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J. Robert continues to send in his informative Toronto fest reviews, and here’s his latest batch. Be sure to visit his entire thread for the complete series. -Doug

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Tuesday, September 9, 2003
Day 5 — Hump Day

by J. Robert Parks

By day five, I feel like an old hand. I know exactly where to go, how much time to allow myself, and how to navigate the various lines. People ask me for directions, and I know where to point. Not that I need it much, but I can even navigate the subway system. Mike Hertenstein …

ïThe Film Forum in New York has announced its premiere of Rialto Picture’s new print of Robert Bresson‘s masterpiece, Au hasard Balthazar (1966), for October 17-30, 2003. The film will then travel to other cities in the ensuing months. (And eventually appear on DVD.)

Their description:

A little donkey is suckled by its mother, then baptized
ìBalthazar;î a girl and boy say goodbye at the end of summer:
a vision of paradise. Years pass and the now-teenaged Marie
(Anne Wiazemsky, later Godardís wife and star, and today a
celebrated author) finds herself drifting into more and more
destructive situations,

J. Robert continues to send in his informative Toronto fest reviews, and here’s his latest batch. Be sure to visit his entire thread for the complete series. -Doug

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Monday, September 8, 2003
Day Four — A Day of Rest…and Masterpieces

by J. Robert Parks

Before Toronto I was talking with fellow Chicago critic Patrick McGavin. Now Patrick goes to Cannes every year and either Venice or Toronto most years. Sundance sometimes, Berlin other times. In other words, he’s a festival hound. So I asked him how he dealt with the inevitable fatigue that comes from …

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.”

–Paul Theroux

One of my sporadic interests is reading travel books–not the sort of glossy tourism guides that litter the discount racks of large bookstores, but the adventurous, personal nonfiction of established novelists (like Theroux) exploring the world in their own terms. And in the cinema, there is one filmmaker who has made this a genre all his own: Chris Marker. Though he, too, often doesn’t seem to know where he’s going, his powers of visual and aural juxtaposition and literate, poetic commentary are such that I don’t …

Friday, September 5, 2003
Day One

by J. Robert Parks

I arrived in Toronto about noon. The weather was gorgeous, low 70s (Fahrenheit) and sunny. I’m struck as we fly into Pearson airport that Toronto occupies the same position on Lake Ontario as Chicago does on Lake Michigan. And as I walk around downtown, I notice other similarities: the congested sidewalks, the streets with high-end stores not far from streets with cheap Thai and Indian restaurants, the wonderfully diverse mix of people. I’ve heard so many people mention how clean Toronto is, but it doesn’t seem any cleaner than Chicago–except …

Not a lot of updates this week, but I’m building steam for next week. Tonight, I’ll be attending the Chris Marker retrospective at the American Cinematheque with my friend and fellow cinephile, Jonathan, who’s driving all the way up from San Diego to see Remembrance of Things to Come (2001), Marker’s latest essay film. Stay tuned for reviews of the films in this series.

And in the spirit of AngËs Varda, Chris Marker, and the Left Bank filmmakers appearing in my blog of late, I just received the French Region 2 DVD box set of Alain Resnais’ Eighties films: …