Hey folks, Harry here posting a regular story! Yeah yeah, I know - I have to finish ROLLING ROADSHOW with my HUD piece, I've got the last 4 nights of QT fest to dish out - and the DVD column that I owe y'all... but hey, I haven't been this behind in the history of the site - I keep this up and pretty soon I might have one of my fave genre directors making a script of mine for SHOWTIME! Anyways - Art Snob's been up Toronto way doing the big fest - and the lucky SOB got to see SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, S.P.L. and WHY WE FIGHT... I hate him. You all know how much I want to see SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, but this S.P.L. sounds like the greatest thing since the invention of the blowjob. And WHY WE FIGHT - that's right up my pinko alley. Here ya go...
Part 2: Art Snob from TIFF on LOOK BOTH WAYS, WHY WE FIGHT, RUNAWAY, SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE, THE MYTH, OCTOBER 17 1961, S.P.L., THE WAYWARD CLOUD, JOHN AND JANE, ADAM'S APPLES
Hi guys. It’s Saturday evening, and I’m sailing home to Rochester from Toronto on the Spirit of Ontario. I’ve seen ten more movies over the course of three days, making it twenty over the course of the entire festival. I’m settling back with a nice drink (Canada’s best hard cider, which I LOVE and always try to bring back), collecting my thoughts on having attended still another great festival while my fellow passengers mill into the two on-board cinemas to savor the savoir-faire of GARFIELD and MONSTER-IN-LAW.
I have to say that there were some major improvements for festival attendees this year. TIFF has *finally* updated its antiquated computer system, and in addition to the welcome ticket confirmations I mentioned in my last missive, same day ticket purchases and ticket exchanges have become much, much easier. I got ALL of my first choices this year, and the one choice I wanted to change was a simple matter at the festival ticket office. There were no hassles whatsoever … it almost didn’t seem like the same festival, what with no mad dashes, horse trading, or 5:00 AM wakeup calls to be the first in line at a given theater to see if any same-day tickets were available. Some romanticism may have been lost, but I’m not complaining!
Toronto’s still got all the coolness I’ll ever need when I’m in a bright lights-big city kind of mood. My mastery of the transit system coupled with years of tips on where the locals hang out meant that there was hardly any dead or wasted time this year. Add in Toronto’s infinite selection of beverages, Canada’s remarkable strides in hydroponic gardening, and over-the-counter Tylenol 222’s (for when 1 and 2 are overdone), and it’s a heady mix, indeed. Only serious shortcoming: no sports bar with the features I’m accustomed to (wi-fi, monitors everywhere, great food, and a large beer selection). Oh well … SOMEthing’s got to make me homesick!
So on to the movies! Once again, I’m listing them in the order I saw them in, so you’ll just have to read on if you want to know how they stack up. I’m mostly just writing my two cents on each movie, leaving the plot synopses to IMDB.
LOOK BOTH WAYS
I was surprised to see that this film won a major award at the festival. It’s very good – I gave it a 4 out of 5 vote in the audience choice balloting – but it’s also fairly culture-specific, and I don’t see it making the jump to the American market. It’s sort of an Aussie variant on CRASH, with all of the main characters impacted by a train wreck early in the film. There’s some VERY impressive editing in the film, some of it necessitated by the fact the two main characters have runaway imaginations like Kevin Bacon’s in THE BIG PICTURE. What kept it from getting a top rating from me (mild spoiler): a happy ending that feels VERY tacked on. (“Tell us your wishes, all-knowing focus group!”) Look for an American remake … possibly using some of the animated sequences from the original.
WHY WE FIGHT
Attention neocons! Arm your smear guns! Man your battle blogs! A new anti-Bush visual essayist named Eugene Jarecki has come on the scene, and he must be destroyed! It’s going to be harder to do this time round – unlike your favorite documentary whipping boy, this guy knows how to keep his ego in check and avoid grandstanding. Plus he knows how to attack the Bush administration to devastating effect using mostly REPUBLICANS (John McCain, Richard Perle and William Kristol included) to deliver the message! The only “usual suspect” (to quote Jarecki) in the movie is Gore Vidal, and he only makes a couple of quips early in the film. (So naturally, he’ll be used by you to dismiss the entire work in your forthcoming diatribes.) Juxtaposition between spoken comments and Bush footage is used brilliantly. Even Bush’s “finest moment” – the bullhorn photo-op at ground zero -- comes across with wincing bogusness the way that Jarecki frames it. (So you can imagine what he can do with some of Bush’s LESSER moments!) Especially brilliant is Jarecki’s replacement of F911’s Lila Lipscomb with recurring comments from a tough-as-nails Vietnam vet and long-time NYC cop who lost a son on 9/11 and whose opinion of Bush and the war in Iraq has subsequently done a 180-degree turn. This is my strongest favorable rating for the festival … I see myself recommending it to almost all of my movie buff friends, associates, and relatives.
RUNAWAY
This is a solid B movie, in terms of both its ambition and my final grade. It sure won’t harm the careers of director James McCann, star Aaron Stanford, or Robin Tunney (whose performance here practically SCREAMS “Lookit me! I can do all of the roles Susan Sarandon is getting too old for!”) The tale of a young man who runs away with his kid brother because he senses (accurately) that their sick father is planning to abuse the boy the same way he abused HIM at the same age is thoughtfully laid out and well executed by all. My problem was with the roadside (plot) convenience store where Stanford works, and the contrived way that that he and Tunney are artificially thrown together working the graveyard shift. The convenience store owner may nudge Stanford towards Tunney early in the film, but believing that he’d pay her to study for her G.E.D. while having deep, thoughtful, revelatory conversations with Sanford (damned if she ever does any work) was just a bit more disbelief than I could suspend. Maybe I’m just too accustomed to seeing the much larger Hess and Sunoco stations by where I live operating with just one attendant during the graveyard shift all of these years. Your mileage on this one will certainly vary,
SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE
My rec: Watch this video on the best home theater system you can when it gets released on DVD. The movie really cries out for a theatrical viewing, but it would seem that a legible one is not in the offing. Age-old cinematic bugaboo reason: unbordered white subtitles against a frequently white background. There’s just no way to read such subtitles, and I must have missed almost ¼ of the dialogue as a result. Subtitles across the black bottom of a wide screen DVD displayed as large as possible would be a completely different viewing experience. What I DID see of the movie seemed like a very powerful work – great cinematography, a lush soundtrack, and good (I think) acting. While she doesn’t earn “psycho bitch” accreditation (my highest actress performance accolade) for this role since any measure of sympathy means automatic disqualification, lead Lee Yeong-ae can sure be ruthless! She gives the expression “killing them with kindness” a whole new meaning! A must for Park fans. Another viewer and I reached consensus that Park’s all-time best is between this and OLDBOY.
THE MYTH
Subtitles are no problem with this movie -- the ever-accommodating Jackie Chan was nice enough to use yellow ones in this self-produced film – and for that matter, the film is first-class in EVERY technical respect. Think of it as a big-budget “Indiana Chan and the Tomb of Levitation,” with Jackie as a modern day archaeologist in search of a tomb that may hold the secret of individual flight. He keeps having dreams of an ancient and chivalrous Chinese general – also played by him – who falls in love with a princess he’s been assigned to protect. There’s plenty of first-rate action on both sides of the time barrier – Jackie gives it his all, and his all is still pretty darn impressive. (There’s some wire work, but you’ll forgive it when you see it in context.) There’s a particularly great action sequence in a glue factory that rates as one of his all-time best. I can confidently tell you that if you’ve ever been a fan of his Hong Kong work, you’re going to LOVE this film. I’d personally rate it as clearly superior to “Temple of Doom” and “The Last Crusade,” though that’s damning with faint praise … it’s a fine action movie in its own right that gives Jackie Chan fans all they could possibly ask for. There’s also some nice eye candy on both sides of the time equation with on-hand self-described “Bond Girl” Mallika Sherawat an especially hot number.. How the film will do in America is a big question … Bible belters will surely reject its depiction of the afterlife being Buddhist.
OCTOBER 17, 1961
This French made-for-TV movie about a key event during the Algerian War of Independence is of interest only for those curious as to how the French citizenry and government reacted when the battle crossed the Mediterranean, resulting in Muslim terrorist attacks on policemen. In short, an unarmed peace march by 11,000 Muslims in Paris was brutally attacked under orders from a police chief (later jailed for crimes against humanity in WW2), with between 48 and 200 unarmed protestors being killed and the entire incident being quickly covered up by the press. It’s a well-paced, well-acted national hand-wringing admission of guilt, similar to the German TV movie, THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE. It almost made me long for an AMERICAN soul-searching production of this caliber, until it dawned on me – we’ve never done anything to feel guilty about! (Only a few out-of-control bad apples here and there … y’know.)
S.P.L.
Action fans crank up your expectations! This Donnie Yen-Sammo Hung big budget HK actioner is everything you’re hoping for and then some! Think of it as THE (corrupt) UNTOUCHABLES vs. THE WARRIORS with a touch of THE GODFATHER thrown in … and you’re STILL not there! Plus it will introduce many Americans to Jing Wu (present at the show), who earned admission to my elite “Scum of the Earth All-Star Team” … the first rookie to make the squad since Leandro Firmino in CITY OF GOD. How nasty is he, you ask? Try to imagine if the Marquis de Sade had bee a martial arts master. (If you see THIS guy coming, don’t even bother trying to run … you’re already dead.) I don’t see how anybody who was a fan of HK gangster films from the mid 80’s to the mid 90’s can help but LOSE IT for this film. Donnie and Sammo do everything you could expect of them, with Hung especially colorful as a mob boss who takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. Some – not all – of the extremes of violence in this movie are too much for even the violence-accommodating MPAA to accept, so it looks like DVD will be the only acceptable viewing experience for HK connoisseurs. Count the days until it’s released … this film is the relief from the wuss-o-rama CGI/wire Hollywood “action” movies that you’ve been waiting for.
THE WAYWARD CLOUD
I’m not going to pretend that I really “got” this colorful oddity from Taiwan, but I WILL say that it certainly held my interest. It’s sort of an art film about a male porno star (so it’s really NOT a porno film, get it?) set in the time of a great drought (unclear whether it’s the present or future) when water hoarding has become a craze. There’s not much dialogue in the film (less than in THREE IRON, for that matter), so you have to rely pretty much on visual clues. If I had to name a central unifying theme for the movie, I’d say that it’s about the aphrodisiac qualities of watermelon. There’s quality titillation for both sexes … and the climax to the film is (of course) a monster climax, coming at the end of what seems like a thousand-cycle thrust-a-thon. Add in a dazzling color palette and music production numbers (featuring American chestnuts like “Sixteen Tons” and “The Wayward Wind” completely reworked with Mandarin lyrics that have no relation whatsoever to the originals), and you’ve got some pretty senses-enveloping weirdness. I really wish that I’d indulged in some of the hydroponic Canadian produce before seeing it, but it was just too early in the day.
JOHN AND JANE
This was the film that I exchanged another ticket for after hearing the buzz about how great a documentary on the people who work at call centers in India it was. I’ve been on the phone to India many a time, especially for technical support and customer service for computer products, and was interested in getting a look at the other side. I have to say that I felt a bit let down after seeing it … it’s really a pretty haphazard effort where the director does little more than just train his camera on a few subjects and ask a few questions. It’s also confusing in parts … one of the subjects is a blonde-haired girl with very western features, so you’re not sure if you’re seeing an Indian or an American who’s been outsourced. It’s also sloppily edited, with no discernable structure and no real POV. Might be worth a look-see on PBS, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.
ADAM’S APPLES
I had to get in at least one Scandinavian film during the festival, since they’ve provided me with some of my best surprises in the past (SHOW ME LOVE and ELLING among them). These countries seem to have a gift for the “oddball grouping” thing, giving you fully rounded characters in place of Hollywood’s invariable collection of stereotypes. This “paroled skinhead does community service at a rural church with fellow reprobates” is no exception. Think of it as ROMPER STOMPER meets ITALIAN FOR BEGINNERS. It stars Ulrich Thomsen, no stranger to Nazi roles (he played the successful rival to John Cusack’s character for Hitler’s mind in MAX at the 2002 fest), and Mads Mikkelsen as the church priest who has no sense of sarcasm whatsoever and takes Thomsen literally when he says that for his community service, he wants to bake an apple pie. It’s a very colorful cast, in a story replete with outbursts of violence (easily R-rated in America) and lots of dark humor. It would have been top-rated but for two things: “dial-a-miracle” plays a part in the ending (although it’s by no means an unconditionally happy ending) and there’s a joke about Down’s syndrome that (for me) crosses the boundary into bad taste. It might make it to America, like director Anders Thomas Jensen’s earlier black comedy, THE GREEN BUTCHERS did. It’s definitely worth a look-see, and I’ll be recommending it to some (not all) members of my circle if plays here.
Well, that wraps up another year. Thank you Toronto, TIFF staffers and TIFF volunteers (I always applauded for the pre-screening bit) for another memorable whirlwind experience! This really IS the top film festival in the world in terms of scope, size, and influence, and you leave the competition further behind every year!
Art Snob
