Viggo's penis wins People's Choice Award

Too tired to blog again... Will talk about more movies next week...

But Eastern Promises won the People's Choice Award at the festival. To understand what the title of this post means (and yes, to see his penis)... go see the film. Ironically, it didn't win the best Canadian film prize (which is a juried prize) which went to Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg. Now, I'm all for avante guard films and must say I (mostly) enjoyed Maddin's very strange film The Saddest Music in the World in which Isabella Rosellini's character has a glass leg full of beer... But I saw Maddin's film in last year's festival, called Brand Upon the Brain and in spite of some cool gimics like having not only a live orchestra, but also live sound effects artists you could watch to the side of the screen (it was a silent movie...) I found it tedious and left before the end. So, needless to say, I did not pick My Winnipeg as one of my movies this year.


Eastern Promises was a good film. Definitely worth seeing. It's film noir but with Cronenberg's horror film stamp on parts of it. Examples are the way he shows things like throats being cut or even a baby being born... But for me Eastern Promises wasn't as good as A History of Violence that I thought had so many more layers... Speaking of film noir... I saw Eastern Promises last Sunday morning at 9:30 am. Cronenberg introduced the film, and seemed truly perplexed that 1200 or so people would show to see such a dark film so early in the morning. He called it, "the world premiere screening of the film in the morning." LOL

Runner up for the People's Choice award (I heard from someone in a line) was Juno, a really great little film that I blogged about the day I saw it... Not sure when this film is opening, but I really hope it does well. I thought it was so genuine and unique and true. (Not to mention laugh out loud funny. I want to see it again to hear the lines the audience laughed over.)

The festival is over for 2007... I skipped my first and last films today, but still managed to see four. My last film actually doesn't start for another four minutes... But I was too tired to stay to see it.

Will post more thoughts on the films and the fest all next week.