Windsor Detroit Film

My week's movies

2012-01-27T17:50:00.002-05:00

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This seemed about the best bet playing locally, both in its topic – a picture with some relationship to Sept. 11 and in its theme – a boy’s search for – what? – meaning in relation to that trauma? The movie is based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, who also wrote Everything is Illuminated, also made into a film (2005) and directed by Liev Schreiber starring Elijah Wood. And in some ways it’s similar. Both involve prolonged and convoluted searches. In this case the story is about nine year old Oskar Schell (Thomas Thorn, discovered on kids’ Jeopardy - seriously), who possibly has Asperger Syndrome. There’s no question the kid is bright but also hyperactive and neurotic. Oskar has formed a special bond with his dad, Thomas (Tom Hanks) (a lot of Toms here, I know) and they often play a game about discovering New York’s lost Sixth Borough, which at the end of the film I think might be a stand in for the 3000 souls lost in the Twin Towers. For some this may seem a bizarre and quite unbelievable story. But it’s really magic realism and your mind has to play along. After his father’s passing Oskar finds an envelope with a key that belonged to his dad. On the envelope is written the word “Black.” Oskar becomes fixated on it and decides he is going to search all the five boroughs of New York where anyone with the name “Black” lives to see if the key opens something that they own. In his travels he hooks up with an elderly tenant of his next door German grandmother. The tenant is played by Max von Sydow, always a pleasure to watch, except that in this movie he is silent, communicating only by notes. The character stopped talking after witnessing a bombing during World War II. Through their travels by foot, bus and subway, the man starts to act as a kind of philosophical guide to Oskar. Hanks and Oskar’s mother, Linda (Sandra Bullock) have smaller roles. This film really is all about Horn, who is pretty good, given he’s depicting someone who’s constantly assertive, in your face and manic. It’s almost enough to give you a headache but not quite, only leaving you with the words, “Okay, that was interesting, I guess.” Does it work as magic realism? Perhaps. But I still found the plot annoying as if the writer was just coming up with something to, well, play - in the manipulative sense - with my mind. This is the first film drama (directed by accomplished Brit stage director Stephen Daldry) I’ve seen that goes into some depth about Sept. 11’s impact on loved ones. And it’s also a kind of ode to New York, with numerous scenes of Central Park, Manhattan and various outer boroughs. Scenes of people falling from the World Trade Center are enough to bring tears. So if the film serves as a kind of meditative experience it’s perhaps worth seeing.

The Mill and the Cross, (2011) which screens again this weekend at the Detroit Film Theatre, is a drama directed by Lech Majewski and starring Rutger Hauer, Charlotte Rampling and Michael York. It’s the first film I’ve seen that takes a famous painting, Pieter Bruegel’s The Way to Calvary (1564) and through the wonders of current film technology (green screens, anyone?) is able to make a few of the characters in that vast landscape “come to life” and tell their stories. Basically it’s an allegory for Christ’s Crucifixion inspired by of the Spanish Inquisition and its persecution of Protestants in Flanders. It’s dark, brooding and - sorry, folks - relentlessly sad. The colours are extremely vivid and most scenes look like art gallery paintings. If you like history of that period, Bruegel (who, let’s face it, is one of the world’s most extraordinary painters), contemplating the heartlessness of man, or simply admire innovative cinematography, you might enjoy this, though enjoy isn’t quite the word. Otherwise you’ll probably be grumbling (to yourself, I hope), if not trying to keep your eyes open.

Finally, there is always the delightful Jacques Tati, and his film (on DVD) Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953). Tati is a wonderful treat. He only made six full length films. But he stars in all of them. Every one I’ve seen is terrific and all deal with the absurdities of everyday life. They’re filled with sight gags and misunderstandings and Hr. Hulot is no different. I prefer his Mon Oncle (1958) – about modern architecture - and Play Time (1967). Mr. Hulot’s Holiday is not quite as imaginative and is more reminiscent of The Three Stooges or W. C. Fields. But it was also made earlier than Tati's other films and therefore less sophisticated. But anything this guy made is pretty hilarious and definitely worth seeing.

The Maple lives, and how!

2012-01-20T16:32:00.000-05:00

A news report that the Maple Theatre was closing for good was premature. So hurray to that! In fact not only will the venerable Maple in West Bloomfield continue to show art, foreign and independent films but filmgoers will have a much nicer venue in which to watch the flicks. According to Jon Goldstein of Cloud Nine Theatre Productions, who is taking over the building’s lease, major renovations will take place to upgrade the three-plex with Emagine Entertainment cinemas style amenities. Emagine, in which he is shareholder, is a newer Detroit theatre chain lauded for its digital projection (the first in the world to convert) luxury and reserved seating, as well as alcohol service. Emagine Royal Oak has a restaurant and bowling alley.....The Maple, built in 1974, will still be known by that name and will have new seats, walls, ceilings, an entirely new lobby and concession stand, and bar-lounge, with a “signature” Pewabic tile fireplace. (Pewabic tiles are the famous tiles made at a craft pottery in Detroit for more than 100 years and which adorn numerous area buildings.).....Goldstein says the upgrade will keep to Emagine’s “amenities, philosophy, experience and how you treat your customers.” He has investments in the chain and theatres in western Pennsylvania, Maryland and Niagara Falls.....The Maple will continue running seamlessly into February with the current screening of The Artist along with other titles but will close in April for at least a month while renovations take place.....Goldstein said that while his priorities are art, independent and foreign films – just like predecessor Landmark Theatres – he will also be guided by films that don’t necessarily fit that narrow stereotype. “I’m not going to just play a movie because it’s art, independent and foreign, I’m going to play movies that I believe are going to cater to the audience that’s there which is a sophisticated, upscale audience, that wants to see great stories, they want to see smart film,” he told WDF. That could include movies like The Help, The Debt, The Company Men or The Descendants. “The Help or The Debt last year was a great movie that was more commercial and more mainstream but would have played very nicely at the Maple,” he said. He said a movie like The King’s Speech was introduced as an art film but went mainstream and earned $100 million. “So I think that the real essence of it is what are the great stories that are out there.”.....Goldstein will be booking through New Jersey based Clearview Cinemas, which also serves New York City art houses include the Ziegfeld Theatre, the largest single screen cinema in Manhattan and a frequent site of award presentations.....So why did Landmark pull out and Goldstein’s company take over? Landmark isn’t saying. But Goldstein understands that it did not want to make upgrades to the building. Goldstein’s proposal created more value for the building’s owner Bloomfield Plaza Shopping LLC, which owns the adjoining shopping centre at the corner of Maple and Telegraph roads.

Maple Art Theatre closing

2012-01-19T17:15:00.001-05:00

A shocker. Landmark Theatres’ Maple Art Theatre is closing at the end of the month. The Detroit Free Press reports that the Los Angeles-based theatre chain has lost the lease of the building attached to the Bloomfield Plaza at Telegraph and Maple roads in northwestern Detroit. The theatre has long been a venue for independent and art films, even before Landmark took it over in 1998. It formerly was operate by AMC Theatres. In fact as an art cinema it predated the conversion of the Main Theatre (also operated by Landmark) in Royal Oak in the 1990s. Landmark’s website shows the only movie currently playing there is The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius). A release from Landmark quotes the chain’s CEO Ted Mundoroff as saying it “saddens us to leave this historical” site. “We love the city of Detroit and will continue to operate the Main Art in Royal Oak.” It appears as if the Maple will close for good without an alternative site being sought. The three-screen Maple was built in 1974 and was the “first of its kind in the area” according to Landmark. It's located in affluent Bloomfield Township. Over the years the theatre increasingly drew an older demographic and many of the films, such as British period pieces, were targeted to that group. Landmark directed edgier flicks to the Main in younger and hipper Royal Oak. Bloomfield Plaza also sports some nifty shops and restaurants - including the site where famed Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive - but a plaza across the street lost its Barnes & Noble book store in recent years. All things, it seems, must pass.

Withnail, and with Umbrellas

2012-01-13T18:41:00.001-05:00

Two unexpected movie experiences on a Friday night. The first was the British black comedy, Withnail and I. Directed by Bruce Robinson, who was recently recruited presumably out of retirement to film Johnny Depp’s The Rum Diary (2011) about the early life of gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. You can see why. Withnail and I, I discovered, is a cult classic. And just like The Rum Diary portrays a down and out journalist at a down and soon-to-be-dead newspaper in Puerto Rico, so Withnail and I is about two losers who share a flat in 1969’s London Camden district. There’s also a connection between the movies in that cartoonist Ralph Steadman illustrated Hunt S. Thompson’s later articles for Rolling Stone magazine, and he designed the poster and opening credits for this film.....But to tell the truth it took awhile for this movie to get going and I was almost about to eject it. The film opens in a slummy, filthy flat shared by a couple of seemingly brain dead longhairs who have nothing going for them except alcohol consumption and in the case of Withnail (Richard E. Grant) lighter fluid. But slowly the picture gathers steam, when our heroes – who turn out to be two unemployed actors – get in to their beat up Jaguar and visit Uncle Mounty (Richard Griffiths). Mounty (love the name) is a flaming gay who allows the boys to use his Lake District stone cottage for a country getaway. Problem is, our lads are about as incompetent living in the country as they are the city. They have no food, not even any firewood to heat the damp house, and they run into a cast of bizarre characters most of whom are hardly friendly. When Uncle Mounty makes a surprise visit, it’s hardly what the boys expected, and Marwood (Paul McGann) fears Mounty’s ardour.....This film turned out to be an extraordinary hoot. No wonder it’s part of the Criterion Collection catalogue.

After Withnail and I, I channel surfaced until I hit upon TFO, the Ontario French public television network, where I saw actors in a mid-1960s film doing nothing but singing. How amazing, I thought, and just had to put down the remote and watch the thing through to the end.....And then it occurred to me, yes, this is that very famous film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, directed by Jacques Demy and starring a very young Catherine Deneuve. This movie, made in 1964, is widely regarded as a masterpiece. And it’s easy to see why. Unlike other musicals where there is spoken dialogue along with singing, every single word in this picture is sung, no matter how inconsequential. Even when Deneuve’s (Geneviève’s) lover Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) has an argument with his boss at the local gas station, their rising tempers are sung.....Many years ago I bought the CD soundtrack to this movie because it features an exquisite jazz score by Michel Legrand. And one of the most famous romantic songs of all time is the main theme, I Will Wait for You. Yes, the movie is about love and loss, set in the late 1950s when France was at war in Algeria. Absolutely hard to imagine a movie like that being made nowadays. But maybe I shouldn’t speak too soon. After all, look what director Michel Hazanavicius has done with recreating the silent era in a movie like The Artist.

Palace final weekend

2012-01-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

And so it went. The final weekend of the storied Palace Cinemas in downtown Windsor. It was slightly lonesome Saturday evening showing up for the 9.40 pm Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Not as many people as one might have hoped were there to commemorate 90 years of the theatre screening movies downtown, although staff said there had been a steady stream of well-wishers talking in their last movies at the cineplex all weekend.....Three movies were on offer. The fourth cinema had already been decommissioned, with a startling view of dismantled seats and piles of seat cushions, giant speakers removed from behind-the-screen, and a mostly sheared off silver screen itself, torn by an exacto knife, said a staffer. (The screen wasn't needed since newer digital cinemas use different material for screens.) Seats were on sale for $15 a pop, and about $400 worth had been sold over the past day. A nice touch was that staff was handing out passes for films at the Lakeshore Cinemas in Tecumseh, also owned by Imagine Cinemas of Windsor. The Palace closed Sunday to make way for the building’s gutting and renovation to become the new home of The Windsor Star, part of a multi-faceted downtown redevelopment scheme.....Patrons showing up at the box office were mostly upset and sentimental about the Palace closing. Windsor actor Leslie McCurdy, who was found talking with a friend near the box office, said it was a shame. “Vibrant cities need vibrant downtowns,” she said, adding that when she travels she loves to stay downtown and be near entertainment venues. “The best little movie theatre is closing up,” she said wistfully. Patrick Pakula, a U of W student, made a point of coming down on the final weekend. “The Palace Cinemas has been a staple in downtown Windsor for a long time,” he said. Matt LeBlanc of Windsor said he had just heard about the closure and came down for "one last hurrah." He likened the theatre's closing to, “a kick in the head.”.....Projectionist Mike Micelli (photo above reserving seats purchased by customers) is the third generation of his family to work at the Palace. His granddad managed the old classic Palace before its renovation in the mid-1980s. His father was an usher. He said the closure “came out of nowhere” and “I feel like I’m getting shoved out.” He said the staff of about 10 is close knit and hope to keep contact after the theatre closed. A wall to write final messages was a nice touch though staff conceded it will probably just be demolished when the renovation gets underway.

Three for three

2012-01-02T16:18:00.001-05:00

Sure I like Toronto. But the idea of wandering the streets window shopping all afternoon on a cold December day prior to a friendly business gathering in the evening kind of left me, well, cold. The solution? How about sitting in a theatre watching back-to-back matinees? You can do that in the big city, where movie houses start screenings at noon and often run until late evening (some things, gladly, never change). And then, since I wasn’t catching the bus home to Windsor until 1 am, I had time to kill after dinner. The solution? Another film of course. It all worked out perfectly.....My train arrived in Toronto at 1.05 pm, allowing me theoretically just enough time to catch a subway up to Bloor St. and the Cumberland Theatre. The Cumberland is a venerable old TO art house in Yorkville, about three levels in height with an escalator taking you from the main floor. The theatre, which I have been to occasionally over the years, hasn’t changed since it was built likely in the 1970s. No matter. With tickets priced just over $10 the theatre threw in a sizable popcorn and large pop, a promotion I haven’t seen at any other place....My first film at 1.30 (okay, by the time I got there it was 1.45) was Café de Flore by Quebec’s Jean-Marc Vallée (of C.R.A.Z.Y., 2005 fame, which I have not seen but now will). In truth I was a bit leery of this movie’s plot, since it swings back-and-forth between contemporary Montreal and 1969 Paris, with a connection that seems a stretch. But, watching it, both stories are deeply absorbing, even if the connection still isn’t all that apparent but vaguely appears as the film moves on. I won’t vouch for the overall plot's credibility. I think this might depend on what your way of looking at the world is. But each story is wonderfully acted and packs an emotional punch.....This movie was followed by a 3.45 screening (“You’ll make it just in time,” the ticket seller said) of Australian director Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm starring Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis and Charlotte Rampling based on the early 1970s’s novel by Patrick White. This is an acting tour-de-force with Rampling playing the dying wealthy matriarch Elizabeth Hunter, literally on her death bed, with her selfish children Rush (Basil, a famous and conceited British actor) and Davis (Dorothy de Lascabanes, some Parisien aristocrat). The story is a send-up of privilege and selfishness, and could easily be a stage play. Davis is particularly good as the frustrated, neurotic “princess,” who only knows too well how to put her foot in her mouth.....Finally, after the Christmas dinner and a short subway ride from "the Danforth" back to Toronto’s midtown, I caught a 10.30 pm screening of The Artist, the hot silent film that has been garnering many award nominations and is many critics’top pick for 2011, by French director Michel Hazanavicius. This is an extraordinary recreation of a silent film set in 1927. And it has all the tropes of that genre, from the cutesy musical score to a Rudolf Valentino lead (Jean Dujardin as George Valentin) and a plot (the downfall of the silent actor with the rise of the talkies). John Goodman (as a stereotyped shouting – of course - 1920s producer) and Penelope Ann Miller also star. (The movie is currently showing in the Windsor-Detroit area at Landmark’s Maple Art Theatre in West Bloomfield.)

Documentary busts spymaster Colby myth

2011-12-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

Documentarian Carl Colby has made a film (opening Friday at Landmark’s Maple Art Theatre in West Bloomfield) that is not only absorbing – indeed fascinating - about one of America’s most searing political episodes, the Vietnam War and its aftermath, but a bit of a myth-buster to boot. The film, The Man Nobody Knew: In Search of My Father CIA Spymaster William Colby, is also a kind of personal meditation about his father, castigated by anti Vietnam War critics during the 1960s and 1970s both for his role in the so-called Phoenix counter-insurgency program in Vietnam and later as director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the Nixon and Ford administrations. The filmmaker takes us to the start of his father’s role as a patriotic World War II vet and one of the first people tasked with the idea of surreptitiously setting up small military groups with expertise to subvert the Nazi war effort through critical disruptions in infrastructure such as blowing up bridges and trains. The whole concept of post-war Special Forces, used extensively in Vietnam, “came out of these operations,” the documentary says. Carl, a normal American kid, always backed his father 100 per cent. The fact he had a covert military role just made Colby Sr. “the coolest character.” As the Vietnam War ramped up in the early 1960s President John F. Kennedy, a war hero himself, also had a romanticized view of behind-the-scenes military operatives and promoted this to the hilt. This “James Bond” and “third way” (neither traditional military nor diplomatic) found an outlet in Project Tiger, which dropped spies behind enemy lines. William Colby also believed that the best way the South Vietnamese could defend themselves from North Vietnamese invaders was to arm themselves in protective encampments supported by the South Vietnamese and American military. Colby left Vietnam in 1962, Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, and the Phoenix program started falling apart. South Vietnamese authorities and military mistreated countless peasants, whether bonafide enemies or not, and the clash of cultures between materialistic Western American soldiers and rural Buddhist Third World villagers became “shockingly disruptive – and offensive,” as one former Phoenix member Senator Bob Kerry put it. This wasn’t the way to win hearts and minds, as the phrase went at the time. We know what the war’s outcome was. Post war Colby was appointed CIA director. But it fell to him to explain to Congress a range of illegal activities – from assassination plots against foreign leaders to spying on domestic critics – that occurred before his tenure. He testified 32 times in one year alone. Carl says his father had to tread a fine line between protecting the legitimate covert activities of the agency and revealing the illegalities. Former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft called the task “enormously complex” and said he didn’t “know how (Colby) could make it from day to day.” The film has interviews with dozens of key characters from the 1960s and 70s – from defense secretaries James Schlesinger and Donald Rumsfeld to investigative journalists Bob Woodward and Seymour Hersh, who exposed CIA spying. The clips are taut, mixed with fascinating film clips of the period – from rural Vietnam War scenes to testimony on Capitol Hill. A lot of this may seem to be a retread from dozens of other documentaries about the period. But it’s fresh - in many ways, because it’s from the viewpoint of a family member and because it shows Colby as a person, not simply a war criminal caricature. One might expect the son to defend his father but that’s not what’s going on here. Says Colby about his dad’s critics: “My immediate reaction was, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Then I’d find myself thinking, ‘Well, who was he really?’” But as someone whose missions in Vietnam and as CIA director might have had honourable intentions William Colby had to take the fall for their eventual corruption. Says one former official of the period, “He became a target, that’s the way Washington works.” Particularly eloquent is Carl’s mother, Barbara, an intelligent articulate woman who was kept at arm’s length by her husband. She was shocked when he asked for a divorce, a further sign that he was in essence an unknowable person. Scowcroft calls Colby a “tortured soul.” Says Carl, “I’m not sure if he ever loved anyone and I never heard him say anything heartfelt. I came to understand the man nobody knew or at least I thought I did.”

Toronto has slipped in showing independent film

2011-12-05T11:53:00.001-05:00

A recent weekend trip to Toronto brought delight and disappointment. Delight because I finally got to step inside the TIFF Bell Lightbox, (left) this new shrine to all things cinema on King St W. and John St. This massive block long building has been open just over a year and is the new headquarters for the Toronto film festival. But it’s much more than that. The building has five cinemas, a museum, an upscale restaurant, a swanky bar and a trendy cafeteria. It also happens to have a 46-storey condo rising from one end of it. The building is amazing from a design perspective, with wide spaces, Bauhaus design elements, and more than plush cinemas. We saw Lars von Trier’s latest, Melancholia. The five storey building also has lots of glass and at night people inside appear ghost-like or as shadows to those on the street below, which is probably Hogtown’s premier party strip. The shadows of course evoke the idea of the flickering elements in a film. We wanted to get to the current museum exhibit Grace Kelly: Style Icon, and certainly much of the building was decked out in the exhibit’s motifs, including a photo booth and the doors of the elevators. But it was too late when we arrived. Oh well, I’ll check it out when I’m in Toronto next week....But the Lightbox experience aside it seemed Toronto had slipped a notch or three in showing independent films. I hadn’t been downtown in four years. But last time I was there the Carlton Cinemas on Carlton near Yonge was still a venerable art house with nine screens. The theatres may have been small and seats uncomfortable but it was still a cornucopia for independent film. Not anymore. Cineplex Odeon had closed the theatre in 2009. Then Edmonton-based Magic Lantern Theatres decided to take it over and reopen with much expectation the art house environment would be recreated. It definitely hasn’t. Sorry to say but the theatre is schlock or mainstream central. They made concessions to two independent films - The Women on the 6th Floor (Philippe Le Guay) and Woody Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris, which is playing in such wide release it almost seems mainstream. Everything else there I could easily see at Silver City.....Even the Bell Lightbox’s offerings were disappointing considering the sophistication and stature of the complex. Showing Melancholia was fine, I suppose, but not out of the ordinary for an art house anywhere. The others films on show? Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki), The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski), Disney’s Enchanted (Kevin Lima 2007), Marnie, part of the Icy Fire: The Hitchcock Blonde series of films associated with the Grace Kelly exhibit, and Time Bandits (Terry Gilliam, 1981) of all things. Again, all pretty much "mainstream" for art house theatres anywhere. The Lightbox's scheduling was also strange. The paper guide had no mention of Melancholia and The Mill and the Cross on the night we were there yet the films were listed on the online schedule.....The Royal Cinema on College St. seems to be keeping the art house tradition alive and offered a European Union (that’s what it was called until, I guess, they kick Greece out) Film Festival.....And looking at the listings in Toronto’s Now entertainment weekly there are some other venues that screen non-mainstream but the line-ups didn’t seem particularly electrifying.

Windsor's last downtown commercial cinema to close

2011-11-28T12:22:00.001-05:00

The fact the Palace Cinemas (left) in downtown Windsor will be closing January 8 is a little depressing. I always had a warm place in my heart for this four-plex, despite its somewhat 1980s glitzy redesign. The theatre will close because the landlord, Mady Development Corp., will undertake extensive renovations to convert the site to the new offices for Windsor’s venerable daily, The Windsor Star. It’s all part of ongoing musical chairs downtown. The Star is leaving its almost century-old site a few blocks away on Ferry St. to make way for the University of Windsor, as the U relocates some of its departments downtown. This had long been in the works as part of a major effort to redevelop downtown. Windsor has been copying the model of smaller Ontario cities which have found it advantageous to have their universities move some of their facilities to the downtown core. This brings students to what had been rather desolate streets with the hopes of spinoffs for retail and other downtown businesses. Overall the plan makes sense. But it still tugs at the heartstrings. The Palace was the last remaining film theatre downtown. So the city, ironically, as it hopes to add more dimensions to the city core, will eliminate an earlier and, arguably, important one. Sure, the Capitol Theatre, also downtown, is headquarters for a couple of seasonal film festivals and hosts Windsor Intl. Film Festival monthly screenings. But it’s hardly a match for a commercial daily cineplex. I used to live within walking distance of downtown and often enjoyed a leisurely stroll to catch a movie at the Palace. Despite an almost three-decade old makeover (the theatre had otherwise long been in the same location) the property was in great shape. Make that “fantastic shape,” as general manager Gina Facca told WDF’s companion newspaper WindsorOntarioNews.com. This was evident earlier this month when the Windsor Intl. Film Festival expanded its venues to the Palace, the first time the theatre had been used by the festival since 2008. I actually preferred this venue compared to the Capitol (and, yes, I love the historic Capitol!) because seats were better, the screening rooms smaller, the lobbies brighter. I hadn’t been in the place in a couple of years and, with a friendly staff and great concession stand, it looked as ready to host the public as ever. The thought crossed my mind: what if The Windsor Star does ink an agreement and move into the building? What a shame that would be! A week or so later the nail was in the coffin. The Windsor Star is delighting in its future digs, which will give the newspaper a main street presence which is supposed to allow more interaction with the community in the digital age. Fine and dandy. But it’s really a shame this building was the one that had to be chosen. Palace Cinemas' owner Imagine Cinemas of Windsor (which also owns the 10-plex Lakeshore Cinemas on the city’s east side), has no plans to open another theatre downtown. Ironically, Facca said, the Palace was just starting to see an uptick in business after being devastated by – another irony – construction a couple of years ago. That resulted in an attendance drop from 1800 to 800 a week. The construction was to create a better pedestrian climate to attract people to local businesses! Facca said the theatre was in the midst of negotiations with university groups to use the Palace to show films for fundraisers. It was another effort to spark new traffic. But it obviously wasn’t meant to be. So shed a tear or two for the Palace’s closing and the end of regular-scheduled movies downtown.

Where are the blacks in Woody Allen's films?

2011-11-22T11:08:00.001-05:00

Watching Part 2 of the PBS American Masters’ documentary Woody Allen on Monday night and seeing Chris Rock interviewed about Allen, it made me think: where are the black actors in Woody Allen’s films? I really can’t think of any. Allen has made more than 40 movies – about one a year – and his filmography is about as much a cross-section of Americana as you will get. So it’s rather surprising that there have been no – or very few (as I say I can’t think of any) – black actors in his movies. Now I’m not one for saying there should be black actors simply for the sake of racial inclusion. That would be racist. But this being contemporary America and Allen considered to be a big liberal it does beg the question, considering the amount of black talent out there. Is it an oversight? Is it simply because Allen’s world is rather narrow (I.e., Upper East Side Manhattanites)? Is it because he’s in a perpetual bubble and oblivious to the wider world around him, which seems possible, based on his neurotic and self-absorbed personality? In any case, an interesting question.

The Woody Allen doc we've been waiting for

2011-11-21T12:12:00.001-05:00

Tune in tonight to PBS’s American Masters at 9 pm to catch Part 2 of Woody Allen: A Documentary by Robert Weide. PBS promotes this as the “ultimate” bio of Allen and for once the evidence lives up to the hype. I found the first part, which aired last night, absolutely absorbing. It took us from Allen’s childhood when he started writing jokes for local newspapers and comedians, to being a stand-up comic in the 1960s, to his first screenwriting (What’s New Pussycat? 1965) and movies (Take the Money and Run, Bananas) to his ever-maturing filmmaking and seminal pictures such as Annie Hall, Manhattan and Interiors. Allen of course has long eschewed media interviews. And Weide says the filmmaker has long been his “big ‘get.” The PBS series is called American Masters. But this is a masterful telling of Allen’s personal and professional life. It not only spends extensive time with Allen himself - in his apartment, revisiting his old Brooklyn neighbourhood - but draws on numerous interviews from friends and colleagues, from his long time producers Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe and cinematographer Gordon Willis, to friends like Dick Cavett and Martin Scorsese, to actors Larry David, Mariel Hemingway, Scarlett Johansson, Julie Kavner, Diane Keaton, Louise Lasser and Tony Roberts. There is plenty here – an enjoyable feast of discussion and reflections about America’s most European director who has been churning out a film a year for the past 40 years. Allen is oblivious to critical acclaim. That’s probably a good thing. Entirely devoted to his work he’s famous for not having attended the Academy Awards to claim his Oscars. That’s because he doesn’t think they bestow true honour on a film – any film. He calls it “favouritism,” unlike winning an award for an objective competition such as an athletic event. We also shouldn’t be surprised when he says he would have preferred to be a famous jazz player (he’s legendary for his low key Monday night clarinet performances as part of a group at the Cafe Carlyle) or the fact he doesn’t know “the first thing” about filmmaking when he started into movies. But it’s kind of a surprise when he says of what many consider his greatest movie Manhattan, that he was so embarrassed about it he offered to make it up to his then company United Artists by making another film without compensation.....I can’t wait to see Part 2. (Part 1 can also be viewed at PBS’s American Masters’ web site http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/woody-allen/about-the-documentary-film/1865/.

Film happily looks at back from the dead technology

2011-11-11T00:54:00.001-05:00

It was strange to watch this movie the same day I learned of a Consumer Reports’ writer who rather freaked driving the Nissan Leaf, the all-electric car with an approximate range on one charge of 100 miles. She suffered from what is known as “range anxiety,” fretting about whether she would make her destinations before the battery conked-out, and saving mileage by taking short cuts resulting in hefty bridge tolls, not to mention the fact the little car lost range with the heater turned on! I never could understand the concept of the Leaf because once you expend your 100 miles you have no charge, none whatsoever. And yet, Nissan has invested billions in this automobile, looking to produce 150,000 annually. By contrast, General Motors’ extended-range Volt is different. After the car has consumed its electric charge a gas-powered generator kicks-in, so you’re never threatened by the prospect of your car rolling to a stop on some forlorn highway. The only problem is the price tag. It’s approximately $40,000 with less than a $10,000 government rebate. Chris Paine’s Revenge of the Electric Car (opening today at Landmark's Main in Royal Oak) deals with these issues head on in this update of his 2006 Who Killed the Electric Car? That was about how General Motors built a remarkable electric car in the 1990s, the EV1. But it was something of a test vehicle and GM decided, for a variety of nefarious reasons such as pressure on environmental regulators from other auto manufacturers and the oil industry, to end its production. Whoever thought, this new movie (narrated by Tim Robbins) says at the outset, that the electric car would be “back from the dead.” Whereas the EV1 was a pilot now we are into mass production with the Leaf and the Volt and other vehicles just around the corner. Revenge of the Electric Car follows four entrepreneurs – from the largest to the smallest – who have revolutionized electric car technology. They range from GM’s cigar-chomping Bob Lutz, who shepherded the Volt from design to production, to Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn, who has pretty much leveraged his company on the Leaf, to Silicon Valley upstart Tesla Motors and its dot.com billionaire head Elon Musk, to a one-man electric car converter, Greg “Gadget” Abbott, working out of an LA garage. Paine made the film over the past few years, taking the viewer through the emotional ups and downs as each of the company’s signature models was introduced, with executives betting consumers would flock to the products. The film and Paine, obvious advocates of electric vehicles, honestly acknowledge the teething pains of bringing such revolutionary technology to market, including the financial risks, consumer pricing, and the driving experience such as “range anxiety.” The film is as much about personal vision and New Age entrepreneurism as anything. Lutz, a “car guy” in the old mould, has seen the light and wants to leave a “legacy” with the Volt. Musk, the former PayPal owner who also runs the SpaceX private outer space company, basically drains his fortune developing Tesla and the tension, as he tries to raise financing, is there for all to see. Even Abbott suffers a blow when his garage, where he was preparing several cars for conversion, is torched by an arsonist and he has to start over. But the movie doesn’t whitewash the individuals or the infallibility of the products. Musk is accused of baiting and switching prices before buyers can pick up their cars. Ghosn has to admit to probing journalists, “I can’t give you an answer” on profitability and “obviously there are no guarantees” on whether consumers will like the products. The movie has that sprightly quality which marked Paine’s earlier film, a combination light-hearted look at an important social issue, with an alt rock soundtrack. But whereas the earlier one had a j’accuse tone, this is more straightforward. And remarkably, despite the travails of all these car-builders, the movie has happy endings, suggesting the revolution to electric power has just begun. However, with Leaf’s “range anxiety” and GM only having sold just over 5000 Volts in barely a year, there’s a long way to go. Paine therefore may be a tad too optimistic in his final glowing scenes. But he would probably defer to one commentator in the film, auto writer Dan Neil of the Wall Street Journal, who says, “What’s needed for the real revenge of the electric car? Time.”

Make a date: it's Windsor Film Festival time

2011-11-09T17:35:00.003-05:00

I’ve checked four films for this year’s Windsor International Film Festival, which opens tomorrow and runs to Sunday. The first is the French-Polish-UK production The Woman in the Fifth by Pawel Pawlikowski with Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke, two good reasons (especially Hawke) alone to see it. The other is its distinctly Kafkaesque plot. Hawke, a writer, is caught in a series of emotional dilemmas. More reasons right there. I’d been looking forward to seeing this flick and it’s great the fest has landed it in my lap, so to speak.....Same goes for Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty, which has already screened elsewhere in Canada. The film may seem like it’s about eroticism but it’s more about power between the sexes and is informed with a definite feminist sensibility (think Catherine Breillat). In this update of the Sleeping Beauty tale Lucy (Emily Browning) is sedated and men play out their fantasies on an immobile person.....Then Saturday it’s the long-awaited The Skin I Live In, Pedro Almodóvar’s latest with Antonio Banderas, who plays a surgeon with a singular, beyond the pale, obsession. But this being Almodóvar the film is sure to be layered and complex and raising a whole range of questions about human identity, gender and what makes people tick.....Finally, on Sunday, it will be time to luxuriate in the old classic Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, Vittorio De Sica’s 1964 film with – who else? - Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren. The movie won the best foreign language Oscar. It has the two stars playing three couples in different time periods and locations in Italy – three short stories if you will....This year’s fest is better than ever, as they say. It has more titles, almost 50. And unlike the dilemma of last year when festival-goers could choose only one screening of each film certain films will have more than one showing. To accommodate this screenings will be at both the Capitol Theatre as well as the more modern Palace – with more comfortable seats, I should add - a couple of blocks sway. The Palace been sorely missed as a film festival venue and it’s good to see it back....Opening Night has Canadian filmmaker Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz with Michelle Williams and Seth Rogen (not necessarily in a comedic role).....Other notable pictures are The Man Nobody Knew, a doc by Carl Colby, son of once CIA spymaster William Colby and about his dad, Emilio Estevez’s The Way, a spiritual journey literally and figuratively across rugged northern Spain starring Estevez, Martin Sheen, and Deborah Kara Unger, Down the Road Again, Don Shebib’s 40 year update of what ever happened to those characters in his Canadian classic Goin’ Down the Road, and Jeff Nichols’s Take Shelter, which has been getting terrific reviews in general release....For more go to www.windsorfilmfestival.com

Anonymous, all right

2011-11-07T18:11:00.001-05:00

So I went to see Anonymous (Roland Emmerich, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow). Finally, someone – had the gall? – to put this simmering conspiracy theory questioning whether the man we recognize as William Shakespeare really authored his works, on the screen. And several well known actors have signed-up to be in it, including Derek Jacobi (a noted Shakespearean) and Vanessa Redgrave, which makes you wonder if they also believe it and therefore might be tainted (probably not, eh?) by the huge scepticism if not outright condemnation that has met the movie. Nevertheless, I went to see it because I found the topic interesting, not that I necessarily agree with it. I highly doubt anyone wrote Shakespeare’s plays but the Bard himself. But I came away thinking this was a stinker. Not because of its theory that an aristocrat and lover of Queen Elizabeth I actually wrote Shakespeare’s 38 plays and 154 sonnets and that a comical and rather incompetent actor named “Shakespeare” was the front man for them. But because 1) the fact the movie only tangentially delves into this subject when it was supposed to be the heart of the film, and 2) the back story about the intrigue and plotting of who would replace the aged queen was horrendously convoluted. The film, based on a decades-old theory, argues that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans), was the inveterate famous storyteller. Despite my scepticism the film still would have been vastly interesting if it stayed on topic. The film does tell us why de Vere couldn’t reveal his true identity. But it tells us nothing of what made the unknown great man tick. What informed his talent, his philosophy of human nature, his indelible turns of phrase, and his life lessons, that more than teemed forth from every play? Second, the infighting about who will succeed the queen seems irrelevant – even though it was taking part around the main characters – to the central story. And even this part of the movie wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so incredibly convoluted. Please - who’s on first, second and third throughout this more than two hour flick? The picture had beautiful computer-generated images recreating London of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. And Rhys Ifans is superb in his role as de Vere though I want to take the compliment back after learning he was the narrator of the vile Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010; see my post July 3, 2010). So, if you really want, go see this movie for some good acting and some terrific period re-creations. But don’t expect to find much at all about what this is supposed to be about. And if you can figure out the plot more power to you.

On Saturday at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) I took in a rather unique event – a showing of mostly home movies chronicling Detroit over the past century. The Lost Landscapes of Detroit shows family-made movies, newsreels and even films from companies like Ford. They depict everyday scenes of Detroiters at work and play, of once thriving neighbourhoods, and of some seminal events such as the little known race riots of 1943, and the opening of the then world’s largest shopping mall, Northland Center, in 1954. Film collector and historian Richard Prelinger brought a similar collection to Detroit last year, a presentation that was a hit. And so too was this one. Many of his collected films can be viewed at http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger

Apparently coming to a Windsor Cineplex theatre, of all places, if a coming attraction movie poster at the Devonshire Mall cinemas is to be believed, is Lars von Trier’s Melancholia starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Kiefer Sutherland. The film is scheduled to open generally Nov. 11 but no word yet when in Windsor.

Finally, perhaps the most fascinating film critic of the last 50 years was The New Yorker magazine’s Pauline Kael. There’s a new biography just out, with a cute title, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, by Brian Kellow. Hmm, wonder if he also means the critic was clueless.

Gonzo, Puerto Rico & rum - what's not to like?

2011-11-02T18:39:00.002-04:00

The Rum Diary, which opened almost surprisingly at two Windsor theatres last weekend, was the first film in ages I attended at a Windsor cinema. And Cineplex Odeon Devonshire put it in one humongous screening room though there was a paltry crowd to enjoy it Saturday night. In any case this story from the beloved, belated and deceased former gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson is little known and long precedes his more famous literary works Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (the former made into a movie in 1998 directed by Terry Gilliam). This is a semi-autobiographical work about Thompson, in his early 20s, a kind of down and out reporter who has left New York to work on a Puerto Rican newspaper. The book describes a sports paper. The movie depicts the San Juan Star, a general interest daily. It describes his escapades among the cast of misfits in the rundown newsroom of a news organization on its last legs, a kind of target by the locals for the evils of American imperialism. Johnny Depp stars as the Thomsonesque Paul Kemp, a reprise of his role in Fear and Loathing as Raoul Duke. He takes on the same character but the story takes place at the beginning of Thompson’s wild alcohol and drug-obsessed lifestyle, drinking his hotel room bar fridge dry on the newspaper’s expense account, natch. Like Fear and Loathing this is a laugh-out-loud comedy as Kemp, like Duke, finds himself in numerous bizarre situations with a couple of whacked-out fellow staffers, Sala (Michael Rispoli) and Moburg (Giovanni Ribisi). There is indeed a central plot with Aaron Eckhart playing the greedy (what else?) land developer Sanderson. Puerto Rico was on the verge of mass tourism and Sanderson wants to be among the first to cash in, recruiting our hero to write positive reviews about his business exploits (in more ways than one). About the only thing Kemp agrees to is Sanderson’s nubile girlfriend Chenault (Amber Heard). True to all Thompson literary themes good wins out over evil in an alcoholic and drug-induced haze including the character’s first experiments with LSD. What’s impressive about the film is its re-creation of 1960-era Puerto Rico, where the women’s fashions seem to be dead on and the numerous vintage cars made me, yes, check whether modern day Havana wasn’t a fill in for San Juan. Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I, 1987), whom Depp pulled out of a kind of retirement to make the film, shows he’s as proficient at the helm as ever. Catch the film while it’s still here.

Guilty as - originally - charged?

2011-10-27T11:13:00.000-04:00

Alain Corneau’s Love Crime (opening Friday at the Landmark Main in Royal Oak) stars Kristin Scott Thomas (KST) and Ludivine Sagnier in a murder mystery that takes place at the highest levels of a multinational corporation. Scott Thomas as Christine is Sagnier’s (Isabelle’s) boss. Isabelle is young, smart and ambitious but in an ethical way that will help the corporation. She reports to Thomas who heaps praise upon her business proposals, which win client after client. The problem arises when Isabelle learns that Christine is taking personal credit for Isabelle’s ideas. Christine makes no apologies. “Good team work means we all win out.” Isabelle accepts this and moves on. Through a colleague Daniel (Guillaume Marquet) Isabelle is given an assignment away from Christine’s eyes. When the delighted American executives, for whom she drew up the proposal, come to Paris on the spur of the moment, she contacts Christine but not in enough time. Christine admonishes her after typically accepting congratulations from the Americans for knowing “how to delegate.” In her own defence Isabelle tells Christine,”I listened to you; I learned to act like you.” Meanwhile Christine had developed a kind of romantic crush on her acolyte, which Isabelle half-heartedly had gone along with. But then Isabelle becomes romantically involved with Christine’s paramour, Philippe (Patrick Mille). Christine calls Philippe, whose law firm works for Christine’s company, to her office. She tells him he must pay a significant debt or she will report him to regulatory authorities. Literally choking after the meeting he angrily fends off Isabelle. Later he apologizes that it was all because of Christine and he wants to make up. Isabelle agrees to meet him. But when he doesn’t show she calls his home only to have Christine answer. “The woman who plays with you destroys you,” Christine says. Enraged, Isabelle, in a frenzy, crashes her car. From here the story is all downhill. Corneau, who at 67 died after the film was made, said the plot turns on vengeance from humiliation. It also plays with the concept of false evidence and the wrongfully accused. And while there are enough clever plot devices in the film to throw the legal beagles off track I remain with the prosecutor’s first conclusion. But the story is engaging enough and there’s a stunning score from jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. KST is starting to age at 51 – gone are the full high cheeks; her face now is more lined and drawn. Sagnier at 32 is a young accomplished French actress, and no stranger to similar roles. She was in François Ozon’s 2003 Swimming Pool and his 8 Women (2002), which actually was a musical comedy murder mystery. Love Crime’s scenes are taut and the actors bring enough to the roles to make their characters convincing. It’s the film’s general premise that didn’t work. Guilty as – originally – charged, I say.

Film clips

2011-10-23T21:17:00.000-04:00

I watched Fred Schepisi’s The Russia House (1990) this weekend. The film is based on the John le Carré novel about the waning days of the Soviet Union. It was one of the first Western flicks to actually be shot in former Communist Russia. And released as it was in 1990 it was likely shot in 1989. Since it was also filmed in the fall it must have been made around the same time that the Soviet Bloc’s most important Eastern European satellite state East Germany was disintegrating and the Berlin Wall fell. Uncanny scheduling that.....The movie stars Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer. And given that it’s based on a le Carré novel it’s all about spies like them. But the movie has a hard-to-follow plot. The novel itself had a number of plot twists that would seem to pose difficulties for a much tighter movie script. But if you’re going to undertake the story you should be prepared to better define what’s going on. Schepisi (A Cry in the Dark, 1988) simply didn’t do this. But, that aside, the film was wonderful to watch because so many of the shots were of outdoor scenes of Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The old Soviet grey streetscapes and modern fortress-like buildings are there. But so too is the extraordinary art and architecture of, say, the Moscow subway, and seemingly all of St. Petersburg.

Halloween is coming up and there’s a film this weekend at the DIA’s Detroit Film Theatre that looks quite suitable for the occasion. It’s a 1959 French film called Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju) which seems infinitely more terrorizing than the run of the mill schlock that goes for horror that H’wood spits out. The plot is about a surgeon’s daughter whose face is disfigured in an accident. He and his mistress go on a kidnapping spree, taking young women and grafting their faces on to his daughter. I get chilled just thinking about it. For more go to www.dia.org

Opening I don’t know when – if ever – in the Detroit area but soon to be coming to Toronto is Bruce Robinson’s The Rum Diary starring Johnny Depp. The film is based on a little known Hunter S. Thompson (he the gonzo journalist who committed suicide in 2005) book of the same name. Depp plays a Hunter Thompson-like character, a journalist, who flees New York for Puerto Rico and a newspaper seemingly outfitted with all manner of misfits. Depp, of course, played the Thompsonesque Raoul Duke in Thompson’s acclaimed book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Terry Gilliam 1998). He also befriended the good doctor and apparently had promised him to make a movie of The Rum Diary after convincing Thompson to publish the book. The movie opens Oct. 28. (UPDATE: it's opening Friday in Dee-troit; and yes, even in Windsor)

Laugh at traditional Brit cuisine

2011-10-13T09:57:00.001-04:00

There seems to be no end to nostalgia for the 1960s. At least where Baby Boomers are concerned. And so we have it again with Toast, the just-released British film starring Helena Bonham Carter and which opens tomorrow at Landmark’s Maple in West Bloomfield. The premise is terrible British food. Or at least the kind of food that ruled Britannia before the advent of large scale immigration. Canned peas and deep fried toast anyone? The story is actually a bio of a famous Brit food and TV personality Nigel Slater (based on his memoir), whose dearly beloved mum (Victoria Hamilton) cooks canned vegetables by actually placing the cans in boiling water! When young Nigel spots more exotic fare in the local grocer’s he becomes fascinated with good food, attempting to introduce more unconventional meals to his very square mid-1960s Midlands parents. His dad (Ken Stott) balks at spaghetti, for God’s sake, not realizing it has to be cooked, and then complains it’s “soft.” There is a subplot here. Besides his budding interest in the culinary arts young Nigel is also attracted to those of his own sex. He espies the family gardener changing clothes from his Marlon Brando-like leather motorcycle duds. His dad of course then fires the gardener. Despite Nigel’s mum’s inadequate cooking he loves her dearly. But a respiratory illness eventually takes her life. Soon after dad hooks up with Mrs. Potter (Bonham Carter), a sexy tart who’s cheating on her husband. Nigel doesn’t want her in the house but can’t resist her delectable cooking. As his interest in food grows so does Nigel’s and Mrs. Potter’s rivalry. Enough said. I’m getting very tired of nostalgia films of this period. And I think a cease and desist order should be placed on making more of them. That said Bonham Carter is good here though she seems to reprise Julie Walters in Educating Rita. I also found it hard to hate her as an uncouth commoner because I know she’s personally not like that. Perhaps Julie Walters or Lesley Manville (Another Year) would have been more convincing. And while the film is a bio it also seems clichéd to tie in a love of cooking with gayness. There are no real problems with the film. It’s well acted and there are some touching moments, especially as young Nigel (played by Oscar Kennedy and Freddie Highmore at different ages) contemplates love for his mum, food, and what he will do the rest of his life - a professional interest in culinary, surely. But a few quibbles. For a family so non-food savvy how do they have an extraordinary vegetable garden, tended by the gay gardener Josh (Matthew McNulty)? And could even a “common” woman like Mrs. Potter fall for an aged grumpy and sexless male like Nigel’s father? Oh well, there's no accounting for attraction. There is also a fixation on the songs of Dusty Springfield. I’m a huge Springfield fan but, come on, this is a little much. Or is it simply a gay thing? The film is billed as a comedy, and there are some humorous moments but overall the effect is touching and maudlin. It’s not bad for S. J. Clarkson’s directorial debut but even this director should be banned from making more mid-Sixties nostalgia films.

Film clips

2011-09-28T15:28:00.001-04:00

Love Crime, a new film starring Kristin Scott Thomas was to have opened this Friday at The Main in Royal Oak but has been rescheduled for Oct. 28. Watch for the review closer to opening from yours truly. Given the general offerings of films released this fall it’s a bit of a standout.....Otherwise opening over the next two weeks at Landmark's Detroit properties are: The Hedgehog at the Main, and Life, Above All at Landmark's Maple in West Bloomfield, and the following weekend Dirty Girl at the Main and Toast (watch for the review here) at the Maple.

Let there be...well, fewer kinks in the Toronto International Film Festival and its Bell Lightbox, the spectacular new theatre complex (above pic from the TIFF website) in TO’s entertainment district, which features several screening rooms, a museum, library, swanky restaurants and bar, in a modernistic – yes – box of a building where those in it at night appear as shadows to people outside. All so film noirish, right? The building, which admittedly is exceptional (I'm still dying to see it), had its first full try out at this month’s TIFF and the reviews were not all rosy. The complaints? Apparently no one thought of constructing more than two slow and rather small elevators to go among six floors, many of which can be jammed with people at festival time. “This building was designed for the festival, by the festival, and it doesn’t work,” a photographer who has long covered TIFF told the National Post. One filmgoer said she was surprised there were obstructed views “for a theatre that’s” so devoted to film. Not to despair. Fest co-director Cameron Bailey put his spin on it. “It creates the conditions for these happy accidents, collisions between people … which is really what this festival should be all about.” But he acknowledged kinks will be worked out. “We’re still figuring [the Lightbox] out," he told the Post. "It’s kind of like a musical instrument. We’re just learning how to play it.”

Von Trier, Wenders – new films from these vanguard European directors will be featured next month at Montreal’s Festival of New Cinema, which I usually attend but won’t this fall. Also, Pedro Almodóvar will have a new flic in this true cinephile fest, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary! (Even the Montreal and Toronto world festivals aren’t that old.) Von Trier’s Melancholia has Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland and Charlotte Gainsbourg (who was in his 2009 Antichrist), a film about the end of the world. Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In has his favourite Antonio Banderas as a depraved plastic surgeon. But, yes, cheeriness is apparently on the horizon with Wenders’s Pina, a film in 3-D dedicated to the late German choreographer Pina Bausch. Despite this festival’s rarefied films and audiences it will screen almost 300 movies including 11 world premieres.

Sean Connery's beastly side

2011-09-21T13:39:00.000-04:00

There are many dimensions to Sir Sean Connery, I suppose. But for me the stereotype is Agent 007, the classy, tuxedo-clad, sophisticated womanizer – neat and tidy to a T. But watching A Fine Madness (Irvin Kershner, 1966) where Connery plays frustrated poet Samson Shillitoe, his role is that of a crazed beast of an artist, a self-obsessed cave man who has no patience for anyone outside of his egocentric bubble. It’s an incredible performance. Connery (photo shows scene from movie) here is anything but the suave gentleman although womanizer he remains, though he’s not the cause of it, as his character fully admits. It’s just that women are so aroused by his bullying and beastly good looks they can’t resist throwing themselves at him.....This is another of Kershner’s mid-1960s movies about philandering men – usually creative types who are trapped in marriage. In this case Connery’s on screen wife is played by Joanne Woodward. In Kershner’s 1970 film Loving (see Aug. 30 post below) George Segal is the unhappy writer, also married to a bombshell, Eva Marie Saint, but finding no satisfaction in domestic life. Arguably, however, in A Fine Madness Connery’s character is more afflicted with writer’s block than anything else and the film dissolves into a kind of madcap romp where psychiatrists try to cure him, “try” being the operative word..... This film is also great for the large number of Manhattan street scenes. Anyone who wants to get a feel for how New York looked in the mid-1960s should see this. Many of the scenes have the film’s characters mingling among the regular Manhattan street crowds with panoramic crane shots looking down on streets like Park Avenue.....The Warner Brothers DVD I watched had as an extra segment – an hilarious short film called Mondo Connery, which is worth watching just for itself. It’s not a trailer but shows Connery behind the scenes as he makes his way around Manhattan. When he finally climbs aboard a New York Airways helicopter atop the then Pan Am building for a flight to JFK (remember that?) the droll announcer says that with Connery’s departure Manhattan will never be the exciting place it was with his presence.

And, the Toronto International Film festival is over. Hurray! Now Toronto can get back to its non self-obsessed self.

Pink ribbons for what?

2011-09-13T17:30:00.003-04:00

I have very little interest in the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Well, of course there are great films screened there. But every year Toronto goes into a kind of orgasmic frenzy over their fest which is really hard to stomach. “George Clooney in Hazleton Lanes!” Gag me! But I did come across a story about one particular film screened at TIFF on a subject about which I have some interest. This is the breast cancer Pink Ribbon campaign.....Acclaimed Quebec filmmaker Léa Pool was commissioned by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) to make a film based in part on writings by noted feminists Barbara Ehrenreich (“We used to march in the streets; now we run for a cure”) and Samantha King. The two have long questioned what the film, Pink Ribbons Inc., describes as the poster child of cause-related marketing, with the ubiquitous pink ribbons in all manner of merchandising and even the colours worn by burly NFL football players. Yet, says the film, despite the fact pink ribbon campaigners maintain we are closer to a cure than ever, mortality rates have essentially not changed in 60 years.....Women, the movie says, “are the most influential market group, buying 80 per cent of consumer products and making most major household purchasing decisions. As they walk, shop, run, jump and race for the cure, corporations continue to boost their bottom line. Yet the money raised through all these efforts is unevenly allocated - treatment and cure are favoured over primary prevention, to the virtual exclusion of the latter”.....I find Pool a fascinating director and she has made numerous dramatic and documentary films. I caught her 1999 Emporte-Moi (Set Me Free) on late night TV several years ago and couldn’t turn it off, the depiction of working class family life in a 1960s Montreal flat was so realistic.....Said producer Ravida Din, who recruited Pool and who herself had been treated for breast cancer, “The question I was intrigued by was, ‘How did we get to this kind of breast cancer culture that privileges shopping (as a solution) as opposed to getting angry and asking for change?' ” (Picture from film courtesy NFB)

Hollywood continues misfiring

2011-09-08T16:21:00.001-04:00

Hollywood.com reports that attendance continues to slide for Hollywood movies this summer with a projection of 543 million tickets sold, the lowest number since 1997 when 540 million paid at the local cineplex. That’s now four consecutive summers with declining attendance. But revenue will be higher – projected at $4.38 billion domestically or one per cent - only because of increased ticket prices. .....A New York Times analysis of movie attendance showed that big name stars seem to be losing their appeal. Johnny Depp still attracted moviegoers in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. But Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks failed to garner audience for Larry Crowne. Jim Carrey also couldn’t pack them in for Mr. Popper’s Penguins. Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig didn’t stir the masses for Cowboys & Aliens.....Sure there were big hits but only a few such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, and some superhero movies such as Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor. Thank goodness. Because prior to these lighting up the silver screen box office attendance had been down 20 per cent for the first quarter.....Meanwhile, wonder why H’wood keeps making bland sequels like Kung Fu Panda 2 and Disney-Pixar’s Cars 2? It’s because of the international market. Those emerging countries' filmgoers like those in China and Russia don’t frequent the movies as much as N. American audiences and are therefore less jaundiced. Said Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino, “America used to set the course – if a movie disappointed here, then it was done. That’s simply not the case anymore. America is just another territory now.”.....The two biggest summer bombs were Cowboys & Aliens and Green Lantern losing at least $100 million.....Of popular movie themes crude comedies ruled the hot summer days and nights. These included Bridemaids, Bad Teacher, and Horrible Bosses. But the Change-Up – which had an opening scene of a baby defecating into Jason Bateman’s mouth (thanks guys!) lost about $12 million......And surprise, surprise, H’wood found out the hard way that when it makes sophisticated adult movies audiences will come out in droves. The Help has garnered $122 million and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (poster above) – a true delight – took in $53 mil.

Dearborn's Fordson figures in Arab-American experience

2011-09-01T14:29:00.000-04:00

I missed Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football and The American Dream at this year’s Traverse City Film Festival, though I did see some of the Fordson high schoolers with their football jerseys on at the awards’ ceremony. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to see it. The film is set at Dearborn’s Fordson high school, built by Henry Ford in 1922 and which is now almost 100 per cent Arab-American. The film has won several awards including at Traverse City and best documentary at the Detroit-Windsor Film Festival. Directed by Rashid Ghazi it follows Fordson’s football team as it prepares for a critical game against its crosstown rival during the last 10 days of Ramadan. The film looks at the players as they try to reconcile their Arabic roots with their role in present day American society. The movie is now being released widely in 11 AMC theatre markets including New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago on Sept. 9, just in time for the 10 year recognition of the 9/11 attacks. In this area it will be screened at the AMC Star Fairlane and AMC Star Southfield.

Two films of their times

2011-08-30T18:32:00.002-04:00

Two movies, both very much of their times, one of which is still ongoing. Loving (Irvin Kershner, 1970) stars George Segal (left) and Eva Marie Saint as husband and wife. They’re living the suburban commuting life in Westport, Conn. He’s a struggling commercial artist. She’s on the home front with two small children. Segal (Brooks Wilson) is a philanderer, having an affair with a gallery owner, Grace (Janice Young) in Manhattan, and is the sexual interest of Nelly (Nancie Phillips) the wife of his commuter buddy Will (David Doyle – John Bosley of Charlie’s Angels fame). The film, shot by Gordon Willis – well known as photographer on Woody Allen flics – has a remarkable sense of realism, with an outstanding performance by Segal whose character is frustrated by his marriage and work and who cannot relinquish his appetites for alcohol and women. This storyline is almost an update of that of the characters in TV’s Mad Men, only the story takes place at the end of the Swinging Sixties, culturally long after the conformist era captured by the television show though chronologically only several years apart. The film’s next-to-final scene is an extraordinary voyeuristic moment - one of the most embarrassing to which characters are subjected in any film I’ve seen - leading to the final resolution, which may be no resolution at all.....The other movie is Henry Jaglom’s 1992 Venice/Venice. I’ve long been a fan of Jaglom (above right), as quintessential a “modern” director as Robert Altman, and whose films with ensemble casts have the same documentary feel. They deal with the post-1960s Me Generation zeitgeist, marked by affluent characters’ introspection and neuroses. Both directors’ films are more complex than that of course. And in Jaglom’s case it’s his focus on women that really defines what they are all about. Jaglom is fascinated by women. Yes, he is physically attracted to them but he’s also absorbed by their psychologies. He finds them more interesting than one-dimensional men because they’re more open, honest and straightforward about what they’re thinking, their attitudes towards men and to the world at large. Films like Someone to Love, Babyfever, Eating, and Last Summer in the Hamptons are good examples of this viewpoint. But so is Venice/Venice – half shot in the Italian city, half in the Los Angles seaside neighbourhood. The film opens at the Venice (Italy) film festival and seems like a documentary as Jaglom plays a director fielding press interviews. But he is not really Jaglom but a director named Dean, though he is for all intents and purposes Jaglom, right down to Jaglom’s trademark hat. Nelly Alard is the French journalist Jeanne with whom he has an affair in this most romantic of cities. She is a modern Mona Lisa, an inscrutable woman who is at turns intrigued and disillusioned by the director. Alard's acting has been mainly confined to French films though she was in Jaglom’s Eating (1990). Too bad we have not been able to see more of her because she is indeed a real find. (photos: Segal - librarising.com; Jaglom - informedinvestor.ic24.net)

Sympathy for Jean-Luc Godard

2011-08-22T14:22:00.000-04:00

Watching Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for the Devil (1970) on the weekend was like being hurtled back in time to the late 1960s when protest was all the rage and revolution definitely was in the air. Godard, the most famous of the French New Wave directors - and who became increasingly political (read Marxist or even Maoist) in his leanings as a kind of agent provocateur of the arts – made this movie about the Rolling Stones and combined it with some sort of treatise about Black Liberation, the Vietnam War and American imperialism, all the radical touchstones of the day.....The centerpiece, though, is shots of the Stones rehearsing and then recording Sympathy for the Devil, one of their most famous songs. Interspersed are cuts to scenes mainly of a junkyard along the Thames River with a group of Black nationalists spouting revolutionary slogans and eventually kidnapping three white women and murdering them. Meanwhile a trendy Carnaby Street belle is running around London spraying graffiti on walls and cars.....I’m not much into supporting graffiti (see my July 3 post about Banksy and Exit Through the Gift Shop) so of course I took disfavour to these images. But I must admit one in particular was funny, that of spray painting the letters S-O in front of V-I-E-T-C-O-N-G. Get it? The Soviets were supporting the Viet Cong. Of course the anti war Left (of which Godard was a member) would never have deliberately made this connection because the war was always portrayed as a civil war with the Viet Cong being the good guys, so it seemed Godard was unintentionally (or maybe not) undermining the Communist world’s own form of imperialism.....In any case, these images of revolutionaries along the streets of London were rather boring, though I’m sure at the time they must have provided a certain frisson to the audience. The best parts of the film were of the Stones actually recording. You felt almost like you were in the studio as they slowly revved-up the tempo of Sympathy, took smoke breaks, and yakked casually among one another, oblivious to Godard’s camera.....Having just read Keith Richards’s autobiography Life, it’s quite amusing to watch the film. Richards describes Godard as an “odd personage,” ”Nobody, I think has ever quite honestly been able to figure out what the hell he was aiming at,” “I couldn’t believe it; he looked like a French bank clerk,” “The film was a total load of crap,” “I think somebody slipped him some acid and he went into that phony year of ideological overdrive”..... To top it all it appears Godard wasn’t much of a rock and roll fan. The movie’s ending credits spell Richards’s name incorrectly, as “Richard” not “Richards.”

Meanwhile, I also watched Rabbit Hole (John Mitchell Cameron, 2010) starring Aaron Eckart and Nicole Kidman. I don’t think I’ve seen Kidman in a less glamorous role. She played a wan, angst-ridden suburban housewife recovering from the death of her child. Sure, her bleached-out look might have just been designed for the role. Perhaps it’s just me but, at 44, is she starting to lose her looks?

Boo hoo. No Montreal this year

2011-08-16T15:18:00.000-04:00

Normally at this time of year I get excited because it would only be just over a week or so before the Montreal World Film Festival begins. It has been my go-to festival every year since it started - way, way back in 1977 (when Talkies, I know, were in their infancy). I’ve only missed about four editions of the festival. But this year I’m not going. There are several reasons. One is because I spent a considerable part of last year in Montreal for family reasons – going back and forth - and feel a bit exhausted. But the main reason is because the festival has changed its dates. For decades the festival has always run from the second last Thursday in August through to the night of Labour Day. But for some reason those dates were changed this year. The festival has been moved forward a week, starting August 18 through 28th. Unfortunately the altered dates interfere with my freelance work assignments; the middle two weeks of the month is a time I’m extremely busy……But it’s puzzling why the dates were changed. So I wrote the festival and received this reply: “The dates of the Festival changed this year in memory of the first Montreal World Film Festival which took place 35 years ago. As this year is the 35th anniversary of the Festival, we just wanted to remember that. So nothing will be sure for next year. Dates can change again, we don`t know yet if it can be permanent or not. We are sorry for the inconvenience it can cause.”…..This reason seems a little puzzling if not entirely credible. As a Montreal friend who closely follows the Quebec film scene said, if the festival really wanted to commemorate its 35th anniversary why not hold a retrospective of selected films from all the years of the fest or a section showing award winners. Moving the dates back seems a little odd and certainly could throw a loop into plans of regular festival-goers who have become used to the later summer time slot punctuated by the long weekend. Also notice that the reply indicated the dates might change permanently…..It has also been suggested to me that the festival may have changed its dates because its schedule conflicted too closely with the Toronto International Film Festival in early September and the Venice Intl Film festival Aug 31–Sept 10. Other reasons could be that the festival simply can’t afford to hold a longer schedule. The fest has also been cut by one day. By eliminating films on Labour Day weekend it might not have to pay higher rent for commercial cinema space. Or the commercial cinema might have upped the rent on what otherwise would be a big box office weekend for the non-festival going public. The Montreal Gazette on Saturday, in a feature on this year’s event, quoted festival general director Danièle Cauchard saying “we’re still underfinanced” despite obtaining more government funding after it was withdrawn several years ago.....I wish the festival luck and will miss not being at it. Although barely known in this part of the world it is significant. With more than 380 films from 70 countries it’s on the scale of Toronto though not with the prestige, generated partly by Toronto’s star-studded and Hollywood focus……

My Traverse City faves

2011-08-08T16:22:00.002-04:00

One of the most enjoyable films at the Traverse City Film Festival wasn’t a major commercial film at all. It was an eight-minute promotional film for the festival. It’s called Lip Dub. The film by FishSoup Films is one continuous shot with a cast of hundreds of local residents who took part in what seems a spontaneous undertaking. Of course it wasn’t. But the film is great and everybody in it seemed to play their part well. The film starts at the downtown State Theatre and moves outside along Front Street, the main drag. It winds through the downtown with individuals and groups – some dressed in costumes – entering and exiting the frame, singing, dancing or re-enacting segments of the two songs in the soundtrack – Paul Simon’s If You Be My Bodyguard, followed by Van Halen’s Jump. Watch it at http://www.facebook.com/pages/FishSoup-Films/113298592435 .....Meanwhile, in terms of the scheduled feature films I saw over the mere three days I was there, Richard Press’s 2010 Bill Cunningham New York impressed the most. The documentary follow octogenarian New York Times Style photographer Bill Cunningham on his daily bicycle rides around Manhattan. For decades Cunningham has made a living photographing what ordinary people wear. But this being New York street fashions can often dictate what the next designer trends (ripped jeans?) will be. The eccentric Cunningham – who lives in a hovel of an apartment in Carnegie Hall – is as an enthusiastic reporter of fashion at his advanced age as he always was.....Next up was Young Goethe in Love (Philipp Stölzl, 2010) about the early life of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of Germany’s historical literary titans and the writer of Faust. It shows how Goethe’s first and perhaps most famous book The Sorrows of Young Werther came to be. An historical film it’s anything but stereotypically solemn. Rather, it’s enriched by a vein of humour that captures a kind of everyday reality of what Goethe’s young life, when he was an unknown and had prematurely given up being a writer, could have been like.....Another film set in Germany was One, Two, Three. But this by classic Hollywood director Billy Wilder was a hilarious screwball comedy. I’m surprised I never heard of it before. It stars James Cagney as manager of the Coca Cola West Berlin bottling plant at the height of the Cold War. Not only does the film have constant one-liners but politics are the underlying theme, presented in a hilarious light with Capitalism versus Communism centre stage. Also remarkable is what was filmed. The movie was made just before the Berlin Wall went up when there was still easy access to East Berlin. One, Two, Three shows the two Berlins which, especially in the East, still looked as if World War II had ended the day before. For screwball comedy enthusiasts and Cold War historians this film is a must. It’s much better than The Spy Who Came in from the Cold!.....Queen to Play from first time director Caroline Bottaro (2009 France-Belgium) was an impressive first directorial outing though it was a bit derivative in its story line of a wallflower finding her passion, in this case through the game of chess. The acclaimed French actress Sandrine Bonnaire was in the starring role. Kevin Kline, in his first French-speaking role, played her mentor as the reclusive intellectual Dr. Kroger. What was great about this presentation was that both Bottaro and Bonnaire were present and answered questions on stage after the film.....And finally, the best of a midnight program of short films was Yuri Lennon’s Landing on Alpha 46 (Anthony Vouardoux), which captures a certain reality of an astronaut in his cramped cockpit landing on a distant planet. One doesn’t know whether to take the film seriously, which seems the intent of the director of this 2010 German-Swiss co-production. But upon Yuri’s emerging on terra Alpha we’re treated to some very black German humour.

A few quibbles with Michael Moore

2011-08-04T19:19:00.004-04:00

Following to my post about the Mike’s Surprise event at the Traverse City Film Festival (below) and Michael Moore’s revelation of his new book Here Comes Trouble, I found much to relate to in his ensuing read from the book and related comments. We are both the same age (57), grew up with a Catholic education, listened to the same music, and were influenced by the politics of the time (i.e., the Vietnam War protests). We even were taken to the New York World’s Fair by family members in the mid-1960s!.....But I have some bones to pick with some of the things he said.....M. M. remarked that he came from a family where his mother was Republican and a grandparent quite influential in local Republican circles. He seemed to hold out some respect for the Republican Party of that era as opposed to the current edition of Republicans, suggesting they had more integrity in terms of their appeal to “conserve” things including presumably wanting smaller responsible government. But how does that differ, say, from the Tea Party wing of Republicanism, whose entire raison d’être is smaller and more accountable government mainly with respect to affordable public spending?.....Then, when speaking about some buddies and him wanting to avoid the Vietnam draft, he reads about how they attempted to use one of their parents’ boats to escape across the St. Clair River to Canada. He joked that they were “boat people.” But this was ironic, given that the outcome of the Vietnam War was the Communist domination of that Southeast Asian country and the creation of thousands of boat people who fled in fear for their lives. Much of the anti-war movement at the time – and presumably or perhaps Moore – were sympathetic to the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, which took over the United States’ ally South Vietnam.....From the same chapter Moore mentioned that one of his friends was Mexican, with a knowing emphasis to the fact that expatriate Mexicans living in the United States (“undocumented aliens” or “illegal immigrants”) is a huge political issue today. He just left this thought hanging while the audience laughed. Nothing wrong with that. But it would be interesting to see him in a debate on the subject presumably defending these “undocumented” aliens. ...And finally, he talked about his role as a filmmaker and political activist in removing a couple of Republican politicians and the wider liberal/Left’s victory in electing Barack Obama in 2008. Yet what has Obama really done that has been different from the despised George W. Bush before him? The only major policy item that I can see that Obama initiated was a greater role for public health. Yet even on this issue his political base thinks it was half a loaf. Moreover Obama has been denounced by many of his supporters for continuing the previous president’s policies - from keeping open Guantanamo to continuing the “War on Terror.” I’d like to have known how M. M. really felt about this.

Canada figures in "Mike's Surprise"

2011-08-02T15:49:00.001-04:00

It was called “Mike’s Surprise” and it’s an event for which tickets are quickly sold out at the Traverse City Film Festival. Mike being Michael Moore, the fest’s founder. Usually in "Mike’s Surprise" Moore reveals a set of films or information about a documentary he’s working on. But this past Saturday, at the fest’s seventh edition, he told another rapt audience that for “those expecting to see the next movie I’ll give you a few seconds to leave.” Instead what we were treated to was his new book, Here Comes Trouble. We were the first members of the public to hear about it and indeed, for the next two hours, hear him read excerpts from it.....The giveaway about his book might have been the big picture on the screen behind an easy chair and lamp where he was to read. The screen showed a picture of a very young Mike on his tricycle circa 1955 riding down the sidewalk of the main street of Davison, a suburb of his home town Flint, Michigan. When Moore came on to the stage the picture was overlaid with the book’s title, showing that in fact this is the new book’s cover. The book went to press last week.....This is Moore’s eighth book but the first to be one of short stories about incidents in his life going back to childhood. He read from four chapters......One of them had a lot about Canada in it. It was an hilarious recounting of an attempt by a few of his friends and himself to avoid the US military draft during the waning days of the Vietnam War by escaping to Canada as conscientious objectors. The foursome took a parent’s boat to the St. Clair River near Port Huron in an attempt to sail as “boat people” across it. But they discovered the boat didn’t have a motor. So Mike suggested they row across – “it’s only 200 feet of river!” The only problem: no oars. So the foursome retreated to White Castle for sliders, smoked a “king size” doobie, and decided to drive across the Blue Water Bridge. There they encountered a Canadian border official, “who looked like a Mountie but was not.” The official suggested they looked high on drugs. They replied, “We are not high sir we are just happy to be here in Canada.” The official suggested a cavity search, sardonically adding that that would be just what US Customs would do. The boys, alarmed, caught on to the joke, and realized they were just the butt of that Canadian “warped sense of humour.” Moore said he knew this humour well from watching Channel 9 in Windsor. “They needed that warped sense of humour to counter all those awful beaver and moose documentaries”.....In another story Moore read of being taken to Washington DC by his mom, a Republican, in the mid-1960s. He got lost in the Capitol building and ended up in an elevator with Senator Robert Kennedy. Kennedy took him in hand and waited with him, despite important senate business, until his mother found him. Moore and his mom then went on to watch the Senate pass the Medicare bill. “It was so cool to be a witness to that,” he said.

Traverse City's organization impressive

2011-08-01T22:23:00.002-04:00

The Traverse City Film Festival was great. I was able to catch the last three days of it. What was amazing was the degree of community participation. There were upwards of 1500 volunteers for a city with a metropolitan population of just over 140,000. All the volunteers I saw were eminently helpful and friendly. In fact they went out of their way. For example, when I arrived to collect media credentials and a volunteer did not have them at her disposal she quickly phoned the festival office. Five minutes later two smiling interns arrived having walked (it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had run) from two or three blocks away with my media kit and tickets.....This is not just the friendliest festival I’ve attended but it’s also one that seems the most well thought out. For example, screens in auditoriums are placed high so that even in traditional theatres with relatively flat floors few audience members had obstructed views because someone tall was sitting in front of them. There was also on-screen notices informing ticket holders to be quiet when leaving theatres at night in residential neighbourhoods so as not to disturb area residents. Volunteers also passed out blue festival umbrellas for temporary use for ticket holders as they were waited in line under a blistering summer sun. Staff even made it easy to clean up after yourself when movies were over. You didn’t have to put your plastic bottles in a recycling bin though there were plenty of them. You just had to place garbage on a table outside the theatre and staff would collect and dispose of it. The bus shuttle system also seemed efficient though we didn’t make use of it. All the theatres are clustered in the relatively small downtown - and therefore easily walkable from one to the other - with the exception of Milliken Auditorium at Northwestern Michigan College on the city's eastern outskirts.....In fact the festival was so good naturedly friendly it made you feel it would be rude to not respond in kind. Now that’s what human relations should be all about!.....More on the TCFF tomorrow including festival founder and movie director Michael Moore’s “surprise.”

Traverse City: my picks & more

2011-07-24T18:42:00.003-04:00

I’m surprised by how quickly films have been selling out at the Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF). By early last week there were already a substantial number of screenings sold out. And a tally today found more than 65 sell outs of the more than 175 screenings (some repeats) in the festival that opens tomorrow and runs until Sunday. This seems to be Michigan’s film fest alright! Perhaps I could venture to say it’s also Detroit’s film festival as southeastern Michigan doesn’t have a mainstream festival of this type. So let's all head north! (or "Up North" in the Michigan colloquial).....In any case, this isn’t necessarily a criticism. But there are few premiers at the TCFF. Rather this a collection of mostly recently made films many of which have been screened at art houses over the past 12 months. These include the Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier), Made in Dagenham (Nigel Cole), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog), Incendies (Denis Villeneuve), Bill Cunningham New York (Richard Press). The Trip (Michael Winterbottom), In a Better World (Susanne Bier) – well, you get the idea. But the festival’s original aim is “to bring often-undistributed national and international films to film lovers”..... There will in fact be world premieres of Habanastation (Ian Padron) and Brothers on the Line (Sasha Reuther) and there are a smattering of Michigan and “Midwest” premieres.....Several classics have been thrown into the mix including To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962), Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936) and The Front (Martin Ritt, 1976).....Here are my festival picks: Young Goethe in Love (Philipp Stölz, 2010), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog 2010), The Swell Season (Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, Carlo Mirabella-Davis 2011), All Good Things (Andrew Jarecki 2010), The Women on the 6th Floor (Philippe Le Guay 2010), Project Nim (James Marsh 2011), Romantics Anonymous (Jean-Pierre Améris 2010),
Queen to Play (Caroline Bottaro 2009), My Piece of the Pie (Cédric Klapisch 2011).....And several documentaries warrant attention: Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
(Mary Murphy 2010), An Encounter with Simone Weil (Julia Haslett 2010), PressPausePlay (David Dworsky, Victor Köhler 2011) and Visionaries (Chuck Workman 2010).....For more details on these films as well as assorted general info and – if you're thinking of attending – to purchase tickets go to www.traversecityfilmfest.org

Traverse City announces films

2011-07-18T17:47:00.001-04:00

The seventh annual Traverse City Film Festival has announced its list of films, and it looks wide-ranging with a strong mix of domestic, foreign, classic, documentaries, shorts and animations. This will be my first visit to the festival running July 26 - 31 in Michigan’s vacation heartland the beautiful Traverse City and environs.....There will be a solid 150 films screened, the most ever. New this year is an experimental film venue in the Dutmers Theatre. This will also be the first of five TC festivals in which a 100-year-old film will be shown, an Italian feature L’Inferno (1911) based on Dante’s Divine Comedy. There will be a special tribute to Roy Rogers who would have turned 100 years old this year. Some of his family have been invited and two of his classics Under Western Stars and Don’t Fence Me In will be screened.....This fest is Michigan native and filmmaker Michael Moore’s baby so expect some degree of films veering to the political. Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi will be honorary chair and perhaps his most famous film The White Balloon will be screened. Panahi is under house arrest in Iran so couldn’t attend Traverse City......This is the silver anniversary of the Great Flint Sit Down Strike and there will be tributes including the documentary Brothers on the Line about the Reuther Brothers and the UAW. And organizers have literally doubled the outdoor screen in the Open Space to 100 feet (about ten stories high and wide) where there will be free nightly screenings on Grand Traverse Bay and up to 15,000 can attend. I can’t think of a better outdoor location - talk about starry nights in more ways than one. The screenings include a rare outdoor showing of George Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back.....Otherwise there are five theatres and a shuttle bus system to carry you from one to another.....The entire event looks like a well-oiled logistical machine located in a great vacation city and served-up in a general feel good atmosphere. I can’t wait to attend if only for a few days.....I’ll have more about the festival in coming days. Meanwhile check out TCFF’s web site www.traversecityfilmfest.org

Winterbottom, Spacey, Kelly, and a rat

2011-07-11T18:25:00.000-04:00

I’m dying to see The Trip (at Landmark’s Main), Michael Winterbottom’s new project with some of his favourite actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, both of Winterbottom’s 2002 24 Hour Party People. That film was about the making of Manchester England’s Factory Records in the late 1970s and the famed post-punk group Joy Division (which became New Order) and its timeless single Love Will Tear Us Apart. Winterbottom’s new film The Trip looks for all the world like a British version of Sideways, Alexander Payne’s 2004 delightful but tart road movie with Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. Only this time the back roads of the U. K. are pursued by these two lost lads on their gastronomic journey. Winterbottom himself is a highly versatile director, with a catalogue of films ranging from A Mighty Heart – about the death of American journalist Daniel Pearl at the hands of Al-Qaeda - to In This World, about Pakistani refugees escaping to England. When you consider these films – and numerous others - they are often of vastly different themes and story lines – from the sober and poignant to the uproariously funny.

Meanwhile, is Kevin Spacey starting to look like Jack Lemmon? Publicity stills for his new flic Horrible Bosses (Seth Gordon) could almost fool you into thinking you are looking at the great Lemmon, who died in 2001. And, by the way, I’m waiting for the sequel to this film, Horrible Employees, though it will never get made, if you get my drift.

I know it’s Toronto and all. But whenever I see an article about someone trying to rescue an old repertory cinema it makes me hope that this once highly popular way of seeing independent and classic movies will still be around for some time to come. Of course Windsor had the venerable and lamented Windsor Film Theatre, which lasted about a decade during the 1990s, on Wynadotte St. West. But in Toronto the Bloor Cinema in the Annex has recently been given new life. It will be managed by the group that puts on the city’s annual Hot Docs festival. The theatre will continue to host the Jewish Film Festival and the After Dark Film Festival. But most of its screenings will now be documentaries.

If you are truly in love with Grace Kelly, as I am, then you will want to go to Toronto this fall for another reason. The city’s fabulous TIFF Bell Lightbox will present an exclusive look at Kelly the star Nov. 4 – 22. (http://tiff.net/tiffbelllightbox). Kelly was probably best known for her films with Alfred Hitchcock, which will also be shown in a new series there called Icy Fire: The Hitchcock Blonde.

The Windsor International Film Festival has put its monthly screenings on hiatus of late. But come back in August when three movies will be shown at the Capitol Theatre, a triple-header, if you will, on Saturday August 6. The first at 2 pm is Ratatouille (Brad Bird & Jan Pinkava, 2007) an animation about a rat with culinary ambitions. Next at 5 pm is Grown in Detroit (Manfred & Mascha Poppenk, 2009) about teen moms in Detroit becoming urban farmers. And then at 7 pm the documentary Kings of Pastry (D.A. Pennebaker & Chris Hegedus, 2009), which I caught last year at the Montreal International Documentary Festival, will be screened. It’s about an extraordinarily tense three-day competition to win recognition as France’s top pastry chef. Engrossing and heart-rending when you see the chances these chefs – at the top of their games – take with their amazingly intricate creations.

Biggest enabler movie in some time

2011-07-03T14:29:00.002-04:00

Anyone who knows me knows I’m interested in art. But not graffiti. Or as it’s called in this movie, street art. Yes, I’m aware of the fine distinctions. Or so they say. To me, it’s all graffiti, illegal and immoral. When the opening credits first began in this film, Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010), accompanied by scenes of graffiti "artists” vandalizing the sides of buildings, public transit cars, freeway overpasses, etc. – all to the sound (quite lovely if its topic wasn’t so vile) of Richard Hawley’s Tonight the Streets Are Ours – I was ready to switch it off. So this is what the “Banksy” movie was all about. Banksy is a notorious graffiti scrawler (oh, excuse me, artist) who is notorious for remaining anonymous and manages to do so even in this film, wearing a hoodie (what else?) with his voice electronically modified.....But I decided to watch it if only as a piece of sociology about the corrupt era in which we live. And, of course, to write a scathing review.....The film is really about French immigrant Thierry Guetta. Guetta, who ran a vintage clothing store in LA, developed an obsession with videotaping virtually everything around him. He eventually discovers street "artists" and is consumed by their images and the exciting “danger” in which they place themselves – perched high atop buildings, working in the middle of the night, fleeing from police. Through a cousin and graffiti-maker named Invader he meets Shepard Fairey, designer of Barack Obama's 2008 election poster. So, now it can be told, Obama’s iconic image (above) was done by a graffiti artist who spray paints on private and public property. That’s a pretty low level of “hope and change” to aim for.....But Thierry’s ultimate goal is meeting the Big Kuhana himself, Banksy, a self-described "art terrorist”.....So obsessed does Thierry eventually become with graffiti that he decides to engage in it himself. And he has remarkable success. He stages a mammoth exhibition in Hollywood and attracts thousands in what would become possibly the "art" happening of the decade. Thierry’s "art" – twists mostly on existing iconic pop culture images like Warhol, Madonna, Elvis and the Beatles – draws incredible enthusiasm and he comes out of it selling $1 million of the stuff. His legacy now seems firmly in place.....Artists metaphorically have sometimes been referred to as outlaws because their visions challenge existing images, indeed ways of looking at the world. But in the case of those portrayed in this film they really are outlaws. And the picture – nominated for Oscar as Best Documentary Feature – is simply an enabler.

Doc chronicles NY Times' angst

2011-06-28T15:05:00.002-04:00

Page One by Andrew Rossi takes us inside the contemporary world of The New York Times. And by contemporary I mean that in the widest sense. Not only is this documentary (opening July 1 at the Main) a rare peek inside the Times’ fortress. It examines the world’s most famous newspaper from the perspective of the onslaught of digital media challenging traditional newspapers, of which hundreds have closed over the past few years during the recession. In fact the photo on this film’s poster (above left) at first looked to me like a graph of the Times' company stock in decline. But when I looked more closely I found it is actually the red stairwell of the Times’ spanking new building, which ironically opened just before the paper began its precipitous financial decline bleeding tons of red (sorry) ink. In the past couple of years the price of the Sunday New York Times was actually more expensive than one of the company’s shares.....Throughout the film people both within and outside the industry speak almost in disbelief at the prospect of the storied newspaper possibly folding, only later to be rescued – with conditions - by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.....The film is fascinating for anybody who’s a newspaper junkie. Simply having an inside look at the mother of all newspapers is a rush. But it’s especially poignant given the Times’ recent distress and becomes a wider examination of the forces that are roiling the newspaper business in the online era, where Twitter updates news constantly and sites like Craigslist have devoured former newspaper classified ads.....The Times has gained some solid footing of late, thanks to Slim, as well as its astute embrace of a digital platform (one person praises the Times’ extraordinary-looking website) and the start this year of charging for online views. The Times has been put through a wringer and the film captures a lot of that, including the tearful farewells of laid off staff. And there are interviews with competing digital media who are trying to eat the Times’ breakfast, such as Gawker or The Huffington Post. The Times may be financially down but its news acumen sharp as ever, continuing to break myriad stories and be the bulletin board to which other media look for their own leads.....Much of Page One is filmed around a small group of writers and editors including media reporter David Carr, a former cocaine addict who worked himself up the newspaper ranks to a plum Times job and who ironically is chronicling the changes convulsing his world. “The messages are the media,” he says as a rejoinder to Marshall McLuhan’s famous statement.

The drawbacks of movie cheap night

2011-06-22T12:59:00.002-04:00

It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a movie on cheap night. I think the last time was to see As Good as It Gets (James L. Brooks, 1997) starring Jack Nicholson. Nah! Couldn’t have been that long ago – could it? In any case, I remember being squished in among a packed auditorium with the kind of crowd I seldom experience on other theatre nights. In other words a crowd that yakked, belched, threw popcorn at one another (reminding me of attending Saturday afternoon movies as a kid) and who were generally rude and boorish.....I took myself to see Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s latest, last night. I wasn’t expecting a packed house for a Woody Allen film, at least in Windsor. Boy, was I wrong. When I arrived at the theatre for the 6.50 screening the only seats that remained were in the several front rows immediately below the aisle and in front of the screen, and two seats in the upper level. (This was admittedly one of Silver City’s smaller rooms.) I asked the usher to show me those seats, and I ended up with one at the very center of the top row. Which was great. However, on both sides of me were couples that a) seemed only there because it was cheap night and it was an eeny- meeny-miny-moe pick b) weren’t very familiar with Woody Allen films, and c) didn’t have much sense of courtesy to filmgoers around them as they talked throughout the movie. You know the kind of things people say such as explaining aloud to their seat mate something in the film that is obvious (“oh, here comes that car again!” or “oh, is he going to get in trouble now!”).....This was a delightful movie, with a story I wasn’t at all expecting. But, at the end of it, a couple in front of me got up and one said to the other, ”We should have gone to so-and-so’s place after all”.....On cheap nights the theatre fills with people who wouldn’t normally go to an Allen film. In a word, Philistines, who didn’t seem to catch the drift of a lot of the artistic or intellectual references in the movie.....A couple of other things. On cheap night the theatre lobby is packed, with line ups even at the self-ticketing kiosks, which don’t seem to work all that well anyway. For example, the kiosk I used wouldn’t accept my Cineplex Scene point card. And when it finally allowed my purchase it spat out a credit card receipt but no ticket. (See receipt picture above.) I almost wasn’t going to be allowed into the theatre save for a kind supervisor who took a look at the receipt and waved me through. Note to self: next time buy online....Another thing about cheap night. With all these people attending to save a few bucks off a regular ticket they sure liked loading up on pricey concession items. Go figure.....Finally, cheap night ain’t so cheap anymore. I paid $7.25, thinking I would only be charged about $4.50. Yes, maybe the last time I did go to cheap night was in 1997!

Film probes youthful Obama idolatry

2011-06-17T18:09:00.002-04:00

A film that raises questions about the kind of youthful idolotry that helped elect Barack Obama will kick off this year’s edition of the Detroit Windsor International Film Festival (June 22 – 26, www.dwiff.org) The screening is by Mexican director Gerardo Del Castillo Ramirez now residing in Barcelona.....The film is called 1/20 which is the date of Obama’s inauguration. In a trailer the film blares a headline saying, “On 9/11 a Part of America Died. But on 1/20 it was Reborn.” Or so a lot of people – including those featured in the film – thought. “It is the 1/20 generation,” the director says.....The film takes both a sympathetic and critical look at youth’s desire to elect Obama and bring about “Hope and Change” after the unpopularity of the Bush administration. It’s based on a script by Matthew Roth. Though a Mexican living in Spain Ramirez says youth across many nations were swept up in the Obama euphoria. “I never see people adopt a flag so quickly like Obama´s,” he told WDF.....The film’s scenes depict characters who are extremely idealistic with others who scoff that promises – not just Obama’s but any politician’s – are illusory. ”Nobody knows anything about him,” one character says. Another proclaims, “Free health care for all!” Another headline blares: “The 1/20 Generation Has Run Away from its Teachers. But Where will it Run to?”.....Ramirez says it’s usually ”easy to convince” people with political promises but in the case of Obama he did not even “promise a lot actually” especially compared to other historical figures.....Ramirez acknowledged Americans wanted to see “a light for ending the world’s bad, I don’t understand very well why, not because I believe that some other politician was better, not at all, I’m talking about how the American people build its icons”.....Even In Barcelona, he said, youth “supported Obama more than so many local politicians, I just don’t understand, maybe they have so many TV or Play Station hours”.....The film's first screening is June 23 at 7 pm.

My introduction to experimental films

2011-06-06T18:33:00.002-04:00

I’m not an experimental film festival guy. Short films looking at patterns in water tend to provide the nap I should have taken earlier in the day. But this year I went to an experimental film festival, if only for one night. I was at Windsor’s Media City now in its 17th year (see May 15 post below)....There were two programs. One was of the films of British director William Raban (who of course I had never heard of), the other of several international films......Raban is a resident of East London, home of Canary Wharf, the huge financial district built by Canada’s Reichmanns. Raban, a left wing filmmaker, depicts that development in the 1990s in several films including Sundial (where the mammoth central office tower serves that purpose), A 13 (about the local expressway that winds through the district), Island Race (a political take on the fight between Right and Left in a local election) and MM (about the nearby and controversial Millennium Dome).....Raban was in the audience and described the building of Canary Wharf as a kind of fitting end to the capitalism-on-steroids Thatcher era. The films varied from one to 28 minutes. Sundial, A13 and MM all had a sinister feel as if the architecture was brutal and a symbol of political policies.....But my favourite Raban film was something quite different. Called Beating the Bridges it was about a boat ride from the far west side of London to the east side travelling under the 30 bridges that span the Thames River. There was something poetic in these images taken of the underside of often beautifully designed Victorian bridges with a soundtrack by percussionist Paul Burwell.....I found the international program more interesting. And the most interesting was the kind of film I would have sworn never to see. It was one continual shot for 23.5 minutes of two mountain peaks as night broke to dawn with only occasional subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The subtitles were of a conversation by people obviously dispossessed, some brutally. But where was this? At first I thought of Central America. But no, it was of Turkey’s Mt. Ararat (where Noah’s Ark was said to have come to rest) and the more modern day conflict that forged the Armenian nation. The film is called Relocation by Belgium director Pieter Geenen.....Another fascinating film, of similar political content, was John Smith’s (British) Flag Mountain (picture above). Only eight minutes in length it was shot from the rooftops of Cyprus’s Greek Cypriot community looking north across the divided city of Nicosia to the Muslim Turkish Republic. A mosque is in the foreground. But what was amazing was a mountain behind with a gigantic Turkish Cypriot flag and which lights up like a neon advertising sign at night. Talk about rubbing one nation’s politics in another’s face.

Why do mediocre foreign films get distributed?

2011-06-01T14:25:00.003-04:00

After watching The Double Hour (Giuseppe Capotondi) at the Main last weekend I had the same feeling I’ve had on occasion after leaving the Detroit Film Theatre (DFT) – are there not better foreign flics available for international distribution? The Double Hour by first time Italian director Capotondi is competently enough made in basically what amounts to a kind of Hitchcockian (though the director prefers to call it a revival of Eighties’ post-modern Italian cinema, of which I really can’t speak). The plot is about passion and allegiance and it throws us curves as characters Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport) and Guido’s (Filippo Timi) intense crime-shrouded relationship evolves. It’s a whodunit that blurs characters’ identities. I suppose this is inventive enough. But when you get right down to it, this is a mediocre crime movie with plot twists that manipulate the audience.....Given the lack of independent art house film screens in the Detroit area it makes me wonder why such lacklustre foreign films end up on the big screen. And it also makes me grateful I go to film festivals where I can actually see great foreign movies which, for some reason, seldom get released in North America......For example, here are just a few titles from last year’s Montreal film festival which haven’t ended up anywhere close to local cinemas: Roberto Garzelli’s The Sentiment of the Flesh (France) – about art students whose obsession with physical anatomy is a metaphor for emotional intimacy (sounds banal but it isn’t), Miss Mouche (Bernard Halut, Belgium) - about teen precociousness on the disastrous home front, Le Mariage à trois (Jacques Doillon, France) – a kind of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf among self-aborbed actors, The Cameramurderer (Robert Adrian Pejo, Austria/Switzerland/Hungary) - a thriller where a couple’s bucolic vacation is interrupted by disappearing children, and The Incite Mill (Hideo Nakata, Japan) about a group of people who volunteer to make big bucks in an experiment, one that keeps you quite on the edge of your seat.....All these films either offer considerable suspense, novelty in filmmaking, or an intriguing plot the likes of which we seldom see. And rather than walking away from a film with feelings of being had we’re exhilarated by what we’ve just seen.

L'Amour Fou shows St. Laurent as intellectual

2011-05-27T03:01:00.008-04:00

Okay, so now it kind of makes sense. Pierre Thoretton, director of the new documentary about the great fashion designer Yves St. Laurent, was a visual artist before he set his sights on film.
L’Amour Fou (which opens today at Landmark’s Maple theatre) in fact is Thoretton’s first documentary. And it’s a good one. But what comes across in L’Amour Fou more than anything else – more than St. Laurent’s ideas on fashion, more than St. Laurent’s love for his companion and business partner Pierre Bergé – is the vast, sumptuous and extraordinary collection of art that the couturier amassed between the 1950s and his death in 2008.
The collection in fact surely must be one of the greatest private collections of recent times - and the film spends an extended period dwelling on it. The collection in fact forms the backdrop of perhaps most of the movie’s scenes and is the framework (excuse the pun) that holds the movie together.
For example, among the film’s opening scenes are those at St. Laurent and Bergé’s homes in rooms surrounded by paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Goya, Brancusi, Degas, and Mondrian. Bergé, in the aftermath of St. Laurent’s death from brain cancer, says the art will have to be removed, giving a real sense that our most cherished possessions only can be temporary.
Throughout the film the director keeps returning to the abundant art whether at the couple’s two Paris homes, their villa in Marrakech, or chateau in Normandy. We see crews increasingly taking it down and packing it up.
When it’s not focussing on the art the film does make an attempt to chronicle St. Laurent’s evolution from assistant at Christian Dior fashion house in the 1950s to his and Bergé forming their own house. Then of course there is St. Laurent’s stunning success through the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
But again the film returns to the art, at last ending with its vast auction by Christie’s at Paris’s Grand Palais, a sale for the ages.
There’s nothing wrong with so much attention on the art collection. But this is a documentary first and foremost about St. Laurent as fashion iconoclast. Therefore the movie should present more detail about what drove his philosophy, indeed his attitude towards women that seemed to be at the centre of it.
Instead we get snippets. For example, St. Laurent wanted to get women out of restrictive clothing. “When people are comfortable in their clothes they are more happy,” he tells an English interviewer. St. Laurent also introduced pant suits including the famous Le Smoking tuxedo saying they allowed women to “assert” themselves. And he introduced ready-to-wear or prêt-à-porter clothing. But the film doesn’t have more to say.
Nevertheless, there’s a lot to like about this documentary.
You can probably even hate fashion and enjoy it. After all, the film is about a couple of intellectuals - St. Laurent and Bergé – who were also devotees of literature and philosophy, to the point of naming every room in their Normandy chateau after a Proust character.
The piano music score by Côme Aguiar is beautifully poignant.
L’Amour Fou captures something of the history of France over the past 50 years, from the May 1968 riots to the rise of the country’s first Socialist President Francois Mitterrand (whom St. Laurent endorsed), to the influence of the Third World on contemporary fashion and 1980s’ gay culture.
It shows that St. Laurent was very much of his time.

Film fest's 2011 website's films off by one year

2011-05-25T11:21:00.001-04:00

For the first time I will be attending the Traverse City Film Festival this July. It’s Michael Moore’s festival, the seventh annual. I fell in love with Traverse City on vacation last year and thought it would be great to combine another sun splashed weekend with the cool darkness of the cinema. Last week I started planning the event from the festival’s website www.traversecityfilmfest.com. I found a couple of dozen films to attend. I did notice that some of the films were dated from a year or two back. But these are independent films, and often obscure, so dates don’t always matter, right? I also thought it odd the festival was listing their films without having made an official announcement, at least one I had heard. But the films were all listed on a scrolled down page under the festival’s “2011” web site. A couple of days later I checked the site again and the list of films had vanished. Then I checked my list against this year’s calendar and found that the website’s dates had been off by one day. In fact they were last year’s! I doubt I’m the only one who got confused. And festival staff, probably realizing this, yanked the list on the weekend. Hey guys, if you’re going to have a website marked “2011” please make sure the content is up to date.

Film notes: Spurlock, Coppola, Maxwell

2011-05-24T14:31:00.003-04:00

I went to see Morgan Spurlock’s The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (at Landmark’s Main), a letdown after his 2004 Super Size Me. Super Size Me was innovative because, although everyone knows junk food is bad for you, Spurlock had the bravery (or stupidity, he might say) to consume nothing but McDonalds’ fare for an entire month and see what it would do to his body. The onscreen evidence is proof! The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is about brand placement and how the movie industry sells its soul putting advertising or product placement in scenes. Spurlock takes this to its ridiculous limit by having the film become chocked full of placements while he delivers a searing critique of corporate labels. Problem is, what he’s telling us is hardly revealing. Yes, there are a few laughs in the film and the story is enough to keep minimal viewer interest. But Spurlock provides no solution. Government grants?.....Just finished reading historical author Antonia Fraser’s memoir about life with husband and famous playwright Harold Pinter, who died in 2008. Fraser’s book Marie Antoinette was adapted for the screen by Sofia Coppola in her movie version (2006) starring Kirsten Dunst. It’s a dazzling film in terms of sets, costumes and depicting the sheer material sumptuousness of the 18th century French aristocratic class. But what was hilarious was Fraser’s description of when she and Pinter watched the film for the first time and almost fell out of their seats (her words) when they heard the movie’s rock music score.....And finally, as I watch – mostly chronologically – the early James Bond movies, I was surprised (I’m probably the last one to know) that the famous minor role of Bond’s secretary Miss Moneypenny was played by Lois Maxwell, a Canadian. She cemented the role in 14 Bond films from the first Dr. No (1962) to A View to a Kill (1985). Maxwell, who died in 2007, was a classmate of Roger Moore at the UK’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She eventually wrote a column for The Toronto Sun newspaper during some of her years as Moneypenny.

The big screen comes to Windsor

2011-05-17T17:11:00.000-04:00

Windsor is finally getting an IMAX theatre. Cineplex Entertainment will be converting one screen at the Silver City near Walker Rd. and Hwy. 401 to an IMAX room opening July 15. It will coincide with the premiere of the final instalment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.....Cineplex spokesman Kyle Moffatt says it will be the first IMAX in southwestern Ontario. Another reason for installing it here is because the city has been “very good to us” over the years with stronger than average attendance, he said....IMAX features a larger screen that accommodates peripheral vision, 3D, and is matched by enhanced audio.....But don’t expect adventure movies showing Mt. Everest or the Antarctic. Films coming to Windsor will be squarely tion-adventure genre. IMAX is making an increased effort to target 18-24 males, said IMAX’s Ann Sommerlath.....The theatre will be slightly smaller at 420 compared to 445 seats to allow “optimal viewing angles,” Moffatt said. The seats will be brand new.....Films will be priced $6 higher than conventional movies.

Meanwhile, screening the second night in a row is Just Because I Am, a documentary about youth and homophobia shot locally by Juan Javier Pescador and Gabrielle Pescador. It screens at Windsor's Walkerville Collegiate Auditorium at 8 pm tonight with an after party.....Says a new release: ”While experiencing the transformative energy of art and the empowering effects of self-affirmation, these youngsters also face aggravating homophobic reactions unleashed by their collective coming out in this traditionally conservative (USA-Canada) border city.”

Media City's 17th & a free shuttle

2011-05-15T15:40:00.001-04:00

Dutch artist Jaap Pieters will be on hand for the opening of this year’s edition of Media City, the largely Windsor-based and internationally-acclaimed film and video festival. Pieters’s The Eye on Amsterdam’s (left)films are shot on three-minute Super 8 reels. They're studied vignettes of unusual happenings and recurrences in everyday street scenes. The films screen at the DIA’s Detroit Film Theatre Tuesday May 24 at 8 pm.....After that, the festival reverts to Windsor’s Capitol Theatre, where the vast majority of the remaining more than 60 films (most well under half an hour in length) will be shown in various programs – with, say, five or six to a program or theme. This includes a regional filmmakers’ package.....The films of British director William Raban, who chronicles the evolution of working class East London including the Canary Wharf financial district – with a meditation on urban change - looks especially interesting.....The festival runs until May 28. Media City is remarkably inexpensive with a festival pass just $20.....To help Americans navigate to Canada’s Rose City a free shuttle will operate from designated stops in Detroit and Ann Arbor. You can book online.....For the experimental and cutting edge check out the 17th edition of Media City. Their web site is www.mediacityfilmfestival.com

Atlas Shrugged needs more coherence

2011-05-05T18:07:00.000-04:00

Okay, so what did I think of Atlas Shrugged (Paul Johansson), which is still screening in metro Detroit but has gotten very dismal reviews. Rotten Tomatoes’ accumulated critics’ score is 13 per cent. And even right-wing talk show host Michael Medved gave it muted praise.....My big criticism of the movie - based on Ayn Rand’s classic 1957 book - is that, if you did not know what the story was about, you were a bit lost. (It put my friend to sleep.) If you know the story, are a Rand fan, or simply like the movie’s message or adventure plot, it will engage you even though it has the look and feel of a made-for-TV movie and has a few phony computer-generated graphics, such as the depiction of rail baron Dagney Taggart’s high speed train.....The best thing about this film bar none is Taylor Schilling (above left) as Taggart. Just as Rand depicted her, she’s an assertive beauty, interested in developing the very best railroad using the very best steel for her outdated and sabotaged tracks. She's a true hero fighting a bevy of politicians, bureaucrats and weasel business types who seek to undermine her and steel magnate Hank Rearden’s (Grant Bowler, who is the second best thing about the movie) vision.....I was surprised that the screening I attended at the Birmingham 8 had as many people as it did. The audience seemed a cross section of the population. This is Part I of a three-part film, one that took decades make (see posts below)......Producer John Aglialoro says the remaining parts will still come out in 2012 and 2013 despite the negative reviews.....Due to the film's low budget marketing was primarily through talk radio and web sites. Originally scheduled for 50 screens public demand saw it end up on first 300 then more than 400 screens. It didn’t do too badly at the box office the first week - $1.6 mil and placing 14th overall. But ticket sales dropped dramatically after that.....If Parts II and III can be fine-tuned technically to match Schilling and Bowler’s performances, and a more coherent story line added, this film can be as good as Indiana Jones, and with much more of a message.....

Cinecitta' revived, Janus Films co-founder dies

2011-05-01T12:56:00.000-04:00

Things were down but not apparently out at Italy’s venerable Cinecitta' studio. This is an Italian national treasure which has been used by such directors as Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica and Bernardo Bertolucci. Government arts cuts had put the studio on the verge of having to sell some priceless props to stay in business. But the government eventually came through providing, not unlike Michigan’s tax breaks, 25 per cent of the money that foreign producers spend when making productions there. That made Cinecitta' more competitive with other European filmmaking capitals. Cinecitta' is a weird mix of private and public enterprise. But the funding was such it has revived the studio to the point where it is thinking of now expanding with a new sound stage, offices, hotel and restaurants. Perhaps little known is that the studio was created by Mussolini. Fascists loved art that glorified the country!

Meanwhile, in the I-had-no-idea department, the man who founded the art house distribution label, Janus Films, has died. Cyrus Harvey, 85, died April 14, in Connecticut. Harvey co-founded Janus in 1956. The business was an outgrowth of his Cambridge, Mass’s Brattle Theatre (which still exists in its hip intellectual glory). He and partner Bryant Haliday transformed what had been a live theatre to a cinema. Janus has distributed films by such luminaries as Bergman, Fellini and Kurosawa. Also fascinating is that Harvey and wife Rebecca started the Crabtree & Evelyn consumer soap products chain. This stemmed from their obsession with flowers and herbs. The Janus logo is of the Roman god who has two faces pointing in opposite directions. Why? Said Rebecca: “They named it that because they themselves were opposites. Bryant was gay and Catholic. Cy was straight and Jewish.”

Just caught Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler (who used to live in Canada though Scottish-born) in 2009’s The Ugly Truth. The flick is good for a few laughs about the war between the sexes. (Everyone says there is, right?) The story works because it plays on opposite stereotypes – Heigl as TV producer Abby Richter and Butler as Male Chauvinist Pig (do they still use that term?) Mike Chadway. Loveless Abby is looking for a modern sensitive man who among other things loves cats. Then she collides with caveman Mike whose cable access show The Ugly Truth, which purports to explain that all men are, at heart, simple, base creatures with really only lust on their minds. Apoplectic at first Abby eventually falls under Mike’s spell. Predictable – you bet. But the one-liners keep coming and Butler is hilarious. Butler himself is definitely worth a look. This ambitious, pick-him-up-by-his-own bootstraps, actor’s resume includes Tomorrow Never Dies, Attila and Wes Craven’s Dracula 2000, designed just for him.

Easy scapegoat for actor's cancellation

2011-04-20T15:34:00.001-04:00

It seems playwright Wajdi Mouawad (left) is a little miffed, to say the least, by the storm of opposition that greeted his decision to cast a convicted murderer from starring in his upcoming musical Des Femmes - based on three Sophocles tragedies - to be staged in Quebec and at the National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa.....Mouawad is the author of the play Incendies (Scorched), made into a successful film by Denis Villeneuve, and which was up for a foreign-language Oscar in February.....When opposition by women’s groups and others arose after Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde announced the appearance of French rock musician Bertrand Cantat in the production, Mouawad didn’t have anything to say. I thought that was a little strange - cat caught his tongue, was he seething?..... Cantat, you see, had murdered his girlfriend, rising French actress Marie Trintignant (daughter of legendary star Jean-Louis Trintignant) in 2003. He got out of a European jail early for good behaviour and Mouawad, a friend, hired him in part as a rehabilitation project. The play, Des Femmes, itself is described as challenging "our notions of justice, democracy, law and crime".....But the uproar, which caught theatre producers off guard (see post below), forced Cantat’s cancellation.....This week Mouawad finally broke his silence and, yes, he seems rather sulky. Mouawad, who is also the NAC’s French theatre artistic director, said that despite the fact Cantat would not appear the play indeed will feature his music. In fact, he said, the production will “radically draw attention to the absence” of Cantat......Mouawad went on to say he was prepared to debate the morality of hiring Cantat. But, strangely, he said that any debate had been shut down by Canadian politicians. That’s a reference to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Josée Verner, who said her government would make sure immigration laws would be fully applied to keep Cantat out of the country. Said a NAC news release: the production “cannot happen without taking into account recent events as well as declarations by certain political figures who are currently engaged in the national election, regarding the strict application, and as imposed on one of the artists featured in the production of the rules governing entry at the Canadian border. As such, the absence of this artist will be made felt throughout the production that will be unveiled on Canadian stages ? (sic) something that will attest to a unified show of support by the actors, creators and technicians involved in this artistic adventure towards one of their own.”.....In other words, take that opponents! Protesters, after all, had been enraged that Cantat's hiring trivialized violence against women......But what's really interesting is that Mouawad and the NAC (one and the same?) are singling out a federal politician. Mouawad called Verner's stance "political opportunism." But he makes no direct criticism of the grassroots' opposition. (Cantat will continue to star in productions outside Canada).....This seems rather convenient for Mouawad. To blame anyone else – I.e., women’s groups, members of which probably make up a good portion of the theatrical audience - would be politically incorrect. But it’s fair game to blame a Conservative government minister.....Mouawad, despite the praise garnered for his challenging play Incendies, has shown us what he is personally made of, and it's cowardice.

When art and human values clash

2011-04-15T14:04:00.000-04:00

A couple of posts ago I mentioned the upcoming screening of the film Incendies (Denis Villeneuve). The film is based on the play by Quebec playwright Wajdi Mouawad, and was up for best foreign language film at this year’s Oscars. The film has won general acclaim not least of all in its home country of Canada.....But there was a huge controversy in Montreal over the past couple of weeks surrounding Mouawad. You see, Mouawad is friends with a certain Bertrand Cantat, former lead singer of a group called Noir Désir. In 2003 Cantat beat to death his girlfriend the rising actress Marie Trintignant, daughter of famed French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant. Marie Trintignant had starred in several movies in the 1980s and 90s, at least one of which I probably saw at some place like the DFT. I remember watching the film starring this wonderful and gorgeous actress and thinking astonishingly, “this woman is no longer alive” because of the recent news that she had died as a result of blows from her hideous boyfriend.....Anyway, fast-forward to this year. Mouawad wanted to bring Cantat to Canada to star in a live theatrical rock adaptation of Sophocles’s tragedies. The news generated incredible opposition in Quebec where the first production was scheduled. Cantat had been sentenced to eight years in prison but was released in 2007 for good behaviour. When news of his starring role in the Canadian production was made public, this generated a public outcry. According to one report, “Theatregoers threatened to cancel subscriptions, women’s groups accused the theatre of trivializing domestic violence, and politicians vowed to slam the door on Mr. Cantat." So, facing overwhelming opposition it wasn’t long before Montreal’s Théâtre du Nouveau Monde announced that it was cancelling Cantat’s appearance. Nor will he perform in a second production at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre (NAC).....Mouawad has so far remained silent but may speak April 18 when he announces the NAC’s upcoming French-language program.....The public's anger caught the theatre company off guard. Said Lorraine Pintal, Théâtre du Nouveau Monde’s artistic director, “Never could I have imagined that the presence of Bertrand Cantat, as a musician on stage, was going to raise such a political, social and media debate”.....What strikes me as interesting about this whole affair is the clash between artistic and human values. Ironically, the very same values often championed by the liberal theatre community, such as the degradation of women, gave way to supposedly the higher calling of art. Perhaps a play could be written about that.

Atlas Shrugged scoring in Michigan

2011-04-12T18:27:00.000-04:00

The movie Atlas Shrugged (Paul Johansson) is fast becoming a huge breakout hit. For the producers of the classic good-versus-evil (capitalism-versus-the state) 1957 Ayn Rand novel, grassroots' demand has seen the movie go from a few dozen theatres nationwide for its April 15 release to almost 300. The movie’s website lets people participate in calling for the film to be screened in their communities. “Not near you yet? DEMAND Atlas to your town.” A month ago there were no screenings initially set for Michigan. Now the movie will open in 10 communities and 11 theatres. In the Detroit area Atlas Shrugged will be shown in Birmingham, Brighton, Novi, Livonia and Sterling Hts. The official website is www.atlasshruggedpart1.com/ where theatres are also listed. This film has been 40 years in the making, a story that perhaps could be made into a flic itself. Deals that could have seen Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Charlize Theron and Russell Crowe act in it fell through. Taylor Schilling plays Dagny Taggart, Grant Bowler as Henry ‘Hank’ Rearden. From all reports – and from the little known production and acting cast - the movie is a knockout: suspenseful and tags highly to the almost 1400-page epic book. And, this, by the way, is only part one of three.

Certified Copy is, well, certifiably good

2011-04-08T15:10:00.001-04:00

Of Landmark’s Theatres Detroit's current screenings I have seen only one Certified Copy, which was shown last fall at the Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF). This is a very good film and not least because it stars Juliette Binoche and William Shimell (one of UK’s leading operatic baritones). In the film Elle (Binoche), a foreigner, owns an art gallery in a Tuscan village. One day she attends a lecture by visiting academic James Miller (Shimell) who has just published a book about authenticity in art. This subject ends up becoming a metaphor for the film’s story as a whole. Enough said. Certified Copy is a fascinating movie which is intimate in a number of ways. The plot focuses essentially on a prolonged conversation as the two people - who appear attracted to one another - tour the Tuscan town and countryside, and the evolving (such as it is) relationship between this man and woman. This is Abbas Kiarostami’s first film made outside his native Iran and it’s a winner. The theme is highly Hitchcockian and, yes, Kafkaesque. It plays with identity, memory and it challenges the audience as much as the characters. At the Maple.

Upcoming at Landmark are two French Canadian films: Xavier Dolan’s Heartbeats (originally opening April 22, now April 29) and Denis Villeneuve's Incendies.....Dolan’s previous film – made when he was only 20 - was I Killed My Mother (2009), a story of generational identity and culture clash wrapped in a power play between a young homosexual and his mother. Dolan said the story is partly autobiographical. Now he is quickly back with Heartbeats, an official selection at Cannes and Toronto. The film is about an increasingly tense ménage-a-trois where the characters’ seeming reach outstrips (literally!) their grasp. Dolan stars in both films.....Further ahead on May 27 Incendies (Scorched), which was up for best foreign Oscar this year and won best Canadian film last year at Toronto, opens. The film takes the viewer from Canada (Quebec) to Lebanon and the Middle East conflict in an ancestral journey that packs an emotional wallop.

Of Davis, Coward, Malle and Moreau

2011-04-04T17:48:00.001-04:00

Nothing special. Just a mélange of images from the past couple of weeks of film watching...Of Bette Davis in a tight-fitting yet elegant dress – and her sardonic quips – in All About Eve (1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz). And a bejewelled very young Marilyn Monroe looking on....Any Wednesday (1966, Robert Ellis Miller) with Jason Robards, Dean Jones, Jane Fonda and Rosemary Murphy, a perfect 1960s (and by today’s standards politically incorrect and crude) farce about a Manhattan cheating executive (Robards as John Cleves) and no doubt an inspiration for the current TV hit Mad Men.....The monumental British war drama In Which We Serve (1942) co-directed by Noel Coward (who also stars fabulously as Capt. Kinross) and David Lean (his directorial debut) about life on ship and on the home front during the fearful early days on World War II when Britain was still pretty much on its own against the Nazi onslaught. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen actors depict fearful, war-weary yet brave servicemen more realistically.....Louis Malle’s first film Elevator to the Gallows (1958) with Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet, about two intertwined murders. Plot holes notwithstanding the film is suspenseful (with a soundtrack by Miles Davis) and reminiscent of classic New Wave cinema though Malle wasn’t really associated with La Nouvelle Vague.....and Jeanne Moreau again in François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962), a strange yet engaging story about a love triangle.....

Morris Engel's American "New Wave"

2011-03-20T11:40:00.002-04:00

My most undiscovered film of late is the 1960 Weddings and Babies (Morris Engel) with Sweden’s Viveca Lindfors (Bea) and John Myhers (Al). The cinematography is so refreshing for a film of this era. Engels’s hand held camera has very much a New Wave look to it. This fact it is shot black and white with low budget adds to the lustre. The story itself is very simple, and therefore makes it more appealing. Set in New York’s Little Italy it is about a photographer, Al, who makes his living taking pictures of, well, weddings and babies, which also happens to be the name of his studio. His long time girlfriend Bea wants in the worst way to get married. But he resists. There is nothing especially dramatic about the plot but again that’s to its benefit. It is a slice of life about an ordinary couple and therefore highly realistic. Engel, still alive, is an interesting filmmaker and I hope to catch others of his like Loves and Lollipops (1956) and Little Fugitive (1953). Engel shot the film himself. Apparently he invented a camera that Stanley Kubrick wanted to use and Jean-Luc Godard also paid him a visit to see how it worked. Engel held on to it, hoewver.....

Watching Hanna and Her Sisters (Woody Allen) last night was a stark reminder of the quick passage of time. This movie, so au currant in 1986, is now 25 years old. Yet the sensibility remains much the same as today. Robert Osborne and Alec Baldwin on Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) The Essentials suggested it is Allen’s best film. Well, it’s perhaps among his best. But you have to include Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes & Misdemeanours, Husbands and Wives, and even more recent fare like Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in that category. Somehow I wasn’t as impressed with Hannah as I remembered it. It didn’t seem to pack the gravitas and seemed more like farce. Elliott’s (Michael Caine) infatuation with Lee (Barbara Hershey) at the expense of his loving wife Hannah (Mia Farrow) seemed superficial and a little ridiculous. Well, it was supposed to be ridiculous, I suppose. But now the film as a whole seems a little that way.....

People talk about Toronto about being a film town. But Montreal could sure give it a run for the money. I posted about the several festivals I attended while in Montreal last summer and fall. There have been several since. And two recent ones – new to me - are the 29th International Festival of Films on Art (FIFA) (http://www.artfifa.com/) and Cinema Politica, documentaries about social activism (http://www.cinemapolitica.org/).....

Michael Moore & Atlas Shrugged go together? Don't worry, there's always Red State

2011-03-14T22:08:00.003-04:00

Fresh from speaking to a March 5 rally in Madison Wisconsin - his so-called “America is not broke” statement – in which he defended public sector workers facing the guillotine of their collective bargaining rights, Michael Moore is advocating Michiganders rally to protect possible loss of their bargaining at a rally in Lansing March 16 (hey, that’s this Wednesday!).....So being the topical filmmaker (really?) that he is, can we expect Moore’s next doc will be about the current movement to roll back union rights? Hmm, I think I’m on pretty safe terra suggesting...yes

Atlas Shrugged the movie – John Stossel told Sean Hannity on Fox News last week that the film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s 1957 book had a difficult time getting to the silver screen in liberal Hollywood. In fact it was 20 years in the making. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie originally wanted to make it with Jolie playing heroine Dagny Taggart. Part I of the iconic anti-government and pro-capitalist flick will be released April 15. How appropriate – it’s tax deadline day for all you Statesiders.....

And in an interview last week with the Freep, director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Chasing Amy), calls his new movie Red State not really a political film. You see, he says, it’s about a religious sect that terrorizes a group of young people (as if they need to be terrorized). The sect is based on the Westboro Baptist Church – you know, that insane fundamentalist Christian church that demonstrates outside of US soldiers’ funerals because those soldiers died defending the freedom of everyone including homosexuals. Give Westboro the prize for coming up with the most convoluted logic of recent times.....But one thing we can be sure of – a good liberal like Smith (he does seems a little naive in the interview so maybe he doesn’t really know it) would never make a horror film about a far more dangerous subject than whacked-out Christians – Islamic fundamentalists.

And speaking of Smith, Kevin says his next movie will be a film called Hit Somebody, a hockey comedy based on the decade-old Warren Zevon song, which Smith plans to partly shoot in Michigan whether tax credits stay or go (probably the latter). Given the national news story in Canada over the past week about the vicious hockey hit by Boston’s Zdeno Chara against Montreal’s Max Pacioretty maybe Smith should consider shooting the film in Windsor.

RO official says no plans to close Main Theatre

2011-03-10T16:57:00.000-05:00

Royal Oak’s planning director Tim Thwing told Windsor Detroit Film (WDF) he knows of no plans for the venerable Main Art Theatre to move from the corner of Main Street and 11 Mile Rd. That’s despite speculation in the past that the owner of the property might move the theatre as part of a plan to redevelop the wider northeast corner of the intersection known as Main North condo-retail project.....My March 6 WDF post below reprints a Detroit News article from 2005 about the Landmark Theatres-owned Main being considered for a move by property owner Joseph Freed & Assocs. But, Thwing told me today, that idea likely has long fallen by the wayside because the parcel on which the Main sits was never developed as one of three phases of Main North. “My understanding is the lease runs for a few more years and then there’s an option to extend it,” he said. “There are no plans for it to shut down that I’m aware of.”.....Thwing said Freed originally was going to develop the Main site as a retail-condo tower similar to its new tower immediately north of the theatre along Main Street. There was also a plan to build a similar tower immediately to the east along 11 Mile. But then the real estate market crashed so Freed stopped planning. The east parcel subsequently has become home of the new Emagine theatre complex, slated to open in May. It’s of course located in the Main Theatre’s backyard. Thwing said there are no current plans for redeveloping the Main site.....Thwing said Emagine shouldn’t threaten the Main because the two theatres cater to different markets. “Every conversation I’ve had (with Landmark company officials) - they feel they’re not competing in the same market as Emagine”......As an aside, going back several years when Freed was considering redeveloping the Main site, Thwing said one of “the early plans called for absorbing” the theatre into the Main North project “but they couldn’t arrange or make the deal go forward”.....So it seems the Main is here to stay or until such time as after the lease runs out and the market improves for redeveloping the property.....As per earlier WDF posts I could obtain no comment from Freed or Landmark and an Emagine spokeswoman says her theatre shouldn’t threaten the Main because the two companies screen to different audiences – Emagine mainstream, Landmark art house....I also asked Thwing if there is adequate parking for the Emagine complex, so that customers attending the 10-screen multiplex don’t overwhelm the smaller Main’s already limited parking lot. Thwing said a separate parking structure to the east of Emagine will serve that theatre. There is also surface parking. He added that there was, ”a lot of discussion” by Royal Oak elected representatives and residents with regard to whether Emagine had enough parking. “Some of them are happy with the number, some of them are concerned it’s not enough. I guess we’ll wait and see how it operates,” he said.....But, he said, “I think we’re all happy that Emagine is here.”

Landmark's no comment on Emagine multiplex

2011-03-06T15:46:00.003-05:00

I finally heard back from Landmark Theatres in my quest to find out the chain's reaction to Emagine Entertainment's multiplex being built behind Landmark's Royal Oak Main Art Theatre (see two previous posts). But really to no avail. "We have no comment regarding Emagine," said Cyra Polizzi, Landmark's Detroit regional publicist.....Emagine, for its part, thinks the 10-screen theatre will be healthy for the Main since it will attract more filmgoers to the corner of 11 Mile Road and Main Street.....I also tried to find out if the Main Theatre building is still owned by a Chicago-based development company which, over the past decade, was looking at moving the Main to a different location. But I could get no comment from Joseph Freed & Associates either. A Detroit News article from 2005 may help shed some light on real estate issues surrounding the Main and the theatre's future. Here's the story:
Tuesday, September 27, 2005 Main Art Theatre running out of time to find new home Developer searching for options for the art house that will be razed for lofts in a few years. By Maureen Feighan / The Detroit News ROYAL OAK -- The Main Art Theatre, a beloved showcase of independent and art films in Metro Detroit, is in need of a new home. The 1940s theater, run by Landmark Theatres but in a building owned by Chicago-based developer Joseph Freed and Associates LLC, is scheduled for demolition to make way for part of a $120 million loft and retail project called Main North at East 11 Mile and Main. Plans call for replacing it with a 12-story loft tower. Demolition is still years away, and in the meantime a Freed official said the company is absolutely committed to finding a new location for the theater.
But at least one Royal Oak official who has been working with Freed to find a new site worries they may be running out of options, especially after the City Commission last week rejected an idea that wouldve allowed developers, including Freed, to offer bids to buy and develop the City Hall and adjacent property. There are only so many opportunities and so many locations you can consider, said Planning Director Tim Thwing. I dont have anywhere to send them. Phyllis Salter, a fan of the Main Theatre, said losing the theater would be a tremendous loss to Royal Oak. Its just such a special theater and people really enjoy it, she said. Its a warmer, more human building and a lot of people who go there have things in common. The theater was built in the early 1940s as a single-screen movie theater and was added onto in the early 1990s, Thwing said. It now has three screens and has often been voted Best Place to see an Independent Film and Best Art Movie House in local papers. Ed Connell, director of development for Joseph Freed, said originally the company intended to build a new site for the theater in the north tower of its Main North project, but that plan failed. Connell said what Landmark has envisioned is a theater with six or seven screens, a bar and a cafe. It would be modeled after a theater in Dallas called The Magnolia. Chene Koppitz, who managed the Main Art and Maple Art Theatre for seven years, said Freed has 10 years left of a 20-year lease with Landmark for Main Art.

No plans to compete with the Main - Emagine

2011-02-28T16:38:00.002-05:00

Rest assured that the new Emagine 10-screen Royal Oak multiplex will not compete with the venerable Main Art Theatre next door.....Michigan-based Emagine will be opening the theatre at 11 Mile and Troy Street in May. Emagine - which breaks the mold for cinemas with a number of amenities like bowling lanes, alcohol, and reserved seating - is putting a theatre in Royal Oak because the suburban city is already an entertainment and shopping mecca.....”The plan is not to affect the Main at all except to enhance movie-going in Royal Oak with commercial films as well,” Ruth Daniels, Emagine’s senior vice president of sales and marketing told Windsor Detroit Film.....Daniels can understand concerns about Emagine’s impact on the Main. “I understand where you’re coming from. I ran the Maple for several years,” a reference to the Main’s sister art house, the Maple in Bloomfield Hills. Both are owned by Los Angeles-based Landmark Theatres. ”I’m an art house lover,” she said.....Daniels said Emagine’s market is quite different from that of the Main. She said there would not be occasions where the two theatres would screen the same films. Emagine’s current Detroit properties are screening movies like The King’s Speech and Black Swan – which are also being shown by Landmark – but Emagine's theatres are not in close proximity to Landmark’s Main and Maple. Daniels said it still could happen that Emagine will open a film that is borderline art. But it won’t be screened next to the Main. Likewise, the Main usually has first dibs on art house movies. “They pretty much have the lock on art house films and they usually get them,” she said......Let's hope the line is thickly drawn between the two theatres' offerings, that co-existence prevails, and that Emagine indeed will draw more filmgoers to Royal Oak - who will curious to check out the Main's offerings next door.

And this just in: Get ready to check out a two night festival of made-in-Michigan films March 11 - 12. The first Uptown Film Festival will recognize movies shot wholly or partly here. The films will screen at Birmingham's Palladium 12 and the Birmingham 8, both in downtown Birmingham. Kill the Irishman starring Christopher Walken will open the fest. It will close with the second annual Michigan Film Awards. Festival passes are available. For more go to http://www.uptownfilmfestival.com/homePage.php

Emagine to open behind Main Art

2011-02-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

Emagine Entertainment will be opening its 10-screen megaplex in downtown Royal Oak in May. I’ve heard advertising describing the theatre as being at Main Street and 11 Mile Rd. (technically it’s at Troy St. and 11 Mile, a short block away on the former grocery store property). But wait...that’s the corner of Landmark Theatres Main Art Theatre. What will be the affect of Emagine’s glitzy and amenities-packed cineplex on the tried-and-true Main, a traditional theatre converted into the three-screen art house in the Nineties but is far from state of the art. Attempts to reach a spokesperson for Landmark have been unsuccessful. Someone close to the situation told me that the theatre doesn’t think Emagine will have a negative impact on the Main and might in fact improve attendance. The thinking is that by attracting more filmgoers to the Main Street and 11 Mile corridor theatregoers unfamiliar with Royal Oak may discover the Main for the first time and check out its offerings......This person said the theatre certainly has no intention of closing though there could be concerns about parking. Emagine will have an adjacent parking structure for vehicles as well as a surface lot. But next door is the Main’s parking lot, which can be tight indeed during popular movies or on a weekend evening. It’s very easy to see Emagine customers exploiting the parking lot. Hopefully the Main will adequately police it.....There’s another - and problematic - consideration. Some of the films screened at the Main are less than true art house fare. For example, currently showing is Black Swan. Black Swan also is screening at Emagine’s existing cinemas. Emagine also is showing indie type films like Cedar Rapids (from Sundance), Carmen in 3D, and The King’s Speech, the last also being screened at Landmark’s Maple Art Theatre in Bloomfield Hills.....Will Emagine’s programming cut into the Main’s audience by offering some of the same movies but in upscale surroundings (including reserved seating, alcohol, and boutique bowling)? Or will Landmark have to sharpen its screenings to show true art films? But by doing so it could suffer an overall revenue loss. Presumably one of the reasons it screens mainstream movies is because its indie titles can’t draw enough people.....More on this in the next post.

Valentine's Day (film) massacres

2011-02-13T16:41:00.000-05:00

I’m proud to say that leading the list of online Slate magazine’s worst Valentine’s movies ever made is My Bloody Valentine (George Mihalka), the 1981 version (not the January 2009 release in 3-D) made in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. I haven’t seen the remake, shot in Pennsylvania, but can’t believe it could be better, in pure awfulness, than the earlier picture. I lived in Cape Breton at the time. And the island was undergoing something of a movie-making boom. Filmmakers were drawn to the northern Nova Scotia island because of its picturesque landscape, old coal mines, and colourful traditionally Celtic people. Slate’s critic Mark Jordan Logan has a great laugh about the movie’s heavy handed murder scenes, indeed clichés in just about every frame. There’s a bar scene with a Moosehead beer logo in the background. Now that’s East Coast! Check out the review – better yet rent the film for some fantastic howls (real & unintentional) - at http://www.slate.com/id/2284948/

Readings: Think we don’t have a rich indie or art house theatre tradition? Check out John Monaghan’s piece in today’s Detroit Free Press. It’s a good roundup of the variety of Motown theatres showing independent fare, from the DFT to Landmark’s two venues to the Burton. He quotes one new resident, who came from Atlanta, saying Detroit has a more vibrant art house culture than his former southern city, with a variety of films he wouldn’t expect “outside of New York City.” The piece is at http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/ODE/DFREEP/LandingPage/LandingPage.aspx?href=REZQLzIwMTEvMDIvMTM.&pageno=NTY.&entity=QXIwNTYwMA..&view=ZW50aXR5

Susannah York; and the VIP experience

2011-02-10T16:22:00.000-05:00

I was saddened by the death of British stage and film actress Susannah York. She died Jan. 15 from advanced bone marrow cancer, a week after turning 72. For me as for many others York, like Julie Christie, was emblematic of British film in the era of the Swinging Sixties (remember those?) She had roles in some of the most memorable films of the era including Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963) and A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966). I’ll especially remember her in The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968) where she played the young innocent sex toy Alice 'Childie' McNaught to Beryl Reid’s June 'George' Buckridge . Over the past decade I was fortunate to catch York perform live at The Ark in Ann Arbor, where she took her touring The Loves of Shakespeare’s Women performing soliloquies from female roles of the Bard. RIP Susannah.

Meanwhile I was in London Ontario last month and saw what high end movie going was all about. I attended a screening of Barney’s Version at Westmount Cineplex, one of three Ontario theatres to have a separate VIP section. Sure, you pay five dollars more ($16.25) compared to a regular adult ticket. But it might be worth it especially if you’re planning a night on the town. (Good thinking Cineplex!) First of all you enter the VIP section from the main lobby. There are glazed doors that automatically open after you pay your ticket. You enter an upscale environment not unlike a nightclub or trendy art gallery. There is a long bar and numerous lounge tables and chairs. The area has its own restrooms - natch. The theatres themselves feature bigger more comfortable and reclining chairs and smaller auditoriums. They’re 100 seats each. When buying your tickets you’re shown an illuminated screen seating chart and pick your seats. The seats have adjoining tables where you put food and beverages including alcohol. Prior to the start of the movie servers come to your seat to take food and drink orders. Menus include five cocktails such as the Cineplex Caesar ($6.95) and foods like the Deluxe Nachos and Smoked Turkey Ciabatta each under $7. A Cineplex spokeswoman said the VIP auditoriums sell out “ahead of any other auditorium showing the same film.” But it makes sense. Why split your time going out to eat and drink somewhere else and then drive to the cinema when you can have it all in one place?

Casino Royale, colour blind, and movie card!

2011-01-28T10:36:00.002-05:00

Casino Royale – I have seen this 1967 spy send-up many times (not to be confused with the 2006 James Bond flic with Daniel Craig) but it has been a long, long time. This, boys and girls, was probably the greatest inspiration for the Austin Powers movies (“shag me”, “do behave”). There’s even a scene of Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress on a revolving bed, reprised by Mike Myers some 30 years later. This film was a mammoth hit in early 1967, caught up in the mod-psychedelia of the era, and with a huge cast of some of the biggest talents then working, combining Old Hollywood with some of the new (David Niven, William Holden, Charles Boyer, Peter Sellers, and Jean-Paul Belmondo). The song, by Burt Bacharach (natch) and played by Herb Alpert, was a Top 30 hit. All this to say it was very much of its era. But amazing what people found funny then. This is a dead-on-arrival two-hour bore, with wooden slapstick and a stupefying plot, and I’m being kind. But – and here’s the but – the last half hour is worth watching. If only because of the fantastical technological netherworld that entraps our heroes. It’s a huge template for spy films – serious and fun – for years to come. One thing’s for certain. Woody Allen hasn’t changed. In one of his first roles, he’s as sarcastically nebbish as ever: “We will run amok,” he says to a romantic interest. “If you’re tired we will walk amok.”

White Oscars? People are raising questions about the fact there are no notable people of colour nominated – none at all, in fact - for an Oscar this season. I never noticed. You see, I’m colour blind. Isn’t this the “post racial” era we’re supposed to be in, especially with the election of Barack Obama?

Scene card: I finally received my Scene card in the mail and can now take part in one of the best deals going. Show your card at Cineplex theatres and you accrue points. You get 250 points for just signing up and 100 points for each movie ticket you buy thereafter. After 1000 points you’re entitled to a free movie and there are other “rewards.” Sign-up now!

Oscar! Not Madison (but we can wish)

2011-01-26T11:37:00.000-05:00

I’m all with The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, The Damned United) nominated for 12 awards. I think Colin Firth is a fine actor for one thing, Hooper got down 1930s ambience and costumes for another, and this was a picture with many close-ups requiring fairly convincing roles from Firth and Geoffrey Rush (Supporting). I also like the fact it isn’t a dump-on or send-up of a former era, which seems refreshing in a way.....I also loved True Grit and think its worthy of best pic status though I would probably choose The King’s Speech over it. Hailee Steinfeld is a knockout and Jeff Bridges is at his lovingly gruff best....Let’s hear it for Portman in The Black Swan – yes, Best Actress!.....The Kids Are All Right was a charming and at times delightfully acerbic comedy-drama about lesbian family life....Have ignored The Social Network (I know I know, most stupendous pic of decade etc. etc. But I have a problem with facebook. I know, I know, the movie’s “not about” facebook.).....I walked out on Inception, remember? (and that was only after the first half hour).....I see Another Year (Mike Leigh) is nominated for Best Writing (Screenplay). I loved this movie, have seen it twice, and would probably sit through it one or three more times.....From the land of the big freeze, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies for best foreign-langauge film. I’ve been avoiding it, not that I haven’t had plenty of opportunities having spent most of the fall in Montreal where it was showing nightly. But somehow a downer about the Middle East doesn’t excite me. Maybe I’ll have to push myself to see it, maybe.....I had no interest in seeing The Fighter despite the critics’ raves. Why? Well, because it’s about fighters – er, boxers.....Will I watch Feb. 27? I usually don’t. But have been getting into it more in recent years. It might be good for an extended snooze.

Capsule reviews of three Windsor films

2011-01-24T10:47:00.000-05:00

Planting Vines is the most accomplished film I have seen from Windsor-Essex filmmakers. It screened this past weekend at the WEx3 film fest- a collaborative mini festival put together by directors Nicholas Shields of the above film, Chris Pickle of Saving Grace, and Otto Buj of Primordial Ties.....Planting Vines was shot both in Montreal and Windsor, with glorious exterior shots of downtown Montreal and Montreal’s old city, and with mainly interior shots made here in Canada’s motor capital. Christopher Lawrence-Menard is in the lead role as coming-of-age architect Daniel who seeks the ideal among the crass in his sometimes debauched profession. Amy Rivard, who has had turns in North American touring theatre, plays his girlfriend Sonya. Of the three films shown over the weekend this has the best narrative structure and scene flow with some imaginative technical effects rarely seen in any movie. Lawrence-Menard and Rivard are maturing in their acting and have solid foundations to build on for future film roles. As does definitely Shields as a director.....Saving Grace seems both a serious psychological thriller and a send-up of 1970s-era psycho/horror dramas. Mandy Bo (Grace) is a drug addict trying to get custody of her daughter. Recovering from an overdose in hospital she’s kidnapped by a janitor, Clayton (played by Jason Barbeck), and awakens in a dungeon-like room in an abandoned building. Clayton tries to convince Grace that his intentions are honourable as he rescues her from the apocalyptic events happening all around them. “I don’t have any bad intentions, I’m just not good with people,” he says. She of course thinks it’s all bunk. Bo and Barbeck have their characters’ fundamentals down pat but the acting could have been a little more polished and the script could have moved more away from cliché (i.e., the close up of dripping blood from the hook that impales the not-so-well-intentioned Hank (Peter Coady)).....Otto Buj’s Primordial Ties is another coming of age story about a young woman which seems a throwback to a 1950s noir. Stephanie Sobocan plays Marjorie, a beautiful ingénue who seems out of place and time, obsessed with her long-deceased father (Mark Lefebvre), a possible occultist or bizarre scientist. She escapes from the world around her to listen to old reel-to-reel tapes of her father’s philosophical musings. This is Sobocan’s first film, and she’s good in evoking the innocence and mysteriousness of her character. In the film Buj seems to want to separate the idealist wheat from the materialist and conventional chaff as his story aims for the ideal and pure. But the directing is at times heavy handed and can jump confusingly between scenes, as it goes back and forth in time to unfold the enigma at the story’s heart.....

Local and online fests

2011-01-20T10:19:00.000-05:00

Just a reminder....the WEx3 mini-fest runs Friday through Sunday at Windsor’s downtown Capitol Theatre and Arts Centre, 121 University Ave. W. This is a chance to catch-up on the state of filmmaking in southwestern Ontario. Three films by Windsor-Essex County filmmakers will be screened.....Nick Shields and Cameron Hucker’s Planting Vines is scheduled Saturday at 8 pm and Sunday at 1 pm, Chris Pickle’s Saving Grace Friday at 9.15 pm and Sunday at 5 pm, Otto Buj’s Primordial Ties Friday at 7 pm and Saturday at 5 pm.....Tickets are $10 per screening with a portion going to the Windsor Essex Cancer Centre Foundation. The films are also being shown in memory and to recognize the talents of Kevin Couvillon “for his invaluable technical contribution” to all three films. Kevin passed away last year....Tickets can also be purchased online at http://www.wetimes3.com/ and picked-up at Will Call....Finally there will be a panel discussion, free to the public, Sunday at 3 pm .....

There was a report last week in a Canadian newspaper that for a small fee people can log on to a new Internet film festival to watch 10 feature length French films, 10 short films, and three films out of competition. Most of the films showcase contemporary young French filmmakers. The festival, http://www.myfrenchfilmfestival.com/, seems like a great idea. After all, why fly to France for a film festival (okay, fresh baguettes are great!) when recently-made films can be brought to your computer? .....The online festival runs Jan. 14 - 29 and you can vote on your favourites. There are also interviews with directors and actors. The winning films will be screened on Air France flights this April.....A problem: I signed into the site but every film I clicked on said, “The film you are trying to watch does not have the broadcast rights in your country.” I’m in Canada. Maybe Americans will have more luck.....

Entertaining, yes, but what's the point?

2011-01-17T11:12:00.002-05:00

Barney’s Version is a generally well-made film from a Canadian director with a cast of international stars, set in Montreal and well, not seeming at all like the dreary Canadian films we’ve come to expect. Interestingly, films based on the books of Mordecai Richler tend to be fairly well made, exuding any evidence of Canadian art house dreariness. I’m thinking of the Richard Dreyfuss–led The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1974, Ted Kotcheff). In Barney’s Version, Richard J. Lewis (Whale Music, 1994) is at the helm as director. But Lewis has been so immersed in directing American TV series he brings forth a movie shed of the narrow and pretentious bleakness of indie Canadian film. This movie has a look and feel of Hollywood, and that’s a good thing......Paul Giamatti in the lead role as Barney Panofsky also provides big time cred as does Dustin Hoffman as Barney’s father Izzy. Minnie Driver also takes a turn as Barney’s second wife. This is an entertaining film based on Richler’s last novel (1997), a story about a curmudgeon TV producer and his life and times.....There’s nothing particularly special about Panofsky. The film starts with him as a young man in Rome hanging with some of his artsy friends. There he meets wife number one, a self-obsessed poet. Returning to Montreal he marries wife number two, a classic Jewish-Canadian princess. Wife number three Mariam (Rosamund Pike) turns out to be the love of his life. But Barney, being Barney, tends to mess even that up. You see, Barney, a man of some intellectual depth despite his schlocky production company and boozing lifestyle, yearns for a woman of class and intelligence. The problem is, he can’t ultimately control his self-destructive urges. He is by turns cynical, caustic, funny and, well, a jerk. Or, this film being Jewish, a perfect schmuck......Which led to a friend of mine’s question about what the point of this movie was anyway. Enjoyable entertainment? Sometimes that’s all something needs to be. But don’t expect any life lessons, or moral answers, from Barney’s Version. Nor does the film capture more of the complexity of Panofsky’s character that’s apparently in the novel, such as his self-loathing as someone who yearns for beauty in all of its manifestations, as represented by Miriam. So, score one for an entertaining two-hour flic. But when you think about it there’s really not much more here.

Grittier than ever

2011-01-13T18:12:00.002-05:00

I finally took myself to see True Grit, the Coens’ latest and another example of their mastery of yet another genre of filmmaking, the tried and true Western. I was expecting True Grit, while keeping mainly to the authenticity of Charles Portis’s book (the original movie, 1969, starred John Wayne as Marshall “Rooster” Cogburn and Glen Campbell as La Boeuf) to carry a pall of the dark humour the co-directing brothers are so famous for. The surprise is there is no irony. This is a genuine Western and done as well as any great Western prior to this. Jeff Bridges is in a logical extension of his role as The Dude in the Coens’ The Big Lebowski (1998) as the gnarly, grizzled Cogburn, hired by 14-year-old Mattie Ross (played by the stunningly-talented Hailee Steinfeld) to track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), her father's murderer. As with all Coen period movies, there is exactingness to the filmmaking, with authentic (if at times not always understandable!) 19th Century dialogue (amazingly stilted and formal even for the roughest characters) to costumes and sets. (Most of the film was shot in central Texas). Bridges is terrific slipping effortlessly into what seems a difficult role requiring personal toughness, alcoholic debauchery, and archaic speech. But the standout is Steinfeld, whose sense of conviction, ethics and intelligence, would be impressive in an adult, let alone a young teen....If mass audiences haven’t discovered the offbeat Coens (No Country for Old Men, Fargo, A Serious Man, Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing) before this, they have now. The film is number one at the US box office, though probably a lot of paying customers are going for the sake of seeing a remake of the John Wayne classic (d. Henry Hathaway) not for the latest film from Joel and Ethan, the smart-aleck edgy ironists.

And I have started to watch all of the Sixties-era James Bond movies beginning with 1962’s Dr. No. – which could parlay into me watching all of the Bond movies, period. Sean Connery of course is in this Terence Young-directed first of the Ian Fleming classics, which hopefully will have a franchise that will go on and on forever. Also on board is Sixties sex symbol Ursula Andress in her most famous scene, emerging in white bikini from the Caribbean surf. It’s been a long time since I saw this and I was surprised that the film held together as well as it did. Often in Sixties comedy-dramas there are huge gaps in the plot and certain elements of disbelief that filmmakers couldn’t get away with nowadays. But the movie - given that Bond films require an imaginative leap anyway - moves along well, with wonderful shots of an early-1960s Jamaica that paints an elegant and sophisticated island paradise. A surprise was the absence of many special effects. Those are saved for last, unlike the last few Bonds which seem all over-the-top action and threadbare plot.

Cross-border treats for Canucks, Yanks

2011-01-06T14:39:00.001-05:00

Americans and Canadians – take note of the following films coming soon to a country next door to you....Canadians (since they have less access to US media) might be interested in checking out the Detroit Film Theatre’s (DFT) new winter and spring schedule. Let’s look at the most high-profile event first. The ABC crime series Detroit 1-8-7’s Michael Imperioli, who heads the cast of the filmed-in-Detroit first season show, will be in attendance Jan. 30 at the gorgeously-restored theatre connected to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). He’ll take part in a discussion of his written and directed 2009 film The Hungry Ghosts. The film will have its local premiere that afternoon at 5.30. The film is described as “an unusual and provocative drama of interconnecting stories set over one 36-hour period”.....Meanwhile on Jan. 27 acclaimed film editor Richard Chew will be in attendance at the DFT to discuss the “invisible art” of his trade. He has been co-editor on such films as Star Wars. And his work includes One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Conversation and My Favourite Year. A series of clips from his films will be shown followed by an onstage discussion and then a screening of one of the films he says has been most influential, Michael Roemer's 1964 Nothing But a Man......Meanwhile Orson Welles’s F for Fake, a picture made later in the master’s career, is a doc that examines “the invisible line between art and illusion.” It dovetails nicely with the DIA’s current art exhibit Fakes, Forgeries, and Mysteries. The film will be shown Jan. 15.....Other films this season of note are Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex Gibney) Jan. 21-23, and Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould (Michèle Hozer and Peter Raymont) Jan. 22. For the complete DFT schedule go to http://www.dia.org/.

Now, for Americans seeking out not only some Canadian fare but LOCAL Canadian fare, look no further than the WEx3 mini-festival Jan. 21-23 at Windsor’s downtown Capitol Theatre (http://www.wetimes3.com/). It features films by three Windsor directors: Nick Shields and Cameron Hucker’s Planting Vines, Otto Buj’s Primordial Ties and Chris Pickle's Saving Grace. The fest is described as a “hands-on collaborative” effort among the filmmakers, “celebrating the independent spirit, craftsmanship and diversity of their productions.” Each film will be screened twice. There will also be a panel discussion Sunday at 3 pm free to the public. This is the first of its kind festival and provides some profile to Windsor’s burgeoning filmmaking scene. And, oh by the way, Canadians can attend too!

Christmas movies - outside and in

2010-12-30T17:34:00.001-05:00

The Christmas holidays are a great time to see movies. And many movies open, almost with a bow tied around them, just in time for Christmas Day. That included films this year like The King’s Speech and True Grit, which opened in Windsor on the Wednesday before Christmas......So far this month I’ve seen three movies in theatres and four on DVD.....Let’s start with what I’ve seen at the local Bijou.....Natalie Portman definitely shines in Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky) in this psychological thriller which brought to mind What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (Robert Aldrich, 1962) the Bette Davis and Joan Crawford classic. The movie has a few turns that are even scarier than regular horror movies. The film garnered an unprecedented 12 Critics’ Choice nominations and if there’s any justice Portman should win for best actress if not for an upcoming Oscar.....Me an Angelina Jolie fan? Not. But with a weak schedule of films at the cineplex I opted for the best (or least bad) showing and saw The Tourist (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others) with Johnny Depp. I actually kind of liked this flic principally because of its stylishness. It was a throwback to the spy/mystery thrillers of the 1960s and brought to mind comedy-dramas like Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963) which in fact has a very similar plot. Hmm. Jolie is the Hepburn character in high fashion sitting at a Paris cafe and then travelling by train to Venice. There are some spectacular overhead shots of the canal city as well as street scenes. The only unfashionable element is Depp, who’s scruffiness looks like something the cat dragged in and makes you wonder what’s so sexy about the guy.....Meanwhile at home I watched a movie that had been sitting on the coffee table since summer, Max Ophüls’s Lola Montès (1955) starring post-war sex kitten Martine Carol (no, I’d never heard of her either) and Peter Ustinov. The story is a tragedy about an ambitious and independent woman who ended as a circus attraction with her adventurous life mocked, a comment on the times. The film, also set among European high society, has a grandeur complete with opera halls and parties packed by stuffy swells. But maybe I’m too much a product of our times because Ophüls’s baroque filmmaking itself seemed stuffy and old-fashioned.....Then I watched Raja (Jacques Doillon, 2003). I discovered Doillon this summer at the Montreal World Film Festival and loved his Le Mariage à Trois, a farce about self-important artists. Since that time I have rented his earlier Petits Frères (1999) and now Raja. Unlike Le Mariage both these films were focussed on delinquent teens and brutality. Raja also focused on the bizarre attraction of a rich French man for a native Moroccan. Both these films seemed without redeeming merit, almost perverse, and I felt kind of dirty after watching them. I came to a conclusion. All Doillon’s films have one thing in common: humiliation.....Then it was back to the Cineplex and The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper) starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter. The movie is about England’s King George VI’s famous speech impediment at the time of his royal ascendency just as war was about to break out with Germany. Virtually everything about this movie is excellent – from the close up acting to costumes to period sets. Bring on the Oscars!.....Next was Harry Brown (Daniel Barber, 2009) with Michael Caine and Emily Mortimore. Caine as the namesake character goes vigilante in this crime thriller, a nudge above TV fare and pretty suspenseful despite a few holes in the plot.....Finally, The Secret in Their Eyes (Juan José Campanella) which won this year’s Oscar for best foreign language film and has had the second biggest box office ever in Argentina, where the film was made. It’s interesting what the Academy gives Oscars to. Academy members probably loved this film because it had the right quotient of what they consider sophistication, a beautiful foreign actress (Soledad Villamil), and a complex enough plot. But while it has some generally good scenes and a few interesting story turns it’s long and plodding and takes itself too seriously.....The holidays continue: next up at the theatre: Jim Carrey as a gay man in the comedy I Love You Phillip Morris, and True Grit, which isn’t a Western, it’s a Coen Brothers!

Mad Men a little tepid

2010-12-20T18:30:00.000-05:00

So what’s the deal with Mad Men? The acclaimed TV show, which has completed its fourth season, has taken the critical world by their short lapels aka the typical ugly men’s suits circa early 1960s. (For some reason this is inspiring a fashion trend.) In any case, I decided to rent a DVD and watch the first two episodes of the drama about Madison Avenue advertising execs in the days of the five-martini lunch when women were confined to the typing pool and otherwise non-complaining targets for male colleagues’ butt-pinching. The series has won a whopping 13 Emmys and four Golden Globes. Critics can’t control themselves, salivating when they talk about how wonderfully the show captures this particular era which seems 180 degrees from our present ever-so-politically correct one. But after watching the episodes I have to say: what’s the big deal? The storyline is built around Don Draper (John Hamm), creative director at Sterling Cooper. In fact, at least from the first two episodes – I had no desire to watch any more – the show is basically ALL about Don – his personal likes, dislikes, his ad campaign creative genius, his affairs, how he treats women especially his wife Elizabeth “Betty” Draper (January Jones). Since this series is about 1960s white collar stereotypes Draper is of course cast as a Korean War vet, hard-drinking and chain-smoking. Much has been made about the show’s authenticity in terms of office decor and especially fashions. The producers get most of this right with the best scenes set is restaurants and bars. Others scenes are passable but I wasn’t blown away. We’re also supposed to be shocked by the political incorrectness of the way people were – the condescension towards women and outright racism towards blacks. Perhaps for younger viewers who didn’t grow up in the era or haven’t seen many movies from that period this is indeed shocking. But the biggest flaw was the lack of dramatic action. Seemingly very little went on over the course of the two episodes except we learned that Don is having an affair with a Greenwich Village art director type and that he was keeping a cold emotional distance from his stunningly beautiful blonde doll-like (well, that’s the point, isn’t it?) wife. In between we get introduced to his secretary Margaret “Peggy” Olson (Elizabeth Moss) whose diffidence is mixed with a cunning sexual desire. Had the show’s plot been more dramatic or indeed edgier I may have been hooked into watching at least a few more episodes. (I realize the plot lines mentioned above have now been well developed.) As for the reputed authenticity, it’s a nice try. But I’ll take the real thing – watching the myriad period films – dramas and comedies - actually made about the advertising world in that era like Lover Come Back, Funny Face, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter and Sweet Smell of Success.

Mark Dailey's death and the Big 8

2010-12-09T18:00:00.001-05:00

The untimely death of Citytv’s Mark Dailey – the booming voice of Toronto’s great upstart television network – brings to mind an occasion several years ago when Dailey was in Windsor.....Dailey, who hosted the 11 pm Citytv news and also was the well-recognized voice of “Citytv everywhere” died at 57 of kidney cancer which had spread to his lungs.....Dailey has a strong connection to Windsor-Detroit. That’s because he used to be a reporter with CKLW radio in the heyday of the famous Big 8 and its more infamous 20/20 news. For those who don’t know – and I can only commiserate in your loss – 20/20 News was like nothing else you have ever heard on radio or may ever hear. It was tabloid journalism in highly-charged few-second bites, rapid-fire reporting and announcing, much of it about the gory crime that rocked the streets of the Motor City then as now.....Dailey covered those stories for the station in the early 1970s before moving up the highway to CHUM in Toronto and later to Citytv.....Dailey, a native of Youngstown Ohio, returned to Windsor in 2004 for the premiere of a documentary that captured CKLW back in its day, Michael McNamara’s Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of the Big 8 (Markham Street Films). For anyone who grew up in Windsor Detroit during the late Sixties and early Seventies CKLW was the station to listen to. At a booming 50,000 watts it could be heard over a large swath of the Midwest and eastern United States. The station famously broke numerous artists’ songs – including those by Elton John, Alice Cooper and Bob Seger - and has been credited by Motown artists as being the “blackest white” radio station ever. But 20/20 News – heard at 20 minutes before and after each hour – was something else. Radio Revolution not only is a terrific return to that era – showing everything from teens cruising Woodward to the 1967 riots – but a “what are they doing now” update with interviews with many of the jocks and newsman, including Dailey, who were household names at the time....So if you haven’t seen it, please do so. Not only is Radio Revolution a great nostalgia piece about the Big 8 but it captures the essence of what it was like growing up in the twin motor cities during that unique period of cultural excitement and turbulence.

Enter the Void doesn't fully deliver

2010-11-28T11:09:00.001-05:00

Go with the gut. My gut feeling was I would be disappointed. My stomach didn’t let me down as I was hungry for another magnificent Gaspar Noé film and didn’t get it. Nonetheless in certain ways Enter the Void, Noé’s latest, is brilliant. First off, the opening credits, This rapid pulsating strobe light show could be played off the wall at any dance club. Second, the camera work and special effects. No doubt about it this film is pretty dazzling, a kaleidoscope of manic colour shot in the dreamlike neon of contemporary Tokyo. And it takes film to places it previously has not been – overhead angled shots, floating and speeding scenes that glide the viewer above rooftops and streets of the dense and maze-like city. But the story, which lasts roughly two-and-a-half hours, is very simple. And that’s part of the movie’s problem. Oscar (Nathaniel Brown in his first major movie role) is a young American drug dealer. He finally makes enough cash that he can afford to fly his sister from the US to join him. The two are exceptionally close having made a blood pact when kids never to leave one another, which ends up occurring anyway after their parents are killed. She (Linda played exceptionally by Paz de la Huerta, Boardwalk Empire) soon finds work as an exotic dancer. In one of the early scenes Oscar and his drug-dealing pal Alex (Cyril Roy) wander to a club called, appropriately, The Void, where Oscar is to make a drug deal. The club is raided. Oscar locks himself in the bathroom flushing drugs down the toilet. He tells police he has a gun. They shoot him through the bathroom door. He falls to the floor and dies. For the next two or so hours the movie is about Oscar post-mortem as his spirit is released from his body but his consciousness lives in a supernatural form as it swoops or hovers above Tokyo rooftops or inside buildings. He visits and revisits those once important to him – people like Linda and Alex – as well as returning to the scene of the crime as he watches police finish their investigation, put his body in an ambulance, and his later identification at the morgue. There are flashbacks to his earlier life. These are some of the film’s more interesting scenes. We see him and his sister being coddled as babies and joyfully loved as children by their middle class Manhattan parents. There’s a cherished scene at the beach followed by a horrific car crash – witnessed from the kids in the car’s back seat – that instantly kills their parents. That scene, repeated a number of times throughout the film, is jarringly, sickeningly authentic. So, even in the afterlife, Oscar never “leaves” his sister, true to their earlier pact. But Linda, of course, doesn’t know this. Oscar’s spirit has no way of communicating with her, which seems a flaw in the story’s premise. The film, even during when Oscar is alive, is shot from his perspective, as we literally look out through his eyes. Post-mortem that’s also the case. Oscar’s disembodied spirit’s view is ours as it hovers above people or moves through walls or indeed zooms through objects, usually bright lights or hole-like cavities. While sometimes dazzling, the movie is repetitive, even boring at times. And there is no real developing plot. Two-thirds of the film is either Oscar revisiting people who he had dealings with – and how his death plays out in their lives, usually miserably - or flashbacks to his childhood. The “Void,” of course, is death. And his death is exactly like a book he had been reading, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, said it would be. Besides the film’s monotony and weak plot there are some clichéd "hey-man-what-a-cool-acid-trip" scenes. Nevertheless you have to applaud Noé’s exceptionally ambitious cinematography and his efforts, once again, to take film to a new level, as he did with comparatively standard efforts like Irreversible (2002) and I Stand Alone (1998). Even if you see Enter the Void once (you probably won’t want to see it a second time!) if you’re interested in the outer boundaries of filmmaking today, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Montreal festivals continue: They don’t call Montreal festival city for nothing. The Brazilian film festival is currently on. It’s in its fourth year and features 10 films......And from Dec. 10-23, 17 Charlie Chaplin movies in restored prints from Janus Films will be screened including less well known ones like The Idle Class and A King in New York. Alas, I will be back in Windsor by that time.

Trois nuits, trois films, en Montréal

2010-11-25T13:35:00.002-05:00

Three nights, three movies, as I continue my late autumn sojourn in Canada’s most interesting city.....On Monday I took in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (with French sub-titles, a first!), a movie generally disliked by critics, who called it a retread of all-too-familiar Allen themes of life and love by oh-so-modern characters. Particular complaints were that it was “joyless,” (one reviewer) and “empty, soulless” (another). So I was geared to be a little underwhelmed. But, after all, this is Allen. And even his worst efforts have some redeeming qualities. But the surprise was that I thoroughly enjoyed the film, hanging on to every moment. No, it was hardly Woody’s best. And, yes, the story is familiar. But did I care? Allen’s topics of love and romance have been favourites with all sorts of directors and writers down through time. But more important was that this movie dealt with the idea of illusion. In fact it’s a modern morality tale. There were good performances by British stalwart Gemma Jones (the film is another by Allen set in London), Naomi Watts, Josh Brolin and Antonio Banderas. And I even laughed at Anthony Hopkins’s rather stock Alfie character.....On Tuesday I visited the former home of the Montreal Canadiens, the Forum. And, yes, it is to shed a tear over what has become of the hockey shrine. Several years ago it was converted to make way for AMC’s 20-screen behemoth cineplex. Now the Habs play at the Bell Centre further downtown. Nothing against AMC. And the developers took some pains to preserve a few sections of old Forum seats outside the cinemas. There’s even a faceoff circle presumably where centre ice used to be, now used by neighbourhood break dancers. In any case, there I watched Copacabana (Marc Fitoussi) starring Isabelle Huppert as mom Babou and Lolita Chammah as daughter Esméralda. Much has been made about the usually dramatic Huppert putting a smile on her face and acting in a comedy. But, as is obvious in this film, she’s so talented she could be in any role. In fact I’d argue the film well captures her personality which is offbeat, irreverent and, yes, funny. But Copacabana is more dramatic than how it’s been portrayed. Babou is a Sixties flower child who remains a free spirit to her Gen X daughter’s conformity. Yes, the story has been done before. But the interaction between mother and daughter isn’t the highpoint. It’s more the film's character study of Babou herself.....Last night I returned to the AMC Forum to see Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (Alex Gibney, Who Killed the Electric Car?). This film has great effects sometimes seeming like a drama. And it was a surprise to see Spitzer cooperate in the making of it. I liked the fact the movie wasn’t overly politically partisan and showed Spitzer’s good points (caped crusader against Wall Street corruption as New York State’s Attorney General) and bad (deceiving his family by seeking out liaisons with a high-priced call girl). The most interesting part of it, though, were the questions raised about who put government investigators on to Spitzer, suggesting it was his Republican political enemies..... I’ll see no movie tonight as I have a family dinner out on the town.....But tomorrow I return to Cinema du Parc to catch the highly anticipated (for me) Enter the Void, Gaspar Noé’s latest. I think Noé is the most interesting director working today as evidenced by his mesmerizing films I Stand Alone and Irreversible. Keeping my fingers crossed.

Film Notes - more Montreal (and Ottawa)

2010-11-22T14:53:00.000-05:00

As a columnist for the Montreal Mirror alternative weekly newspaper put it, and I paraphrase, “Okay a week has gone by, time for another film festival.” It sure is like that in this city. First there was the Montreal World Film Festival (MWFF) or (FFM to my en francais politically correct friends) in August. Then there was the Festival of New Cinema which I attended last month. Following that there was the Arab film festival, the Greek film festival, and Cinemania, Montreal's big fest celebrating French films (all with English subtitles). Going home to Windsor for a week-and-a-half (and catching the Windsor Intl Film Festival) I arrived back in Montreal for the dwindling days of the 16th annual Cinemania. And I caught Un Soir au Club (A Night at the Club) (Jean Achache) starring Thierry Hancisse as Simon, a former great jazz musician who rediscovers the keyboard magic and a personal transformation. I had wanted to see the big new film from France, Copacabana (Marc Fitoussi) (photo top left), starring fave Isabelle Huppert in a mother-daughter rivalry comedy about the garishly past-her-prime Babou (Huppert) being an embarrassment to her sophisticated daughter Esméralda (Lolita Chammah) ..... But not to fear, this being Montreal, the flic is now screening in general release at the AMC (the renovated old Forum where the Canadiens once played). Only about 50 people attended Un Soir au Club. So on that basis – and thinking there would be tickets aplenty - I took myself downtown to catch the closing movie Potiche (François Ozon), an ensemble farce with the grande dame of French cinema the iconically beautiful Catherine Deneuve, and timeless Gérard Depardieu. I was astonished to see a line of people outside the theatre and around the block that went on and on and on and on and on and on... In other words the film was sold out! No matter, it was a nice crisp evening to avail myself of the beauty and bright lights of downtown Montréal.....Overlaid with Cinemania was the documentary film fest, Rencontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal (RIDM)......At this point I was starting to feel filmed-out (I know, unbelievable, but true.) Plus, I had a lot of work to do so tucked myself indoors for most of last week. Finally, with cabin (or should that be apartment) fever setting in, I got out Friday eve and saw D. A. Pennebaker (of Sixties doc fame Don’t Look Back about Bob Dylan) and Chris Hegedus’s Kings of Pastry about France’s top pastry chefs competing for the Meilleur Ouvrier de France, the top award. The film wouldn’t have been my first choice but the others at that time slot were sold out. Nevertheless this doc was engrossing and very human.....Meanwhile, on a side trip to Ottawa over the weekend I picked up a flyer for Ottawa’s Bytowne Cinema, operated by the folks who used to operate the original Towne repertory, dating from when I lived in Ottawa (whoops, I’m showing my age) in the early and mid-1970s. That repertory seems timeless.....There may be no film festival (that I know of) this week in Montreal. But there is plenty on offer at regular and rep theatres. Tonight I’ll (finally) get down to see Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, at Cinéma du Parc; tomorrow likely Copacabana at AMC. I’m also interested in the new doc about former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer that is generating great reviews, Client 9, (Alex Gibney) another evening this week.

Burton Theatre's music-themed series

2010-11-16T10:13:00.001-05:00

Detroit’s repertory Burton Theatre is screening what it’s calling its Urban ScreenPlay Film Series this month at the former elementary school turned funky art house on the city’s venerable Cass Avenue..... (Alert to Windsorites – despite the belief that Cass is the most dangerous street in Detroit, it isn’t. Far from it. You might see people who are down-and-out begging for money but it’s hardly a place you’re likely to get mugged. In fact, with some of the bars and restos along Cass’s several blocks, the street makes for a rather colourful thoroughfare.)......The series started last weekend. This weekend it features a double bill called The Psychedelic Experience with Coming Back for More: The Search for Sly Stone, and Space Is the Place, about the late great avant-gardist Sun Ra.....On Nov. 27 & 28 the theme is Challenging the Status Quo. The first film is Keep on Walking: Joshua Nelson, the Jewish Gospel Singer, followed by Am I Black Enough for You.....The Burton is at 3420 Cass, just south of Martin Luther King Blvd. Its web site is http://www.burtontheatre.com/

Media myths about WIFF's sixth edition

2010-11-14T14:35:00.000-05:00

Peter Coady (left) would like to set a few things straight. Yes, the attendance was up at this year’s Windsor Intl Film Festival (WIFF). But there was no – repeat no - rift with the casino.....And, yes, maybe there is room for more screenings and comfortable seats at the good ol’ Capitol Theatre for future fests.....Coady said some 5900 people attended the four-day event “an improvement over last year” though he didn’t have a percentage. That included 600 high schoolers attending a special screening and live interactive broadcast with Colm Feore, formerly of Windsor. They also loved watching a special screening of last year’s The Trotsky (Jason Tierney) – in which Feore starred - a great film for high school kids planning a revolution during their spare periods.....Media coverage of this year’s WIFF got off to kind of a bad start (do ya’ think so?!), what with the reported split between long time programmer Otto Buj and the festival, and the fact WIFF was no longer holding the gala opening at Caesars.....I didn’t get into the Buj-festival split with Coady because that would have meant interviewing Buj and I didn’t have the time. Perhaps in the future.....Meanwhile, Coady said there was no bad blood with Caesars. But it was solely WIFF that ended the tie. “It was s big step for our board to take to move from the casino,” he said. “And basically we were being honest with the casino. The casino wanted more screenings...and for us it’s technically difficult. I mean moving a 35 millimetre projector after our opening night back to the Capitol for our regular programming, our guys were up to three in the morning, and then you start the festival with guys who are already bagged.” He didn’t think a film fest “belongs in a casino.” That’s despite Caesars making a “good offer of support” including use of the 5,000-seat Colosseum.....Media reports also suggested it was a bad move that WIFF was scheduled the same weekend as BookFest Windsor. But, according to Coady, it didn’t matter. “The big fact is they had great crowds, we had great crowds.” BookFest was held at the Art Gallery of Windsor, a few blocks away. So why did the fest move up a week? Simple, he says. Remembrance Day fell on the second Thursday – usually WIFF’s opening night. “And that’s why we felt we couldn’t have an opening – a big gala – on Remembrance Day.” Makes sense. And which suggests the media should loosen up. It’s only a frickin’ film fest not Armageddon and this is Windsor where we’re even lucky to have a festival.....WIFF sold out five of the six screenings of the three locally-made films in the smaller Joy theatre with 125 seats though chairs were added. It also sold out It’s Kind of a Funny Story (Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck) Saturday night......But, yes, there are still a few bugs that need to be worked out in this, WIFF’s, sixth edition. (Actually it seems that once one problem is nailed down a new one springs up.). The audio vastly improved in the large Pentatsar theatre (one of the Capitol’s three rooms) thanks in part to a new screen purchased from the Detroit Film theatre (DFT) which has a brand new screen of its own. (WIFF has a relationship with the DFT and also screened films there.).....But there were problems at the Kelly theatre. Watching Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe was like watching a foreign movie sans sous-titres. Coady acknowledged it was a problem – “that may have been attributable to some electrical problems up in the booth” - but I also blame the various English dialects in this film now playing at Landmark Detroit’s Main. As much as Windsorites love the Capitol (the latest news is that the years-long impasse was broken with the building’s receiver, and the City of Windsor has gained control of the venerable building) there are problems. Despite a mid-Nineties restoration these are the original seats, and they’re not comfortable. Less so when temporary banquet seats had to be brought in at the Joy theatre, where the locally-made and some other films were screened. “I can’t deny that,” Coady said. He even agreed the more modern Palace complex – just over a block away – would have been a more comfortable alternative but says it looks like the Capitol will be WIFF’s permanent home....As well, the whole issue of the box office moved to the cold confines of University Ave. will have to be addressed. The box office used to be in the warm comfort of the Capitol lobby. This year people in line had to freeze their buns waiting to buy tickets from a box office that didn’t even offer credit card sales, only cash purchases, though many tickets were sold thu WIFF's web site.

WIFF - that's a wrap

2010-11-08T04:24:00.003-05:00

I caught Another Year (Mike Leigh) for a second time (having seen it in Montreal earlier this fall) and it was as satisfying to watch as at the first go round. This character study of aging Baby Boomers focuses on Mary (Lesley Manville) as the frail, ditzy friend of rock solid and nurturing couple Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) (and yes they joke about their cutesy names!) (picture left). In competition for the top prize at Cannes this year the film didn’t win anything, though it garnered the best reviews of any movie. Go figure. This picture unfolds slowly but absorbingly in a nuanced way that juxtaposes marital contentment with the desperation of those who have somehow not found meaningful lives, in a story both sombre and light, with realistic performances throughout.....The Concert (Radu Mihaileanu) is about a former conductor Andrei Simoniovich Filipov (Aleksei Guskov) of Russia’s Bolshoi orchestra who, 30 years earlier, was stripped of his title after hiring Jewish musicians and being declared an enemy of the people. Despite the serious topic this is mostly a light hearted, even zany, ensemble film characteristic of eastern European cinema.

WIFF notes & wrap: Here are some observations from others and myself about this year’s fest, the sixth annual.

- Yes, we all love the old Capitol Theatre. But, despite the building’s mid-Nineties renovation there are still obvious deficiencies. Take seating. These are the original seats and, yes, they’re uncomfortable. I heard numerous people complaining about their sore backsides. This was even truer in the smaller Kelly room (the theatre on the right) where people had to squeeze in to narrow rows. There likely are obvious reasons the Capitol was chosen. But a venue like the Palace complex around the corner - and with ownership that has embraced independent films – would have been a more comfortable venue. The WIFF did screen films at the Palace in the past, as it did at the even more comfortable Lakeshore, but last year consolidated all screenings at the Capitol. Also, the temporary seats in the Joy theatre - often used as a reception room - were even more uncomfortable.

- Another problem was sound, especially in the Kelly. It was all but impossible to make out dialogue during Saturday evening’s screening of Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe. I’ll admit to my own denseness. But the loud sound of the projector coupled with some kind of muffled audio from the movie itself (just my imagination?) and some heavy English dialect made watching it seem almost like a foreign movie without sub-titles.

- The marketing. Yes, we know the WIFF acts as an incentive to bring people downtown. That’s great. (And obviously many of the fest-goers were newbies judging by the number of comments along the lines of “not being in this theatre since I can’t remember when” or “I remember coming here way back in high school!”) But why not promote the festival better? You would never know the WIFF was at the Capitol unless you were a pedestrian happening to take a hard look at the posters in the theatre’s window showcases. Motorists driving by looked puzzled by what was going on. How about next year putting a banner across University Ave. – and at other street locations downtown - advertising the festival big?

- On the plus side, it was good to see that the screens were raised from stage floor level, making them quite visible from pretty well all the seats.

- Finally, it seems unreasonable for some film goers – well, one woman in particular - to complain about others who were munching on snacks. After all, the festival sells popcorn expressly for the purpose of eating while watching the movie. It’s a time-honoured tradition. So to this woman - grossly annoyed about the people down the aisle who were only doing what moviegoers have done forever - I say, lighten up!

WIFF - Day 1

2010-11-06T12:35:00.000-04:00

Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami has Juliette Binoche and English opera star William Shimell (he doesn’t sing) in this tale of attraction, introspection, philosophy and meditation on life and relationships. Reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, a man and woman – seemingly strangers - meet and spend several hours walking the bucolic landscape and timeless villages of Tuscany. As the movie progresses the identity of the two changes in terms of what each means to the other. Or does it? This movie was utterly absorbing.....Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love has Tilda Swinton as Emma Recchi, wife of the inherited owner of a huge Milan linen factory. Her character breaks out of her bourgeois family through a personal romantic obsession, a story paralleling the fall of the company’s fortunes. This is an elegantly-made film with strong studied visual shots and a fantastic music score which underlines the film’s sophisticated look. But it’s a weak story that seems less than convincing.

WIFF notes: There seemed fewer people Friday night compared to the almost-couldn’t-move crowds in the Capitol Theatre lobby last year, and neither of the two performances I attended were sold out. Many people seemed to order tickets online and one volunteer had a big stack of Will Call envelopes, mingling among the crowd on the street and handing them out – a nice touch. But if you didn’t buy online, you were reduced to lining up on University Ave. – in a cold bitter wind – and purchasing from a couple of box office staff. A further inconvenience was that tickets could only be purchased with cash; no credit cards. For some reason the inside ticket booth in the Capitol’s lobby was not used.

Look back in whimsy

2010-11-04T14:07:00.000-04:00

Kingsville’s Tim Swaddling’s first feature The Arrow and the String will have two screenings at this weekend's Windsor International Film Festival.....Swaddling, who has a few short films under his belt, came up with the idea of the film because it’s somewhat reflective of his age.....He grew up in Kingsville and graduated from the University of Windsor with a combined major in communications and visual arts. But recently he started to realize he was getting to an age - 30 - when you start to look back on your youth. “I was already starting to gain perspective on the guy I was when I first entered university or moved out of my parents’ home,” he said. “I had friends who were all commenting on the same thing...about these issues dealing with how you reconcile your past with your future".....The film’s main character Jerry (Noah Davis) is in a rut with his career and his girlfriend. One day he runs into an old acquaintance who appears as vibrant as Jerry felt years earlier. The acquaintance gives him a card for a Detective Brown (Jeff Williams) who specializes in finding past lives. Jerry is sceptical.....Swaddling was able to obtain equipment to make the film through the support of the U of Windsor's Studio 5. Swaddling, also a musician and visual artist, is thrilled that WIFF picked up the flic, with two screenings followed by question and answer sessions with the director.....“It’s quite a big honour for me, just getting into the festival.”

Film Notes: Jean-Luc Godard an anti-Semite? There's an uproar in the American Jewish community about famed New Waver Godard being honoured at an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences banquet Nov. 13. Godard is sharply critical of Israel and at one time claimed to be a Maoist. Godard, among other things, made a statement in 1985 and reported in a 2008 biography by Richard Brody: "What I find interesting in the cinema is that, from the beginning, there is the idea of debt. The real producer is, all the same, the image of a Central European Jew"......I just returned from two weeks in Montreal where it seems quite possible to simply roll through the months going from film festival to film festival. After attending the Festival of New Cinema, Cinemania the French film festival (wth English sub-titles) has opened. There is also the Greek and Arab film fests, not to mention the gay and lesbian fest.

WIFF 2010 - a trove of treats

2010-10-28T18:06:00.001-04:00

Former WIFF programmer Otto Buj’s reported comments that management of the festival has got “boring” may or may not be true. I have no idea.....But what I will say is this year’s line-up (Nov 4–7) is anything but. Virtually everything on offer over the four days looks appetizing. The problem, as I thought with last year’s fest, is that screenings are limited. Most films don't repeat. So if you’ve missed one (perhaps because another overlapped with it) you’re out of luck. Also, all films are screened at the Capitol. Fine and dandy but, again, with the huge crowds the fest attracted last year, some additional screens (i.e., at the nearby Palace) would have been welcomed. But maybe it’s all part of a plan, right? In other words, hold the event at one complex, have only one screening per film, and generate demand. With this festival still in its growing stage (though in its sixth year) and perhaps still insecure that does make sense....From the schedule here is some of what caught my attention.....Louis Bélanger’s Route 132 is a classic road movie Quebec-style. I wrote about it in my reports from the Montreal World Film Festival this year. It’s much better than his earlier Gas Bar Blues.....I just caught Mike Leigh’s Another Year with a very strong cast headed by Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen. A great character study of a tight knit family that focuses on the beginning of the – yes - twilight years of the Baby Boom generation..... Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl is about beat poet Allen Ginsburg’s iconic poem and the infamous 1950s obscenity trial over its publication. (I’m planning to see it tomorrow in Montreal.).....Stephen Frears’s Tamara Drewe (picture above) is a comedy of modern manners that looks deliciously fun about a country retreat, writers, lust, a clash of characters, with unexpected plot lines and of course witty dialogue.....It’s Kind of a Funny Story with rising star Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover; he’s the stout bearded guy) seems to be the mental hospital version of Fast Times at Ridgemont High......I wouldn’t want to miss My Afternoons with Marguerite simply because Gérard Depardieu is in it.....A Film Unfinished looks like a terrific doc about the Nazis’ making a film about life in the Warsaw Ghetto, a glossed over version of course, for propaganda purposes. Some of the original footage is extraordinary.....Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol has been receiving some stunning reviews as well as a laundry list of awards. At first glance it doesn’t strike me as that interesting – the subtext is how America treats its mentally ill – but it may be one of those films that’s an undiscovered gem..... Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy starring Juliette Binoche (a reason itself to see it) seems a nuanced journey through the Italian countryside and has been compared to films by Antonioni. If that’s the case, I’m in.....For those who loved The Triplets of Belleville Sylvain Chomet is back with The Illusionist, an animation about a struggling French illusionist in the late 1950s as his star declines amidst the rise of rock and roll. Based on a script by Jacques Tati it’s undoubtedly charming and bittersweet.....I’ve been intrigued by Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton, for a little while. The story is about an upper class Italian family whose surface veneer cannot hold.....Susanne Bier’s In a Better World looks like a typically crisp Scandinavian drama about family and, interestingly, coming to terms with the meaning of maleness.....And don’t forget this year’s spotlight on locally-made films with screenings of Tim Swaddling's The Arrow and The String; Ken Amlin's Moonlight Sonata and Jayme LaForest's Gods of Accident..... The kicker: many of this year’s films have won a string of awards. The selection is rich. We’re in for numerous treats.....(The Windsor International Film Festival's web site is https://windsorfilmfestival.com/)

FNC Montreal wrap - too much chaff

2010-10-26T14:52:00.000-04:00

The Festival of New Cinema (FNC) is over and I’m disappointed. Partly this is of my own making. I arrived late and missed screenings such as Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void and Miguel Coyula’s Memories of Overdevelopment. And admittedly this fest is more experimental and less mainstream than my tastes. Nevertheless only about 50 per cent of what I saw I enjoyed. My faves were the Bollywood Raavanan and Mike Leigh’s Another Year. Other notables were mentioned in my Oct. 23 post. Add to these the retrospective of films by Pierre Étaix, perhaps alone worth attending the festival for. The FNC had screened newly restored prints of this amazing French comic, whose films spanned the Sixties. Movies like Rupture, Le Soupirant and Tant Qu’on a La Santé are absurd takes on the frustrations of daily life or small events, and uproariously funny…..This was the festival wheat. There was a lot of chaff.....Wang Bing’s The Ditch was as expected an all too slow study of life circa 1960 of a Communist Chinese labour camp in the Gobi Dessert. Bing, who started making feature films in 2003, had several other flics in the festival and also held a master class. ....Pepperminta (Pipilotti Rist – Swiss-Austria) (above photo) is a dazzling psychedelic take on Pippi Longstocking and the subversive power of colour to undermine an authoritarian black and white world. Great idea. And tonnes of effort obviously went into making it judging by the fast-cut gazillion shots of talented actress Ewalina Guzik in any number of contortions with her comic book/fairytale friends. But the film was all frosting and no cake.....Quebec documentary DATA attempts to be a subversive polemic against oppressive capitalist employers. I do understand it was part of the FNC’s “lab” or experimental section. But it was physically hard to watch. The sound was over modulated pulsating static, which was a turnoff from the first minute. Yes, I got the huge headlines continually splashed across the screen. But it was all a little much. Converting the workers? You won’t with this.....Doman Seman (Go Shibata) attacks capitalism (what else?) by grafting a bizarre assortment of everyday characters on to the cosmology of Japan’s Heian period (8th to 12th centuries). Again, lots of energy went into the film’s shooting. But this “experimental” effort left me underwhelmed not least because it looked so contrived......Then there was Danish film Submarino (Thomas Vinterberg). Yet another film about down-and-outers (aka losers) from a contemporary director. Spare me. Or, I spared myself and walked out.

Festival of New Cinema, Montreal - highlights

2010-10-23T12:52:00.001-04:00

Okay, so I’m in Montreal or the Festival of New Cinema (http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/home). I arrived late this year owing to work projects back home. But this is not that important a fest to me anyway. For many years I have never attended it. It is my “second” Montreal fest (after the Montreal World Film Festival in August). This is a smaller fest anyway with fewer movies and screens. But it has kept true to its 1971 roots – an edgy, avant garde, slightly underground event.....To my taste there is less to choose from. I’m not particularly into avant garde that goes over the edge and there’s a quantity of films here that do just that. But there is also stuff that is more mainstream.....Here are some notable mentions: Shit Year starring Ellen Barkin (above) (d. Cam Archer), a surreal black and white portrait of a retired actress (Colleen West) whose life is spiralling downhill fast. This is a good performance by Barkin but the pic suffers from the same plague it’s trying to portray – ennui – and is a little too abstractly drawn.....Preludio (d. Eduardo Lucatero). This is an impressive all-in-one-take 72 minute talking heads flic of a “prelude” to romance by a chance encounter of guy and girl who are early guests at a party.....La Belle Endormie (The Sleeping Beauty) (d. Catherine Breillat), a contemporary take on the children’s fairy tale. It’s inventive fun, mysterious, playful and feminist.....Raavanan (d. (Mani Ratnam). I’ve avoided Bollywood up to now. But I came across this my accident (it was the only available picture after I’d walked out on another). Tremendous – perhaps my fave so far! This 137-minute dramatic epic is larger than life with good and bad guys (no nuance here), thrills and spills (a la James Bond), fantastic landscapes, singing and dancing amidst looming violence. This is the kind of big scope picture Americans used to make. Bollywood is still serving it up – and pushing the genre.....Rammbock (d. Marvin Kren). What happens when zombies infiltrate your apartment complex in contemporary Berlin? Nothing much different than when zombies set about victimizing you anywhere (and we’re getting close to Halloween), though this is a fun thriller as the still unbitten try to outwit their mad assailants in apartment nooks and crannies.....Similar in a way to The Intruder (d. Thanadol Nuansuth). This Thai film has unlucky denizens of an apartment building fending off an attack of hordes of vicious cobras. A few scary bite scenes with of course (horror films usually have this) a lesson on human ethics.....All right, I’m off to another afternoon and evening of bon cinema.....J'espère!

Alan Sklar - voice extroardinaire

2010-10-21T13:23:00.002-04:00

And here I thought I was about to praise how a movie had found a whole new way of presenting its story. I happened to catch the last 20 minutes of Ridley Scott’s 2001 Black Hawk Down last night on The Accessibility Channel. I had never seen the movie before (but have now rented it). What struck me was the continual voiceover narration. Coming across the movie while channel surfing I didn’t know if this was a drama or documentary. The images and acting looked pretty damn real with performances by the likes of Ewan McGregor, Josh Hartnett, Tom Sizemore and others. But the narration had me troubled. Was this to provide more drama or immediacy to the story? I couldn’t figure it out. Then the credits rolled and the same voice – that of renowned New York voice actor Alan Sklar (http://alansklar.com/) – started reading the credits, his voice controlled with meticulous and authoritative pronunciation. Wow – what a concept, having the credits announced! Filmmakers generally try to outdo each other on their inventiveness in credit rolls. But this was unique indeed, right up to announcing the film companies at the very end – “Revolution Studios, Henry Bruckheimer Films.” It made me want to watch – er, listen – to the very last spoken word. Sklar's voice was transfixing. Then it occurred to me. This was the “Accessibility” network (which I had never watched nor even heard of before; I’m currently in Montreal). And that voice wasn’t there because of any invention of Ridley Scott. It was there so that sight-impaired people could more closely follow the action as Sklar described it (“he walks into the supply tent,” “one soldier vomits running down the street”). So the joke is on me. But I must say the narration provided a dramatic effect indeed. And award-winning Sklar is extraordinary. (To hear him go to http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/gvpages/A1575.shtml)

If it's October it must be FNC time

2010-10-15T18:41:00.000-04:00

I’m off – almost – to this year’s edition of the Festival of New Cinema (FNC) in Montreal. This festival goes back a lot longer than most film festivals – to 1971 to be exact. It’s more cutting edge than the Montreal World Film festival, which I attend every August. Ditto for the Toronto International Film Festival. (You can see my reviews from FNC’s 2009 edition posted in October of last year.)....This has been a much “smaller” festival if venues are a consideration. Screenings used to take place on almost hole-in-the-wall locations along Montreal’s great central street, Blvd Saint-Laurent also known as the Main. Over the years it has expanded and in 1999 a luxurious futuristic complex (complete with abstract box office windows) called Ex-Centris became its headquarters. This year I notice the festival has also migrated south and east to the main cinema used by the Montreal World Film Festival, Quartier Latin, a multiplex run by Cineplex Odeon. Cinema du Parc (a favourite repertory of mine) located further west on Park Avenue is no longer taking part....The festival is held in high regard as an auteur fest and has showcased (with the directors present) the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Wim Wenders, Jane Campion, Atom Egoyan and Léa Pool......In 2003 I attended an extroardinary master class with Brit filmmaker Peter Greenaway......I’ll of course be reporting more from FNC next week. Meanwhile you can check out the festival’s site at http://www.nouveaucinema.ca/

Two treats in one night

2010-10-10T01:20:00.002-04:00

A year after it opened I finally made it to Detroit’s Burton Theatre (3420 Cass Ave. just south of Martin Luther King Blvd.) The Burton is an art house cinema created in an auditorium of the former Burton International School (picture at left, web site link at right). And it truly specializes in art house cinema, more so than, say, Landmark’s Main or Maple (which I’ll politely describe as showing mainstream art house). My first post about the cinema was Jan. 11. In that post, a reference to a NY Times story about Detroit entrepreneurs developing businesses in the largely abandoned city, the Burton’s Nathan Faustyn said investors wanted to do something to help make Detroit a more liveable place.....So it was appropriate that the first film I saw there was this weekend’s Detroit Wild City by French director Florent Tillon.....Tillon’s picture is a kind of meditative documentary about the ruins of Detroit, the abandoned city against the backdrop of the industrial powerhouse it was and, towards the film’s end, thoughts on what it could become......There is something in the film of the clichéd outsider’s take on Detroit – the fascination with urban ruins or “urban ruin porn” as it’s been called. But the picture stands on its own as an absorbing piece of filmmaking, as we follow denizens of the city who find a way to live in it and indeed embrace their corners of it whether as an urban gardener or everyday handyman. A sombre piano score helps give meaning to these starkly beautiful shots of burned out buildings, deserted streets and urban prairie, places at once familiar yet filmed from perspectives that make you wonder exactly where that is.....A Q & A with the director (who attended the screening Saturday night) had most in the audience praise the beautiful images of juxtaposed ruins against nature or sunsets though one man found the movie “empty.” I think he meant devoid of life because the Detroit he knows, as physically eviscerated as it is, still has people who bring any place some normality. Regardless, Detroit Wild City is a beautiful look at a stunningly decayed urban environment.

Local teacher opposite Stormare, Plimpton

2010-10-05T17:55:00.002-04:00

Alan Penner loved the experience of acting in a feature film.....It was also great that some of the people he was acting with were fairly well-known Hollywood names – like Martha Plimpton (TV’s Weeds and Entourage), Peter Stormare (Armageddon, The Big Lebowski) and Jill Hennessy (TV’s Las Vegas and Law & Order)......The Leamington teacher and musician also got to see his face in close-up on the big screen at last month’s Toronto International Film Festival when the movie Small Town Murder Songs had three screenings. (picture) .....The movie by Toronto’s Ed Gass-Donnelly of Three Legged Dog Films (This Beautiful City) was shot in Listowel, Ont.....Penner was asked to act in the film as a result of a family connection. His brother Andrew Penner, also a musician, helped with the film’s music. He had also done scoring on the director’s last film. Andrew’s wife Erin was a personal assistant and scout locator. Wanting someone who knew of rural life she “just called us because we grew up in a farm in Leamington”.....Variety describes the murder mystery as “vaguely suggesting a Canadian Insomnia...wedded to its provincial setting, Mennonite ambience and Germanic accents...(a) modestly made but cosmically profound drama”.....Gass-Donnelly is shopping the films at festivals but no word on a distribution deal yet. Penner says it will be available on the DVD rental market.

No to The Social Network, yes to Catfish

2010-10-03T11:47:00.000-04:00

I’m not inclined to see The Social Network (d. David Fincher), despite how stupendous the reviews says the movie is. I’ve been watching trailers for this for the past month and I have not a modicum of interest. Maybe it’s because I can’t stand facebook. I’ll be honest. I have a facebook account. But I opened it because it seemed the only way to correspond with friends who insisted on communicating with me through it (good bye old-fashioned e-mail!). Then I discovered that through facebook's Groups section I could promote stories on my companion newspaper site http://www.windsorontarionews.com/ But even there my “friends” remain static and I’ve discovered Twitter a much more effective way to expand audience. And, yes, I’ll admit it, I really don’t get facebook. It looks hideously complicated. Perhaps someone (likely 30 years younger) will one day take me in hand and instruct me on the marvellous ways of connecting on this fantastic site and I’ll be hooked. For the time being it leaves me cold.....But I did go to see Catfish, the indie film about what can happen when someone deceives another on facebook. But this is a story (documentary) that could be about Internet deception anywhere, such as through a personals or dating site. And despite the movie’s critical acclaim it’s not a particularly a new story. But the film (by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost) is put together well. It seemingly captures the reality of New York photographer and cohort (and Ariel’s brother) Nev Schulman from start to finish as he gets sucked-in big time in romantic infatuation by a distant admirer from the boonies of northern Michigan. In an age where people seem to want to reveal everything about themselves on sites like facebook the fact Schulman let the camera capture his entire experience also seems to suggest that the embarrassment factor in any medium has been severely eroded.

French master Claude Chabrol dead at 80

2010-09-28T11:14:00.000-04:00

Claude Chabrol, one of the masters of the French New Wave, has died. The way he was making movies I thought he would live forever. Chabrol was more than a prolific filmmaker whose most recent movie was last year’s Inspector Bellamy with Gerard Depardieu. If there’s any justice in the world (but of course there isn’t) there should be a film festival devoted to his works. He made 72 films for big screen and TV, specializing in the psychological crime genre. He brought to prominence stars like Isabelle Huppert and Sandrine Bonnaire. Huppert is especially memorable in the 2000 film Merci pour le Chocolat where she plays a respectable upper class maven who no one would suspect of malevolent intent. Chabrol’s pictures play on themes of evil and madness with seemingly normal characters who often tip over the edge. People say Hitchcock is dark but Chabrol is darker. (In fact Chabrol and fellow new waver Eric Rohmer wrote a book about Hitchcock.) Chabrol, along with Rohmer, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard (Chabrol was technical advisor on Godard’s Breathless) all started in film criticism at the famed journal Cahiers du Cinema. Chabrol in person was a gregarious bon vivant, a raconteur and wit, delighting in sumptuous meals, with humour pervading movie sets and very much one of the gang with actors and crew. This of course is in stark contrast to the themes of his films. But why not? It’s like Yin and Yang. Claude Chabrol, one of the truly great ones – and my overall favourite director – has succumbed, no doubt moving on to a splendid banquet in the sky with great conversation and not a little dark humour about his new circumstances. (Photo credit: movie.idv.tw)

My Elizabeth Hurley moment

2010-09-25T17:34:00.003-04:00

Elizabeth Hurley? You mean Hugh Grant’s girlfriend? Or former girlfriend? Or embarrassed girlfriend, after Grant was picked-up soliciting a prostitute off the Sunset Strip in 1995? Other than the notoriety arising from that incident – and her sticking with the louse through the scandal – I never really gave much thought to the Brit actor and Estee Lauder model. As far as I was concerned she was just another gossip press personality. Then I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s The Weight of Water (2000). Hurley was stunning in it. And I don’t mean just in looks. Excuse me for stereotyping but in the opening scenes of the film, when the characters (including Catherine McCormack, Sean Penn and John Lucas), meet for a short sailing expedition to islands off the New Hampshire coast (the movie was shot in Nova Scotia) she is the unexpected bombshell of a girlfriend along for the ride. Until, that is, she opens her mouth. This woman is a manifestation of brains and beauty. In fact she was the most fascinating character of the entire film even though playing a secondary role. She came across as the most intellectual and deepest of the bunch. Hurley’s Adaline Gunn weighed her words with precision, insight and gravitas from a mind rich in general knowledge and of the vissicitudes of human nature. As the characters embark on their brief ocean sojourn, as you could imagine, the close knit group ends up spending hours talking about everything from the arts (the Penn character is a writer) to people’s hidden motivations, particularly in relation a local double murder that McCormack’s Jean Janes is investigating. For her part Adaline reaches heights of intimidating braininess only to retreat into a kind of self-aware warmth and understanding. Had I not seen this in Hurley before? Well, my only real exposure to her was in the Austin Powers movies where her Vanessa role opposite Mike Myers was, well, rather cartoonish - she was a “fembot” after all! This Elizabeth seems more like the - real - deal.

Detroit 1-8-7 too smart for stereotypes

2010-09-22T09:39:00.001-04:00

I watched the opening episode of Detroit 1-8-7, the first prime time crime show (on ABC) shot (hmm, bad pun) in the Motor City. Of course there have been gobs of anticipation for this. Detroit in a starring role on a national TV show? Would this be another example of the big media showing the worst of a city with an already horrendous reputation? Detroiters were anxious yet basking in the glow of television’s big time.....I’m not a TV crime show watcher (not much of a TV watcher at all, in fact). But Detroit 1-8-7 refreshingly portrayed Detroit not at its worse but in a somewhat refreshing way. Detroit is Detroit, and it’s not one of the prettiest urban landscapes (despite my love for it). That said, the outdoor scenes (and there were a lot of them shot largely by hand held camera and quick cuts reminiscent of Hill Street Blues) showed off various dimensions of the city. I even commented to a friend: “This makes Detroit look pretty good.” There were many scenes of relatively decent neighbourhoods and one in an a trendy coffee shop (which “used to be a porno shop” commented Det. Louis Fitch (Michael Imperioli - The Sopranos, Law & Order, Goodfellas, The Basketball Diaries)). The fact much of the pilot was shot in Atlanta accounted for some of the places I clearly did not recognize. The police staff was multi-racial and ethnic, again dispelling stereotypes. One got the sense that not everyone in Detroit is poor, a criminal or destitute – that people actually work and play and enjoy living in the urban surroundings. In fact, the 11 pm news afterwards – with crime-laden stories – brought me back to the “real” Detroit. Hopefully this wasn’t a first episode attempt to mollify a skeptical home town audience and the show in future will depict only the worst of the worst. But I think the production team is too smart for that.....Acting was also pretty good with Natalie Martinez as Det. Ariana Sanchez and Aisha Hinds as Lt. Maureen Mason.

TIFF (boo hoo), and The Last Station

2010-09-20T08:16:00.000-04:00

TIFFed-off: Poor Torontonians. And – especially – poor Toronto media. They’ll have no “stars” to drool over at their local film festival, since TIFF bit the dust for another year Sunday. It is all quite hilarious the amount of ink and broadcast time devoted to the festival’s red carpet and star spotting reports. A sure sign of small town insecurity.

The Last Station – I had been wanting to see this film (d. Michael Hoffman), hearing one commentator go so far as to describe the movie as the best of 2009. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this tale of the last days of Russia’s Czarist-era and civil patron saint, writer Leo Tolstoy, played well by Christopher Plummer. Helen Mirren puts in a good performance as Tolstoy’s rather dismissed wife Sofya. There is also Paul Giamatti (a personal fave) as Vladimir Chertkov, guardian of Tolstoy’s organization known as the Tolstoyans and enemy of Sofya......But rather than the movie built around Tolstoy, as one might expect, it really circulates around James McAvoy’s character Valentin Bulgakov, a young Tolstoy secretary, and his seduction by free-love advocate Masha (Kerry Condon).....The film is nowhere as dramatic or multi-dimensional as I’d been led to believe, nor quite as funny. But it works as a straight ahead period piece and will appeal to those who like standard Merchant-Ivory fair or who are devotees of History Television.

More glitter, less film

2010-09-17T09:59:00.001-04:00

More headlines today from the Toronto International Gittter (or should that be Film?) Festival. In fact there is such an abundance of stars you can't see the films (or should that be 'can't see the films for the stars' or 'the stars are so bright they obliterate the films'). Okay, I'm having fun and continuing to mock the Toronto fest. (Yes, yes, I know it’s a good fest – perhaps the greatest ever – better than Cannes.) Here goes:

* Canadian Malin Akerman delivers on red carpet
Leave it to a Toronto-bred star to bring some much-needed glamour to the Toronto International Film Festival red carpet.

* TIFF’s hottest couples includes a bromance
Love (or in Josh Brolin’s case, smoke – read on for more) is in the air at the 35th annual Film Fest. The GGP counts down TIFF’s hottest twosomes so far.

* Gemma Arterton’s ‘ugly duckling’ spreads her wings
It’s nearly impossible to imagine Gemma Arterton as a gawky and unattractive youth, ignored and taunted by boys.

* Where’s the glamour at Hollywood North?
If you’ve been following the red carpet, you may be wondering if this year’s festival has been dubbed the Toronto International Dull Fashion Festival.

* Autograph hounds share tweets on getting the ink

Red carpet or film festival?

2010-09-15T15:02:00.001-04:00

What did I tell you? Just a sampling of recent headlines or lead sentences of stories coming out of the Toronto Intl. Film Fest:

* The "Tamara Drewe" actress trades in her little black dress for a jumper. It's refreshing to see an actress that's not in a gown for once. Jumpers can be hard to pull off but Gemma has the look down pat with a matching wide belt, an embellishment at the top and a wider leg. It definitely makes a statement. September 12, 2010: Gemma Arterton at the TIFF premiere of 'Tamara Drewe' in Toronto, Canada.
* Did Nelly get entangled in some fishing net on the way to the TIFF peremiere of "Score: A Hockey Musical"?
* Kidman ‘very nervous’ about new film
* Winona Ryder ? There She Is!
* Fans swarm Natalie Portman on the red carpet
* Keanu Reeves doesn’t disappoint at TIFF

Toronto's celebrity orgy

2010-09-15T07:52:00.000-04:00

This is the reason I don’t like – or should I be more polite and say, I’m not really enamoured of – the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). If you take a look at the coverage of the fest (now underway until, mercifully, this weekend) in virtually any Toronto-based media outlet (for Yank fiends, Toronto is the equivalent of New York and controls much of the Canadian media) virtually all of it is focussed on celebrities attending the event. Very little is on coverage of the actual films. Of course, I suppose, this isn’t TIFF’s fault. But then again perhaps the festival is a colossal enabler, don’t you think? One of my other beefs with the festival is its large selection of Hollywood films. The number of H’wood flicks is because Toronto is a mammoth business festival, and film wheelers and dealers use it to broker distribution deals. But why would I want to go to a festival that screens Hollywood films when those same films will open in local cinemas two, three months from now?

Classics at Cineplex Devonshire

2010-09-08T11:44:00.001-04:00

It’s a great idea and helps, if a bit, compensate for the lack of alternative cinema in Windsor. Cineplex Odeon theatres have launches its first Classic Film Series. Tonight is the first evening. Appropriately enough it begins with perhaps the classic of all time Casablanca (d. Michael Curtiz, 1942) with Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains at Devonshire Mall cinemas. The movie also screens Sept. 26 (check times)....Next up: Psycho (d. Alfred Hitchcock) Oct. 13 & 31, then The Maltese Falcon Nov. 17 & 28 and for Christmas It’s a Wonderful Life Dec. 8 and 12. The series continues with eight other films through August. For more info go to http://www.cineplex.com/Events/ClassicFilmSeries/Home.aspx

Montreal World Film Festival - Day 11

2010-09-07T09:40:00.001-04:00

And now for the final day.....The first movie was the television epic La Très Excellente et Divertissante Histoire de François Rabelais (roughly The Very Excellent and Entertaining Adventures of François Rabelais (d. Hervė Baslė). Rabelais was a 16th century writer, scientist and doctor, perhaps France’s most famous Renaissance man. This four-hour drama may give one pause because of its intimidating length. But like last year’s festival’s similar four-hour epic from French television, L’ėcole du Pouvoir (d. Raoul Peck) - about a French finishing school for the country’s elites and a group of idealistic students’ influence on the socialist revolution of President François Mitterand in the 1980s - four hours need not be a burden if the movie is well put together. Though not as dramatic and complex as last year’s L’ėcole, Rabelais’s script is relatively spare and what’s in it is humourous and informative.....This happens to me every fest: I land in a screening that is entirely en Français. Sometimes it’s a result of the schedule having the wrong info about whether the movie has English subtitles (most do) and sometimes it’s my fault for not reading the program correctly. Yesterday it was my fault. I ended up in Michel Rodde’s Impasse du Dėsir (Swiss), sort of a black or tragic-comedy about a psychiatrist engaged in professional abuse for personal reasons. From just watching the film visually it struck me as rather silly and focussed on characters I didn’t really care about. But this may be unfair since I didn’t have the script to help elucidate.....Gianfrancesco Lazotti’s From the Waist On is yet another movie in this year's fest that dealt with disabilities or severe health issues, all of which shatter clichés about those who have them without being dry didactic message pictures. (Other films of the genre include Run if You Can, Oxygen and Stricken). This film is better than I thought but hardly of the calibre suggested in the official catalogue’s quote from the Hollywood Reporter that this is “one of those unexpected pleasures that festivals often promise but rarely deliver”.....Finally, the closing ceremonies and the heralded film - the second in the festival from France’s Bertrand Tavernier, The Princess of Montpensier. Excuse me, but my reading of this picture is that it took more than two hours to tell the story of the doomed love between Marie de Mèziėres and Henri de Guise in 16th Century France. The film's problem is: once we know of the romance essentially no new information is provided over a mind-numbing 120 minutes. Too bad this was the closure although obviously Tavernier is a big name. But the beforehand ceremonies, at which awards were presented (Oxygen by Hans Van Nuffel (Belgian-Netherlands) took top prize), were quite enjoyable.....For more on the prizes go to http://digital.montrealgazette.com/epaper/viewer.aspx

Montreal World Film Festival - Day 10

2010-09-06T01:43:00.001-04:00

Horror thriller director Hideo Nakata’s (Japan) twist on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians might be the best film I’ve seen so far. In The Incite Mill, ten participants are told they can earn as much as $1200 an hour for a job being offered – actually an “experiment” by a “foundation” - that lasts just seven days. They arrive at a remote bunker-like building and, descending a spiral staircase, are welcomed to a sumptuous feast. But things grow darker from there, as these innocents soon descend into rapacious creatures, fighting for survival, all shown live on the worldwide web. This is the only movie of 38 I've seen so far where I was glued to the screen every second.....Russia’s Casual Connection (d. Olga Stolpovskaya) is supposed to be a kind of surreal take on modern Russian. The lead character, a young woman (Sofia Kashtanova), wakes up every morning in a different location as if in a dream, and is seemingly the victim during the day of random unfortunate events. This disturbing movie is an allegory for the dysfunction of modern Russia and worth taking a look at.....The Last 56 Hours (d. Claudio Fragasso) is a well-made Italian drama about a rather bizarre hostage-taking. Luca Lionello as Paolo, a sort of renegade cop and looking uncannily like Al Pacino in Serpico, saves the day when a band of Italian army troops take as hostages staff and patients at a hospital. Their action is all for a good cause of course: Italian soldiers returned from fighting in Kosovo suffering the effects of radiation from depleted uranium in NATO ammunition. While the plot clearly depicts the soldiers as bad guys threatening innocent civilians, the film ultimately seems to treat them as heroes for bringing attention to their fellow servicemen’s plight. It's action-packed and very much like a Pacino film of an earlier era.....Meeting with an Angel (co-directed by France’s Yves Thomas and Sophie de Daruvar) is at once a story about dominance, disconnectedness and voyeurism between lovers Judith (Isabelle Carré) and Roland (Sergi Lopez). It is subtly told and almost under-the-surface in its revelations about the characters’ (especially Judith’s) motives. But, besides an only somewhat interesting story it’s hard to see what the film adds up to.....Bjarnfredarson (d. Ragnar Bragason, Iceland), based on a hugely popular Icelandic television series, has a cast of misfits led by none other than the lead himself. Just out of prison this social activist and what in America would have been called a red diaper baby (as in being brought up by Communist parents) Georg (Jón Gnarr) can’t seem to catch a break despite his best intentions. Perhaps if you’re Icelandic and liked the TV series you’ll love the film. But the characters didn’t win me over. One thing the movie does show, however, is that even in the tiny North Atlantic island, when it comes to the Sixties and left wing politics, nothing was different there from what occurred in North America.....Finally, a German film I actually didn’t like. Snowman’s Land (d. Thomasz Thompson) has a rag tag group of incompetent thugs meet in a remote forest villa. Needless to say nothing good comes of it. It would have been an easy film to have taken a pass on.

Montreal World Film Festival - Day 9

2010-09-05T08:10:00.001-04:00

Thelma, Louise and Chantal is what you might expect from the title – a road movie comedy from France’s Benoît Pétré. Three middle aged women whose lives are listless hit the road to attend the wedding of a former husband. The story is rife with jokes about everything from body image to sex (or lack thereof) to loser men. This could have been overly clichéd but the story is funny and charming enough to stand out on its own.....It Begins with the End has director Michaél Cohen opposite Emmanuelle Béart in this story of attraction, repulsion and ultimately passion between lovers who are torn by the idiosyncrasies of their relationship. I can’t put my finger on why I didn’t particularly care about the movie. The acting was good enough, the film was well put together. But somehow these characters’ story just didn’t engage me. Perhaps the plot needed more of an edge....Another great Scandinavian film in A Family, Pernille Fischer Christensen’s story about a young woman torn between career as an art dealer and taking over her family’s legendary bakery business, a purveyor to the royal court. Good performances from everyone especially Lene Maria Christensen as Ditte and Jesper Christensen as the dominating patriarch in this story about how life plans aren’t always as easy to execute as imagined.

Montreal World Film Festival - Day 8

2010-09-04T10:45:00.001-04:00

When people ask me what I like about European film, a film like Holland’s Stricken (or A Woman Goes to the Doctor) comes pretty close to hitting the mark. The film by Reinout Oerlemans has got it all. It’s slickly-made, has a pace that doesn’t let up, a more-than-absorbing storyline and, contrary to what one might think about a topic with cliché written all over it – breast cancer – delivers in a completely unconventional way. With an electronica soundtrack this story (from the Dutch novel Love Life by Ray Kluun) chronicles the lives of hip professionals Stijn (Barry Atsma) and wife Carmen (Carice van Houten). The movie places the disease at the centre of what is otherwise a trendy, cutting edge lifestyle in Amsterdam’s advertising and party scenes, where the central characters’ relationship is defined on more than one level. If Hollywood had made this the movie would have been sappy and message-driven. You can find messages in this, I suppose, but they’re subtle and come at you in numerous indirect ways. This is first-rate filmmaking.....Spanish film Plans for Tomorrow (d. Juana Macías) might be considered a “women’s film” by a female director (there are other films in the festival like this). It explores the characters of a couple of women where on one day their lives coincidentally become intertwined. These women are struggling against the limitations of age, the balancing of careers, and the desire for freedom from limiting or dominating men. It’s not as slick as Stricken but features strong performances, characters and stories we care about.

Montreal World Film Festival - Day 7

2010-09-03T10:19:00.005-04:00

Thursday it was almost six for six at the festival, the flaw - darn! - being Chantrapas (d. Otar Iosseliani, France-Georgia), my first walk-out. Why? Meandering story-lines in all too typical Eastern European ensemble film.....The day also marked my first “early” (10 am) festival screening (in past years I was routinely at a theatre for the first morning screenings but, hey, I’m doing MWFF/FFM “lite” this year.....First up: Ella (d. Francisco J. Lombardi, Mexico). This tale of an artist and his young wife doesn’t have much to say about art (contrary to the fest catalogue’s description) but is more a probe into how an individual deals with love, betrayal and the criminality surrounding a sudden loss. The film rolls out in an understated and tense manner and there are no scenes wasted.....Living on Love Alone’s theme is about being young and struggling professionally (most of us have been there) but in this case resulting ultimately in the rejection of bourgeois life (a theme in a number of films) where the main character (Anaïs Demoustier) is unable fill the void with a suitable alternative. It’s a good flick from France’s Isabelle Czajka.....In Gold We Trust, also from France and directed by Éric Besnard is an old-fashioned and slickly-produced adventure-crime story straight from the jungles of Guiana. It’s also a tale about corruption in the gold industry and ultimately that there is no honour among thieves. A good fun adventure.....Germany’s Peter Timm’s Beloved Berlin Wall is kind of a screwball comedy about the romance between a West Berlin student and an East German border guard in the days just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The student (Felicitas Woll) finds a cheap apartment just metres form the Wall and begins flirting with a guard (Maxim Mehmet) in the nearby watch tower. Their romance becomes the focus of Cold War intrigue with lots of classic mix-ups reminiscent of 1950s’ Hollywood comedies.....Young Girls in Black (France) is a story of two tight knit high school friends. You know the type: they dress Goth-like, read the deepest literature, and reject the shallow world around them. Good performances, and directing from Jean-Paul Civeyrac.

Montreal World Film Festival - Day 6

2010-09-02T07:47:00.001-04:00

Some days very little goes right at the festival. Yesterday was a case in point. I showed up for the 2.40 pm screening of La Très Excellente et Divertissante Histoire de François Rabelais, Hervé Baslé’s four-hour epic for French television about the life of the Renaissance writer, doctor and humanist. I arrived a few minutes late thinking there would be no problem getting in. Only one other theatre had been sold out since I’ve been here and the overall festival attendance seems less than in other years. And what masochists would want to sit through a four-hour movie, right? But the theatre was “complet” or full. Wow! Perhaps people were attending for movie endurance bragging rights. I had chosen this film because only it and another period piece, René Féret’s Nannerl, Mozart’s Sister, held any interest for me on Wednesday’s schedule.....With hours now my hand I settled for the movie I Heart Regina, 13 vignettes about the otherwise undistinguished prairie city whose only claim to fame seems to be that it is geographically located in the centre of North America. Most of the short films by 14 Saskatchewan-based directors were amusing in this take off of movies like Paris Je T’aime and New York, I Love You, with lots of jokes about surviving the city’s winter Arctic conditions and its bland flat terrain. But of course charm can be found anywhere, right?.....Killing some more time I went to see Venice, Polish director Jan Jakub Kolski’s meditation on Poland’s 1939 invasion by the Nazis. Eleven-year-old Marek’s family trip to Venice is interrupted. So he concocts a fantasy of his beloved Italian city as his family takes refuge with the war going on around them. This type of picture (a boy, the countryside, the focus on only one or two characters at a time, the locations all shot in one area) has been done umpteen times. It’s boring. When I first read the movie’s description I thought the reason for the plot line was that it was cheaper to film in Poland than Venice. I wonder how many in the well-attended screening actually thought they would see images of the Italian city.....Finally, the second period piece of the day I actually wanted to see, Nannerl. Now this was a picture one could sink one's teeth into. It’s about not the famous Mozart, Wolfgang, but his older sister, Nannerl, also a prodigy as musician and composer, perhaps more talented than Wolfgang. She came across as charming and more intellectually astute than her child brother who at one point is described as a genius in the music department but an idiot in every other aspect of life. So why don't we know about her? Check the gender. Marie Féret, the director’s daughter, plays in the starring role.

Montreal World Film Festival - Day 5

2010-09-01T11:54:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was ho-hum day at the fest.....I returned to see Le Mariage À Trois, Jacques Doillon’s take on artsy communal lust and love, because the film is so dense with “deep” dialogue that, while enjoyable, I wasn’t sure I had fully understood it. Sure enough, I had. (It's that kind of film.) And, once again, I held on to every line of dialogue. This audience, smaller than the one the day previously, also seemed to get the film more than the first audience, who seemed to write it off if they understood it at all. There was even a round of applause from people other than me! The picture has made me a real Doillon fan and I’ve already reserved two of his earlier films for DVD rental: Raja and Petits Freres.....The next film was With Love...from the Age of Reason (d. Yann Samuell) starring Sophie Marceau as Margaret, a fast-rising careerist who one day receives letters she wrote on her seventh birthday, seven being the age of reason. The letters reveal how Margaret, who also changed her name from Marguerite, has strayed from her idealistic youthful values. This is a slick film which ultimately is heart-warming. It will have a strong appeal to middle brow audiences, nothing more......Next was The Singularity is Near, A True Story about the Future (d. Anthony Waller). It’s a documentary about American futurist Ray Kurzweil and his predictions for the coming age of advanced artificial intelligence, where avatars will become so human-like they’ll demand equal rights with their biological counterparts. The film leaves one thinking we’re still living in the Dark Ages.....Finally, Tannöd (The Murder Farm) from Bettina Oberli (German & Swiss co-production). Based on Andrea Maria Schenkel’s novel this film is a whodunit set in rural Bavaria. There’s nothing technically wrong about the movie and Julia Jentsch as Kathrin gives an appealing performance. But the film has the look and feel of been-there, done-that. We know the rural landscapes, we know the dark forebodings and religious imagery. To improve the film the director needed to somehow approach the material from a fresh perspective.