soul food movies

feb 9 | sister rosetta tharpe doc @ vancity

2012-02-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

The Godmother of Rock & Roll: Sister Rosetta Tharpe
(2011, UK, Mick Csaky, 60m)

VIFC VanCity Theatre
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Doors 6:30; show 7
Tickets: $20.00

During the 40s, 50s and 60s Sister Rosetta Tharpe played a highly significant role in the creation of rock & roll, inspiring musicians like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Her fans include Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and Robert Plant to name a few.

She may not be a household name, but this flamboyant African-American gospel singing superstar, with her spectacular virtuosity on the newly electrified guitar, was one of the most influential popular musicians of the 20th century.

This exciting evening will include live music from Vancouver blues and gospel guitarist Chelsea D.E. Johnson.

feb 15 + 19 | to kill a mockingbird

2012-02-05T02:50:00.002-08:00

cineplex classic film series

videomatica goes to school

2012-01-19T08:19:00.001-08:00

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

2012-01-14T11:18:00.002-08:00

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

2012-01-05T12:05:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-03T22:55:00.001-08:00

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!

2012-01-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

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

jan 6-12 | the mill and the cross | vancity

2011-12-28T11:32:00.000-08:00

A Soul Food Movie pal sends this welcome note!

The astonishing and amazing movie, "The Mill and the Cross" (which some of us saw during the Vancouver International Film Festival) is back in Vancouver for a one-week run from January 6 to 12 at the VanCity Theatre.

This movie is unlike anything I've seen; it creates a new cinematic genre. Based on Breughel's painting "Christ on the Way to Calvary," it drews the audience into that painting, into the life and vision of Breughel, into the Netherlands of his day, into the mystery of redemption.

Here's my original post about the film's VIFF screening.

super-anon online!

2011-12-28T10:20:00.000-08:00

A few years back, several PT people (including Chy Liu and Deb Sears) were involved in making super-fun short film that's gone on to win all sorts of accolades. Now it's online! Here's a note from Deb...

Hey Super-Doopers:
I hope this finds you all well.

Guess who is turning 89 on Wed. Dec 28th? Stan Lee! Not sure who that is? Shame on you - check it out wikipedia.

We thought it would be great to help celebrate Stan's birthday by posting SUPER-ANON to YouTube! Steve created a YouTube channel for the film - check it out here.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year
Deb

Super-Anon website
Super-Anon on IMDb

christmas at vifc

2011-12-05T11:15:00.001-08:00

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
(UK, USA, 1951, 86 mins)

International Film Centre VanCity Theatre
Tuesday, December 21st, 6:30
Thursday, December 23rd, 6:00
TICKETS
onstage now at Pacific Theatre

Directed By: Brian Desmond Hurst
Cast: Alastair Sim, Kathleen Harrison, Mervyn Johns, Hermione Baddeley

Alastair Sim offers a masterclass in comedy as Ebenezer Scrooge in this definitive black and white version of the Dickens' classic. An incomparable roster of British supporting actors fill out the supernatural morality tale, including Michael Hordern as Jacob Marley, Hattie Jacques as Mrs Fezziwig, and George Cole as the young Ebenezer.

"A trenchant and inspiring Christmas show." —Bosley Crowther, New York Times, 1951

IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
(USA, 1946, 130 mins)
Soul Food article

International Film Centre VanCity Theatre
Tuesday, December 20th, 6:30
Thursday, December 22nd, 6;30
TICKETS

Directed By: Frank Capra
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore

"This story is the lousiest cheese," Frank Capra admitted to his star after making a rotten pitch. James Stewart stuck by his favourite director. "Frank, if you want to do a movie about me committing suicide, with an angel with no wings named Clarence, I'm your boy."

Although the picture has become synonymous with homespun, small town values – values Stewart personified and Capra obviously cherished – it achieves its profound emotional resonance precisely by stressing their limitations, even to the point of suicide. This is the tragedy of a man who dreams of traveling the world, building cities, and making love to Gloria Grahame, who never leaves his hometown, works in his dad's office, and marries Donna Reed. The "unborn" sequence where Clarence shows George how things might look if he hadn't been around is chilling not because it's morbid fantasy, but because "Pottersville" was and is so much closer to contemporary society than the nostalgic gentility of Bedford Falls.

For both Capra and Stewart this was their first movie after service in WWII, and it's riven with their anxieties about coming home. Whether you believe in angels or not, it's a wonderful film.

nov 27 | ben-hur

2011-11-17T14:42:00.001-08:00

cineplex classic film series

unholy night

2011-11-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, is developing UNHOLY NIGHT. Based on a recently finished novel by Grahame-Smith (formerly titled We Three Kings), it focuses on the wandering wise men and puts an action-adventure twist on the original Christmas story.

SGS: That is a huge swords and sandals epic, and very dark, and very expensive. We’re going to have to partner with another big producer to get it off the ground, but that’s something we hope to get going. We have a big pitch on that Nov. 1. If Warner Bros. sparks to Unholy Night and really wants to do it, I’ll probably end up writing that very quickly. That one could be a prime candidate to film sometime next year. insidemovies

thanks, peter

nov 10-20 | vancouver jewish film festival

2011-11-08T15:31:00.000-08:00

Only time for a hasty but timely post. Be sure and check out the link: frankly, I could have listed pretty much every title here, but this is a sampling of films that caught my eye. We've got Catholic priests, atonement and forgiveness, theatre and tv and baseball and more! What's not to like? Thanks, Rosie!

Vancouver Jewish Film Festival
Nov 10-20

TORN
The Ridge Theatre
November 15 2011 | 07:15 PM
“Can one be a Catholic priest and an Observant Jew at the same time?”

THE DEVIL'S ARITHMETIC
The Ridge Theatre
November 13 2011 | 12:30 PM
"During the family Passover Seder, Hanna (Kirsten Dunst) is asked to "open the front door" for the prophet Elijah. Once the door is opened, she finds herself, not unlike Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, to have entered the 1940's and has stepped into Poland and soon into the life of a prisoner in one of the German death camps." From the young adult novel.

DUSK
The Ridge Theatre
November 19 2011 | 08:00 PM
"About the search for atonement, and the ability to forgive."

THIS IS YOUR LIFE
The Ridge Theatre
November 20 2011 | 02:00 PM
I heard a remarkable segment of This American Life dealing with the same story.

SHOLEM ALEICHEM: LAUGHING AT THE DARKNESS
The Ridge Theatre
November 18 2011 | 02:00 PM
"A riveting portrait of the great writer whose stories became the basis of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof."

JEWS AND BASEBALL
The Ridge Theatre
November 20 2011 | 12:00 PM
Narrated by Dustin Hoffman.

nov 9 | ben-hur

2011-11-01T02:37:00.003-07:00

cineplex classic film series

videomatica | final credits

2011-10-31T09:05:00.000-07:00

Two emails this morning.

"Dear loyal subscribers of Videomatica.ca,
After many years of serving your movie needs, we have reluctantly decided that we must discontinue our rental by mail service...."

and

"Hello fans of Videomatica!
Videomatica Rentals is now closed except for returns, as of 10 pm Oct 30, 2011...."

So that is that. No more walking into a room where we're surrounded by movies we want to see, or hold, or read about. Alas.

A sad day. But there's comfort in the news that Cinemail will be acquiring Videomatica's movie-by-mail collection, and adding those titles to their own catalogue of titles. So even once I've viewed and returned The Island, Vision, Police Adjective and My Father My Lord - titles not available through, for example, zip.ca - there's still someplace rent them.

I'm also optimistic that the Videomatica rental collection will be preserved. In my last conversation with Graham and Brian (the VM owners), it looked likely that the dvd and videotape rental collection would be acquired by a university library - as substantiated by their ongoing “Help save the Videomatica Collection, send it to University!” campaign. One hopes that the day will come when the purchase of a university library card will provide access to those vast treasures - though the likelihood that they can be carted off and viewed at home seems questionable.

Later this week I'll check out Cinemail, and almost certainly subscribe.

"Active subscribers will have limited-time access to their Rental History and Queue lists."

So, for the record...

click to enlarge

Monday Oct 31 | NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

2011-10-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

Essential Soul Food Movie, on four of the five Arts & Faith 100 lists. Rare chance to see it on the big screen.

The Night of the Hunter
(USA, 1955, 93 mins)
Monday October 31, 6:30
Vancity Theatre
Directed By: Charles Laughton
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish

A singular masterpiece in the history of film, Charles Laughton’s version of Davis Grubb’s novel is an extraordinary artifact. In the most “out-there” performance of his career Robert Mitchum is the crazed Baptist preacher who terrorizes two young children and murders their mother to get his hands on the loot he knows is stashed somewhere in the house. Laughton cast Lillian Gish as this fiend’s antithesis and resurrects the antique visual rhetoric forged by Gish and DW Griffith in the silent era to create a beguilingly sinister fairytale mood, a mixture of menace and innocence that will stalk your dreams.

PLAYING UNTIL SUNDAY... wiebo's war

2011-10-27T18:04:00.000-07:00

Vancity Theatre
Thu Oct 27 9pm
Sat Oct 29 6:30
Sun Oct 30 8:15

WIEBO'S WAR tells the story of a Christian Community, at war with the oil and gas industry.

Wiebo Ludwig is the prime suspect in a recent string of pipeline bombings. The bombings echo a campaign of sabotage he waged against the oil and gas industry in the 90s -- barricading roads, blowing up wells and culminating in the unsolved death of a sixteen-year-old girl on his family's farm.

VIFF write-up here

NOW ON DVD... tree of life

2011-10-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

NOW PLAYING... machine gun preacher

2011-10-17T13:43:00.001-07:00

Don't know nothin' much about this one, except what it says here, and that people don't seem all that impressed. Hardly a raving "Must See," is it? But it's in town, it aims to be Soul Food, and I'll let you know more once I have more to say...

Machine Gun Preacher is the inspirational true story of Sam Childers, a former drug-dealing criminal who undergoes an astonishing transformation and finds an unexpected calling as the savior of hundreds of kidnapped and orphaned children. Gerard Butler (300) delivers a searing performance as Childers, the impassioned founder of the Angels of East Africa rescue organization in Golden Globe-nominated director Marc Forster’s (Monster’s Ball, Finding Neverland) moving story of violence and redemption.

When ex-biker-gang member Sam Childers (Butler) makes the life-changing decision to go to East Africa to help repair homes destroyed by civil war, he is outraged by the unspeakable horrors faced by the region’s vulnerable populace, especially the children. Ignoring the warnings of more experienced aide workers, Sam breaks ground for an orphanage where it’s most needed—in the middle of territory controlled by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a renegade militia that forces youngsters to become soldiers before they even reach their teens.

But for Sam, it is not enough to shelter the LRA’s intended victims. Determined to save as many as possible, he leads armed missions deep into enemy territory to retrieve kidnapped children, restoring peace to their lives—and eventually his own. The explosive, real-life tale of a man who has rescued over a thousand orphans from starvation, disease and enslavement, Machine Gun Preacher also stars Michelle Monaghan (Due Date), Kathy Baker (Cold Mountain), Madeline Carroll (Mr. Popper’s Penguins), Academy Award® nominated Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) and Souleymane Sy Savane (Damages).

VIFF | THE MILL AND THE CROSS

2011-10-09T10:04:00.000-07:00

Absolutely lived up to all my very high expectations. One more showing only, Thursday Oct 13 at 6:20 at the Granville 7. Tickets at the VIFF website. Here's a link to another article which focuses on the cinematography of the film (thanks Jason) and here's the original Soul Food post...

* * *

How strange that one writer surveying Christian themes in this year's Sundance Festival came up with a pile of what look to me like uninspiring believer-as-bad-guy throwbacks, but completely overlooked this one, which is tremendously interesting. Thanks to Peter Chattaway for this.

Joe Bendel, Libertas:

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a truly subversive old master. Known for his paintings of the Dutch peasantry as well as Biblical episodes, his five hundred character masterwork The Way to Calvary depicted the Spanish Militia then occupying Flanders as the Roman soldiers crucifying Christ. While Bruegel’s commentary on the Spanish occupation is inescapable, the painting is rife with hidden signifiers, which the painter himself explains in Lech Majewski’s unclassifiable The Mill & the Cross, a painstakingly crafted cinematic recreation of "The Way to Cavalry," which had its world premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

Employing state-of-the-art computer generation, scores of seamstresses and artisans, and an enormous 2D background recreation of Bruegel’s celebrated work painted by the director himself, Majewski brings the great tableaux to life on the big screen. Amongst those five hundred characters are Brueghel and his friend a collector, Nicholas Jonghelinck, to whom he explains his projected new painting, "The Way to Calvary."

The film completely challenges linear notions of time, incorporating Christ’s Passion and the world of 1564 Flanders, in which Bruegel and Jongelinck are simultaneous observers and active participants.

Years in the making, Mill is an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking. Majewski represents the social continuum of Sixteenth Century Flanders, recreating the mean living conditions of the peasants, the clean, unadorned quarters of the relatively middle class Bruegel, and the privileged environment of the well-to-do Jongelinck. Majewski’s visuals are often arresting, like the scenes of art director Stanislaw Porczyk’s towering mill, which resembles the enormous set pieces of Terry Gilliam films. Perhaps most stunning are the wide shots of the Calvary landscape, with the figures literally coming alive on Bruegel’s canvas. Yet, Majewski also captures moments of both tender intimacy and graphic torture, rendered with powerful immediacy.

click to enlarge

Dennis Harvey, Variety:

An extraordinary imaginative leap, Lech Majewski's The Mill and the Cross combines old and new technologies allowing the viewer to live inside the painting -- Flemish master Pieter Bruegel's 1564 "The Procession to Calvary," an epic canvas depicting both Christ's crucifixion and the artist's homeland brutalization by Spanish occupiers. Neither conventional costume drama nor abstract objet d'art, this visually ravishing, surprisingly beguiling gamble won't fit any standard arthouse niche. . . .

Opening setpiece stages the complex painting via a combination of live actors (and horses), bluescreen effects and 2D backdrops. Its crowded landscape features some 500 historical, religious, contemporary and symbolic figures, with biblical travails depicted alongside sufferings of Flemish citizens persecuted by representatives of the Spanish inquisition. We continually revisit this tableau, in whole and part, while other scenes are frequently modeled on several other paintings by Bruegel the Elder.

Representing God atop an enormous windmill tower is a miller impassively regarding various scenes from his lofty perch. They include the seizure by red-coated militia of one peasant who is tortured and killed for presumed heresy. Later, another hapless soul is literally crucified for some other crime.

Periodically commenting sorrowfully on this state of affairs -- either alone or in conversation with the artist -- is a wealthy burgher appalled by the invaders' misrule, even if he himself seems immune from harm. A mother whose son has been dragged off to slaughter delivers in voiceover lamentations that are more personal and poetic; she is also the painting's Virgin Mary model. Meanwhile, Breughel himself bemusedly explains the hidden meanings scattered throughout his masterwork, often in the form of conflated religious allegory and political protest.

Not everything is grim here, however. Indeed much of "The Mill and the Cross" delights, with episodes of rambunctious humor among some rural ne'er-do-wells and a roving pack of joyfully rowdy children. Life does go on, despite the climate of fear and cruelty. . . .

oct 14 | wiebo's war

2011-10-07T06:34:00.000-07:00

Soul Foodie Rosie Perera points us to this VIFF-featured-flick, that "tells the story of a Christian Community at war with the oil and gas industry." It's hard not to think that whatever branch of Christianity is represented here will be pretty fringey - but there's nothing like a good documentary to change the way we think. I'm intrigued. Here's the blurbage from VIFF...

WIEBO'S WAR
(2011, Canada, David York)

Trickle Creek Farm, 800 kms north of Calgary: the burgeoning natural gas industry vs. dedicated--and violent--Christian fundamentalists. The story of Wiebo Ludwig is familiar to most Canadians. In the 90s he and his kin came into conflict with an oil and gas company doing extractions near his property. Livestock and family members became ill, Ludwig became angry, and explosions and vandalism started happening. It's a story that played out on the evening news, with the media-savvy and cocksure patriarch providing plenty of footage with his defiant statements. The conflict produced a bitterly divided community, the death of a teenage trespasser and the conviction of Ludwig on just a few of the many crimes committed.

Director David York picks up the story in 2010, profiling the clan as they face suspicion in the contemporary bombings of oil and gas stations in northeastern BC. Cutting back and forth between 2010 and the original conflict, York's documentary has a built-in suspense and an almost uncomfortable intimacy in its close-range portrait of the subject. Ludwig and his brood cooperate, albeit guardedly, with the filming; they're forthright about their beliefs and arrogantly coy about their actions. What emerges is an honest but ambiguous portrait, with the ruthlessness of the oil and gas industry paired off against that of a defensive fanatic. This is a compelling and disturbing film.

oct 14 | bevel up, nettie wild | homelessness awareness night

2011-10-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

A note from Judy Graves, who works on homelessness for the City Of Vancouver.

Nettie Wild's Bevel Up - about Vancouver's street nurses, what they do, why they do it, and refection on ethics. MUST SEE.

Homeless Voices - by Les Merson - interviews done across MetroVancouver of homeless people. This short, powerful film left Karen O'Shannacery of Lookout Shelter and I in tears. Completely authentic, open, feels like working in the street and listening to the people you meet there.

I'll see you there, please bring friends, and forward this email broadly.

10th Ave Alliance is on West 10th Ave at the corner of Ontario.

new to dvd | better world, morin, cunningham, murder songs

2011-09-26T08:06:00.001-07:00

Various soul food movies are new to dvd the past month or so, and well worth renting - if you can figure out how to do that. In Canada right now, we find ourselves in a sad no man's land between the decline of video stores and second-run movie cinemas and the rise of anything to replace them.

Streaming? The selection Netflix offers Canadians is a joke: indeed, not one of the titles I'm recommending for appears to be on offer. As far as I can tell, they don't offer a DVD by mail service to Canadians. Zip.ca is apparently the largest dvd-by-mail service in Canada - but they also bat .000 when I lob these titles over the plate. (You can, however, rent Battle: Los Angeles or Disney's Prom. So all is not lost.)

The sort-of-good news, soon to be the really bad news, is that Vancouver's beloved Videomatica is still in business, and stocks three of the four titles - only Bill Cunningham New York is unavailable. The spring rumours of its August death were greatly exaggerated. Well, slightly exaggerated: they're still advertising October acquisitions under their "Coming Soon" listings, but after that... Nothing. Nada. The void. This weekend I re-signed with Videomatica.ca (after letting my subscription lapse in the spring) in a desperate bid to see at least a few of the films that just don't seem to be anywhere else in our film-free land. Looks like October is Movie Month: not just VIFF, but cramming in as many Videomatica-only titles as I can on my home screen. Police Adjective, Ostrov, The Bang Bang Club, My Father My Lord, Vision, Noise, The Idiot (Kurosawa), Dante's Inferno, The Trap (Klopka)< Mary and Max, Sweetgrass, Choking Man... I'm only forgoing In A Better World, Leon Morin Priest, Bill Cunningham New York and Small Town Murder Songs because I either saw them in the theatre or own my own copy.

So have I got this right? That apparently the Canadian government is using its stricter copyright laws (as well as the barrier to US mailing created by our celebrated postal service) to protect the artists and craftspersons who make movies. And the best way to guard their interests is to ensure that no one can actually watch what they create. Have the federal Conservatives figured out that film is a form of art, and therefore feel obliged to shut it down? Or have they figured out some way to tax torrenting?

Enough. I hadn't intended to start off my week in so discouraging a fashion. I just wanted to tell people about these exciting new Soul Food movies now available on video. Only to realize that the "now available" part of that announcement is barely true - and apparently by the end of October or so, will be completely true. On with our originally scheduled post. For our American readers, stalwart Videomatica subscribers, and those of you willing to torrent...

In A Better World was directed by Susanne Bier and scripted by Anders Thomas Jensen, whose collaboration on After The Wedding was also brilliant. She's a Danish director, which accounts for the artistic sensibility, who studied arts at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which may account for the Soul Food flavour.

Leon Morin, Priest was a Criterion release this summer, set in Occupied France, in which the widow of a French Jew, herself a Communist, struggles to keep her small children out of the concentration camps with the help of a "handsome, brave, vigorous and intellectual priest" (played by French New Wave star Jean-Paul Belmondo).

Small Town Murder Songs concerns a rage-filled cop in an Ontario Mennonite community struggling to leave behind his violent past. Crank up the volume - an overpowering score makes this movie.

Unfortunately, even the hawk-eyed movie predators in the Videomatica acquisitions department missed Bill Cunningham New York, a small, soft-spoken, but utterly beguiling study of the frugal, self-reliant street photographer whose weekly fashion collages are a fixture at the New York Times. Roger Ebert: "It doesn't matter if you care nothing at all about clothing, fashion or photography. Here is a good and joyous man who leads a life that is perfect for him, and how many people do we meet like that? This movie made me happy every moment I was watching it." Looks like I'll have to buy me a copy...

higher ground

2011-09-25T15:43:00.001-07:00

Opened Sep 23. Sounds intriguing.

HIGHER GROUND
International Village
through Thu Oct 6 2:10, 4:55, 7:45, 10:30

SHE HAS FAITH, BUT SHE ALSO HAS SERIOUS DOUBTS
by Rick Groen
excerpted from Globe & Mail, Sep 23 2011

In the media and pop culture, the typical portrayal of Christian fundamentalists tends to err at the extremes, treating them and their beliefs with either an excess of reverence or too much mockery. Higher Ground is refreshing precisely because it finds a middle ground – in this spiritual community, there are no saints and there are no demons, no absolute wisdom and no complete idiocy. Of course, in such a vacuum, drama is harder to generate, and the film’s quiet realism demands from us our own act of faith: We’re asked to watch closely and to listen intently in the promise of a greater reward to come. ...

Essentially, it’s the story of a woman whose life is changed by two embraced discoveries. First, she acquires religion and then, painfully, she gains something that speaks to her far more profoundly – doubt. The script doesn’t quote Tennyson, but his famous dictum – “There lives more faith in honest doubt/ Believe me, than in half the creeds” – lies at the conflicted heart of the tale. That’s the faith Corinne, an evolving skeptic among true believers, labours toward.

. . . Corinne visits a Christian therapist, a guy who in less sensitive hands would just be a lampooned figure of fun. Instead, here, his dead-on diagnosis simultaneously reflects the strength and the weakness of his beliefs. He says to her: “You are worshipping at the altar of yourself.” Of course she is, but that’s exactly the point. Corinne has ascended to that higher ground where the bigger questions are asked. And none is bigger than this: Is religion a denial of her true self, or an antidote to the curse of narcissism? Her trial continues.

viff | soul food picks

2011-09-17T08:11:00.001-07:00

the planting + wait for rain | viff | oct 9-12

2011-09-14T07:18:00.000-07:00

Kyle Rideout directed a memorable production of THE GREAT DIVORCE at Pacific Theatre this past spring, and Jason Goode's DANNY & THE DEEP BLUE SEA (summer 2010) was so strong we invited him to place it in our upcoming season. Now both have placed short films in VIFF 2011! Most exciting.

TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE FOR ALL FILMS!

Wait for Rain
plays in Water
(Canada, 2011, 14 mins, HDCam)
Directed By: Kyle Rideout
In a future where water is scarce--making healthy plants the newest form of bling--James tries to get a girl's attention.

Sun, Oct 9th 9:30pm
Empire Granville 7 Th 2

Mon, Oct 10th 4:00pm
Pacific Cinematheque

The Planting
plays in Fire
(Canada, 2011, 5 mins, HDCAM)
Directed By: Jason Goode

A man reflects on a wasted life of digging holes and filling them back in.

Tue, Oct 11th 9:15pm
Empire Granville 7 Th 2

Wed, Oct 12th 3:45pm
Pacific Cinematheque

sep 14-18 | stalker | cinematheque

2011-09-14T00:21:00.000-07:00

It's placed on all five Arts & Faith 100 lists. It's Tarkovsky. Love it or hate it - and most folks are pretty much one or the other - it's Tarkovsky. Four showings only, some nights double-featured with BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN. Russi-o-rama.

STALKER
dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

Pacific Cinematheque
Wed Sep 14, Fri 16 | 7pm
Sat 17, Sun 18 | 8pm

IMPORTED 35mm PRINT! Tarkovsky’s brilliantly dense, breathtakingly textured Stalker suggests a fantastical confluence of in-the-Gulag Solzhenitsyn and post-apocalyptic science fiction, and could be an elaborate, allegorical, otherworldly illustration of that old maxim, “Be careful what you wish for ...” Guardian critic Philip French likens it to “The Wizard of Oz adapted by a disciple of Dostoevsky and Kafka” and calls it “possibly Tarkovsky’s finest work.” In a devastated post-industrial police state, two men, a writer and a scientist, engage the special mystic skills of a Stalker to guide them through the forbidden Zone, a damp, fecund, overgrown wasteland where the rules of nature no longer apply. At the centre of the Zone, it is reputed, is the Room, a place where the deepest desires of one’s heart are said to come true. The amazing journey there will test the limits and adequacy of the way each of the three protagonists makes sense of the world: through art, through science, and through faith. Distinguished by a remarkable sense of tactility, composed of stunning sepia images, and offering layer upon layer of meaning, Stalker is a haunting and unforgettable work from a visionary director whose too-few films are quite unlike anything else in world cinema. “A masterpiece ... Not an easy film, but most certainly a great one” (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). B&W and colour, 35mm, in Russian with English subtitles. 163 mins.

REVIEWS

"Tarkovsky conjures images like you've never seen before; and as a journey to the heart of darkness, it's a good deal more persuasive than Coppola's."
Time Out

"Visually unforgettable and possibly Tarkovsky's finest work."
Observer

"A vast prose-poem on celluloid whose forms and ideas were to be borrowed by moviemakers like Lynch and Spielberg."
Guardian

fog of war / re:union / sep 11 / videomatica

2011-09-10T08:27:00.002-07:00

Watched FOG OF WAR last night, having just heard Sean Devine's new play RE:UNION Wednesday. Wow - the two are like companion pieces. Not that you have to see one to appreciate the other, not one bit. But experiencing the two in proximity like that is a remarkable thing, the way Sean's play explores the things in McNamara and Morrison that are glanced at but not expanded. It's not like Errol Morris raises questions that RE"UNION answers: Sean's play is just as full of mystery. But the two mysteries combine to make something much, much richer.

If you can see FOG OF WAR before RE:UNION opens (Oct 21) at Pacific Theatre, definitely do it. I can't help but wonder if Sean's play was triggered by the documentary, that the whole piece is his deeper exploration of some of its hints and feints and teases. Who was this Quaker man who sacrificed himself in protest of the Vietnam war? And he had a daughter who almost died with him? Why does McNamara come back to that - it sounds like it shook him. And what was behind that Medal of Freedom speech? And if his heart changed - as it seems clear it did, to see the man's raw, unexplained emotion - what did he think when the plane hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, and he saw a nation gearing up for another Vietnam?

And here's a bit of surprising good news: the DVD I watched last night I rented from VIDEOMATICA!!! We'd all believed their doors would be shut by August 31. But they're still very much in business - not permanently, but for a while. So that means there's still someplace to rent FOG OF WAR! Which is good news all round.

VIFF | FOOTNOTE

2011-09-05T09:44:00.004-07:00

No dates and times yet - the full schedule hits the streets Sep 17 - but here's a Soul Food highlight gleaned from the Sneak Preview guide, available in print around town and as a download from the VIFF site.

FOOTNOTE
Israel | Dir: Joseph Cedar

Winner, Best Screenplay, Cannes 2011

Academic egos clash to witty effect in director Joseph Cedar's (Oscar nominee for Beaufort) tale of two Talmudic scholars at each other's throats. That they are father and son adds a certain frisson to the plangent goings-on.
"A sprightly, shrewd and ingenious black comedy of middle age and disappointed ambition…" Guardian.
"Probably the Cannes Film Festival's biggest breakout, and the closest thing to a tour de force. It had the Festival's most unlikely log line by far (the uneasy relationship between father and son Talmudic scholars reaches crisis point due to a clerical mixup over prestigious lifetime achievement award), which hardly prepares you for the at times stylistically dazzling and dramatically gripping end result." Film Comment

The story of a great rivalry between a father and son, both eccentric professors in the Talmud department of Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The son has an addictive dependency on the embrace and accolades that the establishment provides, while his father is a stubborn purist with a fear and profound revulsion for what the establishment stands for, yet beneath his contempt lies a desperate thirst for some kind of recognition. The Israel Prize, Israel's most prestigious national award, is the jewel that brings these two to a final, bitter confrontation.

The Vancouver International Film Festival runs Sep 29 - Oct 14. Full program guides available Sep 17. Sneak Preview guide available now online.

viff | corpo celeste

2011-09-05T09:00:00.002-07:00

Looks more like Church Bash than Soul Food, but you never know....

CORPO CELESTE
Italy/Switzerland/France | Dir: Alice Rohrwacher | View Trailer

Gritty, authentic, graced by superb naturalistic performances and often truly funny, Alice Rohrwacher's debut dramatic comedy focusses on 13-year-old Marta as she copes with her new life in Calabria after a decade in Switzerland. Catholic traditions are strong in her new village, but as Marta prepares to be confirmed, her growing sense of self causes her to question everything.

The Vancouver International Film Festival runs Sep 29 - Oct 14. Full program guides available Sep 17. Sneak Preview guide available now online.

the secret of the kells | ken priebe

2011-08-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

Animator Ken Priebe has just posted an in-depth look at The Secret of the Kells at his website, Breath Of Animation.

sep 3 | stalker | eye of newt score

2011-08-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

When PT presented The Passion Project in the 2010 PuSh Festival, it was paired with another exploration of Dreyer's masterpiece of silent cinema, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc - a screening of the film accompanied by a new Stefan Smulovitz score, performed by the Eye Of Newt Collective, partly scored, partly improvised. Now the lizard-lensed ensemble bring us another such project, this time tackling another challenging work by another of the most celebrated Soul Food auteurs, Andrei Tarkovsky.

Join us at the Russian Hall Sept 3 to bid bon voyage to Billy Marchenski and Alison Denham as they embark the next day for the Ukraine. Billy, a Radix Associate, is lead creator on Slowpoke, a Radix project in development inspired by the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident. He and co-creator Alison will be staying near the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone for a month, touring the site and developing ideas for the production.

"Not an easy film, but almost certainly a great one."
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

Stalker was made by Andrei Tarkovsky seven years prior to the 1986 accident and eerily fore-shadowed the event. The "stalker" is a professional guide who leads his two clients to "The Zone," an area with the supposed potential to fulfil a person's innermost desires.

Another Radix Associate, Stefan Smulovitz will revive his Eye of Newt Collective, (Silent Summer Nights, The Blinding Light!! Cinema) and gather some of Vancouver's top improvising musicians to "re-imagine" the soundtrack live, with additional work from Radix performers.

Original film rated 100% by Rotten Tomatoes film review website

Admission is $10, snacks and beverages provided.
Bring a pillow, the movie is about 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Proceeds to Radix Theatre Society.

Saturday, September 3rd 8pm
Russian Hall 600 Campbell Avenue
Vancouver, BC

peter bradshaw on tree of life

2011-08-24T17:52:00.000-07:00

Isn't the end of that first paragraph disheartening? I kind of thought maybe the planet was beyond that crap. Oh well, some things just don't change, I guess. Or they don't stay changed. We do better here in Vancouver, anyway...

Tree Of Life
Brad Pitt and Sean Penn are the stars of Terrence Malick latest film, a hugely ambitious and passionate masterpiece
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

At the premiere of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, which I reviewed at the Cannes film festival in May, the movie's final moments were almost drowned out by the booing, jeering and giggling in the auditorium, a response widely developed into a note of balanced and wearily tolerant dismissal in print. People would repeatedly reproach me for my own laudatory notice; this film, they said, was pretentious, boring and – most culpably of all – Christian. Didn't I realise, they asked, that Malick was a Christian?

Well, that last accusation may be true, and the time I have spent since brooding on this film and revisiting others by Malick, have led me to think that The Tree of Life may well come to be seen as this decade's great Christian artwork. But I still prefer to think of it as something other than that. Just as Dietrich Bonhöffer called for a religionless Christianity, so the movie for me created a Christianityless metaphysics. It is a magnificent, toweringly ambitious and visionary work – brilliantly shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, passionately felt, and deeply serious in its address to the audience. The Tree of Life is about the inner crisis of a tormented man in his middle years and the terrible unchangeability of the past. As this man briefly forces himself to consider his own negligible place in the universe, the film gestures at the unimaginable reaches of geological and stellar time, depicting nothing less than the origins of the cosmos and man himself in a colossal Kubrickian symphony of images.

Sean Penn plays a middle-aged executive evidently in the throes of a midlife breakdown, and he is mentally carried back in time to his boyhood in 1950s west Texas, where he and his brothers were dominated by an overbearing father, superbly played by Brad Pitt – a ferocious disciplinarian who abandoned his early vocation for music to become a failed businessman.

Their mother, played by Jessica Chastain, is a gentle, religious soul who asks her sons to follow the way of divine grace, rather than be content to thrive as natural beings. Their father wants them merely to be strong. When one of the brothers dies at the age of 19 on military service, it creates a wound that promises never to heal. Penn's character comes to realise that time, so far from soothing the agonies of our past, may simply preserve and even intensify them as we come to confront our own mortality.

So we are plunged back into an ecstatically remembered childhood before this tragedy, in which their mother plants a tree that she tells her boys will grow to its maturity long after they have grown to theirs. It is a prelapsarian time, yet hardly an Eden. Pitt's formidable dad presides over them all like a pained tyrant, trying to force them to appreciate music, yet also challenging his boys to toughen up, demanding that they hit him in sparring sessions in the front yard and having no scruples about hitting them for the smallest discourtesy or disobedience. Without realising it, he has taught them to think of love and fear as the same emotion. It is an electrifying performance.

And all the time, gigantic scenes from the secret life of the cosmos endow these family dramas with something alienated, bewildering – a sense of a terrifying new perspective in which their traumas are vanishingly tiny and yet have an excruciating new spiritual magnitude. They are a vivid part of an unending universal process in which man is destroyed, renewed, destroyed, renewed again – man, who mysteriously emerged from a natural landscape that exists independently of humanity and human consciousness. One of Malick's most remarkable "prehistoric" scenes shows one dinosaur approach another, apparently wounded dinosaur, place a claw on its neck, hold it there, remove it and impassively move on. What is happening? Mere survival? Or the intuition of something other than survival?

Watching The Tree of Life took me back to Malick's Jamesian drama Days of Heaven (1978), in which the unhurried action provided for one famously haunting shot of a landscape at dusk, in which the cloud-cover dips down at the horizon in a vortex of rainfall. Human life is held up against the massive fact of nature itself, impervious and indifferent to man. Revisiting his second world war movie The Thin Red Line (1998), I now see shots in the primeval forest of a "tree of life" – shots that I didn't notice first time around – and sequences in which dinosaur-descendant reptiles are examined by Malick's camera lens.

Perhaps this is what Malick's cinema is trying to teach us: a kind of Existence 101. He looks, almost stupefied – and as if seeing it for the first time – at a tree, or a river, or a cloud, and asks: why does this exist?

And from there, he takes us to the great unanswerable question, which we will all spend our lives trying, increasingly strenuously, to avoid – why does anything exist at all? This film may not be for everyone, but it makes other movies and other movie-makers look timid and feeble. I am an evangelist for it.

Ebert's Ten

2011-08-23T10:23:00.001-07:00

I'm watching The Third Man this week, and this morning I went sniffing around the internet to see what I could see. Found my way, in that circuitous web-wandering way, to Roger Ebert's list of his personal ten favourite films, c. 1991. Compiled as he prepared to vote in the 1992 Sight & Sound critics poll. (Which reminds me - the next S&S poll comes out next year! Much listing fun.)

Ebert's list is a lovely little introduction to great film, but compiled for personal rather than other reasons. What I like best is that he's the first person I've found to make a convincing case for the inclusion of 2001: A Space Odyssey in the Arts & Faith 100. Alphabetically, then...

Greatest Films
Roger Ebert, April 1991

If I must make a list of the Ten Greatest Films of All Time, my first vow is to make the list for myself, not for anybody else. I am sure than Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" is a great film, but it's not going on my list simply so I can impress people. Nor will I avoid "Casablanca" simply because it's so popular: I love it all the same.

If I have a criteria for choosing the greatest films, it's an emotional one. These are films that moved me deeply in one way or another. The cinema is the greatest art form ever conceived for generating emotions in its audience. That's what it does best. (If you argue instead for dance or music, drama or painting, I will reply that the cinema incorporates all of these arts).

Cinema is not very good, on the other hand, at intellectual, philosophical or political argument. That's where the Marxists were wrong. If a movie changes your vote or your mind, it does so by appealing to your emotions, not your reason. And so my greatest films must be films that had me sitting transfixed before the screen, involved, committed, and feeling.

Casablanca (1942, USA, Michael Curtiz)
It's because it makes me proud of the characters. These are not heroes: when they rise to heroism, it is so moving because heroism is not in their makeup. Their better nature simply informs them what they must do.

Citizen Kane (1941, USA, Orson Welles)
Routinely named the best film of all time, almost by default, in list after list. Maybe it is.

Floating Weeds (1959, Japan, Yasujiro Ozu)
Audiences never stop to think how they understand what a closeup is, or a reaction shot. They learned that language in childhood, and it was codified and popularized by D. W. Griffith, whose films were studied everywhere in the world - except in Japan. Ozu fashioned his style by himself, and never changed it, and to see his films is to be inside a completely alternative cinematic language.

Gates of Heaven (1978, USA, Erroll Morris)
A documentary about some people involved in a couple of pet cemeteries in Northern California. A film about life and death, pride and shame, deception and betrayal, and the stubborn quirkiness of human nature.

La Dolce Vita (1960, Italy, Federico Fellini)
Forget about its message, about the "sweet life" along Rome's Via Veneto, or about the contrasts between the sacred and the profane. Simply look at Fellini's ballet of movement and sound, the graceful way he choreographs the camera, the way the actors move.

Notorious (1946, USA, Alfred Hitchcock)
I do not have the secret of Alfred Hitchcock and neither, I am convinced, does anyone else. He made movies that do not date, that fascinate and amuse, that everybody enjoys and that shout out in every frame that they are by Hitchcock.

Raging Bull (1980, USA, Martin Scorsese)
Ten years ago, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver was on my list of the ten best films. Raging Bull addresses some of the same obsessions, and is a deeper and more confident film. Movie acting as good as any ever put on the screen.

The Third Man (1949, UK, Carol Reed)
Apart from the story, look at the visuals! The tense conversation on the giant ferris wheel. The giant, looming shadows at night. The carnivorous faces of people seen in the bombed-out streets of postwar Vienna, where the movie was shot on location. The chase through the sewers. And of course the moment when the cat rubs against a shoe in a doorway, and Orson Welles makes the most dramatic entrance in the history of the cinema. All done to the music of a single zither.

28 Up (1985, UK, Michael Apted)
The movies themselves play with time, condensing days or years into minutes or hours. Then going to old movies defies time, because we see and hear people who are now dead, sounding and looking exactly the same. Then the movies toy with our personal time, when we revisit them, by recreating for us precisely the same experience we had before. No other film I have ever seen does a better job of illustrating the mysterious and haunting way in which the cinema bridges time.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, USA, Stanley Kubrick)
a landmark of non-narrative, poetic filmmaking, in which the connections were made by images, not dialog or plot. The debates about the "meaning" of this film still go on. Surely the whole point of the film is that it is beyond meaning, that it takes its character to a place he is incapable of understanding. The movie lyrically and brutally challenges us to break out of the illusion that everyday mundane concerns are what must preoccupy us. It argues that surely man did not learn to think and dream, only to deaden himself with provincialism and selfishness. 2001 is a spiritual experience. But then all good movies are.

Read more on each of Roger Ebert's selections, and more about the Sight & Sound poll (1952-1992), here. And you can click on any of the poster images for a closer look.

aug 28 | mas*h | cineplex classic films

2011-08-21T11:13:00.001-07:00

M*A*S*H (1970)
"M*A*S*H Gives a D*A*M*N"
Directed by: Robert Altman
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman, Rene Auberjonois
Plot: The staff of a Korean War field hospital use humor and hijinks to keep their sanity in the face of the horror of war.

Sunday, August 28, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

M*A*S*H is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

aug 19-21 | videomatica weekend

2011-08-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

As you know, our favourite video store is closing. But they're going out in style - this weekend, they've taken over the VanCity Theatre to big-screen several of VM's most popular titles. Get the whole schedule here: I'll just underline a favourite...

The Third Man
6pm Saturday
Graham Greene screenplay, directed by Carol Reed, starring Orson Welles

...and a couple Soul Food-ish selections...

The Big Lebowski
8:15 Saturday
The keystone of Cathleen Falsani's book "The Dude Abides: The Gospel According To The Coen Brothers."

Latcho Drom
8:30 Sunday
A film Anne Lamott celebrates in her exceptional book Traveling Mercies.

Anne Lamott on LATCHO DROM

2011-08-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

LATCHO DROM (SAFE PASSAGE, 1993, France)
"But oh, the old women dancing: the old women who shine with the incredible stirring of spirit that has kept them lit over the years, even though the winds howl all around them."

Anne Lamott says her two best prayers are "Help me, help me, help me" and "Thank you, thank you, thank you." Sometimes one leads to the other.

One time in particular, the answer to the first and the route to the second was a movie. In love with a man and suddenly, desperately self-conscious, she found herself loathing the face and body that are the legacy of four hard-lived decades on this planet. "Even though both feminism and Christianity have taught me that I am my spirit, my heart, all that I have survived over the years and all that I have given, still a funny thing happened after I started liking this guy: I looked in the mirror, and sighed, and thought to myself, I will cut my eyes out."

The still, small voice prevailed – "this little-kid voice, this Tweety-bird voice" – and she asked God for "a little help with this stupidity." And what do you know, iInside ten minutes, friends called and she was on her way to see Latcho Drom, a film about gypsies, without dialogue, filled with dancing and singing and... Faces.
"The gypsies are all born old. The men are dashingly homely, as if cars have ridden over their faces. The young girls are beautiful beyond words, and the oldest women dance. But the middle-aged mothers look just like me and my friends – tired, baggy, in need of some repair."

She doesn't want to see this movie, but it begins to draw her in, to lift her up out of whatever it was she had been sinking down into. And as the old women dance, and she feels "the rush of the life force" inside them, inside her, she begins to se them – and possible, potentially, herself? – as the younger gypsies see them: "absolutely beautiful, visibly beautiful, like movie stars."

"Gypsies" is a piece of movie writing you really must read. Just as the book it comes from, Traveling Mercies, is a work of spiritual biography you really must spend some time with. Lamott is a gifted story-teller, an acute observer, a dazzling and hilarious stylist: coming to faith later in life after an intentionally non-Christian, countercultural upbringing (not that authentic Christianity isn't countercultural, but you know what I mean) and a prodigal young adulthood, the fresh wildness of her faith is breath-taking. Just as Aslan is not a tame lion, Anne is certainly not a tame Christian.

It's no surprise to me that God would use a sensual, soulful film like Latcho Drom to speak grace into the heart of this woman: a film that's not religious in any conventional sense, that's about bodies and faces, about soul and the spirit of a people, without being in any way about spiritual things. Jesus can make wine from any water – it's astounding to see what He can concoct from such a heady brew as this!

"Coming out of the movie that night, I realized that I want what the crones have: time for all those long deep breaths, time to watch more closely, time to learn to enjoy what I've always been afraid of – the sag and the invisibility, the ease of understanding that life is not about doing. The crones understand this, and it gives them all kinds of time – time to get much less done, time for all these holy moments."

Secret Sunshine on Criterion

2011-08-18T15:04:00.000-07:00

New Criterion release. I saw this at the VIFF a few years ago, a Korean story about a woman in desperate straits who becomes involved with evangelical / charismatic Christians. I found it a pretty grim film, and it seemed to me that the Christians, while portrayed honestly and accurately enough, were weighed in the balance and found wanting. But you can decide for yourself. It's definitely a strong film.

Here's what Criterion has to say:

For this exquisite drama about faith and the search for redemption in the face of tragedy, Jeon Do-yeon was awarded the best actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s easy to see why: her devastating portrayal of the widowed piano teacher Shin-ae, trying to start her life over with her young son in a new town, is a master class in subtle expressivity. Secret Sunshine is a raw, unpredictable journey, led by a filmmaker you’ll be hearing a lot more about in coming years.

And, elsewhere,

A master of intensely emotional human dramas, director Lee Chang-dong is a luminary of contemporary Korean cinema, and his place on the international stage was cemented by this stirring and unpredictable work examining grief and deliverance. An effortless mix of lightness and uncompromising darkness, Secret Sunshine (Miryang) stars Cannes best actress winner Jeon Do-yeon as a widowed piano teacher who moves with her young son from Seoul to her late husband’s provincial hometown for a fresh start. Quietly expressive, supple filmmaking and sublime, subtle performances distinguish this remarkable portrayal of the search for grace amid tragedy.

aug 17 & 28 | mas*h | cineplex classic films

2011-08-10T11:11:00.001-07:00

M*A*S*H (1970)
"M*A*S*H Gives a D*A*M*N"
Directed by: Robert Altman
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Elliot Gould, Tom Skerritt, Robert Duvall, Sally Kellerman, Rene Auberjonois
Plot: The staff of a Korean War field hospital use humor and hijinks to keep their sanity in the face of the horror of war.

Wednesday, August 17, 7:00pm
Sunday, August 28, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

M*A*S*H is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

watching for... SUING THE DEVIL

2011-07-30T17:41:00.001-07:00

Trailer looks a little shoddy, but intriguing premise. In theatres Aug 26.

Double feature with "The Man Who Sued God"?

mubi | my father my lord

2011-07-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

Soul Food Movie pal Rosie Perera recommends this recent find: "beautiful, powerful, challenging, worth discussing. Definitely soul food." (She also says to ignore the note there that says there are no English subtitles: it's got subtitles, not to worry).

It's on the MUBI website, streamable for three bucks.

MY FATHER MY LORD
(2007, Israel, Hofshat Kaits)

Abraham Eidelmann, an old ultra-orthodox rabbi, has a young wife, Esther, and a young son, Menahem. He spends all his time praying, studying the Torah and preparing his sermons. Abraham has not much time to devote to Esther, who craves affection, nor to Menahem, who is awakening to life. But today Menahem is happy. His father has accepted to go to the Dead Sea for their holidays.

Winner of the Best Cinematography and Best Director awards at the 2006 Haifa International Film Festival, and the Best Narrative Feature at the 2007 Tribeca Film Fest in New York.

the new world | lumia

2011-07-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

Terrence Malick's ... cosmically tinged movie, about a family in Waco, Texas, in the nineteen-fifties, and the creation of the world, among other things, begins and ends with a shifting flame of red-yellow light. Critics have been confounded by the flame. Robert Koehler, of Variety, dismissed it as a “yolk-colored blob”; Amy Taubin, writing in ArtForum, called it “a great whatsit”; and Anthony Lane described it in these pages as “glimmers of unfathomable light.” The Times' A.O. Scott concluded that it “can only represent the creator.”

So what, exactly, is the “great whatsit”? Malick isn't telling - he hasn't granted an interview about his work since the nineteen-seventies. The Tree Of Life's credits, however, reveal the image to be the light artist Thomas Wilfred's “Opus 161” (1965-66). Now largely forgotten, Wilfred's “lumia compositions,” as he called them, are both feats of bric-a-brac engineering and ethereal works of art. He employed reflective mirrors, hand-painted glass disks, and bent pieces of metal - all housed in a screened wooden cabinet, or, in one case, mounted on a walnut “tea wagon” - to transform beams of light produced by a series of lamps and lenses. To look inside a lumia instrument is to see an apparent scrap heap put to near-magical use. Wilfred began honing his technique in the nineteen-twenties, and by the forties and fifties his work was in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney, and the Museum of Modern Art. MOMA's founding director, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., wrote to Wilfred, in 1959, “I think it would please you to know that we receive more letters and telephone calls asking for information aout Lumia than about any other single work in the Museum's collection.”

A piecemeal transcendentalist, Wilfred sought to represent “the universal rhythmic flow” in his art. He produced roughly forty works before his death, in 1968. Only eighteen lumia pieces have survived. (Clare Boothe Luce's is in storage at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.) One of these is “Luccata, Opus 162,” whic is currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The piece is on loan from the collection of Eugene Epstein, a retired radio astronomer, and his wife, Carol, who own about half of the extant Wilfreds, including the one featured in The Tree Of Life. “These are rarely seen,” Epstein explained the other day. “I you haven't seen one in person, you're totally unaware of them.” This is largely owing to the fact that Wilfred resisted attempts to record the lumia. “I have never permitted any of my works to be filmed,” he wrote in 1962. “We have experimented with the process here and the results have been too poor to be considered.”

Malick's crew first contacted Epstein four years ago about filming “Opus 161,” which they recorded both at LACMA and at the Epstein's home in Los Angeles. The piece runs without repeating itself for one year, three hundred and fifteen days, and twelve hours, although it occupies only about a minute or two of screen time in The Tree of Life. Epstein recalled speaking to one of Malick's producers: “They were trying to capture something about creation and so on, and they were wondering if they could used lumia.” Epstein, who consideres the preservation of Wilfred's works and legacy to be his “life's mission,” is not a film buff, and he did not immediately recognize Malick's name. “Terrence and his wife came over for an afternoon, “he said. “I was told he was a prominent director. He's a bright guy, very cordial, nothing pretentious or anything about him. He didn't come swooping in with an entourage.”

Epstein discovered Wilfred's work in 1960, while visiting MOMA as a graduate student. “There was this darkened alcove where 'Opus 137' was,” he recalled. “It just hit me like a ton of bricks. I stood there for a while watchig, and then my feet got tired, and then I just sat down on the floor and watched some more.” When asked what strikes him about lumia, he says, “Sublime, ineluctable beauty. It's a visceral joy.”

Joshua White, the founder of the nineteen-sixties psychedelic multimedia outfit the Joshua Light Show, also cites Wilfred as one of his primary influences. He recalled taking girlfriends to MOMA after school to stare at the Wilfreds. “He was making something that I call 'fugitive art,’” said White, who was taking a break from prepping a recent three-night stint at the Hayden Planetarium. “You couldn't take a picture of someone looking at a Wilfred, really, because it was so fragile, and the recording medium didn't exist.”

White, who found lumia to have pacific qualities - “I was kind of a hyper child,” he said; “the Wilfred calmed me down” - links his work to his predecessor's: “Light, especially when it's been abstracted by a genius like Thomas Wilfred, the whole point is it's a little ambiguous. You see what you want to see. We make something for you to interpret in your head, so that everybody sees a different light show.” The same, it seems, can be said of film critics.

Gregory Zinman,
The New Yorker, June 27, 2011

WATCHING FOR... pope joan / she... who would be pope

2011-07-21T22:41:00.002-07:00

Sight & Sound, July 2011

Originally released in 1972, Pope Joan (dir. Michael Anderson, screenplay John Briley) starred Liv Ullmann as the legendary woman who supposedly headed the Roman Catholic Church for two years in the 850s. Co-starring Franco Nero and Maximilian Schell as Joan's love interest, and featuring cameos from Olivia de Havilland and a scene-stealing Trevor Howard, it was a typically well-made historical biopic, albeit one whose 'bio' was based on conjecture. . . .

The film met with harsh criticism. Veering between snooty indifference and acerbic vitriol, the reviews combined a sense of costume-drama fatigue with plain dislike of the film's conventional treatment of sensational events. Although Pope Joan openly depicted monks with concubines, nuns attracting lovers and a pontiff going into labour, the film countered its sensational elements with an emphasis on historical context - which somehow affronted those seeking outrage. A press release stating that the script was acceptable to Vatican officials did little to appease the naysayers. The film subsequently suffered hacking at the hands of its distributor, who cut it from 132 minutes down to 111 and, in the US, changed the title to The Devil's Imposter.

The excised footage consisted mainly of a modern story that Briley had written to run alongside the historical drama. In this contemporary tale, Liv Ullmann plays a naive 1970s evangelist, caught in a tawdry love triangle and starting to believe she is a reincarnation of Pope Joan. entire sequences were filmed in 1971 with Keir Dullea and Robert Beatty as psychiatrists trying to diagnose Ullmann's delusional preacher but, outside the 1972 press screenings, they have remained unseen - until 2009, when Briley, Anderson and producer Kurt Unger decided to reinsert them to create a new cut of the film under the title She... Who Would Be Pope.

The final edit is an unexpected take on religious sanctity and human sexuality. Running at 111 minutes - the same length as the release print of Pope Joan - the new version blends, replaces and reframes the original footage. Gone are extended scenes of Joan's approbation as Pope, in favour of a cynical glance at flower-power licentiousness.

The Vatican has long denied Pope Joan's existence but, through the cynical looking glass of 1970s counterculture, this new version increases the potency of the legend, showing how it resonates with attitudes towards sex and religion.

There is also a recent feature film version of the story of Pope Joan, based on the Donna Woolfolk Cross international bestseller, which is directed by Sönke Wortmann and stars Johanna Wokalek, David Wenham and John Goodman. It premiered at the 2010 Berlin Film Festival.

silence (scorsese/endo)

2011-07-21T11:23:00.001-07:00

"Scorsese is set to shoot his long-awaited feature Silence in early 2012, with Daniel Day-Lewis starring." Sight & Sound, July 2011

From Scorsese: Faith Under Pressure
by Ian Christie, Sight & Sound, November 2006

SILENCE is a novel by Japanese writer Shusaku Endo (1923-1996), which Scorsese has had an option on for over 15 years. Set in the 17th century, it uses the story of the Jesuit missionaries who came to Japan and suffered torture and martyrdom for their faith as a basis for exploring the apparent conflict between traditional Japanese and Western Christian values. Endo was a Japanese Catholic, and Scorsese believes that he has an important message for the modern world: a message that Scorsese, the son of Sicilian Catholics and raised in New York, has been struggling to define for himself ever since he first ventured outside Little Italy.

The novel was proposed to him by one of the churchmen who gathered in 1988 to give their views on the controversial THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST - Paul Moore, then Episcopal archbishop of New York. ...

After the archbishop gave SILENCE to Scorsese it took a year for him to read it, which he finally did while he was in Japan to appear as van Gogh in Kurosawa’s elegaic fantasy DREAMS. Deeply moved by Endo's portrayal of Christian faith being tested, he arranged a deal to film the novel through the Italian company Cecci Gori and started writing the script with his longtime collaborator Jay Cocks while working on CAPE FEAR (1991). ...

By now Scorsese felt he was beginning to grasp the profound challenge Endo posed to conventional Western Christianity. "SILENCE was the answer to the void I felt after THE LAST TEMPTATION. What I found there was this great compassion for Judas and for Mary Magdalene, and the idea of Jesus not as someone who glows in the dark, but as someone who's afraid to die - remember how he reacts when Lazarus reaches out from the grave." But he was still no closer to being able to make the film. ..

It's the question of how to live one's life with compassion and, as the existentialists would say, authenticity, that has kept SILENCE on his agenda for over 15 years. It wasn't until the editing of THE DEPARTED that Scorsese and Cocks finally wrote a script he considers workable. The crux of Endo's novel appears to be the drama of torture and doubt that leads the captive father Rodrigues towards committing apostasy - publicly renouncing his faith. What Scorsese has come to realize, after living with the book and studying Endo's other work, is that "Rodrigues thinks he's Jesus, but in the end he discovers he's Judas." The starring role he has envisaged in his own story in fact belongs to the cowardly Japanese convert Kichijiro, "truly disgusting human being" who keeps falling short of his ideals and asking for forgiveness. Rodrigues is forced to recognize that Christianity true to Christ's example demands he grant Kichijiro forgiveness - and, as Endo writes, only when he overcomes his repulsion does "the face of Christ look straight into his" and fill him with shame as he realizes his failure.

This devastating work, hailed by Graham Greene as "one of the finest novels of our time", allows Scorsese to pursue his concern with "what Jesus meant" (the title of another influential Garry Wills book) in a dramatic form as challenging as Kazantzakis’s THE LAST TEMPTATION. He also thinks the issues the novel raises are more relevant than ever today. “If you have real faith, then of course you want to make other people as convinced as you are - go out and save their souls! But you can't impose your beliefs on another culture unless you understand that culture properly, which takes time and compassion. Once the Catholic Church was pretty certain of its rightness, as was Islam, and perhaps the Pentecostal Christians today. I can understand that feeling ‘it's for their own good’, but I resist it. Endo thought the Christianity that would have the most chance in Japan was the feminine side - not the God of judgment but of forgiveness. And I'm interested in how the traditional cultures of Japan, Korea and China accept the evanescence of life in the inevitability of destruction."

But the task of persuading financiers, a studio and actorsto embark on such a spiritual quest remains formidable. Might Daniel Day-Lewis be tempted to return to Scorsese's fold to contribute his unique brand of intensity to the older priest, already accused of apostasy? Might this also be a chance for Scorsese to work with younger European actors, if the new Hollywood spurns his unfashionable choice of subject? Could he find a way of stepping off the superhighway of big-budget productions to work once again on the scale of AFTER HOURS (1985) and THE LAST TEMPTATION (or indeed the ultra-low-budget TAXI DRIVER, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year)? Such decisions aren't easy for a director who has fought so long to establish his authority and keep control of his career, in a world where budgets proclaim clout. ...

jul 24 | spartacus | cineplex classic films

2011-07-17T11:10:00.001-07:00

Spartacus (1960)
"I am Spartacus!"
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmonds, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov
Plot: They trained him to kill for their pleasure…but they trained him a little too well. The slave Spartacus leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Empire.

Sunday, July 24, 12:30pm

Presented in 2K Digital. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

SPARTACUS is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

to aug 1 | criterion sale | soul food picks

2011-07-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

This just in from Criterion...

Dear Criterion collectors,

Looking to beef up your DVD and Blu-ray collections and get a great deal at the same time? Head on over to Barnes & Noble, either a store or online, and dive in to their 50% off bonanza on all Criterion movies. Every Criterion and Eclipse title, Blu-ray or DVD, is on sale, including exciting new releases like Kiss Me Deadly, People on Sunday, Black Moon, and Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas. The sale runs through August 1.

Here are my Soul Food picks from the collection...

Andrei Rublev, Solaris and more by Andrei Tarkovsky
Au Hasard Balthazar and more by Robert Bresson
The Passion of Joan of Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer box set
The Flowers Of St. Francis, War Trilogy (incl Rome Open City and Paisan) by Roberto Rossellini
Metropolitan, The Last Days Of Disco by Whit Stillman
Four Masterworks (incl The Seventh Seal, Virgin Spring, Wild Strawberries), A Film Trilogy (Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, The Silence) and more by Ingmar Bergman

49th Parallel
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Bicycle Thieves
Black Narcissus
By Brakhage
Close-Up
Days Of Heaven
George Washington
Ikiru
The Killer (John Woo)
The King Of Kings (1927)
The Last Days Of Disco
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Wave
Leon Morin, Priest
Magnificent Obsession
Make Way For Tomorrow
Monty Python's Life of Brian
My Dinner With Andre
My Night At Maud's (in "Six Moral Tales")
The Night of the Hunter
Picnic At Hanging Rock
Red Beard
Revanche
Salesman
Secret Sunshine
La Strada
Sullivan's Travels
Wings Of Desire
Wise Blood
Yi-Yi

Tons of other great titles too, of course - I'm a big fan of their new release, the nasty Kiss Me Deadly, for example, but it's hardly Soul Food, now, is it?

Search the Soul Food Movies blog for reviews of a number of the above titles

july @ cinematheque | la dolce vita | the green ray

2011-07-11T22:52:00.000-07:00

Forgive the shoddy blog post, but I'm in full-time rehearsals for THE DISAPPEARING at Pacific Theatre. We open Wednesday. But you HAVE to know about two Soul Food Classics screening at one of Vancouver's (few remaining) cinematic treasures, Pacific Cinematheque.

LA DOLCE VITA

July 14-18

(here's Frederic Buechner on LA DOLCE VITA)

THE GREEN RAY

(or, "SUMMER")

July 21-28

(with thematic connections to MY NIGHT AT MAUD'S)

jul 8 - 14 | small town murder songs

2011-07-10T09:46:00.001-07:00

At the Vancity this week
7pm nightly through Thursday: no show Wednesday

Small Town Murder Songs

A modern gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life.

This outstanding Canadian feature is an audacious leap forward for writer-director Ed Gass-Donnelly. A small Mennonite community in Ontario is rocked by the discovery of a murdered woman at a local landfill. The investigation pulls in big city cops, but local sheriff Walter (Peter Stormare) has his own theory about who is responsible, a hunch that may be clouded by the bad blood between him and his ex-girlfriend’s new lover.

With a tremendous original gospel score by alt rock collective Bruce Peninsula, and an intense performance from Stormare (Fargo) at its troubled heart, this is not your typical crime thriller, but a powerful spiritual drama, deeply rooted in small town Canadian experience.

"A rare film. Virtuoso helmer Ed Gass-Donnelly achieves that longed-for thing, a whole greater than the parts." VARIETY

"Eerily beautiful. Evoking the Coen Brothers. Ed Gass-Donnelly is a filmmaker to watch." SCREEN DAILY

"Sweeps you off your feet from the opening credits. A great achievement!" QUIET EARTH

"A magnificent crime drama. In a category all its own." CITY TV

*** SELECTION ***

Toronto International Film Festival, 2010

"It's a rare film that feels too short, but 'Small Town Murder Songs' leaves one wanting more -- more murder story, mystery and revelations from lead thesp Peter Stormare and virtuoso helmer Ed Gass-Donnelly." Variety

"...the unusual relationship of soundtrack to visuals, the depth of its spiritual component, and the excellent ensemble of actors are impressive enough to make Gass-Donnelly a filmmaker to watch." Screen Daily

Thanks Deb, Peter

jul 8 | new jason goode films | regent college

2011-07-07T07:31:00.002-07:00

Jason Goode's potent production of Danny & The Deep Blue Sea takes the Pacific Theatre stage next January with Alecs Paunovic and Lori Triolo. Jason also directs movies, and two of his short films will be featured in two different Ontario festivals on the same night.

June 24 is a sort of Pacific Theatre (On Screen) Night in Ontario, with THE HITCHHIKER (Alecs Paunovic, Gina Chiarelli, Kathy Parsons, Gillian Fritzche, Stephen Waldschmidt) screening at the Niagara Indie Filmfest in St. Catharines, and POP SWITCH (Lucia Frangione, Michael Kopsa, Duncan Fraser, Jan Kiesser) playing in the ReelHeART International Film Festival in Toronto.

For the handful of us who won't be buying last-minute plane tickets to Canada's second-largest province, there'll be a chance to view Jason's newly completed film, THE PLANTING, at Regent College on Friday, July 8 at 7:30. In addition, a rough cut of his upcoming film, LATE (starring Lucia Frangione) will be shown. See you there!

jul 13 & 24 | spartacus | cineplex classic films

2011-07-06T11:09:00.001-07:00

Spartacus (1960)
"I am Spartacus!"
Directed by: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmonds, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov
Plot: They trained him to kill for their pleasure…but they trained him a little too well. The slave Spartacus leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Empire.

Wednesday, July 13, 6:30pm
Sunday, July 24, 12:30pm

Presented in 2K Digital. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

SPARTACUS is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

jul 15 | beast of bottomless lake | dvd release screening

2011-07-02T08:38:00.001-07:00

left to right: David Nykl, someone's back, beast

The Beast of Bottomless Lake has been sold to Superchannel and has a DVD release, so to celebrate, the Kelowna-lensed feature will be shown at the Denman Cinema July 15 with cast members in attendance.

6:30 doors
7:30 short films (including Super-Anon with Debra Sears, Chy Liu, Mark Lewis)
between 9:00 and 9:30 The Beast Of Bottomless Lake

Pacific Theatre fans (not to mention Stargate: Atlantis fans) may remember David Nykl - Refuge Of Lies, 12 Angry Men, Mercy Wild, even back to I Am The Brother Of Dragons and Say No Max - who stars as Dr Paul Moran in the feature.

website

Tickets: $15 in Advance Only (tickets cannot be sold at the door due to liquor license regulations), online or at the Denman Cinema box office

watching for... lamb of god

2011-06-29T23:52:00.000-07:00

"Diablo Cody, the writer behind Juno, will make her directorial debut with Lamb of God. The comedy follows a young conservative religious woman who loses her faith after a plane crash, decides to go to Las Vegas to live the life of a sinner, and on her journey finds her way back to her faith. The company is fast-tracking the project and wants to begin casting as soon as possible."

edited from Hollywood Reporter

in a better world

2011-06-25T09:15:00.004-07:00

No longer playing in Vancouver. Watching for the DVD release...

A few years back, two equally remarkable foreign films appeared, at around the same time. I never understood why one of them - The Lives Of Others - was seen and celebrated by pretty much everybody, where the other - After The Wedding - went largely unwatched. Perhaps because the Florian Henkel von Donnersmark film won the Oscar: perhaps because it was directed by someone with the irresistable name Florian Henkel von Donnersmark - Oscar bait for sure. I ended up preferring Susanne Bier's neglected After The Wedding, but that could just be my anti-band-wagon-istic tendencies. This much I'll say: alongside Please Give, one of only two films I can think of about philanthropy.

In any case, this time around Bier nabbed the statue, so one can hope her latest lensing will draw the wider audience that the shiny little dude seems to attract.

I finally managed to see the film the other day and recommend it, though it can be tough going at times. It cuts close, in a city still coping with the display of human violence that was the Stanley Cup riot: it's about violence and power, retribution and conscience, on a schoolyard in Denmark and in Darfur refugee camps.

Not only is it directed by Bier, but the screenplay is by Anders Thomas Jensen, who wrote After The Wedding. Both films are complex, mature, unpredictable, taken up with difficult interpersonal / moral questions. A personal favourite (but definitely not everyone's cup of tea) is the extraordinarily black, extraordinarily bizarre, extraordinarily (Scandanavianly) funny Adam's Apples, also written and directed by Jensen. I really can't escape the impression that he and/or Bier must be Christian, or at least preoccupied with or steeped in Christian faith. (I see that Jensen/Biers both have roots in the Dogme movement, and have collaborated before, on Open Hearts [2002] and Brothers [2004].)
In A Better World shows only once daily, at 2:30, at the Denman - the last stop for films on their way out of town. And with the demise of Videomatica, I don't know how one will be able to see it once it's gone. So make the effort, before time runs out.

Anton and his wife Marianne are doctors. Much of his time is spent in Africa, where he tends the sick under harsh and even dangerous conditions; she remains at home in Denmark. Now separated, they have two sons, one of whom, Elias, is badly bullied at school — a crisis that endures until a new boy named Christian arrives. At no point does Susanne Bier’s film stray far from the borders of violence, whether it’s the violence of disease, of calculated payback, or simply of insufferable feeling. By and large, the children in the movie cleave instinctively to an Old Testament view of wrongs inflicted and answered, whereas most of the adults, who seem at once weaker and more disciplined, subscribe, at least in theory, to Christian forgiveness. The movie retains grip and grace, and the performances — by the child actors, in particular — quicken the pulse of life. Winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In Danish.

Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

Susanne Bier on In A Better World: "It's about the distance between being savable and not savable. At what point does redemption become impossible? Is there such a point?"

now playing... tree of life (terrence malick)

2011-06-24T03:30:00.000-07:00

PLAYING June 24-30...
Park 4:00 7:00 9:55 | Sat/Sun add 12:50
International Village Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed: 12:45 1:50 3:55 5 7:05 8:05 10:15

Won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Festival. Kind of the big soul food movie event of the year.

"The story follows a young boy who struggles between being a strong man like his father (Brad Pitt) suggests, or going “the way of nature and the way of grace” like his mother suggests. When he is an adult (Sean Penn) his is still struggling with these two choices as he reaches a pivotal point in his life." flix66

Further notes on Tree Of Life and other Malick films

now playing... bill cunningham new york

2011-06-24T02:14:00.003-07:00

CURRENTLY AT THE DENMAN CINEMA
July 1-7, 3:30 daily

Lovely, lovely film. Photography, the streets of New York, and a self-directed man. I think of Ralph Waldo Emerson "On Self-Reliance." I think of the title of that book, "Purity Of Heart Is To Will One Thing." Katie was right: there's even a bit of Soul Food here. Joy, vocation, humility.

“If you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do. That’s the key to the whole thing.”

Roger Ebert: "It doesn't matter if you care nothing at all about clothing, fashion or photography. Here is a good and joyous man who leads a life that is perfect for him, and how many people do we meet like that? This movie made me happy every moment I was watching it."

tangled | un-tangling the fairy tale of the gospel

2011-06-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

Ken Priebe is a Vancouver animator who writes for Hollywood Jesus. He recently gave a sermon at Cedar Park Church based on Disney's Tangled. There's also a written article which covers some of the same themes.

jun 26 | butch cassidy & the sundance kid | cineplex classic films

2011-06-19T11:08:00.001-07:00

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
"Not that it matters, but most of it is true."
Directed by: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
Plot: Two Western bank/train robbers flee to Bolivia when the law gets too close. Newman and Redford together again, on the big screen!

Sunday, June 26, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

BUTCH CASSIDY is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

jun 15 & 26 | butch cassidy & the sundance kid | cineplex classic films

2011-06-08T11:06:00.002-07:00

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
"Not that it matters, but most of it is true."
Directed by: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
Plot: Two Western bank/train robbers flee to Bolivia when the law gets too close. Newman and Redford together again, on the big screen!

Wednesday, June 15, 7:00pm
Sunday, June 26, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

BUTCH CASSIDY is available on DVD and Blu-ray at Videomatica

jun 11-17 | terrence malick at vancity, park, fifth ave

2011-06-03T23:24:00.003-07:00

With Terrence Malick's Tree Of Life having recently bagged the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and opening June 17 at the Fifth Avenue (with a special preview showing at the Park at 10am Sunday June 12), the Vancouver International Film Centre is serving up a Terrence Malick retrospective June 11-16. Good on them. Every one of these films deserves the big screen - most especially the magnificent Days Of Heaven.

Pocket Money (1972) is a Malick-adapted screenplay that I saw back in the day, but can't for the life of me say I remember showing any Malickisms. Badlands (1973) was his first directing gig, very potent, distinctive - a dreamy, haunted In Cold Blood. Days of Heaven (1978) is one of the finest films ever made, a strong personal favourite, and sees the director moving in Soul Food directions with a distinct Old Testament flavour. Twenty years later, The Thin Red Line (1998) aims for the same sort of mystical / transcendent themes in a WW2 movie, but I found the sprawling film confused, confusing and narratively awkward - though it has its enthusiasts. At the time I wondered if the story problems could be chalked up to studio demands to drastically trim the almost six hour film to what was considered a more audience-friendly three hour running time: I wondered if it would hang together better in the director's original cut? But The New World (2005) disinclined me to give Terry the benefit of that particular doubt, when it became apparent that a Malick disjointed narrative was a matter either of intention or ineptitude. I found the film excruciatingly annoying, but its defenders are many, the redoubtable Jeffrey Overstreet among them. I'll be giving the film another chance sometime when I'm feeling patient and contemplative: it's clearly one of those movies that can very much depend on the viewer's frame of mind. And, regardless of one's patience for its disregard for narrative continuity, shape and momentum, there's no denying it's fundamentally and explicitly concerned with matters of faith - indeed, of Faith.

So I await Tree Of Life with anticipation and trepidation. Here's hoping it's another Days Of Heaven, or even a New World I might be more in a state to appreciate. But grand or galling, it's a movie I won't be missing.

Here's a rundown of the Malick-o-rama, chronologically. Note the venues carefully.

The Thin Red Line (1998, 170 mins)

Sat Jun 11 8:45 | VanCity

A war movie unlike any other, Terrence Malick's spellbinding film is a poetic refraction of James Jones's autobiographical novel – an account of the US marines' six-month assault on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal in 1942. Making his first film after two decades' silence, Malick shied away from genre. Instead, he gives us a philosophical meditation on life and death in nature and in man, a choral epic suffused in images of limpid beauty and stark horror.

Tree Of Life (2011, 138 mins)
Sun Jun 12 10am | Park Theatre
Special preview

Days Of Heaven (USA, 1978, 94 mins)
Sun Jun 12 8:45 | VanCity
Directed By: Terrence Malick
Cast: Brooke Adams, Richard Gere, Linda Manz, Sam Shepard
A melodrama pared back to the bone and filtered through the hazy consciousness of a child, this may be an unlikely masterpiece but it's now universally acknowledged as one of the most beautiful films ever committed to celluloid. A turn of the century prairie tale of love and death, it was filmed in Alberta standing in for Texas, at harvest time.

The New World (USA, 2005, 135 mins)
Tue Jun 14 8:45 | VanCity
Directed By: Terrence Malick
Cast: Colin Farrell, Q'orianka Kilcher, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale, Wes Studi
In his last film, Malick imagined the Americas as they first appeared in the eyes of the British settlers, a verdant Eden of mystery and promise. But he also gives us the European colonialists through the eyes of the natives. This is also a love story, but not a very happy one… his Paradise Lost. It's like a diamond, a rhapsodic reverie that reveals new facets every time you hold it to the light.

Badlands (USA, 1973, 94 mins)
Wed Jun 15 8:45 | VanCity
Directed By: Terrence Malick
Cast: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
The expanse of the Mid-West supplies the intimate distance of Malick’s directorial debut. Against it, runaway teenagers Kit and Holly seem small and remote. And Malick allows them to stay that way. They may be famous, these killers from the middle of nowhere, but they're still nobodies when you get to know them. Laconic and pure, there aren't many better films about the wide open spaces inside us.

Pocket Money (USA, 1972, 102 mins)
Thu Jun 16 7:00 | VanCity
Directed By: Stuart Rosenberg
Cast: Paul Newman, Lee Marvin, Strother Martin, Hector Elizondo
Charismatic performances from Newman and Marvin enliven this low-key contemporary western, a comedy about a naïve cowboy and his savvier sidekick who get burned on a cattle deal in Mexico. Earning his first studio credit, Malick scripted from a novel by JPS Brown. Stuart Rosenberg (Cool Hand Luke) directs.

Tree Of Life (2011, 138 mins)
Fri Jun 17 | Fifth Avenue

P.S. Some nice screen shots at cinema_fanatic

...thanks, Jason

hollywood theatre closed

2011-06-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, Vancouver's beloved, family-run Hollywood Theatre abruptly closed. "Current owner Dave Fairleigh's grandfather Reginald built the 651-seat theatre in 1935. It's been in the family ever since..." CTV

The cinema was used in a 2007 film called Married Life - some stills are posted here.

Really, really sad. A visit to the Hollywood was time travel, for under ten bucks.

The final evening they screened Cinema Paradiso. Perfect choice. What I would have given to be there for that.

photo from kitsilano.ca

heaven's gate | t-bone burnett + david mansfield

2011-05-26T00:17:00.000-07:00

One of the most effective scenes in Michael Cimino's leisurely western epic Heaven's Gate (1980) is the roller skating sequence set in the dance hall of the title. The Heaven's Gate band includes both T-Bone Burnett and David Mansfield - the latter stealing the show in an extended fiddling and fancy skating feature. Mansfield also composed the film's soundtrack. Burnett and Mansfield toured together on Bob Dylan's 1975/76 Rolling Thunder Revue, after which they formed the Alpha Band (1977/78). Burnett's first solo album, "Truth Decay," was released in 1980, the same year as Heaven's Gate.

may 29 | the sound of music | cineplex classic films

2011-05-22T11:06:00.001-07:00

The Sound of Music (1965)
"The Happiest Sound In All The World!"
Directed by: Robert Wise
Cast: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker
Plot: A woman leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to a Naval officer widower.

Sunday, May 29, 12:30pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC is available on DVD an VHS at Videomatica

watching for... gunnar goes god

2011-05-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

Movie buddy Rosie Perera saw this one, and says "Gunnar Goes God was amazing. I highly recommend it if you get a chance to see it ever. I think it's supposed to be coming out on DVD sometime this year, though it's hard to tell. I can't read Norwegian. But according to Google Translate, I think this site gives you the possibility to pre-order it.

Gunnar Goes God
(2010, Norway, Gunnar Hall Jensen, 85 min)

Saturday May 14 | 2:30 PM | Pacific Cinémathèque

What is the meaning of life? For filmmaker Gunnar Hall Jensen, trapped in the woes of middle-class, financially affluent, consumerist culture, the question becomes more than a navel-gazing solipsistic exercise in this pointedly funny film. Gunnar is not alone in his quest for meaning; his entire film crew is stuck in a similar spiritual malaise, over-worked, stressed out and drinking like proverbial fish in order to cope with the demands of modern life. Is this what it's all about, asks Gunnar, "Sacrificing myself for a way of life that leaves me dead?"

When Gunnar reads a magazine article about a desert monastery that has been in existence since the 4th century, he and his entire crew decamp for the Sahara in search of answers. Along the way, he ponders the idea of God and his own lack of faith. . . .

Gunnar tries to fit into monastic life but finds himself lonely, bored and craving junk food. When he asks the monks about death, they state unequivocally: "Death for us is a just a passage from this life to eternal life." But Gunnar isn't quite ready to slip this mortal coil....

Gunnar Goes God is an inspiring, humorous and ultimately joyful meditation on the biggest question there is. —DW

Tickets and complete blurb - including spoilers - at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival website

...thanks, rosie

may 18 & 29 | the sound of music | cineplex classic films

2011-05-11T11:04:00.001-07:00

The Sound of Music (1965)
"The Happiest Sound In All The World!"
Directed by: Robert Wise
Cast: Julie Andrews, Christopher Plummer, Eleanor Parker
Plot: A woman leaves an Austrian convent to become a governess to a Naval officer widower.

Wednesday, May 18, 6:30pm
Sunday, May 29, 12:30pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC is available on DVD an VHS at Videomatica

videomatica: the sequel

2011-05-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

Philanthropist poised to save Videomatica collection
excerpted from Business In Vancouver
May 10, 2011

Videomatica, Vancouver’s iconic video-rental store, will not hold a clearance sale to liquidate its 30,000-film inventory in the lead-up to its closure this summer. Philanthropist Yosef Wosk will contribute $100,000, if need be, to ensure the collection remains intact, either:
•with the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF);
•at an academic institution such as the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University or Capilano University; or
•at a new British Columbia Film Archive.

Processing costs and suggestive content in some films seem to have kiboshed efforts to get the VPL to buy Videomatica’s collection.

Wosk told Business in Vancouver May 9 he hopes the institution that receives the collection is able to contribute money to buy the VHS tapes and DVDs. He said if that is not possible, he would contribute the $100,000.

The next step is a meeting on May 12 with the academic institutions and represenatives from VIFF. “There’s somewhat of a pressure now because Videomatica needs to give up their lease and move out,” Wosk said. “They would prefer that the collection go directly to where it’s going to go instead of having to first go in storage.”

And here's a link to another article on the closing and the shop. This is a good bit;

When the store celebrated its 25th birthday they compiled a list of Videomatica's top rentals. No. 1 was the British comedy Withnail and I. The top 10 was rounded out by Wings of Desire, Down By Law, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Betty Blue, Blood Simple, The Decameron and Baraka. The top rentals in recent years are 8 ½, City of God and The Lives of Others.

videomatica's final reel

2011-05-05T23:09:00.000-07:00

Saddest movie news of the year.

woody + god

2011-04-25T18:44:00.002-07:00

For a long while, Woody Allen was preoccupied with God - in his stand-up, in his early films, right up through Crimes And Misedemeanors - whether for real or just as a running gag. But whether or not he ever had any doubt about his doubts, it's clear enough now that he's settled on his answer....

Sight & Sound: Gemma Jones is particularly good as Helena (in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger"). There's a foolishness to her character - in her belief in the fortune-teller - and yet she's happier because of it. You've long mocked such quackery in your films, and yet is there some envy on your part towards people who can believe in it?

Woody Allen: I don't take that optimistic view. Yes, Helena is able to maintain her balance by investing her emotions in a fake and fraudulent psychic fortune-teller, and I do believe that belief in anything is better than no belief at all. But no belief at all is the true state of affairs. If you face reality with honesty, you're facing a world that is meaningless. It's a godless universe. That's very painful and terrifying, but that's unfortunately the way it is.
Helena's infatuation with the fortune-teller is no different than somebody's infatuation with any of the major religions, which are no less specious. They all serve the purpose of deceiving the believer sufficiently to enable him or her to get through life without constantly being anxious about the terrifying and unenviable position everyone is in.

Sight & Sound, April 2011

apr 30 - may 4 | black narcissus

2011-04-17T02:03:00.000-07:00

BLACK NARCISSUS (1947, UK, Powell & Pressburger)
Pacific Cinematheque
Apr 30 8:30
May 1 6:30
May 4 7:00

#44 on this year's Arts & Faith 100 selection of films with some sort of spiritual something-or-other maybe going on. The A&F write-up goes like this...

This classic, brilliantly colorful film from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger follows five nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, into the Himalayas to start a hospital and school for the local villagers. The battle against the elements and the local culture proves to be a formidable one, though Sister Clodagh’s most difficult tasks comes from within—through the envious Sister Ruth and Clodagh’s own struggle with her calling and commitment.

The film’s location plays an integral role in the overall thematic arc as a battle between competing worlds. Clodagh struggles to reconcile her pastoral memory of the past with the stony heights of her present. The nuns struggle to bring their English Christianity to bear on the lives of the Himalayan villagers. Powell and Pressberger’s stunning use of color helps to underline these dualities, providing a consistent stream of beautiful images both natural and unnatural, lush and rough, pitting worlds against one another in a visual sense. These formal elements serve as fine complements to the narrative of the film, which follows the nuns as they navigate their way between their competing worlds.

Beyond the exploration of these opposing realms, the film also serves as a meditation on the Incarnation, particularly in the notion of Christ’s descent from heaven to earth, His taking on of human flesh, and His service among humanity. The crucifix finds its way into shots repeatedly—appropriate for a nunnery to be sure, but also drawing the viewer to reflect on the intersection of this narrative with the life of Jesus. Black Narcissus is no allegory, but its theological echoes are undeniable.

Here's the Pacific Cinematheque graph...

A sumptuous stunner of studio-set style and seething, repressed sexuality, Black Narcissus is one of the triumphs of British cinema, and one of the great masterpieces in the Powell and Pressburger canon; Jack Cardiff’s amazing colour cinematography, winner of a much-deserved 1947 Oscar, plays no small part in its glories. Five Anglican nuns attempt to establish a mission in a one-time bordello in the remote Himalayas, but find their faith sorely tested by climate, culture clash, and carnal passion. The superb cast is headed by Deborah Kerr as the virtuous Mother Superior; David Farrar as a cynical, sensual British agent; Sabu as the local Indian potentate; and Kathleen Byron as a nun unhinged by desire. The film’s flesh-versus-spirit battle unfolds in a deliriously exotic, studio-set India that recalls the lavish stylizations of the Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich films of the 1930s.

apr 23 | eat, for this is my body

2011-04-16T02:16:00.001-07:00

Not sure that the title's reference to the words of Christ should suggest that this one will necessarily be essential Soul Food. But one's curiosity is nevertheless piqued...

Eat, for This Is My Body (2007, Haiti/France, Michelange Quay)
Pacific Cinematheque
Apr 23 6:30
"Critics have invoked Luis Buñuel, David Lynch and Werner Herzog to describe the extraordinary Eat, for This Is My Body, New York-born filmmaker Michelange Quay’s taboo-breaking, voodoo-infused visual poem to his ancestral homeland of Haiti. Beginning with a spectator aerial-shot swoop into the island country, Quay’s seductive, often shocking film explores power relations — racial, sexual, colonial — through a series of symbolic, surreal sequences set in a decaying mansion."

farewell, my lovely (1975) | pulp magazine glories

2011-04-11T00:15:00.001-07:00

Nothing particularly soul foodish about this one, but I'm a nut for both Raymond Chandler and baseball history, so I got quite a kick out of the 1975 treatment of Farewell, My Lovely - perhaps the most faithful of the Philip Marlowe screen adaptations, with a celebrated turn by Robert Mitchum in the lead role.

I love the look of the film, its saturated colours mimicking not so much the black and white glories of film noir as the lurid covers of those pulp magazines where Chandler's genre-defining hard-boiled stories first appeared.

That particular image evokes the paintings of Edward Hopper, doesn't it? The colour saturation and grainy resolution are exaggerated in these images because I was viewing the film on vhs tape, and doing my screen captures by shooting the screen with my digital camera. Not particularly true to the actual cinematography, but I do like the effect: pure pulp.

The title sequence at the beginning suggests vintage postcards of Los Angeles neon.

Credit where it's due...

I kept noticing the score, which is exceptional - reminded me sometimes of vintage noir scores like Anatomy Of A Murder, Touch Of Evil, Experiment In Terror, The Untouchables, other times of Bernard Hermann's chilling seventies noir score for Taxi Driver. Turns out the soundtrack became available a few years ago: I downloaded it from iTunes. (It's the "End Title" and "Main Title" versions of "Marlowe's Theme" you're after, and maybe "Moose Finds His Velma.")

The inspired casting doesn't end with Mitchum. In a brothel scene, one of the hoods looked suddenly familiar. A review of the credits confirmed: Sly Stallone, a year before his breakout performance in Rocky.

For my money, Charlotte Rampling plays the fatale-est femme in all noir...

But it wasn't till the closing credits rolled that I noticed who played her husband: the only screen appearance (so far as I know) of the legendary crime novelist Jim Thompson, whose bleak pulp fictions were boiled much harder than Chandler's ever were.

"Farewell, My Lovely" was published in 1940, but the 1975 screenwriter must have been a ball fan, because he chose to set his story in the summer of 1941, against the backdrop of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

The baseball angle also leads to the screenwriter's invention of a little black kid, probably over-emphasizing the "who is not himself mean" part of Chandler's famous mandate - "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor."

But if the kid's presence in the picture ultimately tips things the slightest bit too far in the direction of sentiment, it can be forgiven for giving us this particular little street scene...

apr 17 | one flew over the cuckoo's nest | cineplex classic films

2011-04-10T11:04:00.001-07:00

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
"If he's crazy, what does that make you?"
Directed by: Milos Forman
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Louise Fletcher
Plot: Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse.

Sunday, April 17, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

Watching for... THE WAY

2011-04-07T22:29:00.001-07:00

Edited from
Apocalypse Sheen: The Sheen clan and The Way to redemption
by Craig McLean, April 3 2011
Read the entire article at Independent Woman

Martin Sheen, now 70, and Emilio Estevez, a 48-year-old actor-turned-director, have collaborated on another film odyssey on foreign soil, though this time it has been a more enjoyable experience. The Way is about an uptight father, Tom (played by Sheen), trying to reconnect with his restless son, Daniel (Estevez, who also wrote and directed the film). The younger man, a loner and inveterate backpacker (in his father's eyes a slacker), dies in a storm while trying to walk the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage across the Pyrenees in northern Spain.

Tom, a dentist who had waved off Daniel with pointed misgivings about what his son was doing with his life, travels from America to collect the body. Once in Spain, he decides to honour Daniel's memory by completing the 500-mile trek himself, with Daniel's ashes in his backpack. Along the way, he is joined by three ad-hoc travelling companions, all also looking for meaning or fulfilment in their lives: a troubled Canadian woman, an overweight Dutch stoner and a frustrated Irish writer (played by James Nesbitt). And he is forced to look deeply at his own character, his outlook and his lack of faith -- all fuelled by visions of his dead son.

Sheen, who is still married to Templeton, has been sober for 20 years and is now a devout Catholic, having had his faith restored by a series of meaningful conversations in Paris in 1981 with Terrence Malick, the director of Sheen's breakthrough film, Badlands (1973). For Sheen, making The Way has been particularly gratifying. "The whole journey is about showing our brokenness," he says. "It's about opening up and being human. And that's what spirituality really is. It's humanity." . . .

SPOILERS:

Beautifully and elegantly shot, The Way is a straightforward and moving tale of the bond between father and son, a reconciliation between the generations. In this case, it doesn't occur on the mortal plane -- the bereaved father, closed off emotionally, experiences a gentle conversion to his late son's free-spirited approach to life. But given the firmly Roman Catholic context, the film wears its religiosity relatively lightly. Sheen is happy to view Estevez's film as more "pro-life" than pro-Catholic. "Tom is not a practising Catholic, but by the end of the film he has become a believer," Sheen says. "His faith becomes personal. And that's the most important thing about anyone's faith: it has to be personal. If it's impersonal, why bother? It's useless."

Sheen brushes away any suggestion that he might have tried to convert his son during the shoot. "No. If you're going to proselytise, you have to do it with your actions, with your life. I adore Emilio. And God's presence is very powerful in him. He may think of it otherwise, but I see God's presence in his humanity and his joy."

Opens UK May 13, USA Sep 30

Watching For... THE TURIN HORSE (Bela Tarr)

2011-04-07T21:05:00.001-07:00

Doug Cummings is a fellow-traveler, movie-wise. His filmjourney blog is quality. Robert Koehler is a frequent contributor. Here are excerpts edited from Koehler's report on the latest Bela Tarr film, which premiered in this year's Berlinale: be sure and read the entire article, here.

The Turin Horse begins with a micro-fiction by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, reminiscent of Donald Barthelme’s short fictions placing historical figures in fictitious situations. The story simply tells of a horse in 1888 being mercilessly beaten by its frustrated owner for not budging, and how Nietzsche, passing by on the street in Turin, leapt in to shield the horse from further abuse. The incident left Nietzsche fundamentally altered, ultimately mute and possibly mad, until he died about a decade later. “Of the horse,” the story as well as the third-person on the soundtrack concludes, “we know nothing.”

The Turin Horse, the film, subsequently provides an answer to this open question, and just as suitably, concludes with another open ending: Of the fate of the aging Hungarian farmer (Ohlsdorfer) and his unnamed daughter, we know nothing. . . .

Ohlsdorfer has a bum arm and hand, so he’s badly dependent on his daughter to help him with chores, and chores are all that fill their days, with rest periods in between of staring out their home’s main window—almost certainly what farm folks in the pre-electric age would do for entertainment, with the window as a screen. . . .

The film’s most overwhelming effect is a raging wind, so ferocious that it makes a kind of strange musical sound and creates a new environment. The wind is already there in the opening shot, but soon, it’s a malevolent force that some will be tempted to interpret as either God or the Devil. (Which it would be if this were a Bergman film; fortunately, The Turin Horse is as far from Bergman as an Adam Sandler movie.) . . .

Then, he arrives. We never know who he is, a neighbor most likely, somebody Ohlsdorfer feels comfortable inviting past his threshold. In the film’s only monologue, he delivers a warning to them, that any chance for a life of “excellence” and “good” is over, chased out by nameless barbarians who’ve ruined everything. He’s a pivot point, a man facing defeat, certainly a foreshadowing of the European disasters to come, but also a universal warning of the collapse of culture. But it’s also undermined in an instant by Ohlsdorfer, who’s been patiently listening to his verbose friend, stops him, calls it all “rubbish” and orders him out the front door. The man could be a parody of every movie drunk opining about the world (or Beckett character who whips enough energy to muster a speech), seeing nothing but darker and darker prospects with every progressive swig, or he could be the kind of visionary who circulate through the worlds of Tarr’s films, phony or not, with some perception of the way the world actually is. Beyond his conclusions that any chance is dashed for the forces of good and excellence to triumph over the forces of rottenness, he’s here to deliver the word: God is dead.

This may be why, even subconsciously, some rejected The Turin Horse in Berlin, and will do so as it trots through one festival after another toward a deservedly legendary position as a key film of our time. The notion that a film would present a case for the non-existence of God is unpleasant to many people, even people at film festivals, where you’re more likely than in many other walks of life to run into atheists. There are the obvious reasons why some (many?) even hate the film. But the fundamental Nietzschean concept of life without a God is as frequently despised now (perhaps now more than ever before) as it was in the author’s time.

Sight and Sound critic/editor Nick James helpfully mentioned to me a specific reference point to Nietzsche in The Turin Horse: The man at the beginning of Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science” who observes a candle going out as proof that God is dead. The critical turning points in the film include an occasion when the gas-lit lamps in the house fail to work anymore, and a large tome read out loud by the daughter, with the passage she reads describing how the churches are being closed by the priests because too much sin has been committed. Tarr refers to the book, a pure invention of Krasznahorkai’s, as an “anti-Bible.” The fascination with this scene, both in the kind of reverential way that Kelemen lights it and frames the daughter and the book, is that the slightly inattentive viewer might actually think that she’s reading from the Bible, but just perhaps an obscure chapter that only Biblical scholars know well. It is, in fact, the third fiction which Krasznahorkai has implanted in the film - this unexpected kind of meta-fiction masquerading as scripture that’s actually a repudiation of religion.

By the arrival of day six, the storm has ended, the apocalypse hasn’t happened. But this meticulously observed choreography of human beings at work and in everyday life, absolutely materialist and fixed by the clock and the course of the sun rising and setting and rising again the next day, gives way to a disturbing metaphysic without God, a darkness that forces the father and daughter into a Beckett space of motionlessness and the elimination of language.

terence malick

2011-04-05T22:10:00.000-07:00

apr 6 & 17 | one flew over the cuckoo's nest | cineplex classic films

2011-03-31T10:57:00.001-07:00

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
"If he's crazy, what does that make you?"
Directed by: Milos Forman
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Louise Fletcher
Plot: Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse.

Wednesday, April 6, 7:00pm
Sunday, April 17, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

mar 17 + 31 | danny boyle | national theatre live: frankenstein

2011-03-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

I saw this Thursday. Absolutely extraordinary, I urge you to see it. The design elements are astonishing: no surprise, I suppose, when you consider Danny Boyle is so visual a director, and so bold. I thought often of Electric Company. It's clear that the approach is fully theatrical, very much conceived for the three-dimensionality of the live stage - but also that Boyle (or his cinematographer?) had always in mind just how it should be captured for film: the placement of the cameras is many times breath-taking. And the provocative questions about the nature of the human soul, the potential horror of man playing god, creating life in his own fallen image.

National Theatre Live: Frankenstein
Mar 17 @ 7pm | Additional performance Mar 31

Danny Boyle's stage production of Frankenstein, a play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley. Performed by Britain's National Theatre, broadcast live to cinemas.

Silvercity Riverport, Metropolis, Coquitlam
Park & Tilford, Scotiabank
Tickets
Cineplex

Danny Boyle: A rare man in a universe of monsters
Feb 27, The Telegraph

Fittingly for an Oscar-winning film director whom colleagues actually seem to like, the ex-altar boy’s foray into theatre exposes the human side of 'Frankenstein’, says William Langley.

. . . Last week, at the National Theatre, Boyle, the Oscar-winning film director, attempted to take a monstrous step towards rescuing the story from itself. Here was no lumbering Herman Munster-lookalike with spinachy skin and a bolt through its neck. The pared-down, elemental Frankenstein Boyle served up with playwright Nick Dear won rapturous notices, with The Daily Telegraph’s critic Charles Spencer declaring: “At its best, there is no doubt that Frankenstein is the most viscerally exciting and visually stunning show in town.”

. . . He was raised in a sternly religious home in Radcliffe, a down-on-its-luck Lancashire mill town, the son of a steel worker and an Irish-born dinner lady. “My whole life was full of saints, growing up,” he says. “It was a very strict Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years. I was supposed to become a priest, and, really, it was my mother’s dearest wish that I should become one.”

At the age of 14, when he was in advanced preparations to enter a seminary in Wigan, the family priest, Father Conway, took him aside and told him he shouldn’t go. “Whether he was saving me from the priesthood or the priesthood from me, I don’t know,” says Boyle. “But quite soon after that I started doing drama. And there’s a connection. All those directors – Martin Scorsese, John Woo – they were all meant to be priests. There’s something very theatrical about it. It’s basically the same job, poncing around telling people what to do.”

. . . In her preface to her novel, Mary Shelley declares that: “I have tried to preserve the elementary principles of human nature.” These, presumably, being the ones junked wholesale during the 200 years that the tale has been turned into hokum. If the National does have a triumph on its hands, it will be because Frankenstein has finally found someone who shares them.

apr 11- 21 | more bible movies on vision

2011-03-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Fire up those PVR's.... (April 4-8 selections here)

David and Bathsheba (1951)
Monday, April 11 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
A grand retelling of the Old Testament story of King David. Though well-loved by his loyal subjects, King David, a war hero, has finally met a force that he cannot contend with: love.
Having fallen for the beautiful Bathsheba, the beloved king must now find a way to handle her husband, Uriah. David sends Uriah, one of his most trusted soldiers, into a deadly battle, which ensures the fate of Bathsheba's husband and begins King David's downward spiral. The once-mighty king's eventual neglect for his kingdom and people incurs the wrath of God, who in turn destroys much of the country.
Photos

Esther and the King (1960)
Tuesday, April 12 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Joan Collins stars as Esther in this biblical melodrama. Set in Persia in the 4th century B.C., recently widowed King Ahasuerus (Richard Egan) is trying to defeat his enemy, Haman, who is leading a campaign of hatred against the Jews. After many intrigues, including the competing affection of another attractive woman, King Ahasuerus marries Esther and defeats the villainous Haman. The film was directed by Raoul Walsh, and also features Denis O'Dea. It also features a mostly Italian cast and crew with Mario Bava helming an Italian language version.
Photos

The Story of Ruth (1960)
Wednesday, April 13 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Plucked from the Old Testament, the story revolves around the character of Ruth, a pagan priestess who serves in her temple under the High Priestess, and who falls in love with a Hebrew man named Mahlon. This love brings her spiritual beliefs into question as she has trouble reconciling her pagan religion with his belief in one invisible deity. By the time they marry, she has decided to convert to Judaism, but her newfound spiritual beliefs are put to the test when Mahlon dies.
Photos

Salome (1953)
Friday, April 15 at Midnight ET /9pm PT
Desperate to save the life of the radical Christian preacher John the Baptist, Princess Salome (Rita Hayworth) pleads to her stepfather, King Herod of Galilee (Charles Laughton), for mercy. Fearing that a prophecy about John being a holy man is true, Herod agrees to grant Salome’s wish after she performs the seductive Dance of the Seven Veils…until the promise of having the beautiful princess to himself overpowers his compassion and he orders John’s execution.
Photos

The Robe (1953)
Monday, April 18 at Midnight ET /9pm PT
The first movie ever filmed in CinemaScope, The Robe Won 2 Oscars® and was nominated for another three. Best Actor nominee RICHARD BURTON stars as Marcellus Gallio, the Roman centurion charged with overseeing the crucifixion of Jesus. But when he wins Christ's robe in a gambling game at the foot of the cross, his life is changed forever. This inspired story set to a spectacular score features an all-star cast including Victor MATURE and Jean SIMMONS, and remains one of the screen's greatest Biblical epics.
Photos

Demetrius And The Gladiators (1954)
Tuesday, April 19 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
In this sequel to "The Robe," Demetrius fights for his life in the arenas of Rome and eventually challenges Caligula for possession of Christ's sacred garment.
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The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) –
Part One: Wednesday, April 20 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Part Two: Thursday, April 21 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Director George Stevens disavowed gimmicks and in his epic retelling of the Four Gospels of the New Testament, set this dramatization in a panoramic framework of splendidly evocative backgrounds, including the astonishing buttes of Utah. Jesus is portrayed by Max Von Sydow in a difficult and highly praised performance. A huge all-star cast (including Charlton Heston as John the Baptist) animate the vast landscape of the film. Based on the Bible, Fulton Oursler’s "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and radio scripts by Henry Denker. Carl Sandburg was a Creative Associate.
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Apocalypse (2010)
Thursday, April 21 at 10pm ET / 7pm PT
Friday, April 22 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Distinguished screen actor Richard Harris portrays the aged apostle John, prisoner on Patmos and prey to physically and emotionally depleting visions that he records for posterity - as admonishment and warning to all mankind. Also stars Vittoria Belvedere, Benjamin Sadler, Christian Kohlund, Bruce Payne, and Ian Duncan.

overstreet | iambic admonit

2011-03-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

Film buddy Jeffrey Overstreet talks movies and art and stuff on the Iambic Admonit blog - to which Soul Foodie Rosie Perera is a regular contributor.

mar 27 | the wizard of oz | cineplex classic films

2011-03-20T10:55:00.001-07:00

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
"Gaiety! Glory! Glamour!"
Directed by: Victor Fleming
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton
Plot: Dorothy Gale is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.

Sunday, March 27, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

THE WIZARD OF OZ is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

becket | the new yorker, mar 14, 1964

2011-03-17T10:58:00.003-07:00

click to enlarge

apr 4 - 8 | bible movies on vision

2011-03-17T09:48:00.002-07:00

Check out the Bible movies coming up on Vision TV! Anybody got a PVR? Poke around Matt Page's excellent Bible Film Blog for more on all of these titles. Most interesting to me about the John Huston film "The Bible" is that the screenplay is by Christopher Fry, who pretty much led the very significant religious drama movement in England in the middle of last century (A Phoenix Too Frequent, The Lady's Not For Burning, A Sleep of Prisoners, The Lark, The Dark Is Light Enough, etc.)

Jesus (1979)
Monday, April 4 at Midnight ET
The life and words of Jesus Christ, whose followers form one of the world's great religions, come to life in this literal adaptation of the Christian Bible's Gospel According to St. Luke, filmed entirely in the land where Jesus lived.
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The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Tuesday, April 5 at Midnight ET
Basing his drama on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, master filmmaker Martin Scorsese delves deep into the mind and soul of Jesus Christ and the inner torment his experiences after discovering he is the son of God. With Oscar-nominees Willem Dafoe as Christ and Harvey Keitel as Judas, Scorsese received an Oscar nomination for directing this sweeping and vivid masterpiece.
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Jesus Christ SuperStar (1973)
Wednesday, April 6 at Midnight ET
Based on the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and the hit broadway show, this classic rock opera tells the story of the last 6 days of the life of Christ as seen by Judas in contemporary Israel. Directed by Norman Jewison.
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The Bible (1966) – Part One
Thursday, April 7 at Midnight ET
Conceived by producer Dino De Laurentiis, THE BIBLE dramatizes the first 22 chapters of Genesis in the Old Testament. Legendary director John Huston lends his talents to create a movie of epic proportions. Shot in sumptuous 70mm, the film is as visually rich as the story it tells.
Presented in an episodic narrative, the story starts at the beginning, with Adam and Eve, played by Michael Parks and Ulla Bergyd, respectively. Their tragic story leads to Cain and Abel, which is followed by the story of Noah, who is portrayed by the director himself. The Tower of Babel is next, followed by the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. George C. Scott plays the beleaguered Abraham, and Ava Gardner stars as his wife, Sarah. In the end, Sarah is visited by the three angels of God, as portrayed by Peter O'Toole.
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The Bible (1966) – Part Two
Friday, April 8 at Midnight ET

andrew o'hehir on the adjustment bureau

2011-03-13T09:25:00.004-07:00

Andrew O'Hehir dubs The Adjustment Bureau the Pick Of The Week at salon.com. Bear in mind, it's a slow week. Still, kind of a fun movie. Here's an edited version of what O'Hehir had to say: if you want more, and don't mind spoilers, check out the original article.

"The Adjustment Bureau" is a science-fiction romance featuring Matt Damon and English actress Emily Blunt as a couple on the run from mysterious men with hats. Its somewhat awkward blend of Philip K. Dick-trapped-in-"The Matrix" paranoia and cut-rate Augustinian theology, feel clean and organic, if that makes any sense.

The real questions in "The Adjustment Bureau" aren't about what's happening but why the Plan apparently dictates that David and Elise must be kept apart, and whether there's anything they can do about it. Now, those questions engender other questions, and if those sound like debating points drawn from an episode of "The Twilight Zone," or a lecture by some Vatican II-style liberal theologian, you're on the right track. Have David and Elise stumbled into a Miltonic War in Heaven, in which Mitchell is playing the role of Lucifer? If we live in a universe designed by some Grand Poobah who stands outside time, is our sense of agency and free will an illusion? Etc.

OK, as you can see, either "The Adjustment Bureau" falls apart when you start to think about it, or you need to think about it a whole lot deeper and better than I just did. Nolfi makes no effort to conceal the Judeo-Christian roots of his premise (which is also true in the Philip K. Dick short story), and if you object to infusions of pop religion into your science fiction no doubt this movie will drive you nuts. But if you're looking for an end-of-winter cinematic palate cleanser that delivers a sweep-you-off-your-feet love story along with a few gooey, chewy, slightly silly philosophical niblets, then the Plan demands that you see this movie.

Adapted from a short story by Philip K. Dick, whose novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" was the basis for BLADRUNNER, which also had a theological thing or two on its mind.

mar 13 | passion of joan of arc

2011-03-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
Sunday Mar 13 at Pacific Cinematheque

Is it only a year and a bit ago that The Passion Project was on the Pacific Theatre stage? And the memorable screening at the Cathedral with the premiere of a live score by Stefan Smulovitz?

Astonishing film, the masterpiece of spiritual cinema in the silent era. See it.

mar 11 | of gods and men

2011-03-12T11:32:00.000-08:00

Of Gods and Men, the Soul Food movie of 2010, opened Friday March 11 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. The God-soaked movie that took godless France by storm. Winner of the Grand Prix at The Cannes Film Festival, didn't even get an Oscar mention. They really are bone-heads, that Hollywood crowd.

julie taymor | tempest, titus, universe, spidey

2011-03-12T11:19:00.001-08:00

Must be tough being Julie Taymor these days. The news on March 10:

After days of rumors, the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark made the official announcement last night: Director Julie Taymor is out. The problem-plagued musical has also been delayed yet again, this time until 'early summer 2011,' according to the show’s blog... Newser

Also, we Taymor fans have been waiting since last fall for her film treatment of The Tempest to show up on a screen near us, but the longer it takes a movie to get into circulation, the more likely it is to be a disappointment. There are exceptions, but that's common. So I'm nervous.

I LOVED Titus: tough, brave, insane, with its excesses in all the right places; the perfect film of a fascinating mess of a play. The stage version of The Lion King is brilliant, inventive: she made art when you might expect schlock, using an amazing variety of puppets to render the movements of an array of specific animals that populate its African landscapes in a gloriously stylized, always specific way.

A Beatles fan, I was tremendously enthusiastic to see Across The Universe, and truly loved it, though I will say it veered into something pretty sentimental by the end. I was entirely up for the over-the-top cuteness of some of the early sequences: they were all about cuteness and naivete, and Taymor is brilliant at matching style and tone to specific material. And while the characters were types, I was willing to see them as archetypes more than stereotypes. I was with her when the story took an increasingly psychedelic direction, and really with her when it got darker. Only, the film seems to chicken out in the home stretch: instead of leaving things as messy as they should have been, it all got happy again, and the sunshine-lollipops tone that worked so well in the first was pretty cloying for me in the third. I still watch and rewatch the film: it's a favourite. But I wince a bit when things start wrapping up, and blame "studio interference" for the compromise.

The delays in Spiderman make me nervous: maybe Ms Taymor's being made the Judas goat, like a sports manager who gets fired when the team does bad and goes on to coach a string of championship teams. Somebody's got to pay, something must be done to sate the blood-lust of the fans and media, and who knows, maybe it actually works sometimes - "shake things up," "new chemistry," "restore confidence," all that. But often I think it's wrong-headed. Sometimes not.

In the face of all this, and fearing a trajectory, the delays in The Tempest make me queasy indeed, the quease aided and abetted by this chart in the last Film Comment;

click to expand

The best anybody could say is that the film is "of interest," with two "mediocres" and one out-and-out "bomb"? Ouch. Granted, these Film Comment reviewers are a tough crowd, and can be pretty darn snooty. But still, high marks for all the films I've liked the best lately; Blue Valentine, The Fighter, The King's Speech. Unmerited critic feeding frenzy, or a bad sign of something rotting - or at least slipping - in the state of Taymor?

I'll wait to have my own response. Actually, all this makes me more eager to see both the film (if it can get to Vancouver) and the play (if I can get myself to New York): nothing I love better than celebrating a maligned but deserving play or film.

Still... I do worry about how Julie's doing.

mar 16 & 27 | the wizard of oz | cineplex classic films

2011-03-09T10:54:00.001-08:00

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
"Gaiety! Glory! Glamour!"
Directed by: Victor Fleming
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton
Plot: Dorothy Gale is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.

Wednesday, March 16, 7:00pm
Sunday, March 27, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

THE WIZARD OF OZ is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

kurosawa + truffaut | looking + seeing

2011-02-26T00:57:00.000-08:00

To be an artist is never to avert one's eyes.

Akira Kurosawa

I realize that it's presumptuous to write about a film one has only seen three times.

Francois Truffaut

Thanks, Andrew...

feb 27 | doctor zhivago | cineplex classic films

2011-02-20T10:54:00.001-08:00

Doctor Zhivago (1965)
"A Love Caught in the Fire of Revolution"
Directed by: David Lean
Cast: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Alec Guinness
Plot: Life of a Russian doctor/poet who, although married, falls for a political activist's wife and experiences hardships during the Bolshevik Revolution

Sunday, February 27, 12:30pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is available on DVD at Videomatica

for the record | anthony lane on blue valentine

2011-02-17T09:50:00.000-08:00

No particular Soul Food angle on the one. Just a superb review of one of my favourite recent films.

COUPLE TROUBLE
review by Anthony Lane | The New Yorker, January 3 2011

TThe first thing we see in “Blue Valentine” is a small girl, standing alone in the grass, crying out a name. It’s a simple sight, yet fraught with alarming possibility, and that goes for the rest of the movie. Here is the tale of a man and a woman falling in and out of love: something that happens every day, to millions of people, as if that were any consolation. “ ’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all,” Tennyson wrote, and instinct tells us to agree. But he was writing of bereavement—of a love cut off in its glory, through nobody’s fault. What if the love wizens and sours, through everyone’s fault, making the loss too bitter to endure? Who wouldn’t wonder, in a low moment, whether the whole damn thing was worth it, after all?

The girl is Frankie (Faith Wladyka), aged about five, the only child of Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams). Frankie is calling for their dog, which has run off, and Cindy’s search for the wanderer strikes the first note of desperation in the film, though hardly the last. When she arrives late for a school concert, her eyes are wet; the news is not good, and you want to know how Dean will break it to their daughter. “Maybe she moved out to Hollywood and became a movie dog,” he says to her, which is as good a working metaphor for death as I have heard. It’s also a hint of how closely Dean is tuned to Frankie—more closely, sometimes, than her mother is. Together, father and daughter lick the raisins from her oatmeal off the kitchen table (“We’re eating like leopards,” he explains), which shows what a kid he is himself, and what sort of laceration would result if they were parted.

As if in response to this worry, the movie then parts company with itself. One moment, we’re watching Frankie being dropped off with Cindy’s father (John Doman) for a sleepover. The next, we see Dean, looking spry and chipper, applying for a job with a firm of house movers. What’s happening? It takes a while to realize that this is a flashback, to the period before he and Cindy met—the era in which, like all lovers, they feel in retrospect that they were arrowing toward each other. But notice what Derek Cianfrance, the director and co-writer, does not do. He supplies no title saying “Five years earlier,” or whatever, and arranges no major shift in tone, aside from a slight cranking up of the colors. In other words, the past is not so different from the present, and what should be horribly confusing about “Blue Valentine” becomes its most rending aspect; namely, that as we swipe backward and forward through the rest of the film, we can’t always tell the now from the then. Given that one means rage, silence, and failed sex and the other meant a flurry of eagerness and lust, you would imagine the gulf to be unbridgeable; but it doesn’t look that way, and the bridging is the saddest thing of all.

Nothing out of the ordinary happens in “Blue Valentine,” and that, together with the vital, untrammelled performances of the two leading actors, is the root of its power. Dean and Cindy try to mend their marriage by taking a short, child-free, romantic break—a sure sign that the damage is now beyond repair. They go to a motel with a choice of fancy suites: Cupid’s Cove or the Future Room. They pick the latter, which, with its revolving bed and planetary décor, is a tacky, dated vision of a future that will never be. “Don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars,” Bette Davis said at the end of “Now, Voyager”; but she was eons away from the cratered desolation of these two, and she didn’t have a guy with smoke on his breath, arms covered in tattoos, and a head full of vodka trying to muscle her into submission on the floor. Not that the past was a paradise; when Cindy runs into an old boyfriend (Mike Vogel), we are spirited further back to the time when she got pregnant by him, with harrowing results. If you want to see an entire abortion debate dramatized in a few minutes, every angle is represented here, from the brutishness of the conception to the delicate courtesy of the doctor and the sudden, terrified realization of the woman that she cannot and must not withdraw her child from existence.

All of this demonstrates that “Blue Valentine” is that rare creation: a love story that doesn’t shy away from sex, ignore its consequences, or droop into pointless fantasy. The result is adult entertainment as it should be, in other words, right down to the laugh that Cindy lets out, in her leaping delight, when Dean goes down on her. Needless to say, the M.P.A.A., which cannot bear very much reality, took fright at all this and hobbled the movie with an NC-17 rating, which was overturned only after a concerted challenge. It is now an R-rated picture, and rightly so, although you have to ask: In what circumstances would you take a teen-ager, let alone a child, to see it? Who, on the verge of growing up, would wish to learn that the first heady bloom of rapture is doomed to rot and fall, and that even someone as devoted as Dean will wind up pleading to his paramour, with a kind of bullish grovel, “Tell me how I should be”?

127 hours | 'very much a spiritual experience'

2011-02-13T00:14:00.000-08:00

This Guardian article about the real-life Aron Ralston provides an interesting side-note to 127 Hours.

Where Ralston is radically different today, in the flesh, compared with his pre-accident self as portrayed by Franco in the film, is in his recognition that he depends on other people. The love of others, his relationships with his family and friends, kept him alive, he says now. "It was very much a spiritual experience and different from Joe Simpson in Touching The Void. That reinforced his agnosticism – 'I did this all on my own and God doesn't exist because if he did, he would've helped me out, that fucker.' For me it was to go through this and realise, well, God is love, and love is what kept me alive and that love is what got me out of there."

Watching for... DAMSELS IN DISTRESS (Whit Stillman)

2011-02-12T00:57:00.004-08:00

"Whit Stillman's new 'college comedy' is called Damsels in Distress, has musical numbers, and stars Greta Gerwig. Shooting took place in New York in the fall of 2010." Film Comment, January-February 2011

feb 25 - mar 3 | tokyo story | cinematheque

2011-02-11T01:36:00.002-08:00

There's a brand new print of Ozu's masterful Tokyo Story at Pacific Cinematheque later this month. It is one of only forty films to have appeared on all four iterations of the Arts & Faith 100 list of "Spiritually Significant" motion pictures. Paul Schrader devotes considerable attention to the Japanese director in his book "Transcendental Style In Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer," and many consider Tokyo Story to be Ozu's finest work. My first introduction to the film was Roger Ebert's piece in his book "The Great Movies," and my first viewing was at the Cinematheque.

TOKYO STORY
Pacific Cinematheque
Friday, February 25, 2011 - 6:30pm
Saturday, February 26, 2011 - 6:30pm
Saturday, February 26, 2011 - 9:00pm
Sunday, February 27, 2011 - 8:30pm
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 - 8:30pm
Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 6:30pm

feb 16 & 27 | doctor zhivago | cineplex classic films

2011-02-09T10:52:00.001-08:00

Doctor Zhivago (1965)
"A Love Caught in the Fire of Revolution"
Directed by: David Lean
Cast: Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Alec Guinness
Plot: Life of a Russian doctor/poet who, although married, falls for a political activist's wife and experiences hardships during the Bolshevik Revolution

Wednesday, February 16, 6:30pm
Sunday, February 27, 12:30pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is available on DVD at Videomatica

Watching for... CORIOLANUS

2011-02-08T23:24:00.000-08:00

Ralph Fiennes takes Coriolanus to Berlin film festival

Modern-day interpretation of 17th-century tale is sole British production in competition at Berlin film festival. Shot in Belgrade by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd, who last worked with Fiennes on the Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker. Ralph Fiennes directs and stars, alongside Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave, Gerard Butler.

Watching for... THE BURIAL (Terrence Malick)

2011-02-08T00:04:00.000-08:00

"Oklahoma native son Terrence Malick wrapped shooting on The Burial in hometown Bartlesville, Tulsa, and Pawhuska. Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko star as a 'loveless' couple, along with Rachel McAdams and Javier Bardem (as a priest)." Film Comment, January-February 2011

"Set over a period of years, the film stars Affleck as Neil, a failed writer stuck in a loveless marriage with Marina (Kurylenko), whose expiring visa put pressure on Neil to propose. Both Neil and Marina seek guidance from Father Quintana (Bardem), a priest frustrated by his inability to live his own life because he’s too busy advising his parishioners on theirs." The Film Stage

TRUE GRIT | Cathleen Falsani

2011-02-07T01:35:00.000-08:00

A look at True Grit, and thoughts about similarities between Rooster Cogburn and The Dude, led to Cathleen Falsani's essay on The Big Lebowski. Which in turn prompted a reply from godgrrl herself, and got me poking around her blog. She loves the Coen Brothers, so it's only natch she should have some interesting observations about True Grit. Full circle.

True Grit? True Grace.
by Cathleen Falsani (AKA godgrrl)
author of "The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers"

. . . While it most assuredly would be a leap of faith to claim that Ethan Coen’s 1979 college study of Wittgenstein directly shaped the making of True Grit, hints of the philosopher’s take on religiosity float through the stellar film like tumbleweeds. “If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn’t be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different,” Wittgenstein said. “It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”

In the worlds created over the last quarter century by the brothers Coen, clearly the greatest good and highest moral value is that of decency. Their heroes are never perfect, but they are deeply decent folk.

The moral anchor of True Grit and the character who embodies Wittgenstein’s idea of helping-your-way-to-God is 14-year-old Maddie Ross, the precociously pious, profoundly Protestant daughter seeking to avenge the murder of her father by the sociopathic simpleton Tom Chaney. Maddie’s faith and sense of right-and-wrong are reminiscent of the Coen’s spiritual heroine Marge Gunderson in Fargo. Young Maddie is the epitome of unspoiled decency.

Like Marge, Maddie steps into the midst of mayhem with the force of a giant, her morality as simple as it is immovable, and sets about trying to reestablish order from chaos. She enlists the help of Rueben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges)— a classic Coen antihero in the mold of Bridge’s indelible Dude character from their masterpiece, The Big Lebowski. . . . Maddie has faith in the unlikely hero and his “true grit.” It’s more than a personality trait. With her simple yet epic faith, Maddie believes Cogburn is the man, no doubt sent by God, to help her achieve moral retribution for her father’s death.

Explicit religious and scripture references appear throughout True Grit as they have in past Coen films such as O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Barton Fink. Maddie quotes from the book of Psalms — Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will have no fear, for Thou art with me — an image that comes to fruition later in the film when she walks through a literal valley of death. A soundtrack of traditional Protestant hymns, most notably “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” function as Maddie’s internal monologue (or, perhaps, her dialogue with God.)

While many will argue that God’s grace is notably absent elsewhere in the Coeniverse, it is powerfully present in True Grit. At the start of the film, Maddie says, with characteristic frankness, “There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.”

As the plot unfolds, it is precisely true grace — deserved by none yet given freely to each — and not “true grit” that makes all the difference.

This is edited from a longer essay posted at Cathleen Falsani's blog "The Dude Abides." Just so you know, I didn't provide elipses (those sets of three little dots) every place where I trimmed stuff out of Cathleen's original piece: this is a blog post, not a dissertation. But do read the full piece, and check out the rest of God Girl's site.

New to DVD... NOWHERE BOY

2011-02-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Not a Soul Food movie per se, just one I liked a lot. Story of John Lennon before he and his mates headed off for Hamburg. Very smart screenplay, deft and accurate Beatles references, with exceptional performances by Aaron Johnson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff as John, Aunt Mimi and Julia respectively. Can't for the life of me figure why it didn't make more critics' lists. But it made mine, so that will have to do.

Movie City News: "I’m not instantly receptive to the idea of a film about John Lennon, tormented young artist and lone rebel with an acoustic guitar. Yeah yeah yeah… I thought John couldn’t make me smile in a movie theatre again, like I did when I was a teenager, watching A Hard Day’s Night for the first time. I should have known better."

faith at sundance | HIGHER GROUND, THE LEDGE

2011-02-06T10:28:00.004-08:00

Disappointing to see that even the two most "faith-positive" films at Sundance still sound much closer to the skeptical than the affirming end of the spectrum. So many have reverted to the Bad Christian stereotypes that predominated 25 years ago, to judge by this article. The pendulum swings.

Higher Ground

Sundance Film Festival: Movies look at faith in all its forms
Salvation Boulevard, Red State, Higher Ground, The Ledge and Tyrannosaur
show how religion helps and hurts
by John Horn, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Park City, Utah — — It takes a lot of faith to make an independent film. This year, independent films are showing a lot of faith.

Among the roughly 120 features playing at this year's Sundance Film Festival, a surprisingly large number use faith — and specifically Christianity — as either a critical narrative fulcrum or a key expositional backdrop. And the dramas do not always take a neutral stance.

Kevin Smith's gothic horror story Red State targets a violently homophobic pastor modeled on the real-life, gay-bashing Baptist Fred Phelps. George Ratliff's dark comedy Salvation Boulevard casts Pierce Brosnan as the charismatic head of a mega-church (he's loosely patterned after Australia's Brian Houston) who's hardly practicing what he preaches. And Irish actor Paddy Considine's Tyrannosaur explores the futility of faith through the relationship between an embittered older man (Peter Mullan) and a woman working in charity thrift shop.

Yet two other features — Vera Farmiga's Higher Ground and Matthew Chapman's The Ledge — are not interested in using spirituality for satire or shock, instead looking at religion for a deeper dramatic purpose.

Festival director John Cooper said he was struck by how many submissions focused on faith, and he feels it's a reflection of filmmakers considering issues larger than themselves. "It's America looking at itself," Cooper says.

An actress best known for Up in the Air, Farmiga makes her directorial debut with Higher Ground, based on the memoir "This Dark World" by Carolyn Briggs. Farmiga also plays the lead role of Corinne, who has grown up in a Pentecostal church but feels like her life lacks a deeper purpose. "I feel like I live in an empty place," Corinne says at one point.

Farmiga says the film didn't have to be set in a church. What was important, she says, was that Corinne experience a crisis of faith. Having led an emotionally and intellectually sheltered life, Corinne eventually has a personal epiphany, and it's not necessarily her baptism.

"She is a seeker. She's got to find herself," Farmiga says of the film's central turn. "She's not trying to rid herself of faith. She's trying to rid herself of an impoverished faith — an impoverished faith in God, an impoverished faith in marriage."

Even though the small church that is central to Corinne's life is patriarchal and doesn't necessarily fulfill her spiritually, Farmiga is careful not to judge its members — and, by extension, other similar believers. "Some of these people believe they have the answers, and they do," Farmiga says. "And I hope audiences will be refreshed to see Christians depicted in a fully developed, sexualized way — not just with Sunday school values."

The Ledge

Some of those values — including a very rigid reading of the Bible — shape Chapman's The Ledge, which is outwardly a ticking-clock thriller about a man poised to jump to his death and inwardly a debate about how faith and forgiveness can shape personal relationships.

Patrick Wilson plays Joe, the rigid, scripture-quoting husband of Shauna (Liv Tyler), whose affair with a hotel manager named Gavin (Charlie Hunnam) leads to a potentially deadly showdown. The film suggests that even though Gavin is the obvious spiritual apostate, his convictions and behavior might actually be more selfless.

"The film examines two men who have both suffered tragedies and reacted in very different ways," Chapman says. "One has turned to faith," he says of Joe, "and one has turned to humanism," he adds of Gavin, whose beliefs closely mirror the director's.

Chapman hopes moviegoers will see The Ledge not only as an entertaining parable about "the consequences of a too-literal interpretation of religious texts" but also view Joe with understanding rather than judgment. If The Ledge — which was bought by IFC Films — succeeds as Chapman intends, audience members might have the same kind of spiritual discussions as they leave the theater as Joe and Gavin have in the film. "I would like it to provoke a debate," Chapman says. "I think the big question is, What price can somebody pay for faith?"

The price of faith in Ratliff's Salvation Boulevard can be high, even in the film's comic setting. Brosnan plays televangelist Dan Day, and among his followers are Carl and Gwen Vanderveer (Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Connelly), whose devotion to their pastor (and each other) is tested after a gun accident. The film is very loosely based on the novel of the same name by Larry Beinhart.

Ratliff says he grew up in an Amarillo, Texas, evangelical movement, but left the church as a teenager, and considers religion "basically superstitious." Religious convictions, particularly in a mega-church led by a charismatic preacher, are a perfect milieu for satire, he thinks. "I felt I had to explore it — there's some great comedy there, there's some great drama there," Ratliff says. "It's really using religion for a character story."

He says that because "so much of all religion is about giving yourself over," he could use Salvation Boulevard as a vehicle to explore the collision between skepticism and devotion. "The Dan Days of the world really have the ace up their sleeves when they say, 'Believe and be satisfied.'" Even if Carl's faith begins to waver, he ends up being more of a spiritual rock — and Christ-like — than his minister.

Considine's Tyrannosaur is unafraid to show that although religion may serve as a lifeline to some, it can't always save people in a difficult marriage or with other troubles, and may in fact distract the afflicted from more pragmatic solutions.

"I wasn't trying to make a statement," Considine says. "But I do think too many people are worried about an existential thought instead of the here and now. They're thinking 'What do I do to get into heaven?' instead of asking, 'What can I do to make my life better with my fellow man?'"

Considine said his skepticism for religion grew out of watching people exploit his mother's deep religious faith as she lay dying. "The idea that we're all worried about an existential eye watching our every move is a real problem," he says. "It makes us think about things that aren't important."

feb 15 + 19 | to kill a mockingbird

2011-02-05T02:42:00.003-08:00

cineplex classic film series

THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST Reconsidered

2011-02-04T02:31:00.012-08:00

Here's a quirky piece I stumbled upon when scanning the internet a year ago, looking for "Best Of The Decade" reflections. It raises the question, if not in so many words - are Thandie Newton, Rocky Balboa, James Bond and Phillip Marlowe also numbered among the lamed vovnik?

The Movies That Changed My Life:
A Film Geek's Retrospect on Cinematic Paradigm Shifts
by Matthew K
Best Of The Decade #7: The Passion Of The Christ
Dec 18, 2009

Currently, Michael Phillips and A. O. Scott of At the Movies are each counting down their lists of the best films of the decade. For the rest of the month, I will be offering my own lists, not only my 10 "best" list but also my 10 "worst" list as well. As criteria for both lists is hard, I have decided to base my film choices on personal experience: My "best" films are those that lingered with me for weeks after I saw them, and my "worst" films are those that pissed me off the most.

Counting them down in chronological order of release dates, we continue with #7 on my "best" list:

The Passion of the Christ (2004)
directed by Mel Gibson

Step away from all the external drama surrounding The Passion of the Christ: The accusations of anti-Semitism; the controversy of the violence; Mel Gibson's erratic and un-Christian behavior some months after the film's release; Gibson's divorce of his wife Robin, mother of his massive brood of kids, and subsequent impregnation of a starlet/model young enough to be his daughter.

Step away, too, from your core belief system if you will. This I address to the agnostics, the people of Jewish descent, and the hard-line Christians quick to point out Biblical inaccuracies in the film.

Simply take a moment to judge The Passion of the Christ on its merits as a film. Look at all the elements that come together to make it so effective--the performances of the actors; the exquisite cinematography; the realistic effects; and ultimately, the way Gibson structures this chapter in the life of Christ.

By now, most of you know what the movie is about. Christ's Passion, which means His suffering, is reenacted in a series of movements meant to reflect the various Stations of the Cross in the Catholic faith (and feel free to correct me here; I'm not Catholic and am going solely on memory of a conversation with a Catholic friend several years ago). Much is made about the violence, the gruesome depiction of Christ's flogging and crucifixion, and there are moments in the film that are difficult to watch. And yet rather than coming off as a two-hour torture porn with a message, Gibson manages to create a sense of dramatic urgency by making Satan a key figure in the piece.

The only way to really explain why I liked this film is to look at it from a Christian perspective. For those who don't believe in the Christian doctrine, I respect your position, but without some background in the film's theology it is impossible to appreciate the film's narrative craft.

Simply put: The Christian faith believes that Christ was the Son of God, in essence the physical manifestation of God Himself, and that he came to our physical plane of existence to suffer and die for the sins of mankind. An analogy I have used to explain it to people is the scene in Mission: Impossible II when Thandie Newton takes the last syringe of a deadly virus with the potential to kill millions and injects it into herself; she sacrifices herself to save humanity. Likewise, it is as if God became man to "inject" Himself with a "syringe" filled with all of man's sins and then allow Himself to be brutally tortured to death as atonement for those sins.

Digressing: There is a story of a Roman general who was captured by the Carthaginians during the Punic Wars. He is told by his captors that he can be released to return to Rome if he gives his word that he will persuade the Roman Senate to come with a peace treaty to end Rome's war with Carthage. The general vows that he will do just that, and if he fails to persuade the Senate to draw up a treaty, then he will return to Carthage to be tortured to death. As the legend goes, the General returns to Rome and says, in essence: "Do not make peace with Carthage! They are at the end of their rope and will not resist for much longer!" He then returns to Carthage, being a man of his word, and allows himself to be tortured to death.

This story, set up as an example of Roman pride and integrity, gives us some idea of what the Christians believe about Christ. In Milton, there is a scene where man has fallen from Grace, and God tells his angels that as man is now living in sin he is unfit to be in God's presence. God says the only way to save man is if one of His angels will go to earth to take on man's sins and then die to give man salvation. None of the angels volunteer, so God's only Sons steps up to the plate and says, "I'll do it!"

Remove all the dogma, the judgmental finger-wagging of some Christians, and the tired cliches, and the legend of Christ is pretty exciting stuff. Christ in Milton is an entity of great courage and honor, and combine that picture with that of the Christ in Gibson's film being broken on the Cross and you come away with something moving and impressive.

And then there is Satan, played by the creepy-looking Rosalinda Celentano in the film. Satan's role in this film is what the Christian's believe his role is in the lives of men. Basically, Satan hovers over Christ, whispering lies into his ears, telling him he is not strong enough, that his sacrifice won't matter, that the sins of mankind are too much to bear.

One of my favorite moments in the movie is when Christ is praying in the Garden of Gethsemene and Satan stands above Him, taunting and tormenting with his foul words. Finally, Christ rises to his feet, exhausted, literally sweating blood, and looks Satan in the eye. James Caviezel, who plays Christ, displays a masterful sense of subtlety, gazing at Satan with an expression of both recognition and disgust. He is like a tired prizefighter, battered but not beaten, and his eyes seem to say, "Okay, buddy, let's dance." It's Stallone in the original Rocky, dragging himself to his feet to keep fighting when Apollo Creed is celebrating what he thinks is a victory. Thrilling stuff.

There are other moments too, of course. The most mentioned scene by the film's many critics is when Christ is carrying the cross to Golgotha, and his mother, Mary, sees him stumble and fall. At once, Mary has a flashback to when he was a child, stumbling and falling, and her maternal instinct kicks in as she goes to him. This scene gets most people, especially parents, weepy-eyed. It doesn't affect me so much until the scene's denouement, when Jesus looks at Mary, his face a rictus of agony, his body twisted and bloody, and says, "See, mother? I make all things new." I don't know about you, but that line elicits the same kind of emotion as when James Bond mocks his torturer in Casino Royale.

There are some Christians who complain about the film's ending. After two hours of watching this grueling and tortuous death, the Resurrection of Christ is covered in the span of 30 seconds. Why? these Christians wonder. Isn't the most important part of the story the fact that Christ conquered death?

I, on the other hand, like the succinct treatment of the Resurrection. I am reminded of the ending of The Long Goodbye, starring Elliot Gould as Phillip Marlowe. Throughout the entire film, Marlowe is depicted as a bumbling idiot, a rumpled, mistake-prone, frightened little man trying to solve a murder but clearly way out of his league. But in the film's final frame, when Marlowe tracks down and confronts the killer, he suddenly shows focus and nerves of steel. Marlowe was strong all along, you see, and he always had the essential tools to play with the big boys. But he was acting dumb, coming off as weak and unthreatening, so people would let their guard down, make a mistake, and lead him to clues that will help him solve the case.

Likewise, The Passion of the Christ is so elegantly handled that Christ comes off as a helpless, weak little man. Even though I went in knowing the story and believing in the Divinity of Christ, in the context of the film I found myself sensing what the people watching his crucifixion must have felt: The man looked like a nothing, a nobody. Surely, someone this meek and lowly could not be the Son of God.

But at the end of the film, when the stone of the tomb is rolled back and the once-broken Christ stands in the light, fully restored, I had a revelation. Christ was not a weak little man. Like Marlowe in The Long Goodbye, He was strong. In fact, because we see that He has the power to conquer death, we realize that during His entire torture and crucifixion he had the power to stop His suffering at any time He chose.

And yet He did not. He allowed Himself to be tortured. He allowed Himself to seem weak. Not to demean the faith, but this also reminded me of the episode of Happy Days, when Fonzie let a lesser man bully him because he wanted the man to seem a hero in his son's eyes. Christ let lesser men abuse Him, torture Him, kill Him. He could have stopped it, and yet He did not.Why would anyone allow such a thing?

This, I think, is the real core of the Christian faith, something that many followers of Christ do not contemplate enough. And when you see it on film, as vivid and realistic as it can possibly be, the message is all brought home to you. I can't watch the film without shaking. My faith may waver, my mind may be filled with doubt, but I watch this film, and it reminds me of the very core of the faith. The Christians believe someone willingly suffered in their place--someone powerful enough to avoid that suffering if He so chose.

What could be more beautiful than that?

soul food movies

feb 9 | sister rosetta tharpe doc @ vancity

feb 15 + 19 | to kill a mockingbird

videomatica goes to school

jan 19/20 | margaret

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

The Soul Food Movies of 2011

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

jan 6-12 | the mill and the cross | vancity

super-anon online!

christmas at vifc

nov 27 | ben-hur

unholy night

nov 10-20 | vancouver jewish film festival

nov 9 | ben-hur

videomatica | final credits

Monday Oct 31 | NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

PLAYING UNTIL SUNDAY... wiebo's war

NOW ON DVD... tree of life

NOW PLAYING... machine gun preacher

VIFF | THE MILL AND THE CROSS

oct 14 | wiebo's war

oct 14 | bevel up, nettie wild | homelessness awareness night

new to dvd | better world, morin, cunningham, murder songs

higher ground

viff | soul food picks

the planting + wait for rain | viff | oct 9-12

sep 14-18 | stalker | cinematheque

fog of war / re:union / sep 11 / videomatica

VIFF | FOOTNOTE

viff | corpo celeste

the secret of the kells | ken priebe

sep 3 | stalker | eye of newt score

peter bradshaw on tree of life

Ebert's Ten

aug 28 | m*a*s*h | cineplex classic films

aug 19-21 | videomatica weekend

Anne Lamott on LATCHO DROM

Secret Sunshine on Criterion

aug 17 & 28 | m*a*s*h | cineplex classic films

watching for... SUING THE DEVIL

mubi | my father my lord

the new world | lumia

WATCHING FOR... pope joan / she... who would be pope

silence (scorsese/endo)

jul 24 | spartacus | cineplex classic films

to aug 1 | criterion sale | soul food picks

july @ cinematheque | la dolce vita | the green ray

jul 8 - 14 | small town murder songs

jul 8 | new jason goode films | regent college

jul 13 & 24 | spartacus | cineplex classic films

jul 15 | beast of bottomless lake | dvd release screening

watching for... lamb of god

in a better world

now playing... tree of life (terrence malick)

now playing... bill cunningham new york

tangled | un-tangling the fairy tale of the gospel

jun 26 | butch cassidy & the sundance kid | cineplex classic films

jun 15 & 26 | butch cassidy & the sundance kid | cineplex classic films

jun 11-17 | terrence malick at vancity, park, fifth ave

hollywood theatre closed

heaven's gate | t-bone burnett + david mansfield

may 29 | the sound of music | cineplex classic films

watching for... gunnar goes god

may 18 & 29 | the sound of music | cineplex classic films

videomatica: the sequel

videomatica's final reel

woody + god

apr 30 - may 4 | black narcissus

apr 23 | eat, for this is my body

farewell, my lovely (1975) | pulp magazine glories

apr 17 | one flew over the cuckoo's nest | cineplex classic films

Watching for... THE WAY

Watching For... THE TURIN HORSE (Bela Tarr)

terence malick

apr 6 & 17 | one flew over the cuckoo's nest | cineplex classic films

mar 17 + 31 | danny boyle | national theatre live: frankenstein

apr 11- 21 | more bible movies on vision

overstreet | iambic admonit

mar 27 | the wizard of oz | cineplex classic films

aug 28 | mas*h | cineplex classic films

aug 17 & 28 | mas*h | cineplex classic films