Moviepie Musings

We've moved! New 'Pie, new blog!

2009-05-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

Just a heads-up that the Moviepie 'Musings blog has now been incorporated into the new and improved Moviepie website!

All the same coverage, in a brand-spanking-new format.

Click here to keep following along!

Coverage of HotDocs 2009 gets underway tomorrow, with SIFF and the Worldwide Short Film Festival coming in the next couple of months.

Thanks for reading, and please join us in our new digs!

Trailer for Robert Pattinson's LITTLE ASHES

2008-12-03T15:50:00.000-08:00

For all of you squealing about Twilight's Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen... check him out as painter Salvador Dali in the upcoming film LITTLE ASHES!

View trailer here:
http://movies.yahoo.com/premieres/10944212/standardformat/

LITTLE ASHES
Synopsis: In the midst of the repression and political unrest of pre-Spanish Civil War, eccentric artist Salvador Dalí (Rob Pattinson) and renowned poet and revolutionary Federico García Lorca (Javier Beltran), find their artistic and sexual freedom in each other. The two form a bond challenged by their fierce ambitions, the struggle between a love for Spain and a love for each other. The film stars Rob Pattinson (TWILIGHT), Javier Beltran (TV's ZOO), Matthew McNulty (THE SHOOTING OF THOMAS HURNDALL) and Marina Gatell (TV's LALOLA). LITTLE ASHES directed by Paul Morrison (SOLOMON AND GAENOR, WONDROUS OBLIVION).

Website for LITTLE ASHES:
http://www.littleashes-themovie.com/

SLGFF 2008 #7 - A Steamy wrap-up

2008-10-26T14:45:00.002-07:00

Several of the movies I saw at the fest this year had a theme of Gays and Religion, including Testimony, Save Me, and now Equality U. However, unlike films of the past that seemed testy, hostile, and defensive towards organized religion and the (in)tolerance of gays, these new films all seem to be taking a breather and reaching across the divide in favor of discussion rather than arguing. (Send that message to politicians!)

Equality U (6/8) is a documentary that follows a group of young, mostly 20-something Christians as they take a bus tour across and all around the United States, visiting religious-based colleges and universities that all have explicit policies on the books banning homosexual students. For instance, televangelist Jerry Falwell once said he'd rather have the college he founded, Liberty University, burn to the ground than allow homosexuals. The Equality Ride visited about 20 of the 200 schools with anti-gay rules in order to start a discussion and dialogue. Most students wanted to at least talk, but it was the schools' administrations that were most afraid of dialogue, some literally locking their students inside... and the Equality Riders out. The film never stoops to judge harshly the religions involved, but instead condemns the schools and their leaders for destroying the lives of some of the students that they rejected.

My next film was a domestic drama from France, The New World (Le Nouveau Monde) (4/8), a well-meaning but honestly a bit dull lesbian drama. Lucie and Marion are a lesbian couple that decide they want a baby. Or at least Lucie does, and she wants to get pregnant the "old-fashioned way"—no strangers, no sperm banks, just a friendly donation from someone they both agree upon. Well, they find that generous fellow in an old friend of Marion's. He says he'll be scarce, but once the child is born, his fathering instinct kicks in and he feels part of the family... and Marion, increasingly, does not. I liked the emphasis of Marion's isolation from the biological family unit, but overall the film was slow (even at 70 minutes!) and kind of rambling.

The final weekend featured the 3-story dramedy Steam (5/8) as the fest's second Centerpiece. I'll bet most people who saw the film were excited to see Ally Sheedy again (looking completely adorable and healthy again, as a start contrast to her emaciated High Art self). Alas, ladies, she does not play a lesbian. She is a 40-something single mom who has an affair with her young son's hottie, corn-fed, 20-something football coach, much to the shock and disgust of her ex-husband (who has a young trophy wife himself)... and to the shock and delight of her best friend (played by the bluntly hilarious Chelsea Handler).

The lesbian third of the story involves a young hottie college student (Kate Siegel) who hesitates only half a second before embarking on an affair with a sexy bisexual classmate (Reshma Shetty). Girlfriend is a feminist revolutionary, and forgets to mention that she is bisexual (guess how that is discovered). Our main girl decides to fight the power anyways, much to the disgust of her stereotypically uptight rich white parents. This whole plot felt very cliched, and was (unfortunately for this audience) the least interesting of the bunch.

Leave it to the incomparable Ruby Dee to save the third segment. She plays a widow that struggles with moving on with her life until she meets and befriends a charming widower (the lovely Dick Anthony Williams) who relentlessly courts her until she invites him for dinner. Alas, when she finally meets his adult son and his family, things don't quite go so well.

Despite the fine acting in 2/3rds of the film, Steam doesn't have enough oomph to be really memorable or unique. The three leads are supposedly linked by the fact that they all go to a community steam room to unwind, but it is never really explored. And, by the end, you are just left at the end with a "huh" rather than a "wow!" Still, not a bad way to end the fest (for me at least). [Sorry, Elvira, I just couldn't maintain momentum to see you on Closing Night!]

SLGFF 2008 #6 - Manly TV dinners

2008-10-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

On Friday I took it down a notch. Last year, one of my favorite parts of the Festival of the Gays were the "Gay TV Dinners" at Central Cinema, where old TV episodes featuring gay characters were shown while the audience gorged on beer and a set menu. So this year I made sure to schedule at least one TV dinner, and it just so happened that I could fit in The Last Guy You’d Have Figured…, featuring an episode of Alice from the 70s, and Roc from the early 90s.

I vaguely remember seeing Alice when I was growing up, and how later, when I was older, I always wondering why Mel at Mel's Diner always seemed to be wearing a large rollled-up condom on his head (what was UP with that hat?). Single-mom Alice (cutie Linda Lavin) falls hard for Mel’s ex-pro football player pal, Jack, who is foxy in that blond-feathered-hair kind of way. He is nothing but manly, but after a fabulous dinner date out, he tells Alice he is gay (GASP!). But... but... he is a professional football player!?!! Well, "Kiss my grits!" as Flo would say! This show is interesting in that it could only inadvertently emphasize how thirty years later there are still no pro football players (at least as far as I know) that are openly gay. They still wait until retirement to come out.

The episode of Roc, which ran on Fox, was just as timely, as Roc's uncle (played by Shaft himself, Richard Roundtree) comes for a visit to let the family know that he is getting married... to a man! And worse yet, a WHITE man! Particularly hilarious in this well-written episode is Roc's dad Andrew (played by Carl Gordon), who can take only so much before his line is crossed. In protest, he turns on the blender in the kitchen while the ceremony is attempting to take place in the living room. All in all, my tum was full of TV-dinner fare of meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and the episodes were once again enjoyable choices. Gotta love the Central Cinema!

SLGFF 2008 #5 - A different kind of tolerance...

2008-10-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

The first Centerpiece feature of this year's fest, Save Me (6/8), follows a young druggie gay boy named Mark (Chad Allen) who hits rock-bottom in a hotel room, overdosed on cocaine after yet another fling with a random guy. Mark's brother is fed-up, tired of scraping his brother out of the gutter and gives him an ultimatum: Clean up a Christian retreat center that focuses on healing and saving gay men, or the family will basically disown him, putting him back on the street for the last time. Mark very reluctantly decides to go to the Christian recovery center.

Genesis, as the Christian center is called, is run by warm and very hetero middle-aged couple Gayle and Ted, but it is really Gayle (the fabulous Judith Light) that runs the show. She is stern and is the enforcer. The men can always leave, but if they stay, they have to follow the rules. But what no one expects is that Mark will actually embrace his own recovery, as well as Jesus, but also will fall in love with Scott (Robert Gant), one of the other ex-gay recoverees at the center.

Folks at the fest screening were delighted and more than a little star-struck that Robert Gant (best known as Ben from Queer As Folk) was there in person. Believe me, the entire audience of men and women were shamelessly drooling (he is just as hunky in person as on screen), and he is quite the rambler when it came to answering audience questions (but in a nice way—see? I have a crush, too!). He pointed out that the filmmakers were careful to be equal-opportunity when it came to the characters, and never to demonize the Christian characters in the film. In fact, that is what I liked about Save Me—all the characters are flawed and complex, and Judith Light ends up being one of the more sympathetic characters in the story as she struggles with her true love for the men she is trying to help, but is also struggling over guilt for the dead son that she was too late to save. It is a solid film, and will appeal to those that liked the equally sympathetic Mormon vs. Gays tale Latter Days.

SLGFF 2008 #4 - ¡Viva la Revolución!

2008-10-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

The Brits (whom, you could say, invented the sub-group of haughty, intellectually snobby poofters) have always excelled not only in gay cinema, but also in TV shows and series featuring matter-of-fact gay characters. Being gay just doesn't seem to be an issue, so much so that they can move on from the trauma of "coming out" stories to just getting down to business.

Such is the case for the charming and funny TV series Sugar Rush (7/8). Our heroine Kim (Olivia Hallinan), a 15-year-old virgin, seems less traumatized by the fact that she knows she is a lesbian, but is fretting about the fact that she hasn't had sex yet... and is about to explode with hormones accordingly. It doesn't help that her dysfunctional parents have moved her family from the wilds of London to the "safer" and calmer seaside town of Brighton. And now Kim is completely and utterly obsessed with her new best (straight) girlfriend Sugar (the saucy Lenora Crichlow). Sugar Rush is probably the freshest portrayal of teenagers and hormones (gay and straight) since the delightful Swedish film Show Me Love. The kids are practically glassy-eyed with lust, and can barely contain themselves (Kim even considers drugging her friend into unconsciousness so she can have her way... hello, date rape!). Sugar Rush is also fresh for a new generation. There is no soundtrack of sensitive women singers here, it is all Euro-techno-pop and flashy fashion. The show is a lot of fun, fabulously acted by all, and I can't wait to see more episodes beyond the first three that the fest screened.

Unfortunately I decided to stay for the next show, My Super 8 Season (Ma saison super 8) (4/8), a French film about a bunch of sexual and political revolutionaries at the start of the 70s, fighting for the rights of the gays and women. It revolved around Marc (Axel Philippon), who was obsessed with the blank-faced "I'm not gay" gay-boy André (Roman Girelli) while being best friend to feminist Julie (Célia Pilastre). People sleep with each other, the passion of the revolution flares up then kind of peters out, and they all supposedly mature. But it was dull, and (I'm kind of embarrassed to say) cheap-looking. There were bits that were shot in Super 8, which were convincing and great-looking, but the rest was shot on DV, which just brought me out of the moment in time. It looked like a bunch of modern kids dressing up for the 70s and acting like revolutionary hippies. It is a film very similar in theme to Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers, which, funny enough, is also a film I didn't like much. Oh well.

SLGFF 2008 #3 - Homo horror and real-life tragedy

2008-10-20T18:19:00.001-07:00

I decided to fill my Sunday at the Festival of the Gays with a reality-check list of films... aka documentaries--with an intermission of a stern lecture. Well, not stern at all, but more on that later.

First up was the Canadian doc She's a Boy I Knew (7/8), by filmmaker and subject Gwen Haworth. I have to admit that I was intrigued by the publicity photo on the right, as it was so arty that it looks like a sensitive indie-rock duo's publicity shot. But that is actually Gwen (right) and her ex-wife Malgosia, whom she married when she was still Steven. Steven was a hockey jock who had a fine upbringing, but never felt right in his body. He struggled and fought against these feelings, even getting married (he was, and she IS attracted to women), until he finally confessed to his loved ones his secret in his late 20s, when he decided to begin his steps toward becoming a woman. However, She's a Boy is not really about Steven/Gwen, but about the friends and family that had to deal with this huge decision by someone they thought they knew. Gwen's sisters, best friend (her adorable guy-friend Roari), ex-wife, and (most touchingly) her parents are interviewed, and they are brutally honest. Gwen's father, a man of few words, struggles to open up, and confesses that he feels like he lost his only son. They tell of the hurt and in some cases betrayal they felt about Steven's decision to become Gwen. And lucky for Gwen, these people were supportive and are still in her life. It is an extremely intimate film, and fascinating in its emotional honesty.

Next my co-horts and I scarfed down some tacos and scurried down to the fabulous Central Library to catch author Harry M. Benshoff's lecture Monsters in the Closet (5/8), based on his book “Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film”. There are certainly types of horror movies that are resoundingly queer, like anything with vampires for instance, but Benshoff broke it down with a bunch of funny categories, like "Mad Scientist" and, well, others that I honestly can't remember right now. The fear of the (monstrous) outsider is a common plot in horror films, and Benshoff claims that is easily transferable to society's fear of The Gays. The time period allowed for this lecture was really too brief to get into anything in depth, and it seemed that lots of clips were rushed through without enough supporting explanation (as in, "Um, now WHY is that scene gay?"), but it was interesting and timely enough topic to perhaps spark curiosity in checking out his book.

My last film of the day played to a packed matinee at the lovely Cinerama. For My Wife... (7/8) has resounding local connections, not just politically, but in the city's common memory of horrific events. If you lived in Seattle a couple winters ago, you'd remember this crazy flash-flood of a rain storm that came so fast just around afternoon rush hour, that it created a river with whitecaps down the hilly sidewalks and flooded stores within a matter of minutes. The most talked-about tragedy of the event was the story of audio-book narrator Kate Fleming who literally drowned in her own basement, after getting trapped by water rushing down the stairs. After being briefly revived and rushed to the hospital, Fleming's partner of a decade, Charlene Strong, was denied visitation at her bedside because she was not a legal spouse. She was finally granted permission to be at Kate's bedside in her final minutes after getting permission from Fleming's mother... on the other side of the country.

But this was just the start of Charlene's story. Her side of the tragedy also made the news, and she was asked to testify just six weeks after the death of her partner in Olympia, during the hearings about the Domestic Partnership Registration Bill that has slogged around unpassed in the Capitol for years and years. Her raw, recent personal story made all the difference, and the bill ended up passing by a 2 to 1 vote. This first half or so of For My Wife... is shockingly powerful. I don't think I've ever been riveted by congress people's testimony before (it is amazing the things that some of them said in against the bill, like the standby catchphrases of "bestiality," "necrophilia," etc.). But I discovered there is a Rock Star at our State Capitol, and her name is Rosa Franklin. Married for 57 years herself, her eloquent speech about how she has supported the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) in the past, but was now supporting the Domestic Parter bill left no dry eyes in the house. The second half of For My Wife... almost comes across as an extended "Where are they now?" extra after the climax of the film (the passing of the bill). The rest of the film is fine, but as Strong finds herself mingling with movie stars at the GLADD Awards and chatting with Gloria Steinem, it starts to feel a bit after the fact, like the story is still waiting for its ideal conclusion, which would be the freedom for gays to marry all across the country. That is my only complaint about the film, however. It is a very strong documentary that will hopefully find a wider audience beyond the festival circuit.

SLGFF 2008 #2 - Murderous ghosts and killer drag queens

2008-10-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

The Festival of the Gays loves novelist Sarah Waters. Seattle got to host her in a virtual lesbian-rific hootenany a few years ago when she came to present the theatrical premiere of Tipping the Velvet, then a couple years later, SLGFF hosted Fingersmith. So it is no surprise that SLGFF screened Affinity (4/8), her third adaptation (all have been adapted for British television).

Unfortunately, Affinity is Waters least-gripping novel, and that is reflected in the film. The story takes place in Waters' fave Victorian era, and follows a single society lady, Margaret Prior as she decides to go out of her comfort zone (and the pressures of her mother to marry) and become a regular visitor to the local women's prison. There she becomes intrigued and then besotted with the lovely inmate Selena Dawes, who is imprisoned for a murder she claimed she did not commit. It was a sinister male ghost who was the murderer, she claims (she is, after all, a medium to the spirits). Margaret is so obsessed with her new bosom friend that she believes heart and soul in her innocence, especially as unexplained supernatural things happen, like when she finds a lock of Selena's hair in her own bed. You can see it coming... in order to run away, Margaret needs to escape her prison of society life, and Selena her literal prison. But it may not be so easy.... What was missing from both the novel and the adaptation is the more blatant romance, and, well, sexiness of Waters' other stories. This leaves for a lot of repression and blank-faced repression. Affinity is OK, but it never really takes off as being something memorable.

The fest this year has tons of documentaries, some with local roots like Testimony (and tomorrow's For My Wife...). Testimony (4/8) is a well-meaning talking-head feature that interviews a variety of queer folks about the question: Can one be queer and religious? The resounding answer is YES! So much so that I couldn't help but feel that there could have been more diversity in these folks' answers. Their backgrounds are of various Christian denominations, Jewish, and Jehovah's Witness, but they are all overwhelmingly white, and look comfortably upper-middle-class based on their backyards and homes where the interviews took place. Everyone seemed so, well, happy that it didn't acknowledge in any depth the hurt and rejection that is faced by many gays as they are rejected from their church or religious community after coming out as gay. I think I just wanted more grit.

Funny enough, there was more dirt to be found in the charming behind-the-scenes Pageant (6/8), which follows half a dozen contestants as they vie for the Miss Gay America title. The rules: No hormones. No surgical enhancements. But everything else, in the female impersonator arena sure looks like fair game! Follow these earnest contestants, some whom enter year after year, as they represent their states with pride. They may be flight attendants, or work at Disney World in their real lives, but oh how they blossom on stage in full drag. My jaw dropped at some performances, particularly those of adorable drag veteran David Lowman, aka Coti Collins. Coti's Reba McEntire and Judy Garland impersonations have to be seen to be believed. Pageant has the homey charm of films like Spellbound and even Best in Show, and it certainly worth checking out.

SLGFF 2008 #1 - Of faeries and Shakespeare

2008-10-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

There's a chill in the air, it's getting dark awfully early, and it seems just about time to head back into the theaters. That must mean that it is time again for Seattle's Festival of the Gays! More formally known as the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the 2008 fest is celebrating its 13th year. Going with that superstitious number, and the fact that the fest always falls in October, the programmers have gone with a rough "homo horror" theme.

Alas, there was no horror to be found in the Opening Night film, Were the World Mine (6/8). The rather clunky title is unfortunately kind of hard to remember the first time or two you hear it... kind of like Shakespeare [because it IS Shakespeare! - ed.]. So it is really not much of a surprise to see that this gay fantasia (if there ever was one) is framed around Shakespeare's own "Midsummer Night's Dream". High schooler Timothy (Tanner Cohen) is a gay boy that doesn't fit into the testosterone-fueled jock aesthetic that surrounds him at all-boys high school. He crushes on the hero rugby player Jonathan (Nathaniel David Becker), imagining him crooning, open-shirted, to Timothy while lounging atop the teacher's desk. In fact, Timothy's attention slips into an alternate, better musical universe often, so when their artsy-fartsy teacher Ms. Tebbit (Twin Peaks' Wendy Robie) announces that the school play will be "Midsummer," Timothy finds himself one audition later in the lead role of Puck. Puck is perfect for Timothy, as he wishes that he could spray a magical juice on the eyes of others to open their eyes to love... in his eyes, gay love. So when he is practicing his role in his bedroom one night, he concocts a recipe for the juice, right out of Shakespeare, and tries it on his straight friend Max. One squirt from a prop flower, and Max is suddenly besotted with Timothy! Now if Timothy could just see if it works on his straight-boy crush Jonathan...

Were the World Mine is very charming--unsurprising, as it was based on, and created by the same folks that did the short film Faeries five years ago (also a festival favorite). Though the dramatic parts and the editing are sometimes a little clunky in this feature-length version, it still retains its warmth and gentle magic. Most credit goes to the great musical sequences. In fact all the major cast members get to sing, and the first time lead Tanner Cohen opened his mouth to sing, I was literally stunned by his gorgeous voice... it brought a tear to my eye.

Were the World Mine should find a cult audience on the fest circuit, and everyone was delighted to hear that yes, the soundtrack score will be released on CD later this year.

* * * * *

And... just because it is fun, here is the trailer for this year's festival:

TIFF 2008 post-script: Festival director claims he hasn't heard ANY complaints from the public!

2008-09-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

I read this and laughed and laughed.

Really?

"Zero feedback from the public"?

I find this very, very, very, very hard to believe. All I heard, over and over again throughout TIFF 2008, were folks griping about tickets and pricing and the lack of availability. I'm sure at least ONE of those disgruntled festgoers, if not dozens, contacted the TIFF offices to voice their opinions.

And as for complaints about rude staff, clearly no one steered him in the direction of my tale of Grabby Glenda.

(I also enjoy his comment that the fest will only rethink things if "the majority" of ticket buyers complain... if there's "a groundswell" of dissatisfaction. I wonder what constitutes a majority? 51%? 70%? 99%?)

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): A Final Thought

2008-09-14T07:12:00.001-07:00

Dear TIFF,

I think we need to talk.

Things between us haven’t been that great lately. In fact, I’ve noticed that our relationship has been faltering for a while. At this point, it’s kind of reached critical mass.

And maybe it’s time for you to see other people.

I remember when we first met, 18 years ago, and how wonderful we were together. A match made in heaven, I thought. You made me so happy. I couldn’t wait to see you and for us to spend time together. You were filled with surprises and unexpected delights, and I cherished every moment we shared. I always felt loved and valued, and I was always on Cloud Nine whenever you were around.

But things started to change a few years ago. You started to change. You started to get more popular and suddenly all kinds of new people were lavishing attention on you... and I know you loved that. It went straight to your head and you grew self-absorbed. Self-important. I’ve watched it all happen and, TIFF, I don’t like what I’ve seen.

In fact, it makes me really sad. You used to be so approachable and friendly, but you’ve become elitist and exclusive, and trying to snag any quality time with you has become nearly impossible. I knock on your door but you don’t let me in, and I don’t know what else to do as I watch you withdraw further and further into your own little world while your old friends and I stand at an increasing distance.

TIFF, I just feel like you don’t love me. And I know I don’t love you anymore. I’m sorry, but it’s true. These days, you bring me more disappointment and frustration than joy. You cause me more stress than bliss. You take much more than you give. And you have become so high-maintenance that it’s absolutely exhausting trying to be with you.

And, honestly, I’m just not sure I want to keep putting in the effort. It’s not healthy for me.

So, I’m going to take some time to reevaluate where we stand. And, even though I know you won’t do the same, I don’t want to say it’s over completely, because there’s always a tiny glimmer of hope.

For now, I need some time away from you. Please don’t call me or email me, because I’ll likely say something I might regret. Maybe by next year at this time things will be different. Maybe they’ll be better somehow. Maybe you’ll see the light and try to fix things.

But, if not, I will not hesitate to break up with you for good.

Vickie

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): As It Began, So Did It End...

2008-09-13T19:56:00.000-07:00

... with Vickie walking out of the TIFF box office, dejected and ticket-less.

Today was the final day of this year’s festival, and I decided to make a last-ditch effort to use up a voucher by trying to snag a ticket to Patrik, Age 1.5 (screening at 9pm). Unfortunately, even though I arrived at the completely deserted box office at 8am, I was told it was off-sale. Whaaaa... ??? How can that be?! What happened to same-day availability? Not only that, but EVERYTHING after 8pm was off-sale. Sorry, what?!

Yes, I know the same-days went on sale at 7am, but could they really have sold out ALL the tickets to ALL the nighttime movies???

Evidently, yes.

For anyone who’s kept score: I paid for 35 tickets, and wound up (as of the end of todaay) only using 25... and not for lack of effort. I paid a little more than $375 (including taxes et al.) for those tickets, meaning my per-ticket price was $15. Not bad, I suppose, considering a single ticket is $20.50, but I still feel like I handed over a big chunk of money to the fest for absolutely nothing. Well, nothing except aggravation and stress (for me).

Anyway, after that early morning jaunt, I had a lot of time to kill before my first movie of the day: the apartheid-era drama Skin (5/8), which tells the true story of Sandra Laing (Sophie Okonedo), a seemingly “colored” child (based on her skin) born to two white parents (Sam Neill, Alice Krige) and thus subjected to much angst on both sides of the race war – not really accepted by either, but definitely finding an easier time of things in the black townships than, say, the all-white world in which her parents exist. The film was moving, but did feel rather manipulative and heavy-handed. It had something of a movie-of-the-week quality to it, with music cues to signal the audience to every single transition in emotion and some cheesy make-up to age the actors. And... as much as I enjoy her work, I don’t know that this is Okonedo’s best performance. It’s certainly her biggest – she carries the entire film – but I found her work kind of meh here, especially when she’s meant to be portraying Sandra as a teenager. Her South African accent also drifted in and out for the duration.

Next up was my sole Midnight Madness screening, and I have to say that even the daytime repeats of the MM films are livelier and more fun than films in just about any other program. Not sure if it’s because programmer Colin Geddes’ rampant enthusiasm is so contagious, or because the audiences for MM films are typically up for anything, but the pre- and post-film antics are often as entertaining as the movies themselves.

That was certainly the case at Sexykiller (6/8), a horror-comedy about a beautiful young woman named Barbara (Macarena Gómez), who’s like a Spanish Elle Woods with one big difference: she’s a hyper-violent, super-effective serial killer who’s picking off staff and students at a medical school. Problems arise when her new beau (unaware of her hobby) develops a device that can retrieve the final memories of people who have died... with bizarre and unexpected side effects. Bloody, violent, funny, outrageous and never taking itself seriously, the movie was a fun ride.

But even more fun was the Q&A afterwards, during which – among other shenanigans – star Macarena Gómez pulled out two fake pistols and aimed at the audience, demanding to know if we liked the film... and then honed in on some poor guy in the third row who, she said, neglected to applaud on cue. Both she and director Miguel Martí, seemed to be having an absolute blast.

I ended TIFF 2008 with Lymelife (6/8), a coming-of-age story set in Long Island, NY, in the late-1970s, amid a massive Lyme disease scare that finds characters doing things like taping their clothes shut. With a subtle The Ice Storm vibe to it, the film centers on teenage Scott (Rory Culkin) and the assorted dysfunctional relationships that surround him, including the decaying marriage of his parents (Alec Baldwin and Jill Hennessy), the equally troubled union of their neighbors (Timothy Hutton and Cynthia Nixon), and his own budding romance with their daughter (Emma Roberts). In a nice bit of casting, Kieran Culkin co-stars as Scott’s older brother. Well laid out, and told via some solid performances, the film worked for me on most levels, but it did feel like a story I’ve seen before. Just, you know, with more ticks.

And something interesting happened during the Q&A with director Derick Martini. Generally, post-film discussions involve audience members asking questions, offering positive feedback or blatantly kissing the asses of the folks onstage (believe me, I have heard lavish, lengthy, gooey praise heaped upon directors or actors in somewhat embarrassing ways before). But tonight, one woman stood up and said she didn’t like the ending. She qualified her comment by saying that she loved the film and thought it was beautiful, but that she didn’t care at all for how it ended.

Based on how some people in the audience turned on her, you would think she’d said she thought Martini was a talentless hack and that his film was a steaming pile of poo. Good grief, people, not everyone is going to love a movie... and God bless this woman for at least having the courage to stand up and make a comment that isn’t 100% overflowing with praise! Nevermind that she repeated that she loved the movie. Yes, she did go on for longer than she probably should have, but she was just being honest. Apparently, that’s somehow considered poor form, though I don’t see why.

And then... my festival was over. When I went home, it was grey and rainy and very humid out, and I still had 10 vouchers left. Ah well. I’ll post my final TIFF thoughts tomorrow, but in the meantime you can read about which films won which awards at a ceremony earlier today.

Celebrity Sightings: Zip.

Line Buzz: More cheers for Tears for Sale and Lovely Still, and more confusion over Synechdoche, NY.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): Blues and Pop, With a Little Lovin’ on the Side

2008-09-12T20:59:00.000-07:00

I’m getting really tired. I’m finding myself “just closing my eyes for a second” at screening after screening, and my energy level is dwindling by the minute. One more day of film festing to go, and tomorrow promises to be very busy, so tonight’s entry will be slightly abbreviated.

Film #1 today was Who Do You Love (6/8), a surprising delight chronicling the early days in the career of Leonard Chess (Alessandro Nivola), founder of Chess Records and the man who brought people like Muddy Waters (David Oyelowo), Willie Dixon (Chi McBride) and countless blues acts from backroom bars to the mainstream. Blessed (obviously) with a great soundtrack and wonderfully informative while being blissfully compact (a running time of 90 minutes), the film was a great way to kick off a grey, humid, rainy Friday. And I do love a good music-history drama. Even better? That director Jerry Zaks, co-stars Oyelowo and Jon Abrahams, and Marshall Cress – the now-elderly son of Leonard – all showed up for the morning screening and participated in a lively and lengthy post-film Q&A. Well done, fellas!

I followed that with Universalove (5/8), a somewhat uneven but nonetheless enjoyable Austrian offering that tracks a half dozen stories of love around the globe, in cities like Rio, Tokyo and Brooklyn. Like any film of this nature, where the narrative is broken into different arcs for different characters, not all of the stories were as good as others. The Brooklyn segment, for example, felt very stiff and awkward... unaided by English subtitles for English dialogue that didn’t match! Distracting. The Tokyo tale was my favorite, followed closely by the soap-opera drama set in Brazil. Surprisingly (or perhaps not), most of the love stories ended in tragedy or loss, which was kind of a bummer.

If you’ve ever read my TIFF diaries before, or my HotDocs diaries, you’ll know that I am a massive fan of documentaries about kids. My final film of the day is one such doc, and it proudly joins the ranks of personal faves like Spellbound, Summercamp! and Girls Rock!. It was just as fun, just as touching, just as energetic and just as much of a crowd-pleaser as its predecessors.

It was Sounds Like Teen Spirit: A Popumentary (7/8), a fantastic British documentary about the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, in which kids from 17 countries compete in a gigantic, one-night extravaganza where they perform original songs (either solo, or in groups or bands) and one kid/country is declared the winner after, like, 20+ million votes are cast. The film tracks a number of contestants from their national finals (oh yes, this is serious business!) through the actual Eurovision process, and it’s wonderfully presented. Each child is talented but, more importantly, real and compelling. Some have heartbreaking stories. Some have wacky outfits. Some will make you laugh. Some will make you cry. But they will all entertain you.

Director Jamie Jay Johnson was in attendance (this was the film’s third screening!) and was utterly charming. When the film ended, and I was all teary and tender-hearted, I thought, “If he brings out ANY of those kids as a surprise for the audience, I might just start to cry.” Because, if you recall, both Spellbound and Summercamp! sprung kids on me at their screenings, with exactly that result. Alas, he revealed that though one of the kids had initially been scheduled to be in Toronto, her visa (from Georgia) didn’t come through in time. Still, Johnson stayed for a nicely beefy, very spirited Q&A. It was the perfect way to end the night.

Tomorrow, if I’m lucky and can manage a same-day ticket for an evening screening, I’ll have four films on TIFF’s last day. I figure I should go out with a bang, and then collapse from exhaustion at midnight.

Celebrity Sightings: David Oyelowe, Jon Abrahams, Jerry Zaks, Marshall Chess.

Line Buzz: Coincidentally, a couple of people talked about how much they enjoyed Sounds Like Teen Spirit!

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): Meet the Creepertons and the Douchettes! (And Another Stinky Flick!)

2008-09-11T20:29:00.001-07:00

Anyone who attends TIFF knows the importance of chatting with your fellow filmgoers in line or in your seats before the movie. It’s how you hear about what’s great, what blows and whether Jessica Biel is in the ladies’ room doing bicep curls. But sometimes this tradition wields unfavorable results, because sometimes you inadvertently find yourself (somewhat unwillingly) engaged in conversation with someone less than ideal. Someone like Roy Creeperton.

Eric and Dan encountered Roy at one of their screenings, and we promptly gave him his new nickname... then decided that he was just one of many Creepertons floating around the festival. Because sometimes people who are chatty and who strike up pre-screening banter are way way way too chatty, and reveal too much, and before you know it you’re hearing about bunion surgery or being plied for information on yourself. Sometimes, your next-door-seatmate wants to tell you all about her life philosophies or his mental-health issues (this actually happened to me a few years ago!), or sometimes they will simply go on and on and on and ON about their knowledge of film long after you stopped listening. Or caring. And sometimes they’re just flat-out creepy and weird. These folks are all members of the TIFF family known as the Creepertons. They are small in number but mighty in creepiness.

Far more prolific, though, are the Douchettes. This family is very easily recognized by their elephantine self-importance, boorish obnoxiousness and overall douche-iness in that “look at me, I’m a Hollywood PLAYA!” kind of way. (And, yes, they spell it “PLAYA” because that’s how douchey they are.) Characterized by their tendencies to speak loudly into their cell phones (because they’re so important) or text message during films (because they’re so important) or wear sunglasses indoors (because they’re so important and want to protect their eyes from the blinding light of their own fabulousness), the Douchettes are a far-reaching clan. Their members can be found all over Toronto during TIFF and they are unmistakable.

Last night, I had the (dis)pleasure of observing a chap I’m going to refer to as Brock Douchette outside the AMC. Dressed in a silver sport jacket (collar flipped UP, natch!), gold-rimmed Elvis-style glasses and a big fat industry badge, this bleached-blonde, enormous moron in his mid-20s was careful to ensure everyone with a 10m radius heard every word of his super-douchey conversations with his equally poseuresque friends. But the highlight came when a homeless guy asked him for change, and he said, “Hang on, buddy...” in a way that implied he was going to give the guy money.

Instead, he carried right on talking with his posse while the homeless guy stood waiting before giving up.

DOUCHETTE!

Anyway, onwards to today’s films...

First up for me was a very-early morning trek to the TIFF box office to see about getting a same-day ticket to A Woman in Berlin. I’ve wanted that ticket since the lottery, and have tried no fewer than five times since, to no avail. But I was pretty confident I’d get a same-day if I managed to arrive before 8am. So I hauled my weary ass out of bed at the crack of dawn and did. And I scored one. Which also meant I skipped the movie I already had at 9am, partly because I was really tired, partly because there wouldn’t be enough time to run from one theater to the other with time to eat in between, but largely because I didn’t really have any interest in seeing my 9am film (50 Dead Men Walking)... so this was a good excuse to subway back home, enjoy a relaxing breakfast and rest some more. Five hours of sleep a night does not a happy TIFFgoer make, FYI.

Thus, my first film was A Woman in Berlin (7/8), a powerful WWII drama (based on the anonymous memoirs of the same name) about a group of German women (led by the amazing Nina Hoss) who are “kept” in a Berlin apartment building by Russian soldiers towards the end of the war. Repeatedly brutalized and raped by the soldiers, the women valiantly vow to survive their collective ordeal by whatever means necessary. (It reminded me a little of the PoW drama Paradise Road in that way.) For our heroine, this involves striking up an unlikely, but not untrue, romance with a Russian officer (Evgeny Sidikhin), who becomes her de-facto protector and, in many ways, savior. Even though this film boasts a beefy running time of more than two hours, it was worth it. Wonderfully acted, perfectly paced and harrowing enough that I don’t really need to see it again, I suspect this may wind up on the foreign-language film Oscar ballot next spring.

Know what won’t be getting any Oscar nods? My second film of the day, the inexplicably bad and unnecessarily pointless drama (comedy?) Gigantic (2/8). Honestly, I have no idea what this movie was about. None. There’s a mattress salesman named Brian (Paul Dano, who – at 24 – barely looks 18, let alone the 28-year-old he’s playing here), who wants to adopt baby from China. Whatev’. There’s Harriet (Zooey Deschanel), a ditzy girl who falls for Brian. And thennnnnnn... nothing happens, really. The story veers from disconnected scene to disconnected scene, with no clear narrative. All of a sudden, we’re on a family hunting outing. Then Brian and Harriet have sex in a pool. Then some weird, anonymous, violent guy keeps showing up out of nowhere (or in the middle of nowhere) and in disguise to try to beat the living shit out of Brian... FOR NO APPARENT REASON. It is never explained, yet it happens repeatedly. Yes, I get that perhaps this character is meant to be symbolic, or a figment of Brian’s imagination (yet the wounds this guys inflicts are very real and visible to other characters), but it was ridiculous. So was the movie. A gigantic waste of time, in my opinion. Walking out of the theater, hoping for explanation from each other as to what we’d all just watched, my fellow audience members seemed to echo the exact same sentiment.

Happily, I unloaded my ticket to Uncertainty on Eric and Dan’s “omigodthatmovieisbeyondterribleandyouwillhateit” advice. So I had the night off. (No unused coupon vouchers left, otherwise I would have hit a primetime screening.)

Celebrity Sightings: Director Atom Egoyan and critic Elvis Mitchell, leaving the Scotiabank.

Line Buzz: Some good buzz on the Skin, confused buzz on Synechdoche, NY and PLENTY of bad buzz on The Brothers Bloom which, it seems, no one liked.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): A Walkout and a Full Pie!

2008-09-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

Much to my relief and delight, I had the morning off today. No movies before noon, so I was actually able to catch up on a little sleep (emphasis on the word “little”), get some blogging done and have a breakfast that didn’t come in a paper bag or cardboard box. Yes, I know I could have used the empty hours to redeem one of my many, many vouchers and see a 9am film, but I was just too pooped to care.

Unfortunately for me, I could have stayed home for several hours more because my first film of the day was my second walkout of the fest. Painfully slow and, as far as I could tell, without narrative, UK director Duane Hopkins’ Better Things was so uninteresting and ironically titled that the jokes practically write themselves. A photographer, Hopkins at least presents a film that is visually stunning, with each scene presented almost as a tableau – beautifully framed and carefully composed. Problem is, those scenes would be infinitely better as still photographs, not assembled as a movie. Instead, the audience is presented with character after character who speaks in a flat, emotionless monotone and whose facial expression is completely, distractingly blank. Vacant. Every. Single. Character. In every scene. And I promptly began making a mental list of all the better things I could be doing with my time:

1. Grab a big lunch.

2. Floss.

3. Go for a walk.

4. Take Grabby Glenda out for ice cream.

After 40 minutes, I packed it in. I understand the creative device: we’re meant to realize that, perhaps, these people – including several teenage drug addicts and an elderly couple – are dead inside and thus walk around in a sad, morose, vacant haze. But it does not make for compelling viewing, I tell you. At least, not for me. The tone of the characters’ voices and their expressionless faces felt overwhelming deliberate... like a giant neon arrow flashing “SYMBOLISM! METAPHOR!” onscreen. I will fully cop to not being a fan of films like this, so please take my review with a grain of salt. Maybe someone else will love this movie and all its beautiful blandness, but I did not. Several people walked out before I did, and the guy who walked out immediately after me said to the volunteers near the door, “Bad, bad movie...” as he left.

As an aside, when I got home and began writing this entry, I flipped to its page in the program book and saw, to my complete non-surprise, that the film was programmed by Noah Cowan, who makes reference to the film’s “oblique narrative strategies.” ‘Nuff said. I should have known better.

I was lucky enough to have a break of several hours – sadly, not enough time to squeeze in any other screening – before my next film, Medicine for Melancholy (5/8), the story of the morning-after repercussions and discoveries after a one-night stand between Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo (Tracey Heggins). With a tip of the hat to Before Sunrise, the story follows the characters through about 24 hours as they discuss what happened, who they are, what they want, etc. I was loving the film until about 2/3 of the way through, when it started to feel like it lost direction. One scene of the pair dancing at a dance club goes on and on and on, and then the dialogue gets a little preachy... I stopped hearing the characters in a conversation, and started hearing the writer-director ranting. Still, it was good and the performances were very strong. It was preceded by a rather graphic and disturbing Nigerian short called Jesus and the Giant (6/8), which examines domestic violence. I’m not really sure why it was programmed alongside Melancholy..., since the tone is so very different and the content so unnerving. Anyway...

Last up was Shakespeare and Victor Hugo’s Intimacies (8/8), a last-minute addition to my schedule, and one I made simply in a last-ditch bid to burn off a coupon. I AM SO GLAD I DID. It was fantastic. The film is a Mexican documentary about a boarding-house owner named Rosita (the director’s grandmother) and one of her boarders, a young gay man named Jorge... who led a creative but tormented life and who may have been hiding a very big secret. Structured beautifully and unfolding like a masterfully crafted whodunit, director Yulene Olaizola’s directorial debut had me riveted. It starts out appearing to be one thing (a wistful old woman recounting her favorite tenant) and gradually morphs into something very, very different. Excellent from start to finish!

Celebrity Sightings: Jay Baruchel, who wasn’t actually at any of the films I saw. He was on an escalator at the AMC.

Line Buzz: My linemates were SILENT today. Alas.

TIFF 2008 (Eric's diary): farewells

2008-09-10T08:54:00.000-07:00

Farewell, Toronto. I know we’ve only gone out twice, but I’m pretty sure I’m falling in love with you. I’d really like it if we could go steady. So, you know, if you could talk to your government about granting me instant citizenship, that would be pretty cool. Thanks.

Farewell, TIFF. If I thought you showed me a good time last year, you’ve really outdone yourself this time. I know there are problems -- horribly managed lineups outside the AMC, Hollywood douchebags texting through movies, Coopers’ Camera -- but the fact remains that I named 10 movies out of 312 that I wanted to see most, and you gave them to me. You even let me make my own mistakes, no uncertainty about it, but that’s life.

Saddest of all, I must bid farewell to Vickie. Thank you for spending time with me and Dan every single day and providing endless TIFF counseling. Thank you for being a ticket pre-folder just like me. Thank you for snacks, Biel-hunting, and photo shoots. And thank you for always wanting dessert.

Another year, another TIFF. It’s not really over (it ends this Saturday), but I’m about to get on an airplane and fly back to the year-long poop festival that is Los Angeles. Last year we shared our flight home with Geoffrey Rush. Cross your fingers that by the time you read this, I’ll have spent the next 5 hours becoming best friends with Jessica Biel and interviewing her about how much she sucks at everything.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): Unruly Irish Youngsters = Fun Q&A

2008-09-10T07:40:00.003-07:00

Is it just me, or are other folks experiencing relatively empty screenings already? (Despite, of course, the fact that the box office will tell you that every film you’d like is sold out?) That was the case for me at all three movies I attended today, none of which was full and the first two of which had heaps of vacant seats.

First up, Management (5/8), a romantic comedy about a directionless motel employee (Steve Zahn), who falls for a traveling businesswoman (Jennifer Aniston) when she checks in and engages him in a one-night stand. It was a cute enough movie, but it really requires the viewer to suspend disbelief – Zahn’s character, Mike, pursues Aniston’s Sue with such fervent, almost delusional determination that, in the real world, he might just be served with a restraining order. In the film, however, his behavior is considered charming and, while delusional, sweet. Credit Zahn for walking that line deftly. The highlight of the film, though, is Woody Harrelson as an “ex-punk” and yogurt magnate who’s hilariously self-important.

And yet, despite (or perhaps because of) the relatively name-brand cast, the screening wasn’t full by any means. It *was* a 9:45am show, so that might account for the sparse attendance, but it definitely feels like the fest has already begun its annual wind-down.

The rather mediocre turnout for my next film was too bad, because the movie itself was excellent... and so small that it likely won’t see the light of the day at cinemas once the fest ends. Kisses (7/8) is an admittedly somber but fully engaging little (72 minutes!) drama about two preteens (Kelly O’Neill, Shane Curry) living in a housing-project-esque enclave outside of Dublin, who flee their abusive homes for an equally peril-filled adventure in the city. Beautifully shot and nicely told, the film avoids the fairy-tale-ending trap into which it could easily have fallen and, instead, sticks to reality... however unpleasant that might be.

Almost as good as the film was the post-screening Q&A, during which director Lance Daly tried (unsuccessfully) to rein in his so-over-TIFF young stars onstage. Neither O’Neill nor Curry seemed particularly interested in fielding questions – at one point, after a question to which she felt she had no answer, 12-year-old O’Neill said, “I don’t even know why I’m up here.” It was, in a word, fantastic! I’m so used to pretentious and/or precocious young talent being all Hollywood-y and creepy, that this experience with two Irish kids who are not at all caught up in the scene was thoroughly refreshing. Loved it.

Last up was The Dungeon Masters (6/8), which Eric has already discussed below. To his summation (with which I agree) I’ll simply add that there were more than a few moments in the film that my subconscious will revisit in my sleep at some point, I’m sure. The film also reminded me a lot (in tone) of Song Sung Blue, which I saw at HotDocs earlier this year. While it didn’t feel as exploitative as SSB, it had the same “look at how some of these folks don’t realize what their pursuit of their passion does to the rest of their lives.” One particular D&D gamer profiled actually seems to relish destroying relationships, both in the game and in his life... or, I suppose, seems to have almost complete emotional detachment from the hurtful scenarios he creates.

Speaking of detachment, I’m starting to feel like I’m over TIFF. Like, completely. As recently as a few years ago, it was my absolute favorite time of year – I couldn’t wait for August and September to arrive, I would see about 33 films each fest, and I loved loved loved the whole thing. But in the past two years, the love has faded surprisingly quickly. I don’t have that same passion for TIFF any longer, and an event that used to put me squarely on Cloud Nine for a week and a half now leaves me exhausted and annoyed for nine days straight. I dunno, I kind of feel like a contestant on America’s Next Top Model, who’s standing before the judging panel and being told she’s lost her spark... lost her spirit. Inevitably, that girl winds up cut from the show, and I feel a bit like that’s what might happen to me re: TIFF. Time will tell.

Celebrity Sightings: Patton Oswalt.

Line Buzz: I only stood in one line today, and that was with Eric and Dan, so the only line buzz I heard was theirs. Which you can read about below.

TIFF 2008 (Eric's diary): upper of a downer

2008-09-09T21:13:00.001-07:00

Today marks mine and Dan’s final day of TIFFing for 2008. We’re heading back to LA tomorrow morning, and saw only one film this afternoon: The Dungeon Masters (6/8), a documentary about the everyday lives of “Dungeons & Dragons” gamers.

It was, first of all, an INCREDIBLY good-looking movie, almost distractingly well-photographed and edited (I mean that as a major compliment). The Dungeon Masters begins at an annual D&D convention in Indiana, and follows three gamers through the ups and downs of their private lives in the following year. However, it might be misleading to include the “ups” part of that statement, since their stories are awfully depressing.

The film’s primary mission was to portray these people with respectful interest, as opposed to poking fun at them (which, let’s face it, would be the easy route). And don’t get me wrong, the filmmakers maintain the perfect level of objectivity throughout the movie without losing sight of the inherent absurdity involved... but overall, to me, these were sad stories about people struggling to function in the ordinary world. Their real-life triumphs were touching, but it was a little awkward that the film confirmed (at least in these three cases) what you might have already guessed about the lives of D&D gamers.

Nevertheless, The Dungeon Masters was immensely enjoyable and I truly felt affection for the gamers featured. The director, editor, and producer all stuck around for a Q&A, during which Patton Oswalt raised his hand and asked a question! It turns out he is good friends with Keven McAlester (the director), and his question was totally (and hilariously) facetious. I was just thrilled to bring my TIFF ’08 celebrity sighting tally up to 2.

Speaking of celebrity sightings, I need to mention the fact that, all week, Dan and Vickie and I have been on a mission to find Jessica Biel. Her new movie, Easy Virtue (in which she plays a glamorous American divorcee named Larita Huntington) was having its premiere at this year’s TIFF, presenting a really good chance to get an autograph or punch her in the face or otherwise show our appreciation for her body of work.

Alas, no Biel sightings were in the cards for us this week, although Vickie watched news footage of Biel arriving at the red carpet, and Dan and I visited the very spot where the premiere took place a few hours after it was over (we were seeing a movie when the red carpet event actually took place, so we couldn’t even join the gawkers). Apparently Colin Firth (Biel’s co-star) also attended the screening. He’s pretty cool, but has he ever dressed up as Catwoman in a gay Adam Sandler movie? I don’t think so.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): Does Everyone Hate the AMC?

2008-09-09T00:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, I thought maybe I was alone, but it seems like EVERYONE has noticed the serious lack of line management at the AMC theater... specifically, the ease with which line-cutters are joining in-going ticketholders and jumping the queues time and time again somewhere between the street-level doors and the entrance to the cinemas. This morning, I listened to one irate filmgoer going on and on about how ridiculous it is, and wondering aloud why his complaints to the AMC and TIFF staff have, thus far, gone unaddressed.

Yes, I understand that figuring out a new plan at this point in the festival may be impossible, and we may just have to deal with losing seats to folks strolling up the escalators from Harvey’s, but hopefully someone associated with the festival will pay attention to this consistent (and infuriating) breach of line protocol and will implement measures to combat it at TIFF 2009. I mean, they hand out those little colored pieces of paper to those folks going in to buy tickets at the box office, so why not do that with people actually going into screenings? Or, better yet, find space INSIDE the AMC and line folks up in there.

My first film of the day was A ROUGH CUT A ROUGH CUT A ROUGH CUT of New York, I Love You (6/8), which I thought was actually really very good. FOR A ROUGH CUT. I mention that it was a ROUGH CUT because the audience – specifically the press in the audience – were asked repeatedly before the screening NOT to review it. Because, in case I haven’t mentioned, it was A ROUGH CUT. Then, a big printed message appeared onscreen, and stayed onscreen for an excessive amount of time, urging the press (again) to not review the ROUGH CUT until seeing the finished film. Thing is, the only elements cited as being temporary in THE ROUGH CUT were the credits, the music and the effects... and I don’t really know that any of those things would make someone who loved a movie suddenly hate it, or vice versa. So, aside from my slice rating, I’ll simply say: the ROUGH CUT (like Paris, je t’aime of a couple of years ago) is made up of love-centric vignettes set in the Big Apple and starring a whole slew of famous people (including Julie Christie, Orlando Bloom, Natalie Portman and her bad acting, Christina Ricci, Robin Wright Penn, Hayden Christensen, Shia LaBouef and Kevin Bacon). Not all are winners, but the ones that are – specifically, the Ethan Hawke pick-up story and the Cloris Leachman/Eli Wallach walk-and-talk segment – are fantastic.

Also strong was the other movie I saw today, the Danish (waving at Linda!) thriller Fear Me Not (7/8), a nicely creepy character study that follows a husband and father named Mikael (Ulrich Thomsen), who volunteers to take part in a pharmaceutical trial for a new anti-depressant... and who promptly begins to experience a shift in his personality. But when the company unexpectedly ends the trial because some participants have been demonstrating volatile side effects, Mikael decides to secretly keep taking his new meds. With, unsurprisingly, disturbing results. It was a really nicely taut tale with a smart twist... and one that instantly creates a new level of unease that I enjoyed very much. It also feels a lot like a film that some American studio will promptly remake, but I so hope that doesn’t happen.

And that's all. It was another short day at TIFF for me. I’m still having trouble filling all the empty vouchers I have, and I am very quickly tiring of the process as I continue to hemorrhage unused-tickets money with each passing day. But I just don’t have the energy to get up early every day to try to get same-days anymore. And I have no interest in rushing anything because I don’t enjoy sitting in the front row off to the far right. Sure, some films have plenty of extra seating once the rush lines are let in, but often they don’t and the poor rushing souls are left to sit in the theater’s crappiest seats. No thanks.

Celebrity Sightings: Ulrich Thomsen.

Line Buzz: Great buzz for Patrik, 1.5 and Hunger, and murmurs of disappointment for Wendy and Lucy.

TIFF 2008 (Eric's diary): festival karma is real

2008-09-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

I have so much to tell you about, I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I could start by saying our first movie was called Uncertainty (1/8), and it left me uncertain whether to flee the theater or throw stuff at the screen. I also felt uncertain how many times Uncertainty would repeat the same scenes over and over, but I was fairly certain they weren’t getting better every time. Aren’t film festivals full of uncertainty? (See how much fun this is?)

Uncertainty stars the talented Joseph Gordon-Levitt and also someone named Lynn Collins (both of whom were in attendance) as Bobby and Kate, a totally annoying couple who flip a coin to decide what they’re going to do that day. The movie tracks both possibilities through the next day and a half, intercutting like no one in film school has ever thought of this idea. I’ll tell you something, it’s not a bad idea, and it’s already been made into an awesome movie called Sliding Doors. And if you didn’t think that was any fun, don’t even bother with Uncertainty.

You see, in one of the parallel universes, Bobby and Kate find a cell phone and end up running for their lives as they attempt to extort half a million dollars from the Russian mafia, making the stupidest decision possible at every step of the way. And in the other parallel universe... they make empanadas and find a dog.

Uncertainty is one of those movies where I really wanted to go with it, I really wanted to like it and find it artful and challenging and thought-provoking, but it is absolutely devoid of subtext. During the Q&A, one woman raised her hand just to offer the comment, “Layers... wow. Bravo.” I can only imagine that Uncertainty sheer dumbitude regressed her to the moment right after she had seen Sliding Doors instead.

Fortunately, Uncertainty was a way better bad movie than Coopers’ Camera, because at least this movie was HILARIOUS. About 10 minutes into Uncertainty, Dan and I locked eyes to exchange the requisite “You think this sucks too, right?” look, leaving us to barely compose ourselves every time Bobby and Kate talked about how they were uncertain about stuff.

This was all well and good since we left the theater grinning from ear to ear, but it made me nervous. Two lousy TIFF movies in a row? Would we come back from this? Would our next film suck too? I didn’t know anything about our evening film, a Serbian offering entitled Carlston za Ognjenku (Tears For Sale) -- it was a wild card choice and I was starting to doubt that it would pay off.

As it turns out, we needed our last two movies to karmically break even after seeing Tears For Sale (8/8), and it was totally worth it! Try to imagine a cross between Baz Luhrmann, Tarsem, and Pushing Daisies (and of course, imagine that would be divine instead of disastrous). I’m assuming your head just exploded as well. This was truly an experience like no other.

The story is set in a remote Serbian village where all the men have died at war, leaving a population of misery-obsessed babes whose only hope for losing their virginity is one bedridden old man fed through a tube. When one of two sisters inadvertently causes the old man’s death, both sisters are banished from the village and given three days to return with a man or their grandmother’s angry spirit will take them to Hell, where there won’t even be naked men to have sex with (as promised in local folklore).

This is the setup for a visual feast whose CGI effects, fancy editing, and wild imagination put many American blockbusters to shame. In Tears For Sale, these things never seem (needlessly) flashy or self-serving, perhaps because they actually serve the plot as well as the rich Serbian folklore embedded throughout the film. I don’t remember the last time I so thoroughly believed in such unbelievable material, but it all made sense at the time. As Dan and I left the theater, he commented, “If I could turn around and attend another showing of that movie right this second, I would.”

During the Q&A, the director, Uros Stojanovic -- a lovably modest man with a crazy hat collection I can totally respect -- was asked about his next project or plans. “I know this is a very bad thing to say at a film festival,” he said guiltily, “but I am trying to run away and make Hollywood movies.” To be honest, we could use a guy like him. And if you ever get a chance to watch Tears For Sale, don’t you dare miss it!

TIFF 2008 (Vickie's Diary): First Walkout of the Fest!

2008-09-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, I want to start by thanking Eric for a nice, beefy entry yesterday, because I am so seriously wiped that I don’t want to blog at all and would love nothing more than to shut down my laptop this very second and go to bed. So, at least I can rest easier knowing you’ve had TIFF stuff to read and that my briefer-than-usual post might be enough.

[As an aside, I would like it noted on the public record that I love Eric and Dan. Truly, madly and deeply. And I will be very, very sad when they head home on Wednesday.]

Anyhoo...

I began the day with The Burning Plain (7/8), a surprisingly effective multi-storyline drama from Guillermo Arriaga, who penned other multi-storyline dramas (of varying degrees of efficacy) like Babel and 21 Grams. Jumping back and forth between several seemingly unrelated characters and the various traumas in their lives, and featuring a cast of largely unknown actors, the film delivers some nice work from A-lister Charlize Theron... but man, oh man, what’s with Kim Basinger? As lonely housewife Gina, who enters into an affair, she does not stop shaking for the entire time she’s onscreen! She is constantly trembling and quivering and jittery, and that seems to be her new signature move – conveying everything from fear to anxiety to stress to sadness via non-stop tremors. Hers was easily the weakest link in this otherwise strong chain.

Now, to backtrack a bit, my one must-see flick at TIFF 2008 was Wendy and Lucy. I tried to snag a ticket every day (and in the initial ticket lottery) without success and feared my quest would be a failure... until this morning, when I went to the TIFF box office at TLS at 8am (!) and once again requested that film for later in the day. As if by magic, it was available. OMG. I finally did it. Four days of incessant checking finally paid off! It was my film-fest Everest, and I managed to ascend it.

Problem is, Wendy and Lucy (5/8), which had received huge amounts of positive buzz and critical acclaim turned out to be, in my opinion, just okay. A true indie film in every gritty, low-budget sense of the word – save for its name lead, Michelle Williams – the bare-bones story centers on a troubled young woman (Williams) en route to Alaska, who stops in a small town, gets arrested for shoplifting and loses her dog (the titular Lucy). That’s it. I understand it’s a character study, but for me that character left me feeling a little disappointed. Okay, a lot disappointed. The movie was fine, but I had hoped that it would wow me to such a degree that it would be my fave of the fest. Sadly, that won’t be the case.

Speaking of movies that won’t be my festival fave, can we talk for a moment about Cooper’s Camera? Omigoditwassopainful. So much potential and yet so terrible. I can’t even review it or rate it properly because, as Eric points out, I left a half-hour in. Between the late start time, the unfunny script and the consistently shaky hand-held camerawork (that started giving me a serious headache) I was ready to call it a day and head home. I had no idea whether Eric and Dan were enjoying it, but I wasn’t going to stick around to find out. Turns out, I missed absolutely nothing and I’m supremely relieved that I high-tailed out when I did.

Possibly even more tragic than Cooper’s Camera, though, was Moviepie’s Eric and the Kingdom of the Lost Smoothie, which screened at the Dundas subway station earlier in the day. It was heartbreaking. Young Eric had just procured a fantastic Vitapom smoothie from Jugo Juice and was savouring its deliciousness as we approached the turnstiles to head back to the hotel. Suddenly, a subway pulled into the station, we all scrambled to get out our transit passes in time to get through the turnstiles and onto the subway, and – in the frenzy – Eric lost his grip on the cup and his spectacular smoothie crashed in a most spectacular explosion-of-fruity-goodness way all over the floor. To say that he was distraught over the loss would be an understatement. I have never seen a sadder clown in all my life, and I hoped that something... anything... would cheer him up.

Unfortunately, Cooper’s Camera followed thereafter so, you know, not so much.

Celebrity Sightings: Samantha Bee, Jason Jones, Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald

Line Buzz: Still MORE people complaining about ticketing! There were two women chatting in one of the theaters before a screening, and one said, “I have never had this much trouble trying to exchange my tickets!” Sing on, sister. Some good buzz for 35 Rhums and Once Upon a Time in Rio.

TIFF 2008 (Eric's diary): from Monaco to Mississauga

2008-09-07T23:48:00.000-07:00

I mean that title literally and figuratively, if you know what I mean, although I don’t mean any offense towards Mississaugans just because our first dud of the festival is set there. But that comes later.

First, Dan and I caught a morning movie -- by the way, I am no longer using quotes around the word morning because apparently the Scotiabank Theatre food court doesn’t think people eat lunch until 3 PM, when it finally opened -- called La Fille de Monaco (5/8) (The Girl from Monaco). It was a charming, sexy French comedy with a slight thriller twist near the end, which was intriguing but disappointingly not fully explored.

Bertrand (Fabrice Luchini) is a stuffy, aging lawyer in Monaco for a highly-publicized case. Against his wishes, Bertrand’s client has hired a thuggish bodyguard to accompany him at all times and even sleep in his hotel room. And that’s when the titular girl shows up: this is Audrey (Louise Bourgoin), and she is a sexy local weather girl who is terrible at her job but wonderful at intoxicating Bertrand with her lack of inhibition. Bertrand’s bodyguard warns him against this girl, but he is smitten... and his mind is firmly off his big case.

This was exactly the movie I was expecting when I chose it -- it was certainly not too deep, but it kept me entertained for the entire hour and a half, the locations were gorgeous, and who doesn’t enjoy listening to people speak French? And it is starting to look like Dan sleeps through one film per festival, so better it was this one than the one where Jean-Claude Van Damme is a great actor.

Interestingly, the actress playing the title role (in attendance for the Q&A, although I’m pretty sure she spoke zero English) was an actual weather girl with no film experience when the director took a chance and gave her the starring role in this movie. Bourgoin was fabulous in the role and obviously has an acting career ahead of her, but Vickie saw her in the lobby and reported that the instant Bourgoin turned away from fawning festivalgoers, her luminous smile slid right into bitchface.

Maybe she was just jet-lagged.

In the afternoon, we ate an early dinner with Vickie, her sister Trixie, and her friend Valerie. They were all delightful and I loved every minute, especially when the topic of America’s Next Top Model came up and Valerie volunteered, “I don’t know that much about Tyra Banks, but sometimes she does things that make me embarrassed for her.” I laughed so hard I almost snorted chicken pot pie out of my nose. But you know what? I would have looked fierce doing it. And that is the difference between just a pretty girl and a model.

Unfortunately, it was just about time to come down from our TIFF ’08 high, and we should have known because our next film, Cooper's Camera (2/8), was the first screening we shared with Vickie... just like last year’s Nothing Is Private... AND it was shown in the same theater where we saw Nothing Is Private. I guess we can’t say the universe didn’t warn us, but on the other hand, we had a lot to look forward to: this “1985 VHS home video”-style comedy stars Jason Jones, Samantha Bee, and Dave Foley, all of whom were in the audience for the film’s WORLD PREMIERE.

To make a long story short, Trixie walked out after 10 minutes. Vickie walked out after 20 more minutes. Dan and I stuck around for the whole movie, but walked out on the Q&A.

The film was just awful. The TIFF programmer who introduced Coopers’ Camera enthusiastically announced that after 2 minutes, they KNEW they had to show this magnificently crafted comedy that would totally change our lives for the hilarious. The filmmakers would probably not care to know what I was thinking after 2 minutes of Coopers’ Camera.

The plot centered around the titular Cooper family, who get a fancy new VHS camera on Christmas Day (IN 1985! LOOK AT THE HILARIOUSLY BAD HAIRSTYLES! LOOK AT ME NOT LAUGHING!) and film throughout the day as their family falls apart and pulls back together on a thoroughly unpleasant journey of human ugliness. But, you know, it’s hilarious because the house is full of ‘80s stuff and there’s a lot of pee and poop and sex jokes.

And -- this is something that bothered me throughout the movie -- it didn’t remotely resemble VHS. It was obviously shot in HD digital video with some filter applied to make it look like VHS, but it didn’t work at all. So it was impossible to ever feel like this was taking place in the past, on top of the fact that it played like a tedious SNL sketch.

There was probably a collective 8 minutes of funny in all of Coopers’ Camera -- and to be fair, the parts that made me laugh REALLY made me laugh, such as the gift exchange sequence where grandma receives wrapped produce -- but this should never have become a movie. I still love Jones and Bee on The Daily Show, and I’ll never stay mad at Dave Foley for long, but overall this was an awfully depressing affair.

TIFF 2008 (Eric’s diary): Hunan and homos

2008-09-06T23:44:00.000-07:00

Our streak of wildly good fortune at this year’s TIFF continued, beginning with this morning’s film, The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World (7/8), a documentary whose subject may not have been a surprise, but whose subject matter ended up surprising me very much.

Clearly, this movie was initially attractive to Dan because it’s like “NPR presents...” (and as it turns out, the film has also taken the form of a four-part BBC series, which is close enough), and that’s exactly how it played. After drawing us in with practical aspects of running what is essentially an extremely theatrical factory, the film delves deeper into the lives of Chinese families who choose to hold their banquets at T.B.C.R.I.T.W., painting a vivid portrait of modern Chinese life and values.

Most compelling is the story of a young waitress at T.B.C.R.I.T.W., who left home at 15 years old to earn money so her twin sister can go to medical school. Because their family is extremely poor and the father is unable to work, and although both daughters dreamed of becoming doctors, only one of them will ever get to study while the other toils for what amounts to spare change. What makes this sacrifice so heartbreaking is the total lack of resentment on either of their parts, and although neither girl can help weeping through their interviews, it is firmly understood that the good of their family comes first.

T.B.C.R.I.T.W. is also jam-packed with footage that (1) reminds you that American Chinese food is barely related to actual Chinese food, and (2) makes you never want to eat Chinese food again. Sorry, but after witnessing a live snake become an entrée in less than 2 minutes, and the severed chunks of meat are still wiggling and contracting on the plate, I’ll have to take a break from even the most bastardized Chinese food.

Our second film, Patrik 1,5 (8/8) was already whispered to be a festival fave, and I was THRILLED that we got tickets to this one. It’s a Swedish film about a gay couple trying to adopt a baby, and though a clerical error, instead of receiving a Patrik aged 1 1/2, end up with a surly 15-year-old with a criminal record and a whole lot of homo-hatred. Yes, it’s a comedy, but it also dealt with weighty issues so gracefully that much of the theater was sniffling joyfully through the credits.

I’ve seen lots of good and great movies at film festivals, but you can tell it’s a special screening when 99% of the audience sticks around for the Q&A (usually, even in very good screenings, at least half the audience bails ASAP just ‘cause). Patrik 1,5 features two pitch-perfect performances at its center: Gustaf Skarsgård as Göran, one of the dads, and Thomas Ljungman as Patrik. Göran’s husband, Sven (Torkel Petersson) objects to Patrik so much that he moves out, leaving the two of them to develop an unlikely bond that is totally earned by the end of the movie.

It actually feels like a small miracle to have experienced a gay movie that doesn’t suck ass -- maybe Patrik 1,5 is so special because it bypasses the whole notion of a “gay movie” in favor of telling a story about gay people. (No surprise that Patrik 1,5 comes from Sweden!) For that matter, it is nice to see that the “misunderstanding forces two disparate souls to learn from each other” plot device still holds water -- it’s just lazily abused in so many American movies.

All in all, another fantastic day for movies and a very special couple of screenings with entertaining, informative Q&As!

Celebrity sighting: Ellen Burstyn coming down the escalator at the AMC food court. She had done a Q&A for the screening Vickie just attended (Lovely, Still), but I like to pretend homegirl was aching for some Caribbean Queen or Subway. Even Oscar winners gotta eat.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): The Great Equalizers

2008-09-06T21:08:00.001-07:00

I like to believe that the universe tries its best to maintain balance at all times, so that whenever something crappy happens somewhere, something amazing might happen somewhere else. That’s kind of what today’s TIFFing was like.

If you recall, yesterday sucked hard in my TIFF world, so it was with a mixture of dread and optimism that I began anew this morning. I’ve had insomnia for the past several days so, despite desperately needing sleep, I was wide awake by 7am. I figured I’d take my lemons and make lemonade, so I got up, got dressed and headed down to the box office at TLS to see if I could score any tickets to anything today, since all I had lined up was an evening screening.

Things got off to a good start – a subway arrived right away and, when I arrived at TLS, the box office was nearly empty, allowing me to be served immediately. (Note: Grabby Glenda was on duty this morning, but I breezed right past her and never made eye contact... though I did notice my shoulders tense.) Despite going in with five picks (including alternates), I only wound up with one ticket. But I told myself that was better than nothing at all, and trekked back home for a couple of hours of breakfast, rest and email.

Even though it wasn’t my first (or even second) choice, I was thoroughly delighted by my first screening of the day – in part because the film was great, and in part because my film-going experience was great, as well. The movie was Lovely, Still (7/8), a really sweet and very poignant (read: yes, Vickie cried) love story about a lonely grocery store clerk (Martin Landau) and the romance he strikes up with the new neighbor (Ellen Burstyn) across the street. Written and directed by a young fellow named Nik Fackler – who’s all of 24 years old! – the film changes tone a few times, with remarkable results... even though I kind of figured out what was happening about halfway through. The performances from the two leads were strong, and the post-film Q&A – which featured both of them, plus Fackler and co-star Adam Scott – was fantastic. Spirited, strangely moving (hearing Fackler’s explanation as to why he wrote the story in the first place actually put a lump in my throat) and really funny.

Also funny: after the film, I met up with Eric and Dan in the food court below the AMC. As we stood there chatting, I looked up to see Ellen Burstyn descending the escalator and being led through the food court. It was simultaneously amazing and sad. I mean, was there no more dignified way for her to leave the venue than having her shuttled past Thai Express and Subway? She’s won an Oscar!

And while we’re on the subject of the AMC, guess what? You don’t ever need to line up for ANY screenings there! Know why? Because there is ZERO security between the street-level entrance and the entrance to the actual cinema in which you’ll see your film! Isn’t that awesome?!

No. No, it’s not. This free-for-all approach to ushering ticket holders into the venue is a thousand times less secure and more prone to line cutting than any other theater in TIFF’s history. I know this because today was my first actual screening there, and I was maybe ninth or tenth in line. As the line was let in and we began our three-escalator ascent through the shopping concourse, we just merged with ALLLLL the other people ascending the escalators – the folks heading up to buy tickets at the box office, the tourists going to the merch room to pick up T-shirts, the people on their way to the food court for lunch or to Future Shop for a new TV... or the ones with tickets to our screening who were just JOINING THE MASSES AND CUTTING IN LINE. Not just one or two, dozens! When I got to my theater (remember, I was near the front of the outdoor line-up), there were easily 30 or so people already inside, and a slew of strangers (who hadn’t been in line in front me) suddenly materialized between the entrance to the building and the entrance to cinema 2.

And, really, kudos to the queue jumpers for the foresight. Well done. Why bother standing outside in the line, when you can just loiter in the lobby (or in the food court), keep an eye on traffic and just join your fellow ticket holders when they’re let in? It’s so much easier and takes so much less time and effort than waiting outside for an hour, and chances are no one will be able to thwart you because you’ll be alongside a whole bunch of your comrades doing the exact same thing! Even line policers like me are powerless to single out the cutters because there are just so many.

Yet another big strike against the AMC, IMO.

BUT... I should add that I had a delightful time waiting for Lovely, Still to begin because I struck up a nice chat with a group of women who took the seats next to mine. We talked about what we’d seen so far, what we hoped our impending screening would be... and then the nice lady sitting next to me complimented me on my shoes and actually offered me some of her just-purchased Twizzlers! Multiple times! It was such a nice gesture, something so small and seemingly insignificant and yet so diametrically opposed to the asshattiness of Grabby Glenda. It, and the movie, warmed my heart.

Eric, Dan and I then headed to Yorkville for (we hoped) random celebrity sightings, but saw nary a celeb. We did, however, pass the two loud, obnoxious eTalk “lounges” on Yorkville Ave., outside of which were scads of young film fans hoping to see, I dunno, Zac Efron I think? Some other teenybopper? Based on some of the serious spazzing out we witnessed, I think of few of them might have been successful. So, we wound up shooting interview footage instead.

My second screening was okay, but not great. I should tell you that I love Amanda Peet, and will happily see anything she’s in, so (again, not my first or even second choice for this timeslot) I picked up a ticket for $5 a Day (5/8), from director Nigel Cole (Calendar Girls). It centers on a con artist (Christopher Walken), who’s dying and who embarks on a cross-country road trip with his estranged son (Alessandro Nivola) in a bid to rebuild their long-flawed relationship. I can’t put my finger on what was wrong with this movie, but it just didn’t resonate with me at all. Something was missing. It felt like I’d seen this movie before, more than once, and it didn’t have enough Peet. It was, in a word, meh. And, even though it was the film's world premiere, only the director showed and gave a rather long-winded introduction.

And that was it for today. If all goes as planned, I’ll have three films tomorrow. I made the mistake – during one of my “let’s see if I can exchange some vouchers” expeditions – of not ensuring I’d have enough time between two of my films, so I already know that there’s no way I’ll make the one I currently have slated for noon. Fingers crossed I can get a same-day ticket for something else!

Celebrity Sightings: Ellen Burstyn, Martin Landau, Adam Scott.... and Michael J. Fox, in town to pick up his star on Canada’s Walk of Fame. (I walked past the outdoor ceremony on my way to the Scotiabank tonight.)

Line Buzz: Okay, for real, people are mad this year. Today I was in line and heard a guy behind me actually say that he was DISGUSTED at how TIFF is devolving, and he was on a tear about the AMC, in particular. Some negative buzz on Birdsong and some "I agree with you" re: 33 Scenes From Life.

TIFF 2008 (Eric's diary): two films about aging

2008-09-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

It may be impossible to put your finger on just one reason why it’s such a valuable experience to attend an international film festival, but the films we saw today perfectly encapsulate two of them. It’s unlikely that any of our remaining days at this year’s TIFF will pack quite the emotional rollercoaster we’ve had today (though it doesn’t hurt to hope).

First up was J.C.V.D. (8/8), the new Jean-Claude Van Damme movie. But wait! He plays himself, an aging star fighting a losing custody battle, back in Belgium to clear his head when a trip to the post office gets him involved in a violent hostage situation. Soon the event is a media sensation, with crowds of local Van Damme fans causing as much commotion as shoot-outs with the police. One of the perpetrators can’t believe he is suddenly “hanging out” with Van Damme, asking all about Hard Target and his rivalry with Steven Seagal.

It’s a surreal and inherently humorous situation, but handled with surprising realism that might have had more in common with any of Van Damme’s other violent action films -- except that Jean-Claude Van Damme is the most compelling character Van Damme has ever played. He has other things on his mind. His daughter. His legal fees. His fading career. He's getting old. Participating in real-life action is the last thing he needs today. (This is not to say the movie isn’t kick-ass and action-packed, however. IT’S ALSO GREAT IN THAT WAY.)

Before the film, one of the fest directors explained that he saw J.C.V.D. at Cannes and couldn’t believe his favorite movie of the festival starred Jean-Claude Van Damme. He promised we would see a new side of J.C.V.D., and we did. At one point he delivers a several-minute-long monologue that took the entire audience’s breath away. That’s the gift of a festival like TIFF: unexpected greatness can come from anywhere. Even Jean-Claude Van Damme.

In the evening, we caught Adela (7/8), a no-budget drama from the Philippines about a grandmother living in poverty off the side of a major highway. Adela and many other families reside in a garbage dumpsite, functioning as a community like any other. Today is Adela’s 80th birthday, and she eagerly expects a visit from her daughter and grandchildren. Sadly, Adela’s birthday does not turn out exactly as she hoped.

Adela was shot on grainy digital video, obviously among people actually living in these conditions. The style fits the subject matter well, as long takes (occasionally over-long) set us squarely within the reality of life on the dumpsite. Wordless for long stretches at a time, we accompany Adela as she travels to buy food, visit her husband’s grave, and wander the beach in solitude.

Adela is surrounded by new life -- in fact, she delivers a baby in the first scene. Airplanes constantly fly overhead, a subtle reminder of human beings moving from one place to another -- Adela cannot go anywhere. Her community is abound with new beginnings, as her life is coming to its end. And eventually it becomes clear that her grown children have forgotten her.

The director was in attendance for a Q&A, along with Anita Linda, the 83-year-old star who traveled all the way from the Philippines to be here in Toronto. There were tears in her eyes as all she could say was, “Thank you... thank you.” Afterwards, there were tears in the eyes of MANY Filipinos who lined up to greet Anita, kiss her on the cheek, and thank her for her extraordinary performance.

You see, you never, ever know where magic will strike at an international film festival.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): The Great Same-Day Line Fiasco of 2008

2008-09-05T20:22:00.003-07:00

Let me preface this entry by saying: I am a crotchety TIFF veteran. I will fully cop to whining and complaining about how things have changed for the worse, and how the tickets are too expensive and hard to get now, and how the general vibe of the entire event has gone from “fun public festival” to “industry-centric circus that frequently shuts out the very people who made it what it is today in the first place.” So, you know, I realize that I rant. But I think today may go down in history as the single most frustrating line experience I have ever had in my 18 years attending the festival.

To backtrack, the new AMC venue at Yonge and Dundas, and the accompanying relocation of the main TIFF box office to Toronto Life Square (henceforth known as TLS) are, as predicted, seriously flawed in terms of their user-friendliness and convenience. Yes, they’re on the subway line (unlike the Scotiabank) and the seats in the new AMC theaters are comfy and in stadium style... but there ends the bliss. I’m not sure if the TIFF organizers ever sat down with the property management folks at TLS to explain exactly what’s entailed in having a box office on site, but it feels like they didn’t and that the folks who own TLS suddenly decided that maybe huge line-ups taking up precious space would be an enormous pain in their collective ass.

Because someone somewhere vetoed the notion of indoor lines, meaning all lines for all TIFF-related activities (screenings, ticket purchases, whatnot) are outside. On Dundas. Wrapping around to Victoria, where hordes and hordes of students (and businesspeople and assorted pedestrians) file past every minute of every hour from about 8am until after dark. Nevermind the traffic and the exhaust fumes and the almost constant smell of stale urine. So pretty.

But having numerous lines outside for an indoor venue of that scope also leads to mass confusion, for festival goers and, apparently, for certain TIFF staffers. The key word in that sentence is “confusion,” and it’s the main reason for what can only be described as my truly ridiculous and sort of infuriating attempt at procuring a same-day ticket for a film at the AMC earlier today.

It was beyond absurd.

I wanted to redeem one of my many vouchers for a same-day ticket for an AMC screening. The end. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Instead, it set in motion a series of events that left me standing in the wrong lines at the wrong times thanks to a supremely self-important (and clearly inept) volunteer upstairs inside the facility. I mention that so you know that I know the staffers working the lines outside actually know what they’re doing and are doing it well. They have a massive job on their hands, trying to maintain order amid the mayhem, and they’re doing a pretty good job under the circumstances. Congrats. But it only takes one clueless person elsewhere to throw a big wrench into the well-oiled machine they've created.

Initially, I began writing out today’s fiasco in great detail, outlining every ridiculous moment, but when I noticed I was on page three and only halfway through the story, I figured brevity would be better... for you and for my sanity. (I did, however, go on camera afterwards to recount everything – EVERYTHING – on film for Eric’s documentary, and when I was finally finished my loooong single take, he turned off the camera and said, “That was... amazing.”)

In a nutshell, the goings-on go like this: after repeated incidents of misdirection and line confusion, the movie I wanted – which still had tickets available when I’d arrived at TLS – had sold out by the time I reached a box office cashier. I was so frustrated and fed-up by the whole process at that point that I might just have cried (out of sheer frustration and defeat, not because I was missing this particular film) had I not headed right over to Eric and Dan for comfort and laughter. I’m fairly certain that my blood pressure shot up a good 50 or 60 points in the hour and 15 minutes of back-and-forth fiasco-ing, and it took me more than an hour to shake the tension afterwards. Even the actual retyping of the tale tonight was getting angrier and angrier (sorry, keyboard!) as I recalled the whole thing. So I scrapped it and rewrote. Believe it or not, this is MUCH shorter.

Because, did I mention?, I was manhandled. Manhandled. By the same (inside TLS) female volunteer on whom I blame everything. As I was standing in the box office line inside the actual TIFF box office, she unexpectedly GRABBED ME BY THE ARM from behind, literally yanking me out of one line and pulling me by my upper arm all the way to some line supervisor as though I was a petulant four-year-old. What. The. F**k?!

Seriously. She grabbed my upper arm, pulled me and firmly hung onto me without ever saying A WORD to me as she physically moved me from point A to point B as though I should know what the hell she was doing or why. (Turned out she was bringing me to the line supervisor to explain the situation in a bid to move me further up what turned out to be another WRONG line. WTF?!) I was so shocked by her HIIIIGHLY inappropriate behavior that I didn’t even know what to say or how to react. Who does that???? When did volunteers get permission to touch, let alone manhandle, festival goers who are just standing in line, waiting? Grabby Glenda instantly earned herself a nickname and a spot on my TIFF shit list alongside Mouthy Martha and Dora the Dope.

She never explained herself, or apologized, or even offered a quick “hi, sorry, would you mind stepping over here instead?” Nothing. Just a grab and a yank.

And then, after everything... after her pretty much ruining my afternoon... she had the audacity to cheerfully say to me (as I was later stomping out of the box office, ticket-less), “So, did you get your ticket?”

“NO, ACTUALLY, I DID NOT!” I snarled back, opting not to stop and launch into a loud, expletive-laden rant.

“Oh, are you going to try to rush it?” she shouted after me.

Was she kidding me?! STAND IN ANOTHER LINE?!

“NO!” I yelled over my shoulder through a mild rage haze.

Anyway, very long story short: from now on, I know where to stand if I want to buy a same-day AMC ticket. No thanks to Grabby Glenda. And I have calmed down, realized the insignificance of the entire joke of an afternoon and will be moving on now that I’ve told you all about it.

Unfortunately, this whole incident set the appropriate tone for my sole screening of the day – the Polish drama 33 Scenes From Life (4/8) – which turned out to be disappointing. Made up of a series of rather bleak vignettes spanning a year in the life of a photographer (Julia Jentsch), the film purports to be about adulthood and responsibility as a result of love, death and loss. Um. Okay. I guess. Only... I actually had to read the program book when I got home to find out what the hell the movie had been about. Honestly, watching it, I had no idea. And, given the STONE SILENCE with which people filed out of the theater, neither did anyone else.

Celebrity Sightings: None.

Line Buzz: Unsurprisingly, a LOT of festgoers are pissed off about ticketing this year. Lots of frustration over the lottery, the news of the donor process, the practices at the AMC (with the multiple lines), and the inordinate number of seemingly untrained staff (I watched as one cashier at the box office had a customer actually take back her order, walk away and get BACK IN LINE because she was so fed up with the volunteer’s lack of knowledge!). And, from press-screening whispers, a LOT of positive buzz around Anne Hathaway and her film, Rachel Getting Married.

TIFF 2008 (Eric's diary): stop-motion, start festival

2008-09-04T22:34:00.000-07:00

Today we kicked off the first day of TIFF with a little tourism, hitting something called Casa Loma. It’s a mansion (which felt more like a castle) built by a very rich guy who built a very big house before losing all his money and dying while living with his chauffeur. All I know is, we turned off the electronic tour guide and posed erotically on top of a tower. It was worth the price of admission.

Like yesterday, the overbearing heat sapped our energy and caused rivers of sweat to flow down our faces. If you thought Canada in September might be chilly, try putting on a Victorian dress and having professional photographs taken by an angry Russian woman. I did. More explanation later.

Most importantly, however, tonight kicked off the festival and we attended our first screening of the year at the Varsity! Tonight’s film was Edison & Leo (7/8), the first stop-motion animated feature produced in Canada. EVER! The director, producers, writers, several voice actors, and several animators were in attendance and participated in an awkward Q&A in which they all took turns trying to avoid speaking in front of the microphone.

The film itself was just awesome, and visually tasty from start to finish. It concerned George Edison, a 19th century inventor whose son, Leo, has been cursed to be “electrified” for life, leaving him unable to touch anyone or anything without electrocuting it. It had an irresistibly dark sense of humor well-paired with the visual quirks of stop-motion animation. I am hopeful that Edison & Leo will see the light of day beyond this festival.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): Let’s Get Rolling...

2008-09-04T08:38:00.001-07:00

Today is the first official day of TIFF 2008, when screenings (though still limited at this point) get underway and the world waits in breathless anticipation for a sighting of international superstar Paul Gross (raise your hand if you just said, “Sorry, who?”), whose labour-of-love film, Passchendaele, opens the fest. For the uninformed, he’s kind of Canada’s answer to Kevin Costner.

The fest does not yet get underway for me, however, because I have no films today. Shocking, I know. But I have a seen a few films at pre-TIFF screenings so, for your edification and the sake of this blog, some capsule reviews:

Plus tard, tu comprendras (5/8) is part family drama and part Holocaust drama and nicely small in scope, though a little slow in terms of its execution. Set in 1987 Paris, with the Klaus Barbie trial serving as a backdrop, the film follows a man (Hippolyte Girardot) trying to uncover the truth about what happened to his parents during WWII, as he unearths some surprising information in the process. His aging mother (Jeanne Moreau), however, never speaks of the past and would rather leave it all behind. Well-acted but nothing really exceptional in terms of the subject matter, and I found my mind wandering a lot during the first half.

Similarly, The Hurt Locker (5/8), while occasionally engaging, feels a bit like a retread of other war films before it (most notably, Jarhead and Kimberly Pierce’s Stop-Loss) that dealt with disillusioned young soldiers. Jeremy Renner stars as James, an army explosives specialist, who joins a Baghdad bomb squad but consistently puts himself and his increasingly frustrated colleagues in danger due to his seemingly unquenchable thirst for adrenaline. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and made up of vignettes involving the soldiers at work, it has more of a slice-of-military-life feel to it than a film with a clear dramatic narrative. Which is totally fine, but it made it difficult for me to sympathize with any of the characters – the ones I liked best (played by Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes) were essentially bit parts. The strange coda involving Evangeline Lilly (!) also seemed out of place and didn’t resonate with me nearly as much as it should have. It was decent, but not amazing.

Surreal. Weird. Bizarre. Disjointed. Poetic. Beautiful. Fascinating. Sad. Confusing. Those are just a few of the descriptors I could use for Synecdoche, NY (7/8), the sublime directorial debut of writer Charlie Kaufman, who also penned the screenplay. Trying to encapsulate this wonderfully freaky and subtly poignant film is extremely difficult, since it folds in on itself over and over and over again and defies any sort of linear storytelling. In a very broad nutshell, though, the film spans decades and centers on small-town theater director Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who’s having an existential (and professional and marital) crisis and decides to mount the most important piece of theater of his life... which, in turn, literally becomes his life as he recreates everything and everyone in it. Brilliant madness that’s blessed with a kick-ass supporting cast (including Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Emily Watson and Dianne Wiest). It’s definitely not a film for everyone, and it does have a distinct downer vibe to it... but watching this intricate cinematic tapestry unfurl was, for me, magical.

Equally magical and infinitely charming, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (7/8) is a loopy, sweet and undeniably fun all-night misadventure for its titular characters – heartbroken Nick (Michael Cera), who can’t seem to get over his fembot ex (Alexis Dziena), and acerbic hipster Norah (Kat Dennings), who’s fallen for a mix-CD maker she’s never met – and, more importantly, the longest supporting turn by a piece of gum EVER. Nick and Norah meet cute at a club, and his pals are assigned the duty of getting her supremely drunk best friend (Ari Graynor) home. Mayhem and a rockin’ soundtrack promptly ensue when the guys lose the girl – literally – and everyone searches Manhattan for the missing charge. Blessed with winning chemistry between its leads and a nice heart beating beneath its surface, the movie is one of those rare festival films that I actually wish had been about 20 minutes longer. Oh, and Graynor gets the MVP award for her work as the fully blitzed Caroline, which makes the movie.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie’s Diary): Excuse Me, Miss... Is Your Record Broken?

2008-09-01T15:05:00.001-07:00

Okay, I know I said I wouldn’t continue to beat the dead horse that is the annual TIFF ticket lottery, but I only managed to snag 18 of the 29 films I selected this year, so I’m feeling a renewed sense of indignation over the whole thing. Last year, by some fluke, I got everything I requested, but this year the planets have un-aligned themselves accordingly and as expected.

But I think this will be my final rant on the subject, because how much more can be said? Not much. Except: the lottery blows.

Before anyone chimes in with “but this way is FAIR!”, let me just say: it is not fair. Not at all. Yes, it removes the first-come-first-served element so that all orders – regardless of drop-off time – are considered equal in the eyes of the TIFF gods, but how is it “fair” that you pay for tickets you don’t get?

Yes, I understand that those of us who don’t get what we’ve asked for can then re-ask for those same movies, or other movies, in the soul-crushing, serpentine queue known as the “exchange line,” but at what point does the entire process just become so ridiculous and time-consuming and labor-intensive that it’s just not worth the trouble?

Let’s say you’re me, and you’re missing 11 films – not surprisingly, almost all of those absentee screenings are on that first Fri-Sat-Sun weekend when, it seems, EVERYTHING is sold out. So, you try to find replacement films on the days where your schedule is suddenly severely lacking. But the Board of Lies says, “Sorry, sucker. Every film on those days is sold out.”

Then what?

Then you try for same-day tickets during the fest, which entails getting to a venue’s box office at 8am (or earlier)? Even though there’s no guarantee any tickets will be available?

Or you try for rush tickets, which involves getting to a venue some three hours (or more) before the start time of a film? Even though there’s no guarantee any tickets will be available?

And what if you were just coming into town FOR that first weekend and wound up with, say, 4 of your 10 picks? What if you couldn’t find replacement films? Or you didn’t have time to stand in line for hours on end because, you know, it eats up all your movie-going time and there’s no guarantee any tickets will be available?

Well, then you probably try to sell off your vouchers in some line somewhere, or you just eat the cost of the tickets you didn’t use. GREAT news for the fest (cha-CHING!); too bad for you.

Basically, the entire TIFF ticket lottery can be boiled down to: there’s no guarantee any tickets will be available. But the fest will nonetheless happily take your money off your hands, whether or not you manage to get what’d you like. Oh, and this just in: if you’re a festival “donor” and you drop at least $250 in their coffers, your order(s) will be processed BEFORE the ticket lottery. So, I suppose, if you’re willing to part with another couple hundred bucks, you can avoid the lottery headache altogether! Thing is, as I discussed with my linemates this morning, if I want to help fund the arts in Toronto (which someone theorized was a good reason for donating), I’m going to give $250 to an independent theatre group or a youth orchestra or some other in-dire-need-of-cash organization, not the Toronto International Film Festival, which is making money hand over fist AND already over-charging me for tickets as it is.

The “catch” to the donors-first policy? The more you donate, the sooner your order is processed. It all feels very much not in the spirit of “the world’s largest public festival,” I think.

And this really is the last time I'm going to stand on the exact same soapbox to gripe about the exact same issue. I promise.

TIFF 2008 (Vickie's Diary): TIFF (Sept. 4th – 13th) -- Let the games begin!

2008-08-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

Missed a TIFF diary? Want to catch up? Enjoy:
2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002

Oh. Hey. Guess what? It’s *yawn* film festival time again and... blah blah blah... film festival DOs and DON’Ts blah blah.

What’s that, you say? You’re wondering if there’s a distinct lack of enthusiasm in this annual diary intro where, typically, I am overflowing with excitement and glee and exclamation points?

Well, you are not mistaken. I’m feeling twinges of bitterness and increasing frustration as each year passes, and maybe I’ve finally plateau-ed. I hit the wall mid-way through last year’s festival, and it was a bit of a wake-up call. I've never been that tired before. So, I’m aiming lower this September. Seeing fewer films and attempting to pace myself so that, you know, I don’t burn out completely on day four.

TIFF 2008 hasn’t even started yet and I’m already beat. Already working at a stamina deficit. Already feeling like I should be sleeping more and eating better. I kind of feel like I’ve been TIFFing for a good week or two already... and, in many ways, I have been. I’ve racked up a handful of pre-fest screenings, and have once again endured the supremely lame insanity of the annual ticket lottery. Seriously, this immensely flawed system has been in place for, what, 10 years or so?, and it STILL DOESN’T WORK. It’s still unfair. But whatever. That dead horse has been beaten beyond recognition at this point.

Last year, the fest added a slew of convoluted extra steps to the ticket-ordering process, and they remain in 2008. I fully expect fingerprinting, retinal scans and DNA sampling to be incorporated at some point in the not-too-distant future.

In a bid to appease disgruntled festgoers like me, TIFF has introduced a number of new outdoor initiatives at the Yonge/Dundas Square... presumably to distract us from the fact that they’ve relocated their main box office to the busiest intersection in the city, and planted it right in the middle of an already crowded third-floor food court (!), accessible only after ascending two escalators (three if you're coming from the subway level) and servicing a huge volume of people. Convenient.

TIFF has also reduced the number of films at this year’s festival, programming 312 (down from 349 in 2007) but adding screens at the AMC Yonge/Dundas -- a move that may very well make people long for the comparable civility of the previously maligned Scotiabank Theatre. So, one would assume that there might be fewer movies but more screenings. Can’t say for sure whether that’s true. That's math I have no interest in doing.

Anyhoo, I am thrilled to bits that Moviepie’s Eric will be returning to Toronto for his second TIFF! This not only means extra blogging over at Moviepie ‘Musings, where we’ll update daily, but it means a huge amount of fun regardless. So, you know, YAY! And I know that his presence will instantly buoy my enthusiasm, so... onwards!

I’ve decided to pare down my daily entries this year, though, because I think a lot of the extraneous information was, well, extraneous and boring. So, in addition to the daily recaps, I’m only going to spare Celebrity Sightings and Line Buzz™. They’re the most important ones, anyway.

So, while I load up on protein shakes and B12 shots, and attempt to rest up before the circus hits town, check out the official TIFF 2008 website for all the screening info you could want.

See you in line! (Probably.)

Vickie

TIFF 2008 (Eric's diary): entering the lottery

2008-08-27T02:46:00.000-07:00

At 8:54 this morning, we received our Toronto International Film Festival ticketing package including the program guide, order booklets, drop-off and pick-up vouchers, pre-paid FedEx return envelope, and detailed instructions because someone decided that this should be the most complicated and annoying procedure ever. Someone decided that this should be a LOTTERY.

The full schedule was released yesterday, and since then I have read all 312 film descriptions, narrowed them down to 77 favorites and narrowed them down again, eventually settling on 20 choices (10 first picks, 10 backup picks).

This year, I'm especially impressed the number of documentaries I'm dying to see. These were just a few that caught my eye:

- The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
- Blood Trail
- Every Little Step
- American Swing
- Unwanted Witness
- Sea Point Days
- Soul Power
- Food Inc.
- Dungeon Masters

And, of course, there is Religulous, which Dan and I saw chunks of last year, courtesy of Bill Maher and Larry Charles. (The only reason we chose not to see the full version this year was... well, we only get 10 TIFF movies a year, and I didn't want two of them to be the same movie.)

So, this morning, I madly filled in the necessary booklets and forms, and we sent off our FedEx envelope back to Toronto for processing this Friday. Fingers crossed that we get our first picks, but as we learned last year, it seems difficult to go wrong with such an amazing selection. I mean, even Alan Ball's abyssmal Nothing Is Private (now re-edited and re-titled Towelhead for release this fall) was an unexpected bit of Slow Roll glory.

For your perusal, here are mine and Dan's 10 picks for this year:

- Edison & Leo
- JCVD
- Adela
- The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World
- Patrik Age 1.5
- The Girl From Monaco
- Cooper's Camera
- Uncertainty
- Tears For Sale
- Dungeon Masters

And here is our collection of backup picks:

- $9.99
- A Film With Me In It
- Universalove
- Detroit Metal City
- Cold Lunch
- Unspoken
- Skin
- Witch Hunt
- Lymelife
- Kisses

Now that I look at it, I'm surprised that only two of our eye-catching documentary faves made it onto the final playlist, but I guess I have more confidence that I'll be able to rent those at some point. I don't know when else I will be able to see an Norwegian film entitled "Cold Lunch."

SIFF #18 - And then there's the Moviepie awards...

2008-06-16T22:38:00.001-07:00

Some overall comments about SIFF 2008. Maybe it was just me, but were the films actually better this year? I know that SIFF was tightening its belt--for the first time there weren't "more movies than ever on the planet, all in three weeks!" (although, don't get me wrong, several hundred is still plenty). Perhaps the 50 less movies were actually the stinkiest ones that the programmers thankfully cut for our benefit.

There was less schwag for sale (no lunchboxes, stickers, tote bags, etc.), and there were less parties. With this streamlining, especially with the venues mainly limited to the Uptown, SIFF Cinema, Pacific Place, Egyptian, and Harvard Exit, I found the fest much easier and less stressful to get around. I only used my car twice (for films that got out past 11pm), and actually rode the Monorail twice as well! Otherwise, I just did fine on foot and bus. All in all (counting carefully), I saw 33 (I just recounted!) movies and/or SIFF-related events. Not as many as last year, but I liked most of what I saw this time!

My faves of the fest:
Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (narrative), Man on Wire (documentary)

Breakout performances:
Tannishtha Chatterjee of Brick Lane, Andrew Garfield of Boy A

The Ponette award for making tiny children "act" by threatening to stone them:
Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame

A trend of "real-life" documentaries that blur the line of reality and drama:
American Teen, Up the Yangtze

Surprisingly not stinky (not GREAT, but not stinky!):
Battle in Seattle

Favorite short film:
OK, I only went to one shorts compilation, but LOVED the twisted and funny The Pearce Sisters (unsurprisingly from Aardman Animation). I was delighted to see it won a jury prize!

Fabulous archival presentations:
In the Land of the Headhunters, Sunrise w/ The Album Leaf, Alexander Nevsky w/Seattle Symphony

Hottest actors of the fest who showed up in person:
Real-life couple Sophie Hilbrand and Waldemar Torenstra of Summer Heat

If you can't get a good film, don't bother with the Gay-La:
Kiss the Bride

Random acts of kindness:
To prove that I needn't waffle on the last evening of flicks, a kind fellow gave me his extra ticket to Timecrimes for free, and a woman offered (literally one second too late!) to sell me her discounted ticket for my last film, The Wrecking Crew.

Most fun to be had during SIFF:
OK, alright, alright, I'm cheating here... but I'll have to say, sneaking away from the fest the second weekend to go have cocktails with a pack of friends and see the Sex and the City movie. I have no shame!

And finally, weirdest Capitol Hill postering during fest:
The "orange level" lice epidemic posters all over Pine Street, supposedly courtesy of the Seattle Health Department (turned out it was a hoax, at least as far as health officials were concerned)

(To see my ratings of all my SIFF 2008 movies in one place, go here.)

So! Until next year... [checking pockets, looking at watch, whistling to pass the time, thinking I should be somewhere], see you at SIFF Cinema!

SIFF #17 - SIFF 2008 Golden Space Needle Audience Awards

2008-06-16T21:35:00.000-07:00

Best Film Golden Space Needle Award:
Cherry Blossoms – Hanami, directed by Doris Dörrie (Germany)

The remaining top ten audience favorites (in order)
Frozen River, directed by Courtney Hunt (USA)
Fugitive Pieces, directed by Jeremy Podeswa (Canada)
Captain Abu Raed, directed by Amin Matalqa (Jordan)
The Drummer, directed by Kenneth Bi (Hong Kong)
Summer Heat, directed by Monique van de Ven (the Netherlands)
Letting Go of God, directed by Julia Sweeney (USA)
Late Bloomers, directed by Bettina Oberli (Switzerland)
Bliss, directed by Abdullah Oguz (Turkey)
Michou d’Auber, directed by Thomas Gilou (France)

Best Documentary Golden Space Needle Award:
The Wrecking Crew, directed by Denny Tedesco (USA)

The remaining top ten audience favorites (in order)
Great Speeches From a Dying World, directed by Linas Phillips (USA)
Man on Wire, directed by James Marsh (UK)
Accelerating America, directed by Timothy Hotchner (USA)
Creative Nature, directed by John Andres (USA)
Emmanuel Jal: War Child, directed by C. Karim Chrobog (USA)
Trouble the Water, directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessin (USA)
Stranded: I’ve Come From a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains, directed by Gonzalo Arijon (France)
Good Food, directed by Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin (USA)
They Killed Sister Dorothy, directed by Daniel Junge (USA)

Best Director Golden Space Needle Award:
Amin Matalqa, for Captain Abu Raed (Jordan)

The remaining top five audience favorites (in order)
Courtney Hunt, for Frozen River (USA)
Nina Paley, for Sita Sings the Blues (USA)
Dorota Kedzierzawska, for Time to Die (Poland)
Nic Balthazar, for Ben X (Belgium)

Best Actor Golden Space Needle Award:
Alan Rickman, for Bottle Shock (USA)

The remaining top five audience favorites (in order)
Nadim Sawalha, for Captain Abu Raed (Jordan)
Andrew Garfield, for Boy A (UK)
Zdenerk Sverák, for Empties (Czech Republic)
Greg Timmermans, for Ben X (Belgium)

Best Actress Golden Space Needle Award:
Jessica Chastain, for Jolene (USA)

The remaining top five audience favorites (in order)
Catinca Untaru, for The Fall (USA)
Melissa Leo, for Frozen River (USA)
Danuta Szaflarska, for Time to Die (Poland)
Melanie Diaz, for American Son (USA)

Best Short Film Golden Space Needle Award:
Felix, directed by Andreas Utta (Germany)

The remaining top five audience favorites (in order)
Sleeping Betty, directed by Claude Cloutier (Canada)
Bailey-Boushay House: A Living History, directed by Terence Brown (USA)
Zoologic, directed by Nicole Mitchell (USA)
Spider, directed by Nash Edgerton (Australia)

Lena Sharpe Award:
Frozen River, director Courtney Hunt (USA)
This award is given to the film by a woman director that receives the most votes from the public.

SIFF #16 - Cramming on the last day...

2008-06-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

Whooeee! I do always get that last-day panic at SIFF, don't you? You know, the monster fest is coming to an end, and heck, what if you missed what turned out to be your favorite movie, because you decided to call it a night early?

Let's just say that my favorite movie was most definitely not Bottle Shock (4/8), one of those lazy, typical, pleasant-but dull American movies that SIFF often uses as an opening or closing film. But apparently there is an audience for these films, because SIFF's Closing Night (on Saturday for the first time!) audience voted Alan Rickman Best Actor for his role as a Brit expatriate wine merchant in Paris who invites over the scrappy vintners from Napa in California in the 1970s to compete in a taste test with--yes--the French. Based on a true story, the scrappy kids took almost all (if not all) the major awards, including Chateau Montelena, run by Jim (Bill Pullman, as usual, pleasant but bland) and his son Bo (Chris Pine, with the most gawd-awful 70s shag wig I've ever seen). There is a token girl that only shows up to sleep with the two young men in the story (for no reason at all)... except that the OTHER one is Freddy Rodriguez, who is the film's only saving grace. Alas, his earnest performance as a 2nd generation Mexican-American who wants to be a master vintner isn't enough to recommend this flick.

I knew that I would have better luck with Alexander Nevsky (6/8), Sergei Eisenstein's "lost" film from 1938, depicting a fantastic battle between the Russians (led by Prince Alexander) and the German Teutonic invaders in the 13th century. Alexander, play by blond pretty-boy Nikolai Cherkasov, pulls together a ragtag army of peasants to defend Novgorod, with the fantastic culminating battle taking place on a frozen lake. The special presentation took place at the Seattle Symphony's home of Benaroya Hall, with the symphony performing Sergei Prokofiev's original score live, accompanied by a choir and soprano! I wasn't the only one surprised that it wasn't actually a silent film. During dialogue, the musicians would sit patiently, then be pulled in to create the impressive, sweeping soundtrack mainly for montage scenes of Russian majesty, with the regular folks banding together to fight the enemy. The soundtrack was BIG to say the least. The film was very good, but the live soundtrack experience was fabulous and memorable.

I didn't have tickets for the rest of the final afternoon, so decided to wing it. Last year I took the opportunity to catch the announced award winners when they filled the remaining TBA slots. I had already seen one of the films (see next entry, with list of winners), so instead caught, rather spontaneously, the Spanish sci-fi thriller Timecrimes (Los Cronocrímenes) (6/8). It is a tight, fun little time-travel film, which treats the accidental jumping back of a couple hours as just a scientific accident that this unsuspecting fellow Hector falls into. I don't want to give anything away, because getting there is all the fun (and you have to pay close attention, like in Memento). And, unsurprisingly, apparently Timecrimes has already been optioned for an American remake. Go figure.

So, what does one do when it is 9:00 on the last night of the fest? Why, race across town to SIFF Cinema for just... one... more. My last film of the fest was the charming documentary The Wrecking Crew (6/8), which profiled a group of session musicians in the 1960s Los Angeles pop music scene who created the studio recordings for a stupendous amount of hit songs. For instance, did you know that the Beach Boys did not play on the majority of their records? Song after song is revealed (the Righteous Brothers "You've Lost that Loving Feeling," the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson," the Mamas and the Papas' "California Dreamin'," etc.)--and all were performed by the same go-to studio musicians. Crazy! The film includes interviews with many of the musicians (the most famous of these studio guys was Glen Campbell, before he went solo), as well as big names like Cher, Herb Albert, Dick Clark, and Nancy Sinatra. The film is warm and friendly, as it was made by Denny Tedesco, whose late father Tommy Tedesco was one of the Crew. This doc ended up winning the Golden Space Needle for documentary, and was a nice, foot-tappin' film for the end of my festing.

WSFF 2008 Award Winners

2008-06-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Ah, at last. The WSFF has announced all of its award winners, a list that includes a number of films I saw.

Because I'm a little blogged out, allow me to simply redirect you to the official announcement from the fest.

See you at TIFF...

WSFF 2008 #5: Going Out With a Bang...of Thunder!

2008-06-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

As I stood at the northwest corner of Bloor and Avenue Rd., waiting to cross the street and head to the Cumberland, I looked north along Avenue and saw a giant wall of darkness approaching overhead. To my right, sunshine and blue skies...but to my left, and just at the cusp of Bloor, was an endless expanse of black, rumbling clouds. Before I finished crossing the street, the area was already dropping slowly into the menacing shadow of a big, fat thunderstorm.

Then some wicked, nasty weather hit.

Thankfully, by the time it did, I was already sitting in the theater, waiting for my first screening of the day, the Film School Spotlight: Universidad del Cine, a collection of shorts from the UDC in Buenos Aires. They were all technically strong and well-made, but only two truly impressed me:

* Crummy Café (7/8), a clever, one-location story about what would happen if two renowned composers debated their merits – and their music – at a run-down little bar. Smartly written and nicely acted, it made me smile.

and

* Amancay (6/8), a moody, languid, atmospheric character study (or, perhaps, location study) about a despondent young woman (Carolina Presno, left) who returns to a remote cabin where she lost a lover. Come to think of it, I don’t think there was any dialogue at all save for the main character shouting her boyfriend’s name at one point.

Immediately after the closing credits on the last Argentinian short rolled, I hopped next door to catch Official Selection 9: Father’s Day, a series of shorts relating to dads...appropriate, given the day. Even though this screening was kind of a last-minute addition for me, and I wasn’t particularly excited to go, I was pleasantly surprised by the offerings.

In fact, one brilliant short -- Boar Attack (8/8) -- might just be my favorite film of the fest. Much sweeter than its title would suggest, it made me tear up...even though it’s less than 4 minutes long.

Also impressive, and just as touching, was New Boy (7/8), a slice-of-life drama about a nine-year-old boy adjusting to life in a new school in a new country...and reflecting on the life he left behind in Africa. Again, choked me up.

Two honorable mentions for performance go to a pair of actresses in two other shorts screened as part of this programme: little Marie-Felixe Allard (right), the bespectacled, foul-mouthed and completely charming tot in Gilles’ Lili; and veteran Canadian thespian Mimi Kuzyk for churning out some impressive, emotional work in the war-vet tale, Homecoming. Well done, ladies!

And that’s a wrap on the alarmingly Myrocia-free WSFF 2008. The award winners were announced earlier tonight, but I can’t seem to find the results anywhere. I’ll post ‘em when I get ‘em.

SIFF #15 - Heat and ice

2008-06-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

I present to you two of the hottest humans that I've ever seen in person:

Ah, yes, the extreme physical beauty of the two stars of Summer Heat (Zomerhitte) (6/8) graced the presence of the pale and pasty SIFF audience on this weekend matinee, along with the charming director Monique van der Ven, who has been a SIFF favorite as an actress in past years. Van der Ven brought her directorial debut to the fest, and it is an enjoyable summer thriller, taking place entirely on a vacation island in the Netherlands. A hot photographer (both figuratively and literally) named Bob (Waldemar Torenstra) is on assignment, taking pics of the local wildlife, and finds himself smitten with a lovely lass whom we first meet emerging from the waves stark naked. Beautiful Kathleen (Sophie Hilbrand) works at a bar, but mixes with some shifty gangster types who are involved in some shifty drug business. In the tradition of many thrillers past, the mix of a curious guy with a camera, plus lots of sexual tension, tends to get everyone in deep trouble. The film has the sexy feel of early Paul Verhoeven (whom Van der Ven collaborated with previously) or better Brian de Palma, and it truly sizzles with the fine chemistry of its lead actors who are, of course, a real-life couple. A funny note about the screening: Several audience members praised Monique van der Ven's past work as an actress, lamenting that some of her films were very very hard to find here. She said, "Well, I'll bring some of my DVDs next time, and give them to Scarecrow Video!" Of course, everyone loved that!

My next film of the day, the American indie Frozen River (7/8) has probably garnered the most buzz of the fest. I've heard people murmuring about this film left and right, and the first screening sold out. So I sacrificed the first sunny afternoon in weeks to check it out, and indeed, it is a fine film. Two women, a white woman and a Mohawk Indian, live on opposite sides of the reservation border. Because of their own independent desperate need for money (one to buy a double-wide after her husband took off to gamble the family's savings, another to reclaim her infant child being raised by well-meaning relatives) they begrudgingly becomes partners in a smuggling racket. They drive across the U.S.-Canada border over a frozen river to pick up illegal immigrants--a highly dangerous job, not just for the legal reasons, but because of the dangerous ice and conditions. It is an intimate drama of two women, who may not be so different, resorting to desperate measures for their families. It is extremely well-acted, especially Melissa Leo's fierce performance as a woman trying to keep her promises to her disgruntled kids who think she is going to work at the dollar store. Luckily, this film has been picked up for distribution.

WSFF 2008 #4: Kids’ Flicks Never Disappoint

2008-06-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

Before we chat about the annual Shorts for Shorties collection of short films geared towards kids – which was excellent, as usual – can we talk for a moment about what seems to be an unsettling trend among filmmakers at this year’s fest: killing dogs. Good grief, it’s like someone put out a memo requesting more canine deaths in film. Today, two more films featured dogs dying in unpleasant ways. Thankfully, though, unlike Death of Shula, neither of today’s victims were actually harmed during filming.

But I digress...

First up today were the kids’ shorts – hooray! I don’t know why, but filmmakers catering to a younger set are always much, much better at making short films that are both short and films. They’re usually under five minutes, often animated and almost always great – smart, funny, vibrant and able to hold the attention of audience members under 12. Today’s collection contained 18 films, and I’m having a hard time narrowing down my favorites. Most memorable were the trio of Shaun the Sheep shorts (7/8 for them all) -- Stick With Me, Hiccups and The Snore Worn Shaun. Aardman Animation (home of Wallace & Gromit) are masters at their craft, so it’s no surprise that these three films were by far the most popular today.

Also extra-good were:

* My Happy End (7/8), a black-and-white story about an animated dog who finds a best friend in his hind quarters

* the South African tale Jungle Beat 2: Because You’re Gorgeous (7/8), in which a self-absorbed warthog learns the perils of vanity.

and

* Rebelle (7/8), about a note that decides to shake things up within its piece of classical music.

I ducked out after the last film and quickly got back in line for Official Selection 4: Creatures Great and Small, a programme containing films that somehow relate to nature, wildlife, animals or pets. I picked this screening largely because of one film: actor Paddy Considine’s directorial effort, Dog Altogether (6/8), which was not only written and directed by one of my favorite UK talents, but which stars Peter Mullan...whom I’d like to just read me stories with his deep, gravelly voice.

Dog... was good, but didn’t wow me as much as I thought it would. Mullan stars as Joseph, a rage-aholic who’s unable to control his temper (the film opens with repeatedly kicking his dog, whom he later puts out of its mortal-wound misery), and I actually wanted to see more of this particular story because it ended at a various interesting point. Alas.

I also enjoyed:

* Hot Dog (7/8), animator Bill Plympton’s offering about a bulldog who wants to be part of a fire department

and

* the eco-centric Journey to the Forest (7/8), an experimental film examining the issue of clear-cutting.

And then I called it a day. Tomorrow’s the last day of the fest, and I think I only have one screening...maybe two if I can squeeze a second one in. And STILL no Myrocia. This makes me sad.

Total films screened today: 27.

SIFF #14 - Heavy metal and silent drama

2008-06-14T11:04:00.000-07:00

I had a night off from SIFF, but I also happened to have a DVD screener at home of a movie that played the fest earlier in the schedule, so I'm sneaking this one in: Heavy Metal in Baghdad (6/8). Headbanger band Acrassicauda (Latin for “Black Scorpions”) are more than a bit unique in the heavy metal world: they are young Iraqi musicians that have doggedly been covering their most adored favorite bands (like Metallica and Slip Knot) and creating their own original songs, first under the shadow of Saddam Hussein's regime, and more recently in the middle of civil war and foreign occupation. These young men are smart, articulate, and love the universal glory of rock and roll. But in six years of existence, the band had only 5 gigs, including one put on by the filmmakers who had discovered them via long-distance communication. To see about 100 young men with black foreign metal-band t-shirts (that could get them arrested) gather to hear Acrassicauda in a hotel lobby (where the power goes out multiple times) is truly inspiring. Apparently the devil horns are universal, as is the headbanging--though these guys lament that they are not allowed to grow their hair long. Where the film hits hard though is after the guys leave Iraq one by one to Damascus, Syria for refuge. They get to see a close to final cut of the film, and their sadness turns to anger. In the film's final moments, the foreign filmmakers, who play quite a large role in the film, are humbly put into their place by these artists whose home has turned into a violent hellhole. Heavy Metal in Baghdad has a rock-n-roll casualness in its filmmaking, almost like a home video, but it is still thoughtful and interesting, especially if you are a music fan of any sort.

My favorite new SIFF tradition (can you call two years in a row a tradition?), is the commissioning of local rock band to do a new original score to a classic silent film. Last year Kinski created an ear-shattering score to Berlin: Symphony of a City, and this year Sub Pop's The Album Leaf (a new band to me) scored one of my favorite silent films ever, F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (8/8). These events are cool not only because the music and movie, but because they take place at the Triple Door, a dinner-theater club that usually hosts music and/or cabaret. We enjoyed fancy cocktails and a bunch of small pan-Asian style plates while The Album Leaf played their moody, gauzy soundtrack for the story of a country man tempted by a City Woman to do away with his saintly wife to run off with the vixen. It's a fabulous film, of course, and the score gave it a more spooky surreal feel than the first time I saw it.

WSFF 2008 #3: Half-Hearted at the Halfway Mark

2008-06-13T23:46:00.000-07:00

If I were a Telus representative attending the WSFF, I think I’d be kind of peeved.

Today was the third day (not including opening night) of the festival, and Telus is a presenting sponsor – so their ads play before each screening and their logo is slapped on each audience-choice ballot, for starters – yet it seems that no one involved in the fest has bothered to find out what the Telus Mobile Experience is...yet they plug it every single day. Before every screening I’ve attended so far, I’ve heard the exact same half-hearted, confused “pitch” for this Mobile Experience from the person handling the introductory announcements (“Mobile Experience? I have no idea what that is, so somebody please check it out and tell me!”), and it’s starting to get old.

Shouldn’t someone have bothered to find out what this is by now? Given that Telus is obviously handing over a big chunk of change, and the faux-anti-establishment vibe that (intentionally or not) comes across during these pre-film announcements about their product seems more irritating than irreverent on the part of the fest?

I mean, it would take, what?, one quick phone call to someone in the marketing department at Telus? Could it have anything to do with this initiative, announced last year, which I found after three seconds of Googling? Come on. This shouldn’t be difficult. [Note: I am somewhat tempted to believe, or perhaps hope, that this "we don't know what this thing is!" schtick is actually an act, done on purpose to *drive* people to check it out for themselves...but I'm not 100% convinced this is the case. Or, if it is, that it's working.]

Anyway...

I only hit two screenings today, the first of which was largely forgettable. I didn’t really adore Official Selection 10: I Want to Be Adored, a collection of films related to fame, celebrity and entertainment. Honestly, none of them stood out to me, good or bad, and my mind started to wander at some point during each one. The only short that left any kind of impression was Zietek (5/8), a creepy Polish film about an old man who's spent his life carving life-sized pin-up models out of wood...which I thought was fiction but which (I learned afterward when I checked the program book) was a documentary. Um. Yipes.

Thankfully, my second screening of the day – Official Selection 12: Watch What You Eat -- was fantastic. Almost all the films in this collection were great, and the ones that weren’t amazing were still quite good.

I loved Le Grand Content (8/8), an Austrian look at society’s foibles as demonstrated through animated charts and graphs. You can watch the film on YouTube! Other highlights in this grouping were:

* Personal Spectator (6/8), Emmanuel Jespers’ tale of discovering self-worth through the eyes of another. (Note: let me go on the record now as saying that I expect actor Tom Harper to hit Hollywood hard in the future.)

* The Sweetest Sound (6/8), a darky twisted story about the perils of reconnecting with someone you dumped.

* The Frozen City (7/8), a documentary about Winnipeg, MB – the Slurpee Capital of the World. Seriously, these people lurrrrrrrve their frozen beverages!

and

* No Coke (7/8), a hilarious little Scottish film about a British tourist, a broken vending machine in Norway and an apathetic hotel clerk. So fun!

Tomorrow, one of my favorite programmes every year: the kids’ collection, Shorts for Shorties! This year’s set features three Shaun the Sheep entries. :-D

And STILL no Myrocia sightings. I am starting to have Roger Ebert at TIFF déjà vu...

Total films screened today: 17

WSFF 2008 #2: Dying Dogs and Depressing Dramas

2008-06-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

Know what’s super-fun? Sitting in a screening and realizing, to your horror, that the big, cuddly dog dying onscreen is actually dying. That was part of how I spent my afternoon on day two of the fest. (Note to anyone who isn’t clear: the aforementioned incident was decidedly *not* fun.)

My first screening of the day was Official Selection 6: Teenland, which was supposedly a collection of films relating to being a teenager, but a few reeeeeally stretched that classification. Most of the films were meh, and seriously depressing, but two stood out:

* Mats Grorud’s claymation tale My Grandmother Beijing (7/8), a sweet story that, on the surface, seems like a man reflecting on his love for his late grandmother, but which in fact contains more than a little political commentary buried within the titular character’s wrinkles.

and

* Death of Shula (4/8), a depressing and ultimately frustrating drama (?) about a family’s disconnect as reflected through the death of the family dog. This film bothered me for a number of reasons. First and foremost was the fact that, as mentioned, we’re forced to watch – in a lengthy, static close-up – a dog being euthanized...right down to its last gasps of breath. That same dog can be seen here in an earlier scene, where it is clearly in distress (if you’re sensitive to these sorts of things, you might want to skip watching). Filmmaker Asaf Korman obviously shot the canine footage via a veterinarian preparing to put a dog to sleep...and then inserted that footage into the film. At no point are any of the actors (Korman’s actual family) shown with the dog, and dialogue has been looped onto the euthanasia footage. It all felt very cold and exploitative, and the camera holds way too long on the lifeless body, in my opinion. But equally frustrating is Korman’s decision to leave the camera running at the end of his film after he (off-camera) yells “cut.” It completely voided the emotional impact of his story, and took me right out of the action. Too bad. Another example of a crappy ending ruining a movie.

Then came the supremely awkward post-screening Q&A session. I understand that it’s great to have filmmakers or members of the production team on hand, but when it’s obvious they have nothing to say or are perhaps not really wanting to talk about their work (as was the case with a pair of filmmakers at this screening), why not just scrap it? And, if you’re a filmmaker who agrees to take part in a Q&A session, try to at least pretend to be interested in your own project or marginally aware of your own work so that you can answer questions when they’re asked instead of giving the equivalent of a shoulder shrug. My moviegoing pal and I actually had to leave because it was that painful to watch.

Next up was the Celebrity Shorts package, which is always a blend of really great and really self-indulgent filmmaking, and this year was no exception. Falling into the latter category were Kate Hudson’s directorial effort, Cutlass (5/8), which seems to equate love for your kids with buying them expensive things, and Occupations (4/8), director Lars von Trier’s bizarre and ultimately grotesque look at dealing with a chatty Cathy in a movie theater. Oh, and then there was the short that seemed to be funded by the Church of Scientology, given the fact that its entire cast was made up of B-list Scientologists. Kind of creepy.

Two comedies won me over, though. CTRL Z (6/8), features Tony Hale as a frustrated office worker who thinks he’s found the solution to all his problems, and FCU: Fact Checkers Unit (7/8), which follows a pair of dedicated magazine staffers trying to check one final fact about Bill Murray (who co-stars as himself). You can actually watch the film in its entirety here. And one animated film, Descendants (6/8), proved surprisingly moving. It’s the story of two forest flowers (one voiced by Whoopi Goldberg) and the need for love vs. revenge. I got a little choked up at the end.

As an aside: where is Myrocia Watamaniuk??? Five screenings so far and nary a sighting. Alas.

That was it for the day. Tomorrow: humidity and thunderstorms. Drat.

Total films screened today: 16

SIFF #13 - Two countries collapse in shame

2008-06-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

Taking a step back, I can see that my two film choices for the day has similar themes, despite wildly different situations. Both films portrayed disenfranchised people, kept in their place by those in power. But both films had central characters that fight back, even as all odds seem to be against them. One film took place in America, the other in Taliban-run Afghanistan. Surprising, eh?

My Hurricane Katrina story was that I flew out of the country hours before the monster storm hit the Gulf Coast (hearing bad news in the international press, and even worse news when I got home). I remember watching the airport news, with images out thousands upon thousands of red taillights of cars as New Orleans evacuated in advance. But not all who wanted to leave could. One of the great shames of that city, and this nation was that no public transportation was provided for those that had no way to leave the city.

Trouble the Water (6/8) is a fascinating account of a makeshift family, headed by the fierce and strong Kimberley Roberts, who not only weathered the storm in one of the poorest neighborhoods in New Orleans (which was flooded when the levees broke), but took care of her own in the aftermath. Kim had just bought a video camera for $20 the week before the storm, so had amazing first-person footage as her family and a handful of neighbors retreated to the attic of her house as raging water reached as high as a stop sign down the street. No one came to help. No one. Her brother Larry (a hero if I ever saw one), carried survivors one by one to a neighboring house that had a safer second floor. Their saga is interspersed with images from the media, that watched rather agog, and frantic (and haunting) 911 calls from people trapped in their houses with rising water, who are told, "No one is coming." The second half of the film can only suffer in comparison to the footage from the storm and its immediate aftermath, as Kim gathers survivors and goes north, but Trouble the Water is still an important and scathing document profiling just a few of the thousands of people that the U.S. Government abandoned in a time of their greatest need.

I had heard positive buzz about Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (Buda as sharm foru rikht) (8/8), but honestly thought that it was a documentary. Boy, was I surprised to find an intimate dramatic (and at times sweetly funny) story about one little girl named Baktay who just really really wants to go to school like the neighbor boy, her friend Abbas. Taking place in the gaping wound in the cliff side where the Buddhas of Bamyan once stood, the story is told entirely from the children's point of view (and these are LITTLE kids... Baktay looks to be 5 or 6 years old). Each task in her day is an epic journey: buy a notebook, survive horrific torment from Taliban-influenced boys "playing" war, and simply find the school for girls. All of the children are great, and little Nikbakht Noruz who plays Baktay, has created the most natural performance by a young tot since they tortured that little French girl Ponette onscreen (who cried big wet tears when her movie parents died). How do they make children act? Astonishingly, director Hana Makhmalbaf was 18 when she made the film! It's helps that she had the genes of a master filmmaker in her, but still, this film was amazing.

As a postscript to my evening, as I was walking down Capitol Hill from the Egyptian to downtown, I passed by several posters tacked onto telephone poles. The Seattle Health Department, by law, is required to tell the public that a Code Orange level warning has been issued for a LICE EPIDEMIC. What the f...?!?!?! These notices were conspicuously posted on Pine Street, in the area of lots of clubs, cafes and bars. Is the lice infecting club kids? SIFF-ers who have been sitting in too-close proximity to each other for a month? People who frequent coffee houses? Is this for real? Weird. (scratch scratch scratch)

WSFF 2008 #1: Monologues, Monoliths and Mangled Children!

2008-06-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I almost missed the first day of the 2008 Worldwide Short Film Festival.

For some reason, I woke up this morning – and spent the first half of the day – thinking it was June 10th. So, in my mind, the only WSFF screening on the docket would be the opening-night gala. Imagine my shock and awe when, around noon, I realized that, no, it’s June 11th...and the fest would be in full swing...and I had three screenings earmarked for the afternoon...and I hadn’t even picked up my press pass yet.

Yipes!

Some scurrying around and rescheduling ensued, and I made it to all my planned shows.

First up was Official Selection 1: I Have a Dream, a collection of seven films relating to dreams, sleep, imagination and goals. Of the pack, only two really stood out for me:

* Frankie (6/8), Darren Thornton’s curious drama that exposes the inner monologue (spoken outwardly) of a 15-year-old Irish delinquent who’s about to become a father.

and

* Debora Diniz’s fascinating documentary Alone and Anonymous (6/8), which follows a nameless old man who’s trying to starve himself to death. It was at once heartbreaking and really weird...especially given its surprising final few minutes.

I hopped outside and immediately back in line for Official Selection 2: Crime & Punishment, which featured eight shorts relating to, well, crime and/or punishment. While a number of these films started off really strong, more than a few left me feeling meh as they ended because they lacked endings...they just kind of faded out. I dunno, I understand leaving the audience guessing, but in the 10+ years that I’ve been going to the WSFF I find that many short filmmakers seem to just end their films rather than giving them endings. That is to say, they just peter out or stop abruptly. If these were short stories, readers would feel cheated. Viewers of short films should be no exception.

Two prime examples of this in this particular programme were Chief (6/8), the story of a Samoan chief-turned-taxi driver in Hawaii, which probably would have received at least seven slices had it had an ending, and Tomboy (5/8), which “ends” with a strange and half-hearted whimper that seems to imply murder is okay if you get to kiss a boy for the first time.

Thankfully, two wonderfully clever films in this set more than made up for what the others may have lacked:

* Trevor Cawood’s brilliant Terminus (7/8), which is a visually impressive little gem that seeeeeamlessly blends CGI with live action in a story about a persistent stone monolith following a hapless office worker. It was terrific and I literally sat there trying to figure out HOW they created some of the images onscreen.

and

* How Much Do You Love Me? (7/8), a hilarious Australian offering from directors Nick Ball and Gus Johnston, which centers on a the perils of a young couple putting quantitative values on a relationship. So good!

Last up was a program I was very much excited to see, and it did not disappoint: Accidentally Funny: Order is Restored, a collection of instructional and educational films from the 1940s-‘70s which, when viewed now, are hysterically funny. Unfortunately, this particular program isn’t repeating during the fest, which is a shame because it’s so much fun and more people should get to see it. My faves of these ten shorts were:

* Making a Decision (6/8), a 1957 NFB film about a high-school girl forced to decide between a date with a boy and a family obligation.

* I’m a Mammal and So Are You (6/8), a musical explanation of mammals from 1972, with a very catchy tune.

and

* The Finish Line (7/8), a 1977 UK film – which was intended for schools but was promptly pulled from circulation for its completely twisted and surreal content...which, of course, makes it that much more entertaining now. It was meant to be a cautionary tale about playing on or near train tracks and is, instead, this freakishly demented story of kids being killed one after another. Best part of the whole movie? A wide shot where a girl playing one of the young “corpses” sits up among her fellow bodies (clearly forgetting she’s supposed to play dead!), looks around and readjusts herself. Priceless!

A full day. Tomorrow: movies about teens and the annual celebrity-shorts program!

Total films screened today: 25

SIFF #12 - Land of dancing bears and severed heads

2008-06-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

Yep, I took another couple days off from SIFF. I must not be the only one suffering from film fatigue because SIFF was offering their members a 2-for-1 ticket deal for any screening between Sunday and Tuesday! Hopefully they were able to fill up some of those empty seats. I always feel bad for visiting filmmakers when there is only a sparse audience for their screening.

That said, the special presentation The Land of the Head Hunters (6/8) at the vast old Moore Theater was packed. This was truly a special presentation, as Edward S. Curtis' film originally had its world premiere at The Moore in 1914 (how cool is that??). Apparently there were only two surviving copies of the film remaining, both in bad condition, when the restoration began. The best of the surviving footage was taken from both copies, and when a piece was beyond saving, still images (both from the film, and from Curtis' famous photos) were inserted. This worked surprisingly well, though sometimes had unintended comic effect--specifically a moment where two warriors were wrestling atop a cliff, getting closer and closer to the edge. Then there was an abrupt cut to a still shot of one lone warrior peering down to the rocks below, supposedly at the carcass of the loser. This caused giggles in the audience.

The basic plot of the film is a love story ripped apart by warring tribes. The son of a chief loves the young woman in the next village. They decide to marry, despite the fact that she has been promised to the creepy Sorcerer. Our hero has an elaborate wedding party, highlighted by fantastic images of majestic canoes landing in the village, each with a dancer at the front of the canoe: an Eagle, a Bear, a Raven. But drat! The Sorcerer rounds up his own warriors, hops in a war canoe to the wedding (violently killing unsuspecting fisherman and clammers that happen to be in the way), and grab the girl. Don't worry though... the bride does manage to get rescued by her one true love by the end. And lots of severed heads are waved around triumphantly (the heads, by the way, looked like the size of coconuts with lots of shaggy hair... I couldn't help but think of that line from Jerry Maguire "Did you know that the human head weighs 8 pounds?")

The rest of the evening was warmly hosted by members of the Kwakwaka'wakw First Nation from Alert Bay, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Their dancers, many of whom are descended from tribe members featured in the film (the audience audibly cooed when it was pointed on that one man was the grandson of Naida, the bride from the film), performed several numbers accompanied by thundering drumming and chanting. Their gorgeous costumes (I coveted the women's beautiful robes), dances, and fantastic wood masks (especially the clacking beak of the huge Raven mask) delighted the audience. I was reminded of what a great venue The Moore was, as a lone female singer's unamplified voice filled the air all the way up to the balconies. The Moore may be a little rickety compared to the lovingly restored Paramount Theater, but it is still a great place to see a show.

(For more information on the background of the film: www.curtisfilm.rutgers.edu)

SIFF #11 - Man on Wire, Lives halved

2008-06-08T14:32:00.001-07:00

I have to say, this has been a great year for interesting docs at SIFF, and the captivating and inspiring documentary Man on Wire (7/8) is no exception. The film profiles confident, bold, and more than a bit crazy French acrobat Philippe Petit who strung a wire between New York City's barely-finished World Trade Center towers in 1974 and tightrope-walked between them (over 1350 feet, or 100+ stories above the street) as a sort of guerrilla artistic statement. The unbelievable story captivated the city and became front-page news across the world, in large part because of his group of friends (including French, Americans, and an Australian) who helped him secretly set up the stunt, and also carefully documented not only the event, but a huge amount of the preparation. The band of pranksters is interviewed in present time (they all now look to be in their 50s or 60s), and they recount their stories with bright-eyed enthusiasm like it was yesterday. It is a crazy, exciting story... one where the law was clearly broken, but no one got hurt, and the worst offense they could slap Petit with was criminal trespassing. It is a fabulous, inspiring documentary, and very uplifting.

My follow-up film for the afternoon was the indie Half-Life (5/8) which was a noble, though a bit wobbly attempt at dysfunctional family drama combined with a dash of sci-fi. It takes place in a perhaps not-so-distant future where coastal cities are flooded, solar flares cause curious electrical disturbances, and the local news is rife with violent stories (which is actually not really that different from our present reality). Mom Saura Wu (Julia Nickson-Soul) is seeing a younger man who also has designs on her adult daughter Pam (Sanoe Lake), with Pam's little brother Tim (Alexander Agate) caught in the middle. There is also a side story with Pam's friend Scott coming out to his parents, which overlaps with the Wu family's own drama. The film suffers from uneven acting, mainly on the adult male side. The women are all strong and more interesting characters, but it is really the performance of young Alexander Agate as Tim that stands out. He absorbs the drama around him, and escapes via fantasies that appear as animation in the film. His performance is quite lovely. It is also a great-looking film, and may get distribution after the film festival circuit.

SIFF #10 - Autocracy and alarms

2008-06-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I decided to nix the idea of seeing three movies in a row, starting at 4:30 (after yesterday's sleepy incident). This meant I could sleep in a bit, and allow myself to get some kibble before my first movie at 6:30pm.

Strangely enough, I had actually recently re-read the 1981 teen novel The Wave by Todd Strasser. The story of a high-school teacher's experiment with turning his class into basically neo-Nazis was memorably adapted into an After School Special in the early 80s, but this is the first time it has been made into a theatrical film. The Wave (Die Welle) (6/8) adapts the story to the present-day (cell-phone texting, the internet, and all), and changes the setting to Germany (edgy!). Hipster teacher Rainer Wenger, with his leather jacket and Ramones t-shirt, is assigned to teach "autocracy" to students during project week (drat! he wanted anarchy!). To make a dull, retread topic more interesting (after all, haven't all the German kids learned over and over how evil Hitler and the Nazis were?), Herr Wenger decides to turn his class into an exclusive club (see? isn't this fun?). Heck, let's straighten our backs and stand when we speak. "Strength through discipline!" The kids get a buzz, and start to think they are special. They name their movement The Wave, and soon they are ostracizing those not in the group, until things start to turn violent. Let's just say things get out of control, and the ending of this adaptation is harsher (but sadly probably more realistic to modern times) than the original novel and TV version.

The Wave was based on real events in Palo Alto, California in the late 60s, and this screening was immediately made more powerful and fascinating because of the presence of the original teacher, Ron Jones (now retired), and a couple of the students from his class (now, I suppose, in their late-50s), Philip Neel and Mark Hancock. The students remarked how the experiment, gone horribly wrong, was something that they all remember very clearly, like knowing exactly where you were when you heard JFK was shot. One of them said he is making a documentary, having tracked down most (all?) of the original 28 class members. Forty years after the incident, they are all dying to speak about it. I can't wait to see that....

I was excited about my next film, Ferzan Ozpetek's Saturn in Opposition (Saturno Contro) (5/8). At SIFF a couple years ago, I love Ozpetek's Facing Windows, which not only ended up making me really weepy, but also won the Golden Space Needle audience award. Saturn is about a group of "polysexual" friends (I took that word from the official description), who have frequent dinner parties and are basically each other's surrogate family. But then one day young, handsome Lorenzo passes out at the table, and it turns out has had a severe brain hemorrhage. The film basically revolves around the friends dealing with the tragedy, as they hover around the hospital. I never, sadly, became too emotionally involved. Part of the reason was my hatred for the womanizing character of Antonio... because he was just an extension of the actor's same character in The Last Kiss! Maybe Stefano Accorsi is just too good at playing a conceited man-child.

But, you know, I never found out about how Saturn ends... when there was only about 10 minutes left of the film, the movie stopped, the lights flipped on, and a fire alarm started blaring, with a mechanical voice basically telling everyone to run for the exits. I got to go out the emergency exit, which snaked through a completely unlit hallway behind the screen, and go down stairs and stairs and stairs and stairs, until we all spilled out onto the street. As far as I know, it was a false alarm, but since it was 11pm, I wasn't about to wait around and find out since no one seemed to know what was going on. So I decided to call it a night.

SIFF #9 - I'm just feeling so sreepy...

2008-06-06T16:57:00.000-07:00

There is always some point during the festival where your body simply starts to wear out and bone-numbing fatigue sets in. I think I hit that today. Now, I know many of you out there will scoff at the following complaints, but let me say this: I am not a morning person. Several days in a row I have gotten up pre-6am, to get to work by 7:15am, so that I could leave by 3:45pm, so that I could catch a 4:30pm movie. You see, unlike SIFFers out there that flaunt their full series passes and crow about how many films they've already seen so far, I actually have a full-time job, AND am trying to see 30+ shows. I've talked to several folks who've tallied in the upper double-digits how many films they've seen, and for the most part, they are A) Retired, B) Unemployed, C) Press (as in that is their "real" job), or D) On vacation from their "real" job. No such luck for me. What I'm really getting to is this: I fell asleep during my afternoon's first movie. (hanging head in shame)

If you've lived in the Seattle area at all in the 1990s, you'll probably remember the shocking story of the Rafay family in Bellevue, an East Indian family discovered brutally murdered supposedly by their 18-year-old son Atif and his friend Sebastian Burns. The boys were arrested for murder (with the motive to supposedly get insurance money), but they left for Canada. Long story short, almost 10-years later, they were finally put on trial in the US, and convicted on the basis of a secretly videotaped confession by the two, taped by a secret undercover branch of the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The undercover agents are called Mr. Big, but may as well be called Mr. Soprano, in that the RCMP tracks down their #1 suspects, weasels their way into the suspects' lives under the guise of being a hot shot gangster-type, then eventually get the poor fellow to confess. Apparently, innocent men have confessed to crimes they didn't commit, under the fear of threats that Mr. Big made on him, or threats to harm or kill those close to the suspect.

Director Tiffany Burns, who is Sebastian Burns' sister, used to be a reporter for local news stations across the country, and Mr. Big (4/8) has the aura of local-TV reportage, complete with jarringly irritating TV-screen static transition themes (ugh). There is a lot of information in here, and it is fascinating to hear a top dog at the RCMP hem and haw (literally) his way through a phone conversation with Ms. Burns, pretty much incriminating the law enforcement agency with dirty tricks by refusing to talk about it. But the film doesn't have the convincing power of say Paradise Lost or The Thin Blue Line in entirely convincing us of the innocence of Rafay and Burns. It's like, "Look! These other guys were innocent in their Mr. Big sting, so that means Rafay and Burns are, too!" All in all, Mr. Big felt to me like it just scratched the surface of an interesting topic. If anything, it should convince a lot of folks that the crime needs to be re-investigated.

Feeling more perky and, um, well-rested, I attended the packed screening Brick Lane (6/8). There's been buzz around this film, and apparently a chunk of the audience had read the best-selling book by Monica Ali. I however, hadn't... so as a person with no expectations, I thought the film was quite good (I heard a few murmurs that if you read the book in advance, you might be disappointed in the movie). All the credit goes to the lead actress Tannishtha Chatterjee, who plays Nazneen, a Bangladeshi woman who left her small village as a teen to go be the bride of a man in London. After almost 20 years of marriage, her husband Chanu (Satish Kaushik) has lots of ideas, but is not very successful, much to the horrid embarrassment of their British-born daughters. Nazneen, being very traditional, is also very lonely. But when she picks up a job sewing clothes in her own home, she meets the handsome young delivery man Karim (Christopher Simpson) who takes a shine to her. Their illicit romance makes Nazneen blossom, but of course things can never be as easy as that. The film is completely carried by Tannishtha Chatterjee's performance. She is absolutely lovely, sad, wistful, and completely heartbreaking in the performance. You clutch yourself, only wanting the best for her. I was smitten.

SIFF #8 - Israel's Nazi...er... "corn" pulp fiction

2008-06-05T08:15:00.000-07:00

I'm sure some of you out-of-town folks read this blog and think to your collective selves: Sheesh, why would a city have a film festival on the cusp of summer? When the sun rises at 5:13 am and finally sets hours and hours later at 9:03 pm? Wouldn't people rather be running around outside, skipping across lawns and running through the sprinklers until the sun went down? Well, kids, the following pretty much explains it all:

Other than the freak heat wave during the first weekend that coincided (gloriously) with the Folklife Festival, bringing hippies and their friends out from the bushes in the hundreds of thousands, and causing SIFF (and Indiana Jones) movie-goers to blink furiously when they emerged from the theaters... well, this has pretty much been the weather pattern. And did I mention that we've really had no spring to speak of this year so far, expect a couple fluke hot days? This blows, and people are getting cranky.

So, because it's cold and rainy, let's get back to SIFF'n...

One of the many nice things about film fests is that they usually unabashedly include some porny-type films, so why not try to catch a couple, just because you can? At work, since we all don't want to be inappropriate, we refer to this topic as "corn"... so my co-workers' eyebrows raised when I announced I was going to catch a flick about Israeli-Nazi-corn.

Stalags - Holocaust and Pornography in Israel (Stalagim Shoa ve pornographia re’ Israel) (6/8) is a fascinating, weird, and uncomfortable documentary. For a time in 1960s Israel, smutty porn books were available at local newsstands. Well, that is not so strange in and of itself, if you think about it. But these pulp paperbacks, called "stalags" (the Germans' name for "prison camp"), described dominatrix scenarios always with the same basic plot: It is World War II, and an American or British pilot gets shot down over enemy territory. He is captured by the Nazis, who all happens to be buxom, beautiful, severe women with shiny boots, tight pants, and snug Nazi uniforms about to burst. The SS women officers rape and torture their prisoner (which arouses him while causing him pain), then he manages an escape, but not before raping and killing his captors in revenge. Hm. These books were eaten up by the Israeli population, and were the sorts that were passed around sneakily in classrooms by schoolchildren. The readers believed they were written by Americans or English, but they were actually churned out by Israeli-Jew ghost writers. According to the film, this fetishizing was a result of the next-generation's being almost in the dark about the Holocaust, as the older generation (the survivors) absolutely refused to talk about it. As the stalags morphed, becoming more shocking, their distribution ground to a halt with the publication of "I was Colonel Schultz's Private Bitch". When it came to stories of male officers raping women, suddenly it wasn't sexy anymore, and the Israeli government banned the books. Check out more here: www.stalags.com

SIFF #7 - Jocks, nerds, and surfer boys

2008-06-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

My screenings this second weekend of SIFF were admittedly light. I have to admit, my emotional energy (and excitement was focused on my Saturday Girls (and Boys) Night Out to eat, drink, then go see the new Sex and the City movie. Adults have to have some fun, too! In the meantime though, I managed to see a couple of teen-centric films at SIFF....

First up was American Teen (7/8), arriving on the wave of its success at Sundance. There were actually studio-types at this Saturday morning screening, wearing silly sheriff's badges hanging around their necks (ooo! scary!), plus we were warned they'd be scanning the audience with night-vision goggles or something during the screening. Whatever. As for the movie, American Teen is pretty fabulous.

Documentary filmmaker Nanette Burstein followed a handful of high-school seniors for the last year of school in small-town Warsaw, Indiana. In this one high school town, basketball is king, and the reigning prince is jock Colin, whose family is not as well-off as many in the town, so he's under pressure to play well that year to get a basketball scholarship. Hannah is the alterna-girl freak (to some at least), meaning she is artistic, funny, creative, and wants to break out of town when she graduates. Unfortunately, a boyfriend breaks her hear first, spiralling her into a month of depression and anxiety where she practically drops out of school. Jake is a band-nerd who wants a girlfriend more than anything, though he often shoots himself in the foot with his self-esteem issues. And finally Megan is the princess, and in the film, the mega-bitch. Yikes. Remember the mean girls from high school? Well, that's Megan. The film is funny, cringe-inducing, and occasionally heartbreaking, playing like a real-life re-enactment of The Breakfast Club (with a marketing campaign to match).

Sex and the City Night proved a great success (not that you asked), so I took it down a notch on Sunday and just caught one film. OK, well I actually attempted to see another film, Time to Die (Pora Umierac), which I've heard good things about... but the truth is, I didn't have my butt in gear and got there about 5 minutes too late. I didn't want to be THAT PERSON, coming in late, trying to find a seat in a darkened theater. I learned my lesson last year (see, Vickie?). So instead, I loitered in places like The Gap , Old Navy, and Value Village, touched a lot of things without buying them, then went to a coffee shop for an hour and read a book.

My only film selection today was Newcastle (4/8), a surfer-boy movie from Australia. If you want to look at pretty, tan, muscular white boys with sun-bleached hair, this is the movie for you. If you want to see astonishingly gorgeous photography of surfing, the film has buckets to offer. But if you want to spend your time with a main character and his friends that are almost all a bunch of pricks, well, that's Newcastle for you. Seventeen-year-old Jesse is a self-absorbed and apparently very talented surfer, like his older brother Victor had been, but Victor washed-out, and is now a mean loser. Jesse misses a spot (by one slot) on the local team that would be his ticket to getting discovered in the competitive circuit, and he sure can't seem to accept that the other guys might have been better. On top of that, his goth weakling brother Fergus seems to have a crush on Andy, one of Jesse's pals (perhaps Jesse's only friend who isn't an asshat). Jesse, his pals, and tag-along Fergus go on a beach camping trip for sun, sex, and surf, but when Victor and his thuggish surfer-pals show up to spoil the party, well, something bad happens. It is too bad that the film focused on selfish Jesse, who was almost completely unlikeable. I found sweet Fergus' infatuation with the friendly Andy to be a much more engaging (and less predictable) subplot. Plus, I have no idea who did the actual surfing, but not only was Andy a more pleasant character, but I found his style of surfing to be the most captivatingly gorgeous. Everyone knows that I kinda loved the surfer movie Blue Crush... but let's just say Newcastle is no Blue Crush.

[FYI: Bear with me, readers. I'll be taking a couple days off from SIFF now, you know, to catch up on things, life, and whatnot. But I'll be back, catching more movies later this week! Mark my words!]

SIFF #6 - Gay-la ghetto and shorts fabulousness

2008-05-31T16:58:00.001-07:00

For the second year in a row, SIFF has hosted a "Gay-La", featuring a Film of the Gays, followed by a party afterwards. In theory, this is a great idea, and can often bring out (so to speak) an enthusiastic target audience. But it is unfortunate that out of all the movies out there, the Gay-La featured the disappointing Kiss the Bride (4/8) (then again, I would not be surprised if the pickings of Quality Gay Movies were rather slim). Now, you can count me a fan of director C. Jay Cox's last outing, Latter Days, so I had my hopes up for this film. There was actually early positive buzz for Tori Spelling's performance as a bride waiting to find out if her fiance will be lured by the wedding's surprise guest, his long-lost high school boyfriend. Alas, for me the film's two pretty-boy leads blurred together in looks for the first chunk of the movie, and the sitcomy quality of the writing (not to mention the music) didn't work for me. Some of the audience was appreciatively guffawing, but it only reminded me how the bar is set lower for gay comedies. But yes, Spelling gave a surprisingly warm performance, and the concept of trying to re-ignite a lost love (and obsession) from the past was a potentially good one. Too bad the movie was only so-so.

The next day, Friday, I got to work early to finish a project so that I could sneak off for a 4 o'clock screening ("Where the heck do you think you're going???" my co-workers gasped as I darted out early). I wanted to check out Bigger, Stronger, Faster* (6/8) which had a great and funny trailer, and has the potential to be this year's documentary hit. In the same funny investigative style of Michael Moore, first-time feature filmmaker Christopher Bell, a bodybuilder himself, delves deep into the world of steroid use in America. In 2005, the U.S. Congress spent more days (8) discussing steroids in baseball than they spent discussing health care and the Iraq War. What can you say to that? "It's America's pastime!" the senators cried, some of them passionately upset. Whatever. Are steroids proven to be bad for you? Everyone says so, but none of the interviewees seem to come up with concrete data. Are artificially bulked up athletes cheaters? Sure, it's hard to argue with that. But what is most moving about Bell's documentary are his profiles of his two brothers, a bodybuilder and a wrestler. They depend on steroid use to have a fighting chance to compete in their fields. But they are still not the best -- there is always someone bigger and stronger. It's the American way: no one wants to be second place. It is a fascinating (and entertaining) film.

Finally, to top off my work week, I hit one of the shorts programs, Friends and Family (6/8). Despite Seattle's The Stranger dubbing a whole weekend of shorts at SIFF Cinema "The Shorts Ghetto", I was reminded of that fact that there are many gems to be found in these screenings. A couple of my favorites in the program included Peter and Ben (7/8), an adorable documentary-like piece about a man and his pet sheep (it actually made me a little teary at the end), and the fabulous and twisted animated The Pearce Sisters (8/8), about two, well, homely sisters who pick up a fisherman who washed up on the beach (turned out this film was a product of Aardman Animations... no wonder I loved it!).

Of course the real reason I chose this particular screening was because my writer pal Joel Haskard's film Train Town (6/8) was included. It is a twisted little tale of two bickering men who run a model train shop, who take turns manipulating (in sick and wrong ways) the townspeople of their model train town. Good job, Joel... it was funny (and a little jarring) to see you up on the big screen for your cameo! :)

SIFF #5 - Revisionist history and twirling tassels

2008-05-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

My Wednesday night o' SIFF'n featured, hands-down, the weirdest double-feature I've ever sat through. In short, I went from seeing truckloads of WWII Polish military officers get shot in the back of the head, execution-style, to modern smiling, fake-eyelashed, bedazzling women twirling tassels off their womanly assets. The transition made me rub my eyes a few times.

First up was famed Polish director Andrzej Wajda's Oscar-nominated film Katyn (4/8), a movie of great importance with a super-powerful climax that otherwise came across as muddled, disjointed, and rather uninvolving. Spanning from 1939 until after the war when the Soviets occupy Poland, several folks are followed, including a Polish general, an officer, a pilot, and the families/sisters/children that are left behind. None of the characters are explored with very much depth, and it doesn't help that some are children at the start of the film and are adults at the end. It is unfortunate the that film was only so-so, as it is obviously portraying a huge incident to the Poles, where 12,000 officers, scientists, intellectuals, and artists were massacred in the forest of Katyn by Soviets, who then turned the "official" blame on the Nazis when the war ended, literally rewriting history. The last 10 or 20 minutes are shocking and unbearable, showing the victims' fate, but everything leading up to it was unfortunately not too gripping.

In the corral of folks staying for the next film, I was not surprised to see at least one man with his head in his hands, mulling the sadness of the previous film. So it was a bit surreal when folks started pouring into the theater bedecked in glitter, boas, slinky dresses, and lots of feathers, to the tune of a very smiley woman working an accordion. The world premiere of the locally-filmed A Wink and A Smile (6/8) was obviously the hot ticket (comparable to last year's Blood on the Flat Track), with all the hipsters and their boyfriends and girlfriends and partners showing up for the party atmosphere. The film, featuring local burlesque star Miss Indigo Blue (a totally cute, charming, articulate, and funny host), follows a class of women taking Burlesque 101. The women share their insecurities (from body image, to self-confidence, to dancing skills, etc.), some tearfully, while they learn the tricks of the trade over six weeks. The film is a crowd-pleaser, with snippets of locally renowned burlesque dancers doing their acts (some are really fantastic and unique), mixed with interviews of the women, all of whom are interesting and endearing. I especially enjoyed the adorable 50-something mom (who incorporated whistling and birds into her routine), and the sassy taxidermist, who took the audience on a hilarious tour of the interesting frozen critters she was saving in her freezer (sorry, ladies, I forgot your names!). This film will be making the film festival circuit, and is fun and inspirational if you get a chance to catch it.

SIFF #4 - Past evil, fast trains, and other thrills

2008-05-27T08:50:00.000-07:00

Per the recommendation of my TIFF'n pals Eric and Vickie, I picked up at ticket to the British drama Boy A (7/8). I didn't know much about the film going in, as it had been a long time since I had read their reviews (here, and here), but it turned out that this is the perfect kind of movie to see completely cold, as its mystery is slowly revealed. We meet a shy 20-something man being released into the world. He chooses Jack as his name, and it is unclear what his deal is. Is he in a witness protection program? Was he institutionalized? Did he commit a crime? He doesn't have basic social or living skills, seems younger than his years, but has a disarmingly sweet and trusting smile. He is set up with an apartment, placed at a job (that isn't given too many details about his mysterious past), and even gets a girlfriend. But there is an ominous tone to the whole thing, as bit by bit his past is revealed. Andrew Garfield, a young actor I had never seen before, completely carries the film as tormented and sweet Jack, and Peter Mullan shows up as his rehabilition contact, the only one who knows of his past. Boy A is a fascinating drama, with a completely fresh plot that I was wholly involved in. Hopefully you were able to catch it at SIFF, but otherwise it will be released in theaters later this year.

My second film of the day combined two things that rock my socks off: cold, wintery climes (in this case, Russia's Siberia) and trains (woo-woo!). There hasn't been a memorable train movie that I can think of since Runaway Train, but Transsiberian (6/8) will invoke some of the most enjoyable cinematic train thrillers. Woody Harrelson, doing his best "aw-shucks" American persona, and Emily Mortimer play Roy and Jessie, a married American couple returning home from a save-the-children volunteer stint in Beijing. They've decided to take the long way home, across the Asian continent on the Transsiberian Railway.

You know that all sorts of shifty things happen on trains, so their nice little jaunt takes a mysterious turn when they are joined in their cabin by a couple of backpackers, the shifty yet super-hunky Spaniard Carlos (the super-hunky Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega) and his quiet and nervous American girlfriend Abby (Kate Mara). Tension racks up with people getting left behind at train stops, drug runners looking for missing loot, detectives (including Ben Kingsley playing Russian) looking for the drug runners, and sexual tension excalating between characters. The film is as non-stop as a train hurtling across the dusky, snowy plains, and it was a delight to see Emily Mortimer get a complex role where she isn't a complete angel or victim. Ray may be as simple and good as he seems, but Jessie's got things in her past that she is not revealing. Transsiberian is a fun, claustrophobic thriller that had many in the audience (including myself) covering their eyes. And next time I'm on a train, I'm going to make sure the windows open. You know. Just in case.

SIFF #3a - Sir Ben saves the day

2008-05-25T23:08:00.000-07:00

It was Day Four of the fest, and I had yet to be really impressed by any of the films that had gotten good advance buzz. Sure, Battle in Seattle was fine, and the other films were mostly watchable, but there were no films that I was excited about. Luckily today I finally scored two good films that I can highly recommend.

First up was the event A Tribute to Sir Ben Kingsley, which featured an special award for the man himself (the ubiquitous Dale Chihuly blown-glass thing-a-ma-bob), a Q&A, and a screening of one of Sir Ben's newest films, Elegy (7/8). Moviepie Jennifer and her pal joined me to see the Sexy Beast himself, and at least I was impressed by the film (my pals, not so much). In Elegy, Sir Ben plays an aging lothario with a put-upon adult son (Peter Sarsgaard), a fuck-buddy lover (Patricia Clarkson), and a best friend (Dennis Hopper) that he can B.S. with on things, life, and whatnot. What he doesn't expect is that a fling with one of his beautiful young grad students (played by Penelope Cruz) would turn him on his head and that he would actually fall in love.

I had read absolutely nothing about the film before going in, so found myself surprised not only with the cast as each appeared on screen ("OMG! It's Dennis Hopper! OMG! It's Patricia Clarkson!"), but also surprised that I was into the film almost immediately. Despite Penelope Cruz's odd hair transformation (from mousey Bettie-Page severe bangs to the suddenly luscious Penelope-hair we all know and love), I found it to be a believable and humble musing on what it means to age, both for men and women. Unsurprisingly, Sir Ben and all involved were excellent. He also turned out to be an accommodating interviewee, musing on his career from his days on stage, to his burst of fame with Gandhi, to his struggle to find a place in Hollywood after his initial success. I liked his view on acting (and life): the simpler, the better, using the metaphor of minimal brush-strokes to create a whole image. Despite artistic director and host Carl Spence's insistence that it was evening (I think he has already been in dark theaters too long), it was a pleasant afternoon with Sir Ben.

My second film arrived with a bit of buzz. A documentary, Up The Yangtze (7/8), at times almost feels like a drama because of its intimacy with its subjects. Canadian director Yung Chang was in attendance, and memorably introduced the film as "The Love Boat meets Apocalypse Now". The Three Gorges Dam has been slowly blocking China's Yangtze River, and will eventually flood areas 175 meters higher than its previous level, displacing 2 million people. The film mainly focuses on a poor farming peasant family who live in a ramshackle hut on the riverbank (in an area that will soon be covered in water). Because the family cannot afford to send their daughter to high school, she is instead sent to work on one of the river's tour-boats that cater to Westerners (with "farewell tour" cruise themes). The daughter Shui Yu is dubbed "Cindy" at work, and struggles with homesickness, learning English, and the responsibility of a job. The family's sacrifices at home are heartbreaking and haunting; the mother sobs, explaining that they can't afford to send her to school, and the father's gaunt humble face says what words don't. Cindy's story is contrasted with "Jerry" Bo Yu Chen, a co-worker who is handsome, 19, and admits he grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. Their stories overlap with spooky images of abandoned riverside cities and the jovial faces of Western tourists ooing and aahing at the sights and their hosts. Up the Yangtze is a fascinating, moving film... my only criticism is that for those of us without the background knowledge, that the film could have offered some more big-picture explanation of the Three Gorges Dam project, and its intended effect on the countryside. Otherwise, I highly recommend catching the film when it hits the indie circuit this summer.

SIFF #2 - Hyped movies don't put out

2008-05-24T23:07:00.000-07:00

I was pretty excited about the film selections I had lined up for my first couple days of true SIFF'n (Opening Night doesn't really count). On Friday night after work, I caught Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven (Auf der Anderen Seite). Akin is featured as one of this year's Emerging Masters, which is usually a good sign, and I've heard wonderful things about his film Head-On (which is also featured in the fest). Heck, I even got excited about the trailer for this film. But The Edge of Heaven (5/8) despite a lot of great qualities, didn't really grab me and spin me around like I was expecting.

The film is a collage of different characters whose lives are all only a degree or two apart, though they don't realize it. In Germany, an old Turkish man frequents a prostitute who turns out to be Turkish also. He is a widower, so offers to pay her to live with him, and sleep with him only. Alas, the old man's adult son Nejat ( Baki Davrak) isn't too thrilled with his and his dad's new domestic situation. An accident changes everything, however, and Nejat finds himself travelling to Turkey to search for this woman's missing daughter. The daughter Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay) has her own plot line. She is on the run for being part of a radical political group in Turkey, ends up in Germany, finds a woman lover, then ends up in jail in Turkey after being deported. The stories end up criss-crossing, and the acting overall is fine, but I was a little disappointed that I wasn't more emotionally involved in their lives. I was intrigued by Baki Davrak's performance as Nejat, and found his character the most curious and interesting, but alas he was only one part of the collage. Overall, it was one of those movies that I admired rather than really enjoyed.

So maybe I would have better luck with Before the Rains (5/8) on Saturday morning. As the opening credits unfurled, things were looking good: A Merchant Ivory production! Linus Roache! Nandita Das! And the lovely Jennifer Ehle, who has been sorely missing in action lately! The story takes place in 1937, in British India as things are really starting to heat up. Roache is a white plantation owner named Henry Moores who has big plans for the countryside, but the local village is getting riled up with anti-British sentiment. His right-hand man T.K. (Rahul Bose) is Indian, but is completely loyal to his boss, whom he considers his friend. But the exposure of the (married) Moores' affair with his (married) house-servant (the always-lovely Nandita Das) tests the friendship between the two men, and exposes the true relationships between the British occupiers and the local Indians. British-India is a fascinating era for drama, and the film certainly looks lush and gorgeous. The acting is overall fine, but if anything, the film is predictable and is not as gut-wrenching as I was expecting it to be. It was all very... expected.

So, grumbly, I thought that The Home Song Stories (4/8) would renew my faith in my ability to choose great movies. I had heard about this film when I was on vacation in Australia in November, as it had just won a slew of the top Australia film awards. That could a) be a good sign, that it was the best of a good year in film, or b) not mean anything at all, that it was an OK film in a year of crappy selections. You can see where I'm going with this....

The ageless Joan Chen plays Rose, a nightclub singer in Hong Kong who hops from man to man (with her two kids) until she meets an Australian sailor, whom she follows to Australia. They get married, then she leaves him. She and the kids live a transient life for several years, then end up back in Melbourne where he ("Uncle Bill") takes the wife back. Alas, he is out on his ship for months, so Rose gets into hanky panky with the much younger Joe (Yuwu Qi). They set up house in her husband's home (with mother in law scorning on the sides), and all hell breaks loose in no time. This is a bleak family drama, where mom is unhinged half the time, and trying to kill herself the rest of the time. I mean, really, I think there are three or four failed suicide attempts among the characters until, well.... Despite the film's obvious earnestness (being based on a true story, that always makes me feel a little guilty), it was a bit of a drag. Dramatically it went on and on, and the inevitable conclusion came as a bit of a relief, not only to some of the characters, but to the audience as well.

Luckily, as it was a matinee, I could leave the theater and enjoy a beautiful, sunny, late-spring day for some rejuvenation, before jaunting off to meet with pals for eatin', drinkin' and pool playin' to restore my faith in humanity. Hopefully I'll have better luck with my movie selections soon.

SIFF #1 - A Battle in Seattle for Opening Night freebies

2008-05-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

Shoot, it seems like a couple months ago that SIFF just ended, but here we are at the beginning of a new, month-long orgy of movie-ness that is The Seattle International Film Festival! Now, normally I don't go to Opening Night, mainly because no one hands me a free ticket (you have to admit, $50 is pretty steep). But this year was different for a couple reasons:

1) Buzz: SIFF has been advertising the heck out of this year's opener, Battle in Seattle (6/8), which has been building a huge buzz, mainly out of curiosity, but also because of Seattle's penchant for being a town of unabashed movie-star whores (bonafide superstar celebrities don't show up here often, so we get star-struck, all stammering and blushing). When it was announced that a bunch of the stars would be in attendance, especially glamourous Oscar-winner Charlize Theron, tickets to Opening Night were snapped up in a frenzy (while still maintaining our Seattle nonchalant cool).

2) George W. Bush: GW wants us to use our "economic stimulus plan" money to go shopping. You know, go out and buy cheaply made products from China and Indonesia from retailers that underpay their employees, and thusly revive our sagging economy. Well, I've decided instead to use some of what I call my "GD-GW" money to support local arts. The lucky recipient this week? SIFF!

So, slacker I am, I decided on the day-of to give Opening Night a whirl. Fate would decide whether I made it into the sold-out event. I got up at the ass-crack of dawn so that I could leave work early. Luckily, when I got to McCaw Hall at 5pm, there were only 4 people waiting for tix! I knew my chances were good. By 6:20pm, I had a ticket in my hand.

Let's just say, because of the obvious local interest in Battle in Seattle, the air was electric. As per usual Seattle events, there were folks all gussied up in their finest mixed with folks in hoodies, jeans and flip-flops. However, unique to this year's Opening Night were folks handing flyers like "RESIST The World Trade Organization" (www.realbattleinseattle.org) and unfurling banners that were used in the actual WTO protests in 1999. I'll bet it wasn't like this in Toronto!

After folks got shuffled into the huge, packed hall, and were subjected to the expected "thank our sponsors" bits, the celebs came out on stage. Director Stuart Townsend was joined by Michelle Rodriguez, Martin Henderson, Andre Benjamin (who, surprisingly, got the most enthusiastic applause), and, of course, The Charlize. A nice moment was when Townsend explained that at previous fest screenings, like in Toronto, one or two people in the audience would raise their hand and say, "I was there!" So he asked us: who was there at the WTO in Seattle? At least 2/3rds of the audience rose their hand (and the rest were probably still in the lobby drinking $12 glasses of wine). Townsend's response? "Oh, shit."

As for the movie itself? I'm sure everyone in the audience came prepared for the worst, donning their pointiest Skepticism Hats. Saddled with the dorky name Battle in Seattle and facing what will probably be their most critical audience, the filmmakers and cast were unsurprisingly nervous. But I have to say after a clunky start, the film actually got better. Some original footage is interweaved in the story (at the beginning, this is done quite poorly... a swelling crowd of thousands suddenly looks like a couple hundred, depending on if the actors are in the shot), and thankfully real Seattle sites are used in crucial scenes (we can spot Vancouver a mile away, and much of this film was shot there). It was strange to see The Paramount Theater so prominently used, as I walk by that building every day on the way to work. But I was impressed that they bothered, for the most part, using real, recognizable landmarks, which I know the Seattle audience appreciated.

The movie has a collage of characters, including Woody Harrelson as a Seattle cop, Charlize Theron as his pregnant wife who gets caught in the downtown melee, Ray Liotta as the mayor (who shows a bit more spine than our real mayor at the time, Paul "I am not a wuss" Schell), and Martin Henderson, Michelle Rodriguez and Andre Benjamin as protestors. The characters aren't particularly well-developed or even individually very interesting, and the dialogue is admittedly corny at times (Connie Nielsen has a thankless eyeball-rolling role as a reporter who suddenly gets a conscience), but as the film moves along and the situation gets worse, the overall tension of the big-picture situation believably builds. There are several scenes of police brutality that will make you wince, both physical attacks and images of peaceful protestors getting sprayed in the face by chemicals while sitting cross-legged in the street. Yikes.

Did the film deserve its standing ovation from the audience? No. But the movie is not bad, and won't need to be disowned by the city. At one point (I'm paraphrasing from memory here), Andre Benjamin's peaceful "save the turtles" protestor says, "A week ago, no one had even heard of the WTO! Now... well... they still don't know what it means, but they've heard of it!"

After the film, the cast and director came out for Q&A, and politely answered even the most expectedly inane questions from the audience ("How did your role in Battle in Seattle differ from other movies you've been in?"). Henderson won points for his passion and "fight the power" gusto, Benjamin was the most honest and charming, and Theron (who was losing her voice) has perhaps taken the most impressive action with her charity Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project. And, well, Michelle Rodriguez drives a Prius. Guess you have to start somewhere.

As for my overall Opening Night experience? I had a blast. Was it worth $50? Of GD-GW's money... a resounding yes! Of my own money? No, probably not. I walked away with a couple program guides and the curious freebie of a jar of Fennel Salt from a sponsoring restaurant (other people looked excited, so I'm excited!). The post-party involved all 3,000 people pouring out into the courtyard area to fight over free cupcakes and put out even more money for more drinks (didn't drinks used to be included with the ticket?). I shoved one of the tiny cupcakes into my mouth, and fled. After all, the REAL fest starts on Friday....

HotDocs 2008 #10: Yup, It’s Over!

2008-04-28T17:44:00.001-07:00

Well, I didn’t wind up seeing any films on Sunday, the final day of HotDocs 2008. With the transit system out of commission, I decided to just call it a fest and go out with a whimper instead of a bang. It was an excellent week of film-going, I must say, with fantastic weather, mostly great films and more than a few Myrocia Watamaniuk-run Q&A sessions. What I lurve so much about HotDocs – and I said this last year – is its accessibility to the public. Daytime screenings are FREE for students and seniors, and tickets are a very affordable $10 a pop (cheaper if you buy a pass). Filmmakers are almost always in attendance to chat with audiences, and the program book – which is of the exact same quality and almost the same size (page-count wise) as the TIFF program book – is a measly $2! TWO DOLLARS. Flat. For a giant, perfect-bound reference book printed on thick paper stock. How much does TIFF charge for almost the identical product (which, btw, is packed to the hilt with advertising that no doubt covers its entire cost and then some)? More than $30 when you factor in taxes! Proof, once again, that TIFF loves to gouge its audiences whenever and wherever possible. But that’s a rant for September.

For now, and to conclude this year’s coverage, HotDocs has announced its winners for 2008, and they are as follows:

Audience Award: TAKING ROOT: THE VISION OF WANGARI MAATHAI

Top 10 Films as Voted by Audiences:

1. TAKING ROOT: THE VISION OF WANGARI MAATHAI (D: Lisa Merton, Alan Dater; USA)
2. PLANET B-BOY (D: Benson Lee; USA)
3. DEAR ZACHARY: A LETTER TO A SON ABOUT HIS FATHER (D: Kurt Kuenne; USA)
4. THE ENGLISH SURGEON (D: Geoffrey Smith; UK)
5. TRIAGE: DR. JAMES ORBINSKI’S HUMANITARIAN DILEMMA (D: Patrick Reed; Canada)
6. ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL (D: Sacha Gervasi; USA)
7. THE BEETLE (D: Yishai Orian; Israel)
8. DADDY TRAN: A LIFE IN 3-D (D: Siu Ta; Canada)
9. STRANDED, I’VE COME FROM A PLANE THAT CRASHED IN THE MOUNTAINS (D: Gonzalo Arijon; France)
10. ALL TOGETHER NOW (D: Adrian Wills; Canada)

Best International Feature Documentary: THE ENGLISH SURGEON

Special Jury Prize for International Feature Documentary: TO SEE IF I’M SMILING (D&P: Tamar Yarom; Israel)

HBO Documentary Films Emerging Artist Award: Boris Despodov for CORRIDOR #8 (P: Martichka Bozhilova; Bulgaria)

Best Canadian Feature Documentary: JUNIOR (D: Isabelle Lavigne, Stéphane Thibault; P: Johanne Bergeron, Yves Bisaillon (NFB))

Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature Documentary: FLICKER (D: Nik Sheehan; P: Maureen Judge, Anita Lee (NFB))

Best Short Documentary: THE APOLOGY LINE (D&P: James Lees; UK)

Best Mid-Length Documentary: IT’S ALWAYS LATE FOR FREEDOM (D&P: Mehrdad Oskouei; Iran)

And that’s a wrap! See you at the Worldwide Short Film Fest in June...

HotDocs 2008 #9: Are We Over?

2008-04-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

Methinks the TTC strike is going to cost me my final day of movie-going tomorrow. The logistics of getting to and from the screenings is too much of a headache. That, combined with my growing fatigue is, at this point, making me think that today was probably my last day at HotDocs 2008...which kind of sucks because one of my few must-see films -- Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go -- is showing tomorrow afternoon. I might sleep on it.

If not, then I’m afraid the last two films I saw will have me leaving HotDocs 2008 on a meh note.

It was a boy-movie double bill: the short The Pull (3/8), and the feature-length Suddenly, Last Winter (5/8).

The Pull gets three slices because, in reality, it wasn’t a documentary at all. It was a narrative story about the contracted romantic relationship between the director and his (now ex-) boyfriend. They had agreed to be in a relationship for a finite period of time, with a predetermined “end date,” as a way of perhaps enriching the (limited) time they did have together. But my beef (aside from the meh-ness of the story and its execution) is that the film, essentially a dramatic short made up of reenactments, wasn’t a documentary.

Following that was Suddenly, Last Winter, a cute but curiously lop-sided look at co-directors Gustav Hofer and Luca Ragazzi – a wonderfully funny and adorable Italian gay couple, together for eight years – who document the aftermath in Rome when the government proposes legislation that acknowledges same-sex couples. Narrated like a children’s educational special, the film tracks the increasingly vocal homophobic portion of the population as its protests (sometimes loudly and en masse) against the legislation increase. But, after a while, the proceedings felt very repetitive – almost the entire film is made up of interviews with, commentary from, and footage of people opposed to the bill. I started to wonder if Gustav and Luca were the only two gay men in the city. Where was the other half of the argument? What were other members of the gay community feeling? Were there pro-bill rallies? Anything? I didn’t think the religious right and their political counterparts really needed another platform to express their views without opposition, and kind of wished we’d heard from the other side.

Both Gustav and Luca were in attendance for the screening, and gave a pleasant enough Q&A. Oh, and I promised my movie-going pal today that I would print a correction to my beef with the Scotiabank Scene Card ads – seems, thanks to my limited attention span, the two ads are actually for two different Scene cards. One is for the Scene points card, and the other is for the Scene Visa card. I stand corrected.

But I remained annoyed.

HotDocs 2008 #8: We interrupt this documentary to bring you a transit strike...

2008-04-25T23:55:00.000-07:00

Uh oh.

Very late tonight, it was announced that the Toronto transit system would be shut down at midnight as all its union members would be walking off the job and striking. Immediately. This does not bode well for attendance at HotDocs, which will no doubt drop, but also for me...since it limits my access to screenings. I may wind up movie-less on Sunday. For now, though, a recap of today’s films:

My first film of the day was The Black List (7/8), a fantastically simple and simultaneously complex documentary made up of a series of interviews with prominent black Americans reflecting on race as it applies to their own experiences. Culling subjects from the world of politics, the arts, sports, literature and music, director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and interviewer/producer Elvis Mitchell, create what feels like an amazing, insightful, poignant and funny lecture series condensed into about 90 minutes. What I loved most about the doc was its clean, basic execution: each subject sits, facing the camera, against the same slate background...just talking. Occasionally, archival photos are inserted, but otherwise it’s just a one-sided conversation (Mitchell is never seen or heard on camera) without needless bells or whistles. The weight of words is more than enough in this case, and I was thrilled that the filmmakers wisely decided on this creative uniformity.

An interesting footnote: I met Elvis Mitchell at TIFF several years ago, chatting before a screening. At the time, I had no idea who he was – I just thought he was a really friendly, funny guy with a cool name. Turns out (I discovered later), he’s actually a well-known film writer and media personality in the U.S. So, when I saw him around the fest earlier this week, I figured he was here covering the fest. Instead, he was here to present his own film and, in what can only be described as blissful HotDoc serendipity, the moderator for his Q&A was the equally delightful Myrocia Watamaniuk. It was a great, spirited, relaxed post-film session as a result...with him being goofy and self-deprecating and gracious, and her moderating as only she can. Hooray! That’s the kind of Q&A I love.

Up next was An Island Calling (6/8), the story of the murder of a prominent gay couple in Fiji in 2001. Directed by Annie Goldson and based on the book Deep Beyond the Reef by Owen Scott (brother of murder victim John Scott), the film presents a brief history of colonialism in Fiji alongside the political unrest there in recent decades, as well as the personal history of the Scott family, and John’s life up until his untimely demise at the hands of a young Fijian man who was later found guilty by reason of insanity. The film was not unlike an extended segment on Dateline NBC, where a high-profile case gets the investigative-report treatment, but Goldson (in my opinion) makes the smart choice not to feature any interview with the killer. However, for me, there was a tiny bit too much time devoted to the Scott family’s more distant past – less about the patriarch’s infidelity and perhaps more about homophobia amid the police investigation would have been my preference. But it’s not my film, so that’s just a personal choice.

Unfortunately for me, my film-going day ended with the double bill of The Apology Line (5/8) and the ironically titled Anatomy of Failure (2/8). In the case of Apology... -- which features actual voice messages left on an anonymous phone-in line where people can apologize for misdeeds, big and small – a good idea was marred by technical shortcomings. (You can actually watch the film here.) A number of the messages were so garbled that I couldn’t make out what the person was saying, save for the odd word, which made watching the film a little frustrating. Subtitles would have been a HUGE help.

But my issues with that film pale in comparison to those I had with Anatomy of Failure, which was (in my opinion) a giant, self-indulgent, pointless waste of time. Filmmaker Minou Norouzi came onstage beforehand and told the audience that, if we’re unable to find what we’re looking for in the film, she hopes we discover something else. (Read: “If you think my film sucks, try to find something in it you like anyway.”) Sadly, I found nothing I liked, save for a couple of moments of neat cinematography. What was touted in the program book as a film about the disappearance of five women who’d been involved with writer Carlo Castaneda was, instead, some kind of freaky, directionless, experimental film devoid of structure, narrative or explanation. Had I not read the program notes, I would have had no clue whatsoever what this movie was intended to be about. I wasn’t familiar with Castaneda’s work (if that makes me a philistine, so be it) or the case of the missing women or anything, and this film does absolutely nothing to inform me about any of it. No one interviewed on camera is ever identified – who ARE these people??? Castaneda’s relatives? Friends? Disciples? Locations are not identified. The case is never outlined. Nothing. It felt like the longest, most confusing 53 minutes (thankfully, it was only a mid-length doc!) of my life.

Cut to the post-film Q&A. My film-going pal (who was just as disappointed as I was) and I decided to stay just to hear what Norouzi could possibly say about her film, and what the audience would ask. Imagine our surprise (not) when she revealed that she wasn’t really interested at all in Castaneda or the case, but that the film was meant to mirror what was going on in her own life at the time of the filmmaking. Yeah, NO KIDDING. She made a joke about possibly making a follow-up film if new information ever surfaces about the missing women, but I guarantee you I will not be getting a ticket. I wanted to raise my hand and ask a question: “ Hi. Um, who at HotDocs loved this film enough to program it, and who wrote the wildly misleading program notes?” (I also wanted to take Norouzi to a pay phone and make her call the Apology Line.) My friend said she sat in the theatre waiting to see the movie that she was promised based on its description. I concur.

And then I got home to the news of the TTC strike. This doesn’t impact my films tomorrow so much as it seriously messes up my screening plans for Sunday. I wonder if Saturday will be my last day of HotDoc-ing...?

HotDocs 2008 #7: Asses and Art

2008-04-24T23:32:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure if it’s because we’re on day seven of a ten-day festival and people are just getting tired and cranky but, man, are some folks getting a little asshatty. Rude. Obnoxious. There have been a few random moments of self-indulgent, rather discourteous behavior – like the guy sitting one seat over who refused to turn off his cell phone and thus had its tiny, b*r*i*g*h*t glowing blue screen shining like a beacon in the dark while he text messaged – but in the past couple of days this sort of thing seems to have multiplied. And it’s almost always at the Cumberland!

The other day, two rather burly men wanted to get into the row I was in. I was sitting at the end of the row and, because my brain is now wired to shoot me out of my seat to let people pass the instant it seems like someone wants in, I immediately got up and let them pass. A few seats over sat an older fellow who wasn’t quite as speedy. Rather than wait for him to move his feet or get up (for those unfamiliar with the Cumberland, there’s zero leg room and no way for someone to pass without seat occupants standing), the first of the two burly guys just shoved right through, literally climbing over the seated man and banging his knees in the process. The seated man was noticably peeved and told the “climber” to just hang on for a second, but no. Climber kept climbing. Seated man was very angry. Second burly guy, thank goodness, waited for room before he moved. “Your friend is a jerk!” said seated man as burly guy #2 passed.

Then today, there was a huge asshat of an older woman – with a loud, nasal voice and a serious case of entitlement. There are a pair of seats in the Cumberland’s HotDocs theatre that are reserved for people with mobility issues and their companions. They’re great seats, but the point is that they’re positioned so that someone with mobility issues has room for his/her wheelchair or crutches or what have you...and can still sit beside his/her friends. I got to the theatre fairly early for the screening, so it was almost empty. I noticed a man sitting in one of these special seats and, next to him on the floor (and in front of the second seat), lay his adorable golden-retriever service dog. Sleeping. The man had a hearing aid and the dog had one of those seeing-eye-dog harnesses, so it was clearly not his “pet.” (If it was, they wouldn’t have let it inside in the first place.) I sat down in the row in front of him.

So, the theatre starts to fill up. A lot. Seats are at a premium. All of a sudden, the loud, nasal voice of the asshat woman pierces through the din, annoyed.

“Is your dog gonna sit there?”

No reply.

More annoyed, “EXCUUUUSE ME? Is your dog gonna take up this seat or can you move it??”

At this point I turned around to see who was being such an asshat. The woman began making her way into the seat, not waiting for a reply and not waiting for the dog to move. The man, who was clearly willing to accommodate her if she had just waited a second or two, began to pull his canine companion out of her way. As he did so, and much to my delight, he said “PLEASE?” as a way of reminding her that perhaps a tiny bit of manners might be in order. She didn’t get it. She sat down with a big sigh and a harumph as if this was the most she’d ever been inconvenienced at a movie EVER.

Then, less than a minute later, she stood up, walked away and grumbled, “Your dog can have the seat because I can’t see from here.” (Or something to that effect, I can’t remember her exact words.) WTF? How clueless ARE some people??? Asshat.

Anyway, the film – my only screening for today – was The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins (6/8), a portrait of Italian installation artist Vanessa Beecroft and her involvement with a small Sudanese community as she attempts to adopt twin babies after bonding with them during a visit. But what starts as a seemingly altruistic gesture slowly morphs into a strangely ill-advised mission whereby Beecroft, who’s at times infuriatingly single-minded to those around her, forges ahead despite an array of red flags and obstacles and the fact that the two babies she wishes to “save” actually have a father and extended family in their village. Director Pietra Brettkelly said her initial intent was to make a documentary about the business (i.e., $$$) of international adoptions but that this profile of a fiercely, perhaps foolishly, determined artist emerged in the process. Apparently, Beecroft (who’s portrayed as a control freak) isn’t entirely thrilled with the finished product, but respects Brettkelly enough to understand that it’s her film...which was labeled “controversial” by the programmer giving the intro, but which didn’t feel as provocative as I thought it would be.

HotDocs 2008 Bonus: Trailers!

2008-04-24T15:34:00.001-07:00

Look what I just found!

HotDocs has its own YouTube page where you can view a whole whack of trailers for some of the films being featured this year!

To save you a little time, and to keep things relevant, here are the direct links to some of the films I’ve discussed over the past few days:

* 20 Seconds of Joy

* Second Skin

* Beautiful Losers

* Kids + Money

* The English Surgeon

...and the documentary causing all the fuss...

*Beyond Our Ken

HotDocs 2008 #6: Unexpected Delights and Duds

2008-04-23T23:31:00.000-07:00

A funny thing can happen when you go to a lot of film festivals, especially if you do so over many years: you sometimes get to “discover” new filmmakers and then watch their work progress from project to project.

My first film of the day was a short called Beginning Filmmaking (7/8), an adorable year-in-the-life look at four-year-old Ella Rosenblatt, whose father, Jay (a documentary filmmaker), buys her a camcorder for her fourth birthday with the goal of introducing her to his passion. He teaches her the basics – “Ella? What is composition?” – and then she’s free to record...whatever. The result is hilarious, sweet and also surprisingly insightful. The scene where she describes an idea for a film, where she’s watching people on TV watching TV and so on to infinity, is particularly neat.

But here’s the thing: the whole time I was watching I thought, “I know I know this guy.” He’d said in his introduction before the screening that this was his fourth short starring Ella, and I thought for sure I’d seen him (and her) before. But I couldn’t place the where or when. Turns out, I saw his first film with his daughter -- I Used to Be a Filmmaker -- at the Worldwide Short Film Festival in 2003 (!), and saw Rosenblatt’s Ella-free Anita Bryant doc, I Just Wanted to Be Somebody at HOtDocs last year. Who knew?!

Hopefully, progress as a filmmaker will happen for the young director of the day’s second film. Celia Maysles, daughter of David Maysles and niece of Albert Maysles (the renowned co-directors of films such as The Salesman and Grey Gardens), has decided to adopt the family trade, but unfortunately her work wasn’t that impressive. Wild Blue Yonder (4/8) follows Celia as she attempts to learn about her late father (who died in 1987 when she was only seven years old) and his life. But, while the idea is a great one, the execution was disappointing. I didn’t know any more about her dad at the end than I did at the beginning. At the start of the film, Celia is given access to a storage room filled with her father’s things, and she opens an old cardboard box containing a random collection of notes, audio tapes and whatnot...and that’s sort of the structure her film takes. A sloppy mish-mash of images and interviews and archival footage, edited together without rhyme or reason or any clear narrative/direction. There’s also the issue of rights to her late father’s final project – called “Blue Yonder” – for which she goes toe-to-toe with her estranged Uncle Albert. He doesn’t come off well in the film, seeming to be overly entitled and more than a little curmudgeonly as he refuses to give her footage...but, after seeing the resulting film, I have to say I think he made the right call.

Up next was Second Skin (7/8), a look at hardcore gamers obsessed with MMORPGs. What is an MMORPG, you ask? A Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, like EverQuest or World of Warcraft. Profiling a number of gamers – who spend upwards of ten hours a day online playing their game of choice – over the course of a year, the documentary reveals the real-life faces behind the heroic characters these folks adopt in the game realm. While it doesn’t do much to dispel the stereotypical image of a video game addict, and certainly reinforces the theory that too much of anything is a bad idea, Second Skin does a nice job of illustrating the sense of kinship, community and love that keeps these gamers hooked. It’s a funny film, and a very telling one, as well.

I was going to call it a day after that, but wound up sticking around the Bader for one more movie...and I’m so glad I did. I didn’t really have any interest in seeing The English Surgeon (7/8), but wow. It was excellent. On paper, it sounded dry and potentially depressing: a British neurosurgeon goes to the Ukraine to perform surgery under less-than-ideal conditions and reflects on the lives he’s lost on the operating table. But onscreen, it was a captivating and extremely moving (yes, I cried, sue me!) story of a dedicated physician going above and beyond the call of duty in a bid to do whatever he can, however seemingly “insignificant” in the grand scheme of the archaic Ukranian medical system, to help people in need. Wearing Harry Potter specs and looking a lot like actor Ian Holm, Dr. Henry Marsh waives his fees and treats all manner of poor patients. Heartbreaking – witness the number of times he’s forced to tell people their brain tumors are inoperable – and heartwarming (just try not to fall in love with epileptic patient Marian), I adored this movie from start to finish. Be warned, though: there’s some rather graphic brain-surgery footage, so if you’re squeamish...um, look away.

As a footnote, while we’re on the subject of brains: how much is everyone hating the lame-ass Scotiabank Scene Card ads running before each film? I mean, one commercial for a sponsor is fine, but must we have TWO different (but equally awful) commercials for the SAME sponsor...especially when the Scotiabank Scene Card branding is EVERYWHERE at the fest??? We get it. They’re a sponsor. Enough, already.

HotDocs 2008 #5: BASE-heads and Race in Bed

2008-04-22T20:07:00.001-07:00

Well, traffic at this blog has certainly picked up considerably in the past 24 hours.

It looks like yesterday’s account of the weirdness at Beyond Our Ken has attracted some attention. And we at the ‘Pie welcome input, so feel free to leave your comments when you visit.

Unfortunately, today’s proceedings were decidedly low-key and uneventful.

Both screenings this afternoon were double bills. First up was the short doc 52 Percent (6/8), which was a sort of quiet portrait of an 11-year-old ballerina trying to get into a prestigious ballet academy in St. Petersburg, Russia. The title refers to the ideal ratio of leg length to body length...and the subject of the film is, sadly, 0.4% short of this number. It was a nicely melodic little movie...but the biggest laughs in the whole thing come from the girl’s inquisitive cat, who stalks the camera and peers directly into the lens, obscuring an entire shot. Adorable.

That film was paired with a comparatively wild and wonderful mid-length sports documentary called 20 Seconds of Joy (7/8), which profiles 30-year-old BASE jumper Karina Hollekin over several years as she chases the rush in what is easily one of the world’s most dangerous sports. [For those not in the know, BASE (Building, Antenna, Span, Earth) jumping involves climbing to a very, very high place (a mountain, a bridge, a skyscraper) and then jumping off, armed with nothing more than a small parachute in a knapsack.] As a (seemingly hyper-caffeinated) American jumper explains in the film, the life expectancy of a BASE jumper is about six years...because they either get scared and stop, get injured and are forced to stop, or die. This same fellow, who was hugely entertaining and passionate, also explains that if you’re not prepared to die AND watch your friends die, this ain’t your bag. (No kidding. Yikes.) Stunning cinematography, perfect pacing and a compelling subject made this a terrific afternoon thrill ride. One tragically ironic footnote: the film is dedicated to the memory of its cameraman, a BASE jumper who died BASE jumping after the film’s completion.

But what made this screening even better was the Q&A afterwards. Director Jens Hoffmann (who I’ve seen almost every day at various screenings) was in attendance with one of his producers, and they took a couple of questions from the audience. Then, at some random moment, he said something like, “We should let Karina answer for herself...” and then he INTRODUCED HER. She was there! Talk about burying the lead! I wasn’t sure why she hadn’t been mentioned before the screening or before the Q&A, because I’m sure a number of the people who left as soon as the credits rolled likely would have stayed had they known she was in attendance. Alas. But I was there, and I stayed, and so I got to hear what she had to say about her passions and the accident (featured in the film) that could have killed her.

The day’s second double bill got underway with Conversation (6/8), an inventive little gem that features a split screen, with one person on camera (in a tight, head shot) on each side. Then, one by one, several dozen people each comment on their first impressions of the people on the other side of the split screen, based solely on what they look like. Presumably, this process involved each subject viewing a photo of another and having their comments filmed. It’s difficult to describe the structure clearly, but suffice it to say it was an interesting experiment in first impressions. Can you, for example, tell that someone is nice or trustworthy or a teacher or a criminal based on one look?

The latter half of the double bill was...I dunno...kind of disappointing, yet I can’t quite pinpoint why. My gut tells me it had to do with the filmmaker himself, who kind of came off as obnoxious. The doc was The Glow of White Women (4/8) by Yunus Vally, an Indian South African who sort of recounts his life, apartheid, his heritage and his relationships as they all relate to the ideal of white women in that country at those times. More specifically, how a good deal of it related to his own sexual exploits. I was never really sure what the point of his film was – was it a political film? a historical one? an autobiography? all of the above? none of the above? – and that clouded my impressions, I think. There were some neat graphic-design elements in the film, and the archival footage from the 1970s and earlier was fascinating, but ultimately it left me feeling underwhelmed and kind of annoyed.

And that was it for today. I was pooped and opted to come home to a proper dinner and bedtime before 1:30am. *yawn*

HotDocs 2008 #4: The Cult

2008-04-21T21:38:00.001-07:00

Wow.

Today was, by far, my most fascinating day at a film festival EVER. There was...An Incident. More on that later...

First on the docket today was Head Wind (6/8), a mid-length (65 minutes) but good film about illegal satellite dishes in Iran, and the country’s censorship of all manner of entertainment the government deems inappropriate. From remote rural regions to more urban locales like Tehran, satellite dishes – and the programming they import – are everywhere...until the police move in to confiscate them. The doc features numerous individuals trafficking in these illegal dishes and/or other prohibited media (e.g., pirated DVDs of Western films), as well as the lengths to which they must go to keep everything on the down-low (e.g., only putting their dishes out at night, and taking them back inside during the day). There’s a beautiful sequence where two men, using archaic machinery, mold a dish out of a giant disk of metal, but the most interesting character was a dwarf who’s like a one-man Blockbuster Video. He’s not interesting for his size or occupation, though, but because he had six fingers on each hand!!!! It’s not actually mentioned in the film, but each time he was on camera I counted: six fingers per hand!

Speaking of weird anomalies...

My second film of the day was Beyond Our Ken (7/8), a remarkable film which goes inside Kenja, an Australian cult accused of, among other things, sexual and emotional abuse of its members. With unprecedented access to Kenja’s founders – charismatic 80something Ken Dyers and his much younger wife, Jan – and members of the organization, filmmakers Melissa MacLean and Luke Walker expose a seemingly benign group (founded in 1982) who, on the surface, seem to be nothing more than a self-improvement movement. But, faster than you can say “Xenu made me do it!”, the darker machinations of Kenja’s operations bubble to the surface. I was completely engrossed in this movie, and its ending (plus its final 10 minutes or so) literally made my jaw drop open. The whole thing was riveting.

But this is also where The Incident occurred.

It started before the screening even began. While waiting outside, I noticed a couple of women working the ticketholders line and very cheerfully handing out these thick, glossy booklets that, in their chipper words, "give the other side of the story." Read: they were Kenja members distributing Kenja propaganda. (They actually flew to Toronto from Australia just to follow the filmmakers from screening to screening. That, in and of itself, seemed to prove the film’s thesis.) People will take anything that's handed towards them, so the women unloaded literature to just about everybody. I declined because they totally weirded me out.

While they continued working, I chatted with the woman standing beside me in line. We talked about cults, and how unusual it was to have these women here, and I said, "I wonder if they'll also have people `planted' in the audience..."

I theorized that, if Kenja was that invested in having their opinions on the film heard at HotDocs, it would be very likely that they’d have members purchase tickets to the screenings and then somehow disrupt the proceedings.

And they did!

After the film (which was at the Bader), both directors made their way onstage for the Q&A, and I noticed a couple of very large men (obviously security) materialize at the rear of the theatre. This has never happened at any movie I have ever seen at this venue at any festival, ever. They were visibly scanning the crowd, and the assorted headset-wearing staffers seemed to be scurrying about, consulting with these big guys and pointing up at the balcony. I knew something was up, but I didn’t know what.

The always adept Myrocia Watamaniuk was moderating the Q&A and opened the floor to questions. A woman right in the front row, right in the middle of the row, stood up (red flag!), turned halfway towards the audience (red flag! red flag!), said (in her Australian accent) "I am a member of Kenja..." and launched into this rather impassioned monologue/question about footage she felt was purposely left out. The filmmakers, who clearly anticipated the group's presence, tried to answer, but she just kept going...and going...and going. She started accusing them of “interrogating” Ken, and not being honest about what they shot, and all sorts of things. Security started to move towards the front, very slowly. I started to get a little antsy in my seat. What was going to happen? Would this escalate? How many more Kenja members might be in the crowd??

Then someone in the balcony, also with an Australian accent and a member of Kenja, started shouting something, supporting the woman up front. This exchange went on for a good five minutes while the filmmakers tried to rein in the Q&A. People in the audience started to get restless, and *I* started to worry about the safety of the folks onstage. I mean, the filmmakers expose quite a bit of Kenja's ugly underbelly, and there’s zero security screening when people come into a theatre, so I didn't know to what extent its members might want or be able to "silence" them. I hoped everyone was wearing Kevlar, just to be safe.

Thankfully, it all ended peacefully enough, with one of the directors actually telling security to let the members stay. He even gave the woman up front the mic so she could tell everybody about a lecture being given on Thursday (in Toronto) about their “organization.” A few other audience members (not affiliated with Kenja) managed to get in some questions, and then it was over.

The whole thing was super-creepy and freaky and unsettling. But holy crap, was it ever exciting! Thanks, Kenja members, for inadvertently reinforcing the entire premise of the film!

Last up was another double bill. First was the short doc The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (4/8), which was a promising but ultimately hollow look at a brother and sister peddling a skin-lightening cream to South Asians in England. All the film did was feature the pair at some sort of trade show, looking for a distributor, while a few random individuals discuss why lighter skin is viewed as more favorable in some South Asian cultures. That’s it. Nothing about the actual cream or its claims or the siblings or anything. I was disappointed.

That was followed with Be Like Others (6/8), which examines sex-change operations for gay men and women in Iran...a country where sex-change operations are actually sanctioned by the government, but where homosexuality is punishable by death. The logic is that same-sex love goes against Islam, but “correcting” a *physical* mistake is totally okay. It was a very strange thing to observe: general acceptance of transsexualism, but overt homophobia, all under one umbrella. Interviews with MTF transsexuals, pre- and post-op, along with the two key doctors performing hundreds of these surgeries, make up the bulk of the film (and some are quite sad), but the most memorable presence is Vida, the kick-assiest transsexual ever to grace a movie screen. She was amazing!

HotDocs 2008 #3: Well, They Can't All Be Winners...

2008-04-20T20:55:00.000-07:00

I only had two films today, but they were strangely similar. The first doc was itself not a winner, and the second one was about a couple who, by and large, aren’t winners.

Victoire Terminus (3/8) was being plugged as a film about female boxers in the Congo trying to put together a tournament while political unrest rages in their country. Ummmmm...I guess that’s what it was about? I really don’t know. I mean, yes, there were female boxers in the movie, and they boxed...and there was footage of rally after rally leading up to an election...but, honestly, had I not read the program notes beforehand I would have had no clue what the point of the film actually was. None of the women are ever interviewed directly, just observed. Instead, one of their (male) coaches gets face time. There were no title cards or any onscreen text to outline what was happening or who the women are, so I couldn’t identify any of them by name after watching them for nearly 90 very-long minutes. It didn’t help that one of the filmmakers stood onstage beforehand for a five-minute preamble explaining the background of what we were about to watch. Unless he plans on doing this for every single screening of this film, I suspect I won’t be the only one left scratching her head as the closing credits roll.

I was similarly unsure of the intent behind my second film of the day, Song Sung Blue (5/8), which profiles a Milwaukee couple – Lightning and Thunder (Mike and Claire Sardina) – who perform as a Neil Diamond/Patsy Cline tribute act. This was the film that my friend warned me about yesterday, and I have to say that I kind of reacted to it in the same way she had: it felt a little exploitative of a rather depressing situation. I actually felt bad for Mike and Claire, instead of inspired by their drive. This movie is sort of the anti-Anvil. Where that film celebrated the determination and pure passion of a group of middle-aged dreamers who never give up, this film seemed to showcase the (rather serious and unpleasant) downside of being blinded by your own dream-chasing. What sounds like it might be a campy romp is, instead, a rather sobering glimpse at a dysfunctional family, who barely make ends meet, compromise their health and endure one setback after another...all the while desperately pursuing one more minute in the ever-fading “spotlight.” In the Q&A after the film, director Greg Kohs said he made the movie to “help” the family. But, as I sat there watching it and hearing the audience laugh at situations onscreen that were probably not meant to be at all funny, I had to wonder if he succeeded or if Song Sung Blue will wind up eliciting pity for its subjects rather than praise.

In better news, there won’t be a transit strike (at least, not yet) in the city tomorrow, so I can continue to see films! On deck for tomorrow, cults and sex-change operations...

HotDocs 2008 #2: Lovers & Losers

2008-04-19T20:55:00.000-07:00

Before I begin today’s recap, a little leftover housekeeping from yesterday...

First, in my discussion of Anvil! The Story of Anvil, I completely forgot to mention that the entire band actually attended the screening – along with an audience packed with metalheads – and came onstage after the film to field questions from the crowd...who gave the guys a standing ovation. (It really is fascinating to watch the demographic of the audiences change from film to film.)

Secondly, I wanted to clarify that I am not saying I’m a big weeping mess when I say that some of these films make me cry. I realized last night that I should probably distinguish between what happens to me when I watch a moving or particularly beautiful movie/scene/moment in public (i.e., my eyes tear up a lot, sniffles kick in, maybe a stray tear drifts down my cheek) and what Oprah describes as the “ugly cry” (i.e., sobbing and heaving and gasping breaths). When I’m out at a movie, I prefer to stifle my emotions as much as possible...so the “crying” is done internally more than externally. Just so’s you know.

Oh, and one more thing: whyyy must people smoke in line? I think I’ve mentioned this in every fest-related diary I’ve ever written for the ‘Pie...but, seriously, why? Step out of line if you must have a cigarette. We’re all standing shoulder to shoulder, and the rest of us don’t need to smoke right along with you. Many thanks.

Okay, moving on...day two!

Now, when I say the words “prison beauty pageant,” what sort of images spring to mind? I’d be willing to bet whatever you just conjured up in your imagination bears no resemblance to what was featured in my first film of the day, La Corona (The Crown) (6/8), which was the first half of a double-bill screening. Shot at a women’s prison in Colombia, the film showcases the annual beauty pageant that pits cellblock against cellblock. But lest you think the catwalk is packed with beefy butch women in crew cuts and muscle Ts, the inmates competing are stunningly beautiful. Yes, they’ve been convicted of murder or armed robbery or what have you, but...wow. Directors Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega do a nice job of profiling the key competitors, and the proceedings have a decidedly upbeat vibe, but it did feel like it went on about four scenes too long – that it didn’t end at its natural conclusion. Instead, a coda involving one woman’s release seems unnecessarily added on, especially since updates on the post-pageant status of her rivals is never addressed. Just a very minor sticking point for me, though.

Part two of the double bill was Searching for Sandeep (6/8), a kind of cross-continental lesbian love story about Poppy and Sandeep, two gay women who meet online, fall in love and try to overcome the physical and cultural differences that separate them. Poppy is an out, gay, white woman in Australia; Sandeep is a closeted, gay, Indian woman, who still lives with her parents and sisters in England. What follows is a tumultuous, and often frustrating, tale of a long-distance relationship peppered with tender moments, honest revelations and Sandeep’s wonderfully sharp and entertaining quartet of younger sisters, who seem like they fell right out of a Gurinder Chadha film.

I followed these two with Nursery University (7/8), which would make for an excellent companion film to yesterday’s Kids + Money...only this time it’s the parents with the money and a preschool system in Manhattan more than eager to take it off their hands. The ratio of children to available preschool slots in NYC is staggering, making it (seemingly) virtually impossible to get your kid into your preschool of choice. The rationale for this insanity – where a year’s “tuition” can run you around $20,000 – is explained by one parent, who outlines the “feeder school” system, where the right preschool gets you into the right kindergarten, which gets you into the right middle school, which gets you into the right high school, which gets you into an Ivy League college and the best. life. ever. The lengths the parents go to are simultaneously hilarious and shocking, and I hope co-directors Marc H. Simon and Matthew Makar are prepared to make a mint off the thousands of desperate New Yorkers who will no doubt snatch up every copy of the DVD of this film in the hopes of getting an inside edge.

Last up was Beautiful Losers (6/8), a film profiling a group of 10 young visual artists, who all came together in NYC in the early 1990s. United by their passion for making art, their do-it-yourself anywhere and with anything initiative, and their collective position on the fringes of the art world – having come from backgrounds of graffiti art, skateboarding and punk rock – they blazed a trail and influenced all manner of popular art thereafter, from advertising to filmmaking. Among those artists featured in the film (for anyone keeping score) are Mike Mills, Harmony Korine, Margaret Kilgallen and Jo Jackson. Their work is exactly the kind of stuff I love – wild, colorful, cartoonish (some) and BIG – and the doc was, as my film-going friend put it after the screening, a really interesting look at a largely unknown chapter in art history. (This same friend has warned me that one of my picks for tomorrow, Song Sung Blue, is depressing...so I’m bringing Kleenex, just in case.)

HotDocs 2008 #1: The Fest Has Begun!

2008-04-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

This year, I managed to sneak in a few pre-fest press screenings. So, before I get to my actual first day of film-going, some very quick reviews of:

The Last Continent (4/8) is a Canadian documentary about a research crew on a schooner in the Antarctic, who head down for more than a year – where they’ll be stuck once winter comes – to document the effects of climate change on the planet’s last area of unspoiled land. Unfortunately, director Jean Lemire (who also heads the research crew) doesn’t completely deliver on any of the three key things the film should feature: stuff about the crew (who are they? why have they agreed to take part?), stuff about life on a schooner (what’s it like? where do they sleep? where do they shower? what are the effects of such close quarters for so long?), and stuff about the research (what do they do? what kinds of info are they gathering?). There’s plenty of pretty cinematography, an overwhelming score that borders on over-the-top, and some self-indulgent voiceover storytelling...but not a whole lot of documentation of what sounds like it was probably an amazing experience.

The Forgotten Woman (7/8) is an incredibly powerful and hugely moving (read: Vickie cried for almost the entire film) look at the treatment of widows in India – specifically, their exile to a life of overt poverty in the temple city of Vrindavan, their loss of family and property, and the fact that even in present day, some 40 million widows appear to be living in the past. It is heartbreaking, to say the least. Directed by Dilip Mehta, brother of filmmaker Deepa, the film makes for an excellent companion piece to her similarly themed Water. It’s filled with compelling interviews and gut-wrenching imagery (one of the most memorable is a shot of a man on a run-down street, feeding a stack of what appears to be naan to some dogs, while a penniless grandmother sits – with all her possessions in bags – a couple of feet away, hiding her face) that sheds light on a part of modern history that appears to be going largely unnoticed.

Likely to be one of the hot-ticket films is Errol Morris’ latest Standard Operating Procedure (7/8), which trains its lens on the allegations of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison – specifically, those incidents captured on film and widely seen by millions and millions of people. Remember little Lynndie England? She’s interviewed here, along with a number of other military personnel who were either directly or tangentially involved in those notorious pictures. Simultaneously shocking and not really surprising, the exposé recreates events and uses video footage of what transpired to tell the soldiers’ stories...some of which are infuriating, and others (England’s in particular) kind of creepy. What was truly remarkable to me was that the women featured in the film seem to have aged decades apiece since the photos were taken...when, in reality, it’s only been four years.

Anyway...onwards to day one!

The weather outside is a tad on the warm side, and I was a tiny bit worried I’d be crispy by the time my first film of the day let in. Yes, I wore sunscreen, but standing in line with no ounce of shade in sight (still too early for the trees to have leaves) can make even an SPF 30 seem like baby oil.

Never in a million years did I ever expect that a documentary about a heavy metal band would be touching, sweet or so moving that it would make me cry...but Anvil! The Story of Anvil (7/8) was all those things. The film looks at the titular metal band, who hail from Toronto and who enjoyed a short-lived tour in the rock spotlight in the early 1980s, as they continue to seek another shot at glory. Together for some 30-odd years, the guys have gone from teenagers and twentysomething rock gods to middle-aged husbands, fathers and working Joes who still perform, albeit to much, much smaller crowds. Director Sacha Gervasi – a Brit who was a fan of, and roadie for, the band as a teenager – told the audience that the film was a labour of love for all involved, and it shows. Amid the blazing fret work, thundering drums, banshee vocals, infighting, disappointments, triumphs and strange encounters in Eastern European bars...this film is all heart, all the time. And more than a little bit inspirational.

I followed that with a double-bill of short(ish) docs: Kids + Money (6/8) and Emoticons (5/8). Kids... was sort of like watching an episode of MTV’s My Super Sweet 16, that grotesque show where horrifyingly wealthy teenagers behave like complete bratty asshats (brasshats?) as they indulge in ridiculous amounts of excess. Well, imagine those self-involved teens sitting down for interviews in which they expound on the importance of having the right clothes, the right “look” and why fat kids aren’t cool. That should give you some idea of what delights are to be found in this film. It was simultaneously fascinating and repellent. I wonder how these kids’ parents felt watching the wisdom that spilled forth from their offspring? By contrast, Emoticons profiles a number of somewhat socially cast-out teenage girls in the Netherlands, who have found solace and friendship online. Often moving, but slightly lacking in cohesiveness overall (i.e., I wasn’t sure what we, the audience, were meant to glean from the doc), director Heddy Honigmann captures some great moments of candid honesty from the girls and reminds viewers that bullying and online gaming isn’t just something common to awkward teenage boys. (Note: yeah, I got all teary at this film, too.)

So, my lofty goal of not crying too much at HotDocs 2008 has already evaporated – or, perhaps, precipitated – right before my eyes on day one. Oh, but good news: Myrocia Watamaniuk is back! She intro-ed the second set of films with her usual aplomb. Hooray!

Writers' Strike Unfortunately Ignores Reality (TV, that is)

2007-11-28T09:42:00.000-08:00

Last year there was a group of writers in Hollywood that went on strike, but alas it was a group that was misunderstood, and whose message faded from the media after initial interest in supermodel-supporters wearing tight T-shirts. The show was America's Next Top Model, and one of the strikers was one of our very own Friends of the Pie, Daniel. Daniel wrote an article for the LA Times which I think is well worth reading, for some perspective about not just the politics between the writers and the studios, but amongst the writers themselves.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-blau20nov20,0,94249.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

THE FORGOTTEN WRITERS' STRIKE OF '06

Networks now have reality shows to fall back on; it wouldn't be that way had the WGA better handled the "America's Next Top Model" strike.

By Daniel J. Blau
November 20, 2007

AS THE WGA STRIKE stretches into its third week, I am reminded of the last big labor scuffle the Writer's Guild of America presided over. Not the 1988 strike that lasted five months and ended largely in failure. No, I mean the ill-fated 2006 strike by the writers of "America's Next Top Model."

As early as 2004, the WGA was looking at ways to get writers working in the exploding genre of reality TV under their union umbrella before the big 2007 negotiations began. The guild named a new director of organizing, David Young, in 2004, and in 2005, it elected a new president, Patric Verrone, whose whole platform revolved around adding to ranks of the guild. Their intentions were more strategic than altruistic: Without reality programs to fall back on, the TV networks would be hit harder and faster by any strike. It would have been a fine strategy, had it worked.

A small WGA group called the Reality Organizing Committee debated strategies. On one point they all agreed: You couldn't organize reality TV writers one show at a time. The writers would have to demand guild representation en masse at all the networks.

Those of us actually working in reality TV, however, knew little of these plans. Back then, I was one of the 12 story editors on the CW's "America's Next Top Model," where none of us got medical benefits, let alone residuals. Still, I was far more concerned with doing my job well and making ends meet on my entry-level salary than making waves.

But after nearly two years of meetings, the WGA's reality committee was still far from a cohesive plan, so the guild leadership settled on a more expedient strategy: They would choose one popular show to be the poster child for the plight of reality TV writers. They chose "America's Next Top Model."

In the early summer of 2006, only one of the "Top Model" writers was involved in the union campaign. The rest of us were, at best, tangentially aware of its existence. Until, that is, the afternoon of June 21. That was the date of our first official meeting with WGA organizers. Over lunch at a Tex-Mex restaurant in Santa Monica, they spelled out the manifold benefits of guild representation: health insurance, pension contributions and credits for our work. The industry was ready for reality story editors to enter the WGA, they said. Les Moonves -- head of CBS, which owned the new CW network -- had been "put on notice." There was no talk of losing our jobs. We believed the guild's ambiguous promise, "you'll come out of this better than you went in."

Why only "Top Model?" one co-worker asked. Why not all reality shows? "'Big Brother' is ready to go out," they told us. "So is 'The Amazing Race.' But you need to start the ball rolling." We would be the vanguard. Our fellow reality scribes would take to the street inspired by our courage, they said. They bought us lunch.

Over the next month, we asked as many questions as we could: Why couldn't we wear red T-shirts or "Working without a WGA contract" buttons to the office? Couldn't we start by insisting that the company pay us overtime? Why couldn't we let our petition to unionize work its way through the National Labor Relations Board, the government bureaucracy that decides who gets to form a collective bargaining unit? We were told, in no uncertain terms: Stick to the plan. In 2006, as it was this year, the WGA leadership was clamoring for a strike.

The night before the strike began, after a long, tense meeting at the guild offices, we were taken into a conference room where the Reality Organizing Committee gave us a standing ovation for our bravery. The moment played out as great theater, but it was as meaningless as it was absurd. In fact, most of the committee members were hearing about the "Top Model" strike for the first time, as it effectively ended their deliberative, years-long efforts. More odd, it was the first time most of the "Top Model" writers had ever heard of the Reality Organizing Committee.

The next morning, July 20, in front of our production offices in West Los Angeles, I read our statement to about 100 supporters and the news crews, officially launching our strike. We hoisted our WGA strike signs and never entered those offices again. In the weeks to come, our supporters would dwindle, then disappear.

The last week of September, we all received letters notifying us that our jobs had been eliminated, the entire story department abolished. The guild had vanished from our cause, and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represents the video editors, swooped in to unionize the show, freezing the WGA out of "Top Model" for good.

There were 12 of us, not 12,000. And so the strike against "America's Next Top Model" has become a footnote in the long struggle for writers to assert power in an industry that seeks to keep us powerless.

I want the WGA to prevail in the current standoff, and I believe the writers deserve everything they are asking for. But if the negotiations starting next Monday yield nothing, I fear that the strike may drag on for months, and the writers may come to understand the importance of the Forgotten Strike a year and a half too late.

The WGA has made a critical error in underestimating the importance of reality TV. Take out sports and news, and about a quarter of shows on network prime time this fall are "unscripted," which is to say, their writers are not members of the WGA. If this strike drags into 2008, the networks are sure to plug their schedules with hours more of such cheap, easy-to-produce programs with words like "Dancing" and "Next Top" in the title.

No one from the WGA was communicating that to the full guild in the summer of '06, leaving some members horrified that the WGA was ready to let lowly reality types into their club, and the rest unaware that the "Top Model" strike was going on at all. And then when it failed, there was no Plan B.

Had the WGA fulfilled Young's initial promise to procure guild status for all writers working on reality, animation and nonfiction shows, the networks would shortly have nothing new on the air at all. As it stands, the WGA has pushed its members to walk out on their own jobs, and it has left the networks with powerful leverage -- the ability to keep making new TV content.

On Oct. 23 of this year, with talks stalled between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Variety published an article summed up by this headline: "WGA gives up on nonscripted effort." Organizing reality TV writers was one of the contract demands that the WGA was willing to toss aside to reach a deal before the Nov. 1 strike deadline, the article reported.

The next day, an e-mail with the expected rebuttal arrived from the WGA president. The guild's reality TV efforts were as strong as ever, he said. But as far as I could tell, the only error in the Variety article was that it hadn't been published a year earlier.

Daniel J. Blau is an L.A.-based writer and producer whose recent work can be seen in the Advocate and the website Television Without Pity.

SLGFF #7 - Before I forget...

2007-10-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

So, another Festival of the Gays has come and gone. Things I enjoyed: The awesome Jane Lynch evening, the delightful Nina's Heavenly Delights, the glory that was Olivia Newton-John on the big screen in the Xanadu Sing-Along, the nice range of international films, and especially the Gay TV Dinner events at the Central Cinema. Heck, sitting down, drinking beer and eating while watching TV... wouldn't we all be doing that at 5:30 anyways? What an excellent idea to dig up 1970s gay-themed episodes from popular TV shows and give us food and drink! Loved this!

Things I could do without: The sub-par films that only make it into the festival because the genre is smaller, therefore there's less to choose from (when there are crappy gay films, they tend to be really crap-o-rific, and this has always been a problem -- which is no fault of the programmers); the loss of bigger screens in the second weekend (all the screenings at the small Broadway Performance Hall the second week were packed); and the Opening Night party at the big, open Naval building felt a lot like the Senior Prom I never went to.

But I really wanted to be sure that I mentioned that I thought the festival's official trailers were some of the best ever. When you see multiple movies at any fest, you tend to get tired very quickly of the trailers, but these made me laugh every time. They were directed by David Quantic, and you can see them all here. The "tres jolie, Coco, tres jolie" made me chortle every time, and I loved Camile Schwartzbaum (Simetra Jones) the enthusiastic host of every session. Nothing like a fist-in-the-air freeze-frame hurrah after TOP GUN: THE MUSICAL to make me laugh!

[2007 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival]

SLGFF # 6 - Spicy delights and an Itty Bitty Closing Night

2007-10-22T17:57:00.000-07:00

Just when I'm about to give up on seeing a movie that I really and truly enjoy (no, Xanadu doesn't count), I finally lucked out on seeing the charming Nina's Heavenly Delights (7/8). Admittedly, this is a movie that could have gone very very wrong: A family dramedy, the film takes place among the Indian immigrants that have settled in Glasgow, Scotland. Nina (Shelley Conn), the prodigal daughter, has returned (albeit late) for the funeral of her beloved father who ran a famous Indian restaurant in town. Alas, everyone is still annoyed at Nina for fleeing town on her wedding day three years ago and moving to London with no explanation. Among the piles of family and friends are Lisa (Laura Fraser), whom Nina mistakes for her brother's girlfriend. Apparently Nina's dad lost half the restaurant in a bet to Lisa's dad, and yada yada, all people involved -- except Nina! -- wants to sell to Raj (Art Malik, who cleverly runs the restaurant "The Jewel in the Crown"... don't think I didn't get the reference!). Raj is the competition and already seems to have designs on Nina's newly widowed mom! But wait! Dad had already made the finals for the Best of the West curry competition... and it just may be Nina's chance to save the farm! I mean the restaurant! Actress Veena Sood (who plays Nina's mom) introduced the film has having "a little bit of girl-porn and a LOT of food porn!" And how! Food lovers will LOVE this film, with it's mouth-watering extensive scenes of chopping, stirring, frying, and sizzling. Mmm... you can practically taste the curry wafting from the screen. As the title character, Shelley Conn is appealing and gorgeous, and there is a nice tension and chemistry between Nina and her, er, "cooking" partner Lisa. If it weren't all about spicy food, I would compare the movie more to a pile of delicious frosted donuts. Nice to look at, and a sweet snack going down. It just makes you feel good, and is very very cute.

This time I said, "That's it! I won't ruin my evening by risking another film!" And I went home. But got some food on the way. :)

Finally, Closing Night, in the glorious packed Cinerama theater, was the unfortunately, awfully-titled Itty Bitty Titty Committee (5/8). No matter how many times I say it or read or or hear it, I still hate the title... A LOT. Anyways, the title deterred no one, and the theater was full of hipster young women with L-Word haircuts and fashionable Castro hats, plus all the men who wouldn't dare skip the final party. No guests were to be seen, which is too bad because though the film doesn't really have anything to do with Seattle, the film was bloated with an Olympia-rific soundtrack (Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, heck, even Heavens to Betsy!). I had to blink my eyes and wonder if this was 1992, or 1995, or even as late as 1997... but no, the radical chicks on the film were definitely using the internets -- but were curiously causing mayhem to a soundtrack from a different era... dare I say a different generation? Yes, that would be, um, my era. Riot Grrrl was quite a ripple in the musical pond, but did it really start and end in the same town? Is that it? (Discuss.)
Anyways, the film is about meek young Anna (Melonie Diaz, Raising Victor Vargas, aka the best film that no on saw but me). After a day at work at a breast augmentation clinic, Anna crosses paths with sexy Sadie (Nicole Vicius), who is spray-painting the windows of Anna's workplace. A bit of flirting later, Anna has joined Sadie's radical feminist tribe C(I)A (Clits In Action). Made up of artists, rejects, and outspoken feminists, these group of women (well, one "guy" named Aggie, who "was born with a clit"), go around vandalizing stores and such in the name of women's rights -- fight the man, and all that. Among the peripheral characters are Daniella Sea (proving that, hot as she is, is not really the strongest actress), Jenny Shimizu (ditto), and Guinevere Turner (again). Often, very often actually, IBTC played like a music video... in fact, much of the movie WAS a music video, set to the tune of the Riot Grrls o' Olympia, whilst the characters ran amok in grainy video montages, giggling, spray painting, vandalizing, and such. Despite the iffy thespian skills of many of the supporting cast (hey! you're a lesbian and/or my pal! be in my movie!), luckily the leads of Anna and Sadie could act, and carried the film nicely. Anna's good-girl-to-angry-girl transformation was a bit eyeball-rolling, but haven't we all been there? Anyways, the audience ate it up. One of the side characters was criticized as being a "nine-to-fiver"... and I have to admit I related more to her. I suppose though this film seems very after-the-fact to me, in message and music, it will find an enthusiastic audience.

[2007 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival]

SLGFF #5 - Thank goodness for Jane Lynch!

2007-10-20T13:51:00.000-07:00

The house was packed Friday night for An Evening with Jane Lynch, and the audience was jovial and super-excited to see the woman who has been a comedic scene-stealer for years. The introductory film-clip montage of course opened with her screamingly funny "fuck buddy" line from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and went on to highlight roles as varied as A Mighty Wind to The Fugitive to The L-Word to her breakthrough as a "butch dog trainer" (Christopher Guest's only instruction for the character) in Best in Show. She and moderator Jenny Stewart of PlanetOut were both chomping gum when they took their cushy chairs on stage, and it was emphasized over and over that the evening was for the audience. And a friendly evening it was! Alternating from being questioned by Stewart, to taking direct questions from the audience, Lynch proved (unsurprisingly) to be a very funny storyteller, and had the whole audience charmed. The interview culminated with a spirited game of "Who would you sleep with?"(aka who would you do)... some of the more interesting answers: Suzanne Pleshette over Mary Tyler Moore (two actresses that Jane crushed on as a kid), and George Clooney over Brad Pitt (mainly because she wanted to be reincarnated AS Brad Pitt). My opinion of her is unchanged: Jane Lynch is friendly, wickedly funny, and all sorts of awesome!

I decided to hang out for the next show at the theater, since I was in a good mood and hoped for another winner. Alas, I should have called it a night. The next screening was completely packed with men, despite the film 2 Minutes Later (3/8) being promoted as a hot ticket for guys AND gals. The lead actress Jessica Graham was in attendance, and it was announced she had just won a Best Actress award at another recent fest. Alas, she was the best thing about the film, which had the audience inappropriately giggling in the first scene where a hot photographer named Kyle fights off an attacker at a remote gas station, and then gets shot (and supposedly killed) while running off into the woods. Peter Stickles, playing the attacker, was probably the only "name" person in the film, simply for being in the movie Shortbus (he was the peeping Tom). Alas, his resume didn't help, as he was pretty stinky. Two private eyes, Michael (conveniently Kyle's long-lost twin) and Abigail (Jessica Graham) try to solve the mystery of the photographer's disappearance, and in the meantime encounter lots and lots of naked men and their bits and pieces. Oh, and Abigail gets to make out with a couple of women in bathrooms. Graham was much more enjoyable and spunky than the film deserved, especially being burdened with her co-star Michael Molina (as Kyle/Michael) who had the personality of cardboard. I fled before the Q&A.

[2007 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival]

SLGFF #4 - Mental catapults and Lovelorn rent-boys

2007-10-19T13:27:00.000-07:00

I know I'm not the only one that oft finds themselves sitting in a movie theater simmering with hateful feelings towards mankind (aka the people in my immediate vicinity). At my Thursday night screening of No Regret, I found myself in a room full of almost all gay men, and, well, me. I should have first been suspicious of this guy when I asked if I could take the empty seat on the aisle right next to him. He barely uncurled his body away from his companion, coolly turned to look at me, then simply turned backed to his pal and kept dishing. Fine. I sat down in front of him. Alas, he and his man were the type to comment throughout the whole film their own little cute isms, gasps, and catty comments. "MMMmmm-hmmmm... yum" (whenever a good-looking young man was on screen), "What is he DOING?" (whenever they didn't understand something), "Ohmygaaaawwwwwdddd..." (muttered under their breath, but not really, whenever something shocking happened). Not to mention the poorly stifled giggles and conversations that had nothing to do with the film. Mentally, I was concocting a catapult. You know, one of the really big ones, like the one that flung a piano in Northern Exposure, or the one crafted to hurl the Trojan Rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Except my catapult would have these two bitches, and all of their bitchy scenester friends, strapped together, ready to be flung miles away as soon as I severed the rope with my big flaming torch. Why did they bother seeing the movie? Go straight to the bar. I simmered pissily through the film.

As for the film, the gay South Korean love story No Regret (Huhwihaji anha) (5/8), I think I may have appreciated it more sans the catty audience. The story of a very pretty rent-boy named Su-min who is pursued by his ex-boss's son Jae-min was an interesting story of obsession and loneliness. Su-min is a sweet orphan boy who is kicked out of the orphanage when he comes of age, then after getting laid off at a factory, finds he can use his good looks to earn money at a male-only host bar where the young men turn tricks in the back room for cash. He is appalled to service the factory boss's son, then can't understand why that same young man grows obsessive with romantic interest. Of course, the good son Jae-min is expected to get married, and is certainly not supposed to be gay, so it is obvious to both that rent-boy-boyfriend Su-min may not fit into the picture. I was actually enjoying the film (despite my neighbors) until it completely derailed in the bizarre final act, and closed with a moment between the two leads that had the audience bust out into (warranted) fits of giggles. Too bad, as it was an intriguing story until then.

[2007 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival]

SLGFF #3 - Trans trauma and TV drama

2007-10-17T20:29:00.000-07:00

I was slightly intrigued to go to see Monday night's "International Centerpiece" The Witnesses, but opted out of Emmanuelle Beart's ducky lips and instead decided to check out Another Woman (Un Autre Femme) (6/8). Apparently made in 2002, this film pre-dated the award-winning Transamerica by a couple years. In Another Woman, Nathalie Mann (appearing in the opening credits as the gender-free N. Mann) plays Léa, a nervous woman who is a bit of an overachiever at her newish job in Geneva. Léa gets an offer to really prove herself to the big boss by scoring a sought-after business trip to Paris to land a particularly big contract. But Léa freaks out, initially refusing the opportunity. Turns out that Léa not only has a secret past in Paris, but she also has a family... that is an ex-wife and children.

Her family hasn't seen their husband and father Nicolas in ten years, so Léa makes the choice to re-enter her family's life. Anne (the excellent Micky Sébastian) freaks out when she finds out that this mysterious woman Léa, who has made friends with her daughter, is actually her ex-husband. She goes through the range of emotions from disbelief, to anger and betrayal, to hesitantly recognizing the person beneath the skin whom she fell in love with, to somewhat uneasy acceptance. Others, like Anne's longtime boyfriend Pierre, don't react as well. Nathalie Mann is very good as Léa/Nico, and her encounter with a male co-worker who fancies her is particularly well played-out. He simply wants an affair with his beautiful co-worker, while she freaks out over the fear that he may find out her previous identity. Many of the reactions portrayed are very realistic and complex. Though the film seems to drag on a bit, and ends with a closing shot that is both cutesy and eyeball-rolling, Another Woman is certainly a worthy addition to the small-but-growing list of sympathetic transsexual-themed films.

After taking a night off, I decided to check out one of the "Gay TV Dinner" events at Central Cinema (which my pals and I like to call Cinnamon Grill... but that is a whole 'nother story). This is a small neighborhood theater with some cushy seats sidled up to tables, where you can eat and drink while enjoying anything from a classic to a new release film. For the fest, there are three special presentations where 70s gay-themed TV shows are shown, with a set menu to enjoy. Wednesday's theme was "Predatory Lesbians and Teen Tales" featuring the 1974 “Flowers of Evil” episode of Police Woman, and a 1976 episode of Family, starring, among others teenage Kristy MacNichol as the tomboy daughter Buddy. Police Woman oozed with cheese... the plot involved a passel of lesbians running a killer nursing home where all the patients were drugged and eventually killed. Classic moments included one of the deranged lesbians getting a full-on, head-snapping bitch-slap from her dominant girlfriend in order to make her shut up, and the lip-quivering mastermind (who "looked like she should drive a diesel truck") whisper something apparently so crass and unspeakable to one of the police officers, that we can only be tantalized wondering what sort of horrible language the lesbians know. At one point, gorgeous Angie Dickenson looks wistfully off into the distance and says, "I had a college roommate once...", which invoked hoots from the audience.

Family, however, was more serious minded, involving son Willie's best friend Zeke getting arrested at a gay bar, and basically getting outed to everyone because of it. Willie's response is harsh, while Willie's parents are more sympathetic to the neighborhood kid they've all known for years. Mom basically gives Willie a talking-to, letting him know that he is being a complete ass by pushing his best friend away. It was actually really well done, despite some dated costuming choices, and made me a little teary-eyed at points. I've heard Family is out on DVD... I'd kind of like to check out more episodes.

[2007 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival]

SLGFF #2 - Inspiring doc trumps soft-focus girl-love

2007-10-15T18:17:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was because just last week I sat through hours and hours of Ken Burns' epic WWII documentary The War. The best thing about that very good series were the testimonials by veterans and civilians, reminiscing about both the good and the bad of World War II. The simple yet moving documentary Tell (6/8) (as in "Don't ask, don't tell.") plays like a missing chapter of that mega series.

Interviewing military veterans from conflicts ranging from World War II to the current war in Iraq, the film spans generations of gay, lesbian, and even transgendered folks who have served the military with honor. Some were kicked out for admitting that they're gay, others stayed quite until they were honorably discharged or were able to retire. They range from soldiers and sailors, to linguistic experts, to reconnaissance pilots, to one of the highest-ranked officers of the Coast Guard, an Admiral who literally went to the personal ads to hire a female escort to bring with him to functions. I'm not surprised that there are gays in the military, I'm just surprised at literally how many there are. More than one of the interviewees point out that these closeted folks often prove to be the best soldiers, simply because they are out there to prove they CAN be. What the film lacks in visual interest (it is almost entirely a series of talking-head interviews), it makes up for with the stories shared. This screening was preaching to the converted, but I think Tell should be seen by all those in Congress that are waffling about repealing this ridiculous law. The military should be literally taking all volunteers they can get right now.

Unfortunately, I decided to follow-up with The Chinese Botanist's Daughters (Les filles du botaniste) (4/8). As there are so few lesbian movies to buzz about, this movie has apparently gotten some word-of-mouth on the festival circuit (which we all know means nothing--see Loving Annabelle). The film itself is undeniably gorgeous. The cinematography is mind-bogglingly beautiful, with China's lush green foliage, craggy cliffy mountains, and deep gray water serving as much of the backdrop, plus the actresses involved are both very attractive and alluring. But the story of an orphan girl Min Li (Mylène Jampanoï) sent to be an assistant to a master botanist (Ling Dong Fu) only to fall in love with his beautiful daughter An (Xiao Ran Li) comes across as shallow and boringly soft-porny. Heck, when Min Li stumbles upon An lying in luxurious sleep across steaming leaves in a misty greenhouse, her bare skin luscious and glistening with sweat... well, I just about had to suppress a giggle. An abandoned greenhouse serves as a tropical Eden-like Den of Love, and, with its clear walls, is just made for someone to stumble across the undercover lovers (which of course is how it all comes to an end). There was sniffling in the theaters at the end, and my friend T turned, stone-faced, to check my reaction at the conclusion. Without smiling, I pointed to my face and said, "Dry."

[2007 Seattle Lesbian & Gay Film Festival]