Posted by Alexander Huls
Not everything at TIFF can be great. Given the volume of movies that appear at the festival, everything being good would be statistically impossible. You’re always bound to see some duds, stinkers, and out right walk out worthy movies now and then. Naturally, this year was no exception. Here are the 5 worst films I saw at TIFF in 2014. (Two of which, disappointingly, came from my Top 10 most anticipated list no less)
Bang Bang Baby
It breaks my Canadian heart to put a homegrown film on this list. Especially considering that I was very much looking forward to this. Sadly, Bang Bang Baby was the closest I ever came to walking out of a TIFF screening. There’s a lot of reasons. Ultimately though, it’s worst offense is not only being a bad musical that fails at being the bubbly 50s call-back it wants to be, but how it twists itself into simplistic cynical take on the genre that is not original, effective, or welcome. It’s a shame because Jane Levy gives a standout performance in the movie. It’s just too bad it’s wasted here.
An Eye For Beauty
Unfortunately another Canadian entry on this list, I’ll give Denys Arcand’s latest film one thing: it lives up to the “beauty” in its title. Beautiful people. Beautiful architecture. Beautiful vistas. Unfortunately none of it is particularly interesting. Nor does it ever feel like it’s ever coalescing into some sort of point. It just meanders, with significant characters disappearing for long stretches of times, or social commentaries are thrown in out of nowhere. Ultimately it boils down to that old cliché: all beauty, no brains.
REC4
I’m not sure I’ll ever understand how the filmmakers who made the tightly constructed, claustrophobic, terrifying ever got themselves to the point where they made something like. This boring, stupid, continuity-troubled movie with all the wrong instincts feels literally like different people made it. More specifically: people who either completely forgot what made the original so great, or who simply lost all their film making talent along the way.
Wasteland
It’s always a strange thing to watch a movie that is 100% convinced it’s pulling something off that it’s actually completely flubbing. Wasteland proceeds as if it’s done everything it’s supposed to in order to nail its noir meets David Lynch take on the old chestnut of a story about a cop becoming so obsessed with a case that his life begins to unravel. The problem is it wants to get to a dramatic place without putting in work like character development, or even basic explanations of why this case unspools this detective. The effect amounts to listening to someone deliver an academic conference lecture on fascism while mispronouncing the word the whole time.
The Cobbler
The hot streak Thomas McCarthy was on – The Station Agent, The Visitor, Win Win – has been destroyed. Spectacularly. It’s not just that instead of Adam Sandler making a McCarthy movie, McCarthy made an Adam Sandler movie. It’s that the director made a bad Sandler movie – weak slapstick, goofy fantasy, and bouts of intolerance. And that’s the case before you even get to the ending of The Cobbler, which is so patently absurd and misguided it actually caused my entire theater to burst out into laughter.
http://www.blogto.com/film/2014/09/the_5_worst_movies_at_tiff_2014/
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I was talking to a guy at the Toronto Zoo yesterday and he told me an interesting story:
Under the endangered species act, buying or selling
an endangered animal requires a permit. The permits are hard to get —
even for zoos and aquariums.
But there’s a loophole.
“If I donate or loan an endangered species to you, I need no permit,” says Kris Vehrs of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
The folks in North Carolina wanted jellyfish and snipe fish. The New England aquarium had plenty of jellyfish — but no snipe fish.
Steve Bailey, the curator of fish at the New England Aquarium, wound
up making a deal to get snipe fish from an aquarium in Japan, in
exchange for lumpfish. Then he sent the snipe fish and some jellyfish to
North Carolina. In exchange, he finally got his lookdown fish.
Another time, Bailey says, he traded 800 mackerel for a dozen puffins. “You can’t go out and buy puffins,” he says. “So we could have been sitting on a pile of $100,000 and we still would have been puffinless.”
Zoos do things a little differently. They don’t want to say a panda is worth a thousand turtles (or whatever), so there’s no direct bartering. Instead, the zoo giving up the animal gets good karma.
The Calgary Zoo recently decided that its three Sri Lankan elephants would fare better in a warmer climate. So the zoo started looking for a new home for the animals.
The animals were given a new, warmer home in Washington, D.C. The National Zoo paid for the transit, but the price for the elephants was zero.
And the karma system seems to have worked in Calgary. Another zoo gave Calgary a new Indian rhino and some Komodo dragons.
Still on the list: lemurs. Calgary wants lemurs!
But there’s a loophole.
“If I donate or loan an endangered species to you, I need no permit,” says Kris Vehrs of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums.
So a barter system has sprung up among zoos and aquariums to trade
animals without using money. They even do it with species that aren’t
endangered. But barter can be complicated.
For example: The New England Aquarium in Boston was recently in the
market for some lookdown fish, and they knew of an aquarium in North
Carolina that was willing to trade some.The folks in North Carolina wanted jellyfish and snipe fish. The New England aquarium had plenty of jellyfish — but no snipe fish.
Steve Bailey, the curator of fish at the New England Aquarium, wound
up making a deal to get snipe fish from an aquarium in Japan, in
exchange for lumpfish. Then he sent the snipe fish and some jellyfish to
North Carolina. In exchange, he finally got his lookdown fish.Another time, Bailey says, he traded 800 mackerel for a dozen puffins. “You can’t go out and buy puffins,” he says. “So we could have been sitting on a pile of $100,000 and we still would have been puffinless.”
Zoos do things a little differently. They don’t want to say a panda is worth a thousand turtles (or whatever), so there’s no direct bartering. Instead, the zoo giving up the animal gets good karma.
The Calgary Zoo recently decided that its three Sri Lankan elephants would fare better in a warmer climate. So the zoo started looking for a new home for the animals.
The animals were given a new, warmer home in Washington, D.C. The National Zoo paid for the transit, but the price for the elephants was zero.
And the karma system seems to have worked in Calgary. Another zoo gave Calgary a new Indian rhino and some Komodo dragons.
Still on the list: lemurs. Calgary wants lemurs!
https://www.wnyc.org/story/a-dozen-puffins-will-get-you-800-mackerel-inside-the-weird-economy-of-zoos/
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Here’s another one of those weird headlines for ya bunky!
“24-Year-Old Discovers She’s Missing Key Part of Brain”
I don’t know what the big deal is folks ……. BOTH of my kids had the same condition when they were teenagers!
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And one more headline: Pope says world’s many conflicts amount to piecemeal World War Three!
NOPE, WRONG KIDS, we have already had World War lll, it was called “The Cold War!”
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We see that Doug Ford is running for Mayor in place of his brother Rob.
Well, why not, he’s just like his brother, only without the addictions ………….., or the personality!
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Comedian Tom Green returned to Ottawa this week to take part in Yuk Yuk’s 30th anniversary celebrations……………., SHIT, I thought we had seen the last of him!
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Well, ladies and gentlemen, California, as we all know, has about the same number of people as all of Canada, and that’s too many!
So: Venture capitalist Tim Draper launched a measure to chop up the State into six smaller ones!
They didn’t get the required signatures ………………….., but it was a close one!
Had the measure passed, it would not have legally
split California immediately; consent would eventually need to be given
by both the California State Legislature and the U.S. Congress to admit
the new states to the union per Article IV, Section 3 of the U.S.
Constitution. Rather, the measure would have established several
procedures within the state government and its 58 counties that prepare
California for the proposed split, and instruct the Governor of
California to submit the state-splitting proposal to Congress.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Californias———————————————
SPEAKING ABOUT GEOGRAPHY: I guess ya heard about Apple’s geography lesson by now………….. they got all sorts of places wrong on their new maps.
(I guess the funniest thing was when they switched the locations of Ottawa and Toronto)
We can’t be too harsh with them kids, after all, a lot of Americans can’t even point to Canada on a map!
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AND FINALLY, boy have we got one giant “ASSHOLE OF THE DAY!”
This guys’ secretary got cancer so he fired her BY LETTER!
A Pennsylvania woman who is battling pancreatic, liver, and ovarian cancer is also now out of a job, thanks to the oral surgeon, George Visnich, who employed her for 12 years.
Visnich laid her off in writing shortly after her devastating diagnosis, according to a letter written on his stationery that wound up posted on Facebook and then published the local newspaper this week:
“You are currently engaged in a battle against cancer
that will be demanding physically, mentally, and emotionally,” reads
the letter to Carol Jumper, 51, of Hopewell Township. “You will not be
able to function in my office at the level required while battling for
your life. Because of this, I am laying you off without pay as of August
11, 2014. Your last paycheck will be mailed to you this Friday,
8/15/14. Our thoughts and prayers are with you as you fight this
horrible disease. Thanks for your time at Visnich Oral Surgery. I hope
your battle is swift, smooth, and successful!”
The only thing he forgot to put in the note was this: NOW FUCK OFF!
https://www.yahoo.com/health/lay-off-letter-to-woman-with-cancer-causes-outcry-97308014352.html
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