Backyard

Posted on January 31, 2012 by James McNally
Backyard

Backyard (Director: Árni Sveinsson): While it’s true that I’ve long been a fan of Icelandic cinema, I have been a fan of Icelandic music for even longer. In the late 1980s, a band called The Sugarcubes and their elfin singer Björk introduced me to the unique sounds of this tiny country, and since then, I’ve come to love dozens of bands from Iceland. Someone in another recent documentary about Iceland’s seemingly boundless creativity said that the fear of failure is almost nonexistent, so people take risks. They also help each other out, which is exactly how Backyard came to be.

Each August the city of Reykjavik celebrates Menningarnótt (Reykjavik Culture Night), a daylong celebration of the creative spirit of its citizens. There are all kinds of official and unofficial events, and in 2009, Árni Rúnar Hlöðversson (of FM Belfast) decided to hold a concert in his backyard and invite his friends to play. He wanted to record the audio, but he also invited his friend Árni Sveinsson to shoot video. None of the bands (or even the two Árnis) thought they were making a “real” movie, so the whole thing is incredibly loose. Based on my own experiences in Iceland, most things organized are “incredibly loose.” Icelanders like to fly by the seat of their pants, to be honest, but it gives the film a real energy, too.

Though we get the background around the planning (which seems to happen in a matter of days), the majority of the film’s brisk 73-minute running time is given over to the performances, and what a treat. The lineup is incredibly diverse, from the lo-fi stylings of Borko and Sin Fang Bous to the raucous assault of Reykjavik! to the feel-good party sounds of Retro Stefson and FM Belfast (whose finale “Underwear” is guaranteed have you bouncing around your living room grinning like an idiot). And though the musical styles change, it’s great to see how many bands actually share members. In a small place like Iceland, this might be a necessity but it also allows for some very interesting musical cross-pollination. It’s fitting that the film ends with many of the musicians soaking together in one of Reykjavik’s thermal swimming pools.

Some of these bands (múm, Hjaltalín) were known to me, but most were new discoveries, and luckily the DVD package (buy it here!) comes with an audio CD of the songs as well. It’s been on constant rotation over the past few months for me, reinforcing my sincere belief that Iceland is pound-for-pound the most creative place on the planet.

Official site of the film


oehttp://youtu.be/XKbrFxSBdWY
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The Hour (BBC)

Posted on January 29, 2012 by James McNally
The Hour
Editor’s Note: The Hour will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in the US and Canada on February 7 by BBC America. You can help Toronto Screen Shots by buying from Amazon.ca or Amazon.com.

For my Canadian readers, I must begin by saying that obviously this is not the CBC chat show with George Strombolopoulos. Instead, The Hour is a BBC series about the making of a television newsmagazine program in the 1950s. This promises the art direction of Mad Men with the backstage maneuvering and larger political intrigues of something like Good Night and Good Luck. Starring a cast of British actors who will be largely unknown to North American audiences (Romola Garai, Dominic West, Ben Whishaw), the six hour-long episodes of this first season (or “series” as the English more accurately describe it) set up the creation of a new program to deliver the news to the British public in the early days of television.

It’s 1956 and TV news is still being delivered like the newsreels shown in the cinema. Young BBC reporter Freddie Lyon (Ben Whishaw) and his best friend/crush Bel Lyons (Romola Garai), already bored of the way they’re presenting the news, apply for positions on a new program, “The Hour.” But there is also a dark conspiracy brewing, and by the end of the first episode, two people are dead, one of whom was a friend of Freddie’s. While he investigates the murders, Bel is coping with her new position as producer as well as flirting with the handsome anchorman Hector Madden (Dominic West). Whishaw has just the right amount of cynicism to play the underdog, and based on the first hour, I’m hopeful that the conspiracy stuff will win out over soap opera melodrama and romantic entanglements.

The series has been a success on British television and has already been renewed for another six-episode series.


oehttp://youtu.be/InILSU-ZV9M
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The Palace

Posted on January 21, 2012 by James McNally
The Palace

The Palace (Director: Anthony Maras): Perhaps it’s fitting that so soon after hosting the first Shorts That Are Not Pants screening, I was asked to review a batch of shorts in contention for this year’s Oscars®. First up is The Palace, a pocket-sized war film about the 1974 invasion of the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus by Turkey. Almost forty years later, the island is still divided, with the Turkish-occupied territory of Northern Cyprus unrecognized by the UN as a separate nation. I remember this conflict vaguely since it was one of the first interventions by the UN’s “blue helmets,” a peacekeeping force in which Canadian troops served a major role.

The film wisely chooses to keep the focus on one small event during the invasion, letting the tension stand in for the entire conflict. Stella (Daphne Alexander) is a young mother caught up in the conflict who must keep her cool even under the most terrifying circumstances in order to keep her children safe. Hiding out in an opulent house, she and her children become separated from her husband. She and the children, including a fussy baby, hide in one wardrobe while her husband crowds into another where an old couple are already hiding. A group of soldiers and their sergeant soon enter the house, looking to loot the place. Young conscript Omer (Erol Afsin) bemoans the fact that he’s here rather than in London, where he’s due to audition for drama school, while his rather dimmer comrade Mehmet (Tamer Arslan) seems more suited to a soldier’s role. Stella’s attempts to keep the baby quiet keep the tension rising and even the Turks seem on edge. Until they discover a turntable and for a few short minutes everyone breathes easier as The Easybeats’ “Friday on My Mind” plays, lending some absurdity to the scene. But soon it’s back to business as the sergeant (Kevork Malikyan) hears a noise from one of the wardrobes.

Shot mostly through the louvered doors of the wardrobe, The Palace is able to maintain the tension while refusing to paint the young soldiers as villains. But the fact that their superiors are ordering them to kill civilians and loot their houses doesn’t go unnoticed by the viewer. The film is able to portray just a tiny part of the human tragedy of a conflict that has never been resolved. It reminded me quite a bit of Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, another depiction of a place with seemingly intractable historical grievances. And though there’s no time for backstory, both Alexander and Afsin bring humanity to their roles. Each is helpless in a different way, and neither will be able to forget the tragedy played out inside The Palace.

Official site of the film


oehttp://youtu.be/hBC-CnpCXBY
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Blind Spots: Directors

Posted on January 8, 2012 by James McNally

Okay, this is definitely not meant to add to my already burdensome film-viewing workload for 2012, but as I was thinking about the idea of cinematic blind spots, I wondered about the idea of larger gaps of knowledge. How many directors are there whose work I have heretofore missed entirely? This could be even more embarrassing than just listing individual films, but I thought it might be entertaining. As well, if you list yours in the comments, maybe we could help each other by suggesting which film for each director might make a good introduction for someone who hasn’t seen a single one of their films. Here are five of mine:

I got this idea from the cover of the latest issue of 180°, the TIFF Bell Lightbox catalogue, so I know that I’ll have a chance to catch some Bresson films soon. Okay, your turn!

Posted in Blind Spots, Directors, Lists | 5 Comments

2011 CAST Awards Announcement

Posted on January 1, 2012 by James McNally
Update: Check out the CASTcast podcast organized by the Mamo.ca guys! It’s hosted by our friends over at Row Three. Hear me and six other loudmouths debate the results for an hour! Special thanks to Matt Brown for organizing this.

I’m very pleased to announce the results of the 2nd edition of the CAST Awards. I “cast” an even wider net this year, and received 40 completed ballots from film lovers in the Greater Toronto Area. Here are the CAST Top 25 voted on from a predetermined list of just over 100 films which had the most preliminary support. Voters ranked up to 25 films on their ballot from top to bottom, with first choices receiving 25 points, second choices 24, etc. The Points column lists the total score for each film, the Mentions column indicates the number of ballots it appeared on, and the Seen column indicates the total number of voters who have seen the film, even if they didn’t include it on their ballot. I’m proud of the group of critics we’ve gathered, even though I’ve described us elsewhere as “a ragtag group of semi-professional film bloggers, tweeters and Lightbox lobby loiterers.” Of the 112 films on the ballot, more than half our voting group saw at least 40, and five saw more than 70!

FILM TITLE
POINTS
MENTIONS
SEEN
1. Drive 548 31 36
2.The Artist 479 26 29
3. The Tree of Life 460 24 27
4. Attack the Block 386 25 36
5. Take Shelter 376 20 21
6. Midnight in Paris 330 24 31
7. Melancholia 306 19 26
8. Shame 284 19 28
9. Beginners 281 19 24
10. Martha Marcy May Marlene 279 20 24
11. Hanna 235 18 28
12. Café de Flore 207 9 13
13.The Raid 205 12 15
14. Blue Valentine 192 11 30
15. Bridesmaids 185 18 31
16.The Muppets 179 14 25
17. The Illusionist 174 11 22
18. The Descendants 172 11 16
19. Super 8 167 16 31
20. Contagion 167 14 22
21. The Interrupters 167 10 12
22. Tabloid 165 12 20
23. Hugo 162 10 23
24. The Trip 159 14 24
25. Meek’s Cutoff 159 10 18

Participants:

Here is a PDF with each person’s ballot and the collated results, with a few more interesting stats included. Voters could opt out of having their ballot included, so you may notice some omissions, but rest assured that each submitted ballot contributed to the overall results.

And for those still reading, here is my final CAST ballot, ranking 25 films from the list of eligible films. In a future blog post, I’ll come up with my own 2011 list(s), similar to what I did last year and in 2009 and 2008.

My CAST Ballot

  1. The Tree of Life (review)
  2. The Artist (review)
  3. Martha Marcy May Marlene (review)
  4. The Interrupters
  5. Take Shelter
  6. This is Not a Film (review)
  7. The Descendants
  8. Win Win
  9. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
  10. Drive
  11. Attack the Block
  12. Beginners
  13. Hanna
  14. Rango
  15. ALPS (review)
  16. Super 8
  17. Goodbye First Love (review)
  18. The Guard
  19. Contagion
  20. Midnight in Paris
  21. Bridesmaids
  22. Shame (review)
  23. Miss Bala (review)
  24. Cave of Forgotten Dreams
  25. The Ides of March
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