Day nine -- and my last full day in Toronto and being a good but borring boy unlike the FrightFest party boys messers McEvoy and Newton, I was up nice and early and off to the Cumberland. The Cumberland is by any stretch of your imagination not Toronto's best movie house. Toronto's best cinema without a doubt is the Scotia Bank. I know, a cinema named after a bank - just seems daft. We still know it as the Paramount, which was its name before the rebranding. Anyway, when you enter the Cumberland it is obvious that someone, in this case Alliance Film Distributors, one of Canada's largest, had some spare space in their headquarters building, which is above. I can just imagine that some bright spark must have said "what can we do with all this spare space downstairs?". "I know, let's build a cinema". They then shoehorned in as many screens as possible. The screens are all funny sizes and shapes -- some are long, some are squat. It's generally not the greatest place to see a film.

I got there just in time to catch the start of Whip It. Directed by Drew Barrymore the film starts Ellen Page in her first major role since Juno. Considering the early hour, 8:45 AM, I joined a surprisingly large house to watch this crowd pleaser. It was well worth the effort of getting out of bed so early. The film is a lot of fun with infectious performances from the cast. There are some real laugh out loud moments and this was a perfect start to my final day.

Then it was a quick dash upstairs to another of the Cumberland's screens to see Suck. With a long list of cameo appearances, seemingly the biggest in a Canadian film ever - including Henry Rollins as a shock jock, punk godfather Iggy Pop is a crazed record producer and Alice Cooper as the film’s Vampire in Chief. The film was an interesting attempt at connecting the undead and unemployable losers. It had its moments. It didn't quite work, but nonetheless it was an entertaining 90 minutes. The film has been acquired by Universal world-wide so expect to see it in your local DVD shops sometime next year.

I’m off on my trip to Denver and the wilds on New Mexico, before rejoining Mr M in Austin, where I believe we will be joined by quite a few familiar faces. Look forward to reading all about it in our Post Cards from Austin.

Until the next time…..

Ian.

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