On Sunday we saw our fifth and final TIFF film, 13 Assassins. I won’t say much about it other than that if you like Samurai movies, even a litle bit, you should go see it when it comes out. Seriously, people, it was directed by Takashi Miike and it ends with a 45-minute battle scene. What other incentive do you need?!?
A-
I didn’t survive this week at work so much as I climbed out of it. Pushing through this cold (again? seriously? dammit!) I suggested a pub near the Ryerson before our second-last TIFF film. Much to my surprise they had several Unibroue bottles behind the bar, including #9 on the Project FiftyBrew list: Don de Dieu! Kickass. It was very nice, by the way…tasted much smoother than a 9% beer should.
We had time to kill and full bellies, so we walked home, dropped our stuff and then walked back to the Ryerson. I was so wiped that I needed coffee; our barista at Starbucks mistook my ‘sticks of shame’ t-shirt for an indication that I actually speak Japanese and tried to converse with me. My blank stare pretty much answered that question for her. We strolled up to the Ryerson and the oh-so-familiar line-up spot: the concrete wall running along church, a tired movie-goer’s best friend. Oddly enough we were shown in to the theatre 35 minutes before the scheduled start time. That never happens.
Speaking of Japanese, many of the people in the audience spoke it. That’s because we were there to see Confessions (tiff | imdb), aka Kokuhaku, Japan’s submission for best foreign film Oscar. I think I like it more now than immediately after I watched it…it felt a little long at the time, but now I appreciate all the story threads it had to pull together. The filtered slo-mo was beautiful for a while, as was the droning soundtrack, but it wore a little thin in the second hour. Still, very good. It deserves a B, says I.
Tonight is all about relaxing. I could only get about 3 hours of coherent work in at the office today, and tonight — while Nellie is off doing girly things with other girlies — I plan to do nothing more strenuous than write this blog post to the following soundtrack:
Those last two were from the closing credits of Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, playing in the other room, and about as highbrow as it’s gonna get around here tonight. Peace.
I’ve been so busy all week I’ve not had a chance to write about TIFF films #2 and #3: Blame and Let Me In.
Blame (tiff | imdb) was a decent, uncomplicated little thriller from Western Australia, filled with pretty young actors in fancy clothes (for reasons explained as the film goes along). Thankfully never falling back on the crutch of a hidden twist, instead slowly revealing hints about who and how and why we are where we are. Unfortunately the ending just felt forced, which poisoned the whole thing. C+
Let Me In (tiff | imdb) was the North American remake of Let The Right One In (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I admit sounded like a recipe for disaster. I saw the Swedish original last year and loved it, as did many other people, and we all assumed a North American remake would rob it of everything that made the story great: the sweetness of children mixed with the savagery of a desperately hungry vampire (not some sparkling moon-eyed twat), the atmosphere of the housing block, the feathery snow, the brilliant swimming pool scene. But then I read that it had been programmed at the festival by Colin Geddes, he of midnight madness. There’s no way he’d pick a shit remake of a film he must have loved as much as the rest of us. So we picked it. And we got it. And it was amazing. A scene-by-scene, nearly shot-for-shot remake, as true to the book (apparently) as the original Swedish film was. The biggest difference was that the violence was more brutal, more effect-laden; it didn’t hurt the film, it just made the schism between the sweet 12-year-old girl and the vicious monster seem all the more jarring, and interesting. It’s not just me who liked it, either; early reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are running at 100%. Highly recommended. A
This film festival hasn’t felt like a film festival yet. I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t seen or heard or read anything about the start of TIFF10, and by the time we attended our first screening yesterday morning, all the excitement that comes with the first two nights of screenings had worn off. It felt to me like we were joining something late, rather than really being a part of it.
What did feel kind of nice was being back in the VISA Screening Room at the Elgin Theatre. It was our first ‘home’ at TIFF when we started attending, but lately it’s become more and more off-limits to simple movie-goers (and not celeb watchers) like us and the Ryerson has become the new core of our TIFF experience. Yesterday we were able to sneak in because the screening of Trust (tiff | imdb) took place at 11AM; the gala screening had taken place the night before. Even so, David Schwimmer showed up to introduce his second film, and at least gave us a preview of how difficult it would be.
I don’t want to give away much, but if you read the synopsis on either of those links or watch the trailer you’ll get the gist: that a 14-year girl is lured by a sexual predator online and…well, bad things happen. Schwimmer donates a lot of his time and money to a rape crisis centre in L.A., and heard the stories of victims and their families, and a lot of that showed up on the screen. The emotional responses of the girl (played disturbingly well by Liana Liberato) and her father (Clive Owen) seemed more believable to me than anything I’d expect to get from a Hollywood movie.
There was also a subplot: the ubiquitous sexualization of teens. Clive Owen plays an ad exec who did a big campaign, and threw a big party, for a barely-disguised American Apparel. Middle-aged executives talk about what they’d do to 19-year-old waitresses if they weren’t married. The mall is plastered with pictures, appearing barely in-frame, of girls in lingerie. Schwimmer nearly beats us over the head with this, but manages to keep it on-track.
I also can’t describe how important it was that the star really was a 14-year-old girl when this was shot. Again, this is probably not what would have happened had this been a typical Hollywood film. Typically a better-known actress in her early or mid-twenties would be cast, and the audience would never have felt that visceral reaction one has to a child being in danger. They would never have accepted that her emotional response would be naive and childlike. We would know she’s a young adult, and expect her to react accordingly. Tragically, in the end, this commitment to realism may be what keeps the film from a wide release, or even US distribution. As of this writing there’s no American distributor.
B-
I’d kind of forgotten about all the movies we’ve watched over the past week:
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My headphones were filled all week with the new releases by Best Coast (pretty good…almost like the Raveonettes without the male voice), Japandroids (good, but not as good as their last album, I’m afraid; few things last year were), Sleigh Bells (which I like more than I feel I should), Mates of State (hearing them cover the likes of Tom Waits and The Mars Volta seems sacrilegious at first, then awesome, then just fun) and, naturally, The Arcade Fire. Which is < Funeral but > Black Mirror and therefore one of the best things I’ve heard all year. Speaking of CadeFire — which is what I call them now, due to us being so very tight — Frank Yang (aka Chromewaves) summed up awfully well what’s so captivating about them:
They somehow manage to evoke that singular moment in everyone’s life where youth gives way to adulthood, where one becomes acutely aware of the fact that they are not in fact invincible, that they will someday die, but also the sense of still having their entire lives ahead of them and the sense of opportunity that offers – that mixture of anxiety and optimism, insecurity and confidence. It’s a powerful, primal resonance made even moreso when rendered in broad, bold musical strokes. With Funeral, it was conveyed through the lens of family and neighbourhoods, of being part of a special gang. Neon Bible turned it around to be them against the world with no sense that they’d actually triumph. And The Suburbs realizes that there’s no us and them, there’s just everyone.
I’ll probably keep The Suburbs on perma-rotation until my next big anticipated release: Lisbon by The Walkmen.
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With Treme, The Office, Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock and Nurse Jackie off the air right now the only things I’m watching are Mad Men (because it’s the best thing on TV right now), True Blood (because it’s the most entertaining thing on TV right now) and Entourage (because, despite its persistent suck whenever Ari’s not on the screen, for the life of me I cannot seem to stop watching it).
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The miniature time slot attributed to reading is reserved for, as ever, Tony Judt‘s Postwar and Kate Carraway’s twitter feed. However, all other reading shall cease on Tuesday and Wednesday as I have only those days to select our TIFF films.
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And, with that, I’m off to work. After all, all play and no work makes Jack really far behind on his to-do list.
Yet another super weekend. Friday started when I walked straight from work to Fieramosca for dinner with CBGB and GB’s sister & brother-in-law. We tried to sit outside, really we did, but the humidity was just oppressive. We took the bulk of our meal indoors, and had the relaxing and satisfying evening we always have there. The drink across the street probably wasn’t a great idea…it was hot, we were full and someone (not me this time!) ended up with most of a pint on their pants.
On Saturday, once Nellie had slept off the limoncello, we did our usual run to the market and then hid out in the air conditioning for a bit. Ultimately the day was all about seeing Inception (imdb | rotten tomatoes) at the Scotiamount, which I LOVED. So good. Such a rare combination, that; an action movie that feels gritty and still cerebral. I don’t want to give away much to those who haven’t seen it, but among the many memorable scenes there’s a long hallway fight and subsequent sequence featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt — certainly one of my favourite actors working today — that just blew my mind. What was left of it to blow, anyway. Highly, highly recommended, though I would say that there’s little need to see it in IMAX as we did. I think you could see this on a regular modern movie theatre screen and not lose anything. Plus, you wouldn’t have to suffer through the tragically cheesy IMAX laser light show before the film.
Not yet done with movies, we decided to take shelter from the rain and watch The Runaways (imdb | rotten tomatoes) on TV. Neither of us knew much about the band, or how it started, or even how young the girls were…just that Joan Jett, Lita Ford and Cherie Curry had been members. It was okay…really, it looked more like an art project than a movie, which is probably because Floria Sigismondi directed it. And while Michael Shannon was good, I mainly wanted to punch him in the face. So be warned.
As a little prelude to this fall’s Napa/Sonoma trip, we watched Bottle Shock (imdb | rotten tomatoes) yesterday. Not great. It swung too wildly between the good (Alan Rickman, as always, and the beautiful California countryside) and the bad (70s clothing turns my stomach, as do Bill Pullman and the non-Kirk Chris Pine) for me to recommend it, but damn if it make me want to pull another bottle out of the wine fridge.
Way at the other end of the bleak-meter was The Road (imdb | rotten tomatoes), which I kind of assumed they’d ruin, especially after seeing Charlize Theron in the previews. But they didn’t ruin it at all, and Theron’s part of the mother actually helped, I think. Certainly they explain more about the story’s genesis to the viewer than to those who read the book, but it was probably necessary. Anyway, watching it made me want to read more Cormac McCarthy, so I pulled Blood Meridian off the shelf and set to it last night. I reckon I’ll be despondent by tomorrow and homicidal by Friday.
Somehow this has turned into a David Strathairn weekend. For the hours I was at home I just threw on movies in the background, and three of them — Sneakers, Good Night and Good Luck and The Bourne Ultimatum — feature Strathairn. I wasn’t trying to do it. I just happened to be in the mood for those three films and there he was each time.
Maybe I should put on L.A. Confidential and Bob Roberts, just to round things out.
Beerbistro patio: Weihenstephaner, Anchor Steam, Maudite. St. Louis Wings (!): 10 original buffalo and a sneak preview of Montreal’s next opponent. Slight hangover. Vet appointment: (reasonably) clean bill of health. Kittens. St. Lawrence Market. Practically the entire first season of Veronica Mars. A bottle of Southbrook Cabernet rosé. California trip planning. Cumbrae’s steaks and a bottle of 2007 Thirty Bench Cabernet Franc (the Johnny Cash wine) and Ontario strawberries. The Informant! (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Up early. Starbucks, so help me. A little work. Bier Markt: patio seats and Blanche de Chambly and two Weihenstephaner (seriously, when summer hits I just cannot pass up this beer) and lots of wurst. The dramatic conclusion of Veronica Mars season one. Desperate need for — and frustrating inability to — nap.
Now, game one of the NHL’s Eastern Conference semifinals. Be still, my yawning and yet overly nervous heart.
Instead of our usual five screenings at Hot Docs, this year we kept ourselves to three. Good thing too; my Habs have done better in the playoffs than I expected. We were very happy with the three we did see, though:
GasLand (hot docs | imdb) won the special jury prize at Sundance, and for good reason. This had everything a good documentary needs: interesting subjects, a shocking story and a passionate teller. Filmmaker Josh Fox was offered money to allow drilling for natural gas in his property in upstate Pennsylvania. He began to investigate the effects of such drilling (and hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking”, to release the gas) on people who had signed over their drilling rights. More specifically, he wanted to see the effect on their drinking water. See, back in 2005 the Bush White House passed the Energy Policy Act which exempted natural gas drilling from having to comply with the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, which meant natural gas companies didn’t have to worry about the EPA shutting them down no matter how much environmental damage they did. Anyhoo…while traveling around the country visiting drill sites Fox found numerous families whose water had been so infused with gas it could actually be lit on fire coming out of the tap, farmers whose livestock was rapidly dying, entire towns with extraordinary chemical content in their air because of their proximity to natural gas pipeline valves, and so on. Obviously Fox turned down the offer to drill on his property, but many others around him did not. The watershed on which Fox and his neighbours sit supplies water to New York City, Philadelphia, and much of New Jersey and Delaware, and other water systems are similarly threatened. And, lest we Canadians get too smug, fracking has been happening here too, primarily in Alberta but also in Ontario. If you want to know more you can check out GasLandTheMovie.com.
Czech Dream (hot docs | imdb) was a little lighter. Basically two film students, knowing how addicted Czechs had become to shopping at hypermarkets after the fall of Communism, wanted to see what would happen if they launched a huge ad campaign for a store that didn’t exist. Hilarity ensues, mostly at the expense of the advertising industry who claim deceit is not their modus operandi, and then at the thousands of people who showed up in the middle of an industrial park, then ran hundreds of yards across a muddy meadow, to ultimately reach a big fake storefront. The film was made six years ago, at a time when the Czech government was spending millions on ads to convince citizens to vote to join the EU, and the parallels weren’t lost on those who slunk across a field, knowing they’d been sold a bill of goods.
Our final film, Talhotblond (hot docs | imdb) was downright disturbing. I can’t describe it in detail as I’d be giving away too much, but let’s just say it involves three internet connections, two people with mental issues and a lot of innocent bystanders who have their lives ruined. You can watch the trailer at talhotblond.com, and I believe the movie’s already out on DVD and on demand from cable providers.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 