Kat's Top TIFF Picks

Not to be outdone by Jeff, here is my list of most anticipated TIFF 2010 titles. I tried very hard to whittle it down to only ten, with five honourable mentions, listed below, all of which overlap with Jeff's list anyway.

A Horrible Way to Die
Adam Wingard | USA
Ever since Jeff brought Wingard's Pop Skull to Toronto's Over the Top Fest a few years back, I have been curious about what he'd do next. This story of a serial killer who escapes from prison and a woman whose past is slowly catching up with her sounds intriguing and clever. Penned by Simon Barrett, who was last at TIFF with 2004's Dead Birds.

The Butcher, The Chef and The Swordsman
Dao Jian Xiao | Hong Kong, China
The first film in Midnight Madness from mainland China is about a kitchen cleaver forged out of the swords of the world's top martial artists. If it really is like Ashes of Time meets God of Cookery meets Tampopo, then I can't wait to go for 2:00am food in Chinatown after the screening.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Werner Herzog | USA
Herzog. 3D. Some 3000 year old cave paintings. It sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?

Curling
Denis Côté | Canada
Last year Denis Côté delivered Canada's most fascinating film of the year with the strange and compelling documentary-ish Carcasses. This year, he returns with something the TIFF guide refers to as 'accessible' - a portrait of a single dad in rural Quebec who has a deep love of curling. Perfect.

Cirkus Columbia
Danis Tanović | Bosnia & Herzegovina
I thought 2001's No Man's Land was just about the best film ever made about the disintegration of my homeland. Tanović has been making a name for himself outside of Bosnia since, with films like L'Enfer and Triage. Now he's actually back in the old country for the first time since his '01 Oscar winner. I can't wait.

Erotic Man
Jørgen Leth | Denmark
Remember The Five Obstructions, that amazing documentary in which Lars von Trier tries to make his mentor/idol make a shitty film by imposing absurd obstructions onto him, only to be frustrated every time by the master's ability to create something wonderful? Well, the master is back with a feature that's touted in the TIFF guide as his "most radical and personal work", an exploration of aging, loss and of course, sex.

Our Day Will Come
Romain Gavras | France
The image in the programme book has a bald-headed Vincent Cassel surrounded by glum looking redheaded children. I don't need much more than this to be convinced to see this "hallucinatory quest for a land of imagined freedom", to be honest. Plus, I've heard a rumour that it's considerably weirder and not at all the video Gavras directed for M.I.A., which features redheads being persecuted and blown up for ten minutes. This fact piques my interest further.

Red Nights
Julien Carbon, Laurent Courtiaud | Hong Kong, China, France
First time directors make it to Midnight Madness with a "pulpy, fetishistic thriller" that's centred around the hunt for a valuable artifact and the staging of a Peking Opera, The Jade Executioner. Giallo-meets-espionage written by the French and taking place in Hong Kong.

The Sleeping Beauty
Catherine Breillat | France
I love "bracing explorations of female mythologies" and I also love Breillat's take on sexuality. I expect her fairy tale story about a young princess and some witches to be as grotesque and brilliant as only she can make it.

Tabloid
Errol Morris | USA
Morris takes on a story about a beauty pageant queen with an IQ of 168, which programmer Thom Powers almost calls too weird to describe in the programme book without spoilers? Count me in.

One honourable mention must definitely go to the conversation between Bruce Springsteen and Edward Norton as part of the Mavericks program (I really love the Boss).

Since that's not technically a film, here are five other titles that I can't wait to see for reasons Jeff has already articulated: 22nd of May, Boxing Gym, Cold Fish, The Last Circus & Super.

Jeff's 15 Most Anticipated Films of TIFF 2010

The final titles of the Toronto International Film Festival’s 2010 lineup were announced today. Here are the fifteen films that I’m most eager to see:

22nd of May
The new film by Koen Mortier looks to be kinder and gentler than his first film, Ex-Drummer, which was a brilliantly dark comedy. Either way, I can’t wait to see it!

A Horrible Way to Die
The new film from Pop Skull director, Adam Wingard is about an escaped convict in search of his ex-girlfriend who has run away to try and start a new life. Like with 22nd of May, the strength of Wingard’s last film would be enough to have me excited about this, but more reasons to be excited are that it stars Joe Swanberg and AJ Bowen, and is written by Simon Barrett.

Boxing Gym
Probably the best documentary filmmaker in the biz, Frederick Wiseman is back at TIFF for a second consecutive year, with a documentary about a boxing gym (did you guess that?) in Austin, Texas.

Burke and Hare
A new John Landis film?! A new John Landis film about grave robbers, starring Simon Pegg, Andy Serkis, Isla Fisher, Christopher Lee, Tom Wilkinson, Tim Curry, and Jenny Agutter!?!?! GIMME!! EDIT: Burke and Hare is no longer appearing on the TIFF website.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Werner Herzog has made a 3D film. It’s a documentary about cave drawings.

Cold Fish
Sion Sono’s epic, Love Exposure, was one of the best films of last year, so I’ve got high expectations for his new serial killer flic. High expectations which I’m pretty confident will be met.

Confessions
When a middle-school teacher’s four year-old daughter is killed, becomes convinced that two students in her class are responsible and decides to take her revenge. This total 180 from the director of Memories of Matsuko, Tetsuya Nakashima, was a huge hit in Japan, and that it’s playing TIFF after already having its North American/International Premiere at the NYAFF is a sign of quality.

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame
New Tsui Hark! Starring Andy Lau! That’s all I need to know.

I Saw the Devil
Kim Ji-Woon, the director of The Good, The Bad, The Weird returns to horror with a film starring Oldboy’s Choi Min-sik and TGTBTW’s Lee Byung-hun.

Jack Goes Boating
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a guy who’s setup on a date by friends. The first date goes well enough to warrant a second. Hoffman then makes plans to make that date the best date ever. WHAT COULD GO WRONG?! This is also Hoffman’s directorial debut.

The Last Circus
Set in the Spanish civil war, two clowns feud over the same woman in this dark comedy directed by Alex de la Iglesia. Sounds good to me.

Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen
Donnie Yen, Anthony Wong, and Shu Qi! Watch the teaser.

Norwegian Wood
I really like the Murakami book this is based on, so let’s see if the film does it justice.

Super
Finally, James Gunn! It’s been way too long since Slither came out. Rainn Wilson stars as a man whose wife (Liv Tyler) leaves him for a drug dealer (Kevin Bacon), so he takes up crime fighting. Also starring Ellen Page as a young fan of Wilson’s crime fighting work who wants to team up and be his sidekick. With Gunn’s dark sense of humour, I predict great times.

Vanishing on 7th Street
I’m keeping myself in the dark about this one after having watched the excellent teaser trailer. Brad Anderson’s Session 9 is one of the best horror films of the last decade, and this looks like an excellent addition to his filmography.

So yeah… Blah, blah, blah. Those are the fifteen films I’m most excited for. It was hard to narrow it down to just fifteen. It could easily have been twice as long.

Centurion

Neil Marshall | 2010 | 97 min | UK

I was very excited when I heard that Neil Marshall was tackling the story of the 9th Roman Legion who went missing in the frontier of the empire's territory in 117 AD. What would Marshall conjure up? A reinvention of Gaelic vampire lore? A period return to his werewolves? Oh boy, I had looked forward to that for a long time. Well, the wait is over! And Centurion delivers nothing new.

My problem with the movie is not that I was disappointed by its lack of supernatural hoo-ha, however. The story is interesting enough: a legion is decimated by a local army employing guerrilla tactics that are totally alien to the Romans, and is wiped from the official history books. And the calibre of talent is remarkable, led by Michael Fassbender and Dominic West. Unfortunately, the script just goes through the usual paces, delivering a few character surprises, but mostly favouring the path of countless other action films. Even the action set pieces are dry. There are some gory moments, plenty of tight camera work rendering those moments largely indecipherable, and virtual buckets full of CGI blood jetting forth from CGI wounds. By the time a comely unarmoured woman is introduced, you know exactly where everything is heading.

Though I did very much enjoy most of the cast, I do have one casting gripe: Ulrich Thomsen, who plays Pict leader Gorlacon, was done up to look far too much like Sting for me to have ever taken seriously on screen. "Is that Sting? Why is Sting so mad? That might be Sting," etc.

On the bright side, the photography in the English and Scottish countrysides is beautiful. Marshall seems to recognize this as the highlight of the film, too, because he really got his money's worth with that helicopter rental. There are countless extreme long shots of our heroes and their pursuers racing across hilltops and plains. These running shots could be a drinking game if anyone were willing to give Centurion a second watch.

At 97 minutes it absolutely drags its way to the end. Apparently there is a 120 minutes cut in Finland as well? Good God. Centurion is not terrible, but the best that can be said about it is that it is serviceable. On the heels of Doomsday, The Descent, and Dog Soldiers, it is very disappointing that Marshall would accept that as good enough.

Backyard, Toronto

Paul Bartel's Cannonball. Some fried chicken, a couple cans of Steam Whistle, and sixteen millimetres of David Carradine projected under the stars is my recipe for a perfect summer night. RECOMMENDED.

Arab on Radar, Toronto

These guys are still monsters of rock and Toronto audiences are still sedate. I swear the oldies at the Jesus Lizard and Devo reunion shows earlier this year gave it harder than most of the undergrad crowd at Saturday's show. I have gone to shows in a lot of different cities and Toronto beats them all when it comes to sitting on hands and practically yawning through all but the buzziest of buzz bands. And what was up with that gent shouting, "CHINESE STARS" between each song? I gave him a scolding and he quieted for a few numbers, then returned with a fury for the encore. I don't know if the audiences here are spoiled or if the average age when one realizes having fun is more important than looking cool is really out of whack in this city. At any rate, I don't want to get down on the show. Mr. Pottymouth and co. killed it and I had a smile on my face they entire time. Another band struck from the bucket list.

This entire post makes me sound seventy-eight years old.

I Got Your Americana Right Here, J Crew

These images were taken between 1938 and 1944 by photographers from the US government's Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI). They were intended as documents are typical American life, concentrating on rural areas. However, as World War II loomed large for the States the photographs took on the distinct tone of propaganda, shifting toward factories full of primped and posed men women Working Hard to Defeat Hitler. Regardless of their uses at the time, these gorgeous photos are a rare colour glimpse at America of the period.









High resolution digital scans are available for free use here. Thanks to Rick Prelinger for the tip.

EDIT: The Huffingpost Post is totally ripping me off.

Today's Nightmare Fuel

AAAAAAAH! End of History beer is a thing that exists! It is a 55% alcohol beer presented inside, yes, an actual taxidermied stoat or grey squirrel. Only twelve bottles of this particular beer were made, so this is a publicity stunt more than anything, but still. . . way to infuriate God.

You can find more info on the brew, as well as a terrible video, over at the BrewDog blog.

Death Wish 3

Michael Winner | 1985 | 92 min | USA

East New York City, 1985: a time when crime ran rampant and cars exploded at the slightest provocation. Mean streets indeed for architect/crime fighter Paul Kersey to return to, particularly when played by a then 63 year-old Charles Bronson.

Kersey buses his way back to the big city to see an old friend and arrives just in time to hear his final words. His friend had been the latest of many to suffer a violent beating at the hands of local toughs who all look like Adam Ant (including a baby faced Alex Winter). That death cannot stand, will not stand, and the fearful neighbourhood residents have little to do but watch as Kersey takes revenge and causes massive, massive collateral damage.

Far more than the prior revenge films, Death Wish 3 is stunningly bizarre. From the off-kilter direction, to the dialogue ("They killed the Giggler, man!"), to the funk/no wave hybrid soundtrack of Jimmy Page, Death Wish 3 is relentless is the best possible way. This was the third and last Death Wish for director Winner and the second from the 80s action producer giants Cannon Films. All parties involved go for broke. The violence comes fast and heavy, and no one is satisfied until city blocks have been completely devastated. And among all that rubble and amorality, wall to wall laughs.

As the death toll rises around Kersey yet again, Bronson all but shoulder shrugs his way through his performance. At those moments he does speak (according to supporting actor Ed Lauter, he didn't enjoy delivering lines), his delivery is at once psychotically detached and comedic; which is to say, perfect. He shrugs off the death of his wife and coos over his custom Wildey Magnum (the gun's manufacturer later featured the film in a commercial promoting the same!).

Romantic interest Deborah Raffin, playing lawyer Kathryn Davis, also offers a delirious performance and the strangest first date you have ever uncomfortably witnessed. She hates her sister, loves sports, and enjoys taking home brooding strangers after she aids their release from jail onto skid row. Aforementioned Ed Lauter also deserves a gold star for his role as a bipolar cop who salutes friend and foe alike as "dude."

Of course, Death Wish wouldn't be Death Wish if our man didn't soundly dispose of all the street trash ruining grocery runs for everyone. Sure, Kersey takes care of the young punks, but to what end? As the film wraps, wild gangs of geriatrics have pulled out their heaters and tasted blood. . . and loved it.

If you don't watch this movie you hate freedom.

A spotless 35mm print of Death Wish 3 plays again at Toronto Underground Cinema this Sunday, August 1, at 7:00.

The World Cannot Live Half Slave, Half Free

Anti-Hun propaganda postcards from Belgium, circa World War I. Click on the images for larger versions.

Show Me Your "Office"

York Boulevard, Hamilton. See also, "Why I Ain't Post So Much" and "Forever Commuting."

Steam of Life [Miesten vuoro]

Joonas Berghäll & Mika Hotakainen | 2010 | 82 mins | Finland

Can you think of a single thing not to love about a documentary that's 100% naked men in saunas? I know, me neither. But get your mind out of the gutter. The men in Steam of Life aren't, in most cases, particularly sexy. Nor do they, I suspect, give a fuck about whether they look good for the camera. They're just regular guys, with droopy skin, beer bellies or concave chests, bad tattoos, and whatever other flaws you might imagine a random cross-section of the Finnish population to have. What makes the film spectacular is not the gawking at naked men part. It's the fact that these men, who come from a culture that privileges the strong, silent, tough-guy type, all open up in the sauna and share honest, frank stories about their lives.

Apparently, in Finalnd, if you can hot-box it, you can turn it into a sauna, and the saunas in the film are as diverse as trailers and phone booths, tents and underground mines. The sauna is a national passion in Finland that I can't think of a parallel or equivalent to here in Canada. We simply can't relate to how central this ritual is to the daily life of the average man, but Steam of Life sure gets us close to understanding the value of the ritual - and not just for your complexion.

Some of the stories are funny, and some are utterly heartbreaking. The men reminisce about their lives, their children, their lost loves and changing fortunes. It's an unbelievably intimate and frank view into their lives. Their willingness to let the filmmakers shoot them naked in the sauna is actually the least intimate part of it. When the emotions start pouring out and the tears start flowing with the sweat and steam, it's unbelievably touching, funny, sad, and uplifting all at once.

My own love for Finland burns with the fire of a thousand suns, but in this case the quality of the film speaks for itself, and it's not just my gross cultural bias that leads me to endorse it. The audience at the first Hot Docs screening gave the two young filmmakers the most raucous round of applause I've seen yet, stopping just short of an ovation. Truly a beautiful glimpse into the warm heart of an outwardly icy group of men.

Small Wonders

Tally Abecassis | 2010 | 52 mins | Canada

I wish that this film, which director Tally Abecassis spent ten years creating, had been better. I wanted to love it, and while I fell in love with a couple of the characters in it, I couldn't help but feel that the cumulative effect was not as powerful as it should have been.

The film follows three small business owners - proprietors of the kinds of weird neighbourhood shops you pass by every day, and hardly notice. Or, perhaps you wonder how they could possibly still be in business, with their old, dusty signs and cluttered storefronts. The three people she selects are hardware store owner Jae-Gil, a Korean tomboy who was known back home as "Miss Key" for her lock-picking abilities; Peter, the wisecracking watch repairman who complains about the loss of his youthful good looks but whose livelyhood is actually threatened by his failing eyesight; and Norman, a dapper photographer who runs an old fashioned portrait studio.

All three businesses are constantly on the brink of financial ruin - Jae-Gil's because of the increasing number of big box stores crowding out her over-stuffed, tiny hardware haven, the other two simply by the ravages of time and age on their owners, and the inevitable changes of technology. After all, most people throw out a watch rather than having it repaired these days, and nobody goes to a portrait studio for passport shots when you can get them done at any corner store.

Abecassis visited the three struggling entrepreneurs for a decade, and watching them age, go through divorces, heartaches, and the inevitable closure of at least one of their shops is, indeed, touching. But somehow, an element of intimacy is sorely missing from these very personal tales. It's as though a vast distance was maintained between her and her subjects in spite of the fact that the relationships have lasted for such a significant period of time. A fascinating subject, to be sure, and a must see for anyone who loves those weird old nooks & crannies in their own neighbourhood.

And Everything is Going Fine

Steven Soderbergh | 2010 | 89 mins | USA

Steven Soderbergh's portrait of his friend and onetime collaborator Spalding Gray is intimate, touching, and at times very funny indeed. Gray starred in Soderbergh's King of the Hill in 1993 (a story that is touchingly retold in the doc) and Soderbergh has been working on this documentary for about five years - pretty much since Gray's death. The documentary weaves a biographical narrative worthy of Gray's own storytelling gifts, using nothing but clips from his taped monologue performances and a few select TV interviews he did over the course of his career. The stories he tell are loosely chronological, beginning in his early childhood, through his college years, his mother's suicide and the tumultuous decades that followed.

The stories about Gray's personal life - his troubled mother, his own difficulties in maintaining healthy relationships, his struggles with fatherhood - are undeniably touching, but perhaps even more interesting are the clips in which he talks about his development as an artist, the path that made him the unique monologuist we all know and love. He discusses writing, acting, the creative process itself, shedding some light on how that signature style was developed.

Soderbergh made very much the right choice in letting Gray speak for himself in this documentary, sifting through what must have been hundreds of hours of footage to create the final monologue of a gifted storyteller, a summary of his entire life. Retellings of the story of his monther's breakdowns and her eventual suicide, his own struggles with manic depression, his recurring suicidal fantasies and his strange obsession with water (in one clip he talks about always orienting himself in relation to water, wherever he is) provide an eerie sense of foreshadowing for Gray's untimely demise, in the East River, most likely by his own hand.

In the film's final scene, Gray is distracted by the lonely howling of a dog or wolf in the background. The camera stays on him while he pauses to listen to the animal's lamentation, and a lifetime of pain and brilliance is suddenly, heartbreakingly visible on his face. I got a little misty, I can't deny it.

For fans of Gray's work, this is a loving and respectful tribute. For those who don't know his monologues, it's actually a pretty good introduction to the style, the humour, and the strange, compelling character of Spalding Gray.

And Everything Is Going Fine screens again on Saturday, May 1. Click here for more info.

Disco and Atomic War

Jaak Kilmi | 2009 | 80 min | Estonia + Finland

Disco and Atomic War is the story of the evolution of television on the edge of the Iron Curtain. The capital of Soviet block Estonia, Tallinn, was so close to the Western nation of Finland that eager Communists with modified televisions could receive their broadcasts. The US State Department was quick to realize that this battle in the heads of young Communists was as important as any battleground. As the Dallases and Knight Riders poured into Soviet homes, US cash poured into Finland, helping them construct dazzling high transmission towers.

The film is told from those who were on the front lines: inventors building antennae out of scrap metal; young campers waiting for the first broadcast of Emmanuel; cousins corresponding about scandals among the Ewings.

In less capable hands the subject of broadcast television in Estonia would surely be a dry talking heads picture. While director Jaak Kilmi doesn't shy away from offering the insights of media professors and government historians, it is the flourishes of the personal stories told in beautifully spare recreations and the bevy of perfectly selected stock footage that makes Disco and Atomic War such an arresting treat to watch. It is as brilliant a synthesis of storytelling and straight information delivery as I think I have seen. The film manages to capture the enthusiasm of youthful fan devotion so strongly that it that makes the alien concept of a cloak and dagger struggle to see your favourite program easy to empathize and relate to.

I loved Disco and Atomic War. So much so that I give this movie my highest recommendation: MANDATORY STATE-SPONSORED VIEWING.

Disco and Atomic War plays Hot Docs on April 30 and May 1. Check here for schedule and watch the trailer here.