty much the normal life of the freelance writer, except for the fabulous parties, but this time he’s getting paid for it!)

Carsten is also running a blog [Atom feed] for The Coast of his observations and thoughts during the festival, which means I can at least vicariously participate at a much deeper level than circumstances allow–plus I can find out things like the fact that Carsten has been this close to Famke Janssen in a leather outfit. This temporary blog really shows Carsten’s personality, and even includes quotes from a movie that both Carsten and I consider personal favourites.

Here’s a taste:

I wake up with a tickle in my throat. No! No! I will not be sick! Not now! I OD on Vitamin C and Echinacea and check out Lie With Me at 10 AM. The new film by Clément Virgo, Toronto-based director of Rude and The Planet of Junior Brown, based on a novel by his wife, Tamara Berger. This is another film I can’t say too much about, but I will address the buzz, which has to do with the so-called explicit nature of the (many) sex scenes. Good God! Erections! Puh-leez. Anyone who gets up in arms over this needs to go back and watch Last Tango in Paris. It’s 2005, you prudish wankers. Anyway, the story follows Leila (Lauren Lee Smith) as she hits the mid-summer club scene in Toronto. It’s the story of a woman who relates to the world through sex, but who is also a total innocent in other ways. I wonder if this may be the first in a new wave of frank, unselfconscious Canadian movies. I fucking hope so. It’ll impress the French, if no one else.

Note also, that despite whatever damn lies you may hear, I can not in any way be held responsible for the sad state of Carsten’s immune system.