Hey folks, Harry here with an intro for the Art Snob and his adventures and looks at the world of Toronto! He managed to get around quite a bit and saw some films that haven't been covered anywhere that I have seen yet. So cool! Well, I'll let him get to it while I dodge out of the way...
Greetings, AICN denizens. Art Snob here. I'm back home in Rochester, NY from my weekend banzai run to the Toronto Film Fest, and it was definitely a weekend well-spent. Knowing the lay of Toronto and having friends among the local populace are of critical importance when it comes to having a great time at this festival, and I come up aces on both counts. I was able to see six films in two days (including four of the ones that I'd most-hoped to see) and I was also able to make the most out of being in Toronto during the times when I wasn't at a movie. While the out-of-town rookies were waiting in line for same-day rush tickets, I was having sumptuous dinners at two great Chinatown restaurants, enjoying blues and booze at Rex's on Queen St., having breakfast bagels at Shopsy's, lunch pizza at Montana's, dinner pizza (and more booze) at the Sports Centre Grill, and perusing the wares at such quaint business establishments as "THC Hemp Accessories" and "The Condom Shack." All of this for well less than what other out-of-towners were paying for a single night at a hole-in-the-wall hotel room. Ah, connections!
And the time that I did spend waiting in line was enjoyable also. It's all in who you wait with, and when you're with a friend and adjacent to some other movie buffs with notes to compare, the time really flies. This is a fascinating city to explore. It's the most ethnically diverse metropolitan area on Earth and also the greenest city in the world ... a town where you can get smashed on a wide selection of 7% alcoholic beverages without ever having to worry about driving home, and with codeine-laced aspirin available for your hangover. I'm glad that I live so close to it, and just can't wait for the day (real SOON now) when it's accessible from Rochester via high-speed ferry.
As for the movies:
DOGMA was one of the ones that I missed. I got a lousy number in the lottery queue for advance tickets, missed by one getting a same-day ticket when the box-office opened, and the line for rush tickets for the 9:00 showing was already 50 deep by the time I got out of a 3:00 show. So my friends and I just threw in the towel and opted for a night on the town instead. It turns out that not getting tickets could have been a blessing in disguise. The word on the street from people who had seen it the next day was definitely less-than-glowing, with words and expressions like "juvenile" and "big letdown" and "not as good as CHASING AMY" abounding. My expectations have definitely been knocked down a couple of notches for when it gets released wide.
When I failed getting tickets for DOGMA at Uptown, I went for advance tickets for Ang Lee's RIDE WITH THE DEVIL at Varsity and lucked out ... I got two of the remaining three tickets for the afternoon screening. This film definitely has the most commercial potential of the six films that I saw. It's a sweeping, visually sumptuous tale of jayhawkers versus bushwhackers at the western edge of the Civil War in Missouri. Really excellent period detail, with plenty of well-orchestrated battle scenes and refreshingly NOT heavy-handed reflection on why one side eventually prevailed .
Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich both do fine jobs headlining a solid cast. But the outstanding performance for me was by Jeffrey Wright as a paradoxically bushwhacker-loyal black man ... I never would have guessed that this was the same guy who played the title character in BASQUAIT a couple of years ago.
And YES, Jewel DOES give a credible, acceptable performance. No Babs or Madonna megalomania to speak of. It's not just a cameo, either ... she has quite a few scenes, none of them involving production numbers.
One film we hadn't planned on seeing but did was Pip Karmel's ME MYSELF I. This was a light but thoroughly-entertaining film about a still-single 30-something successful career woman (Rachel Griffiths) who gets to see what her life would have been like if she'd ever married the "Mr. Right" she laments having passed over years ago. It turns out that this lifestyle has pros and cons that she never considered ... ditto for her DID-get-married alter-ego who gets to find out what single life would have been like (although the focus is on the single-experiencing-marriage character). A "chick movie" for sure, but one with plenty of chuckles and delights ... men (especially married men) need not dread at all being dragged to it. It won't be a breakout hit (too Aussie), but it should be a very successful performer on the art house circuit.
We also managed to get same-day tickets for HAPPY, TEXAS. This one was a very mixed bag. On the plus side, there ARE some solid laughs. But the setups require a lot of inane serendipity, timeworn madcap cliches abound, and the best laughs are strictly of the "gay sitcom" variety. Also, leads Steve Zahn and Jeremy Northam seem to be acting in two completely different movies. There comes a point where marked contrast between two characters in a comedy can be counterproductive ... this is one of those cases.
Everything gets thrown against the wall and some of it sticks, but not nearly enough to elevate the film into first-run evening ticket territory for me. (Matinee, MAYBE.) Miramax has successfully engineered a lot of advance overhype for this movie that they spent a record sum for at the Sundance Film Festival ... I suggest that you adjust your expectations downward if you want to enjoy it when it opens.
Another mess with better production values (but fewer laughs) was the spy-vs-spy romantic comedy (I THINK it's supposed to be a comedy) HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, a joint British-German-French-Finnish production with American names like Bill Pullman, Bruno Kirby and Glenn Plummer in the cast. It tries to be too many things to too many different audiences (as these kinds of international productions often do), and just never seems to jell. I can't see the picture connecting with American audiences in any big way. Headliner Pullman can't open a movie, and I doubt that the film is going to generate strong enough word-of-mouth to make much of a commercial impact on this side of the Atlantic. There IS one major redeeming factor, however: co-headlining French superbabe Irene Jacob (THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE, RED, OTHELLO) flaunts her AWESOME full monty on a couple of occasions.
Back when Ken Loach's RIFF RAFF became the first "English language" film to feature subtitles for American audiences, it seemed somewhat gimmicky (albeit necessary). Not so with the Scottish film RATCATCHER that I caught. The dialogue was completely indecipherable to the American ear without subtitles. (Now I realize that the accents in TRAINSPOTTING were actually softened considerably, although I never would have guessed it at the time.) But even if the language in this movie WAS decipherable to the American ear, its commercial prospects would still be nil. It's just too unrelentingly gloomy. It centers on a boy carrying a terrible personal secret that he can never hope to escape and his simple but unobtainable dreams for a better future. The cinematography is impressive in a noirish kind of way and the characters are certainly believable, but that's about it. Even if it did have some upbeat appeal, a scene where the boy shares a bathtub with a slightly older (but still underage) girl would probably result in an NC-17 rating over here ... this one can be safely written off, trust me.
That brings me to the last and best movie that I saw ... a little gem from Sweden titled SHOW ME LOVE, featuring the multiplatinum hit single from Swedish teen diva Robyn (Carrlson) played over the closing credits. Movies titled after and featuring a hit pop song are usually incredibly lame (ONE FINE DAY, MY BOYFRIEND'S BACK, CHANCES ARE, BYE BYE LOVE, FOOLS RUSH IN, 'TIL THERE WAS YOU, MY BLUE HEAVEN ... need I go on?), but this film is a wonderful exception to the rule.
For that matter, in Europe, the movie doesn't even GO by the song title ... there it's called "Fucking Åmål," with "Åmål" being the small Swedish town in which the story is set. (The expression comes up when one of the main characters bemoans the fact that everything "in" is already "out" by the time it finally gets to this neck of the woods.) The title is completely unacceptable in America, and director Lukas Moodysson has no objections at all to the change. As far as he's concerned, whoever's distributing the film can name it anything they like. Hitching on to the huge commercial appeal of the MOST-appropriate closing song is clearly the wise thing to do, and this is a film that's going to need all the help it can get to realize even a small percentage of the commercial success that a film this good deserves.
Strike one: The film is a subtitled Scandinavian teen romance movie. With very rare exceptions (e.g. MY LIFE AS A DOG), Scandinavian films haven't registered on American radar since the heyday of Ingmar Bergman. And even then, only by film buffs ... hardly the teen market.
Strike two: The film is shot in 16MM blown up to 35. There's no question that using 16MM enables the film to achieve a greater intimacy/realism factor, but the look is grainy in comparison to what American audiences are accustomed to.
Strike three: The romance is between two schoolgirls.
All I can tell you is that ... it WORKS. This is not, repeat NOT some "queers only" movie. If you could enjoy HEAVENLY CREATURES and/or BOUND, you can certainly enjoy this one. It's a refreshingly neo-realist teen angst movie done far more poignantly and honestly than ANY teen movie that's ever come out of Hollywood. The closest American counterpart in terms of honesty about the hell of school life is Todd Solondz's WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE. (Try to imagine what Dawn Wiener would have been up against if she HAD been a lesbian ... that's a good starting point when it comes to anticipating this film.)
Whereas in HEAVENLY CREATURES and BOUND the lesbian romances were strictly of the expedient two-way "thunderstruck" variety, in this film the relationship develops over the entire course of the film. One girl knows what she wants and is terribly guilt-ridden about it; the other one is gorgeous and popular but doesn't know WHAT she wants ... only that the local boys (and she's pretty much tried them ALL) are a turnoff. The two leads are enormously appealing, and the mostly-amateur supporting cast of schoolmates provides a backdrop high in verisimilitude. There's drama, there's humor, and the film is deftly paced towards a satisfying (for non-homophobes, at least) denouement.
Strand Releasing has picked up distribution rights in the states, which speaks volumes about its limited commercial prospects. This is a company that pretty much releases only what bigger companies won't touch. HAPPINESS (also by Todd Solondz) is its biggest success to-date, so if that movie didn't play in your burg, I wouldn't hold out much hope of seeing this one theatrically.
But if you DO get the chance, check it out and see how good a teen movie actually CAN be. One thing I can promise you ... you'll NEVER hear the song the same way again!
That's it for now. Next weekend I return for another round. PRINCESS MONONOKE is a lock, as are the two most-anticipated documentaries: Ron Mann's GRASS and Errol Morris' MR. DEATH.
