bibliotaphsblog: We went to TIFF!

This past weekend we both went to TIFF and my mom tagged along because she's awesome and likes spending time with us. Our first TIFF experience was two years ago when Meg and I decided to go spontaneously. Last year just my mom and I went because Meg had just moved back to NB and things were too hectic for her to make it. We were very happy to go as a group of three this year.

TIFF is different for everyone. Meg is there predominately for the movies, and I am definitely there for the celebrities. I like movies but I am obsessed with celebrities. TIFF, for me, is about opportunities to come face to face with the stars. The first year we went we had no idea what to expect. It just so happened we both wound up in the lobby of a building with Anna Kendrick and Jennifer Aniston. We watched them hug and before we could pick our mouths up off the ground to realize what was going on we were swarmed by movie-goers and almost lost an eye. We have been trying to re-live this experience ever since.

For those of you who aren't as familiar with TIFF, it's an international film festival in Toronto that spans two full weekends and a week in September. Many of the movies don't have trailers, etc. but you can search their website for ones with directors or casts you may like and buy tickets. It is still going on now, so definitely check out the website if you want to see any movies. The cast and director are usually there on opening night (if not for the first few shows). Last year my mom and I went the second weekend and I was disappointed because there weren't a lot of movies premiering and therefore, limited celebrities. We made sure to go the first weekend this year to up our chances of seeing famous people.

The movies we saw were:

American Pastoral directed by Ewan McGregor

Trespass Against Us directed by Adam Smith

Barry directed by Vikram Ghandi

Lion directed by Garth Davis

The Bleeder directed by Philippe Falardeau

I am absolutely not going to start reviewing the movies, primarily because Meg would kill me and secondly because that's not the point of this post. In brief, they were all good, but my favourites were Trespass Against Us and Lion. Lion actually has a trailer you can watch here. American Pastoral was a premiere which means the cast was all there. (Spoiler alert: Meg will review this book later this week on the blog, as the film is an adaptation of Philip Roth's novel by the same title. She will talk a little more about the film at that point too.) We lined up for a long time to make sure we saw Ewan McGregor, Jennifer Connolly and Dakota Fanning (Meg's girl crush)- and later that night we walked into oncoming traffic because we spotted Dakota's blonde locks across the street. I was fairly bummed because we didn't see Michael Fassbender at Trespass Against Us, but we did see cast members at both Barry and Lion, and the directors were at all five.

What follows will be a series of pictures from the weekend. In the future we may try to do a better job of editing pictures to go on here. I say 'may' because neither of us are great at photography and that seems like an empty promise. If you can bear our amateur skills, enjoy!