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Apr 25, 2013

Hot Docs Coverage


If you follow my writing at The Film Experience, you probably already know that I will be covering the Hot Docs film festival this year. The festival opens today with a screening of the Canadian film, The Manor, directed by Shawney Cohen about his experience of growing up in a family that owns a suburban strip club. It's unlike anything I expected from a "strip club" documentary, but the surprise was a very pleasant one. My review is up at The Film Experience. There will be more of these posts over the next week or so.

Apr 24, 2013

A Star Is Born

*This post is part of Nathaniel's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series.

Generally speaking, I have a very weak memory of films. Even the films I love most and have watched repeatedly over time aren't ingrained in my memory with vivid detail. My recollections are limited to an assortment of shots, scenes, lines and moods. I remember how I felt watching a particular film, but ask me the details of its plot and I'll just stare back at you. In many ways, I see that as a blessing because it allows me to rediscover precious moments over and over again. I remain in awe of a film's achievements like the very first time I experienced them. The point being that I've almost never known what shot I wanted to pick as my favorite before I revisit the film Nathaniel assigns us. There are, however, exceptions to every rule and George Cukor's A Star Is Born proved to be just that.


I remembered four particular moments most vividly: the resplendent silhouette of Esther and Norman's first kiss after their secret marriage, against a backdrop of a Green neon-lit doorway (and reminiscent of that famous Green silhouette in Hitchcock's Vertigo produced four years later), Norman's portentous walk toward the sea against the orange hue of Sunset, Esther's heartbreaking public appearance after the passing of her husband (where her "I'm Mrs. Norman Maine" brings tears to my eyes every time), and the shot you see above.

In this early sequence, Esther, having saved Norman's grace with her astute theatricality on stage earlier, has retired to a worn out bar with her band for an after hours practice session. Norman, who's sobered up after his drunken public faux-pas, has been searching to find the unknown young actress who came to his rescue and he arrives at this location just as Esther is about to start her now famous rendition of The Man That Got Away. With her arresting voice, she mesmerizes Norman and the audience, alike, and when the song ends, Norman takes her for a ride that essentially begins the film's narrative.

Cukor frames Judy Garland as if she is at the center of a painting. She's under a spotlight where everyone else is faded to black.The lighting is at her service and so is the band. She seems to big to be contained in the frame. This one shot effectively encapsulates the entire progression of her rise to stardom, as if to reaffirm what being a star really means: the venues might be small but a star's light shines bright. The persona - Garland's and Esther's - is larger than life and here, that fact is materialized in image. A star is born, indeed.

Apr 23, 2013

The Killing

*This post is part of Ryan McNeil's Blind Spots series and contains spoilers regarding the plot of The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, 1958).
The completist and the Kubrick enthusiast in me could never quite figure out why I overlook The Killing when in one glorious week about 5 or 6 years ago I watched every single film Stanley Kubrick had ever made. Yes, even Fear and Desire, but not The Killing. Over the years, I've gone back to most of them several times but this one had always slipped under my radar. Until today that is.


It's a strange experience, watching for the first time a film by a director so widely admired as to be not just familiar to all cinephiles, but almost synonymous with cinema itself; all the more curious for the fact that The Killing came so early in the legendary auteur's career. In retrospect, it can be viewed as an early signifier of everything that came to embody his peculiar artistic vision, but also as a stand-alone piece far removed from the rest of his filmography. Of course, anyone who's familiar with the director's work knows that despite the presence of many threads that sew his work into a uniform oeuvre - the formal rigor, the fastidiously constructed narratives, the music, the all-encompassing conformity to his vision of everyone involved - every single one of his films has an identity fully of its own. He tackled as wide a range of themes and genres as possible within his filmography, but for the most part, his films didn't bend to the rules of those genres. His presence behind the camera dominated everything about each film. But even for a director of his ilk, The Killing is distinct enough to be mistaken for another filmmaker's work. It possesses neither the formal rigidity of his later films nor their impenetrable characters that can be carefully observed but not intimately immersed in.

Apr 15, 2013

Popcorn Flicks Galore

I've neglected the blog for quite a few days now and even though I've been itching to get back to writing, the truth is, well, I haven't really seen anything to write about these past few days. I've been to some press screenings for the Hot Docs Film Festival - if you follow my writing on the The Film Experience, you know I'll be covering it extensively this year - but those films are embargoed for now and I've otherwise been busy with real life shenanigans.


As part of these shenanigans, my grandparents have come for a visit from Iran after a few years and they've brought some pretty terrific DVDs along with them. I use the term "terrific" very loosely, by which what I really mean is cheesy comedies that get the whole family together for a lot of laughs and not much else to mull over. It's been a heck of a lot of fun, to be honest. The most recent one was a film called Cheque by mainstream director Kazem Rastgoftar, starring Iran's most internationally recognizable actor, Homayoun Ershadi and one of my favorite comedians, Farhad Aeesh.

Cheque is one of those films that don't have a hope of ever crossing the border to find an international audience, but it had a lot of clever things to say about modern Iranian society. This type of ensemble comedy has been instrumental in shaping the financial backbone of Iranian cinema for decades now. They come and go and a few years later few people remember them, but for the 2 hours that they play on your screen, they consistently tickle your funny bone. In Cheque, the current financial malaise and the omnipresent, ever-growing schism between the conservatives, the modernists and monarchists take center stage in a story about a random group of four people who have to spend a couple of nights together after an accident gifts them one hefty cheque to cash and split among themselves.

My relationship with Iranian cinema has mostly been limited to arthouse fare and everything that is generally marketed to a global/festival audience, so films like this are a real breath of fresh air, insignificant as they might be for Iranians inside the country. I was unaware of just how prevalent it has become for women to drive taxis in Iran, for instance, but small lessons like this can often be learnt more readily from mainstream films that don't concern themselves with anything other than appealing to the everyman than from festival films. What I really want to say is that while living in Toronto has provided me with the pleasure having access to TIFF, Hot Docs, an array of other festivals and the newest releases year-around, sometimes I just really, really miss watching cheeseballs like this in the theater with my friends. Luckily, there's enough of them lying around my TV to last me a couple of more months, so I'll enjoy it while it lasts; and I'll resume regular blogging when Hot Docs kicks off.

Apr 8, 2013

Monday's Words of Wisdom


"Movies do not change, but their viewers do. When I saw "La Dolce Vita'' in 1960, I was an adolescent for whom "the sweet life'' represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman. When I saw it again, around 1970, I was living in a version of Marcello's world; Chicago's North Avenue was not the Via Veneto, but at 3 a.m. the denizens were just as colorful, and I was about Marcello's age.
When I saw the movie around 1980, Marcello was the same age, but I was 10 years older, had stopped drinking, and saw him not as a role model but as a victim, condemned to an endless search for happiness that could never be found, not that way. By 1991, when I analyzed the film a frame at a time at the University of Colorado, Marcello seemed younger still, and while I had once admired and then criticized him, now I pitied and loved him. And when I saw the movie right after Mastroianni died, I thought that Fellini and Marcello had taken a moment of discovery and made it immortal. There may be no such thing as the sweet life. But it is necessary to find that out for yourself."
- from Roger Ebert's Essay on Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (courtesy of Peter Labuza)

Apr 6, 2013

Saying Goodbye to Roger Ebert


I haven't really had the desire to write anything about Roger Ebert's passing. There have been so many obituaries in the past few days and I've felt more comfortable reading them than contributing. Nevertheless, like any other cinephile, I'm incredibly sad. I'm not ashamed to say I shed a few tears. He had a major influence on me and was an inspiration when I started writing; but more than that, I feel there will be a hole in my life that no one else can replace. Whose review will I read first when a new film is released? For almost a decade now, every week, the first review of any film I've read has been his and I'm not sure the feeling I felt reading his generous, funny and incredibly smart review can ever be replaced.

I have a great memory of meeting him very briefly during the 2010 Toronto Film Festival, as I got to wheel his wheelchair to the press screening of Never Let Me Go at Scotiabank theater alongside his wife. It's a moment I'll never forget. Even in his cancer-induced silence, he was as magnanimous and kind as his reviews suggest. He will be missed dearly but he has a special place in my heart that will belong to him forever; and his writing will live on forever.

Apr 3, 2013

Death to the Eagleman

*This post is part of Nathaniel's Hit Me With Your Best Shot series.

For the first time in the series, we're choosing favorite shots from short films; two short films, to be precise. I've seen one of them, The Eagleman Stag, countless number of times and the other, Death to the Tin Man, was new to me.


The strange thing about the endlessly fascinating, marvelously rich Stag is that multiple previous screenings didn't help one bit when it came to choosing a single favorite shot. Michael Please's curio is realized with such panache, with such innovative technique that every frame in its short running time packs an incredible amount of detail within its very, very simple construct. Though labeling it 'simple' rather downplays the beautiful achievement of this meticulously crafted film. (Just take a look at this must-watch making of video to see how the "mysterious white material from the back of the cushion" becomes the core of this elaborate design).

Usually the shot that I choose is one that thematically summarizes the film; or one that resonates with me emotionally; or one that is, for aesthetic or thematic reasons, the shot that I remember from the film most vividly. That approach fails me here, because The Eagleman Stag really has no fat to trim; and from start to finish, it maintains its mysterious splendor. So, for no other reason than its enigmatic beauty and its visualization of the film's title, I've opted for this image of Peter, the film's hero(?), as he momentarily begins to transform into a stag. It occurs during a sequence in which Peter's life, or a hallucinated version of it, flashes before his eyes as he lies on his deathbed. The insects he performed his scientific experiments on take over his memories as he shrinks to their size. In this particular shot, which lasts about 2 seconds, he literally becomes the eagleman stag.



In Death to the Tinman, Ray Tintori's sweet and bizarre romantic comedy, Bill, the protagonist, loses his body parts to a curse and multiple accidents. His best friend, Paul, a "disgraced engineer" who is unusually older than Bill for a best friend, redesigns every bit that he loses and produces them from tin. Bill, eventually made up completely of tin, with only his heart and eyes intact, loses Jane, the love of his life, to the meat puppet, a reincarnation of his own body - without the eyes and the heart, of course. To win Jane back, Bill becomes a revolutionary who steals from the rich and gives to the poor, redistributing the wealth as Jane had taught him from one of her university books.

It's a strange concept, but interestingly enough, the film comes off as anything but concept-y. There is a human truth to its almost one-note, simplistic exploration of love that fits well within its stripped-down aesthetics. And there are more laugh-out-loud moments in its 12 minute run time than the average Hollywood comedy playing at your local multiplex. In the lead-up to the shot above, Bill has run across town, wreaking havoc on the properties of the rich before coming to Jane's window to boast about his revolutionary heroics. Jane, who is visible from the window as she's talking to the meat puppet, rejects his advances and shuts the window. Tinman feels dejected but a fellow activist puts a hand on his shoulder and utters the hilarious words "the revolution needs you." For some reason, this one-liner made me laugh really hard and sometimes sheer comic value is enough to make a shot resonate more than anything else.