I know things have been pretty quiet around here since my big philosophical post last month. And while I’m still experiencing writer’s block when it comes to reviewing individual films, I haven’t been sitting around feeling sorry for myself. In fact, I’m busier than ever. In addition to coordinating the second edition of the CAST Awards (look for an announcement early in the new year), I’ve decided to take my long-gestating idea for a shorts screening public.

I’ve always enjoyed short films, but seeing them outside of festivals has never been easy. In fact, even at festivals, they’re usually bundled together in unpromising sounding packages like “Canadian Shorts 1″ or “Programme 6.” And the problem at the spectacular Worldwide Short Film Festival, where they group the films thematically, is just overload. I’ve always wanted to curate a regular program of films that would be something like a mixtape, and in 2009, I started doing it on a small scale.

I’d been a huge fan of Wholphin, a DVD “magazine” of short films from the people behind McSweeney’s, ever since the first one came out in 2005. By 2009, I was still amazed that hardly anyone I knew had heard of it, so I decided to screen a selection of films for a small group of friends at my apartment. It was a hit, and not only because of the cupcakes my wife thoughtfully provided. After running a few more of these nights, I wanted to share my enthusiasm and some great films with the rest of the city. Starting last winter, I began researching venues and licensing fees and possible partners, and I’m very happy to announce that we’re finally launching!

On January 13, 2012, at 7pm, Shorts That Are Not Pants will screen our inaugural program of international and Canadian shorts at the NFB Mediatheque (150 John St. at Richmond). I’ll refer you to the site for more details, but I sincerely hope you’ll join us at the start of this new adventure.

My plan is to make this a quarterly event, and we hope to be working with a variety of partners. For the first screening, we’re showing the entirety of the Future Shorts Pop Up Festival lineup, as well as a couple of wonderful animated Canadian shorts from the National Film Board. But I’m excited by the fact that there is such a wealth of great material out there that has either never been screened before in Toronto, or was buried amongst hundreds of other films at festivals. I’m looking forward to discovering and sharing films with you, live and on the big screen. Hopefully we’ll even get a group together after the screenings to discuss the films over a drink. Short films are worthy of your attention, and I hope to demonstrate that to a larger audience than just the dozen I’ve been cramming into my apartment. I hope you’ll join us!

You can buy tickets for just $8 in advance. At the door, tickets will be $10, or $5 if you’re crazy enough to show up in shorts. Even if you can’t make it and want to support the series, buy a ticket and just let me know that’s your intention. Of course, mentioning us on Twitter (follow us here), Facebook (we have a page) or anywhere else online or off would be helpful, too. I’m certainly not hoping to make money on this, but it would be great if I didn’t lose too much.

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

Announcing Shorts That Are Not Pants!

Back in January, 2011 was looking to be a very good year indeed. I had just finished compiling the votes for the inaugural CAST Awards and was pleased with the level of participation.

In March, I was flattered to be included on a panel on online film criticism among such exalted company as longtime film critics Adam Nayman and Jason Anderson and filmmaker Margaux Williamson. You can listen to us bat the subject around for almost two hours, if you like.
Download audio file (webslinging_film_criticism_online.mp3)
Duration: 1:46:47
Download MP3 (128MB)

In May, I was contacted to talk about Toronto Screen Shots for a blogging conference and the result is the video you can see above.

My confidence was rising, which helped because, also in May, I quit a very lucrative job. It was the first time I’d ever left a job with nothing else lined up already. Maybe I thought the film business was waiting to welcome me with open arms.

It wasn’t.

In the midst of a very tough job search, I was at least fortunate enough to be able to attend a number of press screenings, and enjoyed the deepening camaraderie with a number of colleagues, people writing about film on both a paid and unpaid basis. It was at this point when I probably should have hustled a bit more.

Personal aside: I’ve never been particularly good at “tooting my own horn.” I suppose this could be partially responsible for my zig-zagging career trajectory. I’ve been happy to be a jack-of-all-trades generalist in the belief that it makes me a more “interesting” person. So while I believe I’m pretty good at most everything I try, I’m not confident enough to scream, “hey, look at me! I’m awesome!”

I began to notice a few of my blogging friends picking up paid writing gigs, and privately I was a bit envious. But instead of asking them how they did it, I continued to sit back and wait for others to come to me. When they didn’t, I reasoned that maybe I just wasn’t good enough, or that I really didn’t want it enough.

I do think both those things are true, by the way. Not that that can’t change.

The web is a wonderful thing, and I’ve been fortunate to have been riding the wave of internet publishing (“blogging”) since pretty close to the beginning. But I’ve increasingly felt out of sorts with the way the Internet has enabled the most obsessive among us to succeed. Remember, I’m a generalist. Even among some of my dearest film blogger friends, many of whom are a generation younger than me, I feel at once less serious about film and yet more connected to the rest of the world. I feel inferior and superior at the same time.

So I began trying to figure out what I wanted Toronto Screen Shots to be. I knew from the very beginning that I didn’t want it to be a “movie news” site, trying to break stories about the casting or budget of the latest blockbusters. I prefer to focus on reviews. But even keeping up with the new releases each year, whether theatrically or on DVD, has become next to impossible for me.

It could be simply my age catching up to me, or maybe the pace of life really has accelerated, but I find myself unable to keep drinking from the firehose of media, especially when so many other outlets are doing a fine job of it already.

My aims for beginning this site were pretty straightforward: I wanted to become a more knowledgeable cinephile, and a better writer about film. I also wanted to share films that needed more exposure with an audience, however big or small. I’ve tried to write more about documentaries, or foreign films, or films that are not new.

I think I’ve gotten away from that over the past year or two, as the profile of film blogs has allowed more of us access to press screenings and DVD review copies. As the industry’s need to keep feeding us new product to sell overwhelmed my own need to deepen my appreciation for film, I think Toronto Screen Shots lost its way a little bit.

Another problem is that smaller film festivals which used to realize a huge benefit from online coverage (Toronto After Dark, Reel Asian, Cinefranco, European Union Film Festival) no longer really depend on me the way I used to think they did. Out of loyalty, I have kept trying to cover them, and this year in particular, I feel that I failed.

Back in the summer when I was riding high, I applied for TIFF accreditation for the very first time. When that didn’t come through (along with my rejection for membership in the OFCS, received around the same time), my confidence took a hit, but in hindsight, I’m glad I wasn’t thrown into that maelstrom. It’s clear to me that I need to slow down, to cut back, to reflect more.

The online environment has room for all kinds of writing. I’m disappointed that perceptions of film blogging seem so tilted toward blockbusters, toward discussions of box office numbers, toward only the newest films. That kind of coverage will be as disposable online as it is in print.

So I hope you’ll bear with me as I try to realign Toronto Screen Shots with what my original goals were back in 2007. I hope that freeing myself from the “firehose” will break the crippling writer’s block I’ve been feeling for the past few months.

Maybe when I get my (modest) mojo back, I’ll actually start asking if anybody out there wants me to write for them. Stay tuned.

Note: I tried to find information about the images used in this post but was unable to. If you are the copyright owner, please contact me should you want the images removed or proper credits attached.

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A Word from the Man Behind the Curtain

Ever since I began writing about film online, I’ve felt compelled to use some sort of visual rating system. Although never a fan of the simplistic “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” of Siskel and Ebert, I felt using a rating out of ten gave me a sort of critical framework for comparing films to each other. But lately, I’ve been questioning the value of such a system. When I see otherwise sane people deciding what film to see based solely on a numerical score (even, or maybe especially, one out of 100!) from Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, it disappoints me. And yet, I’ve been rating films this way for years. Well, no more, at least here.

I’ve come to realize that for a variety of reasons, I’m doing a disservice to readers by slapping a number at the bottom of my reviews. For film lovers, it’s too tempting to skip to the rating and not bother to read the analysis and reasoning behind it. And for filmmakers, whose work I’m usually happy to help promote, the number can sink an otherwise well-reasoned review. Filmmakers may be reluctant to link here or even quote from one of my reviews if the number isn’t at least a 9 or a 10. Somehow, that feels unfair to everyone involved.

So, at least for the foreseeable future, the numerical ratings won’t appear here. I still rate everything I see on IMDB, but that’s more for calibrating my own internal critical sense. I don’t see it adding much value here. What do you think? Are numbers and stars and percentage scores and even thumbs useful to anyone other than the most casual of filmgoers?

Special thanks to Flickr user Jez Page for making his photo available under a Creative Commons licence.

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By the Numbers

After a few brief weeks of unemployment, I began working again at the beginning of October. It’s just a few days a week for now, but it’s likely to grow into a full-time position before long. I’m working for a small but mighty distributor called Kinosmith. I’d been aware of them for a while, but didn’t realize that the company was only founded in early 2007. Or that up until now, it’s been essentially a one-man operation. Robin Smith has worked in the Canadian film industry for more than 20 years, for companies such as Capri Releasing, Seville Pictures, Lions Gate, Alliance Atlantis, and the Toronto International Film Festival, and he seems to know everyone. But he made it clear upon meeting me this summer that he needed some help. Although my main areas of responsibility will eventually be the web site and social media initiatives, for the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of administrative work. It’s been a great way to begin to understand the business, and I look forward to absorbing some of Robin’s expertise as we continue to work together. I consider myself extremely lucky to have been in the right place at the right time.

I had been emailing back and forth for the past few months with another industry veteran, Oliver Groom, proprietor of Project X Distribution, a specialized DVD label that puts out the work of British filmmaker Peter Watkins as well as a few others. We finally decided to meet in person for a drink and since Oliver and Robin had recently partnered up for their DVD releases, Robin came along too. All three of us got along well from that first meeting and after another get-together and a few emails, Robin asked me to come and help him out. He recently moved his home office to Oliver’s house and so even though I work for Robin, I see Oliver a lot as well.

If I haven’t been writing here as often as usual, it’s not because I’ve been watching fewer films. On the contrary, I’m also helping out by watching screeners submitted to Kinosmith as well as catching up on the films we’re releasing now. Robin has built up a very impressive catalogue of films in just over two years, and lots of filmmakers want to work with him, so things are very busy. It does bring up a bit of an ethical dilemma for me. I don’t intend to refrain from reviewing films that happen to be distributed by Kinosmith, but I want to be completely transparent about my relationship to the distributor. Do you think it will be enough to put a standard disclosure notice at the beginning of any blog entry that deals with a Kinosmith title? I promise not to give any film preferential treatment, but I don’t want to ignore them, either, especially if I’m ever somehow involved in the decision to acquire the film for Kinosmith.

In any case, I’m very excited to be indulging my passion for film and learning more about the business side of things. It’s a great opportunity and I’m very thankful to Robin and Oliver for taking me under their wing.

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

Working for Kinosmith