videomatica goes to school

The Videomatica movie collection has found a home! Something like 35,000 titles will become part of the UBC library system, with another smaller batch - including about 2,800 documentaries - to be housed at SFU. I'm not sure how many will be available for actual circulation, but a community library card ($120 a year) will give access to the movies at UBC. They'll become available sometime in 2013.

Whew!

(Don't forget that the sales department of Videomatica already had its resurrection - they reopened a while back, across the street and up a block, in Zulu Records.)

jan 19/20 | margaret

MARGARET is back! Two nights only, Jan 18 & 19, at the Vancouver International Film Centre. Kenneth Lonergan's film is loose, structurally, and chooses a different sort of narrative shape than the vast majority of commercial movies: it wanders, observes, doesn't build to carefully sculpted climaxes, doesn't hit its points on the head. For some, it overstays its welcome: its fans (I'm one) wish it ran the full 3+ hours that I think the director would prefer. My favourite of the films I've seen this year - indeed, I have to go back to TREE OF LIFE last July to find the last movie I enjoyed as much, and that stayed on my mind so long.

One astute friend wrote "It's was a good 90 minute film that was 180 minutes long. Mr. Lonergan needed a good editor. Besides the scenic filler, he left in many 'good' scenes that either did nothing to further the story or completely lacked any 'stakes'. I wasnt certain what the young woman's dilemma really was - guilt over her participation in the accident?, angst over her life and it's expectations?, tension from coming of age?"

I completely disagree (and reassure potential viewers that MARGARET is only 150 minutes long), but I pass along his comments as fair warning that your reaction may be the same. Lonergan either tried and failed to make the kind of "well made" movie my friend describes, or he was doing something quite different and succeeded - if not completely, enough for me to love his movie.

jan 6 7 9 11-16, feb 3-5 18-19 | tarkovsky at cinematheque

A standing ovation to Pacific Cinematheque for its upcoming retrospective featuring every film but one (Stalker) by legendary Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky, one of the essential Soul Food directors - challenging, uncompromising, rewarding. The opportunity to see these pictures on a large screen is to be coveted - the epic scope of Andrei Rublev in particular (here's my article) demands that sort of scale, the story of a religious artist struggling with his vocation in the face of overwhelming human suffering.


Andrei Rublev
Friday, January 6, 2012 - 6:30pm
Saturday, January 7, 2012 - 6:30pm
Monday, January 9, 2012 - 6:30pm

Ivan’s Childhood
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - 7:00pm
Friday, January 13, 2012 - 8:45pm
Sunday, January 15, 2012 - 8:45pm
Monday, January 16, 2012 - 7:00pm

The Mirror
Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - 8:45pm
Thursday, January 12, 2012 - 6:45pm
Saturday, January 14, 2012 - 8:45pm
Sunday, January 15, 2012 - 6:45pm

Nostalghia
Friday, February 3, 2012 - 6:30pm
Saturday, February 4, 2012 - 9:10pm
Sunday, February 5, 2012 - 4:00pm

The Sacrifice
Friday, February 3, 2012 - 8:50pm
Saturday, February 4, 2012 - 6:30pm
Sunday, February 5, 2012 - 6:30pm

Solaris
Saturday, February 18, 2012 - 6:30pm
Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 6:30pm

Solaris (Soderbergh, 2002)
Steven Soderbergh’s ambitious remake of Tarkovsky's Solaris stars George Clooney and Natascha McElhone.
Saturday, February 18, 2012 - 9:30pm
Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 4:30pm

The Soul Food Movies of 2011

Pure vanilla post for now: embarrassingly flimsy. But if I wait until it's all fancy and everything, it'll never get posted. I'll flesh it out over the next week or two. For now, just a list of 2011 Soul Food films, accompanied by their Movie City News and Jeffry Overstreet's rankings. Not the top films of the year, not my favourite films of the year: but the films I'd cover in my Soul Food book if I started writing it again - each has some particular spiritual angle. I haven't seen them all: thanks to Ebenezer Scrooge, I saw fewer films last year than I had in more than a dozen prior years. But for now I'll say, the boldfaced ones are Soul Food classics: a bumper crop in any year!

SOUL FOOD MOVIES 2011

BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK
MCN 57
Unassuming documentary about an unassuming man may end up my favourite film of 2011. I don't expect it to be anyone else's, but... It got to me.

HIGHER GROUND
MCN 70
Reportedly balanced study of mid-century conservative Christian culture.

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
MCN 10, JO 6
Cult story has appeal for some Christian cinephiles.

MELANCHOLIA
MCN 6
DOGVILLE's one of my three favourite films, but I honestly don't know if I can see another new film from Lars Von Trier after MANDERLAY and ANTICHRIST. But this one's getting praise that eluded those: study of clinical depression and the end of the world.

THE MILL AND THE CROSS
MCN 77, JO 3
Wow. Takes us inside Breughel's painting. VANCOUVERITES: DON'T MISS ITS JAN 6-12 RUN AT VANCITY!

MYSTERIES OF LISBON
MCN 24
Multi-hour story spans a life, draws comparisons with Les Miserables, features a priest. (Oooh, now THAT'S a write-up!...)

OF GODS AND MEN
MCN 42, JO 4
Masterpiece about Algerian monks. (Look, I told you this was gonna be cursory for now...)

SOUL SURFER
MCN 126
People say, better than expected.

TREE OF LIFE
MCN 1, JO 2
Cannes winner. Best Terrence Mallick since DAYS OF HEAVEN.

THE WAY
MCN 110
Seeing this tomorrow. Not showing up on any lists, but everyone who sees it tells me it's swell, and definitely Soul Food.

WRESTLING FOR JESUS
JO Silver
Overstreet: "Getting to know men who stage wrestling matches in Jesus’ name, Nathan Clarke has made the most thoughtful documentary about evangelical Christianity in America I’ve ever seen. He’s respectful, even-handed, and fearless in provoking questions. It’ll spark discussions about masculinity, marriage, family, and the definition of 'calling.' Moreover, he shows us how dramatic conversions and theatrical Christianity can often distort the Gospel or leave it behind entirely."

PS

SON OF MAN
An all-time favourite of mine, a South African take on the life of Jesus that played VIFF a few years back. Waited forever for it to become available on DVD: 2011's the year it became viewable for Canadians, streaming, on Netflix. Watch it!

DON'T MISS... Margaret | this week only!

Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan made a remarkable first film that's not mentioned too often these days, but which was an extreme favourite of mine. YOU CAN COUNT ON ME (2000) introduced me to both Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo, in remarkable performances.

It's taken over a decade for his second film to reach the screen. MARGARET is praised by everybody who sees it - though that "everybody" is a very small everybody, since it's mostly only been screened in New York, and even that in limited runs. Anna Paquin and Matt Damon headline, Mark Ruffalo's back and Jean Reno is in the cast, but I'm equally excited to see playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis (Jesus Hopped The 'A' Train, The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot) onscreen.

THREE SHOWINGS ONLY, this week, at the Vancouver International Film Centre (AKA the VanCity).

Mon Jan 2, 8pm
Wed Jan 4, 8pm
Thu Jan 5, 8pm

This from the VIFC website:

Hollywood doesn’t produce too many movies like this, and when it does, it doesn’t know what to do with them. Lonergan’s long-awaited, troubled follow up to You Can Count On Me is a volcanic, raw, turbulent drama, probably the most ambitious American film of the year.

Seventeen-year-old Lisa (Anna Paquin) is rocked with guilt after a woman is killed in a traffic accident (she had inadvertently distracted the driver). But that’s only one thread in a teeming social tapestry this intense, passionate teen must negotiate as she comes of age in a time of contradiction and confusion.

“Bursts with ambition and specificity… Paquin deserves the highest accolades for her ferociously committed performance…The film has a cumulative power – solidified by a devastating opera-house finale – that’s staggering. This is frayed-edges filmmaking at its finest.” Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

“Wildly ambitious… embraces big and rich themes and sumptuous tones and moods with a remarkable scope and nuance… For all its awkwardness and uncertainty, the film is a city symphony, romantic yet scathing, lyrical with street life and vaulting skylines, reckless with first adventure, and awed by the abstractions, both intellectual and poetic, on which the great machine runs.” Richard Brody, The New Yorker