Pneumatised!

An ever-changing life inspired by the pneuma

2008/09/05

Toronto International Film Festival 2008

The TIFF started this week on Thursday. Since missing out on the film festival the past two years, I decided to order the popular 10-coupon passbook in advance. As luck would have it for me, there is a martial arts movie showing this year – Chocolate by the same director for Ong-Bak and The Protector. Chocoloate is the debut feature for the “next greatest female martial arts star” Jija Yanin (her stage name). Yanin studied taekwondo when she was younger. The story goes that the director saw how talented she is and decided to recruit her. She worked with his stunt crew for about two years, then the director wrote the screenplay for the movie Chocolate. Yanin performs all her stunts in this movie (you can ignore all the jealous rumours that they used wires and creative editing) and to prove it she has already demonstrated one of the scenes on a live talk show in Asia. She also received injuries on set. It looks like Jija Yanin is well on her way to being the greatest female equivalent of Jackie Chan (Chan being notorious for hurting himself on set due to the extreme stunts he performs himself.)

A talented young female martial artist? Great stunt choreography? Of course, I procured tickets. I got tickets for me and Nathan to see the midnight screening of Chocolate, which is the last Midnight Madness movie to screen at this year’s film festival. (Saturday, September 13 at 11:59 p.m.)

Other movies we will be seeing are:

Daytime Drinking on Sunday, September 7, 9:00 p.m.
Tears for Sale on Monday, September 8, 9:45 p.m.
Ashes of Time Redux on Wednesday, September 10, 9:30 a.m.
The Sky Crawlers on Saturday, September 13, 12:15 p.m.

Here is a preview of the movie, Chocolate.

The TIFF has their film descriptions online. Read more about Chocolate.