One of the things I’ve intended to do since I moved to downtown Toronto like FIVE years ago was get tickets to the Toronto International Film Festival – well this year, I’m finally doing it. Bought a book of ten tickets and with luck, there’ll be good films playing and I’ll score tickets. The official programme doesn’t come out for another month, though, so till then there’ll be a lot of waiting and wondering what the hell I’m going to do with ten tickets. I’ve been to some screenings in past years, mostly from either free tickets or friends with extras. If memory serves, I’ve been to a couple ‘gala premieres’ (Ken Loach’s Sweet Sixteen and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee & Cigarettes) as well as a not-so-gala matinee from the international documentaries category (Cool & Crazy, a film about a Norwegian men’s choir. Yeah). The city always takes on a cool vibe when the TIFF is in town, though, it’s a good chance to see how much shorter celebrities are in real life. I think my top celeb sighting was Willem Dafoe sitting at a patio just north of my apartment a couple years ago. He had these crazy glasses on. Yeah, not much of a story, I know.

This would appear to be the first clear picture of Christian Bale in the Batman costume. First time I saw this, I thought it was an action figure or a statue or something. I don’t know if that reflects well on the costume designers or not. Looks better than Clooney’s outfit, anyway. A one-minute Batman Begins trailer should be out any week now, probably with either The Village this week or Aliens Vs Predator next week. Funny, I would have thought Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle would have been the obvious choice.

Ain’t It Cool has a left-field yet oddly credible rumour about the adversary in Spider-Man 3. I’ll give you a hint – it rhymes with “Wenom”.

And a postscript on the topic of movies – finally got around to seeing Barton Fink last night. The story of a 1940s playwright who travels to Los Angeles to become a movie scripwriter, it was interesting in simultaneously being one of the least weird and yet strangest Coen Brothers films I’ve seen yet. Excellent performances from everyone in the cast – John Turtorro, John Goodman and Tony Shalhoub are all greatly underappreciated actors.

It’s shaping up to be a helluva Fall concert season. I mean, just look at my calendar over there on the side. That’s an insane lineup, and it doesn’t even include expected dates from Steve Earle, Luna, Matthew Sweet or American Music Club. Damnation. Here’s what’s come to my attention in the last 24 hours or so:

A shit-kicking good time will be had at the Horseshoe on September 11 when Alabama’s Drive-By Truckers roll into town with the lovely, talented and lovely Allison Moorer in tow. The DBT are pushing The Dirty South, out August 24 and Allison Moorer released The Duel earlier this year. Tickets are $13.50.

Two-man blues clues The Black Keys will play Lee’s Palace September 28 to support the September 7 release of Rubber Factory, tickets will cost you $15. I dunno, I saw the Black Keys open for Sleater-Kinney last year, and I didn’t think they were worth $15. You could just rent Ghost World and skip to the “Blueshammer!” scene. But that’s just me.

Fellow UK New Wave revivalists The Futureheads will be opening for Franz Ferdinand at The Docks October 1.

Meanwhile, Scots Sons And Daughters, who accompanied FF to town the last time around, will be back on November 5 supporting Clinic, along with Los Angeles’ Midnight Movies.

And some other bits and pieces:

REM’s new album will be out October 5, the leadoff single is entitled “Leaving New York”.

You can see the video for Wheat’s “I Met A Girl” here. It’s a neat vid, shot entirely with still 35mm cameras.

New Spoon website! Updated demo tracks from the new record, too. From Catbirdseat.

Chart finds out just who Rogue Wave are and why they’re getting the attention they are. Me, I just picked up Out Of The Shadow last night (made it to Soundscapes after all). It’s pretty but I haven’t had the opportunity to form any deeper opinion yet. They’re opening for AC Newman August 8 at Lee’s.

np – Old 97’s / Drag It Up

You can preview three tracks from Steve Earle’s new album The Revolution Starts… Now on his website. The album is out August 24, tour dates for the Fall to be announced shortly. There will also be a CD and DVD culled from last year’s Tell Us The Truth tour with Billy Bragg and Tom Morello coming out in October.

A few more concert announcements:

The rain today has put a bit of a damper on my plans to dash out after work and pick up the new Tanya Donelly, Old 97’s and Rogue Wave records. I suppose I can wait a day, but when you’re geek like me, buying stuff on the day it’s released is half the fun. Actually, make that just a couple percentile points of the fun. If it were literally HALF the fun, then I’d really need to reconsider how I’m spending my amusement money.

Verrrry slow day today – I almost posted this article in The Toronto Star about life in Oshawa as a sort-of follow-up to my entry about life in Oakville last week. Despite the fact that a) I only lived in Oshawa for four months on a co-op placement about six years ago, and b) I absolutely hated it – it may have been good for anecdotes (living in the dog room, a mouse infestation, having some jackass disable the neutral safety switch on my car and then having my license plates stolen a couple weeks later) but it truly sucked, otherwise. Apologies to anyone who grew up in the ‘Shwa, but you know it’s true. Anyway, I thought about posting the article but decided not to bother.

np – The Delgados / Hate

I think David Mamet’s Spartan came and went from theatres earlier this year with barely a blip, and to be honest it didn’t register with me either. If I recall, trailers were vague about the plot – someone is kidnapped, action ensues – and there weren’t any really big names in the cast. Val Kilmer hasn’t really been a big name for a while now, I think, and William H Macy gets his name on the poster despite barely being in the film.

Either way, it’s a shame because it’s really quite a good film. Kilmer is quite good as an Army Ranger who’s called in when the daughter of a high-profile individual goes missing, and it goes from there – I’m not going to go into it any further lest I spoil the story. By doling out the information very slowly through the film, revealing just enough to keep things moving, Mamet keeps the tension up from the get-go and keeps things masterfully off-balance – nothing is spelled out, it’s left to the viewer to work it out in their heads while trying to keep up with the action. You don’t even have time to absorb the amount of political commentary until it’s all over. It’s only in the final act, which seems to be Mamet’s Achilles Heel, that things go off the rails, but even then it doesn’t negate the fine job that’s been done to that point.

In truth, it felt a lot like a particularly good episode of 24, less the real-time gimmick and unnecessary filler. That’s a compliment, by the way. Mamet seems to be coming into his own as a filmwriter and not just a playwright writing for film. This film has more action than his earlier films, though it still maintains his trademark dialogue and rhythm. I’ll give this one a definite recommendation and certainly worth a rental.

Americana UK interviews comeback kid Juliana Hatfield about where she’s been hiding the last few years and her new album In Exile Deo.

Bloggers love Sea Ray. This time, the band gets interviewed by Gothamist. From Information Leafblower.

Some Toronto concert notes:

This should have been great. An acoustic show featuring two of the brighter talents to come out of the local scene in recent years – Emily Haines of Metric and Amy Millan of Stars – should have been something special. Something you’d be able to say down the line that you’d been one of the lucky few in attendance. Instead…

First up was Amy Millan, who has been writing and performing as a solo artist outside Stars for some time now. While she didn’t offer any information about her solo record that was supposedly supposed to come out sometime this year, she did perform a few numbers on acoustic guitar along a theme of “love and loss”, as she put it throughout her set. The material was by turns folksy and country-ish, pleasant enough but not overly remarkable. Amy’s voice is like comfort food, though, so when her 40 minutes or so were up, I wasn’t incredibly stoked but still in a good mood and looking forward to the headliner. And I’m still eagerly anticipating Honey From The Tombs, whenever it comes out.

I should have known something was up when a fellow started handing out programs for the show entitled, “Emily Haines Plays The Piano Alone” and the song listing featured a grand total of two songs from Old World Underground out of 13, and the “available for funerals” note on the front turned out to be more promise than joke. Emily came onstage wearing a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers (a big change from her usual Metric pseudo-military miniskirt ensemble), blindfolded and stumbling around, relying on the audience to give her directions to the piano. Why? I have no idea, but she made it without much incident and without a word, began playing a new song. It was slow, sparse and dirge-like. She finished, everyone applauded, she started the next song. It was slow, sparse and dirge-like. She finished, everyone applauded, she started the next song. It was slow, sparse and– do I need to continue? The entire set was slow, sparse and dirge-like.

I don’t think I’d have minded as much if she’d taken the time to explain to the audience that she was going to be doing something different that night, that this was new material that was going to be on the next record or given any sort of context to the show, but instead she plugged through nearly three-quarters of the set before even acknowledging the audience and was seated such that her back was facing half the room and the piano blocked the view for a good portion of the other half. The whole thing came off as incredibly arrogant and off-putting – Haines would do well to realize she’s not nearly a big enough star to take her audience for granted like that. Maybe it’s a good thing she had her back to the audience, so she couldn’t see the number of people walking out mid-show… and it wasn’t just because it was suffocatingly hot in the club. I guess I’ve just used a lot of words to say one simple thing – big disappointment.

No pics besides the one of Emily stumbling for the piano – just some shots of Amy too dark to salvage and a couple pictures of Emily’s back while she plays. Not worth posting. The lighting at the ElMo is really pretty awful and the bizarre seating setup (a few rows of chairs up front, some tables in the middle and sides and everyone else standing in-between everything) made for awful sightlines. And really, there was nothing to see.

Graig has a completely opposite take on the show from me, however.

Moving on.

Jim Guthrie will also be playing that free show at Harbourfront Centre on August 27 along with Broken Social Scene.

The Sadies will celebrate the release of their latest album Favourite Colours on August 24 with two shows at the Horseshoe, September 17 and 18.

The Fiery Furnaces show in September has been pared down from a plural to a singular, the 12th of September, and will be at the Mod Club, not the Drake. Hey, don’t blame me, blame their booking company’s website. White Magic support. I listened to a little of Blueberry Boat at Soundscapes the other day (listening station!) and was more intrigued than I was by the random mp3s I had. I won’t be at that show, however, as that’s the same night as the Old 97s show at Lee’s, and I ain’t missing that one.

Six By Seven’s new album has a new title, :04, and a release date – September 13. I am not holding my breath for a North American release… hello Amazon.co.uk!

The Belfast Telegraph talks to Tanya Donelly about motherhood and new album Whiskey Tango Ghosts, out Tuesday.

Watched David Fincher’s Panic Room yesterday. It was suspenseful, stylish and had a wickedly nasty performance from Dwight Yoakam, but the ending was really abrupt and unsatisfying. Oh well, it was neat technically-speaking, at least.

The official title of the new Star Wars film is Star Wars: Revenge Of The Sith, and not Star Wars: Sucks Even Harder Than The Last One as expected. The George Lucas – always keeps us guessing.

“It’s got gryphons and sphinxes and books and librarians and a most unreliable juggler.” Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean discussed their new film Mirrormask at the San Diego Comic Con.

np – Doug Martsch / Now You Know

“Nice” is such an inadequate adjective – it sounds like such faint praise (ie – “oh, that’s… nice”) – but sometimes it’s just the most appropriate descriptor. For example, last night’s Camera Obscura show at the Horseshoe was just NICE. It would be inaccurate to say “it rocked” or “it blew me out of the water” or some bit of hyperbole like that, because that’s not what Camera Obscura’s elegant throwback pop is about – it’s just nice. Charming, literate, melodic, immaculately arranged and performed and nice. I’m pretty sure the band themselves are nice, too – even the huge guys who look more like they should be playing rugby than twee-pop. The seven-piece Glaswegien outfit was making their live Canadian debut and they couldn’t have picked a better city than Toronto, since we tend to give undconditional love to any band with an accent. They earned it, however, turning in a stellar performance of songs from both their albums over the course of a tight one-hour set (less encore). Tracyanne Campbell’s voice was the perfect mix of sweet and forlorn and harmonized perfectly with co-lead vocalist John Henderson, who did a fine job working the tambourine, shakers and melodica when not stepping up to the mic. Never underestimate the power of the simplest percussion instruments, handclaps or finger snaps to put a song over the top – a good tambourine shake is a thing of beauty. Keyboardist Carey Lander’s backing vocals were pretty much inaudible, though – a pity. All in all, a very, um, nice show. Underachievers nothing. Pictures here.

I didn’t have great expectations for openers Pony Up! going into the show, the samples I listened to off their website didn’t really impress, but I came a way somewhat turned around on them. While the stuff I had heard previously was still the weakest material, that’s a compliment of sorts because some of their other stuff was quite good. A couple of guitarist-sung numbers really put the other material to shame, it was so much more accomplished. And definite props for successfully incorporating some unconventional instruments (glockenspiel, concertina) into their sound. They’re quite young and have got the ingredients to do something interesting in the future – I was persuaded enough to pay attention down the line.

What a night for shows in town last night, though. Besides the nearly-sold out Camera Obscura show, I’m sure the Hidden Cameras CD release show at Trinity-St Paul’s and The Weakerthans gig at the Mod Club were both great shows and heavily attended. So many choices.

Post-punk rock legends Mission Of Burma are finally coming to Toronto. October 22, venue TBA. Woot. Now if only Television could find their way up here someday…

Be Good Tanya gone solo Jolie Holland is at Lee’s Palace October 16, tickets $16.

The Delgados are back in town again on October 23 at Lee’s with Crooked Fingers as support, tickets $15. Why, you ask? To support their new album Universal Audio, out on September 28. Chemikal Underground has a tracklisting and album artwork as well as a 30-second clip of the first single, “Everybody Come Down”. I daresay they sound positively peppy… what gives?

Another “Happy Birthday Merge” interview, this one from CMJ.

Check out a nice live video performance and interview from Sarah Harmer at Sympatico.ca. From Soaring With Eagles.

np – Calexico / The Black Light