First up was Daydream Nation, a Canadian film and the directorial debut of Michael Goldbach which stars Kat Dennings, Josh Lucas and Reece Thompson. Dennings plays a recent small town transplant trying to reinvent herself against a backdrop of constantly stoned fellow students, a long burning industrial fire outside of town and, oh yeah, a serial killer wreaking havoc on the county. She begins an illicit affair with one of her teachers (Lucas) while also developing a relationship with a fellow student (Thompson) who has his own boatload of issues.
I really liked the movie and I'm going to give most of the credit for that to Dennings who is just gorgeous and compelling onscreen. Lucas was also great in a role that was a departure from anything I'd seen from him. The Director and cast attended and did a post film Q&A and told some entertaining stories about how they got involved with this dark little movie. I always like seeing debuts from directors at the festival because there's some vicarious excitement in being part of someone's being night and this was no exception.
After the movie we were wandering past the Ryerson exit and decided to stick around to watch the red carpet for Passion Play which was fun. Brian Austin Green has aged incredibly well. Mickey Rourke, as everyone knows, really hasn't. Megan Fox is gorgeous even though she looks a bit like her own waxed figure to me. And Bill Murray might just be the coolest man in the world.
The next movie was the midnight madness world premiere of Super from director James Gunn starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Liv Tyler (who all attended the screening) and featuring Kevin Bacon and Nathan Fillion (one of my TV boyfriends).
First, the midnight madness atmosphere was a lot of fun and I have to give kudos to the programmer Colin Geddes who seems to love his job and gave a fun and energetic intro to the film.
The movie itself seems like the latest in the 'superhero spoof' genre (see: Kickass) and stars Wilson as a bit of a sad sack who's wife leaves him for a drug dealer (Bacon) and drives him to create a real life superhero 'Crimson Bolt' with the encouragement of a local comic store clerk (Page) who pesters him to become his sidekick. Too be honest, it had a little too much blood and gore for my liking but fans of Gunn's 'Slither' will undoubtedly expect nothing less. But other than having to avert my eyes on a few occasions I enjoyed the movie, and the Holy Avenger tangents were particularly entertaining.
The post film Q&A was a lot of fun and totally entertaining. Gunn gave much of the credit to getting the film kick started to his ex-wife Jenna Fischer (of the Office) who apparently suggested Wilson for the role. Ellen Page seemed to enjoy playing this crazy character and Liv Tyler was stunning. Gunn also talked a lot about how he likes to make movies with his friends who've shown up in pretty much everthing he's done which also added to the party atmosphere on the stage. Which could have also been helped by the fact that it was almost 2 o'clock in the morning.
On that note, I need to get some sleep before the three movies on the schedule for tomorrow. I'll have to get to Saturday's movies next time.
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