TIFF Roundup: My Mother, My Bride and I

My Mother, My Bride and I tells the story of mama's boy Erwin (Matthias Brandt) who shakes up his sheltered existence by bringing a fiery Romanian woman (Maria Popistasu) home to his native Germany. The film contains a number of small, charming moments expertly handled by the three excellent leads. The quirk factor is above average in a good way and the story is engaging. Unfortunately, the tonal shift, two-thirds of the way through drains much of the movie's vitality. Surprises are nice in that they subvert the tedium of telegraphed plots, but occasionally stories are better when they stay the expected course. Worthwhile viewing for parts-are-just-as important-as-the-whole-types because many of the parts are wonderful. Not so much for types who require consistency as an absolute requirement for enjoyment. Variety gives an accurate summation with slightly more spoilerific detail than is ideal here.

The Line Between Bizarre and Intriguing is Fine

A nod to J for the wonkiest cover of the day (likely wonkiest for the foreseeable future) - W. Shatner does Pulp's Common People as spoken word.

TIFF Roundup: Kisses

Kisses deserves accolades and wide distribution. It has much to recommend, from the beguiling performances to the shifting colour palette to the score. The story unfolds as two Irish kids run away from their dysfunctional homes into Dublin. Writer/director Lance Daly creates a film that is both starkly realistic and playful. Kylie and Dylan lighting out for freedom is exhilarating for them and for the audience. But Daly knows that whimsy is easily interrupted by unpleasantness and the consequences of Kylie and Dylan's escape eventually intrude on the pair's fun. Though the film flirts with implausibility a couple of times, Daly largely avoids the trap of movie contrivance (e.g. a Bob Dylan-related scene is cleverly handled). Throughout he crafts a series of mini-adventures that are thoroughly enjoyable and sometimes unexpectedly so. Two otherwise dreary locales are invigorated in sequences where the kids tear up a shopping mall and climb aboard a river dredger.

Kelly O'Neill (Kylie) and Shane Curry (Dylan) are wonderfully natural and compelling. If the post-screening Q&A is any indication, they are much like their characters - Kylie, the adventurous, vivacious spitfire and Dylan, the reluctant, taciturn accomplice. This film is the first for both and O'Neill, particularly, should end up with a busy career if she wants one. Kisses is Daly's third outing. With luck he will make many more films of its quality.

The TIFF Ad

Every year TIFF creates a short spot about sponsors and such that precedes each screened film. It's always accompanied by a bit of music (usually instrumental) and somehow they choose a fabulous tune every time; so fabulous that I look forward to the spots deeply. I can't remember recognizing any of the songs. They've always seemed unique to the ads. This year the Festival is using a song that's definitely not TIFF-specific. Despite the change, TIFF impresses once again with the opening bars of Patrick Watson's socks-knocking off Luscious Life. Piano at its hauntingly loveliest.

TIFF Roundup: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Insight gleaned at Saturday's screening of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist: staying out all night is a lot of fun when you're watching other people do it at the reasonable dinner hour of 6:00; offering film-goers the chance to witness the genesis of a romance is like offering catnip to a kitten; Seth Meyers should do more cameos, Michael Cera is a teen heartthrob. Girls were screaming like crazy for him. When N and N is released widely next month, the crushes will multiply tenfold. He's a sweet guy in a sweet and endearing film that follows two teens around NYC as they search for an elusive gig and possibly fall in love. As is obvious from the title, music plays a key role in their tentative bonding. Nick and Norah have the astute musical taste of cool kids, however, they aren't condescending about it. Neither is the movie. The score and soundtrack are excellent (The Submarines! We Are Scientists!) but an uninitiated audience won't be made to feel inferior if they don't recognize it acts like Vampire Weekend. While the film covers conventional territory it's just different enough to feel original. For example, the du jour drunk girl is actually funny and Nick's gay wingmen are more concerned for his heart than his libido. This movie is the kind of movie that puts you in a great mood almost instantly and keeps you there the whole way through. It's worth seeing if you enjoy the state of happiness. It's must-see viewing if you want to understand why Where's Fluffy propaganda is popping up everywhere. Definitely this year's Vote for Pedro.

Thanks to J for the poster.

TIFF Roundup: Country Wedding

My Film Festival began with Valdis Oskarsdottir's Country Wedding on Thursday evening. The premise - a young Icelandic couple spend a day travelling to their rural wedding with oddball family/friends in tow - seemed a good source of outlandish hijinks. Hijinks are plentiful though they are more predictable than you would hope for (the age-deluded grandmother who keeps wandering off, the emotional bride who breaks down regularly at the slightest upset). Near the end of the film, proceedings threaten to go off the rails of reality into comic melodrama. That said, the characters and their plights grow on you as the story progresses and the circumstances of the film's development demand lenient judgment. At the Q&A, the director and several charming cast members revealed that the film was largely improvised. Rehearsals of character backstories had been conducted pre-shoot but none of the scenes on screen were rehearsed. To top off that laudable feat, Oskarsdottir shot the whole thing in seven days. Seven! After hearing that information, I mentally revised my middling reaction upward. You've got to give credit where it's due.

The Friday File

Peter Howell argues that films screened in the Special Presentations programme at TIFF are often better than those that screen as glitzy Galas and I agree. U.K. scientists have linked personality traits to the type of music a person likes to listen to. And the New York Times spent a night out with Elisabeth Shue. Why is that interesting? Because she engendered lifelong goodwill for her role in the teen classic Adventures in Babysitting and she did it in the first two minutes of the film, dancing around her bedroom to The Crystals' And Then He Kissed Me. The babysitting blues are way more fun than they're entitled to be.

Ear Crack

The National - Apartment Story
Sigur Ros - Inni Mer Syngur Vitleysingur
Nada Surf - Treading Water

Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End was a delight to read. Anyone who's ever worked in an office (or worked at all) will appreciate its humour. Joshua Ferris' novel is aided greatly by his decision to employ first person plural narration. The collective "we" (used to great effect in Jeffrey Eugenides' The Virgin Suicides) draws the reader in as a co-conspirator; just one of many workers enmeshed too closely in the lives of their colleagues. Even when Ferris breaks from the technique for a short section to focus on one character, he maintains narrator/reader symbiosis with observations about recognizable human preoccupations such as this one: "Imagine if one night in a lifetime were looked upon as a scientist might look upon it, or some other life form studying our species, and from that one night, the worth of the entire life were derived. Well, she'd rather hers not be evaluated by the TV she's watched or the closet she hasn't cleaned." Impossible not to be captivated.

Powells interviewed Ferris about Then We Came to the End last year.

Music Gets Analytical

Anything can be turned into a competition. The proof is in the announcement of the annual world air guitar champion. Competition is decidedly less apparent when it comes to the most referenced body part in song lyrics. It's the eyes.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The 2008 edition of the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off on Thursday, September 4th. As always, it’s jam-packed with films from around the globe, although the latest installment showcases fewer Oscar-oriented features. The countdown begins.

The Visitor

The Visitor has been heavily praised and it deserves the good words being said. Lead actor Richard Jenkins turns in an understated performance as Walter, a professor reawakening to vitality through friendship with Haaz Sleiman's charismatic drummer, Tarek. The two men bond over music and solitary Walter is able to find a point of entry into a connected life. As Walter warms to his new companion, Tarek's arrest threatens to upset their relationship. Director/writer Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) is steadfast in his commitment to making an empathetic, but realistic film. He veers close to cinematic contrivance with the story arc of Tarek's mother, but avoids obvious string-pulling nicely in the end. Good performances from the women in The Visitor, Hiam Abbass and Danai Gurira, round out the well-acted, affecting drama. The drum sequences are also a highlight.

To Novel or Not to Novel

93 years of age is not too late to publish your first novel. Of course, some novels should never be published, as the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for bad opening lines attests. The Globe and Mail ran a few of the 2008 lowlights yesterday.

The Grandfather Clause

Just read a nice post at Soundboard about the importance of music to youth. August Brown wonders "if the music you fall for between 18 and 22 is hard-wired to be the only music you really love in that insane, possessive, identity-crafting way for the rest of your life. Do we lose our capacity to be devastated by art as adults? What does it mean when you stop listening to the songs that sent ice up your spine at that age -- does that make your youthful music lust irrelevant today, or is all art meant to have a time and place you're supposed to grow out of?" I haven't an answer for Brown but I do know that even as tastes change, the music of your younger days retains its hold. When I hear raucous music now I usually don't like it. This dismissive tendency cannot be reconciled with the fact that I will happily listen to Hole (Celebrity Skin particularly) for example, and not find it at all over the top. It's grandfathered, as most youthful predilections are.

Free Books and Other Goodies

An obvious spot for free books is the closest public library. But libraries carry all sorts of media these days. Not simply content to stock their shelves with expected classics and mass-market paperbacks, libraries are keeping up with the times by making strides in the area of digital collections. In addition to books, it's also possible to "borrow" music and movies for use on iPods and other portable players. Toronto Public Library is in on the action. If the need to own precludes library use, book swapping may be the answer. If the problem isn't related to ownership but forgetful delinquency, Elf can help you remember what's due before coin-payable fines turn into dollar debts.

Now Reading

Smile When You're Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer by Chuck Thompson. It's decently funny so far, if a bit sophomoric (e.g. author regales reader with details of Japanese colleagues participating in the Penis Olympics). Thompson's intention is to avoid glossy, happy ending vacation stories and he achieves this goal by sharing some of his most inappropriate anecdotes. I'm only at the fourth chapter but the running theme thus far is whores. Whores everywhere for the weary backpacker. It's all pretty rogue-ish, apart from the egregiously banal confessions sub-title. Check out Thompson's appearance on The Hour, where he tackles the subject of sucky travel writing.

Sayonara Nana

I was disheartened to read that Nana Mouskouri is retiring from touring. When I was a kid, one of my favourite things to do was to play LPs at my aunt's house. Selections were limited and I was a slave to the albums I liked, so that usually meant one of four choices: The Best of ABBA; Michael Jackson's Thriller; the St. Elmo's Fire Soundtrack or Mouskouri's Roses and Sunshine. Childhood memories are a funny thing. I had to look up Roses and Sunshine because the title was gone from my head and I really only ever put it on for the song Nickels and Dimes anyway. I remember adoring that song twenty five years ago, but listening to a clip of it today stirs no emotion. It doesn't sound familiar at all and is far removed from the music I listen to now. Yet, I do still have a nostalgic fondness for Mouskouri, the lady with the black glasses, whose life I know nothing about. I wonder why some favourites stick with you and others fade away. The Winner Takes It All brings to mind vivid recollections of being in the living room where the turntable resided, singing/humming my foolhead off (internally). Ditto for Man in Motion, St. Elmo's Instrumental Love Theme and Georgetown. Oh, and Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'....but Nickels and Dimes is without rhythm now; just a tuneless phrase that runs through my head on occasion. Funny.

Coldplay at the ACC

Good seats. Check. Enthusiastic crowd. Check. Humble and thankful band. Check. Spectacle-like visuals. Check. High quality sound. Check. Friendly company (J, K, Y). Check. Fantastic evening. Check.

People slag Coldplay for being thinly disguised versions of U2 or Radiohead. In two reviews I read today (1 and 2), their July 30th show at the ACC received glowing but qualified accolades. As in, great show, too bad Coldplay's musical legacy is and will always be insubstantial. All I know is that the crowd last night was wholly preoccupied with the band on stage, loving every minute of the energetic set and feeling no need to justify their enraptured state. (Wouldn't it be nice if critics saved the qualifiers and just embraced the band for a change?) The foursome indulged the audience by playing popular old hits, singing two songs among the crowd at the stage-opposite end of the building and changing up the static light and laser show commonly employed at stadium-sized venues. Instead, we were treated to music video-style editing of the concert on the enormous screen behind the stage - quick cuts, colour shifts - and on a series of large globes suspended from the ceiling, as well as butterfly-shaped confetti dropping from overhead. My one complaint - Reign of Love's omission from the set list - isn't fairly lodged. No concert features every song you want to hear. The above image comes courtesy of rainbow xperience on Flickr. More good shots can be found here.

Trailer Watch

Boy A - I've been waiting for this pic to come out since last September when I saw it on the TIFF schedule. By the looks of the trailer it should be riveting. As I understand it, the main character's past is revealed slowly in the film. Not so in the trailer, which basically spells everything out. Be warned.

In Search of a Midnight Kiss - A movie about misanthropes searching for love via craigslist on the most overrated holiday of the year sounds like an improbable love story and a bad film at that; therefore, it has to be brilliant (100% fresh as of today). I'm sensing a distinct Before Sunrise vibe and because that is one of my all-time favourite screen stories I hope Midnight Kiss is more homage than derivative. Trailer here.

Mamma Mia!

I was going to write about Mamma Mia! but the Georgia Strait took the words out of my mouth (although I didn't mind Christine Baranski). Yes, the first thirty minutes features reprehensible, stereotypical screeching behaviour from the female leads. No, this film will not change your life. But you'll very likely leave the theatre in a good mood. As soma, it works quite well. MM's perfect if light and funny is the kind of escapism you are prone to enjoying. It may not be.