Hey folks, Harry here with that ticket trader, Art Snob to break down many many many days of festival excursions. And ya know what, you can always count on Art Snob to let ya know... exactly how it all boils down... His acute sense of quality is finely honed from his years at the most fashionable of New York magazines. While he walks with his highest point being his nose... that nose can detect quality and taste
Art Snob here, back home in Rochester, NY and ready to give the lowdown on what I took in during lap 1 of my visit to the Toronto Film Festival. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to communicate while I was at the site, but there was a conspiracy of good food, good drink, good people and good weather that kept me away from my laptop. I made a genuine effort to get something out on Saturday, but was thwarted by a breakdown on the east side of the subway loop.
Overall it was a great time. This was my first TIFF excursion where the necessity of scrambling for tickets to the shows I wanted to see was a non-factor -- I got all of my requests for once, including CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON. So I took things very easy, enjoying the sights and incredible cuisine of the city from my base in the Yonge-St. Clair area, three subway stops north of the main festival district. Three movies a day is my limit … more than that, and they just become a blur. Besides, Toronto's just TOO cool a place to spend an entire visit cooped up in darkened rooms. For me, the festival is a key part of a well-deserved vacation, not a round-the-clock mission, and I'm certainly grateful to a wonderful family friend whose hospitality allows me to take in the proceedings from the POV of a local resident.
FRIDAY:
One of the things I like most about the festival is how surreal it can be seeing a couple of movies on the same day whose only commonality is that they use celluloid stock and were filmed on the planet Earth. Friday evening was a classic case in point. The two pictures I took in: the black-and-white German tragedy NO PLACE TO GO and the Hong Kong bullet ballet, TIME AND TIDE.
Know right from the start that NO PLACE TO GO is definitely NOT the kind of film likely to have a lot of appeal to AICN geeks. And if you're looking for "the feel-good film of the year," THIS ISN'T IT! It's a hard-hitting tragedy, the type of film that Hollywood greenlighters can't reject FAST enough.
The film is based on the late stages of the life of director Oskar Roehler's mother, prominent German novelist (and devout Leninist) Giseta Elsner. The story begins with the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of Communism in Germany -- events that sent her personal and professional life into a tailspin (her novels had always sold better in communist East Germany than in her native West). She comes across uncannily as a real-life Norma Desmond (from SUNSET BOULEVARD) -- a self-indulgent once-prominent woman with garish tastes who is fighting a losing battle with a major mid-life crisis. For Desmond, the advent of talking pictures meant no roles to play; for Giseta Elsner, the fall of East Germany meant … no place to go. She tried resettling in the new Berlin, but found herself to be an anachronism who just didn't fit in at all.
Hannelore Elsner (no relation to the real-life character) gives a performance that's every bit as convincing as Gloria Swanson's was as Desmond. And if you're a fan of black-and-white cinematography, I can't recommend Haden Bodganski's work here highly enough (it'll NEVER survive the transition to the small screen, trust me). The film is definitely not for everyone (heed previous geek admonition), but it's one that I plan to tell a couple of film scholars who I have occasional contact with to check out.
From this film, I had to make a quick scoot over to Famous Players Uptown for the "midnight madness" showing of Tsui Hark's TIME AND TIDE. The place was packed, with everyone psyched for some quality kick-ass Hong Kong action fare. I've really dug some of Hark's work in the past, especially CHINESE GHOST STORY and SEX AND ZEN (that show of affection between the silk shop owner and his wife always gets me misty-eyed ;^)
Over-the-top is pretty much a "given" with Hong Kong action fare. But even taking this into consideration, I can only report that T&T is an inchoate mess. Do you ever find Michael Bay's quick-cut style of filmmaking annoying? If so, be advised that this movie makes Bay's most wretched excesses look like MY DINNER WITH ANDRE. And even if it DIDN'T keep jarring your senses with rapid-fire cuts that make it impossible to ever develop any kind of perspective or fix on the proceedings, the story and character motivations are hopelessly convoluted. I was in a "what the heck was THAT all about?"-state of mind when it was over, and I sure wasn't alone.
Except for a REALLY outrageous sequence towards the end -- where a woman is fending off bad guys with a gun while simultaneously giving birth -- audience reaction was remarkably restrained. A significant number of walkouts occurred over the course of its two hours-plus running time. If you're in the mood for some gratuitous violence in the classic HK tradition, this movie's got it in spades. Unfortunately, it all comes across like Hark simply put a couple of John Woo movies into a cuisinart. Check it out if you must, but abandon all hope for a coherent storyline. I have one word for this movie: OVERKILL.
SATURDAY
I took in ALMOST FAMOUS at noon on this day, and you can certainly add my voice to the chorus of approval for this fine film. Chalk up a third straight TIFF-launched winner for Dreamworks (following ANTZ in 1998 and AMERICAN BEAUTY in 1999). It's a definite cross-generational bulls-eye, with an extremely likeable and sympathetic young protagonist for younger viewers to identify with, and plenty of refreshingly *non-overused* cultural signposts & music selections for boomers to remember fondly. Set between 1969 and 1974 (with most of the story taking place in 1973), Crowe has obviously drawn heavily upon his own personal life story and rock expertise in creating this fictional film -- it has a much richer texture and more authentic period "feel" than any Hollywood hack could ever possibly come up with in creating a similar story.
Newcomers Patrick Fugit (Crowe's alter-ego, William Miller) and Kate Hudson head a stellar ensemble cast. The movie has no shortage of great one-liners, many of them involving famous music stars. (My personal favorites: the one where Miller's mother, played by Frances McDormand, explains why she doesn't want him listening to Simon & Garfunkle, and another where someone makes a killer comment about the Rolling Stones.) The soundtrack may be the first one covering this time period that DOESN'T include "For What It's Worth," "Born to be Wild," or "Purple Haze," and it should be a big seller.
ALMOST FAMOUS is "mainstream" for sure, but it's as good, smart and entertaining as mainstream gets these days. It opens this weekend ... just SEE it. It's superior in every respect to Crowe's last hit, JERRY MAGUIRE, and I'll be recommending it to just about everyone I have any regular movie discourse with.
Not so with a picture I saw later in the day, the ultra-controversial French movie BAISE-MOI (loosely, "rape me" in French). It's almost moot to review it, given the unlikelihood that anybody in North America reading this is ever going to be seeing it. It was rejected for a formal film classification in France, being labeled as "porno." And aside from this festival, it's already been banned everywhere in Canada except for Quebec City and Montreal. America? Forget it.
The story is about two prostitutes who live and work on some pretty mean streets in France. Their already hard lives hit rock bottom when they are abducted and violently gang raped by some thugs. (Think that the rape scene in Jodie Foster's THE ACCUSED was excessively graphic? In comparison to this scene, that one was positively genteel.) The younger one exacts vengeance in her own way, and acquires some money and a car in the process. She has to get out of town, but can't drive. The other one can, and they team up Thelma & Louise-style for what turns out to be a very violent odyssey to the north shore of France.
Essentially, it's a "highway to hell" killing spree movie, with the women using their wiles and seductiveness to destroy and rob men (occasionally women) and keep themselves living comfortably on the road.. They come to realize that a dragnet is closing in on them and that things can only end badly, but they frankly don't care, living only for the thrill of the moment until the final act.
So IS it pornographic? A resounding YES! None of that soft-focus computer-generated "virtual nudity" (such as Thora Birch in AMERICAN BEAUTY and Helena Bonham Carter in FIGHT CLUB) here ... the sex is raw and genuine, with no organ or orifice left unexposed. The cast (including the two leads) is comprised almost entirely of porno actors (instead of just one, as in last year's controversial French festival entry, ROMANCE). And there's an act of violence against a man late in the film that you've NEVER seen in any movie before ... we're talking a *major* "ouch!" here.
But the movie also definitely DOES contain a storyline, character development, and production values -- elements traditionally lacking from what are thought of as "porno" films in America. And it's SURE not the kind of film that porno patrons are looking for. (I PITY any guy who ever brings this film to a bachelor party!) It certainly held the interest of the two sold-out auditoriums where it was shown Saturday night, and only a couple of people walked out. There was applause for the two female co-directors following the show. Porno elements aside, this definitely dose have some artistic legitimacy. There's excellent Euro music accompaniment to some of the sex scenes as well ... I wouldn't mind owning the soundtrack album to this movie at all.
If nothing else, this film nicely undermines Roger Ebert's never-ending crusade for an "A" (for 'adult') category in the MPAA film rating system to sit between R and NC-17 (porno). Jack Valenti once offered to implement this system, provided Ebert and his employers were willing to indemnify the MPAA against lawsuits from producers whose films were labeled as porno. Ebert called this offer "horsefeathers," saying that porno films don't get submitted for a rating anyway. I was curious at the time as to why he didn't simply ACCEPT the offer, since, by his own reasoning, there was zero risk.
BAISE-MOI provides the answer. He couldn't accept it because there most certainly IS a "gray area" between artistic legitimacy and porno. Ebert's always pointed to France as having a "workable" film rating system, but BAISE-MOI -- which WAS submitted for consideration -- exceeded even the most restrictive category and was banned, despite having enough artistic legitimacy to play at a film festival this prestigious. If this film will stop his constant whining on this issue once and for all, we can all be grateful.
SUNDAY
I was in the mood for something light following BAISE-MOI, and David Mamet's STATE AND MAIN filled the bill quite nicely. This is one of those "little" ensemble comedies set against a small-town backdrop. I liked it considerably more than WAITING FOR GUFFMAN and way, WAY more than HAPPY TEXAS (which I sounded a warning alert on from last year's festival).
It's about a Hollywood crew shooting a film in a small Vermont town, and boasts a solid cast which includes Alec Baldwin (who also produced), Sarah Jessica Parker, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy, David Paymer and Charles Durning. There are screwball elements, and it sometimes seems just a tad "stagey," but it never drags, and Mamet's delicious Hollywood-skewering jokes more than compensate for any minor cavils.
Warning: This is the kind of movie that's at high risk for spoilage when com mercial reviews start pouring in. There are choice one-liners that critics are sure to co-opt, depriving you of the chance to hear them delivered by the actors, as Mamet intended. The story is propelled by some amusing complications to the film production (including the necessity of working an anachronistic product plug into the film) that you'll enjoy more the less you know about them going in. It's definitely worth checking out if you're in the mood for some big laughs from a "little" film.
The BIGGEST laughs of the day, however, came from a 16-minute short that proceeded the next screening I attended -- and coincidentally enough, one of them involved David Mamet! The film I'm referring to is Jason (son of Ivan) Reitman's IN GOD WE TRUST, a hysterical "cheating death" comedy, where a slacker kind of guy suddenly finds himself facing eternal damnation if he doesn't make amends for everything he's done wrong in his life in the space of a few minutes. It's at even HIGHER risk for spoilage than STATE AND MAIN ... don't let anyone spill ANY of the joke details to you! It's been picked up by atomfilms.com, and Reitman said that it should be available via this channel in about a month. Be on the lookout for it ... it squeezes far more humor into its brief running time than you'll get over the course of 99% of feature comedies from Hollywood.
I enjoyed the feature film, as well ... CHOPPER from Australia, based on notorious real-life Aussie criminal Mark "Chopper" Read.. I'm a connoisseur of movie villains ("good guys get the girl ... bad guys get the one-liners") and am happy to announce that star Eric Bana (normally a stand-up comedian by trade) has earned a place on my elite "scum of the earth all-star team" with this role. It's a bravura over-the-top performance about one TWISTED fast-talking career criminal who eventually became a best-selling author despite being functionally illiterate.
The film is set basically in two chapters ... one of them during an early prison stretch, the other years later, when he was out of prison for one of the few times in his adult life and facing a contract death for being a police informant. The framing device is him doing a television interview from prison, recounting his various exploits.
Noah Taylor -- who's done a lot of growing up since the year his voice broke -- is the main supporting player, a fellow inmate in part one and a heroin-addicted family man in part two. He's also very good, but this film is clearly Bana's show.
It's hard to know where fact and fiction part ways in this film, because Read was a notorious B.S. artist who was only too happy to engage in colorful braggadocio to enhance his notoriety. ("Never let truth get in the way of a good story," he quips at one point.) But there can be no doubt that he was one colorful cretin, and Bana captures him as such perfectly.
The film is not for the squeamish but if you could appreciate previous classic "scum" performances (Michael Gambon in THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE, AND HER LOVER, Dennis Hopper in BLUE VELVET, Benoit Poelvoorde in MAN BITES DOG, to name three), it's WELL worth checking out. I hope that the film can find an American distributor or at least get released on video. I'd certainly like to see it again sometime.
And CHOPPER wasn't the last great over-the-top performance of the day for me -- next up was Willem Dafoe's justifiably heralded performance in SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE.
This film is a "movie movie" -- a fictionalized account of the making of the German silent vampire classic NOSFERATU, with Dafoe playing the film's mysterious lead, Max Schreck, and John Malkovich playing the film's director, the legendary F.W. Murnau.
Despite centering itself around a much better movie and director, the film exhibits almost the same strengths and weaknesses as Tim Burton's ED WOOD. That film also boasted an outstanding performance by an actor playing another actor who was noted for vampire roles -- Martin Landau's Oscar-winning turn as Bela Lugosi. But in spite of his performance and a lot of critical accolades, the film was pretty much of a box office dud. While you didn't HAVE to be familiar with Ed Wood's oeuvre in order to enjoy it, such knowledge certainly increased one's appreciation of it immensely, and there simply weren't enough of these informed viewers. I'm afraid that such will be the case with SHADOW as well. (How many viewers today have ever seen ANY silent movie in it's entirety?)
The film's best hope for finding a box office niche is an Oscar nomination for Dafoe, which might lead to success at the BOYS DON'T CRY/AFFLICTION level. He certainly deserves it. His Schreck is a method-acting freak who NEVER goes out of character, and the way that he unnerves the rest of crew on a day-to-day basis makes for some wicked fun. The film is a treat for anyone familiar with the original film, but I'm afraid that a lot of the best parts are just going to sail right over the heads of most viewers. I've seen the original, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it again the next time the Eastman House here in Rochester screens it.
MONDAY.
Monday morning was the treat that I'd been salivating for -- CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. I'm not going to review it here. Instead, I'm going to raise a bottle of Molson XXX and toast FROGGY, AICN's chief informant at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
FROGGY ... here's to you for the heads-up. While the "name" critics were at the Victoria's Secret fashion show to ogle and hang out with celebrities in preparation for their big-on-namedropping/short-on-useful-information festival fluff pieces, you took it upon yourself to check out a film screening out of competition in the same time block. Thanks to you and AICN, movie fans all over the world knew that a classic was in the pipeline. I encourage everyone to read your original post at
It's all TRUE! Keep your expectations elevated! This is THE kung fu movie! Forget about IRON MONKEY and Bruce Lee/Jackie Chan flicks. ... this is a whole new league, with Oscar-worthy cinematography, sumptuous mainland China vistas, incredible period detail, and a cast that's first-rate down to the smallest supporting roles to go along with superbly choreographed action scenes. No more "cheese" factor to tolerate! The standing ovations for both the film and Ang Lee were genuine and well-deserved.
Somebody sitting behind me had a question for Lee in the too-brief Q&A session after the film (but unfortunately was unable to pose) that says it all: "Can you direct the next STAR WARS movie?"
That completes my first report. My next scheduled films (beginning Thursday) are tentatively scheduled to be
THE PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR
HARRY, HE'S HERE TO HELP
LONERS
MEN OF HONOR
THE WIDOW OF ST. PIERRE
THE DEBT
WHEN THE SKY FALLS
I'll try to be more punctual this time, but keep in mind that this IS a vacation for me. Over and out for now.
ArtSnob
