TORONTO: NATIONAL INQUIRER: ERROL MORRIS AND “TABLOID”

By Livia Bloom

I admit a certain obsession with cell phone Scrabble, the band Beach House, and of course, Errol Morris. While the first two are relatively recent acquisitions, that last one has been around for a while (since Cannes 2003 to be exact, and an interview on his film The Fog of War).

Morris’ goofy sense of humor remains as addictive as his philosophical and cinematic wanderings. With his latest documentary, Tabloid, my obsession with Morris and his obsessions—in this case, an obsessive beauty queen and the reporters obsessed with her—has reached new heights.

While you’re waiting with bated breath for Tabloid to be picked up by a distributor and released at a theater near you, check out this killer poster for the film, pictured here. It uses an archival photo of the film’s leading lady, Joyce McKinney, that fits so perfectly in this context that it’s downright uncanny.

Here’s another Morris artifact from an earlier venture: Reid Rosefelt, publicist extraordinaire, gave me this promotional keychain that Mr. Death used to promote his business offering “Execution Equipment and Support.” Additional keychains like this were then produced to help publicize the film, but the one pictured below is an original, made by the infamous executioner himself. Clearly, obsession-worthy.

Also, another goody: a new conversation in four parts that Morris and his old pal Werner Herzog held here at the Toronto Film Festival:

Errol Morris & Werner Herzog, Toronto 2010 Part I

Errol Morris & Werner Herzog, Toronto 2010 Part II

Errol Morris & Werner Herzog, Toronto 2010 Part III

Errol Morris & Werner Herzog, Toronto 2010 Part IV

If you immediately feel a strong compulsion to watch all four of these videos at once, and then maybe watch them again, and then maybe start a little research project on some aspect of the conversation raised by Morris and Herzog, you’re not alone. “We’re all obsessive,” Tabloid producers Julie Bilson Ahlberg and Mark Lipson assured me. “You’re one of us.”… Read the rest

TORONTO: ON ELEPHANTS, VIOLINS AND TATTOOS: AN INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS GORDON

By Livia Bloom

Have you ever seen an elephant lie down? This question provoked Scottish artist Douglas Gordon to create Play Dead; Real Time, a giant, startling multiple projection depicting just that. Timeline, a beautiful Gordon exhibition the Museum of Modern Art in 2007 that included the piece, was a triumph not only with art enthusiasts but with cinephiles as well, and Gordon regularly walks the line between these two worlds. In addition to his successful art career and installation pieces, he has made two feature films: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006) and a new work, k.364 A Journey by Train (2010).

Both are intimate portraits: the first of the legendary soccer player; the second of two world-class musicians, Avri Levitan and Roi Shiloach. They are a violist and a violinist, respectively; both are of Polish-Jewish extraction. In the film, Gordon follows along as they travel by train from Berlin through the town of Poznan, where a swimming pool that has replaced an old synagogue. Tracing a route their forefathers traveled under dire circumstances during the second World War, they arrive in Warsaw, where the two men lead an orchestra in a virtuoso performance of Mozart’s “Sinfonia Concertante in E Flat Major.”

Gordon is also represented at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival by a new installation of 24 Hour Psycho, his signature piece, which is on view in the new TIFF Bell Lightbox, a towering, modern “shrine to cinema” that was just inaugurated and opened the public on Sunday. The new piece, now a two-channel work entitled 24 Hour Psycho Back and Forth and To and Fro, is part of Essential Cinema, a broad survey exhibition that includes installations by Guy Maddin, Michael Snow, and Atom Egoyan. (The exhibition has also caused controversy by naming its top 100 films; among other grievances and ironies, Life is Beautiful (1997) trumped The Sorrow and the Pity (1969); Bringing Up Baby (1938) trumped Singin’ in the Rain (1952); and Slumdog Millionaire (2008) amazingly trumped them all). In this conversation, recorded above the city in the pristine Lightbox members’ … Read the rest

TORONTO: ON FESTIVAL STARTS AND THE FORCE OF NATURE THAT IS BROWNIAN MOVEMENT

By Livia Bloom

It’s day four here at the Toronto Film Festival—although based on the post-midnight criteria rather than the 8-hours-of-sleep criteria, I suppose it’s technically day six. The distinctions between days, between periods of lights and darks, have a tendency to become blurry after one’s tenth—or is it the fifteenth?—festival film has come and gone.

Already an appalling quantity of fast food has been eaten, numerous cups of coffee have been gratefully slurped, and at least one trusty steno pad, blank as driven snow just moments ago, is nearly full of hieroglyphics that must have meant something when I was scribbling in the dark. Soon it will be time for another.

Most of us emerge from the screenings mulling like molasses, shifting positions and opinions every time we hear someone who sounds sure of something. In contrast, the indefatigable Joshua Rothkopf and Eric Kohn, Movieliners S. T. Van Airsdale and Stephanie Zacharek, and Chicagoans Roger Ebert and Michael Phillips manage to be succinct, funny, unpretentious, and remarkably coherent just hours after screening time. Surely they are some of the hardest-working folks around. As always, some films disappoint from the get-go while others move in smoothly to monopolize mental and emotional real estate. (You didn’t think I’d name names in the former camp, did you? Let’s leave that to the pros).

Above all, nothing I’ve seen here has struck me with anything like Nanouk Leopold’s new film, Brownian Movement. Leopold is one of the most talented and promising voices in international cinema today. A new film from her is a major event. By adding a third film to Guernsey (2005) and Wolfsbergen (2007), she has created a significant body of work. If her disturbing, uncompromising films have slipped under the critical radar, it might be in part because a feminine biorhythm underpins these devastating psychological portraits of romantic and familial relationships.

Leopold tells the story of Charlotte (Sandra Hüller in a selfless, fearless performance), a successful doctor who is compelled to undertake a series of strange sexual encounters. Her actions provoke disgust, anger, and incomprehension in those around … Read the rest

DO THE YAM: ASTAIRE & ROGERS, THE COMPLETE WORKS | By Livia Bloom

“I wanted to be a dancer,” says Fred Astaire, wheezing out a tune on a harmonica with his gangly frame draped casually over a medical couch. “Till I was psychologized.”

Astaire plays doctor—a shrink, of all things—in Mark Sandrich’s Carefree (1953), a little-known screwball comedy gem as antic and goofy as Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby (1938) with dance. And what dance! Accompanied by an Irving Berlin score, Astaire and Rogers are at the top of their game in the tale of a therapist (Astaire) who must find the root of the commitment phobia that plagues his new patient (Rogers). “She’s probably just another pampered, maladjusted female,” opines Astaire into his doctor’s recorder, prescribing her a good spanking. Until he meets her, that is. Then a playful game of one-upmanship, and eventually love, ensues.

In a dance number for the ages, Astaire first tries to impress his patient on the links with a solo pas de golf club. Looking up to make sure Rogers is watching attentively from a balcony, he turns golf into tap dance, and back again.

The scene evokes Astaire’s most celebrated moments partnering with objects, from a coat rack to
a photograph in Stanley Donan’s Royal Wedding (1951). It only takes a single idea and he’s off and dancing with the lanky, effortless and easy grace of Barack Obama at the podium.

But when he and Ginger team up, there’s no coat rack in the land that can compete. Whether she’s biking in shorts or dining in the poofy-sleeved, big-shouldered gowns that seem to float around her like fog, Ginger is funnier and lovelier than ever. Together, their chemistry is undeniable, and their dancing—captured in full-length, full-body shots with the barest hint of editing—is sublime.

The quick pacing, punny one-liners, and wry send-up of psychoanalysis move nearly as quickly as the protagonists’ feet. In order to get his patient to dream, Astaire’s Dr. Tony Flagg prescribes Rogers’ Amanda Cooper a series of nauseating, dream-inducing foods, from seafood with whipped cream to cucumbers and buttermilk. (Happily, this method of treatment gives occasion for a beautiful, slow-motion dream … Read the rest

DOCUMENTARIES GO IN BLOOM AND UNDER THE KNIFE

By Scott Macaulay

As part of her series “Documentaries in Bloom” at the Maysles Center, curator, critic, and Filmmaker contributor Livia Bloom has assembled a fascinating program this week comprised of three rarely shown films all dealing with plastic surgery and the construction of beauty. The centerpiece is Mitch McCabe’s feature Youth Knows No Pain, in which the filmmaker (and daughter of a plastic surgeon) examines America’s “culture of anti-aging,” juxtaposing her research with an examination of not only her own face but her own attitudes towards her body as a result of being her father’s daughter. I saw the film when it screened on HBO last year, and its commentary is witty, engaging and non-didactic. Definitely recommended. Also on the bill are two related short works from almost 30 years ago. Daisy: The Story of a Facelift is a 1982 film by Dr. Michael Rubbo described thusly: “Middle-aged Daisy shares her decisions, doubts, and stomach-turning medical procedure in this rare featurette from the earliest days of cosmetic surgery.” Finally, a rarely-seen short film by artist Harun Farocki documents a Playboy centerfold shoot. The entire program begins at 6:00 PM each night beginning tonight, Wednesday, July 16, through Friday, July 18. Visit the Maysles Institute site for more info. And, oh yeah, director Mitch McCabe will be present for a Q and A each night.

… Read the rest

CANNES DIRECTORS DIRECTING 2010 |
By Livia Bloom

Each year, before the movies and parties and deals go down at the Cannes Film Festival, thousands of international participants go through the same steps. They complete their registration, receive the color-coded badge that designates their place in a screening hierarchy as rigid as that of a fascistl state, and pick up a mid-sized, branded satchel that holds, among reams of leaflets and ads, the official festival program. This is a slim, beautifully produced book—the 2010 edition is midnight blue—where each film in the Official Competition is given a full double-page spread. There is a portrait of the auteur behind each production in the upper right corner of each page; the directors are often posed behind cameras, or look broodingly into the distance as headphones cover their ears or encircle their necks. But this year, the mini-flipbook of directors’ photos illustrated something else: Of the 19 films in competition, four of them French, not one female director had been included.

It was an omission that clung like a burr to criticism of the competition films. With works like Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard, Lucretia Martel’s The Headless Woman, and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker among the most acclaimed films of 2009, and the top award at this year’s Sundance won a few short months ago by Debra Granik for Winter’s Bone, where were the women directors of Cannes 2010?

Outside of the main Competition slate, the problem persisted. Among the 19 films playing in the most prestigious non-Competition section, Certain Regard (Un Certain Régard), the only one was directed by a woman was Agnès Kocsis’s Adrienn Pál. Among the 22 films playing in the Cannes Classics section, the only one directed by a woman was Isabelle Partiot-Pieri’s Toscan (1954). Among the nine films playing outdoors for the public in the Cinéma de la Plage beach screenings (including JR’s Women are Heroes, 1983), a woman did not direct a single one.

One’s inner backseat driver (or backseat film curator) may find it tempting to point to the least successful of the selected festival films in frustration. It is simply … Read the rest

CANNES COVERAGE, CAM ARCHER INTERVIEW NEW ON THE SITE

By Scott Macaulay

With both our “25 New Faces” feature and the IFP’s Narrative Lab coming up, I’ve been kind of backlogged here on the blog. But, I just posted a couple of things: first, Livia Bloom’s recap of Cannes in our Festival Coverage section, and then my interview with Shit Year director Cam Archer, conducted in Cannes after the premiere of his film in the Director’s Fortnight section. And, in a separate post, Bloom wonders why there were not any female directors in Competition in Cannes this year. You can check them out at the links.… Read the rest

2010 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL | By Livia Bloom

“You know the kind of movie where people laugh and cry?” asked a filmmaker character in Kornél Mundruczó’s Tender Son: The Frankenstein Project (seeking American distribution). “I want you to cry.” “I am crying,” responded the would-be actor before him, his face frozen solid. The internalization of emotion, and the tiny, subtle ways it can creep into the features and postures of even the most stoic characters was explored in some of the best work at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

At first glance, the protagonist of A Screaming Man (pictured above) (Un homme qui crie, seeking distribution), by the talented Chadian director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, looks less like a man screaming than a man lounging. Champion (played by Saleh Haroun) hangs out with his teenage son in the pool of the posh hotel where they work, feeds watermelon to his wife till juice drips from her chin, and knows all his neighbors by their nicknames. At night, he does sit-ups on a plastic mat outside his home until he can do no more; then a pause; then he begins again. When this former swimming ace loses the job that defines him, emotional hurt barely registers on his placid surface. Only gradually do his actions, set against the backdrop of his country’s political strife, begin to belie the startling ferocity of his true response and the disastrous ripples of its consequences.

Although not one female director was selected for the Official Cannes Competition this year, it was a great year for female performers. Several actresses did yeoman’s work, backwards and in heels. In Lee Chan-dong’s Poetry, which won this year’s prize for Best Screenplay and has happily been acquired by Kino International, Korean actress Yoon Jung-hee carried the weight of a 139-minute opus on her thin frame. As Mija, an aging working-class maid raising her grandson in a small town, her character is at once modest and tragic, eccentric and proud. She holds her responsibilities very quietly, even when they become nearly unbearable. In Mija, these qualities are communicated in the smallest of ways; they are there in … Read the rest

BONG JOON-HO, “MOTHER”

By Livia Bloom

Mother, the latest film by South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho, is an inky affair. The humor is dark and the sky is a soggy shade of gray. The bumbling characters have limited prospects, and when love exists, it’s intense and deranged enough to kill for.

The central relationship in the film is between Yoon Do-Joon, a slow-witted young man, and his unnamed mother. The son is played by Wan Bin, a wide-eyed Korean heartthrob cast effectively against type; his good looks leave us continually disappointed by his character’s slow intellect. His protector, oppressor and champion—also known as his mom—is played by Kim Hye-ja, an actress so well-known in Korea for her roles in onscreen families that she has nearly come to embody the concept of motherhood itself.

In Bong’s film, Kim Hye-ja wears chin-length, frizzy hair and boxy, out-moded jackets. She is a wan-faced widow who simpers and wheedles to protect her covert acupuncture gig from sanction by the police. But when her son is accused of murdering a local high school girl, she sets her jaw in determination and crusades for his vindication once and for all. Kim’s character veers from the histrionics of doomed mythological mothers (check out Agave in Greek mythology) to the dogged gumshoe played by Frances McDormand in Fargo (1996). Yet Kim’s “mother” remains somehow understated. She is so intent on her investigation that it’s almost hard to keep her in focus at all; it’s a constant temptation not to become a partner in obsession. But don’t question her actions, whatever they might be. She’s just a regular mom after all.

Magnolia Pictures opens the film this weekend.

Filmmaker: What brought you to filmmaking?

Bong Joon-ho: There wasn’t one moment of epiphany, but by the time I was 15 years old, I knew for sure that I wanted to become a filmmaker. I’ve liked drawing and comics since I was a child. Even now, when I make a film, I usually start out by drawing. I make a sort of storyboard and draw it all myself. My love of draftsmanship made aligning images and … Read the rest

“DEAR DIARY” — TORONTO’S WAVELENGTHS 6: FLASH POINT CAMERA

By Livia Bloom

In a personal touch, all the filmmakers whose work was showcased in the sixth and final Wavelengths program were present for their screening. German director Ute Aurand presented a reverie on her childhood and family called Snowing Chestnut Blossoms, while American Jim Jennings, apparently a neighbor of mine in Brooklyn, showed a collection of images in Greenpoint that not only documented the quirky, spunky personality of that environ but also reminded me of two pair of boots in that little shoe repair shop with the orange-awning that are just about ready to be picked up.

Coleen Fitzgibbon’s FM/TRCS (1974) is an archival film that was recently preserved. It is a dancing abstraction of saturated colors created through a process of optical printing and born of the image of a woman undressing. FM/TRCS had taken a long route to the Festival, as had the piece for which the program was named, Flash Camera Movie (pictured above), which was more than eight years in the making. Filmmaker Sebastjan Henrickson took a year’s worth of disposable camera photos in and around his daily haunts and then turned them into individual frames in this carefully wrought and periodically blinding work. Programmer Andréa Picard explained that the city of Toronto also has a personal relationship with Henrickson: “After working on many a Wavelengths film over the years at Niagara Custom Lab, Henrickson presents us with this lovely offering of his own.”

Not all moviemaking requires that type of time commitment, however. The films I found most striking in the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival (along with Werner Herzog’s inspired feature Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans) were two short works by British-born artist Friedl vom Gröller (aka Friedl Kubelka). A remarkable still photographer, Kubelka’s eye for detail and portraiture shines in her 16mm cinema work. Polterabend (Hen Night, pictured below) is a tiny film that she photographed just prior to her wedding. It depicts six women who watch the camera and the audience, and who are watched by us in return. Initially, the group stares together; later they stare in individual blinking portraits.… Read the rest