Inside TIFF 2012 Day 9: Know Your ABCs

7:40 pm – Started today off with the film that took home the Golden Lion last week in Venice, Ki-duk Kim’s Pieta.  Splitting opinions with it’s series of shocking reveals, the film is a poetic revenge drama.  Regardless of my reservations of watching a 4.5 hour film at a festival, I saw Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s slow, melodramatic onion, Penance.  The Asian triple bill of today was rounded out by When Night Falls by director Liang Ying.  Finishing my last full day here with Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers, which I’ve heard many good words about throughout the last week.  One more day.  [Jordan M. Smith]

2:00 pm – There have been a pair of press screenings, but tonite is the official public premiere to the Midnight Madness section’s The ABCs of Death – 26 plus filmmakers in Kaare Andrews, Angela Bettis, Adrián García Bogliano, Bruno Forzani & Hélène Cattet, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza, Jason Eisener, Xavier Gens, Jorge Michel Grau, Lee Hardcastle, Noboru Iguchi, Thomas Cappelen Malling, Anders Morgenthaler, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Banjong Pisanthanakun, Simon Rumley, Marcel Sarmiento, Jon Schnepp, Srdjan Spasojevic, Timo Tjahjanto, Andrew Traucki, Nacho Vigalondo, Jake West, Ti West, Ben Wheatley, Adam Wingard and Yudai Yamaguchi. We’re curious to know which letters of the alphabet will be tops among the batch. [Eric Lavallee]