tiff2016 - it's what we do

Catfight

Directed by: Onur Tuket
Starring:  Anne Heche, Sandra Oh, Alicia Silverstone

Telling the story of a chance reunion between 2 former college friends that goes wrong, way wrong Catfight is a unique black comedy which delivers pointed commentary on the haves, have nots and what happens when the haves become the have nots and vice versa.  Playing the college friends - splintered by an unknown incident back in the day which fuels all their subsequent interactions - Anne & Sandra are bitter, cynical, angry and mean.  Their interactions are shocking and jarring, based on physical violence which becomes the cause of these transformations of class.  In a nutshell, they pummel the shit out of each other and lose it all.  The pummelling is completely over the top and cringe worthy.  I react to most violence on screen today with a bit of a shrug.  Okay, an explosion.  Yeah, that building collapsed.  Ah, machine guns.  But physical violence in its most base form - simply punching each other to almost death - is so cringeworthy.  Anne & Sandra were great in this and were completely girl crushing on each other at the Q&A.  Give this one a whirl if you can handle some punches.

Trespass Against Us

Directed by: Adam Smith
Starring: Brendan Gleason, Michael Fassbender

As a complex character study of a man trying to break free from the life he was born into, Trespass Against Us hits all the right notes for me.  Michael is the oldest son born to father Brendan, the head of an outlaw British crime family - they're thieves and thugs, living in a communal trailer park of sorts working jobs as directed by patriarch Brendan.  Michael is married, he has two kids.  He wants to be done.  He wants out.  But we all know this isn't easy.  The core of this film is Michael - his portrayal of the hardened criminal and soft hearted Dad who wants more for his family, but whose own family, and circumstances, will not make this possible is nuanced and real.  As every chance he takes to break free is thwarted he loses hope, gains frustration and our sympathy builds.  This one issn't perfect, it did drag at times, but if you keep your eyes on Michael you won't be disappointed.

tiff16 - it's what we do

Things to Come 

Directed by : Mia Hansen - Love

Starring : Isabelle Huppert

I hate it when this happens.  You start your festival full of hope and promise and end up on movie one with ... a dud.  Things to Come chronicles the life of a tightly wound philosophy teacher in Paris as she manages things life throws her way.  Well, all right.  Unfortunately, nothing much really happens by way of plot or narrative and I NEED NARRATIVE so this felt so flat to me.  I spent much of my time wondering when Isabelle Huppert was going to have some mad sex with her hot protege.  Sadly for both of us, this never happened.  Huppert was quite solid overall in this one, though and with 4 other films at the Festival let's hope this is the only dud for her too.

Free Fire

Directed by: Ben Wheatley

Starring:  Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy,  Armie Hammer, Sam Riley

Midnight Madness at TIFF is complete wild vibes.  The audience skews younger than your average TIFF audience, they are jacked and ready for the edgy fare coming their way.  Generally speaking, films programmed for MM are of the horror, supernatural or all together weird variety.  This is decidedly NOT my jam, but a few years ago I stepped out of my comfort zone with a MM film as I figured if I'm going to Festival I need to MM too and I've been selecting a film from this program ever since.  That said, my picks are generally the mildest on the roster as life is scary enough who needs to be scared at the movies?!  Ben Wheatley's Kill List popped by MM cherry that first year,  and I've been oddly following his films ever since.  He brought High Rise to the Festival last year, and has returned now with Free Fire.  Free Fire is manic, hilarious and 90 minutes of pure fun.  Set in one location and taking us through a weapons deal that goes awry this movie is tight, tight tight.  Crisp, crackerjack script.  Over the top action.  Nuanced acting.  Killer soundtrack.  Not much wrong with this one in my books.  I'm a fan for life Ben!

1 out of 2 ain't bad for Day 1, but let's work on those numbers, shall we?  Today's roster takes me to a reunion of old high school friends gone wrong and a tale of a family of outlaws (i.e the mob.  I love the mob.)

Look.  I don't want to talk about where I've been or what I've been doing or why I haven't been writing.  I have reasons - not excuses, REASONS - but I just don't want to get into them right now.  What I want to get into is I'm here now and that's all that should matter.  Okay?  Okay.  We can get to all that other stuff later, whether you want to or not.

tiff2016 - it's what we do

Oh, yeah it is.  It's the eve of what is undoubtedly the best time of year to be a resident of Toronto, and as usual my crew of monkeys is locked and loaded for what is shaping up to be a pretty fantastic festival.

Looking at my roster, 24 films deep,  I'm pretty certain that I'll be high level depressed for the next 10 days.  Why year after year I continue to pick engrossing tear jerkers is beyond me, but perhaps we can explore that a little more later too.  

So tomorrow it is.  Stay tuned - as they say - for reviews, observations, musings and hopefully not too much sleep deprived blather.   I'm excited, and happy to be back.  

Got Style? Get Style!

Got Style?  Get Style! *

Finally!  Spring is here and alongside warmer weather and patio season comes a mild panic as you try to navigate through the fashion establishment’s trends for what’s in this season.  It’s okay to admit it fellas - we’re all in the same boat here.  Rifling through fashion magazines often leaves me shaking my head as I try to figure out how to make outfits remotely suitable for Planet Earth, let alone my own closet.  

What’s more important than following the latest trend is feeling comfortable in your own skin and marking your own type of individuality onto the look of the moment.  This credo saves those who are both too lazy or too poor to reinvent their wardrobe every season - and, seriously, who isn’t?  It also helps you steer away from following trends that are just damn silly (recall the shorts suit trend of last year?).  

Aside from massaging the what’s in & what’s out for your own comfort zone, there are a few things you must do every season and all the time to make sure you’re in style and fashionable.  It has nothing to do with what you’re wearing, but everything to do with how you’re wearing it.  To wit:

Tailor Me, Tailor You!

There’s nothing worse in the world of style than sloppiness.  Sure, grunge was a thing, but thankfully it’s not anymore which means you have no excuse for wearing clothes that don’t fit properly.  Pants should be hemmed.  Suit sleeves too.  Please don’t buy your dress shirts too short - your wrists want to wear your shirt too!  Common sense stuff that isn’t too hard to do.  So do it.  

Sock ‘Em!

Pity the working stiff who goes to work in a suit and has only the sock as his outlet of fashion creativity.  I love socks.  Stripes, polka dots, splashes of fun colour - go wild!  Just make sure the socks you’re wearing are appropriate for what you’re wearing.  I’m talking white, short gym socks with your suit.  NO.  Just.  Don’t.

Shoe’s the Thing!

I could write a PhD dissertation on men’s footwear, but for the sake of brevity  and your own boredom I’ll keep it brief.  Fellas, your shoes tell your story.  I do not overstate.  Do you want your story to be ultra-casual-not-a-care-in-the-world-lets-grab-a-bud Teva’s or i’ve-sort-of-got-it-together scuffed Brogues?  Unless you’re auditioning for a part in Jesus Christ Superstar, trust me when I say no one wants to read your Birkenstock story.   Be deliberate.  Choose wisely.  I am available for consultations.

Ultimately, much of what many consider stylish or not does amount to personal preference.  Unless you’re Jake Gyllenhaal (and if you are, Hi!  Huge Fan!  Can’t wait for Southpaw!), I’m not much of a beard person.  I don’t really like guys in shorts.  I prefer solids to patterns.  The list goes on, but it goes without saying that I’ve seen many a fine fella rocking all of these looks and more.  What makes them stand out from the crowd is a touch of swagger and, of course, the essential fashion staple for any season:  a sexy smile.  

*Originally published April 17th, 2015 in Ego Magazine Online.

Be Normal

Be Normal*

Look I get it.  I really, really do.  Dating, for the most part, can be pretty terrible.  It’s hard enough meeting someone in the cold hard city, let alone having that someone be a someone that you want to date. But let's just say you did find this person, and you want to date them and maybe you sort of get the feeling that they kind of like you and want to date you.  So,  what do you do?   How do you not screw it up?   How do you make sure that you don’t assume they’re screwing it up as you both try to figure out what to do when and how to say it?

There is a way, I think, to navigate through these murky waters of dating whether it's online or set ups or a well meaning (yet meddlesome) Aunt:  let’s all just act normal.  And by this I mean real life human being normal, not the kind of normal we think is now normal because we’ve been dating in this cesspool for so long. Real life human being normal where we treat a person who we think we might like and think might like us as a normal human being, and we in turn act like a normal human being.  REVOLUTIONARY!

Is it normal, after meeting someone and having a grand ol’ time, to take their number and never use it?  No, no, it’s not.  Is it normal to never hear from someone again after you've gone on two or three kinda good dates? No, my friends, it isn’t.   What about waiting more than a day to reply to someone's message?  Nope, that’s not normal either.   How about dating someone for a while yet never meeting their friends?  That’s right, not normal!   Of course there may be reasonable explanations to all this behaviour, but death, amnesia or being whisked into a witness protection program, while unfortunate and certainly possible, aren’t really normal occurrences either.  

The basic credo of treating one another as human beings serves us well in all facets of life, so why can’t we extend this philosophy to the one activity where we should really be putting our best selves forward?  Not the super cool player (not normal) self or the I’m so hot and desirable I don’t need to call anyone back (not normal) self, but the normal human being self that you are on the regular.  Come on.  I know you’re in there.  Be normal.  Can you be normal?

*Originally published March 27, 2015 in Ego Magazine Online.

Birthday

Today would have been my Dad's 79th birthday.

While I can't be entirely sure what my Dad would have been like at 79, I'm pretty sure it would have been much like the guy he was a 39, 49, 59 and 69 : a tenacious straight shooter who had the remarkable ability to cut through life's crap, get the job done and give some damn good real talk advice and opinion, even when you sometimes didn't really want to hear it.

It's this real talk that 7 years later I've come to miss the most.  Well, aside from all the other things about him that I miss the most depending on what time of day it is and where the memory of my mind happens to take me.  His skill at talking my Mom off the ledge of worry, or bringing my brother and his big dreams back down to Planet Earth was nothing short of legendary.  A silent pause, hands folded in front of him, concentrated stare and a simple "Cool it, Pat" or "Gus, Slow Down" would snap the both of them back to reality.  Me?  I got "Calm Down" quite a bit.  ;)

I'm sure my Dad would have some (and by some I literally mean 5 or 6 well chosen words) sage advice for my current life situation - Homeless & Jobless 2014, Remember?!   He'd probably have told me to run for Mayor "You know you can do that job, Olga", and he'd have gotten tons of mileage out of his "Suitcase Olga" nickname for me (the best, right?), but I think he'd mostly have said something he told me years and years ago that I'll never, ever forget:  "You, I don't worry about."  When the most hard working, tough as nails dude tells  you something like that, you know you're going to be okay.  I'm going to be okay.

But today is his birthday.  And I miss him.  I miss the FamJam celebrations we used to have on this day as we celebrated his combo birthday and Name Day as a first step to the holidays.  I miss his smile.  His laugh.  And his little brushes of sentimentality which would slay me with their surprise and sweetness.  I'm tortured that my niece & nephews got short changed on having the most doting and fun Papou.  Christmastime now has a slight vibe of melancholy as these thoughts drift in and out of my mind, and I try to forget them but I don't want to because I don't want to forget him.  Tricky.

So I think of things he did that made me laugh and made me happy and after I cry about them, I smile and then cry some more.   He used to put together these ridiculous illustrative notes reminding us to do very simple, responsible stuff like lock the door at night, my favourite one is packed away in the boxes that are my life right now, so of course I'm sad that I can't exactly locate it.   But I did find something that made me happy, because it made him so happy.

When my Dad turned 70 my brother and I put together a little trip for him & my Mom to Halifax, Nova Scotia to see Pier 21 , Canada's Museum of Immigration.  This is where my Dad's ship had docked in 1951 when at the age of 16 he left Greece and embarked on a new life full of hope and tons of hard work.  We had commemorated his passage, as they say, with a brick on the Wall of Honour and we wanted him to see it himself.   The trip was perfect - full of memories, emotions and even a casino!  When they returned, my Dad couldn't stop talking about it - how amazing the museum was, how he found his name on the ship's manifest, his brick,  the videos of other immigrants telling their tales.  He went on and on.  He was so happy.  So appreciative.  So moved.

A few weeks after their return, I found an envelope with my name on it written in his handwriting on the kitchen table.  I remember smiling - I knew what it was, one of his infamous cards.  Painstakingly picked out, writing lined up with a ruler.

The writing's a bit askew on this one - my Mom said he was crying when he wrote it.  So much for the quintessential tough guy.  ;) - and I guess it's really nothing special.  But it is.  Because while we did make the trip possible, he made who we are possible.  Our work ethic, our attitudes, our characters, our everything.

So today, on what would have been his 79th birthday, I'll remember what was and try not to bog myself down on what could have been.  I know for sure that's exactly what my Dad would tell me to do.

Now What?

A little over three months ago, the company I toiled for for the past seventeen years kicked me to the curb.  Nothing scandalous, just a regular course of corporate contraction in which companies kick out the higher paid and bring in the lower paid.  It's a numbers game and I was caught on the wrong side of the ledger.  While I didn't see it coming, I wasn't entirely surprised - from a pragmatic point of view, it made no sense to keep me on when they could bring in someone to do fundamentally the same job for 50% less.  So much for loyalty.   While I'm annoyed at being turfed like that, I'm not altogether upset.  Would I have voluntarily left a job that was beginning to grate on my last nerve?  Due to loyalty and complacency and uncertainty, likely not.  I walked out the door with a pretty hefty package and tell people I was "fired" or "canned" because it sounds way more dramatic and fun than "laid off".

Big changes, indeed.  How's this for another:  a mere two days before I was turfed (also fun & dramatic!) I signed closing papers on my gorgeous downtown condo, a condo I put up for sale because I "wanted a change".

Why does the universe only listen to some of the things you say?

So, there I was and here I still am:  Jobless AND Homeless.

I had a ten minute "woe is me" meltdown where I contemplated how I went wrong in my life to find myself in such dire straights and what was I going to do and what a loser I was, wherein my brother (of course) told me to, and I quote "shut the fuck up.  you want me to feel bad for you?!  you have no obligations.  you have more money in the bank than most people.  you're getting paid to do nothing for a fucking long time.  no Olga.  no.  just shut up, shut the fuck up.  go do all those stupid things you do and stop feeling sorry for yourself.  no one's buying it." Because he's totally right, of course - all those things are completely true.  We are not dwellers or "woe is me" types in my family and I certainly subscribe to the family creed, but this was a huge big deal for me.  My everything was gone, I think ten minutes was an adequate time to wallow before having some sense whipped back into me.  

And with that, my summer of freedom started off remarkably well.  I was going to take this time, this "gift" as my previously severed (more dramatic than fun) co-horts referred to it, and just chill.  I was going to enjoy my first summer off since I was fourteen and just hang.  And hang I did.  I puttered.  I worked on a show with Second City.  I packed.  I had many coffees.  I did some pilates.  I ate.  I enjoyed the rascals. I started wearing my hair curly because I'm carefree now.  Summer came to an end, and in September I dove head first into TIFF.  And now it's October and I'm on a dream vacation in Asia where I had initially planned to sort of start thinking about what I'm going to do with my life.  Trouble is, I've spent more time contemplating Khao Soi Curry or Pad Thai for dinner.

It's just.  It's just so VAST.  The slate is clean.  I could move to Mumbai (likely not).  I could buy a little seaside cottage in Nova Scotia and work at a local craft store (this is the first time I thought of that one, and it sounds rather nice aside from the craft store part).  I could go back to school (for what I am completely unsure).  I could write a book (this is a dream of mine, and quite honesty I really really want to).   I could do all those things.  I could.  I could.  I could.  I could also get back on my corporate saddle and begin anew doing the same sort of thing I did before.  And therein lies the rub.  How wasted would this time, this "gift", be if I did that?  I would squander this chance to search inside myself, on someone else's dime, to find out what I truly want to do.  What I can truly be.  Who I truly am.  No freakin' pressure, none at all.   Which is why I feel somewhat paralysed.  I don't know what to do because I don't want to blow this.  Or, worse still, what if I find out that I really DO want to be a corporate in charge type who has all the answers and thanklessly gets the job done.  Quelle let down!  Now here's the best part:  I'm not totally worried about it.  I mean, I am generally concerned about where my life is headed - and we haven't even mentioned where I'm going to live! - just not overly so.  I have a belief that it will all work out, and not in some magical fairy dust kind of way but for real.  It will all work out for real because once committed I work damn hard.  And I'm not dumb (although, seriously, my computer skills are terrible so let's hope my new calling has none of that).  It's the unknown, the possibilities and the countless options I'm having trouble with.  Life's menu has far too many entrees on it right now.  And answering the million dollar question has me stumbling.

Now what?*

 

Someone who doesn't have it all figured out and doesn't seem to care, 
off  the coast of Koh Samui, Thailand.

* Any ideas on what I should do?  Where I should live?  TELL ME!  I'm all ears, and who knows ... I may just do it.