TIFF 2007: "Sleuth"

(Gala Presentation)
(2007, USA, 86 minutes)
Written by: Harold Pinter, based on the play by Anthony Shaffer
Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Michael Caine, Jude Law

Anthony Shaffer’s Tony-winning 1970 theatrical staple (somewhere right now, I’m sure, a community theatre company is planning a production) has been given a 21st century makeover by three generations of British cinematic royalty: Kenneth Branagh stays behind the camera this time to put Michael Caine and Jude Law through this chatty clash of ego titans, this time with a script revamped by esteemed poet/playwright (and recent Nobel Prize recipient) Harold Pinter. Caine and Law generate the combustible energy a chamber piece like this demands, but by the end it’s all Pinter’s show--which may be a good or a bad thing, depending on your take on Pinter and reverence for Shaffer’s original text.

Pinter has preserved much of the setup of the original, with a few noteable tweaks: Andrew Wyke (Caine) is a rich and famous novelist who specializes in crime fiction who lives alone in his cavernous country manor, which houses a collection of priceless art and is protected by a high-tech security system. Wyke and his wife Maggie have become separated because of her affair with dandyish struggling actor Milo Tindle (Law), a betrayal that delights the reclusive author. His main concern is that young Milo won’t be able to maintain Maggie’s lavish lifestyle, which will drive her back home.

Having arranged a face-to-face, Wyke confronts Tindle with his knowledge of the trysts and proposes a stunt that will mutually benefit them both: if Tindle were to steal some his wife’s prized jewels and sell them in Amsterdam for a handsome profit, Wyke could claim the insurance winfall. Tindle, dim, desperate, but utterly convinced of his unheralded genius as a performer, agrees to play along. In the process of the staged nocturnal break-in, Wyke betrays Tindle and, well--suffice to say the plot continues with various double-crosses and reversals and is far too byzantine to recount here.

Besides, to reveal anymore would take this into serious SPOILER territory and ruin the element of surprise. Since this is not a literal restaging of Shaffer’s original play, some liberties have been taken that will surprise even those who know the original play or film by heart. Wyke doesn’t have a mistress, Tindle’s now an actor, and no one dons a clown suit. Tindle has planted evidence to frame Wyke in the event of their scheme going awry, and the whole affair does attract the attentions of a sleazy police inspector. That’s all you’ll get from me.

Branagh demonstrated himself a skilled visual director from the get-go with his definitive Henry V adaptation, and his followups Dead Again and Hamlet showed invention and assurance that betrayed his (then) relative inexperience. Here, he relies more on his stagecraft to keep this hermetically-sealed two-hander from degenerating into an inert talk-fest.

He’s smart to keep the camera back and let the actors do the work. Caine, of course, portrayed Milo Tindle in the original film version, and it was his idea to revisit the play and take on Laurence Olivier’s role. He personally selected Jude Law for Tindle, presumably having been impressed with Law’s portrayal of his own Alfie Elkins in Charles Shyer’s recent remake of Alfie. At one point, Law’s Tindle cheekily even asks Caine’s Wyke: “What’s it all about?”, which can’t be a coincidence (assuming this trend continues, can we expect to one day see Law in a remake of The Hand?).

Both actors are clearly having fun throughout facing off through jut jaws and snarling teeth as they spar through various levels of Wyke’s compound, which instead of the old money, game-filled mansion of the original, is now a giant Skinner Box of cobalt and cool blues, with neon splashes that change with the psychological vibe of the moment--like something out a Saw sequel directed by Michael Mann. One can’t imagine a novelist creating a lauded body of work in a such a chilly mausoleum, one presumes that Wyke dipped into his hefty finances to outfit his home with such elaborate traps and devices purely to mess with the randy philanderer's pretty blond head.

There are problems earlier, too, as appearance of the sleazy inspector leads to a twist which is so obvious that I’m surprised the ease of its detection wasn’t an actual plot point (at the risking of committing a SPOILER, let’s just say that there are only five performers credited, and one appears fleetingly as a television image and the other is an off-camera female voice).

This version is much shorter than the original (just 86 minutes, while Joseph L. Mankiewicz's’s 1972 adaptation ran more than two hours), but despite its brisker pace, nastier edge and surprising lack of Pinter pauses, it builds to a disappointing coda. Pinter unfortunately bogs down the climax with a broadly-etched bedroom showdown that throws the Freud into overdrive and brings the homoerotic undercurrents to the forefront, affording viewers the unique opportunity to witness the androgynous Law in semi-drag but deflating the cat-and-mouse frissons that have kept us on edge with a near audible pfft. Such explicit confrontation would have been scandalous around the time of Pinter’s The Birthday Party or Old Times, but today plods as overwrought and obvious—perversely, making this 35th anniversary reimagining somehow more dated than the original.

©2007 Robert J. Lewis

TIFF 2007 Review: "Eastern Promises"

(Gala Presentation)
(Canada/UK, 96 minutes)
Written by: Steve Knight
Directed by: David Cronenberg
Cast: Viggo Mortenson, Naomi Watts, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent Cassel, Sinead Cusack, Jerzy Skolimowski

Whether adapting a best-selling novel (The Dead Zone) or a smash Broadway play (M Butterfly), remaking a notorious ‘50s potboiler (The Fly), or an acclaimed graphic novel (A History Of Violence), David Cronenberg infuses the original author’s vision with the obsessive themes and recurring imagery of his earlier, self-penned works (in film lingo, “Cronenbergian” has become an adjective as instantly resonant as “Hitchcockian”), even though he insists that this is often accidental (the mind reels at what he would have done with Flashdance or Top Gun, two Hollywood blockbusters he was offered). Eastern Promises, while at first glance a more conventional exercise than say, the minimalist psychodrama Spider (based on Patrick McGrath’s first-person novel), has much more to offer than its formal Syd-Field-friendly structure and crowd-pleasing melodrama might suggest.

Marketed as a “companion piece” to 2005’s A History Of Violence, Cronenberg’s newest genre-bender re-teams him with Viggo Mortenson in Guy Ritchie territory: a “mob” yarn which can also be read as another exploration of “biology as destiny”, but here, it’s not a venereal parasite, or an experimental skin graft that will pit soul against flesh, but one’s own family blood.

Midwife Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts) fails to save the life of Tatiana (Sarah-Jeanne Labrosse), a fourteen-year-old addict/prostitute who is rushed to her London hospital in labour. But the child lives and Anna sets out to find the girl’s family to give the baby girl--whom she names “Christine”--a proper home. A card in the girl’s possession leads Anna to the Trans-Siberian restaurant, which is owned by the paternal Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), whose gentle demeanour betrays a ruthless loyalty to the code of the vory v zakone--the Russian mafia. He demands that the diary be turned over to him for translation.

Meanwhile, Anna’s mother Helen (Sinéad Cusack) and her Russian-born uncle Stepan (Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, of the Cannes-winning “Moonlighting”) have already started translating Tatiana’s journal and urge her to keep out of it—according to the girl’s confessions, Semyon is the one responsible for raping her and forcing her into a a life of prostitution.

Semyon's chauffer and “cleaner” Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) is sponsored to become a full member of the crime family, due largely to his repeated and patient defence of Semyon's hot-headed son Kirill (Vincent Cassel), who had arranged a hit on a rival Chechen gangleader without his father’s approval. The Chechen gang vow revenge and embarks on London, but Semyon plans to save his inept son and trick loyal Nikolai into taking Kirill's place at a meeting at the baths. Thinking he’s Kirill, the Chechen assassins attack Nikolai but he kills them both. He ends up at Anna’s hospital, where she tends to his vicious injuries.

Nikolai reveals that he, too, harbours a secret. He’s actually an undercover member of the Russian Security Services, and has been working with a Scotland Yard detective Yuri (Donald Sumpter) to bring Semyon down; leaving him coded messages along with the bodies he’s been disposing in the Thames River. He already knows of the contents of the diary, and with Semyon out of the picture he would be the most powerful member and able to dismantle the London branch of the crime family completely from within.

Mortenson’s stoic intelligence brings shading to what could have been theatrical, 2-D character: the tattooed hit man (Nikolai’s body art—literally to illustrate his commitment to crime family--chronicles a “history of violence” of its own). The degree to which he fearlessly immerses himself in the role is impressive for an actor who could likely retire from his action figure revenue. The already-notorious bath house brawl, which he performs naked, is blistering--and exhausting--in its visceral impact, but Mortenson’s wounded countenance make you feel Nikolai’s betrayal with every slice and shattered limb.

It’s hard to compete with Mortenson’s transformation, but Watts, always a versatile actress, brings steely grace and a maternal doggedness (Anna has lost her own baby to a miscarriage) to her crusade. Cassell gets to have a lot more fun tearing into the “Fredo” role as the libidinous psycho Kirill. Meuller-Stahl’s every appearance seethes with hushed malevolence.

Stephen Knight, who wrote the searing Stephen Frears class drama Dirty Pretty Things, provides Cronenberg with a perfectly structured and briskly paced screenplay, which offers plenty of opportunity to explore the nuances and iconography of yet another subculture while spinning a yarn that’s more audience friendly than much of what comprises his iconoclastic, often-polarizing filmography.

Cronenberg’s usual company is in top form: cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, art director Carol Spier, editor Ronald Sanders, and composer Howard Shore. It’s also one of the first films he’s shot outside Canada, with his hometown of Toronto having stood in for Maine, Pennsylvania, and Tangiers, and Montreal the setting for his Tax-Shelter Era classics Shivers, Rabid, and Scanners. Suschitzky's restrained camera and lack of obvious stylization (his aesthetic reminds me of that of the late great Freddie Francis)--coupled with Spier’s knack for resonant detail—suits a crime yarn that is more concerned about that which lives in the margins.

It’s also short—clocking in at a taut hour-and-a-half--at a time when goofball comedies like Knocked Up run as long as Terence Malick meditations.

Eastern Promises shows that at the age of 64 Cronenberg has lost none of his subversive streak and is an artist at the top of his form. Obviously, Toronto film fest audiences felt the same way, as they awarded it the Audience Prize as Best Film. Be sure to catch it now, currently in theatres.

©2007 Robert J. Lewis

TIFF 2007 Review: "No Country For Old Men"

(Gala Presentation)
(USA, 122 minutes, 2007)
Written by Joel and Ethan Coen
Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy
Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
Cast: Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Kelly McDonald, Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root, Barry Corbin

One of the year’s best films will also be one of the most polarizing: at first glance, No Country For Old Men appears to be a conventional thriller, a straight-up morality tale about a regular Joe who happens upon a stash of loot and the nogoodnicks who want it back, climaxing in the expected betrayal and violence.

But the Coen brothers don’t make conventional films, and the prose stylings of Cormac McCarthy have frequently been characterized with terms like exultant and dense and with sentences like comma-less convoys—and those are his favorable reviews! The cinema of the Coens is distinguished (and in some camps, derided) for its ironic detachment, broad characterizations, and impeccable formalism. McCarthy is a moralist who writes in opaque metaphors and verbose interior monologues. Their unlikely collision crackles:

In 1980, while hunting deer near the Rio Grande, Vietnam vet Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) comes upon the aftermath of a bloody drug deal. He finds a circle of bullet-ridden bodies, a stash of heroin, and 2.4 million dollars in cash. Llewelyn doesn’t hesitate to take the money, but before he can help the only survivor, another crew of gunmen pull up and give chase. Llewelyn’s intimacy with the landscape aids in his escape and he makes it home to his wife Carla Jean (McDonald). He puts her on a bus out of town to visit her ailing mother until the whole thing blows over.

Local Sheriff Ed Tom Bell ( Jones) and his deputy Wendell (Deadwood’s Garret Dillahunt) discover the crime scene and Moss’ abandoned vehicle. Bell is also a veteran, of the Second World War, and is haunted by an incident that has awarded him a Bronze Star and decades of regret. He takes on the Moss family’s troubles as if to make penance for his own past sins.

It’s somehow appropriate then, that a living force of Old Testament retribution, Anton Chigurh, emerges from the desert to locate the missing cash. Chigurh speaks in riddles and loves toying with his victims (basically, anyone who crosses his path) before dispatching them with his unusual weapon—a cattle stun gun—which is ideal for bursting locks as well as human heads. Unaware that there’s a transponder in the stolen money bag, Llewelyn crosses the border into Tijuana. But Chigurh maintains pursuit, seemingly more by supernatural predestination than technology.

Enter private eye Carson Wells (Harrelson), who’s hired by an anonymous businessman (Root) to recover the money. Wells is cocky and efficient and soon establishes contact with Moss in Mexico to bargain for an exchange. But fate has brought him to the same hotel as Chigurh and he’s killed. When Moss calls Wells’ number, Chigurh answers and informs him matter-of-factly that while he should consider himself a dead man, his wife’s life will be spared if he hands over the cash…

Always two steps behind as the trail splinters and the bodies pile up, Bell cannot fathom the senselessness of it all, which he fears is a portent for darker days to come…

Save for a few minor changes (mostly structural) the novel has been translated more or less intact—I read it in two sittings and found it to very film-friendly, with its sparse descriptions, pithy dialogue, and action-heavy scenes. The Coens succeed in capturing the novel’s two voices: the third person, and Bell’s first person account, trimmed here to bookend the film. McCarthy’s underlying theme (the title, never explicitly explained, is a quote from Yeats’ “Sailing From Byzantium”) plays out a bit more obtusely on the screen than on the page, but then ambiguity usually does...

But McCarthy’s headier concerns are not at the expense of entertainment—he’s not a writer who shys away from the theatrical (the hairless, supernatural Judge in “Blood Meridian”, the cannibal clans in “The Road”), and No Country For Old Men is still a damn good yarn. All the pulp elements are there, but McCarthy and the Coens enjoy screwing with them.

Josh Brolin, in the strongest of his five film roles this year (in addition to Planet Terror, American Gangster, In The Valley Of Elah, and the French anthology Chacun Son Cinéma, which reteams him with the Coens) aces a difficult challenge as the enigmatic Llewelyn. Neither McCarthy or the Coens provide any specific motivation as to why he takes the money or what he plans to do with it—he’s an amiable cipher who quickly surrenders his folksy kindness and decency to his war-hewned survivalist instincts.

Chigurh is one of recent literature’s more distinctive villains—a stone-faced phantom who comes from out of nowhere to lay waste to any living creature in his path with his unique choice of weapon, but occasionally granting a victim a chance at escape with the calling of a coin-toss (like Batman’s “Two-Face”, Chigurh subscribes to a moral code: the world is meaningless). Bardem—a magnetic actor who can steal a scene just by being in the frame--has fun with the nuances (the role as written gives him plenty of room to invent) and manages to give life to what could’ve been a heavy-handed symbol-- an existential Terminator (he even performs some icky self-surgery) embodying Bell’s dread of what the future holds.

Tommy Lee Jones and McCarthy are such a perfect match that it seems as if Bell’s laconic musings were written for the actor’s hang-dog cadence, which can sell a line like “when you quit hearing `sir' and `ma'am,' the rest is sure to follow” without a stitch of irony. Jones’ recent directorial debut The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada owed a visual and philosophical debt to McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy”, and it’s been reported that Jones owns the rights to “Blood Meridian” with plans film it when he feels ready (on the other hand, the IMDB lists it as a future Ridley Scott project). His role here is small but essential as the story’s anchor: Bell pines for the “old days” in which the bloodshed he witnessed on the battlefield and encountered on the Texas streets were of a type he could understand. A wistful interlude between Bell and his aged mentor is the second extended dialogue scene between Jones and Barry Corbin at TIFF 2007 to debate the collapse of a moral code and the escalating savagery and banality of violence (the other is Paul Haggis’ Iraq-themed In The Valley Of Elah).

Roger Deakins’ cinematography brilliantly captures a range of distinctive palettes, from the shimmering, southern-fried landscapes, to ominous nocturnal open spaces (the initial desert chase, captured largely in the headlights of the pursuit vehicles, is breathtaking), to the shadowed, spare interiors of border town hotels. But he also reels in his considerable mastery of the frame to linger on some truly great faces that are often required to evoke more than the dialogue.

As for Carter Burwell’s score—well, it’s an odd credit, as there isn’t one. At all. Unless my recollection is faulty (I’m writing this a few days after the screening, and my head is still buzzing as I try to process it all), the “music” is found here in the silences—the wind through the brush in the desert, the crackle of tires on asphalt, the creaking of floorboards—punctuated by startling staccato rounds of gunfire. The only literal music heard until the end credits is the sudden sonic burst (and it’s quite a jolt!) of a mariachi band when Moss awakens in Tijuana.

No Country For Old Men reminds us that early in their careers, the Coens were heralded as innovative suspense stylists with their intimate noir debut Blood Simple and the sweeping gangster drama Miller’s Crossing. After a run of absurdist comedies, the brothers thankfully haven’t lost their nihilistic edge: they've fashioned a sh*t-kicker cousin to Fargo, a seemingly simple fable steeped in symbolic landscapes, regional dialects, confounding motivations, and outrageous savagery from which the extremes of human behavior spiral into equal parts humour and horror.

©2007 Robert J. Lewis

TIFF 2007 Review: "El Orfanato/The Orphanage"

(Spain, 110 minutes, 2007)
Written by Sergio G. Sánchez
Directed by Juan Atonio Bayona
Cast: Belén Rueda, Fernando Cayo, Geraldine Chaplin, Monsterrat Carulla, Roger Princep

This low-key ghost story will invite comparison to the literary frights of Shirley Jackson and Henry James, whose enduring tales of terror were as much about the demons of the mind as they were any spectral shenanigans, but it’s also a worthy addition to the Spanish fantasy film canon which includes the highly-personal and impeccably crafted works of Victor Erice, Alejandro Amenábar, Nacho Cerda, and Jaume Balagueró. The Orphanage will likely be sold on the participation of its esteemed producer--the recently coronated Guillermo del Toro-- but first-timer Bayona (a del Toro discovery) demonstrates he’s got the stuff to make it on his own.

We first meet Laura as a seven year old girl happily playing “statues”--a form of tag--with five friends at The Good Shepherd Orphanage on the Spanish coast.

Thirty-years later, adult Laura (Belén Rueda) convinces her new husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) to purchase the since-abandoned property as their home from which she can operate a daycare centre for special needs children.

Her seven-year old son Simón (Roger Princep) is a lonely but imaginative boy, finding comfort in his imaginary friends, especially “Tomas”, whose grotesque visage he repeatedly sketches. As they prepare to open, Laura and Carlos are visited by a mercurial social worker Benigna (Montserrat Carulla) who eventually reveals her agenda: her deformed son was killed at the orphanage when she was employed there and she blames the children. Simón, while on a scavenger hunt with his invisible playmates, eavesdrops and learns that he’s not only adopted, but HIV-positive. After an argument with his mother—in which he announces his plan to stay young forever just like “Peter Pan”-- Simón goes off to play “statues” with his five new “friends”, and disappears on the morning of the centre’s grand opening.

After six months of fruitless searching, Laura holds on to hope that Simón is still alive, even without his medication. Laura tracks down Benigna, but only to witness her death in a freak car accident. Desperate and frustrated with the police, she enlists the unique gifts of medium Aurora (Geraldine Chaplin). “Seeing is not believing”, Aurora tells her, “it’s the other way around.”

As Laura retraces her once idyllic memories, she becomes convinced that her childhood friends remain, and have snatched Simón to take her place.

Seasoned horror junkies will no doubt be shaking their heads by now: another psychic loner kid? More shock cuts to creepy children standing in ominous tableau? Haunting nursery rhymes? Eerie doll heads? Wasn’t this already done by another Spaniard—Alejandro Amenábar —in a little something called The Others? Well, yes and no, but before you dismiss it as so much John Saul fodder, I’ll admit that this sort of imagery--a rumpled button mask, torn wallpaper, tableaus of empty children’s’ beds, the ominous swooping beams of a nearby lighthouse--could have easily been overtly precious and self-consciously “classy” in the hands of a timid and less accomplished filmmaker.

But Bayona is not above in-your-face shocks —it’s just that his command of tried-and-true horror semantics and his confidence to freely chuck them to mine the silent spaces between the funhouse moments make the two lackluster seasons from the so-called Masters Of Horror even more depressing for a fan to bear. There is one instance of graphic violence so shocking and perfectly timed that I found myself—a committed, card-carrying gore hound—agreeing with the naysayer’s refrain that sometimes, less is more.

As with del Toro’s Spanish language companion pieces The Devil’s Backbone and the Oscar-nominated Pan’s Labyrinth and Erice’s iconic Spirit Of The Beehive, The Orphanage is foremost a drama rooted in the childhood fears of abandonment and parental betrayal, although in this instance, those traumas are explored from an adult’s point-of-view, which gives it a kinship to Nacho Cerda’s recent The Abandoned, which also featured a middle-aged mother tormented by her haunted lineage.

Childhood suffering and death is not an easy subject to tackle in any genre, and it’s one that can be easily exploited for cheap pathos to temper some showy directorial excesses. But for a genre constantly (and inaccurately) vilified for its portrayal of women, The Orphanage reminds that horror tales have long been showcases for strong and complex female characters. Rueda pretty much carries the entire film as Laura overcomes her emotional devastation and finds strength despite her doubts about her sanity. Rueda isn’t afraid to expose Laura’s less flattering qualities, but at no time, however, are we compelled to judge her—Rueda’s performance contains not a false note and is exhausting in its anguished range.

Likewise, Geraldine Chaplin makes a rare screen appearance in a memorable cameo as the medium Aurora. Shot entirely in spectral night vision, her attempt to contact the spirits in the home is the scariest sequence of its type since Poltergeist, and climaxes in one of the supreme “boo!” moments of the year (you’ve been warned…).

Bayona keeps his cast front and centre, with Oscar Faura’s fine widescreen compositions threatening terror in the margins.

Picturehouse won’t release The Orphanage in North American until this coming December, but it’s already slated for an English-language remake (which del Toro will reportedly produce for New Line). In better news, it’s just been announced as Spain's Official Submission to the Best Foreign Language Film Category of the upcoming 80th Annual Academy Awards.

©2007 Robert J. Lewis

TIFF 2007 Review: "Persepolis"

(Special Presentations)
(France, 2007)
Written by: Marjane Satrapi, based upon her graphic novels
Directed by: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi
Cast/Voices: Gabrielle Lopes, Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Simon Abkarian, Danielle Darrieux

Three perfectly fine words--“coming” “of” “age”—never fail to make me shudder when they appear together, especially come film fest season, where previous Tadpoles and Thumbsuckers have sulked and shrugged their way before my equally slumped form more times than I care to remember. With quality film equipment becoming less expensive and more attainable, isn’t now the time for a moratorium on the rambling, period-song-heavy paean to the disaffected, overeducated adolescent outsider and the quirky, clueless adults that don’t understand them? Write what you know is fine advice for the aspiring auteur, sure, but remember what William Goldman said: “Star Wars wasn’t written by a Wookie.”

So it’s a relief, then, that Marjane’s Satrapi’s tale of her own turbulent adolescence, Persepolis, is like no roman à clef you’ve ever seen. The tween years Satrapi revisits are a far cry from today’s usual Sundance fare:

Tehran, 1978. Precocious and exhaustingly inquisitive Marjane (Gabrielle Lopes) is the only child of educated, upper middle-class parents parents Tadji (Catherine Deneuve) and Ebi (Simon Abkarian), who have raised her encouraging her independence and creativity, defiant of the U.S.-backed Shah dictatorship. Living with them is her widowed, cynical grandmother (Danielle Darrieux) who bestows on her granddaughter advice and wisdom as if she were much older than eight.

When the Shah’s government collapses, there is elation across Iran and within the Satrapi household and extended family who anticipate a new era of equality and progress. But instead, the new Khomeneini Islamic Revolution rules with an even tighter fist, especially towards women, with headscarves becoming mandatory, subservience to men enforced by squads of police, and intellectual thought in both sexes all but extinguished. Friends and relatives, like her pro-Communist uncle, are imprisoned or simply disappear. In 1980 Iraq launches an attack on Iran and begins an eight-year war.

Although aware of the horrors, Marjane manages to live as close to a normal kid’s life as possible, with chief pursuits being the acquisition of contraband record albums by Western artists (Bee Gees, ABBA, Iron Maiden), and worshipping her hero Bruce Lee.
Marjane’s parents consider moving to America, but her father rejects the notion ("So I can become a taxi driver and you a cleaning lady?"). So at 13, they send her off to school in Vienna (now voiced by Chiara Mastroianni), where she finds her instructors there hopelessly devoted to their own intolerant dogma, and a subculture of fashionably disaffected punks whose easy cynicism is in the service of nothing. She falls in love with a sensitive blonde dreamboat, only to have her heart broken. And because of her Iranian heritage, she is branded an outsider and potential menace and soonj finds herself living on the streets of Europe.

Ten years after she left, Marjane returns home, where the situtation hasn’t improved much. She enlists in college, marries a chauvinistic layabout, and eventually flees again for permanent residence in France.

I should mention, too, that Persepolis is an animated film, with a clean, monochromatic hand-drawn style (with some colour in the framing sequences) that more or less faithfully translates the stark but evocative panels of the four-part graphic novel (first published in 2000) to the screen. The tale has been streamlined somewhat to focus primarily on Marjane’s experiences, but it’s laudable that much recent history is communicated through dialogue and the girl’s often detached observations of her once-comfortable existence going mad.

This is France-based Sapji’s first film (which also took the Prize Of The Jury at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, the first animated film to achieve such an honour since Rene Laloux’s Fantastic Planet in 1973), in collaboration with fellow illustrator Vincent Paronnaud, and for novices the results are accomplished to say the least, successfully blending candid biography with breathtaking flights of fancy and sequences of grim reality that recall the dreamy tapestries of Sendak and McCay but also the Japanese anti-war classics Barefoot Gen and Grave Of The Fireflies.

For such heavy and frequently heartbreaking subject matter, the film is often uproariously funny: particular memorable are Marjane's demanding chats with God and Karl Marx (both resplendently bearded and ineffectual), Marjane's Duck Amuckish rubbery growth spurt into adolescence, the models in Marjane’s art class forced to wear concealing burkas, and a training montage set to Marjane's rendition of Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger” (here's a clip).

Predictably, the government of Iran has already denounced the film, claiming it to be “an unreal picture of the outcomes and achievements of the Islamic revolution". And Thailand has already caved to pressure from Iran and pulled the film from their upcoming Bangkok International Film Festival. But the West—chiefly the U.S.--hardly gets off easy here, and is explicitly criticized for its financing of the Shah’s government and its weapons deals.

The North American release this coming December will feature the original French dialogue tracks dubbed into by Sean Penn, Iggy Pop (!), and Gena Rowlands. But since the dialogue tracks were recorded first and the characterizations animated to the nuances of the voices, it’s well-worth catching in its original language.

©Robert J. Lewis 2007

TIFF 2007 Review: "Mother Of Tears"

(Midnight Madness)
(Italy/USA, 2007)
Written by Jace Anderson, Dario Argento, Adam Gierasch
Directed by Dario Argento
Cast: Asia Argento, Daria Nicolodi, Moran Atias, Adam James, Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, Udo Kier

Midnight Madness 2007's inaugural screening of Dario Argento's Mother Of Tears was such a festive affair--from programmer Colin Geddes' introductory reminiscences of being a fan in the lineup for the second-year screening of Opera, to heartfelt greetings from the clearly-moved veteran horror filmmaker himself amidst playful jabs from his daughter/leading lady Asia, climaxing with an audience sing-a-long of "Happy Birthday" as midnight struck and Argento turned 67!--that it almost didn’t matter if the long-awaited conclusion to the "Three Mothers Trilogy" was any good or not--we were so pumped that we were game to go for it hook, line, and mad monkey.

At a construction site in Rome, an ancient urn is unearthed. Despite protests from the church, it’s sent to the museum for analysis. When student Sarah Mandy (Argento) and her coworker Giselle (Cataldio-Tassoni) defy protocol and open the urn, they unleash the evil entities that have been entombed for centuries and immediately manifest themselves in a wave of random murders and suicides across the city. Initially a skeptic, Giselle’s ritual murder convinces Sarah that demonic forces are definitely real, which in turn convinces the local detective that she’s insane. When the coven kidnaps the son of her instructor/lover Michael (James), Sarah discovers that she possesses paranormal abilities, such as the ability to see the dead, and is coached by her mother’s spirit (Nicolodi) from beyond the grave as the legion of witches converge on the city to prepare for the resurrection of Mater Lacrimarum--the “'Mother of Tears”--to conquer the world.

Asia, a popular European star outside of her father's works, functions in ingénue mode here (as opposed to her wild child tabloid persona she brought to the screen in her own directorial efforts Scarlet Diva and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things) and manages to forge some real emotion from an underwritten role which requires her to do little more than flee skanky witchy-poos (most of whom look like they missed the casting call for Mark Lester’s Class Of 1984), furrow her pale, pretty brow at the endless exposition she must elicit from various holy men and paranormalists, and pout sorrowfully at her mother's ectoplasmic visitations. Much time is spent setting up Sarah’s latent paranormal abilities, none of which she ever uses in the hasty climax (a familiar Dario Argento handicap that by now, I’m willing to overlook). The rest of the performances are all over the place in tone, from Udo Kier's panicked padre to several horribly post-dubbed extras, and, true to another Argento signature, Adam James as the blandest leading man since Leigh McCloskey.

References are made to the previous films—dancer Suzy Bannion from Suspiria, architect Varelli’s New York apartment in Inferno--but it's unclear what the frequently undressed Mater Lachrymarum wants, other than to host a big orgy that's like if Jesse Franco had adapted Traumnovelle instead of Kubrick. Her resurrection ignites outbreaks of violence, infanticide, and self-mutilation across Italy’s capital, but the gags are shot too tight and are too fleeting, and serve mostly bridge the marathon of conversations in various studies and libraries that make up the bulk of the exposition-overloaded second act. Argento fails to convey a sense of impending apocalypse--there's nothing close to the collapsing social order of George Romero's zombie films or the Headline News hysteria of 28 Days/Weeks Later or the Dawn Of The Dead remake.

The coven’s monkey "familiar" is a nice macabre touch, allowing Argento another nod to Poe ala the heroic chimp in Phenomena. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but join in the applause when the shrieking simian got flattened by falling concrete during the film's fiery climax. Asia seems genuinely frightened of the diminutive menace throughout--confirmed by Argento's Q &A anecdote that the monkey was unpredictable and actually bit her on the leg.

I tend to prefer Argento’s giallo thrillers--"broken mirrors" of "broken minds" to steal from Maitland McDonagh’s essential study--in which the byzantine plots tunneled so deeply into their antagonists' warped world views that their illogical turns made a certain amount of twisted, subjective sense. Argento's supernatural plots are wonky and random, built more around set pieces than plot.

There no comparable set pieces here—and my major disappointment is that Mother Of Tears isn't terribly awe-inspiring, visually. Argento remains one of the horror supreme stylists--closer to Bunuel or Jodorowsky than say, Craven or Romero. While the film is well-paced and features some outrageously gruesome murders from longtime FX collaborator Sergio Stivalleti (with CG and practicals from Lee Wilson, who has worked with Argento on his two Masters Of Horror entries), there isn't that one great scene to rank with the room of barbed wire or the Mater Tenebrarum’s underwater chamber in the previous chapters.

Despite the fact that he waited 27 years to follow up the saga that began with 1977s Suspiria and stalled after 1980s Inferno (although, in his intro, Argento admitted he thought it would only take 20), Mother Of Tears is frustratingly devoid of any real purpose, other than to say, "hey, I'm back and I can still do this", which, as the excruciatingly gruesome mutilation/murder of Cassoni's museum worker confirms only minutes into act one, certainly proves he can. Mother Of Tears smacks of the Michele Soavi films he's produced (The Church, The Sect) than to those early chapters that remain amongst his finest visual achievements. While it's a busy movie, it lacks any urgency to complete the tale, but taken as a "greatest hits" of sorts--ala DePalma's remote retreads Raising Cain and Femme Fatale--there's a good time to be had, but I wished it hinged more on self reflection than-self parody.

©Robert J. Lewis 2007

TIFF 2007: Oh, Now They're Just Encouraging Me...

...and I'll be the only one without a Blackberry...

TIFF 2007: My Preliminary Film List

It all starts tomorrow, and as usual, I like to ease into it...here are my confirmed public screenings (I'm still going through the press screenings schedule...)

Thursday, September 6

"Persepolis"

"The Mother Of Tears" (Midnight Madness)

Friday, September 7

"The Orphanage"

Saturday, September 8

"Chacun Son Cinema"

"Nightwatching"

"Eastern Promises" (Gala)

"George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead" (Midnight Madness)

Sunday, September 9

"Religulous: A Conversation" (Bill Maher and Larry Charles live event)

"Joy Division"

"M"

Monday, September 10

"No Country For Old Men"

"Chrysalis"

"Sleuth" (Gala)

"In The Valley Of Elah"

Tuesday, September 11

"Cassandra's Dream"

"Frontieres" (Midnight Madness)

"Vexille" (Midnight Madness)
"Sukiyaki Western Django" (Midnight Madness)

Wednesday, September 12

"Redacted"

"Stuck" (Midnight Madness)

"I'm Not There"

Thursday, September 13

"Oh! What A Lovely War!" (Dialogues with Sir Richard Attenborough)

"Death Defying Acts"

Friday, September 14

"The Best Years Of Our Lives" (Dialogues with Sidney Lumet)

"The Virgin Spring" (Dialogues with Max Von Sydow)

Saturday, September 15

"Encounters At The End Of The World"

"The Amazing Journey: The Story Of The Who"

"L'interieur" (Midnight Madness)

TIFF 2007: It's Ticket Pickup Day!

Oh, what a wonderful way to spend the last day of a long weekend: baking in the sun for several hours to pick up whatever TIFF tickets you were awarded if you didn't get completely screwed by Friday's lottery draw. While I attend the event as a member of the media, I always get a few tickets to public screenings so I can see some movies with friends and my Significant Other.

And truth is, I don't mind it at all (the lining up part--the lottery is the subject of another posting...)--we got to chat with fellow enthusiastic film buffs about our previous TIFF experiences, our favourite titles of the year so far (although I always get the feeling that I'm the only cinema freak in GTA who goes to Hollywood blockbusters and enjoys them....), books we've read, the things we hate the most about the Fest (the lottery, 'natch), and of course, what we're looking forward to the most at this year's extravaganza (seems everyone's game for The Coens' No Country For Old Men and Brian DePalma's Redacted).

Because we were lucky to get all of our choices (nothing less than a modern miracle, considering we were box 48 of 75, with the lottery starting with box 66!), we didn't have to move to the second, considerably more disgruntled line to hurriedly select alternate screening choices. With so many fewer screens downtown, the seats are sure to fill up quickly. So best of luck to those poor devotees still in line--remember, folks, they're only movies, and most will come out to theatres or at least DVD anyway...

Individual tickets--those remaining, anyway--will go on sale Wednesday, Sept. 5 at the Manulife Centre Box Office (Bay and Bloor) and online at the official site at 7 am (remember, VISA is the only card accepted by the festival).

Complete details and schedules here.

TIFF 2007: Who's Afraid Of The "I" Word...?

This year's TIFF should make for some incendiary evenings, as several major filmmakers with considerable Hollywood cred are risking the ire of Bill O'Reilly and the indifference of the theatre chains to tackle the subject of the Iraq War head-on.

Politics and film are an unavoidable collision, even when you think you're just gonna pass a morning with a splashy historical yarn.

September 11, 2001 began for me with an AM screening of "Musa: The Warrior"--a handsome but rather pedestrian South Korean Yuan vs. Ming melodrama. Still sleepy and craving coffee, I slipped out for one of the Alan Smithee Cafe's cups of oily java.

It was just before 9 AM, and I turned the corner into a tableau of frozen panic where on the monitors, Flight 11 had just impacted into the North Tower . People were weeping into their cell phones, the usually unattended bank of payphones (a rare sight in Toronto, even then) had lineups. Within a few minutes, Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. People have said it was "like a movie", but I didn't think so now or then--reality has no Tony Scott lighting, no "Waltzing Matilda" on the soundtrack or "Fail Safe" freeze frames. A great many of these people around me were industry types and journalists from the U.S. and all I could do was stand there, feeling like a voyeur.

The festival closed down for the remainder of the day, and after much debate, resumed with many screenings and events cancelled out of respect.

The response to 9/11 was surprisingly immediate, as a year later, the events of the day were explored in two contrasting Galas: the French omnibus 11' 09" 01/September 11, in which international filmmakers contributed an 11 minute film representing various voices of the global reaction, and The Guys, an agreeable drama starring Sigourney Weaver as a New York writer hired by Anthony LaPaglia's fire captain to help compose a moving eulogy to his fallen coworkers.

But since Bush declared his War On Terror and invaded Iraq in March 2003, the festival circuit and the cinema landscape in general have been light on debate, other than on the documentary front, of course: Barbara Kopple's "Shut Up And Sing" (chronicling the fallout from The Dixie Chicks' criticism of the administration) , "The Assassination Of George W. Bush" (a rather toothless British mockumentary as to how the world could possibly change in event of the titular event), Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11", and Michael Winterbottom's "Road To Guantanamo".

Critics have been asking: where is this the outrage in mainstream cinema? Where is this generation's "Coming Home" or "The Deerhunter" (hell, I'd offer "Rolling Thunder")? The following risk takers are among the most anticipated screenings at TIFF 2007, with a potential audience beyond the hoopla growing with every dismal news headline...

RENDITION

As in "“extraordinary rendition”, being "the policy by which alleged terrorists can be extradited to foreign prisons and tortured without their country of origin’s legal constraints getting in the way". "Totsi" director Gavin Hood follows up his TIFF People's Choice Award and 2005 Academy Award winner with an unflinching drama starring America's sweetheart du jour, Reese Witherspoon (following up her own Oscar win as June Carter in "Walk The Line") as a pregnant woman Isabella awaiting the return of Anwar (Omar Metwally), her Egyptian-American husband. But he never arrives home, and there's no record that he ever got off the plane from his business trip in Johannesburg . She finds out that her husband is a suspect in a suicide bombing that killed a CIA agent, and has been taken to a detention facility in the Middle East for "questioning". In a parallel plot, the murdered agent's partner (Jake Gyllenhaal) a patriotic go-getter who joined the CIA on September 12, 2001, questions his loyalties to the administration as he witnesses Anwar's brutal interrogations. Alan Arkin, Peter Saarsgard, and Meryl Streep costar.

IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH

Paul Haggis (a Canadian, yes, but he's worked and lived in Los Angeles for the last 30+ years) follows up his acclaimed directorial debut "Crash" with another look at the War On Terror's effects on the homefront. Based on a true story, it tells of a New Mexico family's search for their son who goes missing when he returns home from his tour of duty in Iraq. Career military man Hank (Tommy Lee Jones) and wife Joan (Susan Sarandon) enlist a police detective (Charlize Theron) to help them track down Mike (Jonathon Tucker)--and are devastated to learn is not AWOL, but has been murdered. Hank becomes obsessed with finding out what really happened on his last night alive, when he was last seen with members of his platoon. Its title refers to location of the Biblical battle between David and Goliath.

REDACTED

As in "text that has been blacked out or censored". Already one of TIFF 2007's "must-see"s and having received a 10 minute standing ovation at The Venice Film Festival, this is a radical change of pace for Brian DePalma, who's long been something of a TIFF regular (long ago I walked him to the Ryerson Theatre for 1988's "Criminal Law", when I came upon him lost on Yonge Street) and best known for his suspense classics "Carrie" and "Dressed To Kill" and mainstream hits like "Scarface" and "The Untouchables". With $5 million in seed money from Mark Cuban's HNet, DePalma partnered with Canadian producers Simone Urdl and Jennifer Weiss of The Film Farm to shoot this new and timely look at "The Casualties Of War" set on the front lines. Working with digital video for the first time (and with unknown actors since his "Hi Mom!" years), DePalma employs a number of styles--verite, security cams, websites, YouTube, a French documentary crew--to capture conflicting points of view between the American soldiers stationed in Samarra, and the locals who finds themselves in the crossfire of a civil war, and the horrible rape of a young Iraqi girl.

My reviews to follow...

TIFF Ticket Lottery: The Lucky Number Is...

66 (out of 75)...

2007 "Dialogues" Series Features Von Sydow, Loach, Attenborough, Burstyn

As a film buff old enough to remember when "audio commentaries" were something provided by chatty imbeciles sitting directly behind me in the theatre, I once welcomed any and all opportunities to listen to a director talk intelligently about his/her film from a production and/or philosophical perspective. Mags like "Starlog", "Film Comment", and "Cinefantastique" assuaged my obsessive geekdom until the pioneering folks at the Criterion Collection conceived of the commentary track, the first ever of which was included on their 1984 special edition of the original King Kong. Of course, by the time I could afford to buy laserdiscs, the format was pretty much dead.

These days, DVDs make it easy: everything from J'Accuse! to Just My Luck give their fans the joy of knowing just how great the assistant grip was to work with...

As a film student, live seminars were rare, and usually unenlightening--the odd disgruntled local director complaining about the Hollywood studio system and there not being enough work...

TIFF's "Dialogues: Talking With Pictures" sessions are unique events that offer a screening of a classic or influential title selected and introduced by an esteemed filmmaker, and followed with a lively Q & A (a live, feature length commentary is something I've yet to hear of being performed anywhere...but who knows?). The personality of the hour could also be one of the film's cast members, producers, or writers, or, an admirer from the fields of cinema history or academic study.

Over the years, I've enjoyed countless entertaining and informative discussions: John Sayles on The Organizer (I Compagni), David Cronenberg on Tod Browning's Freaks (although his first choice was Disney's Bambi!), Richard Linklater on Monte Hellman's Two Lane Blacktop, George A. Romero on Powell and Pressburger's Tales Of Hoffman , Bernard Rose on Cammell's Performance, Robert Towne on P & P's The Four Feathers , John Boorman on P & P's The Life And Times Of Colonel Blimp, Don McKellar on Cronenberg's The Brood, and my favorite, a riotous afternoon with John Waters pleading for tolerance for Joseph Losey's notorious Burton/Taylor debacle, Boom!

This year's Dialogues programme is one of the strongest since its inception: confirmed are Ken Loach on Menzel's Closely Watched Trains , Max Von Sydow on Bergman's The Virgin Spring (his sixth collaboration with the late director), Sir Richard Attenborough on his own How I Won The War, Ellen Burstyn on Scorsese's Alice Doesn't Live Here Any More (in which she stars), Sidney Lumet on Wyler's The Best Years Of Our Lives, Peter Bogdanovich on John Ford's silent rarity Bucking Broadway, and actors Nancy Kwan and Arthur Dong on Koster's Rodgers & Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song.

As usual, the screenings will be held at the Alliance/Atlantis Cinemas on Cumberland, where seating is extremely limited, so be sure to get your tickets here at the TIFF box office before they're gone!

TIFF's New HQ Gets A Name

The new permanent home for the Toronto International Film Festival Group has a name and an official logo: Bell Lightbox.

Previously known as "Festival Centre", or "Festival Tower" when first announced in 2003, the Kuwabara Payne Mckenna Blumberg-designed facility--for which Bell Canada paid for naming rights until 2018--will include a five-story condo, five theatres, educational facilities, and an expanded film reference library (check out the advance renders here).

The $196M project became a reality thanks to partial funding ($50M) by the Canadian and Ontario governments, and privately (the remaining $146M) through a unique partnership between The Toronto International Film Festival Group, the King and John Festival Corporation, which comprises the Daniels Corporation, filmmaker Ivan ("Stripes", "Ghostbusters") Reitman, and the Reitman Family.

Vancouver's E + S Inc. (Envisioning and Storytelling) devised a list of four names and a logo from which TIFF Director and CEO Piers Handling ultimately made the call. The name and logo will be featured in a promotional trailer that will be screened through the upcoming 32nd annual Toronto International Film Festival (September 6-15).

On Thursday, Sept. 13, as part of this year's "Dialogues" series, the project's lead architect Kuwabara of the firm KPMB will offer a visual presentation and host a Q & A about the centre's unique features and design. A screening of Chris Marker's 1964 classic La Jetee, which was chosen as (from the official press release) "a new model for telling stories through film, and complements Kuwabara's presentation of a new approach to designing a space that celebrates the wonder of the moving image".

I live only a few minutes walk from the construction site at King Street West and John Street, so it'll be exciting to see this long-awaited and much-needed property come to life. Stay tuned to this site (for the foreseeable future) as I'll be regularly uploading images of the construction's progress.

-Robert J. Lewis

TIFF 2007 Most Anticipated: Dario Argento's "Mother Of Tears"

Great news for fans of one of the horror genre's true visionaries: Dario Argento, the Italian master of trippy, often gore-soaked fantasias, will premiere his long-awaited"Mother Of Tears" (La Terza Madre) as part of the Midnight Madness program at the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival.

This is the conclusion of his "Three Mothers" trilogy that began in 1977 with "Suspiria" and was left hanging after the botched release of 1980's thematic followup "Inferno". In "Mother", archaeology student Sarah (portrayed by Asia Argento--yes, his daughter) releases the demonic forces of a powerful witch which erupt into a wave of suicide and crime in advance of her resurrection.

Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni, who costarred in Argento's "Opera" and in "Demons 2" (which he cowrote and produced), is featured in a prominent role. "Mother Of Tears" also stars European genre vet Udo Kier (Andy Warhol's "Frankenstein", and recently, in Rob Zombie's faux "Grindhouse" trailer "Werewolf Women Of The S.S.") and Daria Nicolodi, Dario's ex-wife (and Asia's mother), who appeared in his earlier films and in Asia's directorial debut "Scarlett Diva".

In the early years of the Midnight Madness program Argento was a staple: his "Opera", "Trauma", and "The Stendhal Syndrome" received their North American debuts at the original Bloor Cinema venue, and the thrillers he produced for Michel Soavi--"The Church" and "The Sect"--made their North American premieres there, too, as did his team-up with George A. Romero, the Poe tribute "Two Evil Eyes".

In recent years, Argento has kept a low profile but has worked steadily--last year's TV movie "Do You Like Hitchcock?" was a return to his giallo roots, as was the Michael Mann-esque police procedural "The Card Player". He also found time to venture to Canadian shores to shoot two episodes in Vancouver for Mick Garris' "Masters Of Horror" series: "Jenifer" and "Pelts" (all of these titles are available on DVD from Anchor Bay Home Video).

The event will mark a reunion of sorts between Argento and fellow guest George A. Romero, who together produced the original "Dawn Of The Dead" in addition to the aforementioned "Two Evil Eyes". Romero has a premiere in this year's Midnight Madness program, too: "Diary Of The Dead", the official fourth installment in his zombie saga that began with 1968's "Night Of The Living Dead".

Argento's films aren't always perfect and can be challenging for the uninitiated to say the least--narrative "logic" isn't a concern ("plausibles", stay home!) and he seems to delight in deliberately polarizing and frustrating the audience. But each effort is always gorgeously designed and a feast for the senses and owe more to Bunuel than say, Wes Craven, but like the suspense masterworks of Hitchcock or DePalma (to whom Argento is often compared), manage to feature at least one extended set piece that's a marvel of timing and intensity.

Here's a list of the entire "Midnight Madness" lineup.

TIFF 2007: Midnight Madness Offers A Home For The Rest Of Us

The first TIFF I ever attended--back when it was still called The Festival Of Festivals--offered a retrospective of David Cronenberg's early works and features that was coupled with a min-fest of science fiction, horror, and horror titles personally selected by Cronenberg and representative of his eclectic tastes and unique definition of what constituted "genre" (his concept of "horror" included Taxi Driver, and he saw Fellini's Satyricon as a "science fiction film projected into the past"). It seemed to have been designed solely to welcome me to Toronto and reassure me: you've got a home here.

Of course, I went every day--already willing to skip classes during my first week of film school--but outside of that small theatre (the Uptown Backstage, specifically), the event was a decidedly "prestigious" affair, celebrating middlebrow dramas and "art" films ranging the likes of The Big Chill, Moon In The Gutter, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, and Can She Bake A Cherry Pie?--stuff that was, y'know, good for you. As a devoted disciple of genre cinema, it was a too-familiar message: "those kinds" of movies don't belong here.

That changed in 1988 when Noah Cowan spearheaded the Midnight Madness programme, which launched with a 12 AM screening of Tony Randel's Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 at The Bloor Cinema. I've attended devoutly ever since, where I've had a chance to meet Peter Jackson at Meet The Feebles, watch Richard Stanley's Hardware with Liam Neeson beside me, and nab Dario Argento at the premiere of Opera just long enough to get him to complete the signatures I needed on my vintage Starlog Press Dawn Of The Dead posterbook.

This year's series, once again programmed by Colin Geddes (who took over for Cowan in 1998), is one of the strongest in recent memory (although it'll be hard to top last year's Borat screening), with several masters of outre cinema in attendance in addition to the usual new faces from the margins around the globe. Here's the complete rundown (all times Midnight ET, of course):

Thursday, September 6

The Mother Of Tears/ La Terza madre (Italy)

Dario Argento returns to the TIFF for his first time since 1996's The Stendahl Syndrome with much-anticipated conclusion of his Three Mothers trilogy, which began with 1977's Suspiria and was left hanging after 1980's Inferno (you’ve still got time to catch up with them thank to Blue Underground's terrific DVD special editions). Dario's daughter Asia (who’s been here for her directorial efforts The Scarlet Diva and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things) stars as an archaeology student who releases a powerful witch upon the world, causing a wave of suicide and crime across Rome. Genre vets Udo Kier and Daria Nicolodi (Dario’s ex and Asia’s mother) round out the cast.

Friday, Sept. 7

Frontieres (France)

As Paris' projects burn in protest of the newly elected right-wing government, a gang of youths flee with stolen money to Luxembourg, only to encounter a mob of neo-Nazi thugs in their hotel. France has been steadily giving us ambitious genre efforts with Haute Tension, Banlieu 13, and Renaissance, so this could be promising.

Saturday, Sept. 8

George A. Romero’s Diary Of The Dead (USA)

After battling the studio system with Land Of The Dead, Romero returns to homegrown filmmaking with the fifth installment in his iconic zombie saga. A group of film students discover that the dead are rising, and create a first-person diary of their fight to survive as social order collapses. Romero lives in Toronto now, so expect him to attend.

Sunday, Sept. 9

Vexille (Japan)

An animated futuristic adventure set in 2077, where Japan has isolated itself from the rest of the world in resistance to a United Nations treaty against bioresearch. Vexille, a female U.S. Special Forces agent, infiltrates Japan to enforce the treaty, and must survive in a social and environmental hell ruled by mega-corporation and “monstrous, android worms”. I saw Legend Of The Overfiend at the first Midnight Madness programme, so all this talk of worms leaves me a bit nervous…

Monday, Sept. 10

Stuck (Canada/USA)

Stuart Gordon, the demented genius behind Re-Animator and From Beyond, makes his TIFF debut with a blackly humorous thriller based on a real-life incident. Driving home drunk after a night of partying, Brandi (American Beautys Mena Suvari) hits Tom (Neil Jordan regular Stephen Rea) with her car on her way home, and with her victim lodged in her windshield, promises to take him to a hospital. But instead, Tom finds himself left to die in her garage, and must find a way to escape.

Tuesday, Sept. 11

Sukiyaki Western Django (Japan)

Ichi The Killer mastermind Takashi Miike has subverted the horror film, the superhero genre, and the kiddie fantasy, and this year, turns his deranged eye on the western! A mysterious stranger breezes into town ala Yojimbo/A Fistful Of Dollars where two clans feud over stolen gold. The press notes promise: “Buddhist temples sit alongside saloons, samurai swords hang from gun belts and sake flows with blood”. With Quentin Tarantino among the cast!

Wednesday, Sept. 12

The Devil’s Chair (United Kingdom)

Adam Mason, a veteran of music videos and several horror films, ventures into Session 9 territory with this intense whodunit in which unstable Nick, convicted of murdering his girlfriend, is released to the care of his psychologist, who returns him and a team of students to the alleged scene of the crime—a derelict mental hospital-- to uncover what really happened.

Thursday, Sept. 13

Flash Point (Hong Kong/China)

SPLs director Wilson Yip and fight choreographer Donnie Yen unleash another adrenaline-surged ride as a rebel cop takes on a fraternity of drug dealers. When his colleague within the gang has his cover blown, both of their lives are on the line, erupting into a chain reaction of operatic violence, which, if you’ve seen Yen’s work in Iron Monkey and Hero, promise to ramp up the current state of the art.

Friday, Sept. 14

Dainipponjin/The Great Japanese (Japan)

Hitoshi Matsumoto, one of Japan's famous comedians, is bland, middle-aged Daisato, who goes through his banal life for a documentary crew who are surprised to learn of his alter-ego: a giant, tattooed superhero in purple tights and an Eraserhead ‘do who battles outrageous villains and monsters to the lament of the Japanese public, who blame him for the destruction of public property and society’s social ills. Could be the funniest superhero spoof since Miike’s Zebraman.

Saturday, Sept. 15

A L’interieur (France)

The event concludes with a psychological thriller, from the country that gave us one of the first and best: Diabolique. Pregnant widow Sarah (Alysson Paradis) is still grieving over the month’s old death of her husband when she receives an unexpected visitor on Christmas Eve, who asks to use the phone. Sarah is immediately suspicious of the caller (Betty Blues Beatrice Dalle) and calls the police. But when they arrive, there’s no trace of the stranger. Sarah locks her doors anyway, unwittingly trapping herself in the house in a battle for the life of her baby.

For more details, check out the TIFF's official page or Colin Geddes' Midnight Madness blog.

Festival Factoids

The Toronto International Film Festival has come a long way since its 1976 debut at Ontario Place as "The Festival Of Festivals", intended modestly as a showcase for titles that had already made a splash at other film festivals. Only 127 titles were screened--compare that to this year's tally:

· 349 films screened in total
· 261 features
· 91 shorts
· 234 that are world, international, or North American premieres (85%)
· 4156 Total Submissions from 55 countries
· 71 First Features
· 28 Screens
· 17 Programmes
· 29,764 Minutes of Film
· 540' Longest Film
· 2' Shortest Film
· 41 Canadian features
· 54 Canadian shorts
· 22 Canadian features making their world premiere
· 9 Installations mounted in venues across the city as part of the "Future Projections" programme
· 340,000+ admissions annually (including industry professionals and the general public)

Info courtesy of The Toronto International Film Festival Group's official site.

Movieforum Returns For TIFF 2007

Welcome back!

The kind folks at The Toronto International Film Festival have invited Movieforum back for our eighth straight year, and with the first screening only weeks away, we've resurrected our blog incarnation for daily coverage of the 32th annual Toronto International Film Festival, which officially begins Thursday, September 6, 2007.

As always, Robert J. Lewis will be our indefatigable (and over-caffeinated) Canadian correspondent from his home turf of Toronto, and your source for daily news and reviews from the earliest AM press screenings to the splashy Gala presentations, and most importantly (well, at least for him), the after-midnight premieres from such fringe iconoclasts as Dario Argento, George Romero, Takashi Miike, and Stuart Gordon, as well as behind-the-scenes industry workshops and presentations.

A complete film list by title, the Gala schedule, and the Visa Screening Room Schedule will become available on Wednesday, August 22 at noon ET. Here are few more important dates:

On Saturday, August 25, Gala (Roy Thompson Hall) and VISA Screening Room tickets (the Elgin Theatre) go on sale on the TIFF website and at the official Manulife Centre box office. Tickets are extremely limited and go fast, so prepare to be disappointed (take some comfort in that most of the Gala Presentations will find their way into theatrical release within mere months of the festival).

Tuesday, August 28: Advance order forms for pass and coupon book holders are available. Remember, it's the yellow ink for your first choice, and green for your backup.

On Friday, August 31, all advance ticket orders must be handed in at the College Park box office by 1:00 PM. Remember, it's a lottery process, so just because you get your selection envelope in early doesn't mean you'll get all your choices. Prepare to have a "B", "C", "D", and "oh, forget it!" plan, as increasingly fewer downtown screening venues make tickets even harder to acquire, even if you invested hundreds of dollars in a pass.

Thankfully, you'll be notified by e-mail about which tickets you got and those you didn't. So on Monday, September 3, you can pick up your tickets and join the first of many lines to choose replacement screenings.

On Wednesday, September 5, whatever remaining tickets there are go on sale to the general public.

And of course, on Thursday, September 6, the 32nd Annual Toronto International Film Festival begins at Roy Thompson Hall with the Opening Night Gala (and world premiere) screening of Jeremy Podeswa's Fugitive Pieces, based upon the novel by Anne Michaels.

Click here for the official site of The Toronto International Film Festival.

Updated 22/08/2007: here's the link to the complete film list and schedule.