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DeFore Toronto
September 14, 2007
DeFore in Toronto: The Movie Studio in Your Pocket
All week long, Motorola has had little sponsorship trailers before Toronto films, touting the filmmaking capabilities of the cameras on their phones. Looking at the crummy, lo-res images they chose to highlight with the boast “so-and-so made this movie on his Motorola phone” I’ve wondered why anybody would think this tool is one a filmmaker would want.
Shows what I know. In the last movie of my festival experience, Wayne Wang’s “The Princess of Nebraska,” phone-cam shots pop up quite a few
times.
It’s a touch that’s meant to be experimental — in this low-budget, handheld indie, a cut to the protagonist’s low-tech point-of-view is appropriate. But there it is. So, while I don’t want to see a ninety- =minute cell-phone feature any time soon, I guess I owe Moto an apology.
September 12, 2007
DeFore in Toronto: Toronto comes to you!
Whew. Just as my pipe dreams about squeezing some just-for-fun screenings in during my last few days in Toronto were revealing themselves as outlandish, I got word that some of the biggest titles on my must-see list are closer to Austin screens than I thought.
The Austin Film Festival just sent out the final version of their lineup, as Monsieur Garcia pointed out in a recent post, and I didn’t have to read beyond the headline to see two movies that got great buzz this week: Jason Reitman’s comedy “Juno” (which costars “Superbad” everykid Michael Cera) is the fest’s “centerpiece” film, while “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” Sidney Lumet’s crime flick starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Albert Finney, owns closing night. Excellent.
“Lars and the Real Girl,” which I vouch for enthusiastically (see link to my review in the last post), will be at AFF, as will “Control,” the Joy Division biopic, and Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” I couldn’t catch either of those, but everything I’ve heard has been positive.
Paul Schraeder’s “The Walker” is booked, so here’s hoping that star — and former Texas Film Hall Of Fame attendee — Lauren Bacall, who attended Toronto to promote the film, liked Austin enough to return.
AFF is more than second fest to the Second City, of course. They’ve cooked up their own events, like a series devoted to Vietnamese- and Vietnamese-American-related titles and a shorter one devoted to environmentally-conscious docs. And of course there are the narrative and doc competitions, and … um … a tribute to “Moonlighting” creator Glenn Gordon Caron.
I may miss that last one, but will reconsider if I hear that Caron has a reel of Bruce Willis’ Seagram’s Wine Cooler ads to show…
It's different for Matt
It’s different for Matt
In the vast world of movie blogs, I can only commit to reading a few with any regularity. One of them — partly to get locally relevant news, partly because I like the guy — is written by SXSW programmer Matt Dentler. (See http://blogs.indiewire.com/mattdentler.)
I particularly enjoy taking a peek at Matt’s journal when I’m knee-deep in a festival. That’s because, although he may be going to as many movies as I am, he doesn’t have to run back to his hotel and write reviews of each one. Instead, he goes to the best parties, hangs out with festival cognoscenti, and wheel-deals his way into new bookings for his own festival. While I’m recovering from writing three reviews in a sitting, and trying to marshal my thoughts on a fourth, I can dip into Matt’s world and see what I’m missing.
Plenty of other sites offer the vicarious partygoing, but too many are obsessed with what actor was there, how good the food was, what the meat-market scene was like, and so on. With Dentler, even the occasional hint of hedonism traces back to pure movie-love.
While Matt and other moving/shaking sorts create tomorrow’s movie scene today, here are two highlights of my fest so far:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=9804
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film/reviews/article_display.jsp?&rid=9744
September 11, 2007
DeFore in Toronto: Buzzzzzz
Critical warfare is something you don’t get at every festival, but is sure can be fun to watch. The only downside for me is that it usually boils up around high-profile movies that I don’t see here because I know they’ll open soon at home. (Other journalists feel a burning need to be the first anywhere to declare a film righteous or unholy.)
“The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” the two hour, forty minute Western starring Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, is one example. I’ve already heard it called a masterpiece in the mode of Terrence Malick on one hand, and one of the most self-indulgent pics in years on the other. I have to say, the cumbersome title doesn’t really argue against the latter verdict.
Similar opposing opinions have greeted “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” the sequel to the Cate Blanchett vehicle “Elizabeth.” What nobody seems to disagree about is that Blanchett’s name is going to be on Oscar ballots this year, whether for this film, for her turn as Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes’ experimental “I’m Not There,” or both.
The critical divide over “Across the Universe,” the Beatles musical by Julie Taymor, creator of the “Lion King” Broadway show, is more subtle: Is it horrible dreck that should be laughed off screens, or simply pretty lame? This one I’ve seen, and I lean toward the less extreme view. Make no mistake, though: I’ll be advising friends to steer clear of the self-important wannabe epic, whose inexplicable sins include writing roles for Janis- and Jimi- proxies in addition to all the Beatle-oriented inventions.
September 9, 2007
DeFore in Toronto: On the red carpet: Some schlub in glasses
Let me take back what I said last night about religiously steering clear of the glitz and glamour. Today I became an accidental participant.
Stumbling through a lobby after my tenth movie in three days, I noticed that a well-dressed doorman was pulling the door open for me and that the pavement ahead was draped in red. A throng of gawkers — the people who’ve been staking out sidewalks for hours watching doorways for a famous face — were staring straight at me.
Oops. Step back inside, John. “Um, excuse me, sir — is there a back way out of this joint?” Yes there was, and I strolled through an alley where limos and black SUVs hovered for those with actual reasons to dodge the paparazzi.
Why the carpet? Because this was the Hazleton Hotel, evidently one of the city’s swankiest pads. I wasn’t staying there, of course — I’m fairly sure I couldn’t have afforded a drink at the bar — but had been in, get this, the hotel’s private screening room. (Seeing a strange and very sweet Ryan Gosling movie you’ll be hearing lots about soon, “Lars and the Real Girl.”)
I’ve been in some beautiful movie theaters (the Paramount among them), but this was something that would impress P Diddy, or whatever he’s called this month: a small, tastefully decorated room in which long leather couches were split by wide armrests into a few dozen of the most comfy theater seats imaginable. I don’t often go for the front row, but when I saw the ottomans down there, I did. Sitting there, trying to look inconspicuous so nobody would notice my jeans and wrinkled shirt weren’t up to snuff, I overheard enough conversations to realize that even the jaded L.A. folk behind me were impressed.
One woman in the room was talking about getting into an elevator earlier in the day and finding herself cooped up with the stars of the new Coen Brothers movie, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin. I hope those shutterbugs out in front of the Hazleton got to see beefcake of that caliber in between glimpses of pasty-faced movie nerds like me.
September 7, 2007
DeFore at Toronto Film FestL There Are Stars, and There Are Stars
Whenever attending TIFF, chances are you’re never more than a block away from somebody your friends at home would drool to touch. In just the first two days, I’ve received “camera call” email alerts letting me know when and where I can spot George Clooney or Jake Gyllenhaal, Jodie Foster or Juliette Binoche.
But that little block-or-three distance can be huge, especially if you come here to see the movies. So far, in the happy confines of non- red-carpet venues, I’ve only seen one celeb: Nancy Kwan, the trailblazing Chinese-American actress who made her name in 1960 as Suzie Wong. She was at “Hollywood Chinese,” a doc about the way the movies portray Chinese characters and the contributions Chinese immigrants have made to the industry.
A key focus of the doc was the stereotypes Asian actors endure, and in the short Q&A after the film a fan — meaning, I guess, to assure Kwan that moviegoers knew image from reality — exuded, “I never thought of you as a prostitute!”
“That’s a very intelligent remark,” Kwan replied, with as much grace as you can have in that situation.
John DeFore at Toronto Film Fest: Staying up in Winnipeg
After one long travel / settling-in day, a too-short night of sleep, and an opening day at the Toronto Film Fest involving not only four movies (the first being “The Orphanage,” a gorgeous ghost story exec-produced by, and in the mold of, Guillermo Del Toro) but a full complement of writing, I took it as a perverse challenge that the first leg of my marathon concluded with a late-night slot filled by “My Winnipeg.”
A docu-fantasia by Guy Maddin, whose distinctively otherworldly blend of silent-film and avant-garde aesthetics is trancelike to begin with, it upped the nod-inducing ante by portraying the titular town as one vast snow-blanketed slumbertown, a town of sleepwalkers and malcontents too sluggish to leave. “Stay awake!,” the narrator (Guy himself) chides himself repeatedly.
I happily report that I remained alert — the movie was too funny to doze. But the woman sitting next to me suffered that head-bobbing tango with gravity and unconsciousness that all late-night cinephiles experience from time to time. My heart went out to her.
September 18, 2006
Au revoir, Ontario
Dragging myself wearily to my desk back home in Austin, I can sit down and catch up on all the versions of the Toronto Film Festival I didn’t get a chance to see.
I gather the gossip of distribution deals and supposed next-big-things that are now dead in the water. I wade through photo albums of people I wish I’d been able to interview (Pedro Almodóvar, Will Ferrell) and those (Brad Pitt, J-Lo) whose frenzy-inducing presence I was happy to miss.
(Occasionally, I stumble across gossip I actually heard while in Toronto, like the silly bit — silly for both the actor and the folks who made a headline out of it — about Sean Penn getting a hotel in trouble for refusing to put out his cigarette.)
I get the final-for-now word on controversies: Yes, the Bush-bashing “Death of a President” got some of the backlash it asked for, but it also won the Fipresci Critics’ Prize; its cousin “The Prisoner Or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair” scored a distribution deal with Netflix.
Best of all, though, I now can look forward to many of the movies I didn’t get to see.
It can be hard to pass up the chance to wait in line for an hour to be the first to see something — “Borat,” say, or “Volver” — that will open soon enough at home. But why fly to another country, if not in search of new, unexpected treasures?
Instead of satisfying my curiosity about “The Fountain,” which will screen soon in Austin’s Fantastic Fest, I made time for an engrossing doc, “Manufactured Landscapes,” about a photographer who finds beauty in ecological destruction. Instead of seeing Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” which I’ve been thrilled about since he described it to me during an interview for “Hellboy,” I soaked up the cryptic but entrancing “Syndromes and a Century,” by Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
And now, within the next couple of weeks, I — and you, dear reader! — will get to weigh in on titles that people strained to catch just days ago: “All the King’s Men,” “Shortbus,” “The People Vs. John Lennon” all have local press screenings this week, and more will follow. And chances are that SXSW’s Matt Dentler is already corralling a couple of gems I missed. Which gives me almost enough time to get caught up on sleep and all the real-life stuff I put on hold during this movie-packed week and a half.
September 16, 2006
A little break
I took a few hours last night and this morning for some film- but not film-festival-related activities. Last night, I caught a stop on the “farewell tour” by Charles Aznavour, the French crooner who has acted in films by Truffaut, Atom Egoyan, and Jonathan Demme. The arrangements weren’t to my taste (think late Sinatra), but it was a treat to see the guy lay on the charm one last time for English-speaking audiences. (In France, he remains officially unretired.)
Today, I spent some time at the Art Gallery of Ontario, which had a show pairing Andy Warhol’s silk-screen paintings with his infamous movies (you’ve heard of them: eight hours of a man sleeping, 24 hours of the Empire State Building, etc.). The curious thing was that the show was put up in some kind of collaboration with David Cronenberg, who also recorded an audio commentary for most of the selections.
The Cronenberg/Warhol connection isn’t an obvious one, but listening to the director’s comments, it was clear that he had some insights to share. Particularly striking was a bit on that famous Elvis diptych, two canvases that each have a pair of images of Presley playing a gunfighter, but one painting is monochrome and one’s in garish color. Cronenberg talks about the themes of death in the Don Siegel film that the gunfighter still is taken from and imagines Warhol foretelling Elvis’ and his own fates through the artistic choices he made.
The whole show was a little consolation for the fact that the revered Canadian didn’t have a movie at this year’s fest. We’ll have to wait to see how he follows “A History of Violence,” but at least we know he’s not slacking off.
September 15, 2006
Local does good!
A big point of pride for locals this year has been “Away From Her,”(*) the feature film writing/directing debut for actress Sarah Polley. Polley, you see, is “a national treasure” in the words of a local publication, and though that may be slight hyperbole you can see their point: Born in Toronto, she has gone on to be a high point in films by regional geniuses Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg, alliterative auteurs Wim Wenders and Hal Hartley, and, well, the guy who made the “Dawn of the Dead” remake.
Anyway: Her film, the adaptation of an Alice Munro story about a man losing his wife to Alzheimer’s, is a solidly made tearjerker that gets to you without being at all manipulative. And appropriately for a national treasure, she showcases a Canadian actor many folks (me, anyway) won’t know: Gordon Pinsent, a bear of a man who has to find a way to be faithful to a wife (a brilliant Julie Christie) who has essentially forgotten who he is.
Which brings to mind something I noticed on Canada’s beautiful currency. While our money features national monuments and the not-entirely-universal motto “In God We Trust,” the Canadian $20 is adorned with the work of a Canadian artist and the Gabrielle Roy quote, “Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?”
I’m beat and ready to come home to the good ol’ motherland, but Canada does have its good points.
- Here’s a list of everything I’ve reviewed (or will soon) at hollywoodreporter.com: Bonneville, Chacun Sa Nuit, Lake of Fire, Manufactured Landscapes, Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour, This Filthy World, Stranger Than Fiction, Palimpsest, Love and Other Disasters, Little Children, Last Winter, Kabul Express, Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Jade Warrior, Half Life, The Fall, Catch A Fire, Time, Syndromes and a Century, Away From Her, Brand Upon the Brain
September 14, 2006
No agony of the feet
One great thing about the Toronto fest is that so many of the screens are in such proximity to each other. Where Sundancers must trudge over snowy hills and SXSWers must shuttle from Arbor to South Lamar Boulevard and points in between, Toronto has clusters of theaters so dense that you can hop from one to another all day without breaking a sweat: Eight active screens are housed under one roof, two other multiplexes offer four each. And if, Heaven forbid, you have to catch the Metro and travel a few blocks to a standalone theater, you may be rewarded with the movie-palace opulence of the Elgin Theater. (A big, big brother to our Paramount.)
A downside: Hopping from Screen One to Screen Seven is so easy that walkouts are epidemic. It’s difficult to lose yourself in a film when literally dozens of people around you are leaving to find greener cinematic pastures. (To be fair, I would have left a few of the things I’ve seen, had I not been assigned to write about them.)
And now, with apologies to Stephen Colbert, a Toronto edition of “Tip of the Hat / Wag of the Finger:
TIP OF THE HAT: To Toronto’s sanitation department, which has made recycling so easy you really have to be a lout not to do it. At almost every intersection (with more regularity, I think, than regular trash cans on Austin sidewalks), there is a three-compartment bin with slots for paper, bottles/cans, and general trash.
WAG OF THE FINGER: To Toronto’s public-transport folks, who sell weekly all-you-can-ride cards with a catch: They have a set time period (from Monday through the following Sunday), instead of just covering seven days from the date of purchase.
Then again, at least Toronto has a subway system …
September 12, 2006
Steal this movie!
Statesman readers who have attended any free sneak previews in the past couple of years might be familiar with the paranoid-seeming anti-piracy measures studios take these days: Magnetic-wands at theater doors checking for cell phones, prints that are watermarked so that bootlegs can be tracked to the theater where they were made and security guards with night-vision goggles, watching during screenings to catch viewers with concealed video cameras.
All understandable when you’re screening “X-Men 3” or some other blockbuster-in-waiting a week before civilians can see it. The temptation to get such stuff on the Internet must be huge.
But I’ve been greatly amused this week, seeing those night-vision dudes police Toronto Fest screenings of, say, “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen,” a documentarylike film about explorers making contact with a tiny Inuit tribe.
Isn’t the big problem with art and foreign films the fact that so few people seem to be interested in them? If I were “Rasmussen” directors Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, I would be thrilled beyond belief to hear that people were so eager to see my movie that they would watch a jittery handheld bootleg of it that took hours to download online. I think that would be better news than an Oscar nomination.
September 11, 2006
The stars, part 2
Time to eat my words: Just a couple of hours after blogging Sunday about how few celebrities I see here, I literally bumped into “Catch a Fire” director Phillip Noyce and very nearly tripped over the outstretched leg of star Tim Robbins. (Robbins wasn’t being rude — he was just too tall to squeeze his legs under the cozy table he shared with “Fire” costar Derek Luke and Patrick Chamusso, the film’s real-life inspiration.)
This was at the first party I’ve been able to attend — one I only went to because it was on my way home after the evening’s last screening, I was starving, and I hoped there would be some free food. (There was, and wine as well.) You can always spot the journalists at these things: They’re poorly dressed, weighed down by backpacks and their eyes don’t gravitate to A-listers nearly as much as they do to what’s under the covers of buffet dishes.
But how they go to these things and manage to get any work done is beyond me. I had to hustle home to write about “The Fall,” some serious eye candy from Tarsem Singh, the director of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” video. As with “The Cell,” all Singh asks of a plot is that it provide opportunities to stage ravishing dreamlike images, many of which are inspired by other artists. Nice balance to the meaty narrative of “Little Children,” which more than filled my day’s quota for substantive drama.
September 10, 2006
The stars, obscured by clouds or velvet ropes
When you go to a film festival, everybody asks what actors you saw there. But when all you do is move from screening room to pressroom (where ink-stained wretches huddle over laptops to shoot out missives like the one you’re now reading), there isn’t a lot of opportunity to cross paths with the glittery people. I know Penélope Cruz, Will Ferrell and Dustin Hoffman are in town, for instance, only because I’ve seen bits of their press conferences out of the side of my eye on the pressroom TV. Ferrell and Hoffman are on the tube right now, in fact, being charming enough that this blog entry is taking a lot longer than it should.
Sundance is cozy enough geographically that I’ve bumped into famous faces in the restroom and sat next to them at cafes, but so far this doesn’t seem to be that kind of environment, which is fine with me. If I bumped into Ferrell at a party, it would take every ounce of my willpower not to ask him to imitate Dubya for me.
(Whoa! As I typed this, a journalist hunched down in front of the TV, handed her camera to a stranger, and asked to have her picture taken with the TELEVISED IMAGE OF DUSTIN HOFFMAN. What can you say about that?)
Still, amazing as it seems, some of these people who have been made rich and famous by movies actually take time out of their Toronto schedules to see a few of them. Two minutes or so before the press/industry screening of “Little Children,” Michael Moore slipped in and took the seat directly in front of me. He chatted casually when the person to his left asked him a question, laughed at appropriate times in the film and was one of a handful of people to stay until the very end of the credits.
At one point in the story, a man tells a woman that his wife makes documentaries. “Oh, like Michael Moore?” she replied, and the audience cracked up. (To my left and right, pens popped out immediately to note the incident. Mine was already at hand.)
About “Little Children,” which will be the eighth or so review I’ll file at the Hollywood Reporter: It’s very likely to be the best of the year. Hearing advance hype from a festival is dangerous because if you spend the months from now to its release hearing how good it is, you’re almost certain to be disappointed. So just make a mental note to see it and ignore any hype that comes your way.
Speaking of the Reporter, the other reviews I’ve filed there so far are: the John Waters doc “This Filthy World”; Phillip Noyce’s apartheid suspense film “Catch a Fire”; Will Ferrell in “Stranger Than Fiction”; the Polish crime flick “Palimpsest”; stand-up performance documentary “Wild West Comedy Tour,” hosted by Vince Vaughn; the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”-obsessed romantic comedy “Love and Other Disasters”; and “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen,” made by the team behind the extraordinary “The Fast Runner.” Boy, are my fingers tired. They’re not the only thing.
September 9, 2006
You like? I like!
Overheard (and paraphrased) on day two of Toronto:
“Were you at that midnight ‘Borat’ premiere last night? It was like a rock concert, so many people trying to get in.
“But the projector broke down after the first 20 minutes. [Sympathetic groan from listener.] No — it got better: Turns out Michael Moore was in the crowd, and he thought he could fix the projector. That didn’t work, but he and [“Borat” director] Larry Charles got on stage and talked to the audience for a long time.
“When that petered out, and the projector still wasn’t fixed, Sacha Baron Cohen came out on stage in character as Borat! He said, ‘They must have the same projector here we have in Kazakhstan.’ He was hilarious — people were going crazy. When he showed up on the red carpet before the screening, he was in a cart pulled by donkeys.
“They’re rescheduling a make-up screening for tonight. I don’t mind re-watching the beginning: That 20 minutes was the funniest thing I’ve seen in decades, and people were laughing so loud I missed half the dialogue.”
Nice surprise unrelated to “Borat”:
Sitting down for the Will Ferrell comedy “Stranger Than Fiction” and hearing the opening scenes accompanied by the familiar chords of Spoon’s “The Way We Get By.” Britt Daniel gets credit as the co-writer of music for the movie, but fans shouldn’t come expecting lots of new material — for the most part, the filmmakers just took familiar Spoon tracks and stripped the vocals out.
September 8, 2006
One for three
I got to three films on my first day in Toronto: the quite fun John Waters documentary and two real dogs. The first dud was “Jade Warrior,” a martial-arts mumbo-jumbo saga blending Finnish and Chinese (!) folk tales; the second, a murder-investigation flick with aspirations to meaty psychodrama, bore the unfortunate name “Palimpsest.”
They take the “International” part of the “Toronto International Film Festival” name seriously here. Leafing through the program drives home the fact that, despite the best efforts of groups like the Austin Film Society, our town is still the boonies where world cinema is concerned. I count about 20 different countries represented by films that played on the first day alone — and that’s before the end of the lunch hour.
Of course, being from another country is no guarantee of a film’s quality — “Palimpsest,” a Polish policier, could have been made by advertising professionals in Burbank — but there are serious artists here, who have followings in other parts of the world, whose work is only available to Austinites via DVD. More on these filmmakers as I get to see their work firsthand.
Till then, I’m still convinced that Austin has an audience for more diverse material, if only some genius exhibitor could find the magic combination of venue, publicity and repertoire. John Waters had some ideas about how university film programs could be made exciting again, but none of them can be printed here …
September 7, 2006
Diving in to Toronto
And it begins!
After a brutal day of travel and orientation yesterday (thanks to pre-fest insomnia, my day started at 1:30 a.m. — then festival-related business kept me out until midnight Eastern time), I’m officially caught up in a festival I’ve wanted to cover for years: Toronto. The one that affords neither glimpses of the Riviera nor opportunities for snowboarding, but routinely launches some of the year’s best films.
Ever the eager beaver where movies are concerned, I was first in the auditorium at the first screening time-slot available. How many folks, I wonder, would turn up at 9 a.m. to listen to “Pope of Trash” John Waters talk about unbelievable depravity both real and imagined? Yours truly — and the belly-laughs were just as good as a few shots of espresso.
This blog is meant as a you-are-there account, so I won’t be doing much actual reviewing of what I see. For that, you’re welcome to visit hollywoodreporter.com. I’ll be filing reviews for THR as schedule and sleep-deprivation allow; by the time you read this, I may have gotten the documentary above (“This Filthy World,” it’s called) out into the ether.
Now, off to see either Chinese-Finnish martial arts or a South Korean horror film. Talk to you soon.
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