• • Film Fridays

  Once

  March 28, 2008 • Tuval Dinner

  

  This movie has been getting a lot of buzz lately and that usually means I probably won’t see it. But on the insistence of my most trusted movie critic friends I took the plunge.

  Its hard to write about this film without spoiling some of its gentle power but I’ll try my best. The first thing I would say is don’t watch the trailer. As with most trailers it tries to sell a different idea of what this film is about. At its heart this is a movie about two things, two people and the music they share. Its kind of a musical but not in the cheesy way that musicals actually tell the story with song. The music scenes in Once just paint the emotional landscape and deepen our sense of the characters lives. It has to be said that if you hate the music you probably won’t like the movie that much. You can hear some of the music here…

  But the most profound aspect of Once is the way it defies romantic cliches and portrays both main characters as complex, interesting human beings who you can actually imagine liking each other.

  As Shameless has written before, this is a rare occurrence. I can’t actually remember seeing another film that has its love interests be so respectful and gentle with each other while they actually get to know each other in a genuine way. I can’t stand it when the “hottest” people in a movie meet and you immediately know that they are going to end up in bed together. Soon after this you watch the standard music montage that shows a couple walking on the beach, playing in the park, eating in a diner, etc, etc, blah blah. This is supposed to let you know that they now know each other well and like each other a lot. But you don’t really know why they like each other (especially because I usually don’t like either of them) or what they know about each other.

  While you might think that watching two people actually be nice to each other might not make for interesting movie watching, I found Once to be an engaging and enjoyable film.

  Understated, uncomplicated and satisfying without a Hollywood ending I would recommend this film to anyone who is tired of one-dimensional women and men playing out the same scenes again and again on screen.

• • Film Fridays
  • Queeriosities

  Show Me Girl Meets Girl

  March 21, 2008 • Allison Martell

  I do love a good romantic comedy. And there are so few fluffy romance movies with queer couples – on the big screen, nearly every lesbian love story ends in murder or suicide. Until recently, my mental list of happy queer romance movies included (1) D.E.B.S., (2) The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, and… well, that was it.

  I’m adding another film to my list. Show Me Love is about two girls in love in small-town Sweden. (It’s from 1998 – I’m always behind the curve on this stuff.) I like that it’s a movie about teenagers played by teenagers, not 25-year-olds. It is funny and awkward and believable, and I promise, it will win you over. Go on, buy some chocolate and curl up in bed.

  I found Show Me Love at my local video store, West Side Stories. You can’t throw a DVD in the west end of Toronto lately without hitting an indie rental joint, but West Side Stories is special. For one thing, they’re super friendly. Just west of Dundas and Dufferin, they are also Toronto’s first DVD merchants “specializing in women and the LGBT community.”

  Besides the usual new releases and a solid collection of hipster favourites, Dawn and Tanya have a good selection of queer flicks and section for “women in film.” They have also been hosting small film screenings. The next one is next Saturday, 29 March at 10pm. The movie is Mai’s America and I really wish that I could go, so you should go for me. (Note that according to Facebook, the event is “women only safespace.”)

• • Film Fridays

  Ch-ch-ch-changes

  March 14, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  What do Reality Bites, Lost in Translation, and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon have in common?

  It’s alright, I’ll wait.
  …
  Yeah, okay, so not a whole lot (other than that I happen to have these all in my DVD collection).

  What they have in common is they’re all movies where I thought I knew how I felt about them/their characters. Then on rewatching them I had almost completely different reactions than I remembered.

  Take, for instance, Reality Bites:

  The great big Gen X movie from 1994. Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Janeane Garofalo, Ben Stiller, Steve Zahn.

  Now, I remember loving Reality Bites. I think it was my favourite movie for a long time. In the early 90s, Ethan Hawke as Troy Dyer was the perfect greasy haired slovenly philosopher artist boy. A little slink across the room, and my teenaged Ethan Hawke crush was solidified.

  Lelaina (Winona) was smart and interesting and pretty, and trying to do something with her life. And I had absolutely no time for Ben Stiller’s character Michael. Boring corporate jackass.

  

  Then let 10 years pass. And watch it again.

  I want to punch Troy Dyer in the face. Lelaina? Kind of a whiner. And suddenly, I have all kinds of sympathy for Michael.

  Oh crap, I guess I came of age already.
  (more inside…)

• • Film Fridays
  • Geek Chic

  Putting together the puzzle of Tracey Berkowitz

  March 14, 2008 • Wesley Fok

  Yes, this is my third post regarding a movie starring Ellen Page, but stay with me on this.

  The Tracey Fragments has a fairly simple premise: take a fifteen-year-old girl who’s tormented at school, shackled with an ineffectual psychiatrist, and living with a family barely held together with emotional duct tape. Then rip the tape off and see what happens. One day, Tracey’s kid brother goes missing, and like all teenagers teetering on the brink of emotional collapse, she takes the one action that makes sense: she runs away from home and towards Winnipeg in the hopes that she’ll find her brother. From that basic foundation, McDonald spins a complex multi-tracked narrative, told largely through an almost-literal kaleidoscope of images that serves as the film’s calling card. Nearly every scene in the film consists of multiple video images, arranged and re-arranged in often-hasty compositions designed to put the viewer inside Tracey’s cluttered, mile-a-minute mind.

  

  (more inside…)

• • Film Fridays
  • On The Job

  House of Blues

  March 7, 2008 • Allison Martell

  Like seemingly everyone I know, I watch House MD. I love House – both the show and the character – for their wit and intelligence. So when I heard that David Shore, the show’s Canadian creator, was going to be interviewed on CBC’s Q, I stuck around on my couch to listen. Then Shore started talking about Cutthroat Bitch.

  Okay, so maybe this requires a little background. One of this season’s new characters is a young doctor named Amber. She is competitive, ruthless even – she works very hard, but she also misses no opportunity to mess with her coworkers to get the job. Other characters on the show often refer to her as Cutthroat Bitch, as if it’s her name. So does David Shore, with a self-satisfied smirk on his voice.

  Sometimes it’s hard to figure out whether sexist comments in a script reflect the opinions of the show’s creators, or are just there to develop an unlikable character – House is every sort of misogynist, and I think we’re usually supposed to laugh at him. But my perception of this show is changing.

  Let’s talk about women in House. The other new female character is emotionally stunted and nameless – they just call her “13.” Cuddy, the Chief of Medicine, is both unable to control House, and usually in the wrong, frequently slowing down the real doctors’ lifesaving work. Because Cuddy has so much power, she is also unable to get so much as a boyfriend, let alone a partner. Her attempts to start a family are ridiculed and then forgotten. Cameron is probably the best developed female character, but then she was pathetically in love with her unavailable boss.

  Coming from a supposedly boundary-smashing show, this is really tired stuff. Women on television who get ahead almost always do it at the expense of family or morals. Sure, go to medical school – you might be good at what you do, but you’ll die sad and lonely.

• • Body Politics
  • Film Fridays
  • In My Opinion...

  A whiter, brighter smile

  March 7, 2008 • Elle E.

  Apologies to Ellen Page if this costs her a shot at spokeswoman for Minty-White International, but in her pre-Oscar interview with Barbara Walters it was clear that she had not succumbed to bleaching her smile. Her teeth looked good - healthy, normal - but also kind of weird for TV. The person I was with (who does not obsess over teeth as much as I do) actually pointed it out first.

  We’re so used to seeing bleached teeth on screen that regular ones stand out like a wad of spinach. If you find yourself with the kind of free time necessary to start watching for this, you’ll see what I mean.

  (more inside…)

• • Film Fridays
  • Race and Racism

  Movie Magic

  February 29, 2008 • Tuval Dinner

  

  I know I’ve mentioned this film before but now I’ve actually seen it! Yesterday I joined about 100 high school students, their teachers and a small number of other adults at the Revue for a screening of A Winter’s Tale followed by a Q + A with two of the film’s actors.

  I had expected this film to be a poorly made but very well-intentioned piece of social commentary. What I actually experienced was an amazing piece of film-making. From the opening note of pounding, perfectly chosen music to the flawless acting, excellent script, powerful story and tight conclusion this film is a truly awesome piece of cinema. The Q + A session echoed some of the issues in the film; gender stereotypes, racial profiling, community responsibility, masculinity, drug dealing and more.

  Filmed in Toronto’s Parkdale community A Winter’s Tale tells a simple story.

  Shots ring out one winter night and a bullet meant for a local street dealer kills a ten-year-old boy.

  In the downtown Toronto community of Parkdale, grief and suspicion hang heavily in the air, while the nightly patrons at Miss G’s Caribbean TakeAway resume their ritual of beer and banter.

  But one of them, Gene Wright, cannot go on. He begs his friends for help. In a most unusual development, six Black men make a pact to form a support group in hopes of salvaging their broken spirits and redeeming their besieged community.

  I highly encourage everyone to go see this film. To find out about showtimes and to see a trailer check out A Winters Tale.

• • Film Fridays
  • In My Opinion...

  For the pervy freaks: an elegy to Suspect Video

  February 22, 2008 • piKe krpan

  Over the past few days I’ve started writing a few different posts for today’s Film Friday feature. One was about up and coming Oscar nominee Ellen Page, who I love. Then, in response to Megan’s blog piece about the lack of women directors, I started a little data compendium of the Oscar nominees broken down according to gender, Guerilla Grrrls style. Then I found someone had already done that here. So check it out.
  
  However, I’m not really a big movie person. I don’t watch or care about the Oscars. I am much more interested in smaller documentaries, indie films, and my local community. And one pathway to those cherished things is now no longer: Suspect Video.
  

  

  Goodbye, Suspect Video. You can my regular parking spot right outside. For my bicycle, that is. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wyliepoon/)

  Many of you have seen the nation-wide coverage of a six-alarm fire at the corner of Queen and Bathurst. About 10 different stores were totally burned out and many people living in the apartments above were lucky to escape alive.
  
  It was only two short blocks from my home. Yesterday I finally got a chance to walk through my neighborhood and finally got a look at the smoking wreckage. I was surprised by the intensity of my reaction seeing such devastation. I was holding back tears.

  I watched coverage on the teevee news on Tuesday night and it focused on Duke’s, a bicycle shop that I also frequent, which had been a family business in that exact location for 80+ years. While I do mourn the loss of the bike shop (I just bought a new Ulock there last week), what I’m really going to miss is Suspect Video.
  
  Now I don’t suppose that a national teevee news show could talk about what kind of stuff Suspect Video did for this community of freaks, geeks and punks and queers. Suspect Video probably couldn’t be described as an upstanding community member. Their windows were always full of garish and freaky figurines with cobwebs hanging all around, both real and fake for effect. When you went in the store, no salesperson greeted you. Instead the guy or girl munched on their pizza and watched some cheesy zombie flick on the screens above the merchandise turned at ultra high volume, shrieks and moans galore. I admit that many times I went into Suspect to just be treated with disdain and humanness. No perky falsity around getting my dollars here.
  (more inside…)

• • Film Fridays

  Mrs. Peel, we’re needed

  February 15, 2008 • Wesley Fok

  Diana Rigg has had a long and storied career as an actress. She’s performed in numerous stage plays, married James Bond, and had her prized diamond necklace recovered by Muppets. But the role she’s best known for is the surefooted, quick-witted British agent Emma Peel on the 60s-era landmark spy series The Avengers.

  

  John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) track down a killer who's fond of kittens. No, really.

  Every bit the equal to her crime-solving companion John Steed, Emma Peel was far from the typical damsel in distress of most spy fiction. She knew several martial arts and could dispatch any number of evil henchmen with ease. But more than just a lethal weapon, she also had a solid scientific background and often proved herself more intellectually capable—and quicker with a finely turned witticism—than Steed. Rigg played the part of Mrs. Peel with an elegant charm, lending her character a certain dignity that raised the show above its occasionally camp origins. Though Honor Blackman was the first to star opposite Steed as one of his female partners, the very capable and independent Catherine Gale, it’s Emma Peel that everyone remembers so fondly.

  Sadly, though the producers of the show were ahead of their time in creating a liberated female protagonist, they weren’t bright enough to extend that same philosophy to Diana Rigg herself. She left the show after two successful seasons partially because she was fed up with how the producers treated her. It’s said that twelve episodes in, Rigg discovered that she was paid less than the cameraman. Reportedly, Rigg also had few friends on set. One of her defenders was none other than John Steed himself, Patrick Macnee, who tried to convince Rigg to stay—but to no avail. And though Rigg eventually moved on to other marquee projects, The Avengers lasted just one more season with the somewhat naive and innocent spy-in-training Tara King by Steed’s side—in many ways a watered-down wallflower version of Emma Peel.

  (more inside…)

• • Body Politics
  • Film Fridays

  Hairspray (2007)

  February 15, 2008 • Catherine Hayday

  I’m not big into high school movies, or song and dance movies, or remakes. So was Hairspray ever fighting an uphill battle with me.

  A friend of mine gets teen swag and sent some my way, in the form of the 2007 Hairspray DVD. I probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, which is good and bad, because if I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have all these damn songs in my head.
  

  

  
  

  (more inside…)

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