I high-fived the Energizer Bunny today.

Day three at TIFF and I have big plans! Take a guess on what usually happens when I have big plans. If you guessed “Everything works out perfectly!” then you’re a moron. If you guessed, “A hell of a lot went wrong” then you get the prize of a side of breakfast sausages. I told you it was the year of pork.

The first movie I planned on catching today was called Never Let Me Go and starred Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley. I needed to be down at the theatre by 9:30am. I woke up at 9:41am. Gold. So, that didn’t work out. However, since I enjoyed The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo so much on Sunday night, I decided to catch part 2 of the trilogy, The Girl Who Played With Fire. This was even better than the first one. I liked it quite a bit. It was directed by Daniel Alfredson. How that guy manages to captain the Ottawa Senators and make a movie at the same time is beyond me. That’s some good multi-tasking. In part two our Girl takes on more wife-beaters, rapists and sex traffickers. She uses an axe at one point. I love this girl. Obviously, there’s much more to it, but if you haven’t read the books or seen the first movie then I do not want to spoil it for you. Go watch the movies.

Film number two today was called Everything Must Go and it stars Will Ferrell in a serious role as an alcoholic who loses his job, gets thrown out by his wife and lives with his possessions on his front lawn. With no job, no money, no phone (he smashed it), no home (wife changed the locks) and no life basically, he uses a city zoning clause that allows him to have a yard sale for 5 days. It wasn’t your typical Ferrell film and I think the guy can actually act. The movie was predictable, but it’s worth seeing him branch out a little bit. The projector broke just before the movie started and then my pen exploded in my back pocket. Good times.

Leaving the theatre is where I saw the Energizer Bunny. He’s big. He was also giving out free batteries. Hooray.

Up next was my third documentary at TIFF. Before I get into it, just as the movie is starting, I popped out to the concessions to grab a drink. A mix of Orange Fruitopia and Sprite (Thanks Nick) when I came back in, a small Asian man had moved all of my belongings and sat in my seat. What made it worse was the TIFF volunteer that was standing next to my seat let it happen. I take back any nice things I said about the volunteers. I asked the volunteer why she didn’t say anything to the guy, but before she could answer I brushed her off and grabbed my belongings. I may or may not have smacked the small Asian man with my newspaper. Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with Asians. The man was Asian and I like to be thorough when telling a story. Anyway…the movie…it was called Game of Death. It was a French film that took an experiment conducted at Yale University back in the ’60s and recreated it. Yale scientists were analyzing the human condition and took a group of men and put them into two groups: “Teachers” and “Students”. The groups were separated by a wall where the men couldn’t see each other but they could hear each other. The ‘teachers’ would asks questions and every time a ‘student’ got one wrong, the teacher would administer an electric shock to the ‘student’ by flipping a switch with each incorrect answer resulting in a larger voltage of shock. The teachers could hear the painful screams of the students begging them to not shock them anymore. It turns out 62% of the teachers asked all the questions and kept shocking the students. It also turned out that the students were actors and weren’t really being shocked. So, these French filmmakers decided to do this experiment again, but this time in the guise of a game show. I don’t really want to spoil the results for you, but let me say that people nowadays are much more horrible than in the ’60s.

Small note: the guy sitting next to me at the internet cafe right now smells awful.

The next film I wanted to see was the new Werner Herzog documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I couldn’t get a ticket for this, so I thought I’d check out the ‘rush’ line for last minute seats. There were 60 people ahead of me a full 90 minutes before the movie was to start. Fuck that. I didn’t bother even trying. On the bright side, I hit up the free soda stand once again. I don’t think I’m taking advantage of it yet.

I ended up checking out a documentary called Exit Through the Gift Shop. What started out as a film about graffiti and street artists ended up being more about the director of the film and his transformation from director to a street artist himself. A good chunk of this movie is about British street artist Banksy. If you haven’t seen this guy’s art, you have to check it out. I’m a fan of good graffiti and it was pretty amazing to see how fast some of these guys do it and it was also very cool that they let a guy with a camera follow them around. It was ridiculously short (80 minutes), but I liked it a lot.

Before I left the theatre I hit the washroom and saw for the first time nerdy bathroom wall writing. Where I assume used to be a towel rack there was a bracket still attached to the wall with a very small whole in the middle. Beside the bracket was this: “If you shoot a photon torpedo down this exhaust port the whole station would be destroyed.” Nerds Unleashed! As I was leaving the theatre, I held the door for an employee who was carrying garbage out and he turned to me like he was a shoe shine boy in the 30’s and said, “Thanks Mister!”

Back to back to back movies at the same theatre tomorrow. Joy.

P.S. I’m fully aware that a National Hockey League player did not direct The Girl Who Played With Fire.