September 9, 2008
I have always liked the first Monday at the festival, especially the mornings, as it heralds four more weekday mornings when things aren’t quite as crazy, and even the sillier films take on a bit more of an air of respectability, as the audience is reduced to the hard-core take-the-week-off crowd. Not that I don’t thoroughly enjoy the rest of the fest, but it is fun to have the feeling shift a bit more towards the sedate. It’s a bit less harried; there’s a bit more community, a bit more insider-clubbiness to it. Not that there’s any snooty exclusivity to that - you can all join the club - just take the week off!
The documentary EVERY LITTLE STEP tells the story of the audition and casting process for the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line on Broadway. Being that A Chorus Line itself is the story of the audition and casting process for a Broadway musical, we have the filmic equivalent of a feedback loop here, and it’s quite the engaging ride.
Now I’ve never seen A Chorus Line - neither on stage, nor in the movie theatre, nor on DVD - but before you starting cursing my parents and showering me with elaborate pity parties, or making expensive arrangements to put me up in New York’s finest hotel rooms with great seats on Broadway tout de suite, rest assured that I will soon be correcting one of the oversights of my upbringing by seeing the show when it hits the stage of the Canon Theatre later this fall. All will be well.
I got the ticket for EVERY LITTLE STEP just because of the fact that I will be seeing the musical shortly, and I am certainly anticipating the show now, having finally learned a bit about this stage phenomenon. If you’re going to see it anyway, you might as well be prepared, right? Right. There’s no word if STEP will open before A Chorus Line opens in late October, although that would be a longshot. If I were David Mirvish I’d be trying to arrange it, nevertheless. Those who know the show will love this backstage look, those who don’t will be left wanting to see the show. And you’ll be wishing for these actors to be coming with the touring production - we certainly come to root for a few of them - but they won’t be coming, I have already checked the cast list on the website.
I am still thinking about THE COUNTRY TEACHER a day after, but I’m not so sure what to say about it. I don’t want to give too much away, but then again, I have little faith that this fine film will make it to theatres here. It Czech. See many Czech films?
TEACHER is shot in the beautiful countryside a distance from Prague, in a farming village on a lake, surrounded by woods. The setting is the rural idyll, an escape from the capital from which the titular teacher had a past he has run from. He soon finds, however, that you can’t keep your secrets hidden if you continue to act the way you did in the city: a foolish act puts his very existence in the village in peril, and the film subsequently asks its characters if they can forgive and accept, or if they will be slaves forever to misery and hate.
The film makes a choice that not all audience members were willing to accept. One questioner left the Q&A when another audience member eloquently defended the director: you could see that this film had cut deeply.
Anyway, I have no idea if such sketchy details on my part will entice anyone to see this film should they have the opportunity. I remembered little about it from the festival write-up by the time it started, and in retrospect I was glad not to know much more about it than what I have laid out here. This is one of those ‘this is the way life happens’ films, and sometimes it’s better to be less prepared for them. In fact, I have told you too much already. Forget what I have said, but see THE COUNTRY TEACHER if you ever have the chance.
TULPAN sprawls over the Kazakh steppe while at the same time it finds beauty in simplicity, with an entirely uncomplicated plot, and a whole disappearing culture for the audience to drop into. Asa is a young man, recently returned to the steppe after several tours as a Russian submariner. It’s time for him to find a wife, get a herd of sheep, a yurt, and establish a family. Tulpan is the girl down the road, a long day’s tractor ride away, and the object of Asa’s affections. A meeting is arranged to offer a dowry to Tulpan’s parents, but she and her mother aren’t interested: Tulpan is destined for the city and better things. Asa’s desires for Tulpan remain undiminished however, and if he can just prove to her that he can be a good herdsman and pure of heart, well, maybe she’ll change her mind.
Asa’s extended family are so natural that you cannot imagine you are seeing anything other than a real family going about their lives. Scenes do not seem staged or written so much as they have been merely caught by the camera. Shots of the sheep herds in a dust storm, or what it takes to get a hurt camel some help, or of family life in the yurt, or of weather on the steppe, are all exactly what they seem, with no hidden meanings nor dark complications; they are simple glimpses of this anachronistic life, and it’s very, very charming.
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September 8, 2008
There are a lot of iPhones at TIFF. I have already endured(!) a party with friends a couple of weeks earlier where 6 iPhones showed up - and showed off - and I have been telling everyone that I will wait the year until my current contract is up before I switch to the greatest communication device ever created… but, it is getting harder not to knuckle under and get myself one now. I could be carrying one of them around the festival and typing away on them instead of having to haul my trusty but bulky PowerBook about. Oh well, next year I will have an iPhone that will blow the early adopter’s phones out of the water; no doubt I’ll be able to talk at twice the speed those slack-jawed yokels enunciate their yammer, take shots in 5 megapixel clarity, and drive my car with its remote control. (No offense Foolish Early Adopters! Haha!!)
It’s a day of three documentaries in a row for me: I didn’t schedule that on purpose, but I am looking forward to them all…
If a film with 9 philosophers talking for 10 minutes each about what matters most as they see it appeals to you, you will really enjoy Astra Taylor’s EXAMINED LIFE, a title riffing on Plato’s maxim that an unexamined life is not worth living. If the above does not initially appeal, well, you might be surprised. You will all get a chance to test its appeal for you when EXAMINED shows up on TVO’s schedule in the coming months, but in the meantime I can tell you that Cornell West, Martha Nussbaum, Avital Ronell, Peter Singer, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Michael Hardt, Judith Butler, and Astra’s sister Sunaura Taylor, (yes, Hippie parents) and the inimitable Slavoj Zizek expound upon questions of ethics, responsibility, power, meaning, revolution, acceptance, love, ecology. There are moments when the academic jargon will benefit from the rewind and/or pause buttons on the PVR, and from a conversation with more well-versed friends, but most speakers make themselves easily understood. Strangely enough, or so it seemed to me at first, I found myself seated beside a number of viewers who had gotten into a call-and-response type of interaction with the film, of the kind that is learned in charismatic churches. I kept hearing “yes!” and “it’s true!”, everything short of “amen” from them, which was quite unexpected, but it did make me feel like I was in church, this being Sunday morning and all. As a quick intro to philosophy today, and how it just might apply to real life, EXAMINED LIFE is easily worth at least one viewing.
FOOD INC. is one scary (but not without hope) and rather important film.
Enjoy eating? I have some friends who, if their party behaviour is any indication, do not, but I do, and I know some of you occasionally eat as well, so you just may have some interest in this film. I think FOOD INC. is destined to be one of the more talked-about documentaries of the coming year - that is, unless Monsanto has anything to say about it. (Actually, please don’t send them this email, as they will likely sue me for suggesting that they may want to squelch the release of a film that should bring to them the level of scrutiny that the tobacco industry has ‘enjoyed’ in the last couple of decades.) I certainly spent the rest of the day talking about it.
Filmmaker Robert Kenner, inspired by the books ‘Fast Food Nation’ by Eric Schlosser and ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ by Michael Pollan, set out to put together a film of how the food supply system in the US works, exploring all areas, real friendly like. As research ensued however, Kenner found that he was being stonewalled by the food producers of the US; one after another Tyson, Smithfield, Purdue, Monsanto, etc., all refused to be interviewed, and what emerged instead was a litany of grave concerns that farmers themselves had over the practices that puts much of the food on our tables. As Kenner points out, the advance of technology should continually be making our food system safer, when in reality e-coli outbreaks are becoming more common. (It needs to be said that Maple Leaf Foods acceptance of responsibility for the listeriosis outbreak here in Canada is anathema to the actions of the multinational food corps in the US, which indicates to me a somewhat more benign industry in this country. I may be somewhat naïve in that belief, but this film has got me hoping that our border provides at least some cushioning from the worst of what is shown in this film.)
That said, FOOD INC. is very well put together, and not so much depressing as it is educational, and it should prove to be an agent of change in the people that go to see it. It will be for me.
You’d think I was a jockumentary fan if you didn’t know me better. A day after seeing a basketball doc, here I am at HARVARD BEATS YALE 29-29, a doc about an even more obscure sport: football. At least I’ve been to some Raptors games over the years, but football?
Well, the title was too intriguing. So Harvard beat Yale 29-29? How did they do that? What does that mean? I turns out that the game in question took place 40 years ago, at the end of an undefeated season for both teams. Yale was heavily favoured to win as a nationally highly ranked team who played tougher opponents than their Ivy-League rival Harvard. Their annual duel in 1968 however, which was 22-0 for Yale at one point, turned out very differently later, and it’s the last half of the game that the players on both teams will never forget.
Filmmaker Kevin Rafferty has crafted a fun film (even for non-football fans) that intercuts the important plays with players’ reminiscences about them, (intercuts which occasionally show you can’t count on memory, but that you can on videotape). Highlights of the interviews include that one of the Yale players roomed with George W. at the time, and one of the Harvard players roomed with Al Gore. Another one of the players was going out with Meryl Streep, a Vassar student way back when. Oh yeah, and on the Harvard team? Tommy Lee Jones. What a laconic interview he gives. Get the man some pep pills.
It’s all good fun, and as the players from both the “winning” and “losing” teams will tell you, it’s just a football game.
The day ended back in the land of fiction films, with director Baltasar Kormákur’s very enjoyable WHITE NIGHT WEDDING, a contemporary Icelandic retelling of Chekhov’s Ivanov. I had seen Kormákur’s amiable 101 REYKJAVIK years ago, and thought it was time to revisit this clever director. WEDDING takes us to a remote island off Iceland’s north shore (people really live up there?! yup!) where a former Reykjavik college professor is planning to marry a local girl half his age. Jon is haunted by the ghost of his late first wife however, and his future mother-in-law is, well, less than thrilled with the prospect. Jon’s friends, an eccentric gaggle of islanders, however, conspire to make certain the obstacles to the marriage are overcome. It’s all quite amusing, and filmed in a rare, beautiful place. It’s been quite a while since an Icelandic film hit the art house circuit here, but I am hopeful this one just may do it. It certainly deserves a chance.
Craig James White
Toronto - see you in the dark!
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September 8, 2008
Well who knew you could make a smashing documentary about a buncha guys from the wrong side of the tracks in a rust belt Ohio town who coalesce into possibly the best high school basketball team ever? Well, first time filmmaker Kristopher Belman did. The result of countless hours of footage from basketball games, practices, and interviews, MORE THAN A GAME tells the story of LeBron James and his teammates and coaches from the St. Vincent-St. Mary Fighting Irish of Akron, Ohio in the late 90s and early 2000s. James is now an NBA star, whom Kris had the foresight to get out and videotape long before the rags to riches story was a fait accompli, and got the footage he needed to make a fully fleshed out, visually exciting film that shows the kind of sacrifice and discipline it takes to turn ragtag players into a nationally ranked team - and boys into men. That may sound a little hyperbolic, but it’s not far off, and this story warrants all the attention it is destined for. Simply because it’s about basketball GAME will be big in the States anyway, (and might even do well here), but it is exceptionally well put together, better than it needs to be to do well, well enough that I think it is a Best Documentary candidate come Oscar time. These guys have heart, their coaches have the right stuff, and stumbles in their trajectory allow us to really connect with them and root for them.
Introducing the screening, TIFF programer Thom Powers asked how many people were at their first film festival film, to which a lot of hands were raised. MORE THAN A GAME drew a pile of people up from Ohio, plus locals that until now hadn’t connected with a festival film. The screening subsequently drew an atypical level of response from the audience - there were multiple outbursts of applause and cheering throughout the film, and once it was all over and the players were brought up on stage for the Q&A, many in the balcony moved forward to crowd the mezzanine aisle for a better view, bringing a real concert-standing room only feel to it all. It’s worth noting that a couple of the players totally choked up during the Q&A, as they discussed watching their high school years unspool before their eyes again.
The Q&A was followed, by anyone who wanted to attend it, with Lebron James leading a hoops shooting contest at Yonge-Dundas Square, which of course, was thronged. All of this was very populist on a day when the Toronto Sun’s headlines screamed FILM FEST ‘ELITIST’. It does have that corporate side, but it’s not the singular beast some would have you believe. (Just stay away from the Galas.)
During the introduction for GOODBYE SOLO, an independent American film (it could not be farther from Hollywood), programmer Jane Schoettle announced that SOLO had just won the FIPRESCI prize at the Venice Film Festival, heightening our expectations for this already buzzed-about film. (FIPRESCI prizes are handed out by a panel of film critics to promote film art and encourage new and young cinema).
The film concerns a man who has moved from Africa to the US to make his way in the world, and to provide for his family back home. Solo is driving a cab at the moment, but seeking employment as a flight attendant. One evening a fare he has picked up gives him a deposit to book him for a drive into the mountains in ten days. The destination is a national park known for its cliffs, and the fare won’t ask Solo’s innocent question about why he wants to go there - setting the wheels of the story in motion.
Côte d’Ivoirian newcomer Souléymane Sy Savané is riveting as Solo, while veteran character actor Red West brings a gruff realism to William, a man worn down by a past he keeps hidden. Director-writer Ramin Bahrani brings their story to the screen with such unsentimentalized honesty that the film has more of a documentary feel to it. I don’t think there’s a wrong move in the whole film. This will be a hard one to forget. If this doesn’t play the Carlton/Cumberland/Canada Square art house circuit, something is wrong.
NICK AND NORAH’S INFINITE PLAYLIST was my last film of the day, and a complete departure from SOLO: it was Hollywood calling tonight, but I didn’t initially realize it would be. Directed by Peter Sollett, who was responsible for the excellent RAISING VICTOR VARGAS 5 years ago, I expected another New York based low budget indy pic, and because it stars hometown nerdthrob Michael Cera, I thought maybe we had another JUNO here. Well, it’s not a total Hollywood sellout…
NICK AND NORAH is the story of a couple of Bridge and Tunnel New Jersey kids in New York for the evening. The two are both in the middle of relationship meltdowns with their Exes when they meet and eventually find love through their shared musical interests. (None of that is really a spoiler given the name of the film of course.) It turns out that it’s far more smartly written than the average teen comedy, but while it doesn’t exactly reach those JUNOian heights, NICK AND NORAH will play very well. Michael Cera’s impeccably understated comic delivery is complimented by winning performances including Kat Dennings playing Norah and the hilarious Ari Graynor as her too-often-drunk friend Caroline, along with a whole ensemble’s worth of photogenic friends with whom to trip the light fantastic. No surprise, New York at night also looks fantastic in this pic, (I think I want a crazy late night next time I’m there), and the soundtrack is consistently fun (and should sell like crazy). If you’re gonna sell out and go Hollywood, might as well do it as well as Peter Sollett has with NICK AND NORAH. This one’s out in October.
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