“Spirit of the rising sun lift me up, Hold me there and never let me fall”
-Three Sunrises, U2

You would never recognize Sarah Polley if you bumped into her on the street.

She came to my film marketing class at Ryerson last night after we had screened her new film, Away from Her which marks her directorial debut. She’s short, relatively unkempt in the hair bushing and no makeup department (like I should have any say when it comes to not brushing one’s hair), but she’s very well-spoken and often funny. She just seemed really down to earth and casual, and really cares about her film.

The film was good, although not my usual cup of tea, I did enjoy it. Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, and Olympia Dukakis star in it. I am in love with Gordon Pinsent. That’s right, I have a crush on a man in his 70s. Not really, but for all intensive purposes he rocked. I asked Sarah about casting in which she delighted the class by calling Christopher Plummer a jerk and said that the reason he turned down the part Sarah had originally written for Gordon was because, in the words of Christopher Plummer, “Julie Christie can’t act.” It was fun to hear all the behind the scenes casting for what could have been. It should also be pointed out that Sarah narrated a Bruce Cockburn doc my company produced, which is as boring as it sounds.

In other rad news, I totally swept the class Oscar pool. I’m awesome. I not only won, I won by over 20 points. Eve came in a respectable 4th place. Along with my bragging rights for giving a beat down to a class of film nerds, go the spoils: 5 DVDs from Capri films where our instructor works. The “sweet” titles include: Darwin’s Nightmare, The Japanese Story, Walk on Water, Tideland and something else that I had never heard of. Wow. I must be the only person who owns their own copy of Tideland since no one bought and/or enjoyed this awful film. Poor Terry Gilliam. I’ll put it next to 12 Monkeys to make it feel better.

“I would give you everything”