I’ve never been to the Sundance Film Festival, and have no burning desire to hang out with the stars in a ski resort in Utah, but I have been trying to follow a bit of what’s going on. Here are a few films that I’m hearing good things about and which, with any luck, will make it to Toronto either at HotDocs or TIFF:

• Son of Rambow
• For the Bible Tells Me So
• Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten
• King of California
• Snow Angels

The film summaries are from the much more attractive and usefully-designed Unofficially Sundance site.

from Consolation Champs

Watching Sundance from Afar

Lights in the Dusk (Finland/Germany/France, director Aki Kaurismäki): This is the third film in Kaurismäki’s “Helsinki Trilogy” (the others are Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man Without a Past (2002)) While I haven’t seen the first, this film shares many thematic and formal elements with the second film, and I enjoyed it just as much.

Koistinen is a lonely security guard who is ignored by his co-workers; that is, when he’s not being teased by them. His life is soon turned upside down by a femme fatale, with heartbreaking results. Despite the grim-sounding plot, the film is full of the director’s trademark deadpan humour. And I’m in awe of how he can make the film just radiate love despite the mannered acting and awkward staging. Perhaps it has to do with the warmth of the lighting and the colour palette, as well as the use of nostalgic music and art direction. Whatever it is, from the first frame, you know the director loves this sad sack and wants us to love him too.

The films of the Helsinki Trilogy all deal with people on the margins, and it’s clear that Kaurismäki’s sympathies lie with the common people and not with those whose success or power has dehumanized them. He is a true humanist, and his “heroes” all bear their sufferings stoically; in fact, they quite literally personify a “never-say-die” attitude, and that makes them admirable. Their hangdog expressions may make us pity them, but it’s their core of inner strength that makes us love them.

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Lights in the Dusk

Lake of Fire (USA, director Tony Kaye): A monumental (152 minutes!) documentary on the abortion issue filmed over a 15-year period, Tony Kaye’s film is likely to become a classic. The film covers all kinds of ground and features interviews with many people on both sides of the issue. Perhaps surprisingly, quite a few of them have intelligent things to say.

There is quite a lot of (and I’d say too much) coverage of the extreme fringe of the pro-life movement, including the string of killings of abortion doctors in the 1990s, and a very strange and possibly insane man who runs an organization called Lambs of Jesus. Too often, the pro-life camp is described as simply an extension of the Christian Right’s agenda. While that may be largely true, there are millions of other people with pro-life views that are much less extreme, who are not necessarily marching or picketing abortion clinics. It would have been nice to hear from some of them. One interesting pro-life advocate was writer Nat Hentoff, a liberal atheist. In the pro-choice camp, there were a few notable voices, including lawyer Alan Dershowitz and Frances Kissling of Catholics for a Free Choice. Then there were those who appeared to be in the middle somewhere, including several medical bioethicists and even Noam Chomsky, who was perhaps the most eloquent voice in the film.

I suppose the extensive coverage of the shootings of abortion doctors may have been included to balance the equally disturbing images of abortion procedures, including the doctor “piecing together” the body parts of the fetus after the procedure. Any honest film about abortion needs to address these very real images.

I believe it may have been Chomsky who stated that abortion comes down to a difficult choice between two (and possibly more) competing but authentic values. He also pointed out that if pro-life supporters claim to be concerned about children, there were lots of easy ways to help the many suffering children in the world, but that few were actually doing much about it.

The film concludes with two segments where I found the use of music to be manipulative. One is the statement by a nurse who was severely injured in an abortion clinic bombing, and the final longer segment follows one woman as she goes through the entire abortion procedure, from filling out forms to her sudden breakdown as she tries to tell the interviewer she’s “relieved.” The images and stories were powerful enough without the need for swelling strings in the background. As well, it’s not always clear when each part of the film was shot, or whether we’re seeing things in chronological order at all, and for a film that covers 15 years of a changing political landscape, it would be nice to have a timeline and even some statistics to see how things are changing.

Other than those relatively minor misgivings, this is a landmark film and has set a high standard for feature length documentaries dealing with this relatively neglected subject. The two and a half hours went by very quickly, and I was even left wanting more. Director Kaye says he has lots more and could even make the material into a television series. I for one would be interested.

(8.5/10) – my graphic doesn’t show half-points

from Consolation Champs

Lake of Fire

El Ratón Pérez (The Hairy Tooth Fairy) (Argentina/Spain, director Juan Pablo Buscarini): I don’t think I can write a substantial review of this film since I was so sleepy during it. The week is catching up to me, and because I was with my wife and sitting in such a comfortable and dark environment, I dozed off a few times. The film itself was quite good, though. A combination of CGI and live-action, El Ratón Pérez is the story of what happens to children’s teeth when they place them under their pillows. Unlike in North American and northern European culture, the Latin American and Spanish legend is that a mouse named Mr. Perez takes the tooth away and replaces it with a coin. Nothing terribly original about the film, but it was well-made and charming, and the many children in the audience seemed to appreciate it. One distraction was that they had someone reading the English subtitles into a microphone for the younger viewers. Having that competing with the Spanish-language soundtrack as well as the subtitles made watching the film more difficult.

Visit the film’s web site

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

El Ratón Pérez (The Hairy Tooth Fairy)

Exiled (Hong Kong/China, director Johnnie To): Among lovers of Hong Kong cinema, Johnnie To is legendary. He had three films showing in this year’s festival (Election (2005) and Election 2 (2006) screened together, as well as this film) and this was my first experience seeing one of his films. I’ll be seeking out some others. Exiled is an incredibly well-constructed film. It’s like a Swiss watch, with every scene precisely set up and choreographed and nothing wasted. To has created a self-contained world and set his characters loose in it. Set just around the time of Macau’s reversion to the Chinese government, it concerns a group of hit men who come together when their boss orders a hit on one of them. Two pairs of men arrive at the target’s new home. The first to warn him, the second to kill him. After a kinetic set piece involving three shooters, precisely 18 bullets, and the target’s wife and infant son, the group ends up helping still-alive Wo move furniture into his new place, before settling down to eat.

The mixture of action, comedy, and sentiment is probably a staple of Hong Kong gangster films, but I found it fresh. The plot continues when the assassins agree to give Wo some time to carry out one last job to make some cash for his soon to be widowed wife and orphaned child. Things don’t go as planned, however, and the film bumps along from set piece to set piece until an inevitable but satisfying end. Each choreographed set piece is set up in such a way as to heighten the anticipation, and you almost don’t mind that none of these trained killers seems to be a very good shot. It’s enough that they’re all ludicrously macho, swilling scotch from the bottle and smoking as they fire bullets at each other.

Seeing this one on the big screen is a must, just for the sound. The musical score, by Canadian Guy Zerafa, veered between James Bond and spaghetti westerns, with a bit of mournful harmonica thrown in. It worked perfectly, as did the fact that the viewer can hear every single shell casing hit the ground throughout the film. Even the gunshots themselves seemed different from those in American films, with less blast and more metallic sounds. It certainly helped create atmosphere. While this and the choreographed gunplay never let you forget you’re watching a created thing rather than any semblance of reality, that actually made me more appreciative of the creator. He’s certainly created another Johnnie To fan.

Visit the film’s web site

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Exiled

Blindsight (UK, director Lucy Walker): I loved this, and not just for the obvious reasons. Blindsight is a documentary about a group of blind Tibetan teenagers who attempt to climb one of Mount Everest’s sister peaks. Now, this kind of thing is usually a can’t miss. Inspirational. Moving. Pretty standard, right? And even if the film were just that, I’d still have liked it. But it was so much more. Blind herself, German Sabriye Tenberken established a school for blind children in Tibet, in a culture that sees blindness as a curse, as evidence that a person did bad things in a previous life. Many of the children at the school have been shunned their whole lives, and at best, are a burden to their families. As part of their education, Tenberken shares with them the story of American Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. She sends him a letter inviting him to come and visit her students. Instead, he comes up with a plan. He’ll arrange an expedition for them to climb 23,000 foot Lhakpa Ri and provide all the guides and equipment. Sabriye finds six willing participants and this is when the fun starts.

Erik’s team are mostly American, mostly male, and mostly sighted. As experienced mountaineers, they’re Type-A personalities, very gung-ho and goal-oriented. Sabriye is European, female, and blind, and the students for her are more than a “project,” no matter how well-intentioned. Additionally, the students are Tibetan, and not old enough or confident enough to always stand up for themselves. As the expedition unfolds, they become pawns in between the two adult “sides,” wanting to please both, while at the same time wanting to gain the confidence that comes from accomplishment. As an additional obstacle (other than being blind, that is), they are speaking English as a second or in most cases, a third language, and struggle to understand and make themselves understood.

When it turns out that none of the students have any climbing experience, and that some are much more coordinated than others, it begins to unravel Erik’s original plan for them all to reach the summit together. As both students and teachers begin to suffer the effects of high altitude, decisions must be made as to whether to continue on or to send some down the mountain. Among the effects of high altitude is increased irritability, and you can see how this feeds the conflict between the adults. At the risk of oversimplifying, on one side are those for whom the destination is all, and on the other are those who just want to enjoy the journey. I won’t tell you how it all turns out, except to say that this was one of the most surprising and thought-provoking stories I’ve seen in a long time.

The film also weaves bits of each climber’s story into the narrative, and this was sorely needed, since once on the climb, the kids tended to keep their heads down and their mouths shut. With all the drama going on around them, that wasn’t surprising. The backstories are by turns charming and heartbreaking, and I found it very strange that I found myself closer to tears at the beginning of the film than at the end. This was contrary to my expectations, and another pleasant surprise.

In addition to all the human drama to cover, director Walker and her small crew had to contend with the frigid and oxygen-deprived conditions herself, lugging equipment up the mountains and hoping it wouldn’t break down. As with all great documentaries, the filmmaker was just lucky enough (or smart enough, or prepared enough) to be at the right place at the right time, and she’s captured a very special story that has as much to say about people who want to do “what’s best for the kids” as it does about the kids themselves.

Visit the film’s web site

Braille Without Borders (Sabriye Tenberken’s organization)

(10/10)

from Consolation Champs

Blindsight

The Sugar Curtain (Spain/Cuba/France, director Camila Guzmán Urzúa): Strangely and almost unintentionally apolitical, this film is a personal remembrance of growing up in the 70s and 80s in Cuba. The director seems to have shot all of the footage herself, making it more like a home movie. And it’s incredibly nostalgic, with lots of comparisons of old photos with the present. But the film’s thesis, if I can use a word that strong, is impossible to prove in this context, even if it’s correct. The director seems to be saying that life in Cuba in her childhood was good, that Castro’s revolution was achieving positive results and that the end of the Cold War was disastrous for Cuba. But this is pretty self-evident. We see a lot of run-down or abandoned buildings that were in good repair thirty years ago. We hear interviews with her classmates who agree that things aren’t as good anymore. I don’t want to sound facetious, but I could probably make a pretty similar film about my own childhood.

When she talks to students at her old high school, about the only privation she can uncover is that they no longer get snacks. In the director’s childhood, they got chocolate biscuits and fizzy drinks. But in a society where the government provided so much (and still does, compared with the rest of the world), these examples seem a bit forced. I’m sure life in Cuba is difficult for many, but from the evidence of the film, it still seems to be doing pretty well. For a society that has withstood a trade embargo from the world’s richest nation for more than fifty years, and whose biggest benefactor cut it off more than fifteen years ago, it’s doing remarkably well. Its children are literate and fed, and it seems to have avoided the extremes of poverty seen in many parts of the Caribbean and Latin America.

Unfortunately, I think the director’s complaints are fairly universal. The idealism we feel in our youth turns into disillusionment as we age. The forces of globalization and capitalism are affecting Cuba, even as Castro tries to hold them at bay. The fact that the director and many of her classmates left Cuba in the 1990s (during the “Special Period” that followed the end of the Cold War, a time of tremendous economic hardship for Cubans) also clouds the picture. How does her memory of Cuba as a socialist paradise differ from the memories of the anti-Castro crowd in Miami, who remember pre-revolutionary Cuba as a different kind of paradise? Both are unreliable and nostalgic.

While the film was enjoyable as a window into one person’s experience, and it was great to see the modern footage of life on the island, overall I found it unsatisfying.

(6/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Sugar Curtain

The Way I Spent The End Of The World (Romania/France, director Catalin Mitulescu): This was an earnest but uneven film about life in Romania during the final months of Ceausescu’s rule in 1989. Teenaged Eva and her young brother Lalalilu live with their parents and suffer the hardships of living under a hated dictator. Since their neighbour is a cop, they have to be careful what they say, and Eva’s parents encourage her budding romance with the policeman’s son Alex because of what the family connection could do for them. Instead, her rebellious attitude gets her expelled from her school and sent to a technical school for troubled students. There she connects with another neighbour, Andrei, whose family have already been punished for protesting against the regime. Together they make plans to escape Romania by swimming across the Danube, but when the crucial moment comes, Eva turns back.

Meanwhile, Lilu is plotting with his friends how to kill the dictator. Young Timotei Duma is very reminiscent of Salvatore Cascio, who played young Salvatore (Toto) in Cinema Paradiso. Which means he was extremely cute, and some of his scenes were the best in the film. There are two whimsical scenes where we seem to enter his childlike world: one is set in a submarine taxi where all the villagers can be taken to whatever city in Europe they wish to visit, and the other visualizes the boy blowing a huge chewing gum bubble that becomes so large that it floats away. Clearly, the theme of escape is on everyone’s mind.

I wish there had been more scenes like that. Instead, most of the film consists of Eva’s various meetings with Alex or Andrei and very little dialogue. For a main character, she was just a little too enigmatic. I definitely felt the film could have used a bit more dialogue and a bit more editing to speed the pace a bit. As well, the ending could have used a bit more explication. There are some pictures of Ceaucescu on live television and what appears to be live coverage of him fleeing but there is no explanation. For Romanians this might be self-evident but for the rest of the world, we could use a little bit of help.

The ending itself is quite lovely, with the increasing tension suddenly released with Ceaucescu’s fall. And there were some moments of dark humour, as when the students are required to sing patriotic songs about how wonderful their lives are in Romania when it’s plain that everyone is living in misery. But there is a bit of unexplained business at the end surrounding the policeman and his son Alex that bothered me. As well, there were a few strange cinematographical choices throughout the film that proved distracting. Scenes would be clumsily blocked by objects as if the director didn’t quite know where to place his camera. It’s not a huge surprise to discover that this is Catalin Mitulescu’s first feature film.

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Way I Spent The End Of The World

Offside (Iran, director Jafar Panahi): Filmed during an actual qualifying match for the 2006 World Cup, Offside works brilliantly as both a comedy and a tragedy. The film follows the fortunes of a group of young women who are caught trying to sneak into a football match at Tehran’s Azadi Stadium. The country’s Islamic religious leaders have decreed that women may not sit with men at sporting events, lest they be exposed to cursing and other morally questionable behaviour. This hasn’t stopped the country’s young female fans, who continue to sneak in using various tricks. But Panahi focuses on a small group who have been caught and are being detained agonizingly close to the action. They beg the bored soldiers guarding them to let them go or at least to let them watch the match. The soldiers tell them they shouldn’t have tried to get in, that they could have watched the game at home on TV. They banter back and forth in almost real-time as the game continues, just off-camera.

There is one very funny sequence where a young soldier accompanies one of the girls to the restroom. Since there are no female restrooms at stadiums, he has to clear the room of any men before he can allow her to go in. Plus, he makes her cover her face so no one can see she’s a woman. This is accomplished using a poster of Iranian soccer star Ali Karimi as a mask, with eye holes punched out.

You get a real sense that even the soldiers are baffled by the prohibition, and are only carrying out their orders so as to hasten the end of their compulsory military service. One soldier complains that he was supposed to be on leave so he could take care of his family’s cattle in the countryside. Little by little, the girls and the soldiers talk to each other, and there are numerous small acts of kindness on both sides to show that these are basically good people living in terrible circumstances. However, the soldiers’ constant reminder that “the chief” is on his way lends a sense of menace, since we don’t know what sort of punishment the women will face.

Unlike most Iranian films, which are known for their strong visuals, Offside is filmed in a realist style with no artifice. In fact, the film was made during the actual qualifying match against Bahrain that took place on June 5, 2005. The “plot” in many ways was determined by the result on the pitch. If Iran won the match, they would qualify. If they lost, they would not. Since the World Cup has come and gone, I don’t think it is a spoiler to say that Iran won the match. The scenes of celebration at the end of the film were real and spontaneous, which gave the film a real authenticity. Seeing how much this meant to the people of Iran was deeply touching.

As well, one of the young women makes reference at the end of the film to seven fans who died during the Iran-Japan match on March 25, just a few weeks before. They were trampled to death after police began to spray the crowd with water to move them in a certain direction. Knowing that this was a real-life tragedy added another level of poignancy to the celebrations.

I don’t want to go off on a long political tangent, but this film gave me real hope that there are those in Iran who are hoping for change and working at it. Iran is a nation of young people, and it is only a matter of time before they take the place of their elders in the political sphere. Films like this one show the proud spirit of the Iranian people in spite of their present difficulties, and it’s my sincere hope that there is a brighter future for them.

Interview with director Jafar Panahi

Good review from Sight and Sound magazine

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Offside

The Host (Korea, director Bong Joon-ho): A huge box office hit in Korea, The Host is a good old-fashioned monster movie, and a lot more. The director introduced the screening by saying that the film isn’t really a monster movie at all, but an emotional Korean family drama, and he’s right, mostly.

The family in question is a strange one. There are no mothers and no spouses, just a grandfather, his three unmarried children, and the daughter of his eldest son, whose mother abandoned her shortly after she was born. The grandfather and eldest son run a food stand next to the Han River, and one day, a gigantic lizard-like monster emerges from the water and attacks the people picnicking along the riverbanks. In the process, 13-year-old Hyun-seo is carried off before the horrified eyes of her father Kang-du. The family grieves together in the hospital to where they’ve all been quarantined until Kang-du receives a staticky cell-phone call from his daughter, who is alive and begging him to come and rescue her from the monster’s lair, somewhere in the sewer system.

The reason for the quarantine is that the government believes the monster is carrying some sort of virus and are trying to limit exposure to the rest of the city. The problem is that they’ve called back all the troops that they’d first sent to capture the monster, and now it falls to this dysfunctional family to find their child. After breaking out of the hospital, the whole group embarks on a search and rescue mission armed only with a couple of rifles and sister Nam-ju’s bow (she’s a bronze medal-winning archer). They’re all ineffectual in unique ways. While Nam-ju (Bae Doo-Na, so great in last year’s Linda Linda Linda) is an excellent archer, she’s slow to take aim, which cost her the gold medal. Brother Nam-il is a university graduate who can’t find work, so he’s turned to booze. And Kang-du is just generally lazy and a bit dim-witted.

There is quite a bit of humour in the way the family members interact, as well as a fair bit of social and political satire at the expense of both the Korean and U.S. governments (the Americans are blamed for dumping toxic waste that created the monster in the first place). This was amusing, though pretty heavy-handed.

The cinematography made use of lots of rain and cloudy skies to convey the claustrophobic feeling of the sewers even when we weren’t actually there. In fact, the only sunny skies in the film occur just before the monster’s first appearance.

While I did find the film enjoyable, I felt it ran a bit long, and stretched credibility a few times too many. It’s a monster movie, after all, so maybe I shouldn’t have had such high expectations. The effects are well-done and it was certainly fun to watch, but it’s not an art film by any stretch of the imagination. The theme seemed to be that even dysfunctional families are still families, and that we need to take care of each other and not expect our governments to protect or rescue us.

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Host

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (UK/Austria/Netherlands, director Sophie Fiennes): Not as salacious as it sounds, this is a three-part documentary (each episode is 50 minutes) featuring Slovenian superstar philosopher/psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek. Zizek takes us on a journey through many classic films, exploring themes of sexuality, fantasy, morality and mortality. It was directed by Sophie Fiennes, of the multi-talented Fiennes clan (she’s sister to actors Ralph and Joseph).

I enjoyed this quite a bit, although I think it will be even more enjoyable on DVD, since there is such a stew of ideas to be digested. Freudian and Lacanian analysis can be pretty heavy going and seeing the whole series all at once became a bit disorienting by the end of two and a half hours. It didn’t help that an ill-advised coffee and possession of a bladder led me to some discomfort for the last hour or so.

My only real issue with this is that Zizek picked films that were quite obviously filled with Freudian themes. He spends quite a bit of time on the films of Hitchcock and David Lynch, not exactly masters of subtlety. I would have liked to see him try to support his theories by using a wider range of films, although that’s really just me saying I’d like to see part four and five and six.

Zizek is very funny, and part of the humour was watching him present what amounted to a lecture while inserting himself into the actual scenes from some of the films he’s discussing. So, for instance, we see him in a motorboat on his way to Bodega Bay (from Hitchcock’s The Birds) or sitting in the basement of the Bates Motel (from Psycho). Which is not to say that his theories are not provocative. Even when I found myself disagreeing with him, it definitely made me think a little more deeply about the films. Which is exactly what he’s trying to accomplish.

Visit the film’s web site

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

When I dropped off our picks, we were in box 17 and the randomly-drawn starting box was 22. There were 40 boxes in all, so that meant we were in the 36th of 40 boxes. Bad news. Brooke got all ten of her films, which only figures. My friend Jay only got 3 of his 9 films (he got two tickets to one, though). I managed to get half of my ten choices. So, after more than three hours of lining up and lining up again this morning, here is my final schedule for this year. I only missed out on three films, since I was able to get tickets to alternate screenings for two others:

• Saturday September 9, 12:15pm: The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (UK/Austria/Netherlands, Director: Sophie Fiennes)
• Sunday September 10, 3:45pm: The Host (South Korea, Director: Bong Joon-ho)
• Sunday September 10, 6:30pm: Offside (Iran, Director: Jafar Panahi)
• Monday September 11, 5:30pm: The Way I Spent the End of the World (Romania, Director: Catalin Mitulescu)
• Tuesday September 12, 8:15pm: The Sugar Curtain (France/Spain, Director: Camila Guzmán Urzúa)
• Thursday September 14, 5:30pm: Blindsight (UK, Director: Lucy Walker)
• Thursday September 14, 9:00pm: Exiled (Hong Kong, Director: Johnnie To)
• Friday September 15, 6:15pm: El Ratón Pérez (The Hairy Tooth Fairy) (Argentina/Spain, Director: Juan Pablo Buscarini)
• Saturday September 16, 11:45am: Glue (Argentina/UK, Director: Alexis Dos Santos)
• Saturday September 16, 4:30pm: Lake of Fire (USA, Director: Tony Kaye)
• Saturday September 16, 9:00pm: Lights in the Dusk (Finland/Germany/France, Director: Aki Kaurismäki)

9/15/06: I dropped Glue and picked up El Ratón Pérez (The Hairy Tooth Fairy), due to the Waking City game which starts tomorrow. As well, Brooke’s seeing the film tonight and wanted me to go with her.

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2006: Final Schedule

For anyone who’s interested, you can read all of my previous coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) here:

http://www.consolationchamps.com/archives/film/tiff/

As well, I’ve covered the Hot Docs documentary film festival since 2004. Those reviews are here:

http://www.consolationchamps.com/archives/film/hot_docs/

from Consolation Champs

TIFF Review Archives

For the past two days, I’ve been working my way through the 440 pages of the programme book and have figured out ten films I’d like to see that fit into my schedule:

• Saturday September 9, 2:30pm: The Way I Spent the End of the World (Romania, Director: Catalin Mitulescu)
• Saturday September 9, 6:15pm: Indigènes (France, Director: Rachid Bouchareb)
• Sunday September 10, 12:30pm: The Sugar Curtain (France/Spain, Director: Camila Guzmán Urzúa)
• Sunday September 10, 3:45pm: The Host (South Korea, Director: Bong Joon-ho)
• Sunday September 10, 6:30pm: Offside (Iran, Director: Jafar Panahi)
• Tuesday September 12, 7:00pm: Renaissance (France/Luxembourg/UK, Director: Christian Volckman)
• Thursday September 14, 5:30pm: Blindsight (UK, Director: Lucy Walker)
• Friday September 15, 7:45pm: D.O.A.P. (UK, Director: Gabriel Range)
• Saturday September 16, 4:30pm: Lake of Fire (USA, Director: Tony Kaye)
• Saturday September 16, 9:00pm: Lights in the Dusk (Finland/Germany/France, Director: Aki Kaurismäki)

The next step is to hand in our choices (I’m splitting a 30-coupon book with my wife Brooke and my friend Jay) tomorrow morning and then pick up our tickets next Monday. If we don’t get all our choices, I have a few second choices up my sleeve. But I’m crossing my fingers we’ll get everything.

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2006: Early Picks

It’s almost that time of year again. From September 7-16, Toronto is taken over by celebrities and celebrity hounds, partying into the wee hours and clogging up Yorkville with their bling. Oh, and they show a few films as well.

I’ll be attending for the 12th year, though I’m only seeing ten films again. Without taking vacation time off work (which I’m saving for our trip to Slovenia just after the festival ends), ten is about the limit for me.

I was a little bit excited for about thirty seconds when I saw that the official TIFF web site is offering a feature called “Your Blogs”. That is, until I read part of the lengthy terms and conditions:

Uh, no thanks. Instead, I’ll be posting my reviews here as always, and cross-posting them to TIFFReviews, a site which has been covering the festival since 2004.

The complete film list was released yesterday, so now comes the hard job of deciding what to see and when to see it. If I’m careful, I might just be able to avoid anyone famous.

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2006: Preliminaries

The Last Hangman (UK, director Adrian Shergold): Between 1933 and 1955, Albert Pierrepoint was Britain’s Chief Executioner, responsible for more than 600 hangings. Timothy Spall gives a devastating performance as a decent man engaged in the loneliest of professions. The title is somewhat misleading. Hangings were carried out until 1964, but Pierrepoint was the last man to hold the official office of Chief Executioner.

As the film begins, Pierrepoint is proud to be offered a job as a hangman, following in his father’s and uncle’s footsteps. Since he’s only needed every few months, he maintains his job as a grocer’s deliveryman and keeps his moonlighting a secret from his friends and even his wife (Juliet Stevenson). He is very good at his new profession, and is determined to complete each job as quickly and humanely as possible. It’s a bit odd seeing him trying to shave seconds off the time required for each execution, much like a professional athlete trying for a world record. That is, until you realize that his desire is for the prisoner to have as little time as possible to be afraid. After each execution, it falls to Pierrepoint to cut down the body and prepare it for burial, and it’s touching to see the tenderness he displays. After the execution of one woman, he tells his assistant, “She’s paid the price, now she’s innocent.”

Pierrepoint’s reputation grows and after the war, he’s flown to Germany by the British Army and placed in charge of executing scores of Nazi war criminals. As a result, his secret is leaked to the press, who now broadcast his identity as the finest hangman in the land. With his earnings from these jobs, he and his wife decide to open a pub(!), which does a booming business, thanks in part to his notoriety.

But the job begins to take a terrible toll. Even after he tells his wife about his second profession, she doesn’t want to hear about it. Nobody really wants to hear about it. When protestors start demonstrating against capital punishment, Pierrepoint finds himself the target of their ire. Doubts begin to creep in to destroy his previously unshakable faith in what he does. By the mid-1950s, Albert Pierrepoint resigns his position (ostensibly over unpaid fees) and completely reverses his own position on capital punishment, though he initially keeps his opinions to himself. In his 1974 autobiography, however, he finally confesses that the whole experience had left a bitter aftertaste for him and that he felt that capital punishment had “achieved nothing but revenge.”

Though this is a fairly standard biopic and “issue film,” the performances of Juliet Stevenson and especially Timothy Spall are remarkable. Pierrepoint’s determination to remain detached takes a terrible toll on his life and is bound to fail eventually. The obvious conclusion is that killing corrodes our humanity, whether the killer is a murderer or an executioner on the state’s payroll.

Note: This film was retitled Pierrepoint upon its release.

More on Albert Pierrepoint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Pierrepoint

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Last Hangman

Workingman’s Death (Austria/Germany, director Michael Glawogger): After you see this film, you’ll never complain about your job again. Subtitled something like “Five Portraits of Work in the Twenty-First Century,” Glawogger’s documentary features some of the most dangerous, difficult, or just plain unpleasant work in the world.

Each segment except the last one is about twenty-five minutes long, and is shot without any voiceover narration and very little editorializing. We are simply presented with people working and talking about their work. The director possesses a very painterly sense of composition, and we’re often presented with shots of workers posing as if they were in front of a still camera. The camerawork is even more impressive when it is moving, and I often found myself wondering how they were able to film in some of these conditions.

The segments follow, in order, a group of miners in Ukraine who have dug their own coal shafts, a group of men in Indonesia who collect sulfur from an active volcano and haul it down the mountainside, butchers at an open-air slaughterhouse in Nigeria, men who break apart rusting ships for scrap metal in Pakistan, and steelworkers in China. Although all of these workers are merely surviving, the thing that struck me most was how contented, even happy, most of them were.

That being said, three of the five segments featured Islamic societies, and I found myself wondering about the connections between the conditions these men were working in and the rise of Islamic radicalism. Among the shipbreakers in Pakistan, for instance, there was an interesting segment which followed a photographer who circulated among the men charging them a fee to take pictures of them holding an assault rifle. There was no voiceover, but I got the impression that these men wanted to be seen as revolutionaries instead of just subsistence scrap workers.

The most intense segment had to be among the butchers, and there was quite a lot of blood and gore evident as we watched the men work. But strangely, I found this a more honest approach to the production of food than I saw in the factory farms in We Feed The World. These butchers are “hands-on,” literally.

The final segment, filmed among steelworkers in China, was the shortest, and the least interesting, but the director was trying to end with the optimism of the Chinese workers for the steel industry, which he contrasts with shots of a defunct steel mill in Germany that’s been turned into an art installation. His point was slightly unclear, but overall, his unflinching eye for detail, even in some harrowing work environments, makes this documentary a must-see.

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Workingman’s Death

Citizen Dog (Thailand, director Wisit Sasanatieng): I’d heard some buzz around this film, that it was sort of a Thai Amelie. In fact, it’s Amelie cranked up to 11. Which is entirely too much. This film is absolutely overstuffed with whimsy. A narrator tells us the story of country boy Pod, who comes to Bangkok to find work and falls in love with Jin. Along the way, he loses and then finds his finger, drives around a chainsmoking talking teddy-bear as well as a man who licks everything, and shares his house with a gecko that has the face of his dead grandmother. If that’s not enough, the object of his desire is an obsessive neat freak who carries around a book written in Italian that she can’t read. A case of mistaken identity sends her off on an environmental crusade that results in her accumulating a mountain (literally, a mountain) of plastic water bottles. Will this pair find love in the end? Well, by the end, I didn’t care that much.

The problem was that the visual tricks and whimsy overwhelm the characters, who end up being nothing more than a collection of quirks. The constant voiceover also never really lets the characters tell their own stories, and the romance never feels believable.

Sasanatieng is obviously a director of huge talent, and there are quite a few great sight gags and some really original visuals. But there’s just far too much of it. It’s like eating a whole chocolate cake at one sitting. If he could tone down the trickery a bit, and find a story with real characters, he could one day make a really outstanding film. This isn’t it yet, but I hope he does it. I’m giving this 6.5, though my graphic below doesn’t show halves.

(6.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

Citizen Dog

Twelve And Holding (USA, director Michael Cuesta): Ostensibly about a group of friends, this film tells three separate tales that veer from comedy to tragedy and back again. I’ll sketch them in the order of most successful to least.

Malee lives with her mom and never sees her dad. She’s just started her period and begins to develop a very strong crush on a construction worker who is one of her therapist mother’s patients. Her attempts at flirting are both painful and very funny to watch. She’s obviously missing a father figure, but there’s something else stirring as well, and she’s lonely and looking for adult attention. Zoe Weizenbaum was just a joy to watch, beautiful and earnest and lovable and willing to take amazing risks for the film. The director told us to watch out for her as “Young Pumpkin” in the upcoming Memories of a Geisha.

Leonard is an overweight kid from a family where everyone is overweight, and he’s tired of being the butt of other people’s jokes. After a serious accident in which (bizarrely) he loses his senses of taste and smell, he starts eating healthy food and exercising, and takes radical action to, as he sees it, save his mother’s life. Played soulfully by Jesse Camacho, Leonard is never just comic relief, but a hurting little boy who wants to change not only his life, but his family’s as well.

Jacob (Conor Donovan) and Rudy (also played by Conor Donovan) are twin brothers who are very different from each other. Rudy is athletic and fearless, Jacob withdrawn and shy, mostly because of a large birthmark on his face. One night, Rudy and Leonard stay overnight in their treehouse, after bullies threaten to destroy it. Their plan to stay awake and defend it goes horribly wrong when they doze off, and the bullies light it on fire, unaware that anyone is inside. Leonard escapes with relatively minor injuries (but as noted above, the odd side effect that he can no longer smell or taste). But Rudy is killed, and his family is devastated. Jacob is racked with guilt for not being with the others on the night of the fire, but he’s also filled with a desire for revenge. After the two perpetrators are sent away to a juvenile facility for a year, Rudy and Jacob’s mother expresses her wish that the guilty pair die, a sentiment that Jacob stores away in his heart.

For a while, Jacob goes to the juvenile facility regularly to threaten the two, telling them that when they get out, he’s going to kill them. But after one of the boys commits suicide in custody, Jacob softens and even continues to visit the other boy and bring him comic books. As the boy’s release looms, they make a plan to run away together. Jacob is unhappy at home, feeling unwanted due to the arrival of a new adopted child. But his plans lead to even more tragedy.

If all this sounds melodramatic, it is. And despite the heavy subject matter, at times there was a vaguely “after-school special” feeling about the film. This last story, which in some ways ties the others together, carries the most weight, but is the least successful. I’m not sure why, but it may have something to do with the huge dramatic burden placed on the shoulders of a young actor with little experience. The fact that the film careens through a wide emotional territory like a drunken elephant doesn’t help, either.

In the end, the performances of Camacho and Weizenbaum are so winning that I sort of wish they were in a film of their own. As a story of three kids seeking the love of their parents, the film is only partially successful. I also wish the kids had been in more scenes together, since you don’t really get to see why they’re friends in the first place. I’m giving this 7.5, though my graphic below doesn’t show halves.

(7.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

Twelve And Holding

Thumbsucker (USA, director Mike Mills): Another directorial debut, this time for Mike Mills, who’s been making short films and music videos for a number of years. An altogether sunnier film than The Squid And The Whale (see review below), the two films are actually interesting mirror images of each other.

Justin (newcomer Lou Pucci) is 17 years old and still sucks his thumb. He tries to hide it from his parents, but they know, and it’s beginning to cause some trouble. He hides it from his new girlfriend, but she dumps him when she senses he’s not “opening up” to her. A school counselor suggests that the problem is that Justin is ADHD and that Ritalin will help. Ah, simple. But he soon dumps the pills and begins to try to stop being “weird”. Along the way, he learns a few things about his parents and about being himself. It’s a fairly standard coming-of-age story with a bit of a twist.

It baffles me why this film was savaged by Variety and a few other critics, who derided it as a “paint-by-numbers” indie film. I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Sure, there’s a great soundtrack (Polyphonic Spree and Elliott Smith), and an androgynous young lead (Pucci is excellent and plays innocent like a young Johnny Depp). But there are no shootings, no weird sex, and the family, though far from perfect, are caring and decent people.

It’s actually refreshing to see people in this kind of film portrayed as anything other than freaks. Veterans Tilda Swinton and Vincent D’Onofrio play parents who really love their kids, though they don’t always understand them. And the film defies convention by having D’Onofrio play the failed athlete dad as someone who really wants a genuine connection with his oddball, non-athletic son.

And even though, compared to something like The Squid And The Whale, this film is polished to a high gloss, it never feels fake. Instead, Mills has created an atmosphere of safety, a place where a great many teenagers actually live.

There is some exposition near the end of the film involving Benjamin Bratt (as a recovering coke addict TV star) that feels contrived, but it’s played for laughs. As is Keanu Reeves’ role as a wholistic orthodontist. His over-the-top performance for once doesn’t seem to detract from the film. Perhaps it was because Mike Mills introduced the film personally, but I get a feeling of sincerity from the film that seems anything but paint-by-numbers. At every step of the process, from his casting, to his soundtrack choices, I think Mike Mills was trying to make an irony-free film. And I think he has succeeded.

Film’s Web Site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thumbsucker/

Director’s Blog: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thumbsucker/blog

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Thumbsucker

The Squid And The Whale (USA, director Noah Baumbach): This film contained the best ensemble acting I’ve seen this year. Based on the autobiographical experiences of writer and director Baumbach (co-writer of Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic – Anderson serves as producer on this film), The Squid And The Whale is about the family dynamics of a family of four going through a divorce in the mid-eighties. Father (Jeff Daniels) is a writer whose best days are behind him, yet he remains an unrepentant snob. Mother (Laura Linney) is also a writer, about to have her first novel published. When her multiple infidelities emerge, the parents decide to divorce. Their sons Walt and Frank are thrown into turmoil. This is not original stuff. But the writing is of such high quality, and the performances so genuine, that I found myself drawn right in.

The film is obviously told from the sons’ perspective. Walt seems to be like his father, snobby and self-righteous, while younger Frank seems more sensitive, though also more self-destructive. Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates’ son Owen Kline is a revelation in this role. His sister Greta also appears briefly in the film. You might remember these two from The Anniversary Party, but this is really a breakout role for Owen, and I hope he’ll continue acting.

The film makes it painfully aware how people hurt each other when they can’t talk directly about their feelings. Daniels is excellent as a man whose intellectual pride and snobbery hide his deep insecurities and the pain of rejection by his wife. And Laura Linney is able to make even an unsympathetic character a little less blameworthy. The only issues I had the film are probably related to its miniscule budget. The handheld camerawork is often a little bumpy, and the film feels a little unpolished. But after hearing how Baumbach had a 23 day shooting schedule, and took five years to obtain the funding for the film, I have to give him credit for producing a smart and moving piece of cinema.

Just as an aside, I was pleasantly surprised when the end credits rolled that the beautiful titles I’d been noticing were designed by Torontonian Leanne Shapton, who was art director at Saturday Night magazine for a few of its most visually exciting years (circa 2000-2001). I’m glad to see she’s finding new places to bring her great eye for design.

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Squid And The Whale

Everything Is Illuminated (USA, director Liev Schreiber): Based upon the acclaimed novel by Jonathan Safron Foer, Everything Is Illuminated is the directorial debut of actor Liev Schreiber. An audacious choice, since the novel is multi-layered and very “meta”, but Schreiber, who also wrote the screenplay, handles the material with ease, for the most part.

Elijah Wood (looking as doll-like as ever, and wearing glasses that magnify his already-huge eyes to make the not-so-subtle point that he is an observer) plays Jonathan, a man obsessed with collecting things from his family’s history. When his grandmother hands him a photograph from 1940 saying, “Your grandfather wanted you to have this,” it sends Jonathan off on a voyage of discovery. The picture is of his grandfather in Ukraine, standing with an unknown woman who, according to his grandmother, saved him from the Nazis, allowing him to escape to America.

Jonathan duly turns up in Ukraine, where he hopes to unravel the mystery of the woman in the photograph. His tour guides turn out to be a little unnerving to the fussy and obsessive vegetarian. His translator Alex is like a Ukrainian version of Sasha Baron-Cohen’s Ali G and Borat characters rolled into one, and is played by newcomer Eugene Hutz, the frontman for the “gypsy punk” band Gogol Bordello, who contribute several songs to the soundtrack. While I thought his accent in the film was just an outrageous parody, during the Q & A, I realized it was actually his real voice (or maybe not. It could be part of the shtick.). Alex’s grandfather, the driver, thinks he is blind and is accompanied everywhere by Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., his “seeing-eye bitch.” Alex’s mangled English leads to many laughs, and the middle section of this road movie is easily the most enjoyable.

Things get a bit more serious when they find the woman in the photograph, but here, in a section of the film called “The Illumination,” I found myself still a little in the dark. Perhaps in ironing out a few of the book’s twists, something was lost, but I found the “mystery” either confusing or not so mysterious, and actually felt a little unsatisfied by the end.

However, the film is shot and edited beautifully, the acting is fine, and the directing sure-handed. Schreiber admitted that the stuff in the book that he left out of the film was the stuff that attracted him to the idea in the first place. Which is an odd thing to say, really. The book contains an imagined history of the shtetl where Jonathan’s grandfather was raised, a place with hundreds of years of history which is wiped out by the Nazis in a few hours. I think this background would have given the film the weight it needed at the end of the journey. Without that ballast, the film floats away a bit.

Nevertheless, this is an assured debut from Schreiber, and I look forward to seeing what he chooses for his next project.

Gogol Bordello Web Site: http://www.gogolbordello.com

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Everything Is Illuminated

The Heart Of The Game (USA, director Ward Serrill): A documentary about high-school basketball that took seven years to make, this film will be compared to Steve James’s Hoop Dreams, which is a high compliment indeed. But the films are different.

Serrill began following the girls’ basketball team at Seattle’s Roosevelt High School when they hired a new coach, tax law professor Bill Resler. Not expected to make much of an impact, Resler proceeded to build a powerhouse in his first year at the job. An eccentric but effective motivator, he chose a different “theme” for his team each year: Pack of Wolves, Pride of Lions, Tropical Storm, and then whipped his players into a frenzy. His motivational skills and his ruthless physical workouts gave the team the confidence and endurance to beat their opponents, even when they were bigger, taller, or more talented.

In his second year at the job, he noticed a young freshman by the name of Darnelia Russell. She stood out for a number of reasons. She had been an outstanding basketball player at her middle school. And she was black. At Roosevelt, in a privileged suburb of Seattle, black students were a minority, unlike at inner-city schools like arch-rival Garfield. In fact, when he tried to recruit her for his team, she rebuffed him at first, admitting to her friends that she wasn’t used to being around so many white people. Her presence at Roosevelt was the combined idea of her middle school coach and her mother, who wanted to keep her out of trouble and make sure she got an excellent education.

Her arrival helps Resler build Roosevelt into a city dynasty and a threat at the state championships. But there are ups and downs. And if you wonder why the film took seven years to make, Serrill admitted that he just filmed everything and waited for the story to emerge.

Although the film touches on a few issues of race and class, Serrill says he wanted to make it more about the basketball, and there are generous clips of games, even from major network coverage. Although it give the film much of its energy, I felt myself wishing there were a few more interviews with players, especially Darnelia, who emerges as a central character in the story. We never really get to know her as anything other than a great basketball player.

That being said, it’s a documentary about sports, so I’m predisposed to like it. There is real drama and excitement, both on and off the court, and it’s also good to see the contribution of people like Bill Resler recognized, a good man who is instilling not just a love of winning, but of playing, and living. As the credits rolled, it was endearing to see that a few of the songs were actually composed and played by Resler, on guitar and vocals, with director Serrill on harmonica. I’m giving this 8.5, even though my graphic doesn’t show half-points.

Film’s Web Site: http://www.heartofthegame.org

(8.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Heart Of The Game

Bubble (USA, director Steven Soderbergh): Not quite sure how to write about this one. Bubble feels like a bit of an exercise for Soderbergh. First of all, it was shot in HD (high-definition) digital video, and this makes the visuals incredibly crisp. Secondly, it was filmed on location in a small Ohio town with a completely amateur cast. The script felt mostly improvised or situational, and actual dialogue is quite sparse.

This is a small and quiet film in which large themes play out over 90 minutes. The pace is very deliberate, and the atmosphere incredibly claustrophobic. The overriding theme for me seemed to be isolation and it was almost physically painful watching some of the characters go about their daily routines or listening to them try to connect with each other. These are people who seem completely inarticulate and unable to express their feelings. There is a sort of love triangle, and a murder, but that’s about all I can say.

Though the mannered acting and slow pace threw me off at first, once I got used to it, I appreciated the film a lot more. This is one of Soderbergh’s more experimental films, and he admitted after the screening that it would be “polarizing” for audiences. While the film is not entirely successful, I’m glad a director of his stature is still taking risks.

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

Bubble

October 17, 1961 (Nuit Noire) (France, director Alain Tasma): Another gut-wrenching portrayal of some of the shameful events perpetrated during the Algerian war, this film is an important document of the legacy of French colonialism.

On the night of October 17, 1961, more than 20,000 Algerians gathered in Paris for a peaceful demonstration against French rule of their homeland. It wasn’t entirely spontaneous. In fact, the FLN (the main group advocating for Algerian independence) required all Algerian men to participate. It was to be a show of solidarity to bolster the ongoing negotiations between the FLN and the French government. Instead, it turned into a massacre. The police were already living in a climate of fear and repressed anger due to the ongoing campaign of random assassinations of police officers. And the police leadership were eager for a crackdown to avoid further humiliation. As the demonstrators gathered in various districts, police immediately moved in to arrest thousands, and after some confusing reports of being fired upon, themselves fired upon and then charged the crowds. There is no official report on the number of dead, but it was somewhere between 50 and 200. More than 40 years later, there has never been an official acknowledgement of the events of that night.

Noted television director Alain Tasma spent two years gathering evidence and reconstructing the events leading up to the massacre, and he presents a straightforward account that manages to capture the rising tension keenly. The film is a sort of parallel to the events portrayed in the classic film The Battle of Algiers, and Tasma owes a lot to the techniques and pacing of that forty-year-old masterpiece. With the exception of that film, most “issue” films rarely rise above their sense of moral outrage, and October 17, 1961 (more evocatively entitled “Nuit Noire” in its native France) is not a masterpiece. But it does capture the feeling of a time not so long ago, a feeling which is eerily present again in the rising Islamophobia of many Western democracies.

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

October 17, 1961 (Nuit Noire)

Thank You For Smoking (UK, director Jason Reitman): At the film festival a few years back, I saw an incredibly accomplished short film called In God We Trust, and I vowed that if young Jason Reitman (son of Canadian director Ivan Reitman) ever made a feature film, I’d run out and see it. I kept my promise, and Reitman delivers on his.

Aaron Eckhart is Nick Naylor, the tobacco industry’s spin doctor. He is very good at what he does, and manages to be likable while saying and doing despicable things. In this biting satire, Eckhart doesn’t really have any epiphanies, but he thinks he does. After an ill-advised affair with the reporter doing a profile on him, his secrets get out and he loses his job. But after a bravura performance at some Senate hearings, Big Tobacco wants him back. Claiming to have a “responsibility” to his young son, he refuses the job. Instead, by the end, he’s set himself up in business advising all sorts of other icky corporations.

The film is stuffed with very smart laughs, and I liked the fact that Nick emerges unrepentant at the end. It just sharpens the satire, that this man actually thinks he’s now a better person. The tone of the film reminded me quite a bit of Alexander Payne’s Election, though the comedy is much broader.

Reitman loses his deft touch slightly near the end of the film. Up to this point, no one has been seen actually smoking in the film. After a bizarre attempt on his life, Nick is told that he has to quit smoking. It’s a bit incongruous and it’s never mentioned again. I suspect that this is much funnier in the novel by Christopher Buckley on which the film is based.

I would definitely recommend this film, not only for its skewering of the tobacco industry (standing in for all corporations, really), but also for its jabs at Washington and Hollywood as well. No one is spared. You’ll even get to see Rob Lowe in a kimono!

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Thank You For Smoking

Brothers Of The Head (UK, directors Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe): Based on a novella by science-fiction author Brian Aldiss, this film attempts to tell the story of Tom and Barry Howe, conjoined twins who are plucked from their family by an impresario in order to form a rock band.

Almost deliberately gimmicky, the film is also too clever by half (if you’ll pardon the pun). By mixing genres, styles and moods, the directors (whose previous film was the excellent documentary Lost In La Mancha) lose their way pretty quickly. I was never sure whether I was meant to take it all seriously or not. Flashbacks, dream sequences, it was all just a bit much. Plus, the promised rock and roll just didn’t move me. I was reminded a bit too much at times of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a film I found original and moving. But in this case, the songs just weren’t as good, nor were the main characters sympathetic. A more unfavourable comparison would be the similarly disappointing Velvet Goldmine.

(4/10)

from Consolation Champs

Brothers Of The Head

We Feed The World (Austria, director Erwin Wagenhofer): I would call this film a Mondovino for food. By which I mean it is an examination of how globalization and the growth of the power of corporations has affected the production of food. The director dispassionately takes us to farms in Romania and Brazil, a fishing boat in Brittany, a greenhouse in southern Spain, and a chicken processing plant in Austria.

In all these places, we see traditional practices being abandoned in favour of giant factory operations. In each place, someone on camera asserts that flavour is not as important as price or appearance. So we see hothouse tomatoes being driven 2500 kilometres to be sold, we see rainforest cleared to grow soybeans, even though the soil is unsuitable, and we see the entire eight-week life cycle of thousands of chickens, raised to supply the incessant demands of the world for cheap food. Watching factory-farmed chickens being “processed” might be enough to turn some people into vegetarians. Except for the fact that our vegetables are really no better.

There is some interesting information about GM (genetically modified) crops which are resistant to herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup and the growing use of hybrid seed. Unlike regular seed, which farmers used to save from year to year, hybrid seed cannot be used to raise a second crop, forcing farmers to keep buying seed from large seed firms like Pioneer. This raises all kinds of issues, and I really think the film could have spent more time here.

The film ends with an interview with the CEO of Nestlé, the largest food manufacturer in the world, who muses on “attaching a value” to water, and calls the position of the NGOs, that access to clean water is a human right, “extreme”. After bragging how many jobs his corporation is creating, and how many families it is supporting, he glances at an informational video of one of Nestlé’s Japanese factories, and marvels how it is so roboticized. “Hardly any people,” he crows.

The only significant weakness to this documentary was its unrelenting gloom. I would have liked to have been given some ammunition or to have seen some success stories, or at least some rebellion. But there wasn’t any. Since I have an interest in this area, I can point you to the Slow Food organization, which is trying to encourage more consumption of local products and the preservation of disappearing foodstuffs. But I really wish the director had done it instead.

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

We Feed The World

Capote (USA, director Bennett Miller): Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favourite actors, period. But he’s usually known for character roles, and so he’s not quite the household name he deserves to be. And sadly, because this film probably won’t have wide appeal, he might remain that way. The truth is that he’s one of the finest actors working today, and this film is a tour de force. Hoffman inhabits the role of Truman Capote, nailing everything from his childlike voice to his fey mannerisms, even down to his facial tics. He’s almost too good, which may distract a bit from the other charms of this film.

If focusses rather narrowly on the time Truman Capote spent writing his most famous book, In Cold Blood. After a family of four is murdered in their remote farmhouse in Kansas, Capote decides to write an article for The New Yorker. After the two murderers are apprehended, Capote begins to form a bond with one of the men, Perry Smith (portrayed with amazing subtlety by Clifton Collins Jr.), drawing parallels between his own troubled childhood and that of the career criminal. The proposed article is abandoned, as Capote realizes he has the material for a book. And not just any kind of book, but a whole new kind of writing, what Capote calls “the nonfiction novel.”

As the months drag on after the men’s convictions, Capote keeps trying to draw Smith out, asking him to tell him about the night of the killings. When he finally does, it’s uncomfortable to watch, not only for the brutality of the murders, but also for the way that Capote uses Smith for his own ends. It’s clear that there is an inner conflict going on in Capote’s mind. On one level, he really does befriend this killer. But he also uses him for material so he can feed his huge ambition and ego. His duplicitous nature is just another thing he has in common with Smith.

But after several years of research, at the end of all the legal appeals to spare the killers’ lives, Capote is relieved to hear they’ll finally be hanged. It’s the only way he can finish his book. However, the experience of actually watching the executions shakes him deeply. His jumbled mixture of feelings and motivations went on to have a profound effect on Capote, and although the book does go on to become his most successful, he never finishes another. The film ends by quoting the epigraph to his final, unfinished manuscript, Unanswered Prayers. It was Christian mystic Teresa of Avila who said that “answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered.”

Film’s Web Site: http://www.sonyclassics.com/capote/

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Capote

Linda Linda Linda (Japan, director Nobuhiro Yamashita): Named for a song by legendary Japanese “punks” The Blue Hearts, this film tells the story of four girls who form a band for an end-of-year high school festival. They decide to play covers by The Blue Hearts, and although the film only covers a few frantic days of practice, the pace is sometimes glacial. I’m not sure that this is a bad thing, though it felt like the film wanted to go in two directions. On the one hand, it was a typically sentimental Japanese film about the passing of youth, and the director gives us a few shots of each of the girls smiling wistfully while gazing off in the distance. On the other hand, it’s a film about a thrown-together-for-the-hell-of-it cover band, and it could have used a bit more of that kinetic attitude. That being said, it was hugely enjoyable (though probably a good 15 minutes too long), and Bae Doo Na, who plays the gawky Korean exchange student, literally steals the film. Her transformation from gawky outsider to sassy singer, though unrealistically quick, is endearing. And only in a Japanese film would someone get to sing the lyrics, “Like a rat, I want to be beautiful” and make it sound heartfelt. I’m giving it a 7.5/10 (2.5 per chord!), even though my graphic below can’t handle half-points.

9/14/05: After harbouring suspicion for a few days, I finally checked and confirmed that this film is NOT directed by the same guy that brought us Waterboys in 2001. That was Shinobu Yaguchi. But the two films are very similar, and equally fun.

Film’s Web Site (Japanese): http://www.linda3.com/

Bae Doo Na’s Web Site (Korean): http://www.doona.net/

(7.5/10)

P.S. This film just made me want to listen to some good old-fashioned DIY three-chord rock and roll on the way home. Here’s what my iPod offered up:

• Spoon – You Gotta Feel It
• Teenage Head – Total Love
• Guided By Voices – A Good Flying Bird

Brilliant. Now I just have to find “Linda Linda Linda” by The Blue Hearts!

P.P.S. I was pleasantly surprised to see in the credits that the film’s music was by James Iha, ex-Smashing Pumpkins.

from Consolation Champs

Linda Linda Linda

Well, the madness begins again tonight. My first film isn’t until tomorrow, but for the next ten days, Toronto is taken over by film nuts and paparazzi. This year, I’m seeing 15 films, a 50% increase from last year, and I’m not taking any time off work, so by the end, I could be pretty exhausted. I’ll try to post reviews, as always.

• Friday September 9, 8:45pm: Linda Linda Linda (Japan, Director: Nobuhiro Yamashita)
• Saturday September 10, 3:00pm: Capote (USA, Director: Bennett Miller)
• Saturday September 10, 6:00pm: We Feed The World (Austria, Director: Erwin Wagenhofer)
• Saturday September 10, 10:00pm: Brothers Of The Head (UK, Directors: Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe)
• Sunday September 11, 9:15am: Thank You For Smoking (USA, Director: Jason Reitman)
• Sunday September 11, 1:00pm: October 17, 1961 (Nuit Noire) (France, Director: Alain Tasma)
• Sunday September 12, 7:00pm: Bubble (USA, Director: Steven Soderbergh)
• Monday September 12, 4:45pm: The Heart Of The Game (USA, Director: Ward Serrill)
• Monday September 12, 9:00pm: Everything Is Illuminated (USA, Director: Liev Schreiber)
• Tuesday September 13, 6:00pm: The Squid And The Whale (USA, Director: Noah Baumbach)
• Tuesday September 13, 9:00pm: Thumbsucker (USA, Director: Mike Mills)
• Wednesday September 14, 9:00pm: Twelve And Holding (USA, Director: Michael Cuesta)
• Thursday September 15, 10:00pm: Citizen Dog (Thailand, Director: Wisit Sasanatieng)
• Saturday September 17, 3:00pm: Workingman’s Death (Austria/Germany, Director: Michael Glawogger)
• Saturday September 17, 6:00pm: The Last Hangman (UK, Director: Adrian Shergold)

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2005: Final Schedule

It’s that time of year again. This year will the 11th year that I’ve attended the Toronto International Film Festival. Brooke and I are splitting a 30-film coupon book, so I’ll probably end up with somewhere between 15 and 18 films. The full list of films was just released yesterday, and I’m beginning to get excited. I try to see a mixture of “Hollywood” films that will get released and smaller foreign films that may not. Here are a few that look interesting so far:

• Wah-Wah (dir. Richard E. Grant)
• Everything is Illuminated (dir. Lieb Schrieber)
• The Squid and The Whale (dir. Noah Baumbach)
• Shopgirl (dir. Anand Tucker)
• Capote (dir. Bennett Miller)
• Why We Fight (dir. Eugene Jarecki)
• Thumbsucker (dir. Mike Mills)
• Elizabethtown (dir. Cameron Crowe)
• Citizen Dog (dir. Wisit Sasanatieng)
• Tsotsi (dir. Gavin Hood)
• Tideland (dir. Terry Gilliam)
• Bubble (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
• The Heart Of The Game (dir. Ward Serrill)
• A Little Trip to Heaven (dir. Baltasar Kormákur)

Of course, this is all preliminary. We don’t get the actual schedule and full programme book until next week, so I’ll have to see what fits. I don’t take any days off work, and in addition, this year Brooke and I are taking a Spanish class twice a week in preparation for our trip to Uruguay in November. Hope I can squeeze everything in!

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2005: Getting Excited

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (USA, director Xan Cassavetes): The daughter of the late filmmaker John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowlands, Xan (Alexandra) Cassavetes grew up surrounded by the culture of film. But in her teens, she began to form her own taste, thanks in part to an innovative Los Angeles area cable channel. Z Channel began in 1974, long before there was a Blockbuster Video on every block, and it showed both neglected American films as well as the greats of European cinema. Xan set out to make a straight documentary about the channel, and in the process found a whole other story.

Jerry Harvey was a film geek’s film geek. He joined Z Channel in 1980 after programming films for a local arthouse cinema. Under Harvey’s direction, Z Channel really took off, competing against heavyweights like HBO. While remaining a local treasure, Z Channel’s influence was disproportionate to its subscriber base, since so many filmmakers lived in the LA area. Harvey was a friend and champion of such filmmakers as Sam Peckinpah, Henry Jaglom, Michael Cimino, Robert Altman, and Paul Verhoeven, and was one of the first to show “director’s cuts” of such misunderstood films as Heaven’s Gate, Once Upon A Time In America, and The Wild Bunch. But he was also a deeply troubled man. His obsessive nature fuelled his work, but it often led to bouts of crushing depression. His mood swings culminated in a terrible tragedy in 1988 when he killed his wife and then took his own life. Remembrances from his friends are still fraught with grief and anger, more than fifteen years later.

While at first, I wondered if I were seeing two films (a portrait of Jerry Harvey, and an appreciation of overlooked films), I realized that the beauty of Cassavetes’ film is that she’s celebrating the life and achievements of Jerry Harvey by talking about some of the films that he brought to her attention through Z Channel. Not his tragic end, but what came before. So often, when a life ends in tragedy or violence, we only remember that part. Sure, you could call Harvey a murderer. But he was also an incredible film lover and filmmaker’s advocate, someone who had a wide ranging influence as well as a group of loyal friends who are still reeling from his loss.

Z Channel only lasted about a year after Harvey’s death, and the many people interviewed (Quentin Tarantino, James Woods, Theresa Russell, Paul Verhoeven, Robert Altman, and Jacqueline Bisset among them) seem almost as wistful about the death of a certain era in cable television as of their friend Jerry Harvey.

P.S. It seems fitting that I should end my 2004 Toronto International Film Festival experience with a film about a TV channel that director Henry Jaglom described as “like a film festival in your house every night.”

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (USA, director Ken Burns): It may seem hard to believe, but I’ve never seen a Ken Burns film. I’ve always meant to, of course, but watching a multi-part documentary series is something of a commitment. So I jumped at the chance to see an entire film in one sitting. Clocking in at an impressive 218 minutes (and including a short intermission and a lively Q&A session, I was in the theatre for almost 4½ hours), I was hoping that the quantity would be matched by the quality. I was not disappointed.

Jack Johnson was a true original. The first black man to hold the heavyweight boxing championship, he was a self-assured man who dressed well, drove fast cars, and kept white women as girlfriends. While not unusual now, this was highly irregular a hundred years ago, at a time when black lynchings were at their peak and the press regularly printed offensive cartoons to go along with its racist rhetoric. In the ring, he was a highly intelligent boxer, favouring a defensive style unknown in his day. He was also incredibly sensitive and articulate, especially for a man with only five years of formal education. But the struggles Johnson faced were almost insurmountable. No white champion would agree to fight a black man. Jim Jeffries preferred to retire undefeated rather than face Johnson, and Johnson had to travel around chasing champ Tommy Burns, hounding him to give him a title shot. When Burns finally agreed to a fight in 1908 (for a purse of $35,000, an unbelievable sum in those days), the contest wasn’t even close, with Johnson dancing around, taunting his opponent, and talking to people in the ringside seats. The police stepped in during the fourteenth round to prevent him from knocking out the badly beaten Burns.

Johnson held the title from 1908 until 1915, with his most famous bout in 1910, against ex-champ Jeffries, whom he soundly defeated. This led to race riots all over the country, and many people were killed. From the moment he won the championship, it seemed that white society looked for ways to discredit him. The press were relentless, printing hostile editorials and calling for a “Great White Hope” who would return boxing’s crown to its rightful place (and race). When a 37-year old Johnson finally lost the championship to Jess Willard, a giant man ten years his junior, it seemed to many that the black race had been taught an important lesson.

Johnson’s life was troubled, and he continued to face persecution from the press and even law enforcement, who prosecuted him on charges related to his “debauchery” with white women. He eventually served a year in prison. There would not be another black heavyweight champion until Joe Louis, 22 years later.

This is a remarkable film for many reasons. First of all, in the little-known story of Jack Johnson, Burns has found a microcosm of the racial situation of the day, and one that has many echoes even now. Muhammad Ali, after seeing James Earl Jones portray Johnson in the Broadway play “The Great White Hope” (later made into a film), declared that Johnson’s life story was similar to his own. A black man choosing to live as a free individual on his own terms is something that is still hard for some white people to tolerate.

Burns’ film is also remarkable for the way in which it uses actual archival film of Johnson’s bouts. Using silent film, Burns and his crew have added sound effects such as crowd noise and the sounds of blows connecting, and it gives these scenes the visceral punch they require. Finally, the superb “talking heads” (including the late George Plimpton, James Earl Jones, and the witty Stanley Crouch) and voice talent (Samuel L. Jackson is the voice of Johnson; others include Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Jacobi, Brian Cox, and Alan Rickman) bring the extraordinary story of Jack Johnson vividly to life.

As an added bonus, you get to hear James Earl Jones say “balls”. Twice.

P.S. Ken Burns is involved in a campaign to have Johnson legally pardoned for his alleged violation of the Mann Act. Other supporters include Samuel L. Jackson, Senators John McCain and Ted Kennedy, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Film’s Web Site: www.pbs.org/unforgivableblackness/

Director’s Web Site: www.pbs.org/kenburns/

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

Bad Education (La Mala Educación) (Spain, director Pedro Almodóvar): I’m really having trouble coming up with things to say about this film. I’m new to Almodóvar films (Talk to Her was the first one I saw), and maybe I just don’t “get” him yet, but I must say I left this film with a vague feeling of disappointment. Outlining the plot is difficult, but it begins as a story of two childhood friends reunited in adulthood. One is a film director and the other a struggling actor who shows him a short story that he’d like to see developed into a film. It is a partially autobiographical account of the sexual abuse experienced at the strict Catholic school where both boys met. The two boys also fall in love there, and the jealousy of a priest conspires to separate them forever. To be honest, this section of the film was the most enjoyable for me. Despite the horror of abuse, it’s very discreetly implied, and the innocence of childhood love is refreshing. Unfortunately, this section, seemingly so important, only lasts about ten or fifteen minutes. The rest is a tangled telling and retelling of events that came later, when sex becomes a commodity for everyone involved. The plot is complicated by the fact that each character is being played by two or three different actors, and despite having only a handful of characters (all male, by the way), the film never really lets us get to know them or their motivations.

Despite that, it’s a cleverly constructed film, and shot beautifully. It’s hard to think that even a disappointing Almodóvar film can be better than most Hollywood product, but alas, it’s true.

Film’s Web Site: www.lamalaeducacion.com

Director’s Web Site: www.pedroalmodovar.es

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Bad Education

Mondovino (USA/France, director Jonathan Nossiter): Since I work in the wine business, I had been quite eager to see this documentary, and I wasn’t disappointed. Reportedly drawn from over 500 hours of footage, the good news is that Nossiter will be releasing not only a theatrical cut, but a ten-part, ten hour series of the film on DVD by next Christmas (ThinkFilm is distributing it). The bad news is that it’s still a bit of an unwieldy beast. When it was shown in Cannes, it was close to three hours long. For Toronto, he’s cut about half an hour but it still clocked in at 135 minutes. Now, for me, that’s fine. I love wine and I love hearing about the controversies raging in my business. But not everyone wants that much.

Nossiter flits around the globe, from Brazil to France to California to Italy to Argentina, talking to winemakers and PR people and consultants and critics about the state of the wine world. The theme that emerges is that globalization and the undue influence of wine critic Robert Parker are forcing a kind of sameness on wine. Small local producers are either being bought up by larger conglomerates (American as well as local), or are being pressured by market forces to change their wines to suit the palate of Mr. Parker, who dictates taste to most of the American (and world) markets.

It’s a complicated subject, and I can understand why Nossiter wants to let his subjects talk. There is Robert Mondavi, patriarch of the Napa wine industry, and his sons Tim and Michael, whose efforts to buy land in Languedoc faced opposition from local vignerons and government officials. There is Aimé Guibert, founder and winemaker of Daumas Gassac, iconoclastic opponent of Mondavi’s plans and crusader for wines that express local terroir. There is Robert Parker himself, expressing some discomfort with his influence while refusing to stop writing about the wines that he favours. There is “flying winemaker” Michel Rolland, consultant for dozens of wineries all over the world, advising them how to make Parker-friendly wines. There are many many more fascinating personalities in this documentary.

If you are a wine lover, you will want to seek out the ten-part series as well as the theatrical version of this film. But even if you’re not into wine, the film is an interesting look at how the forces of globalization are changing many of the world’s oldest and most established traditions. The effects on local cultures and economies cannot be ignored.

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Mondovino

Les Choristes (France/Switzerland, director Christophe Barratier): Les Choristes is an unabashedly sentimental film that reminded me very much of Italian films Ciao Professore! and especially Cinema Paradiso. It tells the story of a failed musician named Clement Mathieu who finds himself taking a job in desperation as the supervisor of a reform school in 1949. The school is run by an authoritarian tyrant and the students are a bunch of delinquents who taunt him immediately with shouts of “Baldie!” and “Bullet Head!”. Mathieu decides to begin a choir as a sort of project to help with discipline and soon has the respect of the students. He also discovers a boy with a remarkable voice and does his best to encourage this gift while harbouring a crush on the boy’s mother. This is not totally original stuff, but the story is told well and the performances are strong, most especially by Gérard Jugnot as the rumpled and lonely Mathieu. The resemblances to Cinema Paradiso are quite strong. Both films use a flashback structure. In Cinema Paradiso, a famous film director is called home to his village to attend the funeral of his old mentor, the projectionist at the local cinema. In Les Choristes, it’s a famous orchestra conductor, called home to bury his mother, but the event triggers a visit from an old school chum who unfolds the tale of their music teacher Mathieu. The film is a “man behind the man” tribute to those quiet souls who push others to greatness while often not feeling very successful in their own lives. As someone who studied to be a teacher, I love this kind of story, even if it is not always fashionable in “serious” cinema circles. The emotions are real and are helped tremendously by a fabulous musical score and beautiful choral pieces.

The director was proud to be presenting the film in Toronto after its huge success in France, where it sold eight million tickets and a million copies of its soundtrack CD. We were also treated to a performance after the screening of two of the songs from the film by another boy’s choir, and the standing ovation was almost inevitable.

Film’s Web Site: www.leschoristes-lefilm.com

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Les Choristes

The Alzheimer Case (De Zaak Alzheimer) (Belgium, director Erik Van Looy): Although based on a novel, this stylish police thriller’s main conceit (“hitman has Alzheimer’s”) could have been lifted from a Hollywood film executive’s idea of “high concept”. Except that it would have made a forgettable Hollywood picture. Instead, director Van Looy sets this story in his native Belgium. Police detectives Vincke and Verstuyft are like a modern day Starsky and Hutch, without the bad haircuts. Who knew that Antwerp even had police, never mind such cool ones? Their job is to track down the man who’s killed several high-profile politicians and a young child prostitute.

Reminding me a lot of Terence Stamp in The Limey, veteran actor Jan Decleir portrays aging hitman Angelo Ledda, whose refusal to kill the young girl leads him to seek revenge on the people who want her dead. His deterioration is a cause for sympathy as well as a plot device. He must complete his “mission” before he forgets his reasons for carrying it out. He also plays a cat and mouse game with the police who are trying to solve the killings, staying one step ahead until he can no longer think clearly.

Van Looy admitted his fondness for “police thrillers with a soul” and especially for the work of Michael Mann, and the influence of Mann is everywhere. If you like Mann, you’ll like this film. Well-developed characters, moody cinematography and fine acting didn’t completely save this film, though. I thought the plot was a little too straightforward, and the film itself was about 20 minutes too long, with a couple of false endings that could have been re-cut. I think I would have given a shorter version of this film an 8, but even if it was a slightly derivative cop film, it was a slightly derivative cop film in Flemish!

Film’s Web Site: ms.skynet.be/alzheimer

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Alzheimer Case

Salvador Allende (Chile/France/Belgium/Germany/Spain/Mexico, director Patricio Guzmán): September 11 will forever be remembered in this country as the anniversary of the attacks that brought down the World Trade Center. But it’s also the anniversary of the death of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile whose government was brought down by a CIA-backed coup d’etat in 1973. Director Guzmán has spent his entire filmmaking career documenting and exploring the tragic recent history of his country, and with this film he finally turns to Allende, a hero to Chile’s political left. The coup that resulted in his death led to 18 years of brutal dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet, a dark period from which the country hasn’t entirely emerged.

A deeply personal portrait, the film probably makes more sense in the context of Guzmán’s other films. For someone who doesn’t have much background on Chile, it can be a bit maddening since it assumes a familiarity with the history of Chilean politics. Early film of Allende campaigning for president is quite moving, though. The director has mostly been based in Paris since he fled Chile after the coup, and it’s clear that the Chile to which he returns doesn’t have much time for him. His interviews with old Socialist Party members are touching, but seem only nostalgic. He doesn’t talk to anyone from the current political scene, and an interview with the former US ambassador appears to have been conducted by someone else, a long time ago.

The fact that no official biography of Allende has ever been published in Chile is remarkable. It’s almost as if Chileans want not only to forget the nightmare of Pinochet, but also the dream of utopia that Allende offered beforehand. Sadly, at this point in Chile’s history, Guzmán seems a bit like one of the old comrades he interviews: condemned to irrelevance.

On the other hand, the parallels between Allende and current Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez are remarkable, including the opposition’s tactics of strikes and economic protests. It is no wonder that Chavez suspects US involvement in the coup that nearly toppled his government in 2002. In that coup, while Chavez and his ministers were holed up in the presidential palace, the army threatened to bomb the building, a threat that was actually carried out by the Chilean military in 1973. The footage shot by Guzmán of that event is particularly chilling. My hope is that Allende’s idealism and commitment to peaceful change are a beacon for Chavez, and indeed for all the people of Latin America and the rest of the world. He was one of the first heads of state to warn about the dangers of multinational corporations, for instance, and it is clearer than ever that the struggle of the world’s people is no longer about Cold War allegiances and ideologies, but against rampant global capitalism and the consumerism that feeds it. Guzmán said he wanted to make this film for young people. Perhaps in a few years’ time, he can make another film in Chile, not about old soldiers, but about young ones.

Related Web Site: www.salvadorallende.com/

Related Web Site: www.neravt.com/left/allende.htm

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Salvador Allende

Ferpect Crime (Crimen Ferpecto) (Spain, director Álex de la Iglesia): I knew I was going to enjoy this film from the moment a large rumpled man in a Misfits t-shirt lumbered onto the stage to introduce himself. “Hola, amigos. The person who is supposed to introduce me is not here. I am here but she is not here. She is in the bathroom.” Director Álex de la Iglesia had us laughing even before the first frame of his film. While admitting that Ferpect Crime was just about the worst title for a film ever, he told us that this film was about a man who was so obsessed with living a perfect life that it was bound to cause problems. It’s no surprise to learn that the director has a degree in philosophy.

Rafael works as a salesman in the ladies’ wear section of an upscale department store. He’s very popular at work, especially with the ladies, and he’s very very good at his job. So good, in fact, that he considers himself a lock for the position of floor manager. But after losing the promotion to his hated rival Don Antonio, things take a turn for the worse and pretty soon Rafael has a dead body on his hands. His only help comes from the one woman he hasn’t already bedded, the unattractive Lourdes. Before long, Lourdes has Rafael wrapped around her finger and his life is far from the model of perfection he has always pursued. As the plot thickens, the comedy becomes much darker and the film almost turns into a thriller. There is also a strong element of satire, making this much more substantial than the laughs would indicate. The conclusion (“lesson” seems too strong a word here) is that it’s only after we give up our unrealistic expectations of living a perfect life that we can really begin to live at all. But if that’s too heavy for you, then go just to see the scene where Rafael goes to meet Lourdes’ parents. This film makes me want to see every other film by this warm and wickedly funny director.

Film’s Web Site: www.crimenferpecto.com

Director’s Web Site: www.alexdelaiglesia.com

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Ferpect Crime

Drum (South Africa, director Zola Maseko): Drum is the story of Henry Nxumalo, a journalist for South Africa’s pioneering Drum magazine. Set in the mid-1950s, the film attempts to recreate the ambience of Sophiatown, an area of shops and nightclubs in central Johannesburg that has been compared to Harlem during its Renaissance. Henry is at first content to write sports stories for the magazine, until the gradual encroachment of apartheid laws threatens his beloved neighbourhood. Henry’s politicization leads to confrontations with the authorities and to a predictable end.

Overall, I don’t feel like I have much to complain about. It’s just that, well, I think I expected more punch. I’m a veteran of many films and plays dealing with South African history, but most of them (Cry Freedom and the underappreciated Barbara Hershey vehicle A World Apart, for instance) deal with the political awakening of white liberal South Africans, and have been directed by white, often foreign, directors. Even so, I found them powerful and inspiring. Naturally I expected that a film about a genuine black hero directed by a young black South African director would be even more powerful and affecting. And this one just wasn’t. Clearly, the casting of American Taye Diggs in the role of Henry has a little bit to do with it. His casting tells me that the director wanted to make a commercial film, and with that comes some inevitable tradeoffs. The film feels too short and hurried to make Henry’s transformation convincing. His relationships with his wife, boss, and colleagues were surely an integral part of the story, and yet they feel superficial here. At the Q&A after the film, Diggs even admits that he still feels the part should have gone to a South African actor. The director countered that “women dig Taye Diggs” and that his presence would “put bums in seats.” Enough said about that.

The music, though, stands out and almost succeeds in elevating the film. Granted, it is pretty hard to mess up the music in a South African film, and here there is a fine mix of township jazz and mournful hymns that hints at what life in Sophiatown must have been like.

Overall, the film was competently written, directed, shot and acted. But it feels a little bit like a missed opportunity. Apart from the two films I mentioned above, you really should see the one-woman play The Syringa Tree (by Pamela Gien) if you ever get the chance. That play, performed by one woman on a nearly bare stage, has left indelible images in my mind that no film can ever match.

Related Web Site: Drum Photographer Jürgen Schadeberg — check out the film on this page entitled “Have You Seen DRUM Lately?” which sounds like a nice companion piece to this film.

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

Drum

Letters to Ali (Australia, director Clara Law): No, this isn’t about Muhammad Ali. It’s the story of a 15-year old Afghan boy who’s seeking asylum in Australia, and about the Australian family who befriend him. Australia is the only “Western” country that incarcerates all refugee claimants in remote camps, forbidding them to work or go to school until their cases are decided, which often takes years. The filmmaker befriended a remarkable family who had been writing to “Ali” (a pseudonym) for more than 18 months. They had even driven 12,000 km round-trip to visit him. When they decide to visit him a second time, the filmmaker and her cameraman/husband tag along, and this film is the result.

Although she draws attention to a particularly shameful policy, the film is weakened in my opinion by a few things. Since it was filmed on digital video, some of the handheld camera work left me nauseated. There were far too many shots of the admittedly-gorgeous Australian landscape shot from the bouncing vehicle on the unpaved road. Related to this, the film was simply too long and felt too slow-paced. Another issue was that the first ten minutes promise a much more personal film than is ultimately delivered. We hear about the filmmaker’s own experience as a recent immigrant from Hong Kong, but then she kind of fades into the background for much of the rest of the film. “Ali” is described throughout the film and some of his words are used on the innovative captions the film uses instead of voiceover narration, but since filming inside the detention centre wasn’t permitted, there is precious little footage of the boy himself. When, near the end of the film, “Ali” is allowed some degree of freedom outside the camp, we do see him enjoying himself with his new adoptive family, but due to concerns about jeopardizing his refugee case, he’s entirely blurred out, which was at first odd and then just annoying. Not only can’t we see his face, but we don’t know his real name, nor have we heard his voice. We know just enough about him to sympathize, but no more. The fear that has motivated Australia’s repressive policy has also infected the filmmakers and the lawyers representing “Ali,” leaving him almost as faceless as the Australian government would like him to be. As of this screening, his case is still unresolved. He may be sent back to troubled Afghanistan at any time. Let’s hope this film can make a difference, not just for “Ali”, but for the thousands of refugee claimants still imprisoned in Australia.

Film’s Web Site: www.letterstoali.com

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

Letters to Ali

This is the tenth year that Brooke and I have attended the Toronto International Film Festival, though only the seventh together. We had a much easier time of it this year. Since we’re going to BC and Washington on the 18th (the last day of this year’s festival), we decided only to see ten films each, so we split a 30-coupon book with Brent. We got lucky in that the first box drawn last Friday was box 10, and our order form was in box 19 (out of a total of 40-odd boxes), so we were pretty confident we’d get most of our picks. We never dreamed we’d get all of them, but we did, so we were only in line for a little over an hour. We met up with our friends Philip and Ian and were able to go for breakfast before 11:00.

So, here are my ten films for this year. Reviews will follow:

• Thursday September 9 — 9:00pm — Letters to Ali (Australia, Director: Clara Law)
• Friday September 10 — 6:00pm — Drum (South Africa, Director: Zola Maseko)
• Saturday September 11 — 12:30pm — Ferpect Crime (Spain, Director: Álex de la Iglesia)
• Saturday September 11 — 3:30pm — Salvador Allende (Chile/France/Belgium/Germany/Spain/Mexico, Director: Patricio Guzman)
• Saturday September 11 — 7:15pm — The Alzheimer Case (Belgium, Director: Erik Van Looy)
• Sunday September 12 — 12:30pm — Les Choristes (France/Switzerland, Director: Christophe Barratier)
• Sunday September 12 — 6:00pm — Mondovino (USA/France, Director: Jonathan Nossiter)
• Tuesday September 14 — 9:30pm — Bad Education (Spain, Director: Pedro Almodóvar)
• Thursday September 16 — 5:00pm — Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (USA, Director: Ken Burns)
• Friday September 17 — 9:00pm — Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (USA, Director: Xan Cassavetes)

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2004: Final Schedule

Good Morning, Night (Italy, director Marco Bellocchio): Buongiorno, Notte (its Italian title) is a quietly powerful film exploring the events surrounding the 1978 kidnapping (and eventual assassination) of former prime minister (and leader of the powerful Christian Democrat party) Aldo Moro by the Communist-inspired Red Brigades. The irony is that Moro had just played an instrumental role in forming a coalition government in which the Communist Party were going to participate for the first time in Italian history.

We follow events through the eyes of Chiara, a young “revolutionary” who begins to have doubts about her participation. Moro, though held for almost two months, never seems to have lost his humanity or his inner freedom. In contrast, the terrorists seem isolated from the outside world, from each other, and even from themselves in the claustrophobic apartment that has become as much their prison as Moro’s.

This is not an “action” movie. It is more contemplative, and there is a real sense of sadness, despair, and wasted life that pervades every frame. The use of actual television footage from the newscasts of the time add authenticity and bring home the fact that this is recent history. The only weakness, in my opinion, are the many scenes of Chiara dreaming of different outcomes (her poisoning her comrades, Moro walking out free). I am glad the scenes are in the film, but it is sometimes difficult to determine when she is dreaming, imagining, or actually experiencing certain events.

Overall, a powerful and humane exploration of a dark moment in Italy’s history. Bellocchio doesn’t dwell on the many conspiracy theories that are still swirling about who was responsible for the murder. Instead, he makes a film that celebrates the value of life, and mourns its waste.

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

Good Morning, Night

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (UK/Netherlands, director Peter Greenaway): Here’s what the programme book has to say about this film, “The Tulse Luper Suitcases project will use five media: at least three feature-length films, television, numerous DVDs, the Internet and books. The content is a history that covers six decades, a period Greenaway refers to as the Uranium Years: from the discovery of uranium in Colorado in 1928 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Ninety-two suitcases (after the atomic number of uranium) will be opened, twenty-one of them in the first part of the project, The Moab Story.”

Of course, I don’t think most of the audience read the programme book, nor had most of them ever seen a Peter Greenaway film. Both were required prerequisites tonight. The Moab Story is a technical tour-de-force, using all manner of innovative film techniques. And all of the Greenaway obsessions are present: generous amounts of nudity (both male and female), numbers and counting, superimposition of text, sumptuous art direction, and a labyrinthine plot. I was baffled, frustrated, fascinated, baffled again, etc. It would be hard to attempt a plot outline, but the subjects covered include Mormonism, fascism, filmmaking (with winking references to several other Greenaway films), and the nature of confinement. A muddle, to be sure, but an ambitious one. Greenaway has given himself a huge canvas on which to paint a huge story. Or rather, this is like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle. Head-scratching, yes, but I can’t wait to find the next piece.

(8/10)

P.S. The website will probably not be of much interest if you haven’t seen the film, but there is a blog section where it’s possible to leave comments. Some people are leaving comments “in character” and addressing Tulse Luper as if he were a real person (and still alive, though he’d be 92).

from Consolation Champs

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story

Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself (UK/Denmark, director Lone Scherfig): I found the emotional arc of the story a bit weird, but enjoyed the film nonetheless. You see, suicide itself is not funny. But Wilbur keeps trying to kill himself in various ways which I think are supposed to be funny. Meanwhile, his longsuffering brother Harbour (hmmm…symbolism?) has just buried their father and now has no relief since he’s constantly worried about Wilbur. Then something wonderful happens. Harbour meets and falls in love with Alice, and her nine-year-old daughter Mary. They marry, and all seems well, even despite Wilbur’s almost successful suicide attempts. Then a new crisis hits.

I don’t want to spoil the film, but let me just say that things get better for Wilbur once he learns that other people need him. I was complaining to my friends that British films like this one (well, it’s a British/Danish coproduction) tend to hide their saccharine with lots of swearing. There wasn’t an unusual amount of swearing, but Wilbur’s surliness is paper-thin, hiding the proverbial “heart of gold” underneath. He’s the typical “bad boy” that women find irresistible. Harbour is the typical saint/martyr who is kind but just a bit dull (in fact, why didn’t they just call him “Safe” Harbour?). Alice, of course, loves both of them.

So although the film was tremendously acted, and had some great secondary characters (Julia Davis as sexy but flaky nurse Moira was hilarious, as was the psychologist played by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen), I was just a little bit disappointed with the main characters. I thought a film like About A Boy took the suicide issue just a bit more seriously, while still finding abundant humour elsewhere.

(7.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself

Remember Me (Italy, director Gabriele Muccino): I didn’t see this film. The reason was that when picking second choices, the film I picked to follow this one started at 9:30. I didn’t even check the running time of this film until today, and it was 125 minutes, which would have made me late for the second film. Since I was meeting my friends Brent and Paul for the 9:30 film, I went down and sold my ticket to a grateful man in the rush line.

from Consolation Champs

Remember Me

End Of The Century: The Story Of The Ramones (USA, directors Jim Fields and Michael Gramaglia): This was a warts-and-all documentary about one of my favourite bands. And I mean warts-and-all. The lighting, lack of makeup, and extreme closeups (along with this particular screening being a digital blow-up) made everyone look terrible. Johnny Ramone and Seymour Stein (former head of Sire Records) look they have some kind of melanoma, Ed Stasium (producer) was sporting a black eye, and Danny Fields (former manager) looked seriously unwell (jaundice, sores). The only ones who emerge relatively unscathed are Legs McNeil and John Holmstrom, founders of Punk magazine. This seems fitting, since they also appear to have emerged from their punk roots without suffering too much damage.

Since we were viewing a very early print, most of the video clips had not been cleared, and so had timecodes and other stuff overlaid, so that was somewhat annoying. It didn’t feel like a finished film, and the way they shot most of the interviews in extreme closeup was not very flattering to the subjects, most of whom have probably been living hard for going on fifty years.

The film was enlightening in that it broke open many of the reasons why the members of the band generally couldn’t stand each other. Joey comes off best, as the obsessive-compulsive romantic who couldn’t shake his grudge against Johnny for stealing and then marrying the woman he loved. Johnny was (and still is) cruel, demanding, and just mean, but he also was the driving force behind the band’s relentless work ethic. Dee Dee was just loopy insane, but sort of lovable in the way that damaged people are. Original drummer Tommy looks like the record producer he was meant to become, and second drummer Marky looks pretty much like the drummer he’ll always be. One moment of incredulity was when fill-in drummer Richie (from the ’80s) is interviewed in the present wearing a suit and tie! Maybe he sells insurance now.

All in all, only a few bits of new information, and with the downbeat ending (Joey and Dee Dee are no longer with us, nor is Joe Strummer, who was also interviewed in the film, and Johnny seems as unrepentant and nasty as ever), this will definitely drive me back to the records, where The Ramones seem to lose themselves in a more positive energy.

Let me take this opportunity to plug, once again, Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s amazing book, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. And though I haven’t read it, I’m sure the book Legs co-authored with Dee Dee, Lobotomy: Surviving The Ramones, is good as well. Funny, when I read Please Kill Me a few years ago, I remember hearing that it was going to be made into a film. I sure hope this wasn’t it, or I’d really have to say, “please, kill me.”

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

End Of The Century: The Story Of The Ramones

The Agronomist (USA, director Jonathan Demme): This is going to be hard to rate. The subject of the film, Haitian radio journalist and activist Jean Dominique, was a firebrand and a voice for democracy until his assassination in 2000. The film, born out of Demme’s long friendship with Dominique, is a stirring tribute to the man and his wife, journalist Michèle Montas. However, it is clear that most of the footage is more like a collection of Demme’s home movies than a professionally-produced film. Demme interviewed Dominique many times over the course of more than ten years, and it’s not always clear when particular conversations are taking place. To make things worse, some of the editing is awkward and even gimmicky at times, and the overlaid text graphics are just plain ugly. If I were to rate the story of Jean Dominique, I’d give it a 10 (which was why it was a no-brainer to stand when Michèle Montas came to the stage). Unfortunately, Demme’s film is a less-than-inspiring piece of work about an incredibly inspiring man.

(7/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Agronomist

Evil (Sweden/Denmark, director Mikael Håfström): Based on the Swedish bestseller Ondskan by Jan Guillou, Evil is the story of sixteen-year old Erik, who is expelled from his high school for his constant fighting. What his teachers don’t know is that at home, Erik is being beaten mercilessly by his stepfather, and is lashing out the only way he knows how. He is sent to a prestigious boarding school, where he is determined to make good on his considerable academic potential. But the school is ruled by the cruel whims of the senior students, whose many crimes, both petty and otherwise, are ignored by the faculty. Erik faces a choice. He can fight back, and be expelled, or he can take the humiliation. Or is there another way?

This beautifully-shot film reminded me of Lord of the Flies, for obvious reasons, but has also been compared to Rebel Without A Cause (which, being set in the 1950s, it references directly). It didn’t hurt that Andreas Wilson, the actor who plays Erik, bears some resemblance to James Dean. It’s a very well-crafted film, even if it doesn’t have any revolutionary things to say. The universal themes of friendship, first love, growing up, and resisting injustice are all here and handled with skill. There is quite a bit of violence and humiliation in the film, and even though we are stirred up to see Erik take his vengeance, the director gently pulls away from showing us this half of the equation. I thought that was a very interesting decision, and it elevated this film above being just a more violent Revenge Of The Nerds.

(8.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

Evil

Moi Et Mon Blanc (Burkina Faso, director S. Pierre Yaméogo): Mamadi is a doctoral student in Paris. He’s studying international law so that he can go back to Africa to change the political situation in his country. While working as a parking garage attendant, he finds a bag of drugs and money and decides to keep it. Along with his French buddy Franck (the blanc in the title, roughly translated as “white guy”), they travel back to Burkina Faso and decide to start a bar.

This was a light-hearted buddy movie, and it had its charms. Nevertheless, the plot and characterization were minimal, and there were some editing/continuity problems. The attempts to parallel people’s attitudes about race in both countries were a bit clumsy, as well, however well-intentioned. Still, I have to applaud a filmmaker from a country with so few resources for making such a good-natured film. The scenes in Burkina Faso, though less tight narratively, have an ease that lets you know the actor (and the filmmaker) is home. And home, despite the political problems and poverty, is where the heart is. Working with such limited resources, Yaméogo has done a pretty good job. I hope he gets to continue making films.

(6.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

Moi Et Mon Blanc

Stander (Canada/UK/South Africa, director Bronwen Hughes): Andre Stander was a police captain in South Africa. In 1976, during riot duty, he shoots and kills a young black man. Deeply disturbed by his place in the apartheid society, he begins robbing banks, while still working as a police officer. After more than two dozen robberies, he is apprehended and sentenced to 32 years in prison. After two years, he breaks out of prison along with two accomplices and soon the “Stander Gang” are at it again, robbing dozens more banks (as many as five in one day). This unbelievable and yet true story is told with gusto by director Bronwen Hughes. One of my friends was vaguely surprised that a female director could be so true to the way male friendships and camaraderie operate, but Hughes does a great job. Because the story takes place in the ’70s and ’80s, the art direction was crucial, too, and it’s pulled off magnificently, aided by a jazzy and slightly campy soundtrack. The film seemed like a joyous remix of Bonnie and Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Catch Me If You Can, and even Starsky and Hutch.

In my opinion, the only thing that would have made it better would have been a little more insight into what Stander really thought of the white society in South Africa, and what his real motives were, if any. Was anarchy all he believed in?

(8/10)

from Consolation Champs

Stander

Touching The Void (UK, director Kevin Macdonald): Based on the book of the same name by mountaineer Joe Simpson, the film both recounts and recreates the harrowing true story of Simpson and climbing partner Simon Yates’ 1985 ascent of the sheer face of an Andean mountain. During the descent, Simpson falls and badly shatters his leg. After attempting to lower his friend to safety and losing him over an ice cliff, Yates makes the controversial decision to cut the rope that binds them together, letting Simpson fall more than 100 feet into a crevasse.

Amazingly, both men survive. And even more amazingly, Simpson staunchly defends his friend’s action upon their return home. Told in a docudrama style, the film captures both the majesty and terror of the mountains along with the real emotional and physical experiences of the climbers themselves. Utterly unique and deserves to gain a huge audience.

Joe Simpson continues to climb today, and received a standing ovation after the screening.

(10/10)

from Consolation Champs

Touching The Void

Mayor Of The Sunset Strip (USA, director George Hickenlooper): Rodney Bingenheimer is short and kind of funny-looking. He also knows just about everyone in the music business, from David Bowie to Cher to Coldplay. This film explores how Rodney’s love affair with the famous took him from groupie to disc jockey at Los Angeles’ famous KROQ. Along the way, he worked as Sonny and Cher’s gopher, acted as Monkee Davy Jones’ stand-in, and opened his own club (Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco).

This is the second film I’ve seen this weekend that explores our fascination with fame and the famous. But where I Love Your Work tried (and in my case, failed) to get us to sympathize with the movie star, this film had no trouble getting us on Rodney’s side. After his parents divorced when he was three, Rodney lived with his mother until she pretty much abandoned him as a teenager. His search for a surrogate family took him to Los Angeles in the mid ’60s, where his innocence and small stature made him irresistible to hippie girls.

The scenes which were hardest to watch were of Rodney spreading his beloved mother’s ashes from a boat in England, and of his unrequited love for his “friend” Camille.

The soundtrack is also a great collection of the classic and the downright wacky. I hope his friend Ronald Vaughan’s band “Isadore Ivy: Spaceman-at-Large” is included.

As an added bonus, Rodney was at the screening, and though not comfortable with all parts of the film, he must be applauded for his willingness to let the film show him as he is. The only sad thing is that he’s down to one three-hour shift a week at KROQ, and he’s clearly aware that he’s not as “hot” as he once was. It’s like his family is abandoning him all over again. Sadly, that’s the nature of fame. It’s just not possible to find unconditional love among those hungry for stardom.

(9.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

Mayor Of The Sunset Strip

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Ireland, directors Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain): Wow. This documentary was absolutely jaw-dropping. The directors travelled to Venezuela to make a profile of President Hugo Chavez, and in the course of their seven month stay, were witnesses to the bizarre 48-hour coup which took place in April 2002.

Chavez, an immensely charismatic leader, draws almost all of his support from among the poor, who make up about 80% of Venezuela’s population. Despite huge oil wealth, Venezuela has always been ruled by a small minority who have kept that wealth in the hands of the few. Chavez is obviously not a popular man among this crowd, nor in the eyes of the Bush administration, who clearly want Venezuela to remain a source of cheap oil, especially now. Chavez planned to shake up the state oil company in order to facilitate his plan to redistribute some of the wealth. This led to predictable protests from the wealthy class, who also happen to own most of the newspapers, television and radio stations in the country. This private media empire had been an unrelenting critic of the Chavez government, even in the face of genuine reforms (for instance, under Chavez, healthcare and education were made free, for the first time in Venezuela’s history!).

I don’t mean to ramble on, but it was incredible how this private media manipulated images in order to further the aims of the coup plotters. After a very tense confrontation between Chavez supporters and opposition supporters, snipers suddenly began firing on the pro-Chavez crowd, killing at least ten. In response, some of those in the crowd who had handguns (about 25% of Venezuelans, according to the film) began firing back in the direction of the sniper fire. The private media actually ran these images and declared that the Chavez supporters had fired on the opposition crowd, killing ten of them. This version of events was fed to the Western media, including CNN, who ran the manipulated footage uncritically. This crisis led directly to several high-ranking military officials calling for Chavez’ resignation, and then surrounding the palace with tanks to force it. All the while, the filmmakers were inside the palace with members of the Chavez government. Chavez refused to resign, but agreed to be taken into custody by the generals after they threatened to bomb the palace. The opposition then shut down the state TV station and broadcast that Chavez had voluntarily stepped down. In reality, he was kidnapped and held hostage on an island, unable to communicate with his ministers or family.

The “interim” government convened the next day, whereupon they dissolved the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, and dismissed the Attorney General and the Ombudsman, effectively abolishing all of Venezuela’s democratic institutions. As word filtered out to the people that Chavez had been imprisoned, and had not resigned, huge crowds began to surround the palace. Emboldened by a crowd numbering into the hundreds of thousands, the palace guards, who had remained loyal to Chavez even while continuing to do their job for the new government, hatched a plan to retake the palace. Within a few hours, they had succeeded, and although many of the coup leaders managed to escape, some were detained in the palace basement. The ministers of Chavez’ government, including the Vice President, all in hiding, were informed and all came back to claim their rightful places again. When it became clear that the rank and file of the military had not deserted Chavez, they went to release him from his island prison and he returned to Caracas in triumph.

The whole thing had taken about 48 hours, and if it hadn’t been for the massive demonstrations in support of Chavez, the coup would have succeeded. The film was an on-the-ground account and made no claims of objectivity, but the fact that so much of the story was altered or simply ignored in North America seems inexcusable.

So, although the filmmakers were simply in the right place at the right time, they also managed to cover a lot of details that were very illuminating. The fear and despair of the Chavez government ministers on the night of the palace siege, their relief and elation when they were reinstated, the protests of the ordinary citizens, and even the fears of the upper classes; all were detailed with great immediacy. A one of a kind film experience.

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

The Fog Of War (USA, director Errol Morris): This was a very strong documentary focussing on the life of Robert McNamara, the Defence Secretary who served under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. McNamara, now 85 years of age, talks at length about his experiences and the lessons he has learned. His mind still razor-sharp, he admits that he made many mistakes in the “fog of war” and that he was responsible for many thousands of lives being lost. But he doesn’t really admit guilt. He talks about how he made the best decisions he could at the time, and how his advice often went unheeded. He and Johnson eventually disagreed so severely about policy on the Vietnam war that he either resigned or was fired. He says he can’t remember which it was, but that one of his friends always reminds him that of course, he was fired. I never got the feeling that he was trying to justify himself, and yet Morris is such a clever filmmaker that he leaves quite a bit of room to ask questions, even while painting a mostly sympathetic portrait of a very powerful man. A fascinating experience.

(9/10)

from Consolation Champs

The Fog Of War

I Love Your Work (USA, director Adam Goldberg): Giovanni Ribisi is a movie star living what I hope is a caricature of a movie star’s life (although in Hollywood, there seems to be no such thing as a caricature). He’s becoming paranoid, seeing stalkers everywhere and suspecting his movie-star wife of infidelity (with Elvis Costello, no less). Then he meets a fan who seems so normal, and proceeds to screw up this man’s life, all the while descending into some sort of madness, and flashing back to a time in his life when he seemed to have normalcy and real love. This film is a bit of a mess, actually. Lots of flashbacks and movie stars portraying movie stars portraying movie stars. It got a bit too “meta” at times, and the narrative was muddled. There was also an ambiguity about the whole fame thing, which is not very new, and frankly, hard for an audience to sympathize with.

I love movies and hate the movie business. So, apparently, does Adam Goldberg. So how come I didn’t like this more?

(7/10)

P.S. I’ve always loved Goldberg. He’s always played sort of “sidekick” roles, first on the short-lived TV series Relativity, then on Friends.

P.P.S. Before the screening, I saw Giovanni Ribisi walking down the lineup filming the crowd with his camcorder. In addition to Ribisi and director Adam Goldberg, Franka Potente, Christina Ricci, and Shalom Harlow were also at the screening. Of course, after seeing the caustic way in which fans (and stars) are portrayed in the film, it would be just about impossible to say anything to any of them, even if you could get close.

from Consolation Champs

I Love Your Work

Nói Albinói (Iceland/UK/Germany/Denmark, director Dagur Kári): Nói is an oddity in a land of oddities. He’s bright, but never in school, and his tiny remote town is boring him to death. All his attempts to escape seem to fail, and then a cruel twist of fate leaves him even more isolated than before. Clearly a bit autobiographical, this first feature contained some clever ’80s kitsch (Rubik’s Cube, MasterMind, ViewMaster) from the director’s own teen years. Though not particularly original, the film was well-made and filled with dark humour and some wonderful images (and not just of the “beautiful Iceland” variety, though it had those, too.) Nói shooting at huge icicles with a shotgun, and later, digging a grave in a snowstorm, were particularly arresting. I’d like to see what Dagur Kári will do next.

(7.5/10)

from Consolation Champs

Nói Albinói

Well, we spent from 9:30 until 2:00 today lining up to pick up our film tickets, and then submitting our second choices. I only got 9 of my 15 picks (Brooke got 10 of hers), so then we joined the second line to try to get tickets to whatever other films were available. Here is my revised schedule:

• Friday September 5 — 7:00pm — Nói albinói (Iceland/Germany/UK/Denmark, Director: Dagur Kári)
• Saturday September 6 — 12:00pm — I Love Your Work (USA, Director: Adam Goldberg)
• Saturday September 6 — 4:00pm — The Fog Of War (USA, Director: Errol Morris)
• Saturday September 6 — 9:00pm — The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Ireland, Directors: Kim Bartley, Donnacha O’Briain)
• Sunday September 7 — 10:30am — Mayor Of The Sunset Strip (USA, Director: George Hickenlooper)
• Sunday September 7 — 3:00pm — Touching The Void (UK, Director: Kevin Macdonald)
• Sunday September 7 — 9:30pm — Stander (Canada/South Africa/UK, Director: Bronwen Hughes)
• Monday September 8 — 10:15pm — Moi et mon blanc (Burkina Faso, Director: S. Pierre Yaméogo)
• Tuesday September 9 — 9:30pm — Evil (Sweden/Denmark, Director: Mikael Håfström)
• Wednesday September 10 — 6:45pm — The Agronomist (USA, Director: Jonathan Demme)
• Wednesday September 10 — 11:59pm — End Of The Century: The Story Of The Ramones (USA, Directors: Jim Fields, Michael Gramaglia)
• Thursday September 11 — 7:30pm — Remember Me (Italy, Director: Gabriele Muccino)
• Thursday September 11 — 9:30pm — Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself (Denmark/UK, Director: Lone Scherfig)
• Friday September 12 — 9:45pm — The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (UK/Netherlands, Director: Peter Greenaway)
• Saturday September 13 — 12:30pm — Good Morning, Night (Italy, Director: Marco Bellocchio)

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2003: Final Schedule

Last night, Paul and Brent came over to our place so that we could all make our choices for the Toronto International Film Festival which begins on September 4. This part of the process is always frantic. You have to mark your choices down in a printed schedule, which must be dropped off before 10am tomorrow. These schedules are placed into numbered boxes, and at 10am, one number is drawn out of a hat. This lucky box is the first to have its orders filled, and then the box whose number follows it, etc. Last year or the year before, we were in the box before the lucky box, meaning that our order was filled last. I think we got half of our choices. Regardless of how lucky you are, you almost never get all of your choices, which means last-minute scrambling to plug something into your schedule. It helps if it’s something you want to see, and of course it helps if there are tickets left by the time you’ve decided and then stood in line. So, it’s always an adventure.

Here are my preliminary picks. If I’m very lucky, I might get 13 or 14 of these:

• Friday September 5 — 6:30pm — Bright Young Things (UK, Director: Stephen Fry)
• Friday September 5 — 9:45pm — Lost In Translation (USA, Director: Sofia Coppola)
• Saturday September 6 — 12:00pm — I Love Your Work (USA, Director: Adam Goldberg)
• Saturday September 6 — 4:00pm — The Fog Of War (USA, Director: Errol Morris)
• Saturday September 6 — 9:00pm — The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Ireland, Directors: Kim Bartley, Donnacha O’Briain)
• Sunday September 7 — 10:30am — Mayor Of The Sunset Strip (USA, Director: George Hickenlooper)
• Sunday September 7 — 6:45pm — Love Actually (UK, Director: Richard Curtis)
• Sunday September 7 — 9:30pm — Cigarettes And Coffee (USA, Director: Jim Jarmusch)
• Monday September 8 — 7:00pm — The Singing Detective (USA, Director: Keith Gordon)
• Monday September 8 — 9:45pm — Cheeky (UK, Director: David Thewlis)
• Wednesday September 10 — 6:45pm — The Agronomist (USA, Director: Jonathan Demme)
• Wednesday September 10 — 11:59pm — End Of The Century: The Story Of The Ramones (USA, Directors: Jim Fields, Michael Gramaglia)
• Thursday September 11 — 7:30pm — Remember Me (Italy, Director: Gabriele Muccino)
• Friday September 12 — 9:45pm — The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (UK/Netherlands, Director: Peter Greenaway)
• Saturday September 13 — 12:30pm — Good Morning, Night (Italy, Director: Marco Bellocchio)

Last night was such a blur that I’ve only just now realized how skewed my choices are toward American and British films, and documentaries. The good thing about not getting all your first choices is that some of your last-minute substitutions turn into the happy accidents that make that year’s festival memorable. So, no matter what happens, I’ll be seeing some great films in the next couple of weeks.

from Consolation Champs

TIFF 2003: Early Picks

In America (Working Title) (Ireland, 2002, Jim Sheridan, director): A bit of a fairytale, about an Irish family who move to New York City after the tragic death of one of their children. Hokey in places, but utterly moving, due mainly to some excellent performances. Samantha Morton (again, though, not much talking!), Paddy Considine, and especially miraculous performances from real-life sisters Emma and Sarah Bolger. They were at the screening and received a standing ovation. The story is told from 10-year old Christie’s (Sarah Bolger) perspective, and she captured all the nuances of a child who has both lost her brother and been called upon to hold the rest of her family together. Plus, she sings beautifully! 6-year old Ariel (Emma Bolger) is just incredibly funny and cute. The introduction of Djimon Hounsou as their initially scary neighbour was where the story veered into cliche, but overall, a finely acted and emotionally involving story. An added bonus is a soundtrack by Gavin Friday and Maurice Seezer, who also scored Sheridan’s last film, The Boxer. (Note: The title of this film may turn out to be East of Harlem, which is how it is listed at IMDB, though the director still hadn’t made up his mind.) 8.5/10

from Consolation Champs

Saturday Movie

OT: Our Town (USA, 2002, Scott Hamilton Kennedy, director): What happens when Dominguez High School in Compton, California decides to put on a school play for the first time in twenty years? This documentary reveals all. This is an experience so genuine and thrilling, so full of real characters and real drama, that you’d think it would be a dramatic feature (ie. a made-up story). Despite less than perfect video and sound quality, this impeccably-edited documentary pulls us into the lives of a group of talented, creative high school students in a place mostly known for “gangsta rap.” 9/10

A Peck On The Cheek (India, 2002, Mani Ratnam, director): This is the first Indian film I’ve seen in the Tamil language, and while it does share some similarities with other Indian films (wonderful music and choreography, sweeping storyline), the director attempts more than just to entertain. The film tells the story of Amudha, a precocious nine-year old whose parents reveal to her that she was adopted, thus beginning an odyssey that takes them all from India to war-torn Sri Lanka. Gorgeous visuals mix with horrifying scenes of violence expressly to make a point, though it is a simplistic one. Amudha is played by P.S. Keerthana, and she is one of the few child actors I’ve seen who can be precocious and yet not annoying. Her charm and beauty held the film together. 9/10

from Consolation Champs

Wednesday Films

Love Liza (USA, 2002, Todd Louiso, director): This is the feature directorial debut of actor Todd Louiso (and yes, he talks and acts exactly like his character in High Fidelity). Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Wilson Joel, a man whose wife has committed suicide before the film begins. We follow Wilson as he tries to carry on, unable to open the suicide note she left for him, becoming addicted to sniffing gasoline fumes, and trying to make friends among radio-control car/boat/plane enthusiasts. If it sounds a bit wacky, it is. It’s also beautiful and very very sad. Hoffman is a genius at playing lovable sad sacks, and he’s even better than usual here, carrying the entire picture on his slumped shoulders. The wonderful Jack Kehler (who played the artistic superintendent in The Big Lebowski) provides excellent comic relief. Philip’s brother Gordy Hoffman wrote the screenplay, and the film took four years to get made. Obviously a labour of love. A gorgeous melancholy soundtrack from Jim O’Rourke adds immeasurably to an already powerful film. 10/10

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Monday Film

Morvern Callar (UK, 2002, Lynne Ramsay, director): I was looking forward to seeing Samantha Morton in this, hoping that for once she’d have a role where she spoke more than a few sentences (having seen her in Sweet and Lowdown and Minority Report). Alas, she plays yet another nearly mute enigma. Although she’s fascinating to look at, she’s not given much to work with here. She plays the title character, who wakes up one morning to discover her boyfriend has killed himself in her kitchen, leaving his finished novel on the computer with instructions for her to submit it to a publisher for him. Instead, she puts her own name on the manuscript before submitting it, dumps his body, and takes a pal on holiday to Spain. Between shots of a hedonistic party lifestyle she apparently wants to leave behind, and some shots of her looking at her hand or insects, not much else happens. 6/10

Auto Focus (USA, 2002, Paul Schrader, director): Fascinating material here. Auto Focus is a film about the life and murder of TV actor Bob Crane, best known for playing the titular character in Hogan’s Heroes. The film traces Crane’s career during and after the series, focusing on his increasing involvement with John Carpenter, a man with whom he picked up women and made pornographic films. I was hoping that Schrader would try to dig a little under the surface, since obviously this man was leading a double life, but instead he gives us a strangely upbeat voice-over from Bob Crane, who can state with equal chirpiness “the show was a big hit” and “John Carpenter was acquitted of the murder.” It was almost as if the point he is trying to make is that Crane himself had no insight into his duality, and no real guilt, either. It made the film oddly unsatisfying, as if there should have been more “weight” to the story. Nonetheless, Greg Kinnear (as Crane) and Willem Dafoe were superb. 7.5/10

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Sunday Films

Sweet Sixteen (UK, 2002, Ken Loach, director): A completely charming mix of hope and despair set in Greenock, a troubled suburb of Glasgow. Fifteen-year old Liam spends his time trying to scrounge enough money to buy a caravan (trailer) for his mom and him to live in when she’s released from prison. He needs money fast, and decides to cut in on his mom’s boyfriend’s heroin trade. Of course, he’s soon in way over his head. Among the rest of the non-professional cast, Martin Compston’s performance floored me. He captures that period between childhood and adulthood with just the right mix of emotions. He was sitting in the seat right behind me and when the film was over, I turned to him, speechless, and just shook his hand. 10/10

The Man Without A Past (Finland, 2002, Aki Kaurismäki, director): This sweet-natured film tells the story of a man given a fresh start. After being brutally mugged, the man loses his memory and has to rebuild his life. Without a job or money, he lands among the poorest of Helsinki’s denizens, living in a cargo container by the docks. He meets and falls in love with a Salvation Army worker, and this relationship in particular made the film seem like an old 50s melodrama. The warm lighting and bright colours added to the romantic feel. This little twist of irony, as well as a generous helping of deadpan humour, had me smiling even as our hero struggled against the prejudices of a society unable to trust a man without a name. 9/10

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Saturday Films

Falcons (Iceland, 2002, Fridrik Thór Fridriksson, director): Mawkish and heavy-handed, this film was (almost) saved by two things: the cinematography capturing the incredible beauty of Iceland, and the luminous Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir. Keith Carradine plays an ex-con who travels to Iceland “to forget.” Instead he meets a woman who might be his daughter. I saw Fridriksson’s excellent Angels of the Universe two years ago, which was adapted from a book. This time, for his first English-language film, he chose to write the screenplay himself. I wanted to like this more, but the story was just too trite. 6.5/10

Spun (USA, 2002, Jonas Åkerlund, director): Boasting a raft of young talent (Jason Schwartzman, Patrick Fugit, Mena Suvari, Brittany Murphy), this is a frantic tale about a group of methamphetamine addicts. Raunchy, disturbing, and often very very funny. The pace does tend to wear out the viewer, though. Since we saw the “unrated” cut, expect the final “R” version to be more manageable in length. Brittany Murphy and John Leguizamo do amazing work here. 8/10

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Friday Films

Well, it’s that time of year again. The film festival starts on Friday. We spent most of Monday lined up to get tickets and choose alternates. Here’s my final schedule. Stay tuned for the patented CC “capsule reviews”:

• Friday September 6 — 8:30 PM — Falcons (Iceland)
• Friday September 6 — 11:59 PM — Spun (USA)
• Saturday September 7 — 2:30 PM — Sweet Sixteen (UK)
• Saturday September 7 — 6:30 PM — The Man Without A Past (Finland)
• Sunday September 8 — 3:30 PM — Morvern Callar (UK)
• Sunday September 8 — 9:00 PM — Auto Focus (USA)
• Monday September 9 — 3:00 PM — Love Liza (USA)
• Wednesday September 11 — 8:00 PM — OT: Our Town (USA)
• Wednesday September 11 — 10:00 PM — A Peck On The Cheek (India)
• Saturday September 14 — 9:30 AM — In America (Working Title) (Ireland)

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Toronto International Film Festival, 2002 Edition

Waking Life (USA, 2001, Richard Linklater, director) is a groundbreaking film. Using a form of rotoscoping to animate over digital video footage, every frame of this film is beautiful, creating the perfect setting, a dream world, where the main character never knows if he is asleep or awake. Lots of philosophical musings, which occasionally grate, making it difficult to concentrate on both the visuals and the talk at the same time, but overall a film that deserves several viewings. 9/10

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Waking Life

The film festival has been disrupted the past few days and two of my screenings have been cancelled or rescheduled, but tonight I saw a film for the first time since Monday night. How fitting that it was The Son’s Room (Italy, 2001, Nanni Moretti, director), a quietly moving film about grief. The anguish that this family experiences in the film is being played out thousands of times over in the United States, Canada, and other countries right now, and collectively as well. It was good to be sad with a lot of people tonight, and to realize that every single person who perished in New York, or in Washington, or in Pennsylvania has people who love them very much, and who are grieving. Impossible for me to “grade” this one, since my reactions are as much due to real life right now as anything in the film.

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The Son’s Room

Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (France, 2001, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, director) Between Jeunet’s dazzling visual tricks and Audrey Tautou’s dazzling beauty, it was hard to look at the subtitles at all (might be a reason to learn French in itself!). Jeunet (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children) has made an incredibly romantic movie that celebrates all of life and love (not just romantic). As in all romantic comedies, Destiny is a major character, but only in this film will it use a suicidal goldfish, a globetrotting lawn gnome, and a one-armed fruit vendor as its henchmen. Perfect! 10/10!!

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Amelie

La Pianiste (Austria/France, 2001, Michael Haneke, director) reinforces the “Austrians=grim” thesis I’m formulating. Isabelle Huppert won a well-deserved Best Actress award at Cannes for her portrayal of a woman who, in her efforts to attain the artistic ideal, loses her humanity. Trapped by her talent, she suppresses her emotions and her sexuality until they can only be expressed in twisted and terrifying ways. When a younger student falls in love with her, our hopes rise, but are soon dashed by the realization that she cannot experience love the way others can. It is too late for her, and the film’s final 30 harrowing minutes are, tellingly, devoid of the beautiful music that carried the first 90 minutes. The message seems to be that the music itself is not enough without the life and beauty it’s describing. 9/10

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La Pianiste

Rain (New Zealand/USA, 2000, Christine Jeffs, director) was a beautifully shot first feature, set at a beachfront cottage in New Zealand. Lots of melancholy, but also strangely disturbing close ups foreshadowing tragedy: soapy dishes being washed, a man cutting the lawn in his bare feet. Sort of a coming of age story, very moving. 8/10.

Japanese Devils (Japan, 2001, Minoru Matsui, director) was almost three hours long, but compelling all the way through. This documentary features the confessions of 14 Japanese soldiers, detailing their atrocities against the Chinese in the war that Japan waged for most of the thirties and forties. At times hard to listen to, it was nonetheless an exercise in bravery for these men to speak out when the overwhelming majority of soldiers did not. A deeply difficult film to get made and shown in Japan. 8/10

Tape (USA, 2001, Richard Linklater, director) was another film that dealt with the issue of confessing our sins. Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard play two old high school friends reunited in a seedy hotel room ten years later. One character coerces the other to confess to a rape he committed in high school, then informs him he has taped their conversation. It gets even more complicated when Uma Thurman, the victim, shows up. Shot in six days on digital video, the medium is used brilliantly to reinforce the seediness and claustrophobia of the setting, as well as the characters’ unstable relationships. Adapted by Stephen Belber from his play. 8/10

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Rain/Japanese Devils/Tape

Waterboys (Japan, 2001, Shinobu Yaguchi, director) was another crowd pleaser. It follows five misfits who start a synchronized swimming team at their all-boys high school. Much hilarity ensues, including a flaming afro, some electrocuted dolphins, and a breathtaking Esther Williams-esque finale. Despite that, there are still some quirks about Japanese culture which elude me, so this rates 8/10.

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Waterboys

Elling (Norway, 2001, Petter Næss, director) has me grasping for words and coming up with lame stuff like “triumph” and “joy” and other stuff from the movie ads. Nevertheless, it’s amazing. Two mental patients are released to live semi-independently together in their own apartment. It’s like the Odd Couple in a halfway house, with note-perfect performances from the two leads, especially Per Christian Ellefsen as the title character. This turned around my icky mood from the earlier film with some to spare for tomorrow! Needless to say, it’s a 10/10!!

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Elling

Models (Austria, 1998, Ulrich Seidl, director) was my first film of the festival. It was a thoroughly unpleasant tale, shot in a documentary style, about coked-up and unhappy models in Vienna. The excruciatingly long scenes alternated between existential longings for love and meaning, whining about physical imperfections, real or imagined, and hedonistic pursuits. It made its points in the first ten minutes, then kept making them over and over and over for the next hundred and ten. Maybe that was the point. Not sure if I’m grading the film only or the whole experience, but I gave it 5/10.

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Models

Noted: “You want to know the Christians’ biggest mistake? Not recognizing the neutrality of media. You don’t like the movies they’re showing downtown? Then make some of your own. You spend all your time preaching to the choir, it just gets incestuous. And you know what incest produces? Retards.”
— Christian film producer Matt Crouch (The Omega Code) in the September 10 New Yorker. (via DVD Journal)

Well, that’s a fitting way to begin my film festival experience. I’m off to see “the movies they’re showing downtown.”

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The Movies They’re Showing Downtown

Today I began the annual bittersweet ritual of lining up for the Toronto International Film Festival. Today it was picking up the program book. Thursday morning, it’s lining up to drop off my film picks. Monday morning is lining up to pick up tickets and see how many of my picks I got, then lining up again to pick alternates. Then during the actual festival, it’s lining up at every film to get in. Lots of interesting conversations are overheard in line. Stay tuned…

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Line Up

My final two films of the film festival:

• Before Night Falls – Directed by artist Julian Schnabel (who also directed Basquiat), this tells the heartbreaking true story of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, persecuted, imprisoned, and finally allowed to leave Cuba, only to die of AIDS at the age of 47. Beautifully shot, and lovingly acted, with cameos from Sean Penn and Johnny Depp. Any biographical film that makes me want to run out and find more about the subject is a success. 8/10
• Comédie de l’innocence – This one was creepy. A child decides one day that his mother is not his real mother, and takes her to an address where he says his real mother lives, a woman who lost her own child in a drowning accident two years earlier. Very Hitchcockian, especially the music, and left a few loose ends (or maybe I just couldn’t make the connections). Excellent underplayed performances, especially by the child, and Isabelle Huppert as his mother. 8/10

Another film festival over. Not that my life will be any less busy for a while. I have concerts on Monday and Tuesday night, a party next Saturday, and another week of jury duty and taking care of my dad’s cats.

Is Jack Saturn OK? His sites haven’t been updated since the end of August, and frankly, I miss him. If anyone knows his whereabouts, please clue me in.

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Final Two Films

Yet more films:

• Possible Worlds – Canadian film directed by Robert Lepage, a well known theatre director. This was an awkward mixture of philosophical “arty” film and B-movie sci-fi schlock. When someone says the line, “They took his brain,” how good can it be? This rates a 6/10
• Loners – From the Czech Republic, where everyone is gorgeous. That’s the impression I was left with. A very sharp, funny film with no particularly deep message. And according to the director, the pot smoked in the film was “mostly real”! This is a solid 7/10.
• The King is Alive – Directed by Kristian Levring, one of the founders of the Dogme 95 movement (ie. filmed entirely on location with digital cameras), this is about a group of tourists who become stranded after their bus breaks down in the North African desert. As starvation looms, they decide to stage a performance of “King Lear.” Great ensemble cast, including Janet McTeer and Jennifer Jason Leigh, although it’s typically Scandinavian (gloomy…) This was an 8/10.

Two films left, and then it’s over for another year. The trial’s going ok, too. Hopefully we’ll be finished by the end of next week, but there’s no guarantee. In my opinion, the rest of the jury are grumbling a little too much. After all, we can go home when it’s over. The accused guys might not have that option.

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Yet More Films

More films to report:

• City Loop – This was a debut from former journalist Melinda Chayko. It’s a story of six individuals who work at a fast food restaurant and what happens on one long night. It’s composed of individual segments told from each character’s perspective and the narrative folds back on itself in some really clever ways. Good performances from a cast of unknowns, also. I’d give it 7/10
• Angels of the Universe – This is my favourite film so far. A beautifully shot and told story of one man’s struggle with schizophrenia, based on a book by the director’s best friend about his brother. Achingly sad and yet life affirming. It’s a shame no one will probably see it outside of Scandinavia. My second Icelandic film of the festival (who knew??). This is easily a 9/10.
• Chasing Sleep – Starring Jeff Daniels as a man whose wife doesn’t return home from work one day. He spends the days and nights getting progressively more freaked out and unable to sleep. It’s been compared to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, but I think it doesn’t quite achieve what it wants to. Still interesting and of course a bravura performance from Daniels. 7/10
• Signs and Wonders – [there were still tickets available for this film this morning, so Brooke and I decided to add it to our schedule] Great cast including Stellen Skarsgard, Deborah Kara Unger, and Charlotte Rampling, (Skarsgard and Rampling were at the screening, and Brooke got both their autographs) about a man who leaves his wife for another woman and then changes his mind. It starts off as a film about infidelity but veers into cheesy thriller territory. Also notable for being completely shot with digital video cameras. It felt like an American film trying to be an European film. 6/10

Also, today was my first day of jury duty. I reported to the pool of potential jurors and sat in on two different trials. The first was a civil trial and I didn’t get called up. The second was a criminal trial, with four defendants facing a total of 40 charges. Jury selection went on for the whole day, and I was chosen as juror number 8. We finished the day with only 10 jurors, out of a total pool of almost 90 people, all of whom were rejected by counsel. I’ll be on this jury for the next two weeks. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing how the whole process works, and listening to both sides in the case.

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More Films To Report

I almost forgot. Before Chopper last night, they screened a short film called In God We Trust, directed by a young director named Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman, as it turns out). It stars that guy from the IBM commercial, the one where the guy is walking around a supermarket, apparently shoplifting stuff, and then the security guard stops him on his way out to give him his receipt. It’s a brilliant piece of comedy, compressed into a perfect length (16 minutes). 9/10. Keep your ears open, this guy’s going places…

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In God We Trust

I saw two films last night. 101 Reykjavik was a comedy, mostly. 30 year old slacker still lives at home with his mother in a tiny house (their bathtub has a lid that turns it into bench seating for their kitchen table!). His mother brings home her Spanish friend and over New Year’s, he has a fling with her. Then his mother confesses to him that she is a lesbian and that her friend and she are lovers. Much confusion ensues, but this ends up a story about a guy who finally gets a life. Music by Damon Albarn of Blur. Not sure if this will get US distribution, the director said that’s why they’re in Toronto. I’d give it 7/10.

Chopper was another first feature, and features one of Australia’s best known standup comedians in the role of Mark “Chopper” Read, one of Australia’s most notorious criminals. This guy got his nickname from having someone slice his ears off in prison. Sound gruesome? The movie has lots more nastiness in store. Excellent acting from Eric Bana and innovative cinematography from director Andrew Dominik. Although violent, the film does leave us wondering about the relationship between criminal behaviour and fame. The real Chopper Read is out of prison now and has written 9 best-selling books based on his life and crimes. I’d give this one 8/10.

I also bought a new cellphone today (Sanyo SCP-4000) and some music:

• Elastica-The Menace
• Aimee Mann-I’m With Stupid (CDN$9.99)
• The Police-Regatta de Blanc (CDN$9.99)
• Beastie Boys-Paul’s Boutique (CDN$9.99)
• Chemical Brothers-Dig Your Own Hole (CDN$9.99)

I love getting deals like that. I’m off to another Australian film tonight, I’ll try to report on that tomorrow.

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Two Films Last Night

Here is my film festival schedule. I’ll try to comment on each film, but I doubt I’ll have time for proper reviews:

• Friday September 8 — 6:30 PM — 101 Reykjavik (Iceland)
• Friday September 8 — 10:00 PM — Chopper (Australia)/In God We Trust (USA)
• Saturday September 9 — 9:30 PM — City Loop (Australia)
• Sunday September 10 — 1:00 PM — Angels of the Universe (Iceland/Norway/Germany/Sweden/Denmark)
• Sunday September 10 — 6:30 PM — Chasing Sleep (USA)
• Tuesday September 12 — 9:45 PM — Possible Worlds (Canada)
• Thursday September 14 — 9:15 PM — Loners (Czech Republic)
• Friday September 15 — 7:00 PM — The King is Alive (Denmark)
• Saturday September 16 — 12:30 PM — Before Night Falls (USA)
• Saturday September 16 — 7:00 PM — Comédie de l’innocence (France)

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Film Festival Schedule 2000

Okay, this is where the Toronto International Film Festival drives me nuts. They make the program guide and schedule available yesterday, and you have to pick all your films (10 each for Brooke and I, but up to 50 for some friends of ours) and drop off your schedule TOMORROW morning before 10am. Isn’t that nuts? And you rarely get all your choices, which leads to some frantic scenes of people crowding around a big board seeing if their third or fourth or fifth choice is sold out already. It’s barely controlled chaos, and every year I complain. But you know something? I love it.

This year is doubly interesting for several reasons. I work just north of Toronto, and it takes me about 75-90 minutes to get home, and then another 20 to get downtown. So I’d been thinking I’d be limited to films that started around 8 or later. But lo and behold, I’ve been called to report for jury duty the week of the festival, and the court is right downtown. Could be the greatest inconvenience ever. But, my dad is going on one of his semi-annual trips to Ireland, and I have to feed and water his two cats. He lives about 45 minutes from where I do. And he’s leaving the weekend before the film festival. I’m going to be running all over the city for that week. If I’m not as cheerful as usual in my updates, you’ll know why…

As part of the lead up to the festival, there have been a bunch of free screenings this week of the “People’s Choice” winners from the past twenty years. Last night, we saw Shine (1996). I originally saw it at the 1996 festival, and I loved it just as much the second time. Geoffrey Rush’s Oscar was well deserved. I always wondered if David Helfgott’s recording of Rachmaninoff’s 3rd Symphony was available. I mean the recording when he was a student at the Royal College of Music, the one where he collapses after finishing his performance. Does anyone know? One cool thing was that the real David Helfgott plays about half the music on the soundtrack. It’s such a great story.

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Toronto International Film Festival