'True Grit' a true Western with classic Coen characteristics

Joel and Ethan Coen have travelled all over the map in recent years. Their films have ranged from the dark and chillingly violent “No Country for Old Men” to earlier efforts like “Fargo” that mixed unexpected violence with folksy humour and small-town sentimentality.

Add in comedic efforts like “The Big Lebowski” and you can see the wide range these guys have.

One thing their diverse films almost always have in common though is a unique artistic approach, beautiful photography and composition that makes every frame look like a masterpiece. Within a few minutes you almost always know you’re watching a Coen bro’s movie.

That was no different in their latest effort, a remake of the 1969 Western classic “True Grit” (starring John Wayne in his only Oscar-winning role).

I haven’t seen the original film so I went in with few expectations. I wasn’t sure where they would take the story about a 14-year-old girl out to seek revenge on her father’s killer with the help of a U.S. Marshal and a Texas Ranger.

At least as far as the story line went, anyway. In terms of the look, tone and chemistry of the film though, I had a lot of expectations. It was the first time the Coens had reunited with Jeff Bridges since “The Big Lebowski” and I was interested to see whether the sparks would still fly.

I also wondered how the introduction of a 14-year-old girl as a main character in a violent Western movie would affect the tone of the film, which I was expecting to be violent and gritty.

The violence was there, but it wasn’t the central characteristic of the film. It came in a couple of sparing, but sharp, shocking bursts.

Mostly, the film was about the story – an epic tale of payback and the relationship between Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) and Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) – a bounty hunter whom she hires for his “true grit” and LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) a Texas Ranger on the trail of the same man – Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin.)

Mattie’s drive for revenge is what carries the film. It’s not hatred or anger that drives her, more a pragmatic urge to take matters into her own hands and do what’s right. Her precocious nerve, fierceness and energy drives the story and the mission and she steals almost ever scene she is in.

Bridges is good too, as the drunk, rough around the edges lawman who isn’t afraid to bend the rules. But I do wonder if Bridges isn’t getting a little too comfortable in the skin of the overweight, slobby drunks he’s been playing lately. Luckily, his hard edge and toughness comes through in the moments when it’s required, and at those times the slobby side is all but forgotten. In true Bridges form, he’s also lovable despite his unlikableness.

Damon is great as a quirky and not-that-successful Texas Ranger. He adds a bit of a comedic element to his role, which is a bit out of place. And there’s a creepy moment when Mattie wakes up and he he’s there, watching her sleep and tells her he was considering “stealing a kiss” and another where he actually spanks her.

I wish there was more of Josh Brolin. He plays such a good hard-ass tough guy, but he was barely in the film until the last 15 or 20 minutes, and even then there just wasn’t enough time or space to really explore his character.

That was really the only disappointment in the film. The story was excellent, the acting was solid and the Coens went for a true Western fell, complete with wide panoramic shots, eerie mountain scenes and perfect use of snowfall to create a cold, lonely feel.

Great movie. You should see it.

The young John Lennon was a "Nowhere Boy" (2010, directed by Sam Taylor-Wood)

John Lennon is one of those people I feel like I kind of know. Like Paul Simon or John Steinbeck, I feel like he’s revealed enough about himself in his music and writing, and I’ve been a dedicated enough follower for long enough, that I have some kind of insider status and I know things about him that other people don’t.

That’s a total misconception, of course, the kind that comes crashing down when we meet our heroes for the first time and feel a profound sense of disappointment when we find out they’re just like us – human.

I haven’t met John Lennon, obviously. But I do feel like I have a new introduction to his life through “Nowhere Boy.” The film, playing at the Bloor Cinema this week, focuses on John’s mid to late teenage years and provides a fascinating snapshot into his life.

At the beginning of the film John, played brilliantly by Aaron Johnson (believe it or not, yes, he’s the guy from “Kickass,” turns out he’s British), is a young man trying to figure out who he is.

He’s being raised by his cold, stoic aunt and his uncle, a warm and jovial fellow.
With a sudden death in the family, he has his first encounter with his estranged mother, with whom he has had no contact to until that point.

The death, the glimpse of the mysterious redhead, and the sudden realization that his mom is out there and that he should get to know her, shakes his life up in a big way.
Her love of music and carefree attitude introduce him to a new world at a time when he’s trying to figure out who he is.

Rock and roll is just starting to take the world by storm as Elvis Presley makes his mark, and the young John, who doesn’t really play any instruments, decides to form a band. Eventually George Harrison and Paul McCartney come along, and the chemistry that will create one of the greatest bands of all time, begins to develop.

There are some interesting details, like the source of the money that paid for the band’s first professional recording, and the fact John initially didn’t want Paul McCartney in the band because he was too good.

"Better with us than with someone else," says one of his band mates, convincing Lennon to change his mind.

It’s a fascinating portrait, taking just a few brief years and zooming in for a detailed illustration of young John Lennon’s life. Played expertly by Johnson, Lennon’s powerful charisma comes through. He’s also troubled and dangerous, dealing with dark demons in his life and struggling to reconcile the way he was raised with the wild in his blood.

Johnson, even though he looks nothing like Lennon, is convincing, describing how that emotional struggle, charisma, raw talent and artistic hunger could come together to create a force like John Lennon.

Paul, though his role is much smaller in the movie, is also well played by Thomas Sangster – who also looks nothing like McCartney. His gentler manner and more refined musical skills play well off Lennon and the two form an unlikely bond.

The film just barely hints at tension between the two as they jostle as co-leaders of the young group.

I’ve read that McCartney is mad that Sangster is shorter than Lennon in the film, since that wasn’t the case in reality. He also says the film captures the essence of the young John Lennon, but that not everything in the film actually happened.

Sam Taylor-Wood has created an interesting, compelling look into Lennon’s little-known younger years, and I recommend this film for any Beatles fan – so yes, basically everyone.

Dark and gritty 'Dragon Tattoo' film has teeth (directed by Niels Arden Oplev, 2009)

There’s been a ton of hype surrounding "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." For a while the book (by Stieg Larsson) by the same name was pretty much everywhere, and the film, released hot on its heels, has also generated a lot of excitement.

That surprised me a little. It’s pretty rare to go to Blockbuster in search of a foreign film (made in Sweden), with subtitles, and find that all 20 copies are rented.

That just doesn’t happen, and it speaks to the popularity of the three-part book series and the films.

After watching the movie last night (I haven’t read the book) I’m still a little surprised. Don’t get me wrong, the film was awesome, but it didn’t have any major stars, was entirely shot in Sweden, in Swedish.

What it did have was a gripping, thrilling storyline that scared the heck out of me, solid unpretentious acting, and a simple, gritty narrative that relies on the story rather than CGI or Hollywood clichés to make a mark.

The story focuses on Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a once-respected journalist who has been convicted of libel, and has six months to kill before serving his sentence.

He is approached by a wealthy businessman named Henrik Vanger, and asked to spend that time turning his investigative skills to the unsolved disappearance of his niece, who went missing 40 years ago.

Along the way Blomkvist enlists the help of the beautiful, but darkly troubled Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a tattoo’d and pierced hacker who was initially hired to investigate Blomkvist’s background, before Vanger brought him on.

Her illicit skills, paired with Blomkvist’s investigative skills, allow the team to turn up new clues in the mysterious investigation set mostly on the Vanger’s creepy island estate.

Rapace and Nyqvist are both pitch perfect in their roles, very different people united by their connection to the girl’s disappearance and their commitment to seeing the investigation through – and their ability to draw the characters into their lives.

Great writing and direction get a lot of credit for that too though.
Another reason I was surprised by the success of this film here, is the graphic nature of some of the scenes. I’m guessing a lot of people who saw it aren’t used to the boundary-pushing of European cinema, and were probably caught off guard. We were.

There are three scenes of sexual abuse or violence that were pretty shocking, and definitely won’t make it into the American version, which is apparently now in casting. (Allegedly Ellen Page is a contender to play Lisbeth, which in my opinion would be a bad choice. And Angelina Jolie was apparently sought before the remembered she’s way too old. Sidenote: isn’t it lame that big American movies always have to have the hot star of the moment? Rapace is awesome in this role because you’ve never seen her before and have no preconceived notions or baggage.)

I definitely recommend this film, but know what you’re getting into. It’s dark and graphic and not for everyone.

One really interesting sidenote is that none of the three books (The other two are The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest) in the trilogy were published until after Larsson died in 2004. According to Wiki he wrote them for pleasure, as a hobby, and made no attempt to publish them until just before he died.

'Defendor' (2009) directed by Peter Stebbings

I watched ‘Defendor’ last night. Pretty interesting movie. I admit I fell asleep a couple of times but that was mainly because I was beat, and is no reflection on the film.

The film stars Woody Harrelson as Arthur Poppington, a self-styled super hero whose main weapons include a metal-studded trench club, handfuls of marbles and small jars of angry, agitated hornets.

His life’s work is protecting the vulnerable and beating up the bad guys. He also likes to rehearse ahead of time the one-liners he delivers to the bad guys.

Something’s not quite right with Defendor (note, that’s Defendor, not Defender). Based on a couple of flashbacks, his mother seems to have been a drug-addicted prostitute who may have been forced to abandon him at a young age, leaving him to be raised by his grandfather.

As a boy, Arthur asks his grandfather when his mother is coming home. He explains that she never is, that drug dealers got her -- “captains of industry” as he refers to them sardonically.

Sometime after that conversation, Poppington invents his ‘Defendor’ alter-ego and dedicated himself to tracking down ‘Captain Industry’ – his nemesis.

The problem is, Captain Industry doesn’t exist, at least he doesn’t up until Poppington befriends Kat Debrofkowitz (Kat Dennings) a down-on-her-luck prostitute who needs to lay low for a few days to avoid an angry pimp, and ends up staying with Poppington.

Kat has her own troubled past to deal with, and the two develop a weird semi co-dependent relationship, based mainly on the fact that Kat lies to Defendor, telling him she knows who Captain Industry is and where he can be found. The rest of the film focuses on his mission to track him down and get revenge.

Defendor’s unswerving commitment to his task is respectable. He doesn’t really get scared, and seems to be willing to take on any challenge, no matter how impossible, even though he usually loses on some level. He’s sort of a heroic loser, I guess, which is a twist on a superhero movie and makes this film really interesting.

And Harrelson is awesome in the role, really convincing and totally committed to the character to the point where you don’t see Woody, you see Defendor.

Another cool thing is that the film was shot in Hamilton, Ont., of all places. Gritty, grim, industrial wasteland Hamilton makes a perfect backdrop for the movie.

One other nice surprise was seeing Clark Johnson as Capt. Fairbanks of the local police. Johnson played city editor Gus Haynes in The Wire and it was almost like seeing an old friend.

This is a good film with a simple but interesting story. I definitely recommend it.

Hockey players, farmers and pickup trucks

At first I didn’t think I was going to like Jeff Lemire’s Tales From the Farm (Essex County Vol 1). It was roughly drawn, sparse and somewhat jarring. The characters were all harsh lines and contrast, and the dialogue was simple and abrupt.

But a few pages into the graphic novel and I had completely forgotten all those criticisms and was fully focused on the simple but gripping story, recommended to me by Dan Brown.

Set in Essex County in Southwestern Ontario, the story focuses on the goofy, highly imaginative boy Lester (think Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, but without the cuteness and with a bleak chicken farm as the setting) and his uncle Ken, who is raising him following his mother’s death.

Ken is a single, hard working, old-school farmer doing his best to raise a child and thereby keep a promise to his dead sister. Lester, who wears a mask and cape for most

of the book, feels like he’s more of an obligation than a loved one, and their relationship is tense.

"Hey Les, Hockey Night in Canada’s on…two to one for Boston, second period, wanna watch with me?” Ken asks one night after dinner.

"…Nah,” Les replies, then disappears into the basement to watch the game on his own.

It’s sad and a little uncomfortable to read this kind of relational grappling between two people not really equipped for the relationship they’re thrust into.

But in increments, little by little, you become more comfortable as a reader as Lemire reveals the deeper truths behind the relationship and you get fully drawn in without even realizing that it’s happening.

There’s simplicity in the storytelling and sparseness to the drawings that combine to tell a powerful but simple story that’s revealed through a few characters, a farm and a country gas station.

If you’ve ever lived in the country or been around farmers or small town hockey players, this story will resonate. If not, that’s ok too; I think you’ll still like it.

I'm looking forward to reading the next two installments in the series.

The Lines We Choose... another year's Banff Mountain FIlm Festival

Once again the Banff Mountain Film Festival has left me feeling inspired and motivated and ready for the next trip/adventure.

Katie and I went on Friday night, the first of a three-night run at the Bloor Cinema.

Most years, there is a feature-length film and half a dozen shorter offerings. But this year that wasn’t the case. There were several films around the 30-minute mark and another four or five 10-minute or less films.

I’m not sure which format I prefer. This way you get to see more films, but you miss out on the longer films, which are often the most memorable.

Either way, it was still a great show this year. Two films in particular stand out in my mind.

"Committed 2: Walk of Life" was a fantastic rock climbing film. It focuses on James Pearson’s attempt to climb a massive, blank, near-featureless chunk of rock on the ocean coast of Devon, in the U.K.

He becomes obsessed with climbing this wall, and won’t rest until his goal is
accomplished.

He begins by knocking out all the old bolts left behind by other climbers over the years. “It looks like it has a new lease on life,” he says, once the hardware is all removed and lying in a huge pile at the base.

There’s a definite sense of attachment between Pearson and the cliff.

He also seems serious and determined and capable, but also humble and low-key. There is none of the death-defying heart-stopping showboating of Chris Sharma, none of the jokey charisma and character of Didier. Pearson just climbs. Even his style is humble and understated and often not all that pretty to watch.

But what he accomplishes is spectactular.

And the film itself (check out the trailer here) is shot in a way that suggests the story, the reality of this challenge, is enough. It’s simplistic in its style and grandiose in its content, which is a really rare and cool combination. It works really well.

It’s one of those films where the audience is so behind the subject, that at times spontaneous applause is irresistible.

The second film that has really stuck in my mind is “Signatures: Canvas of Snow.” It’s a snowboarding, skiing and “noboarding” (more about that later) film that feels more like a moving painting or a filmic graphic novel set in the snow mountainous forests of Japan with a wicked soundtrack.

I’m usually disappointed with the snowboarding films at the BMFF. They’re usually high on shocking jumps and cliff drops and spectacular crashes and straight-lines, but low on creativity and artistic direction in terms of the look and feel of the films.

This was different. The film, edited down from a full-length (which I. Will. Own.) is just stunning to watch.

It focuses on skiers and riders whose connection to winter goes beyond what they can do on snow but encompasses their whole lifestyle.

The film’s website describes it like this: “In Japan there is a cultural connection to the different Signatures of our terrestrial home – a sense that the rhythm of fall, winter, spring, summer, influences the rhythm of the person, their energy, their riding style, and the lines they choose.

That’s no exaggeration. The riders seem to belong in the dense forests, heavy laden with fresh snow, mind-numbing powder and winter storms that make up the canvas of this film.

One of the riders is Atsushi Gomyo, who says traditional snowboards are too restrictive, cutting off the connection to the snow. Therefore, he cuts and shapes his own binding-less snowboards, and has perfected an effortless style of carving through deep powder that looks like a dream.

It’s just beautiful to watch and reminds me of how much I miss snowboarding in real mountains.

A soundtrack featuring the mellow tones of Jon Swift makes this film that much better.

Inspired…

What's your "Lost City of Z"?

I sat down a couple weeks ago to write about “The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon.” But I ended up getting caught up in reminisces and memories of travels and adventures and my own obsession with foreign places, and had written an entire blog entry by the time I realized I hadn’t written a word about “Z.”

I’d say that’s a pretty good recommendation for the book.

In “Z,” David Grann, a staff writer at the New Yorker, tracks the life and travels of Percy Fawcett, a British adventurer and explorer who became obsessed with finding a mythical El Dorado in the Amazon, that he dubbed “Z.”

Fawcett, with the help of the Royal Geographic Society, spent much of his life searching for the city – and the proof he needed to prove his theory that an advanced, rich civilization once existed in the region.

In the end, he disappeared into that wilderness with his son in 1925 and was never heard from again. Dozens of groups went after them, giving legs to the already sensational and wildly publicized story, and many of them never made it back either.

Whether they were murdered by hostile natives, starved to death in the harsh "counterfeit paradise" of the Amazon, or died from illness, has never been firmly determined.

Fawcett was considered one of the toughest explorers to have ever set foot in the jungle and he knew the region well. As a result the mystery surrounding his disappearance has gripped imaginations for three-quarters of a century.


A number of books and movies have been made – including a new one starring Brad Pitt (which is why he’s been sporting that ratty beard for so long). He was even a character in “Tintin and the Wooden Ear.” Herge imagined him as a grizzled old fellow who had given up on society and decided to live out his days in the Amazon simply because he liked it better.

But it seems as though no one has come as close to solving the mystery as Grann.

Through meticulous research, unprecedented access to Fawcett’s journals and papers, face to face interviews with some of his family members -- and even retracing his steps -- he has put together a fascinating map of Fawcett’s life and work. He even unravelled, he believes, the mystery of Fawcett’s true route on his final journey.

I usually get pretty bored with biographies but I couldn’t put it down. There was something about the way Grann brought Fawcett back to life, and the way he seemed to get inside his head to truly understand what it was like to be him, that was fascinating.

It was also sad. He sacrificed so much and left so many people behind in the pursuit of his dream. And I think that’s why he fought so hard in the end, even to the point where it cost his own life and his son’s. The fear of failing, after giving up so much, was worse than the fear of death, for him.

Grann brings all this in a sensitive, compelling manner. Most impressively, he even manages to uncover new, important details about Fawcett’s work, and his Lost City of Z.

It’s all “Up in the Air,” really

I really wanted to love “Up in the Air” starring George Clooney and directed by Jason Reitman. I had pretty high expectations and wanted the movie to be great. I guess I was hoping it would be one of those rare occasions when Clooney veers away from the comfortable, status quo characters he usually plays, and does something different.

I’m thinking of “O Brother Where Art Thou” as an example of what he’s capable of when he breaks the mold.

I don’t know why I thought that was a realistic possibility, since everything I had heard about UITA made it sound like his character was as close to the real Clooney as possible.

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man who travels and works constantly, is smooth and successful, slick and well-dressed and has no visible attachments. He even delivers motivational speeches under the title “What’s in Your Backpack?” which extol the virtues of living an unencumbered lifestyle.

In this film, as pretty much everyone knows by now since the hype has been huge (nominated for Best Picture etc.), Clooney plays a professional downsizer. His company is hired out by other companies to swoop in and deliver bad news to employees while making it sound as much like good news as possible.

"Anyone who has ever built an empire or changed the world has sat exactly where you are sitting" is one of his favourite lines for the newly-unemployed.



While he realizes that his work is pretty low on the moral register, he strives to infuse it with as much dignity and respect as possible. He seems to truly care about the people he is firing and wants to help them deal with it – at least for the 15 minutes he is sitting across from them.

After that, he’ll never see them again and is seems clear he rarely gives them a second thought after they walk out the door.

When a young over-achieving upstart, appropriately named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) joins his company and tries to do away with the road-warriors like Clooney, replacing them with call-centre style webcam downsizers, Clooney is forced to demonstrate the value of his work.

He takes her on the road and shows her why people deserve to be fired in person.

I was disappointed with this movie. While I liked the way the film was shot, with an interesting mix of documentary-style footage of people reacting to being fired and interesting airplane and airport scenes, overall it was pretty underwhelming.

While Kendrick is convincing most of the time (nominated for best supporting actress) there’s one terrible scene where she starts crying in a hotel lobby, waving her hands around in the air in a really unconvincing way. It’s pretty ridiculous.

Also, neither Katie nor I sensed the chemistry that was supposed to exist between Clooney and a fellow road-warrior (Alex, played by Vera Farmiga who also got a best supporting actress nom) whom he meets in a hotel bar, and continues to rendezvous with in meet-ups around the country.

She tells him she’s a female version of himself, and makes it clear there are no strings attached.

Seems like a good idea at the time, but this relationship ends up serving as a metaphor for Bingham’s life and the emptiness he has filled it with. In fact, what helped salvage the story for us, was the way this relationship plays out and the eventual realization that everything Bingham loves and values in his life, means nothing.

While most of the film glamourized his lifestyle, the final scenes reveal where his choices have taken him and what all those Air Miles really add up to in the end.

Camper vans and hitch-hiking...

I’ve been thinking a lot about maps lately. Well, maybe not so much maps, as what they represent – the idea of an adventure, an exploration in a place you don’t know very well.

That’s always been an exciting concept for me. I remember when I was a little kid, too young to go anywhere on my own, I’d read books like “On the Road” and lie awake at night dreaming about hitchhiking out west, travelling to Alaska or living in Banff.

I managed to do two out of three eventually. Then years later, even after I’d had some pretty awesome adventures, I’d listen to the trains rumbling by my little cottage on the Lake Ontario shore in Port Hope, and I’d wish so bad that I was on one, going somewhere, anywhere.

I remember one night a train was stopped on the trestle near my house (the drivers would stop the train and run down the embankment to KFC sometimes late at night) and I saw a half open boxcar and was so close to hopping in.

Part of me has always regretted not doing it. I think I would have ended up in Montreal or maybe Halifax, which would have been cool.

I’m less restless now. That’s a good thing since I’m married and all. And also because staying in one place for more than a year or two has been good for my career.

But sometimes I still get the urge to just go.

Tonight and the last couple of weeks I’ve felt that. Maybe it’s the warm weather or the thought of booking some vacation time.

Or maybe it’s that mention of the Traveling Wilburys in Matt’s blog the other day, which got me thinking about The Highwaymen (both are awesome road-tripping bands, btw).

Or it could be the conversation my friend Chris and I had about Volkswagen Westfalia vans on Monday night. We both love them and our conversations often track in that direction.

We were talking about how much fun it would be to buy a van in California, Oregon, Washington or B.C. maybe, then get acquainted with it on the long trip home to Toronto.

That would be awesome. And guess what? Katie likes the idea too. She's never done the cross-Canada drive and is pretty excited about doing it some day. Maybe it will happen. Of course, that would likely mean I probably can’t get a vintage pickup truck, which is another thing I really want…

Okay I’m just rambling now. I actually sat down to write about “The Lost City of Z,” a book I just finished reading. It’s about an obsessed traveller and explorer named Percy Fawcett. That’s what got me started writing about maps and adventures.

I’ll write a little book review about “Z” soon. It’s a good one.

"Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno" (Serge Bromberg, 2009)

"Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno" is a film about an unfinished film. And in a way, the project helps serve to complete the original film, which has sat collecting dust for decades.

The first incarnation of “Inferno” was written, produced and directed by legendary French filmmaker Henri Georges Clouzot. It was a dark, experimental project that intended to tell the story of a husband (Serge Reggiani) who becomes obsessively jealous and suspicious that his young, beautiful wife (Romy Schneifer) is having an affair.

Newlyweds, they take over a small lakeside hotel in the country, just net to a massive train trestle that spans the nearby river.

As his paranoia grows, his jealousy becomes linked to the trains that cross the bridge. The rumble from the steel structure, the whistle, the smoke, all seem to trigger his fits of jealous rage.

These moments of insanity are rendered using what was at the time, cutting edge lighting, sound and special effects techniques that Clouzot and his crew essentially invented for the film.

It’s fantastic. His paranoia is illustrated perfectly when certain phrases or bits of conversation -- real or imagined – begin to repeat themselves mercilessly in his head, the tempo speeding up and slowing down like a wind sprint.

In other moments, the camera stays on Romy for long, mesmerizing shots, where she seems to dance for the camera using little more than facial expressions. Tricks of lighting make her face appear as if it is almost changing shape in these moments.



In another long, eerie scene she is pouring sparkling water from a bottle into a glass. As it overflows she laughs and continues to pour. The scene is strange but riveting, even though nothing really happens.

That’s sort of the story of this film about a film. Despite having American backing, in the form of an unlimited budget and timeline from Columbia Pictures, high-ranking French cinema stars and the best crews available, nothing really happened.

Clouzot seemed to get lost in the details, spending endless time, energy and money on mere moments of the film, or on meticulous storyboards and technical specs for every single frame.

In the end he lost track of the story and vision that should have tied the narrative and special effects together. In the end he drove away one of his stars, frustrated the crew and drove himself to a heart attack.

The new film – I hesitate to call it a documentary because so much of it comprises the original footage – pieces together a lot of the mistakes and tracks the lack of direction and communication that seemed to plague the project, mostly through interviews with many involved with the film.

It also explores Clouzot’s brilliance through interviews with those he worked closely with and by showing exhaustively the original footage, test shots, experiments and even out-takes from the five abandoned canisters of film Clouzot left behind.

Bromberg says the inspiration for the film was borne when he was trapped in an elevator with Clouzot’s widow for several hours, by chance, and he was able to question her about the intriguing unfinished project, a sort of “Titanic” of its time.

I hope she considers the new film to be tribute to her husband’s legacy and not a criticism of it. Yes, at times the film seems critical of Clouzot’s almost maniacal directing style, which is almost a mirror image of the film’s obsessed character. But the real service is that Bromberg came as close as anyone could to finishing the film.

He even has actors script read the scenes that were never shot, helping to fill out the missing pieces – a technique that works amazingly well in this film.

This film may not appeal to a wide audience, and it’s definitely targeted at true cinephiles. But as someone who doesn’t know much about French cinema but still likes a good yarn and appreciates innovative film-making, I was pretty riveted and was glad I got to see it – if only for the crazy-weird scenes and fantastic special effects that look like they could have been shot yesterday.

"Makers" by Cory Doctorow (2009)

I like what Cory Doctorow is all about. He’s an advocate for file sharing and fewer and less stringent copyright laws. He is a prolific and acclaimed science fiction writer, a diplomacy expert and intellectual who never graduated university, a generally creative person and someone who seems to fight for what he believes in.

I like the fact that he (according to Wikipedia and based on the tone of his new book “Makers”) believes companies should own the rights to sell their products, but that anyone who wants to share them after purchase should be able to do so.

And I like that he seems to live this out, essentially giving “Makers” away as a serial.

I also like that he wrote a book ("Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town") that is set in Toronto’s Kensington Market and whose main character is the son of mixed parents – a washing machine and a mountain.

And he's Canadian too.

But I wasn’t crazy about his latest book – which is also the only one I’ve read. I was excited about the concept, though. It's set in the near future and focuses on two indie-minded inventor geniuses (Perry and Lester). They take the discarded tech junk the world has tossed out and turn it into cool, useful stuff.

I myself have a sometimes-bad habit of scavenging old junk from the ends of people’s driveways in order to turn it into other cool stuff, which I think might be partly why the concept resonated with me.

Their world, it seems, is a nightmare vision of what ours probably will become. Mass-produced consumer Wal-Mart culture has gone too far, and the thousands of ubiquitous strip malls, big box stores and fast food restaurants -- the byproduct of that consumerism -- have essentially imploded. By sheer volume, it seems, they have been devalued to the point where almost nothing is worth anything.

So Perry and Lester take the worthless junk, which is available by the truckload (Tickle-Me-Elmo’s are one such item) and hack it. They start a movement, inadvertently, that becomes known as New Work, and is documented by Suzanne Church, a tech reporter who joins their little rebellion.

Eventually, their movement morphs into something else. Now jaded, the two inventors create an interactive, almost amusement park-style "ride," where riders can add, change or remove features based on what they like and don't like. The more people that take part, the deeper the becomes, and a story begins to emerge in the ride that begins to develop a following all its own – and Lester and Perry once again become the unlikely, unwitting fathers of a massive, worldwide movement.

They also help give heart and vibrancy to a shantytown of castoffs from the soulless culture they live in.

And of course along the way they make enemies -- the main one being the Walt Disney Corporation.

Like I said, I really appreciate the concept here: A futuristic society that’s close enough that we can easily identify with it, a believable mixture of products, technology and terminology we know, and a selection of other stuff invented and imagined by Doctorow, most of which is both fantastical and believable all at once.

I also liked the clever inventions Perry and Lester create, and their organic style of inventing.

But I didn’t like everything. For one thing the book felt way too long. I really had to fight to get through the last third. It got to the point where I felt he had made his point, but just kept belabouring it, on and on and on until I found it hard to care.

Oddly, Goth culture plays into this story too. And I found his descriptions and understanding of that sub-culture group a little awkward.

For one thing, in the book Disney has dedicated an entire section of Disney World to all things Goth. And they come in droves to explore it and experience it. They love it. That just doesn’t sound realistic to me, but then I don’t know that much about the culture to say for sure.

Also, it can be argued that the heroes of the book sell out, big time, along the way, something that just didn’t seem to fit with the way their character had been portrayed for most of the book.

In the end this book is a great concept with smart ideas and pretty decorations, but with so-so writing and humdrum storytelling.

"Invisible City" (2009 directed by Hubert Davis)

This week I went to see “Invisible City,” a documentary about Toronto’s Regent Park.

While we were there, my friend Jed told me that he had heard others who had seen the film say they couldn’t believe this place was in downtown Toronto. It wasn't that they were shocked by the poverty or the quality of the housing or anything like that, but just that it looked so unfamiliar.

And it’s true, Regent Park is one of those places that people in this city drive through all the time, but that few people ever have reason to explore. And for that reason, it really is an “Invisible City” – everyone knows it’s there, everyone knows its reputation, but to the vast majority of Torontonians, it doesn’t really exist.

We saw the film at The Royal, where a three-day run was extended by two nights due to the huge response and large crowds that attended.

The film, directed by Academy Award-nominee Hubert Davis in 2009, follows the lives of two young men, Mikey and Kendell, over the course of several years as they come of age in Regent Park.

As their lives are changing, so is their community. Canada’s oldest housing project is in the midst of a major “Revitalization” that is meant to transform it from a planned ghetto community to a so-called mixed housing community.

Phase One of the development is underway at the beginning of the film, with some of the buildings being torn town and a massive hole excavated for the condo-style buildings that are meant to replace them.

The boys are finishing up their time at Nelson Mandela Park Public School and getting ready for high school. Since Regent doesn’t have it’s own high school, the boys get sent to schools outside of their community.

Mikey and Kendell face challenges both in their community and outside, at high school. Mikey attends a wealthy high school in Midtown Toronto where he seems alienated and out of place. Kendell struggles with the discipline required by the basketball team he joins at his new school, where the coach says they bring in players from Regent to add toughness and edge to their team.

Both of the boys live with their mothers, their fathers largely or entirely absent from their lives. Both struggle with making the right choices, dealing with anger and pressure from friends and tension with police. Their mothers struggle with trying to connect with their boys, protect and encourage them, while also being tough when they need to.

One constant for both is Ainsworth, a former CFL player who is their teacher at Nelson Mandela. He seems to understand the boys and their need for positive role models, and sticks with them over the years, staying in their lives, checking in and dispensing wisdom and friendship when he can.

"Someone once said everyone needs someone in their life that they don’t want to disappoint,” he says at one point -- not grandstanding, just being honest about his motivation.

There is a little bit of hope in this film and quite a lot of heartbreak as the camera sensitively follows the boys’ struggles and challenges as they work out the kind of lives they want to live, the kind of men they want to be. Both are handled sensitively and without judgment.

It’s obvious that Davis earned their trust – something that takes time and commitment in Regent Park. The boys speak to him honestly and openly about their struggles, mistakes and the forces at work in their lives, opening up a window into their hearts.

The film is also just beautiful to watch, accurately and artistically rendering the unique community that is Regent Park, a separate, and invisible, city within the city.

"One Week" reminds me of epic road trips and the Terry Fox memorial (2008 starring Joshua Jackson, director Michael McGowan)

For anyone who has ever road-tripped the Trans Canada from Toronto to B.C., “One Week” evokes a feeling of familiarity and nostalgia through its blatant, unapologetic use of the tacky, cheesy, awesome landmarks that serve as milestones along the way.

In the movie, Ben Tyler (Joshua Jackson) visits various over-sized items during a cross-country motorcycle journey, including a giant Muskoka chair, the big nickel in Sudbury, Kenora’s giant musky, the world’s largest teepee and a giant T-rex, to name a few.

If you’ve ever travelled that amazing stretch of road, you’ll know those memorable spots that make up our collective Canadian roadmap. Like the Inukshuk of the Arctic, they are used by travellers as waypoints that help break up that long journey into manageable sections.

And if you’re anything like me, you can’t watch this movie without remembering the time and place in your life when you were at one or two of those landmarks.

In “One Week” Tyler has it all together. He’s engaged to a beautiful girl (Liane Balaban of “New Waterford Girl”), has a good job as a teacher and has a great family. When he learns suddenly and unexpectedly that he has a bad case of cancer, that world comes crashing down around him and he decides he needs to just get away.

Not run away, so much as spend some time on his own, on the open road, figuring things out the way everyone should, on a vintage Norton motorcycle. It’s something he just has to do before beginning an intense course of chemotherapy that’s going to sideline him for possibly years.

What was planned to be a journey of only a couple of days becomes an epic trek as he finds himself unable to turn around.

I was skeptical about this movie. It just seemed like such a blatant, cheesy appeal to Canadian national pride and the premise was just too cliché and obvious.

And it is all of those things, definitely. I mean, seriously, he kisses the Stanley Cup, smokes a joint with a wisdom-dispensing Gord Downie, and rolls-up-the-rim on his Timmies.

But it’s still a great movie.

The story is well told, the dialogue is believable and compelling, and the narration (which I normally find is used to fill in the holes the director left behind) in this case helps add detail and depth to the story and never feels contrived.


And the footage shot along the way tells the story of Canada, from Toronto to Lake Superior and Northwestern Ontario, the Prairies, to the Rockies and West Coast. The crew, which travelled cross-Canada in a giant bus and shot guerrilla-style, must have had to make constant stops to shoot all the cool things along the way.

The director, first-timer Michael McGowan, said he wanted to shoot the obvious icons of that journey but also the lesser known ones, like the world’s largest photo mosaic in Muskoka and a giant pipe somewhere else.

He accomplishes this, painting a portrait of Canada that is both familiar and sentimental, but also new and inspiring.

He also seems to have an honest insight into how it might feel to receive the kind of news that Ben got. On one hand, he’s a broken man, unsure of what to do or how to live his suddenly shortened life.

On the other, he experiences a weird sense of relief. He admits the first thought that went through his head when he got the news was that he had an excuse to call off the wedding. And there’s a freedom to suddenly do what he wants and be the person he feels he might have been if he could live his life over again.

I liked this movie, but I couldn’t help wondering, would anyone outside of Canada ever watch it, or ‘get’ it? I know Joshua Jackson has a pretty big following largely due to his “Might Ducks” and “Dawson’s Creek” roles, but I couldn’t imagine many people outside of our borders wanting to see it besides the die-hard Pacey freaks.

But we were watching the special features (yup, embarrassing I know) and there was a Q and A with Jackson and McGowan from a Toronto showing, and that question came up. Someone wanted to know how they thought it would be received elsewhere.

Jackson has a really good answer. He challenged the question, suggesting only Canadians would ever worry if a film was ‘too Canadian.’ He said a U.S. or British filmmaker would never ask that question.

"It’s not too Canadian, it’s just Canadian,” Jackson said.

I like that. And I like this movie. If you’re a proud Canadian, a die-hard Pacey or knuckle puck fan, or if you just like a good road-trip movie, I recommend this one.

**There were some funny references to Jackson’s past work. He meets an NHL hockey player wearing a “Ducks” jersey, and at another point he’s asked where “Dawson” street is. I liked the fact they were willing to have fun with this story and didn’t take it too seriously.

***When Jackson, a hardcore Canucks fan, kisses the Stanley Cup, he kisses the 1966-67 engraving – the last time the Maple Leafs won the cup. Nice touch.

**** ALSO, and this is the last thing I’ll say, Joel Plaskett makes an awesome cameo as a Toronto busker.

Still loving Tintin after all these years

I’ve been reading a lot of Tintin books lately. Katie bought me four or five a couple of months ago and I got four more for Christmas.

I finished reading the last one, Tintin and The Seven Crystal Balls, today. It was a rare to-be-continued ending. Annoying, but at least it gives me a good reason to go buy The Prisoners of the Sun to find out what happens next.

I'm planning to collect the entire series, but here is a list of the ones I now own:


- Cigars of the Pharaoh
- The Blue Lotus
- The Broken Ear
- The Crab with the Golden Claws
- The Secret of the Unicorn
- The Castafiore Emerald
- Tintin in Tibet
- Destination Moon

My aunt Sandy and uncle Dave, whose son Scott, my cousin, is about 10 years older than me, used to pass on a lot of his old books to me when I was a kid. Among them were classics like “Lost in the Barrens” and “Curse of the Viking Grave” – which I’ve mentioned in past blogs -- and a bunch of Asterix and Tintin books.

Not quite graphic novels, not quite comic books, the Tintin installments are more like short adventure novels with illustrations. Both Asterix and Tintin fit that rare genre of books that are meant primarily for kids, but are accessible to adults on a whole different level.

Or maybe I’m trying to be way too deep or sentimental here, and the simple fact is that I love adventure stories and comic books and Tintin combines both. The writing is smart and clever and you can read them over and over again. They’re the kind of books you want to keep in your collection forever, so that your own kids can one day appreciate how awesome they are.

Tintin, the central character, is a young Belgian reporter who finds himself embroiled in all kinds of sleuthing adventures, travelling around the world to unravel mysteries of science, history and politics.

His fox terrier Snowy and a cast of characters that includes, off and on, the loyal but troublesome Captain Haddock, the bumbling detectives Thompson and Thomson, and the hard-of-hearing Professor Calculus, always accompany him.


The books were written by Georges Rémi Under the pen name Herge. Apparently he became famous for his trademark simplistic, minimalist style of illustration. That makes sense. Reading his books you appreciate how much he can convey with simple, uncluttered illustrations.

Wikipedia says the series first appeared in a Belgian newspaper as a comic strip in 1929, but became so popular it was soon released in book form, and a movie and theatre show were also created.

And I’m excited that Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, is slated for release in 2010, with Jamie Bell playing Tintin alongside Daniel Craig as Red Rackham and Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock. Steven Spielberg is directing. The movie is probably the reason why Tintin books are once again back on the shelves and easy to find. I’m happy about that.

Anyone out there a Tintin fan? Any ideas why these books are so popular?

“The Warriors” can’t sleep ‘til Coney Island (1979, directed by Walter Hill)

“The Outsiders” – first the book and then the movie – made me and pretty much every other adolescent boy want to be in a gang. It just seemed so cool to be a member of a tight-knit group of hoods with hearts who always had each other’s back.

As you grow up it steadily gets drilled into your head that gangs are bad and any decent human being wants nothing to do with them – but still I think most guys, deep down, like the idea of being associated with a group of dangerous people who look out for each other.

The opening scenes of “The Warriors,” which was playing at the Bloor Cinema this week, evoked that same feeling. The Warriors, a gang of seven or eight guys from Coney Island, have travelled across the city to Prospect Park in the Bronx for a gathering of all the city’s syndicates.

Cyrus, the “one and only” leader of the Gramercy Riffs, the city’s largest and most powerful gang, wants to unite them all under one banner, saying they would outnumber the police three to one and could have the run of the city.

The first five minutes of the movie is a massive montage of gangs wearing their ‘colours’ and making their way to the meet. Some of them, like the Warriors, wear leather vests embossed with their emblem. Others are a little more creative, like the Furies, who paint their faces in garish colours, wear baseball uniforms and carry bats, and another group that wears hillbilly outfits.

Shortly after the gangs gather, the plot is laid out. A crazy gang member named Luther (David Patrick Kelly) shoots Cyrus in the middle of his speech, then blames the Warriors.

The Riffs – a scary gang of martial-arts trained black dudes (I kept waiting for Kareem Abdul Jabar to come out) -- put a bounty on the Warriors and the members spend the rest of the movie desperately trying to get home under the leadership of Swan (Michael Beck), their “war chief.”

One thing my friend Phil and I both said was that we expected to laugh more. Not that we thought it would be funny, but we did think it would be slightly ridiculous. But that wasn’t really the case. The director and the actors – none of whom I could name and only one or two I recognized – treated this film really seriously. Sometimes that can look really cheesy and dated 30 years on, but in this case it didn’t.

First of all, the suspense works. For about the first third of the film there’s a palpable sense of tension as the Warriors try to survive, deciding when to run and when to stay and fight, racing or “bopping” (fighting) through subway stations, on platforms and through tunnels.

Other times they’re roaming through eerily silent parks, cemeteries or empty, creepy strange neighbourhoods, always on the lookout for the next gang trying to take them out.

You get the feeling this is the New York that exists for strangers at night who have no place to go home to. It’s cold and harsh and you have to watch out.

I love this vision of the city. It’s so different from the usual images of New York – Times Square, Ground Zero, Central Park. This is the non-touristy NYC , and the camera’s explore gritty neighbourhoods and cityscapes in a really refreshing way.

Coney Island, with its ramshackle houses and broken down amusement park – with its awesome Wonder Wheel -- is one of the most compelling canvases in the film.

"Is this what we fought all night to get back to?” one of the Warriors asks as they ramble through their own turf at dawn, finally home, to safety – they think.
This film could have just petered out, but it ends strongly with the kind of justice you hope to see in a movie where the “good” guys have spent most of their screen time running away.

All in all, this movie works really well. The acting, by a huge cast of virtual nobodies, is strong, the dialogue is really interesting and almost poetic at times (these gang members are almost artsy) but not cheesy.

I just went to New York, but this movie makes me want to go back and see a little different side this time around. Maybe there’s a Warriors” subway tour I could take. Hmm, or maybe I could make one!

If you can find this film, it’s definitely worth watching. The print we saw was scratchy and the sound was a little fuzzy, and you could almost feel the ghosts of the thousands of people that have probably sat in theatres just like the Bloor and watched that very copy of the movie. That made the experience even cooler.

**A quick IMDB search seems to say there’s a remake of this in pre-production for 2010. That would be cool, or terrible, depending.

"Moon" is awesome but Kevin Spacey still sucks ("Moon," 2009, directed by Duncan Jones)

Kevin Spacey sucks. Lets just get that out of the way right off the bat. In my opinion he hasn’t done a good movie since “American Beauty.”

He was my least favourite part of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” and he was also my least favourite part of “Moon” starring him and Sam Rockwell, which I watched last night. But I’m happy to say his role was minor enough that he didn’t have too detrimental an effect and the movie was still pretty amazing.

But wait a minute, why am I starting a blog about a movie I loved with the one part I didn’t? Let me start over:

"Moon" stars Sam Rockwell as astronaut Sam Bell, and Kevin Spacey as Gerty, the Hal-like (Think “2001: A Space Odyssey”) computer/robot assistant who keeps him company on the moon.

Sam is nearing the end of his three-year contract running a fuel-mining station on the far side of the moon, and is looking forward to going home to see his wife and young daughter.

The film is set in the future (though it’s not clear how far) and is entirely set on the moon. The inside of the station is mostly cold and industrial. Sam’s messy quarters, a room where he prunes and talks to his plant collection, and a makeshift table where he is carving a miniature town -- though he only remembers making a few of the buildings -- are the main personal touches.

When Sam leaves the station to repair the Helium-3 harvesters when they go offline, the moonscape is silent, eerie and monochromatic, pretty much how you’d expect it to look and feel.

In the scenes where Sam’s little moon-rover is seen trekking across the surface, the moonscape almost looks like it was shot in miniature using a paper mache model and a toy moon-mobile -- and it works. The scenes look fantastic, especially when the Earth is visible hanging over the horizon, a beautiful, far-away world.

It all helps add to the mystery of why Sam is there, what’s really going on with his wife – from whom he receives cryptic, puzzling video messages – and how he’s going to survive until it’s time to go home.

Rockwell is fantastic in this role, changing his stripes like a chameleon several times during the film, convincingly every time. One moment he’s the grungy, worn out astronaut, the next he’s the guilt-plagued absentee father, then the slick clean-cut keener or the suspicious outsider.

And in some cases he’s seamlessly carrying out conversations between those characters, dialogue that is also somehow believable. Nancy, my slightly crazy video store lady, told me today: "You would never think for a SECOND that it was one actor!", even though the evidence is staring you in the face.

My friend Tyrone says this is one of those movies you shouldn’t spend too much time trying to figure out, or you’ll ruin the ending. I mostly disagree. It’s not a big surprise finish, it’s more of a steady burn that builds and builds, the story getting better as the truth is revealed.

The movie was directed by Duncan Zowie Heywood Jones, who now goes by Duncan Jones, and is the son of David Bowie. It’s his directorial debut, and a solid effort.

"Blankets" (2003, Craig Thompson)

Years ago a friend recommended I read “Blankets,” a graphic novel by Craig Thompson. We had both had a very ‘Christian’ upbringing, complete with church camps and Sunday school and a good dose of old-fashioned guilt, and she thought this book would resonate since it deals with a lot of those issues.

I’ve always kept that title in the back of my mind, and whenever I’d end up browsing the graphic novel section of a bookstore, I’d keep an eye out for it.

I’ve never seen it, and had started to doubt it actually existed, when it’s white and blue spine jumped out at me on a shelf a few weeks back. There was just one copy and I snatched it up right away and started reading it that night.

My friend Meghan Sheffield was right when she said that this book is relevant to anyone who grew up the way she and I did. At some points I cringed in embarrassment at the honesty in those pages, other times I laughed, and I even got a little misty at one point.

The writing is powerful and honest, and is a perfect match to the rich black and white drawings that go along with it, illustrating the emotions, feelings and ideas described in the text.

“Blankets” is mostly autobiographical, and traces Thompson’s life, beginning when he is just a young boy growing up in a poor Wisconsin family with his parents and brother, right up to what seems like his present day life.

Along the way he wrestles with faith, fitting in, growing up, falling in love, then struggling as that love falls apart.


I found his experiences at church camp the most relevant to my own experience. The way Thompson describes and draws it, it could almost be one of the camps I went to. The camp he attends is even called 'Sno Camp’ – exactly the same name as one I went to.

He expects camp to be a haven of escape from his hometown school, where his faith has made him an outcast and the mockery of the ‘popular’ kids. But when he arrives, he quickly discovers he doesn’t fit in there either, and feels surrounded by cliques, hypocrites and fakes.

“Something about being rejected at church camp felt so much more awful than being rejected at school,” he writes, suggesting that it felt like God himself was disappointed that he couldn’t fit in.

But as he grows up and starts to figure out who he is, he learns to spot the other outsiders and band together with them. One of those is Raina, a girl from Michigan who is also trying to figure out her faith and her place in the world.

They fall in love and most of the second half of the book describes their relationship, from smitten bliss, to disappointment and depression – basically all the things you feel when you fall in love as a teenager.

There are two especially poignant moments in the book, in my opinion.

The first is a scene where, overcome by the spirit of guilt and old-fashioned Bible-thumping that he has received at church, Craig decides his love of drawing is a sin or an idol in his life.

Acting on it, he fills a bag with all the artwork he has ever done, and burns it in a barrel behind his parents home.

The second, and this is where I got pretty torn up, is when things hit rock bottom in his relationship, and he severs all ties. Once again, he sets out to burn everything related to that part of his life, including a patchwork quilt Raina spent weeks making for him. It’s a terrible moment and I regretted it for him – but at the same time I respected his passion and the courage to do something so final.

Thompson is an expert at matching pictures with words -- or using pictures to illustrate the feeling that one experiences after reading those words. He’s patient and takes his time when he needs to – sometimes using a nearly blank page to illustrate a feeling of emptiness or loneliness, other times cramming images into a panel to show excitement or exuberance or an overwhelming feeling of joy on the part of the characters.

He does what a good graphic novelist should – uses the combination of pictures and words to creat something bigger than the sum of its parts. I like that.

There were many parts of Thompson’s Christian experience that I didn’t go through in my own personal life and couldn’t fully relate to. But they all hit home either through friends’ experiences, time I spent working as a youth leader, or just as a cautionary tale about the power of organized religion and it’s potential negative effect on sincere faith.

A brave and honest memoir, Blankets is recommended reading for anyone who has struggled to fit in, gone to church camp, fallen in love or questioned their faith. Wait, I think that’s pretty much all of us…

Here's an interesting sidebar from Exclaim! magazine about the fallout from Thompson's decision to be so honest and open in the book.