Charming Monsters

Despite the weather, January 2010 is shaping up to be an excellent month for Toronto cinephiles, at least those of us with a taste for art house and old school action.

First up is the return of Silent Sundays at the Revue Cinema, the west-end indie theater on Roncesvalles. This year’s program launches with The Lost World, a 1925 adventure flick that combines dinosaurs with then-modern London. William O’Meara, the city’s finest (er, and only?) silent film accompanist, will be providing a live soundtrack. Should be awesome, if I can fit it into an already-overstuffed day!

Next week is four glorious days of Guy Maddin, compliments of the film program at University of Toronto’s Innis College. Maddin is one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers, and I’m super excited at the opportunity to hear him talk in-depth about his work and artistic process. The event schedule includes:

Tuesday 12 January 2010, 7:00 p.m., Innis Town Hall
May I Blow My Bugle Now? My Life in Clips – Illustrated lecture by Guy Maddin on his major influences and favourite films

Wednesday 13 January 2010, 7:00 p.m., Innis Town Hall
Machine Gun Lullabies and Short Sleep – Guy Maddin illuminates the short film as an artistic form

Thursday 14 January 2010, 7:00 p.m. Innis Town Hall
My Winnipeg – Film with live narration by Guy Maddin

Friday 15 January 2010, 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. JHB Room 100
I’m Going to Pull Down my Pants: Confession & the Cinema of Uninhibition – Roundtable discussion of Guy Maddin’s films

Friday 15 January 2010, 7:00 p.m., Innis Town Hall
Brand Upon the Brain! (With Guy Maddin in person) on a 35mm print!!

All events take place at Innis College and are FREE to attend – first come, first served. In addition to be a brilliant filmmaker, Maddin is a charming, erudite and highly amusing speaker – I recommend checking out the first two lectures even if you’re not a fan of his films.

As much as I adore my adopted hometown of Toronto, there are times when I wish I lived elsewhere. Usually New York, and usually because of some film-related event. Like right now, when I’m staring at the schedule for the upcoming MOMA To Save and Project film festival. Newly restored versions of NANOOK OF THE NORTH and Frank Capra’s FORBIDDEN on the big screen? A showing of HAXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES, a 1922 silent Swedish film that’s been on my want-to-see list since I missed out on the last Toronto screening years ago due to schedule conflicts*? And – gem of gems – a restored print of Lotte Reiniger’s THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED? What a feast of old-timey cinematic glee!

I’ve seen a few of Lotte Reiniger’s shorts, and outtakes from an unrestored version of ACHMED, but never the full film; hopefully, this new restoration will merit a DVD release (there’s one currently available, but I’ve been a bit hesitant about the transfer quality). Her life story is pretty interesting, and her influence resonates clearly among modern directors such as the Brothers Quay and Guy Maddin (in particular, the silhouette sequences in ARCHANGEL).

“I love working for children, because they are a very critical and very thankful public.” – Lotte Reiniger

(links via the Dangerous Minds blog)

* – oh, and it turns out HAXAN is public domain and thus available online; the quality won’t be as nice as a print, of course, but I’ll have to give it a try this weekend, just to see.

SYMBOL (Shinboru): my twitter review for this film pretty much sums it up: “never has one man’s surreal angst been so incredibly funny”. SYMBOL was definitely the weirdest film I saw at TIFF this year, and also the funniest. Funny in that hand-over-mouth,-faintly-embarrassed-to-be-laughing-so-hard-at-this kind of way. If you enjoy those odd Japanese game shows that pop up on Youtube once in a while, SYMBOL is probably for you.

The film starts with two plotlines: one follows a Japanese man who awakens alone in an all-white room with no apparent means of escape, the other follows a Mexican wrestler preparing for a match. The connection between the two isn’t immediately obvious, and even once it’s revealed, may leave some viewers scratching their heads. It gets stranger from there, building up to an ending that’s either jaw-dropping or totally pretentious, depending on your personal feelings about life, the universe and everything. I thought it was awesome, but I also saw it on the last day of the festival, so that might just be my sleep dep talking.

Also: this film is not for those who find male nudity uncomfortable. There is literally more angel penis in this film than I would have ever thought possible; it’s not obscene, but it is hilarious. And difficult to explain to anyone under 16, I’d imagine.

Valhalla Rising: I learned a very valuable lesson from VALHALLA RISING; never take your friends to see an art house film, even if said art house film involves a good deal of viking violence. They won’t enjoy it, and their obvious non-enjoyment is going to keep knocking you out of the film as well.

VALHALLA RISING is perhaps the most metal film I’ve ever seen; brutal, vicious, desolate and strangely powerful. I’m not really sure I can recommend it, but if you’re up for a curiously-paced exploration of inhumanity, faith and delirium, this would be a good place to start. The first 30 minutes play like a Hong Kong action film, loaded up with ugly yet compelling combat sequences; the last hour is a surrealist descent into increasing chaos and solitude, like watching a group of people slowly starve to death in the woods. Only with more axe fights and mud baths. The film is soaked in an unrelenting bleakness, from the characters and plot to the cinematography itself, a monochromatic palette that strips forest and ocean down to a stark, sad beauty.

Don’t let the trailer fool you, by the way, as to the amount of narrative explanation the film provides – about a third of the dialogue in the film is in the trailer, and the closer the film moves towards the climax, the less vocal everyone becomes, leaving the audience to puzzle out scenes and motivations on their own.

THE WAITING CITY: My viewing of this film was no doubt influenced by the terrible mood I was in the day I saw it, but it managed to strike all the wrong notes with me. The basics: uptight professional woman and her laid-back musician husband travel to India to complete a long-planned adoption; delays happen and their relationship starts to strain as a result. There really wasn’t much here that struck me as new or fresh; not the unraveling plot, not the oh-so-typical characters, not the “attractive white people exploring an exotic culture” motif. It’s competent enough, and probably worth watching if you have an interest in international adoption or India, but nothing groundbreaking.

Jos asked for weird movies, so weird movies it is! I still haven’t done anything longer than a Twitter review for any of the Toronto International Film Fest screenings I saw, so there’s plenty for me to catch up on. To be honest, I saw far fewer films this year than I usually cram in. A typical TIFF, for me, involves anywhere from 35 to 50+ films over 10 days; this year was a paltry 24, if you count the short film screening as a single movie. I also saw more “mainstream” films this year, which translates to anything hitting theatres in the six months following the fest. I missed out on a bunch of films I really wanted to see – AIR DOLL and MALL GIRLS I’m particularly sorry to have not seen – but hopefully I’ll have a chance to track those down, either at indie cinema showings or DVD.

HIPSTERS (Stilyagi): To be honest, I almost skipped this film based on the translated name alone. So I owe a massive thanks to Matt for recommending I check it out, given that it turned out to be one of my favorite films of the entire fest.

The core premise is classic musical with a Russian twist: during the height of the Cold War, a member of the Communist Youth Party falls for a rebellious girl and dives head-first into a forbidden subculture of jazz, flashy clothes and swing dance to win her heart, discovering himself along the way. Sappy as all good musicals must be, but leavened by the constant background of the oppressive Soviet regime and a slightly odd pacing that keeps it from being too pat. The dance numbers are a blur of color and joy, the acting is solid, and it’s a fascinating peek into a little-known youth subculture. The Stilyagi were a cultural palimpsest, an attempt to recreate a forbidden style with little clear information and lots of misconceptions to go on. It reminds me of a bunch of the Japanese youth movements, especially the rockabillies, who are a darker take on the stilyagi style: James Dean versus Chuck Berry, as it were. I’m fascinated by the way cultures borrow and rewrite one another (on that take, I highly recommend SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO for a wild rethinking of the Samuri Cowboy aesthetic) and HIPSTERS has a great deal of fun exploring this area. The closing song sequence, in particular, is one of the most uplifting, glee-soaked bits of cinema I’ve ever seen.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any subtitled video clips online, but there’s a trailer here and one of my favorite numbers (when the main character gets kicked out of the Youth Group, a tribute to unity and conformity) online here to give you a flavor. Like the Stilyagi themselves, the film is a pastiche of musical and cinematic styles, blended together into an odd but satisfying whole.