Welcome / How it works / Thank you La La Land

Welcome to throwdown815.

I'm still trying to figure out what exactly this site is. Is it a blog about movies? A collection of interviews from film festival programmers? Or is it some kind of personal journal? In light of labelling it one thing or another - and likely being inaccurate - I thought I'd just reflect on how I came to creating this site.

The idea first came to me during a screening of La La Land at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The film blew me away, and was a reminder of not only how much I loved watching movies, but how much I loved being a TIFF attendee. Without getting into spoiler territory, let's just say that La La Land is in many ways about staying true to what you love doing. Not because what you love doing will necessarily propel you to stardom or success (it might), but because it's simply important to live life in this way. Despite what the title might initially imply, I don't think the characters in the movie are necessarily striving for the Hollywood-esque 'la la land'. Their 'la la land' is simply a world where phrases like 'now's not the right time' and 'life got in the way' don't exist - which unfortunately can seem crazy in reality.

It's an overly idealistic message, I know. And let me say upfront that I'm not quitting my day job or switching careers here. I've always wanted to write about movies and go to more film festivals, but have also always found a reason not to. I'm too busy with work/school; I'm too tired; I talk about movies with people all the time, why write? I don't know, for whatever reason, I've just always wanted to. And that's what this site is for.

So to break it down, there will be 3 things that I'll be doing regularly... 1. Film Festival Tour: I'll be attending 1 film festival in Toronto each month over a 12-month period. At each festival, I'll be interviewing one of the organizers/programmers to get a flavour of what makes their festival unique, and why they continue to do what they do.

2. Blog: This is gonna be a collection of my own personal thoughts on cinema, with a fair share of posts on Asian cinema.

3. Film of the Week: Each week, I'll post about one movie and write a quick blurb about it. These won't be reviews, just a paragraph on something noteworthy about the film or my personal experience watching it.

In all honesty, I'm not expecting a lot of people to read this site or care what I have to say. I'm not a film critic, filmmaker, or anyone involved in the film industry. I'm just an avid viewer who likes to write. So this site is just that. I'll be writing about movies, going to film festivals around the city, (hopefully) interviewing festival organizers and having fun while I do all these things.

And in case it wasn't already clear, I really liked La La Land. To those of you thinking - 'it's Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, of course he went bonkers over the movie' - let me direct your attention to a little movie called Gangster Squad. Yeah, exactly. It's not just them, the movie itself is amazing. Please go see it in December.