TIFF 2005: Getting Excited

It’s that time of year again. This year will the 11th year that I’ve attended the Toronto International Film Festival. Brooke and I are splitting a 30-film coupon book, so I’ll probably end up with somewhere between 15 and 18 films. The full list of films was just released yesterday, and I’m beginning to get excited. I try to see a mixture of “Hollywood” films that will get released and smaller foreign films that may not. Here are a few that look interesting so far:

Of course, this is all preliminary. We don’t get the actual schedule and full programme book until next week, so I’ll have to see what fits. I don’t take any days off work, and in addition, this year Brooke and I are taking a Spanish class twice a week in preparation for our trip to Uruguay in November. Hope I can squeeze everything in!

Milan, We Hardly Knew Ye

This is it, folks. My first football-related fan post. Liverpool striker Milan Baroš is in talks with German club Schalke, despite his desire to stay with Liverpool. I’ve grown to like the happy-looking Czech, especially after two impressive goals in Liverpool’s 4-3 win over Olympiacos in Liechtenstein last weekend (a game I saw only through the magic of BitTorrent). But Liverpool now has four strikers, with the recent acquisition of storky Peter Crouch, and that’s probably one too many.

So, Liverpool is one of my Premiership favourites, mostly due to their perennial underachievment (notwithstanding their fantastic come from behind victory over AC Milan in the Champions League final in Istanbul a few months ago). My other favourites for this season will be Manchester City (shadow-dwellers) and recently promoted Sunderland (giant-killers?).

Lost In My Football Obsession

Well, that is partially true. But I’ve been feeling incredibly run-down most of this month, and not too excited about updating here. We’ve had the hottest summer in memory and I’ve just been sapped of energy. I also might be sick. Think I’ll see the doctor next week if nothing improves.

As for the footie obsession, I found an amazing free online game called HatTrick, where thousands of teams compete against each other every week. It’s a tech geek’s paradise, too, because there are all sorts of plugins and statistics to help you get the jump on the other guy. I also picked up a copy of Football Manager 2005 on eBay. It’s almost impossible to find here (where it’s called World Soccer Manager 2005) but is hugely popular in the UK, where it outsells most other PC games by a wide margin. It also has a robust online community who contribute patches, skins, and roster updates to keep the game as realistic as possible. Both of these games have been instrumental in my ongoing education about the “beautiful game”, as has the excellent series History of Football: The Beautiful Game, narrated by the supercool Terence Stamp.