TIFF 2010 reviews: Red Nights

Sigh...last one of the year. Another TIFF come and gone, closing it out this overcast Sunday with one last Midnight Madness escapade, the French/Cantonese Les Nuits Rouges du Bourreau de Jade (Red Nights). I suppose I could lay a lot of the same criticism at the feet of this flick that I did with The Butcher yadda yadda, as it does veer dangerously close to disorganized mashup territory, but Red Nights carries it off much better; you never feel as if the directors aren’t actually steering the ship. It’s a French film, really, it just happens to be set in Hong Kong, and stars Carrie Ng, who I somewhat remember from my years as a HK film fanatic, though she was a second-tier star whose work I didn’t pay as much attention to as I did, say, Maggie Cheung, and who did way too many sleazy Wong Jing comedies for my liking. Still, she does have an impressive screen presence here, as a femme fatale whose viciousness would put Bridget Gregory to shame.

The plot is ostensibly a thriller, a noirish tale of antique smuggling and competing mob bosses, but layered onto the action is a bizarre tale of a perverse sexual underground, with Ng as a black widow type who straddles the line between fetishistic kink games and the kind of bloody sadism that made me nearly throw up at Martyrs two years ago (what is it with French directors and their desire to see women skinned alive, anyway?). The scene in which she demonstrates the effectiveness of a paralyzing agent on a hapless underling by flaying her alive with a set of three inch jade fingernails is one for the MM record books, and did provoke more than a few walkouts. While I can’t quite recommend the film—its jumble is a little too unhinged for my liking—I will concede that it does deliver all it promises, which is the hallmark of a successful Midnight Madness festival pick. So I didn’t end the festival with a bang...it’s been a few years since my final film sent me out onto the autumn streets of Toronto with a film-lovin’ spring in my step, but overall this year is on an upward swing from 2009. Only fifty or so weeks to go until the fun starts again...(**1/2)

TIFF 2010 reviews: The Trip

As I’ve mentioned before, The Trip was the one big “I can’t miss this one” of the festival for which I came up short in the ticket draw. Michael Winterbottom is the kind of filmmaker that never makes the same movie twice, which can be a plus or a minus when it comes to being an audience member, but Winterbottom has followed his muse to quite a few very cool places of late. Plus, how could I resist the premise? Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon drive around the English countryside eating elaborate meals and bickering. For a fan of a certain kind of British comedy, this was the golden ticket. Alas, my order form was in the 35th bin processed and I didn’t get to go to the premiere. A spare ticket did turn up for the final day of the festival though, and though I had little hope of any of the principals still being in town (not a given: in 2007, Son of Rambow was the last screening I saw on the final Saturday, and Garth Jennings was still enjoying Toronto) I snapped it up.

So glad that I did. The Trip was just, to fall back on a hoary old cliché, a crowd-pleaser of the first order. It’s basically an hour and a half of two brilliant comedians playing vaguely fictionalized versions of themselves, driving each other up the walls, doing endless impressions, working out comedy bits, doing that British thing where they insult the other person but couch it in a way that it’s not meant to be an insult but the target really knows it is but neither will admit it and engaging in bizarre and ultimately (in the case of Coogan) heartbreaking introspection. I don’t think I’ve laughed as long or as hard in ages, and neither had the rest of the packed Ryerson auditorium, from the sounds of things.

Thing is, I don’t know if there’s more out there to enjoy. I looked The Trip up on imdb.com, and it’s listed as a six-episode TV show. So possibly what I saw was an edited-down version of all the episodes stitched together (Millennium trilogy style), and maybe a full-length version is coming out on BBC DVD. Or maybe each episode was only twenty minutes long and used as filler for those oddly-timed British TV shows to keep the schedule vaguely hourly. At any rate, pity I didn’t get to witness what was no doubt one hell of a Q&A on the 11th, but I’m still glad I got to see the film. (****)

TIFF 2010 reviews: The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman

I’ve been thinking a lot about cinematic excess lately and how it’s almost become a thematically-varied genre unto itself, and specifically how that pertains to the Midnight Madness program. I suppose it’s one of the big draws for that section of the festival, the chance to watch something onscreen go Over The Top with an audience primed to totally lose their shit at the very prospect. There are degrees of course. On one level, you have the films that achieve their craziness (subjectively speaking) honestly. Think Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, or John Woo’s 1986-1991 output.. Jackson especially seems to revel in tossing viscera at the screen for no higher-minded reason that a desire to please both himself and a certain sympathetic type of audience member bound to scream in joy at the sensation. On a second level, you have the kind of excess that exists only for its own justification; a self-conscious craziness that exists because it’s expected, or because the writer and/or director have a desire for the sensation without earning the right to it with the surrounding story. This one’s often given away in the screenplay, with plenty of caps and exclamation points in the action descriptions.

And recently there’s emerged this bizarre third level, a cousin once removed that seems to actually be about the process of creating excess. Exhibit A is Robert Rodriguez, who teetered back and forth across the line between 2 and 3 with Rose McGowan’s machine gun leg in Planet Terror and then firmly planted his flag with Machete, something which barely qualifies as a movie but is rather a collection of “bet you can’t top this” moments in a simulacrum of a genre that, strictly speaking, has never existed in the form that Rodriguez thinks it did.

Anyway, all this comes up now partly because I’m delaying trying to write about my third MM movie of this year’s festival, The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman, about which I have virtually nothing to say except, huh? There’s a lot of talk in genre circles about that supposedly fun style called the mash-up. To bandy the word about is to offer a supposed explanation as to why some directors never settle on a tone within a movie, or it’s used as a cultural explanation for why Bollywood films will stick a musical number in the middle of a car chase in the middle of a family slapstick comedy in the middle of a horror movie. What it too often really means, though, is a headache-inducing collision of discordant elements with no rhyme or reason. Like, for example, in The Butcher, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover which throws loads of elements of Hong Kong and mainland China cinema into a messy unstirred stew. From wu xia pan to mo lei tau; from the cooking comedy to the Shaw Brothers chop socky; from the shameless, bellowing, mugging of repulsive bulbous characters with unfortunate facial hair to the ingénues in silk dresses coyly hiding behind fans; from deliberately-artificial soundstage work to Scott Pilgrim-style fight sequences...this flick has them all, just not in any understandable form. I have no idea how it played at midnight; I saw it at 3 in the afternoon and nodded off a couple of times, or I think I did.

Even more baffling, is that The Butcher and Carol and Ted and Alice is apparently going to get a mainstream release, four or five years after Kung Fu Hustle flukily put Steven Chow at number one in North America for a week. Doug Limon is credited as a producer, and not just on the English poster à la “Quentin Tarantino presents Hero” but within the opening Chinese credits. Not sure how the Bourne Identity director got mixed up in this mess, but he may want to rethink. (* 1/2)

TIFF 2010 reviews: MODRA

At this point of the week there are relatively few non-gala premieres left on the schedule, so I imagine Ingrid Veninger's MODRA (all caps as per the Program Book for reasons I’m not quite sure of) will be my last for the year. I was downtown a bit early and dropped by the box office to see if any tickets had gone back on sale for the final showing of The Trip, or Jucy, or Good Neighbors, but no such luck. (UPDATE: over lunch on Thursday I bussed over to the box office again for one more stab, resigned to swapping my The Big Picture ticket for Cold Fish, which I did sort of want to see as a fourth choice, and managed to snag the very last The Trip ticket for Sunday. Sweeeeeeeet.) Heading back along King St past the Lightbox I passed John Sayles walking west; Amigo got a one-star review in the Eye this morning, I can’t help but wonder how the premiere went.

Anyway, I wound up being first in line for MODRA not by design. The only other time I’ve been first was for Lou Reed’s Berlin three years ago; that was definitely on purpose. I finished off the Ian Rankin novel I’d been plowing through and had cracked open a collection of Nick Hornby columns when we were finally let in, along with what seemed to be several dozen of the director’s family, in keeping with the spirit of the movie we were about to watch. From its opening shot of the Toronto skyline onwards, MODRA is the kind of film that sort of demands you like it, that it’s your patriotic duty as a Torontonian to sing its praises. Veninger seems pretty cool; I looked up her imdb page and she’s got the chops on both sides of the camera going back many years. Still, there’s a forced-cliquish Queen West feel to the whole affair that I know bugs me more than it does others. I guess I sort of feel that movies are to be made and then set loose on strangers rather than screened for family and friends. Even writing this the morning after the premiere I feel the tug of emotional blackmail, knowing that any complaints will only be seen as churlish and I should be celebrating its very existence. It’s a shot-on-HD, microbudget story of a girl’s trip to visit relatives in Slovakia, bringing along on a whim a slightly hyperactive dude she doesn’t know very well from her high school. The girl is played by Hallie Switzer, the director’s daughter, which could have been more than a little ick as far as the teen romance side of the equation goes (“A little less tongue on this take, honey.”) but MODRA is one of the most chaste teen movies I’ve ever seen (at least between the leads) so that wasn’t much of an issue.

As it stands, the film still plays somewhat like a home movie that found itself scripted; seemingly half the cast are relatives of the director and star, and sometimes the non-pro acting works in a vaguely Cassavettes kind of way (other times, it seems as if the non-English-speaking Slovaks are reading their lines phonetically off of cue cards), but far too much of the footage seems like she really wanted to give Eastern-Bloc small-town relations shining moments on the big screen, forward narrative momentum be damned. This is especially noticeable in a series of stare-straight-ahead full-on facial shots early in the movie as characters are introduced, a stylistic tic that thankfully doesn’t reoccur. Having dissed it thus far (I’m sorry! really!) I do have to say in MODRA’s defense that both the dialogue and the performances of the two lead actors never step wrong, not even once. Switzer and Alexander Gammai give two of the best performances I’ve seen at the festival, Unforced Naturalism division; there’s not a frame onscreen during which they lose character or act as anything even remotely unlike mixed-up, lonely seventeen-year-olds trying to puzzle out their attractions. So it’s a mixed bag. (**1/2 but what do I know, I suspect it’ll win best Canadian feature anyway)

My entire festival this year will have been spread across only three theatres—the Scotia, the Ryerson Auditorium and the AMC Yonge-Dundas—and I’ve been missing the geographic variety. Nothing at Isabel Bader or the Winter Garden, and nothing at the Varsity, which is down to just two devoted festival screens this week, which considering the great TIFF times I’ve had there in the past is a real heartbreak surpassed only by the complete elimination of the Cumberland as a venue. The AMC emerging as fest central is especially aggravating, and one of the main reasons was on display last night. Unless I’ve been misinformed, all the theatres at the AMC are digital projection—no celluloid. Which means that, sure, the Pixar and James Cameron movies look great, but everything else has a slightly unsettling clean look to it, and as an audience member you’re at the mercy of the bloody computer servers. The server crashed before the 22 Mei screening I was at, and Colin Geddes had to vamp with audience participation until it was rebooted. And MODRA, whose HD video limitations turned the AMC 3 into one big TV screen, kicked off with a DVD-skipping blip of static and misplaced frames (and a cry of “You didn’t just see that!” from the director). One would think a festival run by and for the true aficionados of this city would have better options.

TIFF 2010 reviews: Insidious

As the Midnight Madness program this year seems, to my mind, to be a huge improvement over the ’09 fest, I upped the number of flicks from that section in my selections this year...and then suffered through Vanishing on 7th Street. Still, it had been nagging at me that despite the dozen or more MM movies I’ve seen at TIFF over the past few years, I’d still come up short on the full-on Ryerson-at-the-witching-hour experience, and with one more day off in my holiday, I decided to check out one of the premieres. And perhaps Insidious wouldn’t have been my first choice out of the ten, but that’s what was on at 11:59PM Tuesday night. I figured if nothing else it would be an experience. And it was, in a ganja-smelling, beachball-flying, 300-lb biker chicks in spandex kind of way. It was also one of the best horror film experiences I’ve had in a theatre in ages, from an unlikely source.

Toronto is where, as the story goes, a flick called Saw made its first big audience impression. It wasn’t the first torture porn movie, you can trace the theme back to the late fifties with Hershell Gordon Lewis and I remember seeing more than a few video sleeves at Suspect back in the day of European PAL dubs with cover art depicting some hapless soul strapped to a chair while a masked figure prepared to go to work on them with something burning or stabby. But Saw, sadly, kicked off the trend in horror that’s fortunately running on fumes these days, inspiring a franchise that few of even the hardcore followers give a crap about any more. Of all the TP movies that have been pinched out since 2004, I’ll stand by only the Hostels as genuinely solid movies. Still not actually scary in any way other than inspiring unease over violations of the flesh, but at least well-made and acted. So last night was a homecoming of sorts, as Leigh Whannell and James Wan arrived to the reception usually accorded, I dunno, writers and directors who don’t sound like overgrown and hypercaffeinated Australian frat boys, or rock stars, by an audience that probably 50% of whom had been in the very same room at that Saw premiere six years ago. This program does inspire loyalty; and it’s definitely a different crowd from any other screening at TIFF, despite the occasional “oh, people have been getting serious all day, then they unwind with something wild at midnight” claims that I’ve seen flogged.

I can lay a fair bit of blame on the Wan/Whannell team for what they started (and, seriously, I don’t think I’d ever want to hold a conversation with either of them) but I will say that Insidious is an utterly merciless scare ride. Which no doubt has plenty to do with a receptive audience: I’m sure if I saw this on some sunny afternoon at the Silvercity Eglinton in a half-empty theatre it wouldn’t have been a tenth as effective as it was in a packed, eager and (let’s face it) mildly toasted Ryerson auditorium. I haven’t heard screams like that in there since It Might Get Loud, and yes, they were earned. Insidious is one creepy-assed haunted house movie...sort of. It neatly veers off from the standard haunted house tropes so to say anymore would risk too many spoilers, but it’s definitely a white-knuckle ride. (***1/2)

Finally got to bed around 3:30, and I’ll fully admit that I was worried about being creeped out alone in my apartment, but general ingrained scepticism serves me well. I got maybe four hours of sleep: I had a last-minute early-morning dentist appointment and had to get up at an unfortunately reasonable hour. One more tonight on my last day off, then nothing until the weekend (hopefully I’ll be able to make one more ticket trade).

TIFF 2010 reviews: Womb

The Hungarian/German/French co-production of Womb was one of the few can’t-miss picks for which I actually got a ticket in the draw this year, so needless to say it was the only screening I’ve been to so far in which none of the stars, in this case the only reason I wanted to see it in the first place, made it to Toronto for the premiere. I gather they’ve already done their festival duties, as Womb has played various European festivals already. The print was even fairly scratched up all the way through the opening credits; it’s rare to see anything less than pristine pass through a projector at TIFF, this film had obviously seen its share of projection booths already. Oh right, the stars: Eva Green and Matt Smith. Which for a dual James Bond/Doctor Who geek was the cast of the festival. Not sure how many other Vesper Lynd aficionados were in the audience but there were definitely a few fans of the Doctor: I was right behind a woman in line who proclaimed “If they announce that Matt isn’t here, and you hear a ‘Son of a BITCH!’, that’s me.” and also saw a guy unfurl a twenty-foot (or as near as) knit scarf in line, only seven actors behind the curve.

So no stars to ogle, but that’s not what the festival’s about, right? (Right?) Which is okay in this case, because Womb is actually pretty damn good. I realize that I haven’t been summarizing movies in these blog posts because I figure anyone interested will read the blurbs on tiff.net, but this one’s easy: a woman gives birth to the clone of her dead lover. I suppose the Hollywood studio pitch might be along the lines of “Spanking The Monkey as envisioned by Philip K. Dick,” and then you’d feel the kiss of concrete on your cheek as security flung you out the front gates onto Melrose. It’s not an easy movie to warm up to: it’s practically silent, I doubt there’s more than ten script pages of actual dialogue, though the resulting film doesn’t fall into the “Look at my potato” school of filmmaking trap that so much eastern European cinema succumbs to. Despite the subject matter, there’s remarkably little ick factor...I mean, think about it...there really isn’t any incest happening, and it’s shot so clinically as to make Dead Ringers seem positively loud and goopy by comparison. As for the two leads, even ostensibly aged to her late forties (the makeup effects in this movie give new meaning to the word “minimalist”) Eva Green on the big screen still has a smile that’s like standing a bit too close to the sun and remains one of the most captivating actresses working today. Once you get take in the fact that her character is most likely completely insane from about the half hour point onwards, it's a brave performance. This is the first non-Doctor thing I’ve seen Matt Smith in, and though the guy may not have a lot of arrows in his acting quiver that I can see—“gangly babbling genius” and a degree or two to each side of that seems to be his range—but it does suit the character here and he’s a surprisingly engaging big-screen presence. So if heady, realistic science fiction is your thing (if you liked Primer, you’d probably dig this), you could certainly do tons worse. (***1/2)

TIFF 2010 reviews: Submarine

Not once have I actually gone to any of the festival screenings of films that have won awards at TIFF. Sometimes one can pick up on the buzz, the news of Slumdog Millionaire of Juno enrapturing audiences and getting a healthy shove towards award season spreads meme-like through the ticket holder and rush lines, but not once have I actually caught any of the festival hits during the run of TIFF. Today’s screening of Submarine made me think I was witnessing this year’s surprise in the making. Imagine a Wes Anderson re-imagining of the early Adrian Mole books and you’ve got the wonderfulness that is Richard Ayoade’s debut feature. Ayoade is probably best known to Anglophile hipsters from TV shows like “The Mighty Boosh” and “The IT Crowd,” on both sides of the camera; he’s your standard BBC-produced actor-writer-director. Submarine was one of my gotta-see picks, but I actually traded a premiere ticket for this second screening (damn Sunday night scheduling, with count ‘em FOUR flicks I wanted to see all playing simultaneously the other night). It made the list due to, well, being set in my beloved Wales. I’m a man of simple pleasures. Plus it stars Sally Hawkins, who’s rapidly becoming one of my absolute favourite British actresses.

The whole cast is stellar: Cymru native Craig Robinson stars as this year’s cinematic Holden Caulfield, and shares a scene with his Hawkins that’s a master class in whipcrack comic timing and reaction shots. Also on hand is Noah Taylor, all grown up from his earlier arthouse starmaking roles in The Year My Voice Broke and Flirting; Paddy Considine, an absolute riot as a bullshit-peddling self-help guru with the world’s reigning champion comedic mullet (Submarine is set in late 1986, so it’s not just an ironic affectation) and, though I hadn’t made the connection until she first appeared onscreen, Yasmin Paige from "The Sarah Jane Adventures" who, if Matt Smith shows up at the Womb premiere tonight, makes this quite the Russell T. Davies’ casting office day for me.

The main reason I was pissed for not getting the opening night of The Trip in the ticket draw was missing what I assumed would be the funniest Q&A of the festival. This one made up for it. Ayoade was already playing to an adoring crowd when he riffed on the various viewers sidling up the aisle and was typically British in his self-deprecating comments as to his directorial skills. In all honesty I don’t know if Submarine is bound for the Audience Award this year; the programming assistant who intro’d the screening did say that there had been a bit of a groundswell after opening night and the director and cast were suddenly finding themselves doing a fair bit of press, so maybe I’ll be cheerfully proven wrong. At any rate, it’s a complete gem, the best thing I’ve seen so far. (****)

I waited to say hello to Robinson and Paige afterwards, and they charmingly posed for a pic together. Turns out Robinson’s from just near Cardiff and seemed pleased when I mentioned that I was in love with the town and was looking forward to going back. I also think I surprised Paige by mentioning my Sarah Jane fandom; I actually just watched the ep. yesterday in which Maria and her dad move to America and I couldn’t resist asking if she returned later in Series 2. Sadly, no. Oh well. I parted with a “Croeso i Toronto,” which got a smile from Robinson, though I suspect I may have mutated the “T” a bit, dammit.

Okay, back out to grab an early dinner, hit the box office to see if I’ll be going to Midnight Madness tonight, and to the Scotia to get in line far too early for Womb.

TIFF 2010 reviews: Vanishing on 7th Street

Oh well, first dud of the festival, and it always seems to happen around flick four for me. Had my first mid-day Midnight Madness screening today, Brad Anderson’s Vanishing on 7th Street. MM has long been one of my favourite programs of TIFF; I’ve seen at least one of its shows every year since ’05, peaking two years ago when I saw six out of the ten, the heaviest concentration of any fest program. That burned me out a bit, especially a certain French torture-porn experience I won’t rehash, so last year I dialled it back to two, and wound up batting .500 on my picks. I’ve got three on my docket currently, though I’m debating cranking the caffeine and actually going to a proper 11:59 PM tomorrow night if tix are still available, after all I do have Wednesday off work.

But enough OCD trivia. Anderson’s probably best known for The Machinist, which was an earlier entry at Midnight Madness that was notorious for Christian Bale starving himself down to 110 pounds for the shoot, and then having to bulk back up again to play Batman immediately afterwards. I haven’t seen that one, but I’ve heard such good things that I was willing to give this one a shot, as the synopsis had a certain creepy Omega Man read to it, and sounded like my favourite type of horror movie, an atmospheric cranking up of tension in a surreal cityscape. In his introduction, Colin Geddes mentioned that Anderson had flown back to L.A. immediately after the midnight screening the other night and was in fact on the set of his new film as he spoke, but...a couple of the stars were in the house (just for an intro, not hanging around for a Q&A). And out came Toronto’s own Hayden Christensen and the always lovely Thandie Newton. I’d make “Mannequin Skywalker” jokes but, in all honesty, I re-watched the prequels again recently and can’t really blame Christensen for his performances, there’s really nothing the greatest thespians in the world could do with Lucas’ dialogue.

Anyhow. Creepy atmospheric end-of-world eternal night horror flick, right? Sure, except for the horror part. Though it starts off strong, with some genuinely memorable set pieces—a suddenly pilotless airliner crashing into the Detroit skyline in the far background is particularly effective—things go south in a hurry as the four main characters (our two guests plus John Leguizamo and 14-year-old first-timer Jacob Latimore) hole up in a bar and freak out every time the lights dim. I hate to say it, shadows just aren’t scary unto themselves, and an hour and a half of “Stay in the light! Oh no, my flashlight’s dying!” gets really repetitive. “Silence In The Library” did this so much better; the Vashta Nerada put these darkness monsters to shame. And while I hate to whine about a movie for not serving everything up neatly on a platter, there’s never any resolution or explanation as to why nearly everyone on earth went poof when the power went out, and by the time the end credits rolled that payoff is about all that would have made up for the preceding hour and a bit of tedium. Might be the Rapture, might be a cosmic reset button was pressed, there are references to the “vanished” Roanoke colony but that’s left only vaguely resolved.

At any rate, I know I wasn’t the only one disappointed. Not once did I hear a sharp intake of breath indicating fright in the audience; I heard one oddly curious “Oh!” (and one might even drop the exclamation point from that word) at the initial mass vanishing and then near-silence for the rest of the screening. Maybe it was more effective at midnight. (*1/2)

My day, sadly, did not get better. I’d like to be blogging about 22nd of May , the first Belgian film I’ve seen since Man Bites Dog, but I had some bad food court Thai for dinner and the first half hour of the movie was hand-held shakeycam so I had to leave the theatre and get some air to head off the potential peristalsis. When I got home I re-read the synopsis in the Program Book and decided that it had possibly not been the wisest choice after all; as I’ll be in Belgium eight weeks from tomorrow I wanted to see something in Flemish but a surreal Rashomon-like philosophical thriller done entirely in nausea-inducing whip-pans wasn’t the ideal vacation preview.

Two more tomorrow (possibly three if I can score a ticket to Insidious), including a Welsh comedy—sadly not in Welsh—and that Hungarian science fiction flick starring Vesper Lynd and the eleventh Doctor. So I’m psyched.

TIFF 2010 reviews: Machete Maidens Unleashed!

Two years ago one of my absolute favourite films of the festival was this documentary called Not Quite Hollywood, a whiplash-inducing tour through the glory days of Australian exploitation cinema. A rare Midnight Madness doc, it was as wild a ride as any other flick I saw that year, and (temporarily, at least) renewed my love of great trash cinema, which had been waning in a morass of semi-respectable mainstream viewing habits and the death of VHS. Plus, I won a copy of the companion guide to Ozploitation when director Mark Hartley liked my Q during the Q&A following the screening, so I was actually pretty psyched to catch the Aussie director’s latest exploration of the world’s cinematic underbelly, Machete Maidens Unleashed!, a survey of the glory days of Filipino trash cinema. Which is, when all is said and done, really only part of the story. What the doc is truly about is the American style, specifically the Roger Corman school, of low-budget filmmaking, specifically as it applied to shooting in cheap locations, even in a country under a fascist dictatorship such as the Philippines.

And it was, as you can imagine, a great ride once again. I can’t rave quite as much about this one as I did about Not Quite Hollywood, I suppose because there were fewer films on display here that I’d be curious to actually see. I rambled on in my 2008 review about how I didn’t leave trash cinema, it left me, so I won’t rehash it here, but the flicks excerpted in this year’s montages are more the type of junk I’d rather see Mike Nelson and the ‘bots decimate verbally than actually sit through myself, though the record-setting abundance of T&A in the clips would no doubt disqualify most of these movies from SOL screenings. What really stuck with me from this screening was, once again, a sad sense of a bygone era the likes of which we’ll never see again, when one could rise through the filmmaking ranks of Hollywood by starting off sweeping floors at New World pictures and moving up to a director’s chair in a few months. Or when a word like “exploitation” hadn’t been Dworkin’d to death and could be used in the spirit of fun and daringness. The drive-in era was already winding down when I became a movie viewer, and the death of VHS and straight-to-video cheapshit actioners sealed shut forever a certain brand of filmmaking for which I have completely unearned affection. Much more than a tour through the wacky cinema stylings of southeast Asia, Machete Maidens Unleashed! is much more elegiac and melancholy than I think Hartley intended it to be. When I spoke to him after the show and commented that I wish I’d gotten to L.A. twenty years earlier because of the opportunities that were simply not there anymore by the time I arrived, he laughed and said “Well, imagine being born twenty years too late on the other side of the world!” Point taken. (***1/2)

Two movies to look forward to on my first official vacation day: a Midnight Madness creepy sci-fi flick and a Belgian crime drama. That’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.

TIFF 2010 reviews: Beginners

You know that whole “feels like” concept that everyone’s always on about at work, that thing that kind of feels like air-filling chatter to mask existential unsettledness? “I can’t believe this is Tuesday, it feels like a Friday already!” “Oh my god, it’s only 11? It feels like lunchtime!” I had that vibe for about half of today. I suppose it’s because, as the TIFF begins every year the Thursday after an always-shifting Labour Day, it kind of slides around the month of September from year to year. It’s already the twelfth, and despite having been to only one of my eleven planned screenings, the overcast skies and blustery breezes that signal the official start of autumn in this city, some part of my brain kept telling me that the festival was in winding down mode.

And maybe it was, sort of. The opening of the Bell Lightbox, a gargantuan fiveplex cinema and gallery with unfathomably expensive condos attached, that has been talked about endlessly for the past few years of the festival, finally came to pass with a ribbon-cutting and block party, and the doors were flung open for the public to explore. Not sure exactly what one expects from a building that’s supposed to celebrate Canadian film by bringing it to the masses right downtown...it’s not like film fans are going to be able to walk in off the street and chat up David Cronenberg in the bookstore or get popcorn refills served by Bruce McDonald (well, maybe they will at that...). When all is said and done, it is a mighty impressive building, but still one that comes off as a big, clean, movie theatre with a moderately academic feel. The initial programs already feel a bit too indebted to The Canon Of Great Cinema—round-the-clock Rules Of The Game screenings to begin immediately and coming soon, the moderated debate “Citizen Kane: best movie of all time or the greatest film ever? Discuss!”—but I don’t know, maybe the staidness will dissipate in time. Right now the whole thing seems a bit anticlimactic.

Anyway, I only stayed long enough to catch a glimpse of Jason Reitman in the press gaggle, check out the bookstore, collect my free thumb-sized cupcake and hear some band from Quebec with an unclear connection to the whole affair rocking out on an adjacent stage. Fortunately, I had a screening at three so I was unavailable to hear the Surprise Special Guest, smug and annoying rapper K’Naan (What? You were expecting Springsteen?) and the inevitable performance of his metaphor-mangling flag song.

That screening was of Beginners, a touching and subtle dramedy by Mike “not the guy in REM, the other one, dammit!” Mills and I really wish I hadn’t made that connection because I’ve been humming “Texarcana” ever since I did. The film, somewhat autobiographical apparently, stars Ewan McGregor as a Los Angeles graphic artist mourning the death of his father, who had outed himself in his seventies and is played in flashbacks by Christopher Plummer. While grappling with his emotional upheaval, he finds himself involved with a visiting French actress played by Mélanie Laurent, which is exactly how I hope I’ll be able to get through the loss of my parents, with a gamine-like European woman dropping into my life and shagging me silly in a five-star hotel for a few weeks.

Actually...that’s undeserved snark. The movie is really an incisive exploration of the themes of grief and healing, of children coming to terms with the fact that their parents had rich inner lives of their own, all set in the nooks and crannies of L.A. that don’t get seen on the big screen that often. The movie never becomes a Gay Film; that aspect of the father’s life is a dominant theme, but despite plenty of Dolby-loud smooches between Plummer and a creepily youthful-looking Goran Visnjic, Mills simply presents it as an honest and important part of a well-lived life. The title is a bit of a misnomer: the film isn’t so much about beginnings at all, but about endings, of letting things go...and then moving on so I guess it is about beginnings in an ourobouros kind of way, but the film maintains such a fantastic mood of final steps into maturity and understanding that it’s much more a sunset film than a sunrise one, if you know what I mean. (***1/2)

Good Q&A afterwards: McGregor is sadly in Scotland on another shoot so he couldn’t make it and Plummer was also MIA at least for this screening (it premiered last night) but the luminous Mélanie Laurent was on hand as well as a couple of supporting players, all heaping praise on Mills, who absolutely deserves it. I ran into him near the limousine pickup spot as I was heading to dinner and we chatted a bit; I was wondering if a bookstore that makes a few appearances in the movie is the one I loved when I lived in L.A., not too far from Hollywood and Highland (it wasn’t, but he knows the one I was talking about). Off to Zyng for some Szechuan noodles and then some crazy Filipino exploitation fun.

TIFF 2010 reviews: Daydream Nation

As it’s been for the past couple of years, my personal TIFF experience started off a bit anticlimactic this year, as I had no screenings on night 1 of the festival. So once again I bolted from work at quitting time, wolfed down just enough nosh to stay awake and landed a decent spot in line outside the Ryerson, which is usually an uneventful tradition, however Brian DePalma happened to walk by at one point. I called out a happy early birthday to him, which earned what may have been a slightly nervous laugh. DePalma doesn’t have a movie in the festival this year; coincidentally I was at the premiere of his last movie at the very same theatre at the 2007 fest (Redacted, which at the time I thought was a decent throwback to his early guerrilla-style political comedy work but upon reflection was more like being trapped in dinner theatre improv hell in the Iraqi desert).

Anyway, my first movie of TIFF ’10 was Mike Goldbach’s Daydream Nation, part of the Canada First! program. And it was…a very frustrating film. I really wanted to love it: so much about it seemed to be on my wavelength, from the millennial adolescent themes to the stellar casting--more on Kat Dennings in a moment--to the fact that it’s named after a Sonic Youth album (Goldbach also named his lead male character Thurston…dude’s a serious fan). And parts of the movie do attain a certain transcendence: Daydream Nation has so many haunting visuals it achieves a near dreamlike sense of sadness and surrealism. Its sense of apocalyptic dread is much more finely attuned than even, say, Donnie Darko; it evokes a sense of psychic pain and adolescent anguish like little else I’ve seen of late. And the dialogue glows with wit in a manner that sidesteps the cloying trap of post-Diablo fest fare, except for an odd moment where Dennings’s character Caroline repeats one of her screw-the-world diatribes verbatim to no registered effect. Killer TIFF-centered moment: Caroline insults her new small town home as having “more incest than an Atom Egoyan movie,” which is the kind of line that at this festival earns wincing, laughing “ooooohhhhhs” followed by glances around to see if Egoyan happens to be in the audience. I’ll state for the record that he wasn’t, which I know because ten minutes after the screening let out I passed him on Yonge Street heading in the other direction. It’s that kind of week in Toronto.

Unfortunately, the oppressive (and once again, I’m saying that as a compliment) atmosphere of the visuals can’t cover up the somewhat patchwork nature of the script. I got a sense of a bit too much scattershot spitballing, that Goldbach fell into the trap of putting every idea he had onscreen in case he didn’t get a chance to use it in a second film. I had enough caffeine in my system that I know I didn’t nod off, yet on several occasions I felt lost, like scenes had been excised from a longer cut with less grace than was needed. Flashbacks are bungled just enough to cause temporal confusion; onscreen titles are used, but so sparingly that they seem like an aesthetic choice he couldn’t bring himself to totally commit to; there’s a serial killer subplot that comes and goes with little enough comment that it feels like it’s only there for atmosphere; a Taxi Driver homage pops up confusingly and then vanishes again. For all the many producers involved, what Goldbach needed was someone to tell him “You’re almost there. Just one more tightening-up pass through the screenplay and it’ll be on much more solid ground.” He didn’t have that producer.

What he did have, however, is Kat Dennings, who was the perfect choice for Caroline, embodying too-much-too-soon voluptuous adolescent sensuality crossed with an anarchic spirit and hard-shelled wit. Dennings follows through on the promise of earlier roles in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist; this could be her Ellen Page-style breakout role, though Daydream Nation betrays its Canadian origins much more than Juno did and I have my doubts about American audiences so quickly embracing an inky-black comedy that namechecks Egoyan in its punchlines. Casting all around is impressive, it should be noted; she’s been MIA from mainstream screens for so long I’d forgotten what a vibrant screen presence Andie MacDowell can be with the right material. Josh Lucas also strikes the right notes as a teacher with boundary issues that he makes the excesses of his character more plausible, and Rachel Blanchard has somehow grown out of teen comedy nitwit roles into deeper-than-she’s-letting-on supporting player status.

So it’s a mixed bag. But still a decent opener for the festival this year, and deserving for the most part of the critical praise it’s been getting. (***)

No screenings today unless I score a ticket for Lapland Odyssey in the rush line, then two tomorrow plus the Bell Lightbox opening street party.

TIFF '10 - The mixed bag results of the ticket draw

Apparently it’s a bit harder this year to keep the blogging momentum going. I suspect that in previous years I’ve nattered on far too much and no longer feel the need to chronicle every last firing of the synapses as pertains to the festival. As well, this year has gotten off to a bit of a rocky start in terms of the ticket draw, and my heart’s in it all maybe 15% or so less than usual.

So I’ve got my schedule worked out for the most part. Bad news first: I rolled snake eyes in the draw again this year. My form was in box 3 and it was box 9 that was chosen to start the processing. I still had hope for a while, though, considering that in 2008 I was in the dead-last bin to be worked on and still had a pretty stellar year. And who knows, I could well look back on TIFF ’10 on the evening of the 19th pleasantly surprised at some unexpected treasures that fell into my lap. Thing was, the festival two years ago had a couple of things going for it. First off, aside from Adam Resurrected, there were no absolute must-see screenings that year (and that one was more for the presence of Paul Schrader than the film itself; the fact that the movie was terrific was a bonus) so among my 18 picks (two 10-packs and two tix for a pair of titles) there was little heartbreak ultimately even with my lousy positioning. Plus, as is no doubt often the case, some of my second picks wound up knocking my socks off. To this day I have no idea how It Might Get Loud wasn’t completely sold out in the first round of picks.

This year, I only bought one ten-pack so the margin of error was a bit slimmer. And I must say I’m sorta glad I did because even if I had twenty slots to play with, I seriously don’t know if I could have banged together a screening schedule. Are there twenty movies at TIFF ’10 I’d love to see? Easily. Do half of them all seem to be screening simultaneously? Yup. Sunday at 8PM there were four movies for which I wanted tickets. So I got six out of my top ten picks, and due to the backups I was forced to settle for, the volunteer ticketers gave me overlapping screenings, so I was making trades the next evening. And worst of all, my absolute top pick of the year, Winterbottom’s The Trip, was not one of the ones I got. Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon onstage for a Q&A (I imagine) would be the funniest evening of the festival. Keep your Springsteen, this is one I would have camped out for. And it was going to be on my birthday, no less, almost as fortuitous as the Lou Reed concert movie being the bestest present ever at the 2007 fest. I also didn’t get Brighton Rock or the opening night of the new Mike Leigh. I know the latter will inevitably play the Cumberland this fall (if the theatre is still standing by then) but on the off chance Leigh, one of the reigning masters of the form, would be in town, opening night was worth shelling out for.

Sigh. So the only Can’t-Miss I did get was the premiere screening of Womb, which I’m intrigued about for casting reasons only: Eva Green and Matt Smith. Considering I’m proudly both a James Bond geek and a Doctor Who nerd, the merest possibility of Vesper and/or the Eleventh showing up for a Q&A makes me all Quigley down under. What else...my weekend kicks off with Daydream Nation, which is apparently a bit more press-worthy than I’d figured, as Kat Dennings is on the cover of both Now and the TIFF Now insert this week. Then I’ve got nothing on my b-day for the first time since, I think, 2003, and though I’m being taken dancing at Synthpop Saturday that night, I’m still going to check in at the box office off and on in case any Trip tix get released. Beginners (Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer); Machete Maidens Unleashed! which I’m actually quite looking forward to as I saw Mark Hartley’s earlier appearance at TIFF two years ago and Not Quite Hollywood was one of my favourite movies of that fest; three Midnight Madness flicks this year as, like I’ve mentioned, it’s a much better crop in that program than there was last year; and I went by the BO this morning and picked one up for The Big Picture which brings my total to eleven, unless tix for Jucy, Brighton Rock, Lapland Odyssey or Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame come back into availability.

So that’s where it stands right now. Three days until TIFF ’10 begins, four days until my first screening. Come on Festival...there’s an uphill climb ahead to win my heart back, but I have faith.

TIFF '10 - choices, choices...

Man, was it hard this year.

I really hope this residual lack of enthusiasm on my part dissipates soon. Waking up this morning (hell, yesterday for that matter) I felt some of the old TIFF giddiness, that sense that Program Book Day is like my Christmas and Birthday wrapped up in one, that the Highlight Of My Fall was fast approaching and the textbook-sized book that seems to retain that fresh ink smell through years of sitting on my bookshelf (except for last year’s, which still has the faint aroma of paint as it spent enough time in The Tent at Nathan Philips Square) was just waiting for my annual excited lunchtime pilgrimage and “oh, is that my phone?” afternoon perusal. Note to the organizers: when the Bell Lightbox is fully open and serving as TIFF HQ, will we once again have more than one year in a row where the box office is at the same location? Anyway, 12 noon hit and I was racing down King St. to the corner of Peter, already seeing the crowds perched on planters filling out their ticket forms. I turned over my tickets and was handed the Program Book and form. No swag bag this year? September 2nd apparently. Hmm. And tradition takes another whack in the nads.

Anyway, the afternoon passed as it does every year, scanning the book, highlighting potential titles in the index and cross-referencing with the schedule. I have to say, there are a few Absolute Can’t Miss titles this year. I already mentioned The Trip, which has its first screening the evening of my birthday. Womb stars both Eva Green and Matt Smith and seems like a creepy, vaguely science fiction experience but with that cast I’d be all over it no matter the genre. Submarine: set in Wales and starring Sally Hawkins and Patty Considine? Sold. Observations...no Dialogues this year? Shame. Bruce freaking Springsteen is a Maverick guest? Y’know, tempting, but I know that’ll be the hot ticket of the fest, no sense getting excited about it. So I won’t see any up-close-and-personals this year. Oh well. There are actually a few Midnight Madness titles I’m into this year, Colin Geddes really turned it around after last year’s sequel- and Megan Fox-heavy program. It’s also cool to see directors like Mark Hartley and Takashi Miike in the supposedly more reputable programs after tenures in MM.

Then comee the evening, and my usual joyous playing with spreadsheets to plot out a schedule. I’m only taking three days off this year rather than six, but with the TIFF going to eleven days for 2010 I figured I would still have a sked with plenty of gaps. I’ve got my book of ten and I’ll try and pick up two or three more once the individual tix go on sale. And then the gambling comes in. I’m thinking I will probably be able to score a ticket for a later screening of Machete Maidens Unleashed! so I shouldn’t waste a draw choice on that one, right? And I run into a fairly big hurdle...I can’t make what I want to see fit! I’ve got all these days with two movies eight hours apart, or there’s an evening with four movies all at once I want to check out and I can’t decide which one is least likely to play the Varsity in October. Worst of all, on one of the days I’m taking as vacation, I’ve got one screening, in the evening! I might as well go to the office and bank my holidays.

Crap. Oh well. I’ve pounded out a top ten picks and ten backups. Here we go, top ten picks:
Daydream Nation
Bad Faith
The Trip
Beginners
Submarine
Vanishing on 7th Street
Another Year
Womb
Brighton Rock
Red Nights

And my 2nd choices:
Easy Money
Machete Maidens Unleashed!
Client 9
The Big Picture
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
22nd of May
Modra
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale
Dhobi Ghat
13 Assassins

Some of my backups really should have been among my main picks. If I don’t get into Dhobi Ghat that’ll be the umpteenth year I haven’t caught an Indian movie. And Herzog in 3-D? Meh, who knows, two years ago I wound up with opening night of It Might Get Loud as a fallback pick, so I could well be surprised. So of my main ten...one Canadian film, only one (!) with subtitles, two MM, no documentaries, and a Mike Leigh film which I know will play in the fall but part of my resolution list for this year is to catch at least one high-profile big-name director and I am a huge Leigh fan so if he shows for a Q&A and Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent join him onstage I’ll have had a great night.

Cross your fingers for a fortuitous bin number, and away we go.

TIFF 2010...the early days

It’s been far too long. Last November is when I updated this blog, and that was about the trip to Britain rather than strictly cinematic ponderings (gotta say, I was surprised when Harry Brown finally came out theatrically here and was greeted with critical dislike-up-to-indifference and commercial meh), and as I guess is appropriate for someone who’d essentially thrown in the towel when it comes to pursuing writing as a career, I’m worried about the “use it or lose it” mental muscle atrophy. So, with a bit over six weeks to go before TIFF, a whack of titles for the Galas and Special Presentations have been released and the slow rev up into pants-wetting celeb worship as practiced by our supposedly savvy and jaded local media can begin in earnest.

There’s also, on my part, a bit of an emotional reticence to dive right in to festival raves. As both my faithful readers know, last year was my first time at the Toronto International Film Festival where I sorta, well, had a lousy time. Of my fourteen presentations, only one was an unqualified knock-my-socks-off rave, and that was a Q&A rather than a screening (In conversation with...Michael Caine). I did see a couple of terrific films that I’d unhesitatingly recommend: the awesome Aussie horror flick The Loved Ones and the Israeli thriller Kirot which, oddly enough, the distributor of apparently read this blog and emailed to ask if a line of my rave could be quoted on the domestic release DVD case, which blew my mind, but after assenting, I never heard another word..but nothing that just set my brain afire the way some previous years’ screenings had. I also saw a whole lot of “well, okay, I guess...” and even one that I actively hated, another Australian movie, the screen adaptation of the musical Bran Nue Dae, which to me rang of minstrelry. Add to that a gap-filled schedule, insomnia, scorching weather and far too many screenings in the loathed AMC Yonge-Dundas Square googolplex, and I was actively pissed off by the end of the week.

At any rate, my co-workers know that I always book off six days, Friday to Friday, for the fest in September, and since I don’t ask for much when it comes to holidays they cut me the slack. One approached me in January this year with some news...she’s gotta go to a wedding in Russia the first week or so of September. Which pooched at least some of my planned days off. And the thing is , I didn’t respond with a “well, I might just have to quit” terror like I might have in previous years but a sigh of acquiescence...which should really tell you how bummed I was after TIFF ’09. As it worked out, she’s coming back during the first weekend of the festival, so I would only be kept from late screenings on opening night or daytime shows on the Friday, but even still...this year I’m only taking three days off, Monday through Wednesday. I mean, by that point all the stars have gone home anyway, and once you’re past the mid-point, there’s a lazy coasting vibe that settles in and the lack of urgency makes for a certain sadness in the screening lines.

So I’m approaching this year with a different attitude. I’m changing my game plan a bit: probably limiting myself to twelve shows but we’ll see for sure once the entire schedule is posted on August 24th; going to try and focus on screenings that look like fun rather than “I really oughta...”; might even try and spot a genuine movie star or two instead of gooning over Antipodean directors who are more starstruck at their surroundings than I am. I’ll maybe dive back into Midnight Madness: in 2008 I saw six screenings in Geddes’ program and am still reeling over Martyrs (last time I mention it! promise!) so I dialled it back last year and only batted .500 in my picks (but still? Jennifer’s Body as the opening night MM flick? I know the festival has a strong Juno connection, but seriously, dude...).

Enough out of me for now. The Gala/SP lists went up, plus some of the Masters program, and even though I don’t go to galas and I skip Special Presentations if they’re the upper-tier priced ones at the Visa Screening Room (that price hike, dating back to TIFF ’08, still smarts as that’s by far my favourite place in Canada to watch a movie), but I still might try and catch a few Winter Garden SP screenings and it’s always worth previewing my autumn viewing plans.

So of the Galas, there are a few I know fer shurr I’ll be catching when they hit theatres later one: the new Aronofsky, Black Swan; Barney’s Version because was there ever anyone more needed to star in a Mordechai Richler adaptation than Dustin Hoffman?; Casino Jack, starring Kevin Spacey as Jack Abramoff...is it just me or are film biographies being churned out far too close to the events portrayed these days? Maybe Oliver Stone started it with W., but we’ve also got Fincher’s upcoming Mark Zuckerman biopic which was announced even before the latest round of privacy indignation. Look for the G20 docudrama Rubber Bullet starring Ellen Page as Kelly Pflug-Back and John Travolta in a grey wig as David Miller, as the opening night gala film for TIFF ’11. Right, sorry...The King’s Speech and The Town are also must-sees.

As for the SP’s, there are a few I’m really hoping are Winter Garden bound. Winterbottom (appropriately enough) is back, and while I didn’t think Genova was his greatest work, he’s re-teamed with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon for The Trip and that’s one I’ll pay scalper prices to see if the three of them are onstage together for a Q&A. Mike Leigh is (inevitably, one might say) coming with his latest, and considering how much I loved Happy Go Lucky from a couple of years back, it would be great to hear a true master present his work. This is the year, I promise (and I know this is violating my “I’m not going to see a movie because I really should see it” rule) that I check out a genuine Indian film, and Dhobi Ghat sounds pretty sweet for that exploration. Made In Dagenham, Never Let Me Go, Outside The Law, the new one from John Cameron Mitchell (from Shortbus to Nicole Kidman in one movie? Right on, dude.), Tamara Drewe from Stephen Frears...shit, there’s A LOT that I want to see this year, and they haven’t even announced anything for Canada First! or Contemporary World Cinema yet.

So this could be a good year, the kind of redemption I need from the festival. As long as this bloody heat wave breaks before then...

I'm a stranger here myself: report on the U.K. trip

I know I was trying to keep this a movie-oriented blog, but I do write below on the experience of seeing films in London and Wales...anyway, enjoy.

I’ve been back two weeks now as I post this, back to the grind of Toronto and the office after eight days in the U.K. And it’s been pretty much as I feared all the way back in the summer when I made my airline reservations: I fell so in love with the place that I didn’t want to leave. It’s silly and melodramatic; I was actually choking up at Gatwick when I called Genevieve to let her know I’d made it to the airport after one last day of sightseeing and souvenir shopping. Breakups haven’t hit me so hard. Crazy, right? I still can’t explain why I was so affected, why the Small Island, as Bill Bryson called it in a book which filled me with no small amount of dread when I read it a week before departure, got so far under my skin. Maybe it all comes down to one simple fact: I got it. Within a day of boots on the ground, I felt I was making my way as a tourist through a society and culture that made some odd sort of sense to me. By contrast, I’ve lived in Toronto for almost a decade, was in Los Angeles for four-odd years before that, Montreal for university and a youth in Ottawa and all of those cities, to this day, leave me somewhat baffled. Granted, most human behavior does that, but far too often I feel like an alien trying to decipher why those cities work (or more often don’t work) the way they do. I can’t claim to fully understand London, there’s no way one could after only a week. And I’m sure there’s plenty that would get me completely flummoxed upon lengthy exposure (and I will admit to a small sampling of that, see the section below on the topic of plumbing). But there’s just such a certain ease in living in the U.K. that impressed me and made me feel at home to a sudden and strange degree.

Some of it was just the little things. Take the London Underground (and you must). Compared to Toronto’s anemic two routes, the tangled, dozen-route spider web that jumps off the map is intimidating at first…but five minutes in one realizes that it really can get you anywhere you need to be. And things are a lot closer than you may think; often a few stops within central London including a transfer can be skipped with a brief walk. And such interconnectivity makes it a snap whenever there’s a station closure or track repair: a detour doesn’t take you that far out of your way. Other legends disproved: did you ever hear the expression “In London, you’re never more than thirty yards away from a rat”? Compared to Toronto, or even Montreal, the Tube is clean enough to do surgery on. In my experience, only Washington D.C.’s subway is cleaner, and it’s illegal to eat while riding that one. I never even saw a hint of the capital’s legendary vermin the whole time I was in London, yet the first day I was back in Toronto, I saw soot-blackened mice running around on the tracks at the Eglinton station. And by the way, that very day the stretch of the Yonge line between Bloor and Queen was shut down due to a power failure for several hours, until the TTC managed to spread the same failure to the track between St. Andrew’s and Museum. Enjoy the walk.

The sense of the city making sense comes in bits and pieces. Sticking to the Tube for a moment, if you step off a train and are looking for the way out, there are illuminated signs saying, and I quote, “WAY OUT”. Seriously. Not “This way to (whatever) street,” but a straightforward “WAY OUT” lit up in green. How about when you need to see a man about a horse? Looking around you won’t spot a sign for “rest rooms” or “washrooms” or any other euphemistic appellations. Just “TOILETS”. No beating around the bush here. It’s a tiny semantic thing, but for a big function-over-form guy like myself, it struck a chord. And speaking of British toilets, what with their smart avoidance of the North American-style automatic flush radar sensors that give you a ride on the enema express if you so much as bend over to tie a bootlace, I must also mention their hand dryers, these clamshell contraptions into which you insert your hands for about eight seconds while air blasting at hurricane speeds dries your hands to a Sahara degree, and you get to thinking that the designers of the wheezing, asthmatic dryers that serve Canadian public johns and never fail to leave your hands awkwardly moist, they just didn’t give a shit about their work.

This sensibility seems to extend to the locals, which is possibly the thing I liked most about being there. In addition to being generally helpful and friendly without ever descending into obsequiousness, the Brits and the Welsh seem to have made an art of, well, just going about their day-to-day in an efficient, non-obtrusive way. It’s hard to explain exactly what I mean, but as an experiment, just try to walk around Toronto on some busy weekend afternoon. Count how many people get to the top of an escalator then stop in their tracks and look around absently while other riders trip over themselves piling up behind them. Or how many couples hold hands and spread themselves out, weaving back and forth in front of you as you try and squeak around them. Or make your way to the back of the Queen streetcar past someone wearing a huge backpack blocking the aisle, staring vaguely ahead then barking at you if you try to nudge past. Okay, so I’m a misanthrope. Whatever. In England, wherever I went, life seemed to chug along without any of these inconveniences that no matter how minor, can add up over the course of a day to the extent that hermit life seems a viable alternative. Londoners are alert, street-smart and aware of their surroundings. Once again, a subtle, surely unconscious thing that makes worlds of difference. I sometimes suffer from claustrophobia in crowds to the point of hyperventilation, and that was barely an issue the entire time I was in the U.K. I'll concede that Harrods was pretty bad, and I imagine that the week before Christmas must be like a Tokyo subway during rush hour in there, but that was really the exception.

Having been fed a diet of British movies and books growing up (part and parcel of being Canadian), I’d been worried about having to deal with shillings, farthings, ha’pennies, guineas, crowns and the legendary three-part price tags, but a quick wiki search dispelled that conundrum, as England went to decimalization in the early seventies. Whew. The coinage is a bit excessive, especially considering how nothing can really be bought for a pence (I think Canada and the U.S. could also stand to be rid of the penny), but it barely matters, as the VAT is included in purchases. Go into an HMV and you’ll see CDs for £6 or books for £5 and (miraculously, to an Ontarian who’s had two decades of national sales tax upon provincial sales tax and is about to be subjected to a harmonized tax) that’s what you pay! Here’s a fiver, and walk out with your product. No muss, no fuss. Add the concept of virtually no tipping in restaurants, and a day and a half in you’re wondering why the rest of the world seems to miss the point.

Yes, England, or at least London, is more expensive than here. Still, the universal law of salary does apply: while you may be required to take a flatmate, even out in the suburbs, Genevieve said that after the initial shock, when you’re getting paid in pounds it all sort of evens out. Some expenses were my own damn fault. I didn’t bring my cell phone with me, which I still think was a sensible move. On a trip to New York City a couple of years back I got absolutely raped on roaming charges, and I shudder to think what Rogers would have gleefully dinged me for any overseas calls. So I used phone booths, which they still have in abundance over there, unlike in North America, where every glass-enclosed pay phone was stripped of its shell by the end of the nineties (and no, not all London phone booths are plastered to an opaque degree by postcards advertising transsexual prostitutes; the number is closer to 85%). However, the U.K. is, I discovered, a cell phone based culture to the degree that of the half hour of commercials that precede the feature in a movie theatre (half an hour? Yes, more on that later), twenty minutes tend to be devoted to cell services, apps and blackberries. Which all have a different area code than central London, hence when you plug a pound into a phone box to call a friend you’re basically always calling long-distance, a countdown clock starts ticking and the pence remaining indicated on the LCD screen plummets like the Dow in 2008 so that you’re scrambling for more change almost immediately.

Likewise on the price front, I’d heard endless horror stories before I went: “We ordered a tuna fish sandwich and a Coke at a cafe, and later we did the currency conversion and realized it had cost us $18!” Bollocks. The exchange rate when I went was not nearly as bad as it has been in past years, and the difference was negligible. Most of my pub meals would have cost even more in Canada, I suspect, figuring in tax and tip. My round-trip bus ride between Cardiff and Caerphilly was £3.90. Movies at some theatres, even on a weekend evening, were cheaper than Toronto. WHSmith (and there seems to be one in every major train station, and four within just the south terminal at Gatwick) have virtually every bestseller marked down to cheaper than BMV would stock it at here in Toronto. (Hmmm…could there be a correlation between plentiful cheap reading material and a savvy and intelligent population? One can’t help but wonder…) But a pay phone call still costs you four bucks if you want to actually finish your sentences. So it’s hit and miss.

One forgets how much England has permeated our consciousness until you’re there and every tube stop, neighborhood and town brings up the memory of some song or book passage. I was staying with friends in Streatham in south London, and the radio station in my brain kept spinning “Stay Free” every time I was in the area (“…at weekends we’d go dancing down Streatham on the bus…”). The tube stop at which I’d catch the double-decker bus home was in Brixton (“When they kick at your front door/How you gonna come?...”) And oh yeah, I don’t want to go to Chelsea. It’s also impossible to walk past the MI-6 building overlooking the Thames without humming the James Bond theme or possibly some Morrissey track from “Vauxhall and I” (or, for that matter, wondering why the Thames is pronounced “temms”), or through Waterloo without thinking of Ray Davies and his sunset. The train ride back from Wales passed by the connections to towns I only know from Douglas Adams books (“Ford wasn’t from Guildford after all…”, “I’ll take you as far as the Basingstoke roundabout.”) By the time I walked past Notting Hill up Portobello Road and wound up at the Rough Trade record label’s flagship store, I was in cultural memory overload.

Okay, a few more notes on my trip in no particular order. First, and maybe this should have come first, a big shoutout to Genevieve and her husband David, who graciously let me crash on their living room couch for five nights. I know Gen from when she starred in the short movie I made back in 2002, then she subsequently got accepted into a drama school in London, and her awesome hosting made my trip wonderfully low-stress. I arrived during a particularly heavy work week for both Gen and David, so I didn’t get to see nearly enough of them, but I couldn’t have had lucked into a better living arrangement. Endless, endless thanks.

The British moviegoing experience. One thing that impressed me about Leicester Square was that if you do a slow turn in the middle of the park, there are at least five movie theatres within view. My second full day in London I caught an opening day matinee of 2012 at the VUE and it was…well, different. First there was the snack bar. Here’s my actual exchange with the guy behind the counter.
“Hi, I’d like a small popcorn.”
“Certainly. Salted or sweetened?”
“Um…salted?” He brings it to me and I have to ask, “I’m sorry, when you said ‘sweetened’, what did you mean exactly?”
“Oh, it’s, ah, sugared?”
Here is one of the few things in Britain that left me gobsmacked.
“Ah. Okay, sorry, that’s just weird. I’m Canadian, and I’d put butter on my popcorn.”
“Butter? Ewww!”
I kid you not.
Anyway, like I said, if you think there are too many commercials before the flick at your local Cineplex Odeon, you have no frikkin’ idea. David told me later that it’s standard practice to show up for a movie twenty minutes or more past the announced starting time as you know you’re not going to miss anything. And ready for the japander.com website, there were a couple of Lost In Translation-style commercials for which George Clooney and John Malkovich (for some coffee brand) and Sigourney Weaver (for what I think is a cell phone video game app) got some quick overseas dough. And if you fear that Canada is turning into a nanny state, I should point out that every single onscreen commercial was rated by the British film classification board and branded with the ratings logo in the lower left corner. When the film finally started, we got the full censor’s certificate and rating on the screen. To go to such extremes reminds me of how, when I lived in L.A., a stationery store would have to get a restaurant health inspector’s certificate in the window if it had one rack of breath mints at the counter. As for the movie, well, it’s certainly Emmerich’s best, which is to say it’s ludicrous and overwrought from beginning to end, but at least has a classier bunch of actors than he usually gets, including Thandie Newton (still one of the great screen goddesses of our age) and John Cusack (getting’ paid, Malkovich-style).

Sunday night in Cardiff I checked out Harry Brown at the ginormoplex visible from my hotel window. I missed the movie when it played TIFF this year, though I did catch Michael Caine’s Q&A a day or two later. As far as I know there’s no distributor for Harry Brown in North America, which is a shame, because it’s one of my top movies of the year, a grim but still touching revenge thriller in which Caine goes Bronson-style vigilante on a gang of drug dealing hoodies just a couple of tube stops away from where Gen and David live. Michael Caine just rocks the joint as a retired Royal Marine who’s been Pushed To The Edge; it’s one of his best performances in ages and a pretty kickass action role for a guy in his seventies. The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus was also playing in Cardiff, and I kind of regret not seeing it, as it’s not out here in North America yet. The different release schedules of major films is a bit disorienting: I saw the trailer for the “upcoming” Law-Abiding Citizen, and Where The Wild Things Are will be arriving in the U.K. in mid-December. On the other hand, The Boat That Rocked, re-edited and re-titled as Pirate Radio for its North American release of a few weeks ago, is already on DVD over there, as is that new biopic of Queen Victoria, which will be coming out here during the Oscar rush next month.

Getting around: I’ve already gone on at length about how easy it is to find your way around London on the Underground, but as further proof, here was my first day in a city in which I had never set foot before. I arrived at Victoria Station on the Gatwick Express by around 10AM. I dumped my suitcase at Left Luggage (£8 for the day), bought my train ticket to Cardiff and a weeklong Oyster Card (an all-purpose transit pass for the tube and busses) and began walking. By early evening I’d seen Westminster Abbey and Cathedral; Parliament and Big Ben; taken a ride on The Eye; checked out the Harry Potter platform at King’s Cross station; passed through part of the theatre district; explored Trafalgar Square; located a few decent cybercafés, bookstores and souvenir shops; and plotted out my next day’s walking tours. I’d also taken about a hundred photos by the time night fell and the rain finally started and I caught an overland train to Balham station. Oh yeah, here’s the thing about the night: I guess it’s because the British Isles are substantially north of Toronto that the sun, at this time of year, is always relatively low in the sky, so the midday haze both over Waterloo Bridge and Cardiff Bay had a glorious sunset glow to it, and actual sunset would occur a bit after four PM. Weather-wise, England was pretty much how I’d imagined. I’m pretty sure it rained every day I was there, everything from prickly mist to frog-choking downpours, but there was also never a single day without some clear skies and sunshine. I’ll take that any day over your typical Toronto November weather, all frigid and windy, or Montreal where I’m sure it was already snowing as I was walking up Regent Street with my Spring jacket zipped halfway up.

The British seem to travel everywhere. All through the tube system, the wall posters that aren’t advertising theatre shows (“James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad, Sanaa Lathan and Adrian Lester in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” or the unsettling sight of Captain Jack Harkness all dolled up for La Cage Aux Folles) or the new Queen best-of CD, plug vacation destinations. “Come to Syria!” is not, I’d wager, an advert you’ll see anywhere on this side of the Atlantic. Everywhere in Eastern Europe is a viable destination. Every town, including Cardiff with its 300,000 population, has an international airport. Plus they’ve got all these little charter airlines all over Europe with insane deals. On the walk to my gate for departure I saw a billboard for a Norwegian airline offering Oslo-London flights for £28. When I was considering Edinburgh as my side-trip I found a £5 flight from Gatwick. Okay, there are no doubt some extra fees, but anyone who’s ever paid a few hundred bucks to fly one way from Toronto to Ottawa and spent so much time waiting in lounges and on the tarmac and stuck in traffic on the 425 that you figure it would have been quicker and cheaper to just rent a damn car and drive there yourself, would find this place a paradise of bargains.

I know I’ve gloried in British plumbing already, but I’ll also add my voice to the chorus of befuddlement at the sinks in that fair land. One sink, two taps, two faucets. Wha-huh? I caught a standup comic my second night there (also my third night, as he was the compère at the second comedy show I went to), a New Orleans ex-pat who’d told me he’d been living in England for nine years, who did a bit that slayed the audiences both nights. To the best of my recollection, here’s how it goes:
“Winston Churchill visited Moscow for a summit with Stalin and observed these fascinating sinks in which all the water came out of one tap, and you could adjust the temperature to your liking via two knobs, one for hot water and one for cold water. He was so impressed that he wrote about it in his memoirs. Why is Britain still the only developed country in the world where people think it’s normal to wash your hands like…” And then he mimes sticking one hand under a tap and wincing as it gets scalded, then the other hand under the other tap and shivering as it’s chilled, then repeats the action and finally yells “Fuck it!” and stomps off. The audience howled and applauded, so they're obviously aware of the silliness yet I don’t see any populist uprising demanding rational plumbing. Maybe they figure they’re at least better off than the Welsh. I had to call down to the desk at my hotel in Cardiff to get the sink in my bathroom (sorry: in my toilet) explained to me, what with its two horizontal knobs sticking out of the faucet, each with a release button and latch, one of which, as I learned, controls the intensity of the water and the other of which is actually marked with temperature gauges. For a country that once conquered half the world, you’d think the British could get this sorted out.

If I had to pick one highlight from the trip it would be the glorious, glorious city of Cardiff. I knew I wanted to take at least one side-trip while in Great Britain, and had considered Edinburgh, but that would have involved another flight or a seven-hour train ride, and I couldn’t really think of anything much I wanted to see there…oooh, castles. Well, they have those all over the place, including in London. And Napier University, which would have just been for wistful what-if wondering (I’d considered going there for post-grad film school if I hadn’t gotten into AFI). On the other hand, Cardiff did have the biggest Dr. Who museum and looks pretty damn spiffy on Torchwood and it’s only two hours away by train, plus I stumbled upon a great bargain at a hip hotel through Frommer’s so Cardiff it was! I just couldn’t get enough of the place, from its bilingualism—it’s so rare to see a sign not in two languages that to see something just in English tends to jar you to a stop—to its magnificent town centre and brand new shopping complexes that seem to have had the wrapping taken off an hour before I arrived, to “the Hayes,” the town centre pedestrian stroll…

Then there’s The Bay. I got to the hotel a couple of hours before check-in so I left my duffel, got a map from reception and took a half-hour walk down to the Red Dragon Centre, the entertainment complex that houses the Dr. Who Museum. Yes, I’m a nerd. Deal. And yes, the Red Dragon is all over the place, on every bit of tourist merchandise, the Arena, the Stadium, the Brains Beer brewery, and possibly on a tattoo on my arm someday. Interestingly, Wales’ is one of only two flags in the world whose design features a dragon, the other being Bhutan. Anyway. The Dr. Who exhibit, except for a mural depicting all the previous Doctors, is devoted entirely to props and costumes from the 2005-onwards relaunch, and has a curiously small gift shop. The exhibition is coordinated, I believe, from a shop on The Strand back in London which I visited on my last day in country and where bought even more Dr. Who junk (Torchwood mug and playing cards, and a hardcover episode guide) to weigh down my luggage. The next day was my required castle excursion, to the painfully charming town of Caerphilly (where, of course, the Cheese Shop sketch kept running through my head) and the kind of millennia-old battlements that scatter the countryside like they were sprinkled randomly like pizza toppings across the crust of the isles. Seeing as how it was a chilly, windy Monday morning in November, there were about nine people total touring the castle, including a Japanese family with whom I used my fractured nihon-go to ask if they’d get a photo of me with a turret in the background, and a Filipino couple who, of course, have relatives in Mississauga. Wales, overall, made a huge impression on me. The populace, if it’s at all possible, were even nicer and friendlier than Londoners; the language, when you hear it--and if you want to there’s a TV channel entirely in Welsh which I kept flipping back to in awe--is hypnotic; and except for the HMV on Queen Street in Cardiff filing artists alphabetically by first name (yes, Lou Reed is in the L’s), it was the kind of town in which I’d love to put down roots.

So where does that leave me? Homesick for someplace I spent eight days in, unfortunately. I know I’m going back as soon as I can…the coming year is going to be a frugal one so I can save up for a longer stay in Cardiff, some more London theatre experiences (number two on my greatest hits of the U.K. was seeing We Will Rock You at the Dominion) and hopefully Manchester, Dublin, Edinburgh…once the British Isles get in your blood, they’re there for good. See you soon.

TIFF 2009: the wrap-up

Maybe the problem was me. Maybe I was just the victim of some weird statistical clustering in that my fourteen film selections out of the several hundred available from which to choose were merely “solidly entertaining” down to “you’ve gotta be kidding me” and there are, out there across the GTA, dozens of other festival regulars with ten-packs who saw nothing but gems and are currently proclaiming in their own blogs that TIFF ’09 is the best year ever. I don’t discount that possibility out of hand. I do, however, have to be truthful and say that this year’s Toronto International Film Festival was a big letdown for me.

Part of it may be that I’m stuck in the past. It’s not a long past, to be sure: 2009 was only my seventh TIFF, only the fourth for which I purchased ticket packages and booked a week off of work and made the festival my late-summer holiday. I don’t remember TIFF when it was still called The Festival of Festivals, or when all the screenings were in Yorkville, hell, I don’t even go back far enough to remember when the Program(me) Book was published in black and white. I’ve just been going long enough to know, in ways that barely need articulating, the rhythm of the festival’s unspooling, and when something might be amiss.

In 2007, my favourite year of all my fests, the word hit the street in very short order: Juno is the breakout of the year. That was also the year of No Country For Old Men, the year the Ryerson auditorium sang “Happy Birthday” to Dario Argento on the first night of Midnight Madness, when Young People Fucking and Walk All Over Me were must-see refreshing blasts of Canadian kink following through on the promise of Shortbus, when there was an unofficial double bill of Joy Division movies...it was, in my memory, the year where there was a wonderful overlap between movie star hype and quality world cinema that spilled over onto the streets of downtown for ten days. There was joy in the air that year, quality and excitement that created an almost tangible buzz. And maybe it’s unfair of me to compare subsequent festivals to that one, but as long as the hype machines are out there trumpeting how “this year is the strongest year in memory”, they have it coming.

2007 had Juno. 2008 had Slumdog Millionaire. 2009 had...don’t say Precious, please don’t say Precious. Ungainly title aside, no film was more hyped, and no film could be more predictable as the Audience Award winner. With wins at Cannes and Sundance before this town, there’s already talk of the Oscar push. I wouldn’t count it out, but is the nation really going to embrace something so far along the misery index? What other possibilities are there? Up In the Air, I suppose, which I am really looking forward to seeing. Darwin, at this point, doesn’t even have an American distributor, and early reviews are middling. Dr. Parnassus will be a curiosity piece; since Ledger already got his posthumous Oscar, expect it to have a steep dropoff in its second weekend and to be ignored come awards season.

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. Here’s my week in review:

Best of the fest
I actually did enjoy several of the movies I saw this year. I won’t be seeing them again, but I’d recommend them to anyone
An Education
Timetrip: Curse of the Viking Witch
The Loved Ones
Kirot
L’Affaire Farewell

Middle-of-the road
Still worthwhile, I’m glad I saw them even if I didn’t love them.
Solitary Man
The Disappearance of Alice Creed
The Most Dangerous Man in America

Near-misses
Cleanflix
Fish Tank

Uh...no
La Donation
Survival of the Dead
Bran Nue Dae

Films that, in retrospect, I really wish I’d either had a chance to see, or made the effort to see
Daybreakers, A Town Called Panic, Antichrist, Suck, Glorious 39, Cracks, The Joneses, Harry Brown, Leaves of Grass, Partir, Mao’s Last Dancer

Random thoughts on the festival

I didn’t see any screenings at the Cumberland this year. If the longstanding threats are followed through with, and the theatre is razed to make room for another much-needed Yorkville condo tower (eye roll) I may never enjoy TIFF shows there again.

Why did Space not sponsor Midnight Madness this year?

Are you sure we're at the right movie: Solitary Man, A Single Man and A Serious Man...hey, I didn't know Michael Douglas worked with the Coen brothers! Oh, wait a sec...

The pirate noises are a tradition that already seems to be on the wane. It was pretty funny when it started in 2007, though.

The pre-film montage of sponsors was sort of interesting this year, though as I'm sure it is for everyone who sees more than ten movies, it's pretty exasperating by day four. The excerpts of old footage showing Toronto on film actually inspired applause during several of my screenings. The Cadillac ads where the guy pitches rehashed script ideas (“This one’s about a shark that terrorizes a seaside town. It’s called...Death Shark!”) never get old for me. The NBC/Universal Volunteers one, though...thank god for the volunteers, that’s not what I’m saying, but that clip is at least three years old, and I’m always distracted by seeing the same actor who plays the spotlighted volunteer also sitting front row stage right applauding himself.

Resolutions for next year

1. TIFF 2010 is going to be all about fun for me. I’m going to see a lot fewer movies that are good for me and more movies that offer pure silly pleasure. I’m going to see fewer movies set in depressed northern Quebec towns and I’m going to make a concerted effort to fill my selection booklet with Canadian vampire comedies and movies in which Nick Cage flips out with an iguana.
2. Though I still won’t be shelling out for any Galas, I’m rescinding my rule about skipping the star-laden Special Presentations. I heard too many stories of great films and fun screenings to write them off completely. So Clooney’s movie will be out in November. I cherish the experience of a great audience too much to discount the potential joyous evening.
3. I won’t book a full week off of work any more. With the festival practically winding down by Tuesday and daytime screenings during the week being half-full with seniors’ outings, I’ll conserve my days off and fill my first weekend and evenings with films instead of sticking myself with do-nothing Thursdays.

And that’s it. Only fifty or so more weeks...

TIFF 2009 Reviews: Bran Nue Dae

So this is how it all ends? Not with a bang, but with a simper?

Last year, recapped: the final Saturday of the 2008 festival, a muggy day that gave way to storm clouds and a cold autumn rain, I saw three movies to close out my marathons, one of which was the French nightmare Martyrs. Though I'd seen a few terrific films at TIFF '08, I was still already feeling a bit burned out and let down after a truly top-to-bottom spectacular '07, and to end it all with an hour and a half of grisly bodily mutilation and torture was not, to put it mildly, a good move. So this year, not even knowing how disappointing I'd find my screening choices, I was determined to walk out of my final film in an upbeat mood: no dead children, no documentaries about Kafkaesque legal situations, no decaying marriages...just something fun and happy. Hey! There's an Australian musical! Brilliant.

Uh...no.

Bran Nue Dae is apparently based on a hit stage play from Down Under, and has been translated to the screen with a thudding obviousness that can only make me wonder how it was a hit in the first place. With a storyline that seems plotted by an eight year-old and song lyrics straight from the "let me put too fine a point on that" school of unintentional comedy and song after song that ends after one verse, Bran Nue Dae could have been deliberate tourisy camp, a giddy self-knowing nostalgic romp in the vein of Grease. But even the slight pleasures of decent tunes and a couple of solid singing voices are steamrolled by Geoffrey Rush who apparently thinks he's doing The Rocky Horror Show and patronizing overacting on the part of most of the Aboriginal performers that borders on minstrelry. (*1/2)

What a way to end the week. Crap. I think I'm going to catch a late show of Jennifer's Body tonight and I'll do a full-festival round-up in the next entry.

TIFF 2009 Reviews: Timetrip - The Curse of the Viking Witch

Emerged from the AMC and what little overcast sky there had been had completely dissipated, so I walked back north under a flawless blue, dammit. I really miss the Varsity, I realized; only two of my screenings were there this year, as opposed to 2007 when pretty much half were. Bloody AMC siphoning off screenings. I was standing in line when Arsinée Khanjian appeared at the top of the escalator, and I would have gone over to express my fandom to one of the great screen goddesses of our time but she headed downstairs before I could duck under the ropes. Oh well.

Down the line a bunch of kids were, for no reason I can explain, singing Abba songs. Right, this was my first-ever Sprockets Family Zone screening, so my first TIFF experience where under-eighteens were both allowed and encouraged. I was a bit worried about this; early in the festival I’d heard from someone in line next to me that she’d gone to a Sprockets show in a previous year, and the festival had stationed someone with a microphone in the theatre to read aloud the subtitles for the benefit of the wee ones. This lead to a pre-emptive investigation on my part, I managed to stump a few people at The Tent but eventually got a phone call saying that, no, there wouldn’t be simultaneous English translation and I wouldn’t need to trade in my ticket. Still, the projector bulb did get switched off for a minute or so after one reel change, so Thespis wasn’t entirely thwarted.

Despite all that, Timetrip: The Curse of the Viking Witch (VØlvens Forbandelse) turned out to be, though not necessarily the best movie I saw at TIFF this year, certainly the most enjoyable time I spent in a darkened theatre since opening night eight days ago. I guess I see my fair share of current children’s movies...I always check out the latest Pixar, and I sorta liked Monsters vs. Aliens, plus I’ll usually take my little brother to a flick when I visit Ottawa. My own take on it is that H’wood churns out three kinds of movies for pre-teens these days: the computer-animated stuff that’s geared just as much for the parents and at its best operates on a few different levels of thematic understanding; pandering and obvious life-lesson slapstick (you couldn’t drag me to the upcoming Old Dogs if you shoved hooks through my eyelids and yanked); and Troublemaker Studios’ filming of Racer Rodriguez’ bedtime stories. This wonderfully fun film from Denmark, on the other hand, is something I haven’t seen in a while: a solid SF/fantasy tale that assumes the audience is as smart as its characters and delivers its entertaining thrills and spills without a trace of condescension.

It also bears mentioning that religious history plays a key role in the plot, and the way it’s handled pretty much guarantees that Timetrip will never see the inside of an American movie theatre. The story is kicked off by a tenth-century Danish soldier refusing to reject his conversion to Christianity and thus being cursed by his former lover, a witch who bears an uncanny resemblance to Nina Hagen circa “Get Your Body,” to immortality. To actually tackle the demise of pre-Christian pagan beliefs in a children’s movie and not treat it evangelically seems, in a year where the Darwin biopic Creation reportedly can’t secure a U.S. distributor because nobody wants to risk releasing it in flyover country, and a couple of years after The Golden Compass was run out of town on a rail for daring to be written by an avowed atheist, even a seriously demented dubbing job can’t save this one from the inevitable knives. A sixteen year-old and his younger sister chase a magical crucifix through Danish history, yet their faith is never even an issue, no belief system is ever proclaimed by the filmmaker to be superior to another, and the villainess acts out of a sense of jilted injury rather than theological inflexibility. The religious story points are there, but the beliefs of the audience have no bearing on one’s level of engagement with the story. Like I said: respect for the audience. (***1/2)

TIFF 2009 Reviews: L'Affaire Farewell

Man, I really wish it would rain. If nothing else, this TIFF will be remembered for the unprecedented gorgeous weather that persisted for its entire run. It’s especially notable in comparison to last year’s week-long Dagobah-in-July mugginess. Personally, I find it all a bit unsettling; just one day of lining up in the rain would help ease us into the autumn, the festival being that sad occasion where the serious moviegoing population of Toronto exits the AMC on the second Saturday night after Labour Day into a light drizzle and sighs “well, that was summer.” The natural transition point of the seasons has been well out of whack for two years in a row now. I blame Al Gore.

Anyway, day 9. After swinging by Hollywood Canteen to pick up a flyer for next week’s memorabilia show—I never go to those but it’s got three Bond-related guests, including George Lazenby, lined up—and taking care of some banking, I meandered down to the AMC for another movie that’s been getting quite terrific advance praise, Christian Carion’s L’Affaire Farewell. Early arrivals were herded back down the escalator to the food court and lined up in a vacant room overlooking Yonge-Dundas Square, where Don’t Look Back played under the makeshift bandshell, then we headed back up stairs after a while and ¾ filled the theatre...I’ve never seen so many unfilled seats as I have this year. I imagine it’s economic, fewer people seeing fewer films, but it’s also that time of the week.

I should state right off the bat that I have no idea if this cold war thriller is based on an actual event. I sort of assumed it was, but it occurred to me later that it’s the kind of story that would remain classified for decades if it were true, so if it is based on real people, it’s no doubt been changed beyond recognition. The film itself is terrific, I’d say its relation to other spy movies is like Donnie Brasco’s relation to other gangster movies, namely that it shows the mundane yet still deadly day-to-day workings of a certain mysterious business, with all the cinematic excitement stripped away. Farewell exudes authenticity. There’s not one moment over the course of the film when you aren’t convinced that real life espionage behind the Iron Curtain carried on exactly as its portrayed.

It’s also got some very curious casting. Director Emir Kusturica plays the Soviet government official leaking state secrets, Willem Defoe (in one of three movies he’s got at TIFF this year) plays the head of the CIA and Fred Ward plays President Reagan without the slightest hint of parody or irony, and actually manages to look uncannily like the 40th president. And oh yeah, there’s David “Hutch” Soul as another White House aide. Yeah, that credit kinda made me do a double take as well.

Anyway. Pretty solid film, a great dissection of realpolitik and a pretty perfect time capsule of a bygone era. Not a bad pick. (***1/2)

TIFF 2009 Reviews: La Donation

Every year, I try and see at least one Canadian movie at the festival, either in the Canada First! program or Reel to Reel or wherever it happens to fall. This year, though an oddity of funding and immigration, Survival of the Dead counted towards that goal, but I also wound up seeing Bernard Émond's La Donation (The Legacy). I'd actually been looking forward to this one since I read about it in the Program(me) Book, for reasons that now seem a bit baffling to me. Homesickness for Québec? Well, I only lived in Montréal for four years and barely ventured off the island. I guess it was just my attempt to guarantee myself something humanist and low-key amidst the British kidnappings and Australian serial killers. Of course, I wasn't really in much of a mood for low-key and humanist by the time 3PM on TIFF Day Eight rolled around. An early morning oil change turned into a $371.00 repair job, I missed lunch, and I raced to make it to the Scotia in time for the lineup. Plus I've been reading "Downtown Owl" over the past couple of days and my mind was already floating in a haze of elitist sadness about what life is like in a town of less than 800 souls.

This seems an opportune moment to bring up something that's puzzled me for ages, or at least I've found oddly frustrating. We in North America have a strange idea of what constitutes an "art movie" and by extension a "film festival" movie. Basically, any foreign language film, no matter how mainstream it is thematically, qualifies for that particular millstone of categorization. There's a story, which may be apocryphal but probably not, about a film distributor in the mid-eighties who was shopping A Better Tomorrow around in search of an American distributor. This U.S. studio exec sat patiently through John Woo's classic Heroic Bloodshed epic, the film that made Chow Yun-Fat a megastar across Asia, and when the lights came back up shrugged to the rights holder and said: "I can't do anything with it. It's an art movie." To which the poor guy said "What the fuck are you talking about? It's an action movie! In fact, it's got more action than Lethal Weapon! Are you crazy?" and the exec calmly pointed out "It's all Chinese people. That's an art movie."

True, this was about eight or nine years before the underground following of HK would spill over into a couple of years of mainstream box office acceptance of dubbed Jackie Chan, and more than a decade before Crouching Tiger accomplished the long-sought-after CrossOver. But it's indicative of a mentality that still, I think, affects distribution thinking, not to mention festival programmers. There are always a few Indian movies in the TIFF lineup, often even as a gala, and every couple of years one sneaks through the ramparts to wind up with some sort of low-level distribution. I wonder, though, if these films, are the truly brilliant ones that deserve to break out of the Bollywood pack. Or if you could grab any well-directed non-hacky yet still utterly generic Indian film, put some solid subtitles on it and peddle it as the next arthouse hit. I suspect this theory runs smack up against the other theory I spouted a few days ago about how we can learn more about a country's culture through its genre cinema than its pious nationalist cinema. But my point is that what we in this limited market think of as an art movie, or a film festival selection, is, for its country of origin, Just A Damn Movie.

Which brings me to Québec. It's the sad cliché that Canadians don't go and see Canadian movies. It's such a cliché in fact, that it barely bears rehashing here. We've gotta be the only country in the world where our own movies go straight into the arthouses for the most part. Yet, just five hours east of here there exists a Distinct Society that supports its own vibrant self-contained industry, films made for and by Québecers with very little eye on the commercial markets beyond the borders of the province. On one hand it's admirable, on another hand it`s indicative of a certain insularity that results in separatist ideology. But on a third hand, it baffles me when I see some Québec films, because I have no idea what audience they’re aimed at, but then again I’m not from la belle province and I don’t claim to understand what makes them tick cinematically. In 2006 I saw a film called Dans Les Villes at TIFF. I just scoured my old MySpace blog to dig up my review of it:

Oh, jeez. Never would I have thought that Montreal could seem as hideously unromantic onscreen as it does in this movie. A bunch of miserable, suicidal, blind, insomniac and senile Quebeckers walk rainsoaked streets, cross paths randomly and drink a lot of coffee and wine. For an hour and a half. Truth be told, it's actually quite well-directed, but to what purpose? I'm enough of a believer in film as a necessary art that I think if you've got the chance, you make a film to tell the story that you want/have to tell, and Québec has a long and justifiably proud history of supporting their homegrown filmmakers at the box office. But who is going to want to watch this? Who in god's name is this film meant for? “Marie-Joseph! We must hurry if we are to get to the cine for the new Catherine Martin film! I've heard there's no dialogue for more than sixty minutes, and Robert LaPage stares at a wall for half an hour! We don't want to be at the back of the line!”

Okay, La Donation isn’t nearly as bad as all that. In fact, it’s the most atmospheric film I’ve seen in ages, completely immersing the audience in the mood and tone of West Abitibi with a skill that Alan Rudolph could take notes from. But oh Buddah is it sad! Its portrayal of a cold, grey community that is slowly dying from lack of industry and general old age is utterly heartbreaking. And in keeping with the aesthetic of misery, the lead actress maintains a rigid squinty emotionless mask for nearly the entire running time. There are at least four deaths over the course of the film, many more tales of wasted lives and dreams deferred, and an oppressive gloom that penetrates every frame. And is this mainstream Québec filmmaking? Is there an audience for this, enough of one to make back its budget?

But dammit, like I said, it’s so freaking well-made that it could only be totally intentional. Still, the director stood up beforehand and explained that it was the third part of his trilogy dealing with faith, fate and charity (a triptych I wasn’t aware of), and maybe that’s what tipped the scale for me. As soon as he provided that key, I couldn’t help but flash back to Kieslowski`s Trois Couleurs trilogy, a trio of films that coincidentally came out when I was living in Montréal, and Faraway, So Close!`, a film which I always associate with Bleu, Blanc and Rouge because they all shared a certain vibrant thematic and tonal aesthetic that I came to associate with post-unification European cinema. And La Donation just seemed so freaking dour and sad in comparison. (**1/2)

So I don’t know. All I know is that it’s not the movie I really needed to see today. I’ve got three more to go: a French cold war thriller, a Danish kids’ fantasy and an Australian musical. Come on, TIFF...blow me away!