Hey folks Harry here with the 3rd Il Matto report from Toronto. I officially really want to see THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD. Guy Maddin's DRACULA got me... and his short films are dazzling. He's making films for a different era, for the taste of today's fans. Really nice work. Well, get on with it...
THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
Truly describing a Guy Maddin film is impossible. No one makes movies like him, but lets try. "The Saddest Music in the World" is a '30's backstage musical crossed with an Ingmar Bergman parody, shot in the grainiest black and white you can imagine, with occasional color seqences. Mark McKinney(Kids in the Hall, SNL) takes the Warner Baxter/Warren Williams/William Powell role, as the ex of Winnipeg beer baron Isabella Rossellini, whose legs were amputated by his father, a drunken doctor, and her would be lover, after an auto accident (he saw double and cut off the wrong one first. Ever since , he's been trying to make the perfect prosthetic. He may have succeeded in glass legs filled with beer. McKinney has a new girl, Narcissa (Maria de Medeiros), a Serbian with a talking tapeworm, who may be the lost wife of his brother, Roderick, who has taken on the grief of the 9,000,000 lives lost due to the Serbian gunman who started the Great War. Rossellini has a marketing scheme to increase brand awareness, pitting the nations of the world against each other in a musical contest to produce the saddest music (sadness and beer go together), with a $25,000 prize, one on one single elimination, wth play by play and color commentators on the radio. Lot's of bizzare musical numbers, including a number of versions of "The Song is You". This film is much wierder than my description. Maddins films don't usually get much of a release, but this one might. A definite "go see".
THE GREEN BUTCHERS
"The Green Butchers" director Anders Thomas Jensen wrote many of the Dogma 95 films (Mifune, The King is Alive). His three shorts have been nonminated for Oscars and one won. This deadpan comedy is his second feature. Two mismatched butchers open their own shop. A electrician is accidentally locked in the freezer overnight, and when an emergency supply of chicken is needed, well, what are you gonna do?. Things snowball, and soon the "chicky wickies" are the talk of their Danish town. Svend, a sweater, was always picked on, but now is a celebrity. Bjarne, a widower, now has a new girlfriend in Astrid, a mortician's assistant, but his retarded brother Egil, in a coma for seven years, wakes up and won't leave him alone. What to do? Usually subtitles rule out laughng out loud, but the languaage differences never get in the way of the Kurismakilike humor here. Recommended.
LOVE ACTUALLY
You always know what you're going to get in a Richard Curtis penned movie ("Four Weddings and a Funeral", "Notting Hill", Bridget Jones' Diary", not to mention the "Blackadder" TV series):great dialogue, funny uses of curse words, some sappy romance, pop music references & recitations, Hugh Grant, and a stand up and cheer ending. In "Love Actually", his first directing effort, the formula stands, and that's a good thing. A large ensemble cast tells the stories of many characters, some of whom know each other. You get Chiwetel Ejiofor and Keira Knightly, Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson and Claudia Schiffer (in his dreams), Colin Firth, Bill Nighy very funny as a rock star gone to seed, Laura Linney, of course a terrific cameo by Rowan Atkinson, and a bunch of others whose names I do not know. The only one that was tough to buy was Grant as the Prime Minister, though Billy Bob Thornton as a randy American president was believable. This was billed as a work in progress, so it may be edited down from its' 2h9m. It's fun as it is.
IDENTITY KILLS
"Identity Kills" was a "time slot" film for me, something to fill a couple of hours when there was no movie playing that I was itching to see. Sometimes these choices can be wonderful surprises, such as Asia Argento's "Scarlet Diva" was for me a few years ago. Sometimes they can be a waste of time. This one was pretty good. Directed by Sören Voigt, this shot on video German movie concerns Karen Lohse, played by Brigitte Hobmeier, an unhappy young woman who has spent some hospital time after a suicide attempt, who lives with Ben. who cheats on her and is unkind. They get married and nothing changes. She has a job at a silverware factory. She is a woman under the influence of something. She has some vague dreams about bettering herself, but finds it easier to steal from work, and eventually steal something much bigger. It took a while to get into this film, but when I did, I was taken. My favorite kind of movie is the psychological study. This is a good one.
Il Matto
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