Well folks, I’m off to gobble up turkey and gargle some mulled wine, but here’s a rundown of films to see this holiday season. The list is long, but there’s certainly something for everyone.
Monkey Warfare and Snow Cake
If you haven’t been inside the newly re-furbished and sonically beefed-up Royal Cinema, try to make it down after December 15, when it officially opens with exclusive screenings of Reg Harkema’s Monkey Warfare.
Canada’s Top Ten
“We have nothing to be embarrassed about,” Toronto International Film Festival CEO Piers Handling intoned to a packed house of Canada’s film elite at the Revival night club on Tuesday night. The chuckles and chorus of “What did he just say?” spasmed through the room.
Planned Housing Spaces
What the hell went wrong in Regent Park? And how can we be sure that similar mistakes aren’t made in our rush to redevelop it?
Apocalytpo
I don’t want to forgive Mel Gibson. I’m not talking about the anti-semitic garbage the old lush may or may not have uttered last July; I’ve always felt critics had no place in the bed and interrogation rooms of Hollywood. No, in my eyes, Gibson’s biggest crime was 2004’s sado-masochistic The Passion of the Christ, a film that, in a shameless attempt to stoke evangelical Christian fervour and spending power, exploited, to the point of pornography, the torture of Jesus.
The Puffy Chair
In a weekend rife with slick offerings from the Leonardo Di Caprios and Mel Gibsons of the world, set everywhere from the fall of the Mayan Empire to the Kono district of Sierra Leone, it’s refreshing to find a movie like Jay and Mark Duplass’ The Puffy Chair. Shot for only US$15,000, and over the course of only a couple of days, the film is a kind of amalgam of Cassavetes’ Faces, Richard Linklater’s Slacker, and this year’s Aniston-Vaughan vehicle The Break-Up.
The Bridge
Many will dismiss Eric Steel’s The Bridge as a snuff film. Many people won’t want to see it. That’s understandable.
RESFEST
Last night, RESFEST, North America’s hippest and most cutting-edge video festival, hit Toronto, with a Nike-sponsored opening night party at Supermarket in Kensington Market. The festivities featured ONE SELF (DJ Vadim, Yarah Bravo, Blu Rum 13) and followed screenings of some of RESFEST’s slickest international shorts, as well as Rock the Bells, a documentary about concert promoter Chang Weissberg’s quixotic quest to book the Wu Tang Clan in 2004.
F***
There’s no going back. After decades of incensed debate over the socio-linguistic value or the noxious ills of everyone’s favourite expletive, “fuck” has now achieved a permanent place in our everyday lexicon. As vocabularies shrink and sentence lengths contract, the word has become a conversational cure-all, a word to throw in whenever we get lost. It’s peppered throughout our movies, cable TV and video games. It is even slowly gaining acceptance in that most conservative of mediums, the newspaper. You can’t walk down the street (regardless of what neighbourhood you’re in) without hearing it. It’s on the tip of my tongue whether I’m frustrated or exhilarated. “Fuck” has arrived.
Volver
Volverhas it all: ghosts, incest, murder, suppressed family secrets and a ridiculous amount of mountainous cleavage. In lesser hands, the movie could have played out much like an episode of As the World Turns (or the Spanish telenovelas former bad boy director Pedro Almodovar loves so much). With the deft hand of a master, however, Almodovar treats the tragic with the lightest of comic touches. His ode to the women of La Mancha (where he grew up) shows how the supportive bonds of sisterhood, the will to survive and the ability to chuckle at fate can defuse even the most harrowing of situations. While such an approach leaves one emerging from the cinema largely unmarked by the film’s tumultuous journey, subsequent analysis of why this might be the case reveals just what the director and his remarkable female cast have done.
Bobby
Watching Emilio Estevez’s Bobby gives one a new appreciation (in case any of us had forgotten) for the artistry of the late Robert Altman. Trying to capture the hopeful spirit he felt was lost with the assassination of Presidential aspirant Robert Kennedy at LA’s Ambassador Hotel in 1968, Estevez weaves together the lives of 22 characters working or staying at the hotel that night (none of whom are either Kennedy himself or his assassin, Sirhan Sirhan). Landmark, era-defining films such as Nashville are alluded to in Estevez’s long, unifying, Altmanesque tracking shots. Given the height of genius it’s cribbing from—and the palpable passion the director feels for his subject—Bobby should have been a great film, a thoughtful meditation on an alternate American past (and present) that that assassination might have kiboshed: one without Nixon, race riots, or Iraq. You can see that’s where Estevez wants to go. Unfortunately, his writing and direction are too ham-fisted to translate what he sees in his head (and heart) to the screen.
Film is Dead, Long Live Film
Tonight at the AGO, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers Toronto (LIFT) will be celebrating its 25th anniversary with the first installment of an event entitled Film is Dead, Long Live Film. Beginning at 6:30, LIFT will screen nine “film manifestos,” all commissioned by the cooperative to celebrate the “death” of celluloid. Once the screening is over, LIFT is throwing a party at Supermarket (268 Augusta Ave.), where it will host a special performance by prankster video artist and Neoist founder Istvan Kantor. The piece, entitled The Blood of Many Filmmakers will no doubt harken back to the artist’s ongoing “Blood Campaign.” (Wear a rain poncho!) For more info about tonight’s festivities or what to expect when the celebration continues with more screenings next Wednesday, visit LIFT’s Web site. The event is in memory of Roberto Ariganello, LIFT’s long-serving Executive Director, who passed away suddenly in August.
Casino Royale
It seems the best way to rejuvenate worn-out pop culture icons these days is to go back to the beginning. It worked for the caped crusader in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. And it works for the long-floundering (though immensely lucrative) James Bond franchise in Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale. I hate to add to the deafening hype, but the way this film turns Bond inside-out, exploring how he became the efficient, misogynistic, starched-collared killing machine he is, is unbelievably fun. Though it drags a tad in the final third, this is one of the best films in the franchise’s history.
Reel Asian Film Festival
Now in its tenth year, the Reel Asian Film Festival is perhaps Toronto’s most successful small film festival. The highlight of this year’s fest will no doubt be the November 15th opening night screening of Hong Kong New Wave great (and Wong Kar Wai editor and mentor) Patrick Tam’s first film in seventeen years, After This Our Exile. The movie focuses on a one-time playboy (played by Aaron Wok) now way past his prime who violently struggles with rising debts and the potential breakup of his family. The gala party at Revival preceding the screening will feature video animation from Lai Chung Poon.
