CRITICALMASSCAST

The return of Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair has us waxing nostalgic for the 90s, a decade full of music we love/hate. We discuss the evolution of girl pop over the last two decades, review several new releases and TV shows, and provide an update on the TIFF 2010 gala presentations.

Concert Review: Lilith 2010
Film Reviews: Despicable Me, Salt, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
DVD Reviews: Winter Light (Criterion Edition), BBC’s Beautiful People
TV Reviews: Mad Men (Season 4), Pillars of the Earth

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A collection of artifacts and images from the history of film will be gathered together in Essential Cinema, the first exhibit to be held at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, the Toronto Film Festival’s new downtown home. “This is truly a representation of what happens at the festival, a back and forth between programmers, the audience and conversations in line,” says Noah Cowan, artistic director of the Lightbox. “The pieces show the history of cinema, writ large. It’s a conversation with the audience on why film matters to us all.” The exhibit, which includes original scripts and storyboards, memorabilia and new art projects from artists such as Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin, is free to the public and open during the entire film festival, from Sept. 9-19.  Read more about Noah Cowan’s favourite exhibit pieces in this National Post piece.

The Essential Cinema exhibition will transform the gallery spaces of TIFF Bell Lightbox into a journey through the Essential 100, TIFF’s list of the most influential films of all time. Bringing together iconic costumes, film stills, posters, music samples and film clips, the exhibition charts these works – all 100 of them – that have played such a key role in defining film culture for more than a century. Highlights include Robert De Niro’s cab license, used while researching his role in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), original release posters from Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and original storyboards from Gone With the Wind (1939) depicting the evacuation of Atlanta. The exhibition will also include a special section, developed in partnership with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, exploring elements of the creative process behind Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Vertigo (1958), from costume design to Saul Bass’ iconic title sequence.  Audiences will have at least two opportunities to see each of the films before the end of 2010.

… must come to an end! This week, Cindy Alexander joins us as a permanent co-host on CriticalMassCast to discuss our favorite film endings of all time. We also look back on Golden Girl Rue McClanahan’s fabulous career, and discuss what we’ve been watching and doing over the past few weeks.

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From the Luminato website:

Now in its fourth year, Luminato is an annual ten-day celebration where Toronto’s stages, streets, and public spaces are illuminated with arts and creativity. Luminato is a multi-disciplinary festival of theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music, film, literature, visual arts, design and more.

Luminato embraces three key programming principles: collaboration, accessibility, and diversity.

* Luminato embraces artistic collaboration – creating unforgettable moments by bringing together artists from different cultures and genres. The festival encourages local, national, and international artists to discover unprecedented creative expressions through unexpected partnerships. The Luminato staff, led by CEO Janice Price, partners with the Luminato Artistic Committee, as well as the arts leadership of the City of Toronto, to shape the programming offered at the Festival.

* Luminato’s hallmarks include free widely accessible events, and “accidental encounters with art.” Festival-goers are invited to participate, explore, and celebrate their own creative spirit.

* Luminato embraces and celebrates Toronto’s cultural diversity, and recognizes that creativity flourishes when cultures join together in a spirit of tolerance and respect.

Luminato is a charitable, not-for-profit, cultural organization whose vision is to commission and present significant local, national and international programming that reflects the city of Toronto as a diverse and accessible city that engages domestic and international audiences. Luminato brings Toronto’s light to the world, and the world’s light to Toronto.

Coming September 10-19, 2010, over the same period that the Toronto International Film Festival will be in full swing comes the Toronto Urban Film Festival.  The Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF), unique in North America, is a 10-day public film festival that reaches 1.3 million daily commuters on the Onestop TTC subway platform screens. Urban-themed films from across Canada and around the world play every 10 minutes on 270 screens in 50 subways stations across Toronto.

The 4th annual TUFF will take place on the Onestop Network of 270 subway platforms screens throughout the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) from September 10 – 19, 2010, at the same time as TIFF. Each year TUFF screens only the best films from of hundreds of submissions. In 2010 TUFF is raising the bar – showcasing fewer films in order to give our finalists more exposure.

TUFF is open to both Canadian and international submissions. All films screened are silent and exactly one-minute in length.

TUFF, the film festival for commuters, showcases all genres of film, video, and animation from both professional and amateur filmmakers.  Filmmakers are asked to consider seven themes designed to engage the imagination of an urban population.

Each year a Guest Jury is invited to select the final films and program them into our thematic categories. The Guest Judge then chooses the films which are awarded our top prizes.  The Guest Judge this year is none other then celebrated Canadian Director, Producer and Screenwriter Deepa Mehta.  So if you have something to say about the urban landscape and willing to commit that artistry to film, make sure to check out the TUFF website for regulations and make sure to get in your submissions by the deadline on July 15, 2010!!

With film festival season clearly in full swing here in Toronto, the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival now enters the fray: presented by Telus and running from June 1-6, the festival promises to bring an amazing slate of short films, which includes three programs of recent shorts from Poland, and Shorts for Shorties- the ever-popular family-friendly programming, now with an animation workshop post-screening, courtesy of guest animator, Jon Izen.  Women also take center stage with a special screening of the Swedish omnibus program DORIS, and a special screening of the 2009 Lunafest touring program.

The opening gala will feature award winners from around the world at the Bloor Theatre, Tuesday, June 1 at 7:00pm and will include the amazing animation of Cordell Barker’s Runaway.  A prize winner at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and 2010 Genie winner for Best Animation Film, Runaway sees the world as a driverless train thundering recklessly over bumpy tracks. The film’s hilarious plunge toward chaos is enhanced by music from composer Benoît Charest (The Triplets of Belleville).  The film festival will also feature other animations from the NFB: Making its world premiere is Theodore Ushev’s Lipsett’s Diaries, an animated journey into the tormented life of the brilliant filmmaker Arthur Lipsett, from the loneliness of his childhood to his suicide at age 49. The Man Who Slept (Sacrebleu Productions/Unité Centrale/NFB) by Inés Sedan follows a young woman who shares her life with a sleeping ghost. She lives in denial of a loss that has left her all alone. This vibrantly textured animated film is a work about resilience: a journey to night’s end that culminates in an awakening.

As part of the Special Program, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, creators of the Oscar-nominated short Madame Tutli-Putli, return with the live-action/animated adaptation of Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life ((NFB in association with Warner Home Video) based on the book by Maurice Sendak. Produced by Spike Jonze, Vincent Landay and Marcy Page, and featuring the voices of Meryl Streep and Forest Whitaker.  Andrea Dorfman’s Flawed, her intimate tribute to inner beauty and emergent relationships will also be featured as part of the festival.

So stay tuned, CriticalMassCast will be there to cover the best of what the festival has to offer in the world of short film!!  If you will be in the Toronto area during the event, be sure to check out the online schedule- the programming this year looks fresh and innovative…. there is definitely something there for everyone!

Erin Donovan, documentarian and editor of the Steady Diet of Film website and podcast joins Gregory Ashman of CriticalMassCast for a fun chat to discuss and review a varied selection of documentary film from Toronto’s recently wrapped Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival.

Films reviewed include:

- And Everything is Going Fine…
- 1991: The Year that Punk Broke
- Space Tourists
- The Kids Grow Up
- Sex Magic: Manifesting Maya
- Dreamland
- Farewell
- Citizen Architect: Samuel Mockbee and the Spirit of The Rural Studio
- Into Eternity
- The People Vs. George Lucas

DOWNLOAD LINK

Total run time: 57:54

File Size: 54.7 MB

It finally happened: Betty White fever invaded the Saturday Night Live stage. Cindy Alexander joins us this week to discuss the golden girl’s performance (spoiler alert: she killed it!) and the episode’s most memorable moments. And – because Betty puts us in a nostalgic mood – we review three films that had an impact on us growing up. All that, plus Toronto Talk and some pop culture jabber.

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Star Wars is a movie that has become ubiquitous. George Lucas created a story that grabbed a generation by the scruff of the neck and immersed them in a fantastical adventure and they fell in love. And like any devoted lover they have become rather protective, maybe even possessive of the characters and story.

The People vs George Lucas looks at the love/hate relationship between George Lucas and his fans. The man created a universe that is so beloved and yet many of the fans feel betrayed by Lucas’ attempts to perfect them by producing Star Wars Special Edition and the prequel trilogy.  Through interviews and fan interpretations of Lucas’ various films Alexandre Philippe slowly lays out the case against George Lucas. He even likens Lucas to the character of Anakin Skywalker in describing his rise to ‘power’ and his subsequent ‘fall’ from grace.

The list of grievances against Mr. Lucas is long. It begins with him changing the cantina confrontation between Han and Greedo so that Greedo shot first; to the addition of Hayden Christianson at the end of Return of Jedi as the ghost of Anakin and the creation of the most annoying film character of all-time in Jar Jar Binks. There seems very little in Mr. Lucas’ favour except for the fact that Star Wars is his story. It was his imagination that created it and to most it would seem his to do with as he pleases. Star Wars fans beg to differ. They see Star Wars as their story that they collectively share.  George Lucas, a man who once despised the movie studios for their lack of artistic vision, has become equally as ‘corporate’ himself. He became as one fan put it “the evil genius of marketing”. He created lunchboxes, action figures, bedsheets, t-shirts and plastic lightsabres. Though you can say he demonstrated capitalism at it’s best people ate it up. If it hadn’t been successful the Star Wars action figures would have died a slow and quiet death. They didn’t. In fact the opposite was true. They were so popular they couldn’t produce them fast enough. They sold empty boxes promising to ship the toys as soon as they had made them.

Though the bulk of this movie is spent pointing out Mr. Lucas’ mistakes it does not end in this way. In a round about way you come to terms with the idea that though you may not like how he’s used his universe it is still his universe. The nature of art is that it can be inspiring as well as polarizing but in the end it belongs to its creator.  For all his flaws and mistakes he like Anakin finds redemption at the end of this documentary. It is his vision and imagination that has awed and inspired generations of fans. It’s true that without him there would be no Jar Jar Binks. Sadly there would not be a Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, Chewbacca, C-3P0 or R2 D2 either.

- Review by Cindy Alexander

Nine years in the making, Ditteke Mensink’s romantic and alluring historical docudrama, Farewell has finally made its way to the Hot Docs festival.  This documentary was an unexpected treat- after unsuccessfully waiting close to an hour in the rush line to get a ticket for the critically lauded documentary biopic ‘Bhutto’ – I decided to take a chance on Farewell based on the synopsis and glimpses of the archival footage displayed in the official trailer for the film.  Indeed, culled entirely from stunning archival footage from the maiden voyage of the Graf Zeppelin in 1929, Farewell tells the story of Lady Grace Drummond- Hay, a British journalist and star reporter working for U.S. newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who was the first woman to travel around the world by air.

Hay was the only woman among a small gang of her male international journalist counterparts from all over the world who participated in the historic flight in August 1929 where the airship started from Lakehurst, New Jersey and arrived back in 21 days after stops in Friedrichshafen (Germany), Tokyo and Los Angeles.  But what would life be without a little romance?  Mensink punctuates the historic events (both in the air and on the ground) very nicely with a romantic subplot involving fellow journalist and real-life Hearst reporter Karl H. on Weigand.  Mensink has taken journal entries from Drummond-Hay’s account of the trip and has done a great job of weaving the real world politics of the time, a musical score (composed brilliantly by Paul M. Van Brugge), plus the majestic imagery of the archived footage and has composed a great work of experimental historical drama.  The personal character of Drummond-Hay was also pretty fascinating to watch.   The opening passages of the film help to introduce us to the motivations of our main protagonist and it is pretty easy getting on board (along with the help of voice actor Poppy Elliot’s sumptuous narration) with a woman trying to make her way in a man’s world- by using her gifts as a writer and the spectacle of the moment to really test her skills as a writer by getting her stories on the front pages of Hearst’s newspapers.  Some will say that a story like this was made for big-screen Hollywood entertainment, and that may be true, but there is an irresistible verisimilitude that has been created and crafted for this film that truly makes your heart soar.  Highly recommended.

- Review by Greg Ashman

A watercolour drawing from the Andrea Dorfman documentary 'Flawed'

Criticalmasscast Review of Flawed/Small Wonders- by G. Ashman

Small Wonders and Flawed are both intimate and timely entries to the Canadian Spectrum program for the Hot Docs festival.  Presented together, Flawed first presents a 12-min personal story told in gorgeous drawings done in black ink and watercolour by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman with accompanying narration.  The drawings help to keep the story light and visually interesting while Dorfman presents her philosophical take on self-esteem, growing-up, relationships, personal identity and even cosmetic surgery.  Flawed asks the deceptively complex question, “Why would you want to see yourself as ordinary when you can be extraordinary?” The documentary cleverly grounds this discussion in picture postcards sent back and forth between Dorfman and her future husband when they were starting to get to know each other at the beginning of their long-distance relationship: with Dorfman in Toronto and her cosmetic surgeon boyfriend in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  While one can see the potential of this story being expanded into an intriguing feature-length take on cosmetic surgery for children (which is apparently a huge reality), Dorfman instead takes a more insular take on her subject matter and grounds it in her own musings on childhood and adulthood insecurities regarding physical beauty.

Small Wonders is a documentary both directed and narrated by filmmaker Tally Abecassis.  Presented at a feature length of 52 mins, Abecassis’s subjects are allowed more screen time to let their personal stories breathe a bit.  The documentary focuses on the small Mom and Pop stores you encounter all the time in your neighbourhood that you know should probably be collapsing under the strain of stratospheric rents and the economic realities of the big box stores but still manage to stay afloat.  How can these businesses possibly endure?  What is their economic formulae for their continued success and/or survival?  Abecassis does a great job of breaking down (with a lot of genuine tenderness) the sense of tradition, identity and dignity these various shopowners reap from their occupations.  Touching and heartbreaking, the various portraits that are revealed are indeed wondrous: Whether it be ex-cassanova Peter who operates his watch repair business out of the corner of a barber shop or hardware store owner, Jae-Gil, a former motorcycle-riding tomboy who finds her store suddenly surrounded by (12!) big box stores these stories are inspiring and offer intriguing glimpses into a quickly dwindling element of modern urban and community culture.

Official Trailer for Small Wonders:

Running from June 3 to August 26, this summer season celebrates TIFF Cinematheque’s twentieth anniversary by bringing back two momentous retrospectives from its inaugural season, a selective retrospective on Pier Paolo Pasolini, TIFF Cinematheque’s very first presentation during the summer of 1990 at Jackman Hall, and a complete retrospective on Akira Kurosawa, first presented during the Fall season of 1990 at the Backstage. In addition, it will feature first-ever tributes to James Mason and Catherine Breillat; a ten-film tribute to Robin Wood; Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales; an evening with Julian Schnabel; and a special screening of Joyce Wieland’s The Far Shore.

TIFF Cinematheque (formerly Cinematheque Ontario) opened its doors in June of 1990 when the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) assumed the operation of the revered Ontario Film Institute, which had been founded by film scholar and author Gerald Pratley in 1969. In its twenty-year history, TIFF Cinematheque has risen to become one of the pre-eminent programming institutions of its kind. Film professionals in the international arena recognize its programming as among the best in the world, highlighting its inspired approach, the quality of presentation and the serious consideration given to all genres and periods of cinema.

“The range and richness of this summer season capture what TIFF Cinematheque has stood for over the past two decades: a fierce adherence to the history of international cinema, and an equally passionate commitment to contemporary film; past and present, radical and classical, social and aesthetic, all in close tandem,” said James Quandt, Senior Programmer for TIFF Cinematheque.