Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism

Posted on December 20, 2011 by James McNally

Now before you think that I’m breaking out of my writer’s block with a vengeance, based on that title, I’ll have to let you down ever so easily. It’s actually the title of a really interesting film lecture series coming up at the Miles Nadal JCC. Each Monday night from January 16 through March 26, from 7:00 until about 9:00, critic and author Kevin Courrier (Critics at Large) is going to examine this meaty-sounding subject with a selection of film clips. The films under discussion make this sound fascinating:

  • Monday January 16: The Kennedy Era (The Godfather, Part II, The Manchurian Candidate, JFK assassination news coverage)
  • Monday January 23: The Johnson Era (Bonnie and Clyde, Dr. Strangelove, In the Heat of the Night, Cool Hand Luke, Night of the Living Dead, The Wild Bunch, Bullitt)
Midnight Cowboy
  • Monday January 30: The Nixon Era (Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, Alice’s Restaurant, Dirty Harry, Billy Jack)
  • Monday February 6: The Carter Era (The Conversation, All the President’s Men, Taxi Driver, Winter Kills, Who’ll Stop the Rain, Nashville, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, Star Wars)
  • Monday February 13: The Reagan Era (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Blow Out, Pennies from Heaven, Diner, The Border, The Survivors, Moscow on the Hudson, Under Fire)
  • Monday February 20: No class
  • Monday February 27: The Bush Era (Field of Dreams, True Believer)
Primary Colors
  • Monday March 5: The Clinton Era (Primary Colors, Forrest Gump, JFK, In the Line of Fire, Love Field, Three Kings, The Contender, Wag the Dog, The West Wing (TV))
  • Monday March 12: No class
  • Monday March 19: The GW Bush Era (We Were Soldiers, Tears of the Sun, The 25th Hour, Team America: World Police, Fahrenheit/Fahrenhype 9/11)
  • Monday March 26: The Obama Era (Rachel Getting Married, Definitely, Maybe, No Country for Old Men, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Hurt Locker, The Visitor)

Tickets are $12 for each class ($6 for students) or $100 for the entire series, and are available in person at the Miles Nadal JCC information desk (750 Spadina Ave. at Bloor St.). Hope to see you there!

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Announcing Shorts That Are Not Pants!

Posted on December 14, 2011 by James McNally

I know things have been pretty quiet around here since my big philosophical post last month. And while I’m still experiencing writer’s block when it comes to reviewing individual films, I haven’t been sitting around feeling sorry for myself. In fact, I’m busier than ever. In addition to coordinating the second edition of the CAST Awards (look for an announcement early in the new year), I’ve decided to take my long-gestating idea for a shorts screening public.

I’ve always enjoyed short films, but seeing them outside of festivals has never been easy. In fact, even at festivals, they’re usually bundled together in unpromising sounding packages like “Canadian Shorts 1” or “Programme 6.” And the problem at the spectacular Worldwide Short Film Festival, where they group the films thematically, is just overload. I’ve always wanted to curate a regular program of films that would be something like a mixtape, and in 2009, I started doing it on a small scale.

I’d been a huge fan of Wholphin, a DVD “magazine” of short films from the people behind McSweeney’s, ever since the first one came out in 2005. By 2009, I was still amazed that hardly anyone I knew had heard of it, so I decided to screen a selection of films for a small group of friends at my apartment. It was a hit, and not only because of the cupcakes my wife thoughtfully provided. After running a few more of these nights, I wanted to share my enthusiasm and some great films with the rest of the city. Starting last winter, I began researching venues and licensing fees and possible partners, and I’m very happy to announce that we’re finally launching!

On January 13, 2012, at 7pm, Shorts That Are Not Pants will screen our inaugural program of international and Canadian shorts at the NFB Mediatheque (150 John St. at Richmond). I’ll refer you to the site for more details, but I sincerely hope you’ll join us at the start of this new adventure.

My plan is to make this a quarterly event, and we hope to be working with a variety of partners. For the first screening, we’re showing the entirety of the Future Shorts Pop Up Festival lineup, as well as a couple of wonderful animated Canadian shorts from the National Film Board. But I’m excited by the fact that there is such a wealth of great material out there that has either never been screened before in Toronto, or was buried amongst hundreds of other films at festivals. I’m looking forward to discovering and sharing films with you, live and on the big screen. Hopefully we’ll even get a group together after the screenings to discuss the films over a drink. Short films are worthy of your attention, and I hope to demonstrate that to a larger audience than just the dozen I’ve been cramming into my apartment. I hope you’ll join us!

You can buy tickets for just $8 in advance. At the door, tickets will be $10, or $5 if you’re crazy enough to show up in shorts. Even if you can’t make it and want to support the series, buy a ticket and just let me know that’s your intention. Of course, mentioning us on Twitter (follow us here), Facebook (we have a page) or anywhere else online or off would be helpful, too. I’m certainly not hoping to make money on this, but it would be great if I didn’t lose too much. 🙂

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Blind Spots Series 2012

Posted on December 4, 2011 by James McNally
Blind Spots

Every time I get together with other film bloggers here in Toronto, somebody inevitably gasps in horror as someone else admits that they haven’t seen a particular movie. This has always been amusing to me, because, you know, everyone has their cinematic blind spots. Though there is no Official Canon of Films You’re Supposed to Have Seen™, sometimes we act as if there is. And there are definitely films that, as a cinephile, I know I should have seen by now, but just have never gotten around to. Hence the idea for the Blind Spot series.

I shared this idea with Ryan McNeil a few weeks back and he’s already gotten the jump on me in posting his list, but the gist of the idea is that I’m going to list a dozen films below. Films I feel somehow guilty or silly for not having seen yet. I’ve sometimes nodded along to discussions of these films, hoping nobody would ask me my opinion. By the end of 2012, I will be armed with my own opinions on them, along with a small sense of accomplishment.

My hope is to watch and post something about each film on this list during 2012. Though I have many many more than 12 on my blind spot list, for this first attempt, I’m going to try to balance Hollywood films with foreign and documentary films. Ideally, I’ll post once a month, but I’m not holding myself to that and neither should you. Here goes (and no gasping!):

  • Raging Bull (1980, Director: Martin Scorsese)*
  • Knife in the Water (1962, Director: Roman Polanski)*
  • Nashville (1975, Director: Robert Altman)
  • L’Atalante (1934, Director: Jean Vigo)*
  • Gone with the Wind (1939, Director: Victor Fleming)
  • Psycho (1960, Director: Alfred Hitchcock)
  • Blue Velvet (1986, Director: David Lynch)*
  • The Conformist (1970, Director: Bernardo Bertolucci)*
  • Jules and Jim (1962, Director: Francois Truffaut)
  • Grey Gardens (1975, Directors: Albert and David Maysles with Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer)
  • Cabaret (1972, Director: Bob Fosse)
  • Tokyo Story (1953, Director: Yasujirô Ozu)

Films marked with an asterisk (*) are ones I have actually owned on DVD for quite a while now.

You are more than welcome to join me in this enterprise. Come up with your own list, post in the comments and/or on your blog, and let’s keep each other accountable for expanding our knowledge of cinema next year!

Thanks to Flickr user atomische (Tom Geibel) for making his image available under a Creative Commons license.

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Animation Express 2

Posted on December 2, 2011 by James McNally
Animation Express 2 Blu-ray

Animation Express 2 (Directors: Various): It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since the National Film Board of Canada released the original Animation Express collection. I raved about that collection, and although sequels are usually not as good as the original, this second collection is just as stuffed with treasures as the first.

Particular favourites include the experimental CMYK, where printer’s marks dance around the screen to the music of the Quatuor Bozzini quartet, and Wild Life in which an Englishman trades his bowler hat for a cowboy hat, coming to Alberta in 1909 to try his hand at ranching. It doesn’t quite work out in this whimsical and yet haunting film.

The DVD contains 20 more (and the Blu-ray 26 more!) and while I don’t like all of them quite as much as the two above (I particularly didn’t like the Meryl Streep and Forest Whitaker-voiced Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life), this collection continues to gather the very best in Canadian animation, some of the most-awarded work in the world.

P.S. Though I’ll be posting more about this later, you can see both CMYK and Wild Life on the big screen as part of a new shorts screening series I’m launching in January. Behold Shorts That Are Not Pants. Hope you can join us!


oehttp://www.nfb.ca/film/animation_express_2_trailer
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European Union Film Festival 2011

Posted on November 20, 2011 by James McNally

Now in its seventh year in Toronto, the European Union Film Festival is still a little under the radar for most film fans in our city, and that’s a shame. For one, it’s the only film festival I’m aware of where all screenings are FREE. But quite apart from that, it offers a huge selection of cinema from a wide range of cultures, and in a multicultural city like Toronto, that makes some of the screenings feel like impromptu gatherings for various outposts of the European diaspora. Just last year, I was in a screening of Slovenian film Landscape No. 2 (review) and realized that long-distance swimmer (and subject of the fascinating documenary Big River Man (review)) Martin Strel was in the audience too.

This year’s festival takes place from November 17-30th and all screenings take place at the Royal Cinema (608 College Street).

The films are a mix of new and old, stuff that plays high profile festivals like TIFF and films that rarely play outside their country’s borders. In other words, it’s really an unmissable opportunity to peer into some rarely-glimpsed corners of the world through cinema. Here are a few I’m looking forward to seeing:

The Other Side of Sleep

The Other Side of Sleep (Ireland, Director: Rebecca Daly) – screening Tuesday November 29th at 6:00pm

Having recently played at Cannes and TIFF, this film might have the finest pedigree in the program. Arlene is a young woman prone to sleepwalking. One morning she wakes up outside next to the dead body of another young woman. As suspicion grows in her small community, Arlene finds she’s unable to sleep, mixing her dreams and reality.

Stricken

Stricken (The Netherlands, Director: Reinout Oerlemans) – screening Tuesday November 29th at 8:30pm

Featuring the gorgeous Carice van Houten (Black Book) as a woman diagnosed with breast cancer, Stricken focuses on her husband Stijn and his choices. When her illness shatters his perfect life, he escapes into a world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And soon into the arms of another woman.

Lapland Odyssey

Lapland Odyssey (Finland, Director: Dome Karukoski) – screening Wednesday November 23rd at 6:00pm

A treat from TIFF 2010, Lapland Odyssey is a road comedy about a trio of losers who head out one winter night in search of a “digibox” for Janne’s girlfriend’s television. He’s screwed up so many times with her that her ultimatum (get one by morning or I’m out of here) sends the friends off on a ridiculous and frozen quest. I’ve seen and reviewed this already but would recommend it if you like Nordic comedy. I’m hoping to catch it again, in any case.

P.S. Vancouver also has a European Union Film Festival running from November 25-December 8. They might have a nicer website and get to see The Artist, but they also charge for tickets. Ours is FREE! 🙂

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