It’s that time of year! Film festival frenzy is about to hit Toronto, and I intend to be one of the first frothing-at-the-mouth fanatics pressing my face up against the glass of the box office when the Official Film Schedule comes out for advance ticketing on Tuesday, August 30. Since I know you’re all *dying* to know what sort of goodness is available to movie buffs living in or near the 416, here is my top ten shortlist of films to see. I’ve included a cut-tagged movie description and director biography for each one, so click with caution – the descriptions may contain what you would consider “spoilers”.
Check out my selections from last year, all of which were awesome, except ‘Shark Tale’, which sucked. Also,
Pipes’ Top-Ten for the Film Fest
1. Dave Chappelle’s Block Party – Michel Gondry
A mix of Dave Chappelle’s sketch comedy and musical interludes, inspired in part by the 1973 documentary Wattstax, a non-stop 7-hour musical event that took place at Watts, the Los Angeles Coliseum, August 20, 1972. It was a sort of Woodstock event but with black artists, namely the groups Dramatics, Staple Singers, Rance Allen Group, Emotions, Bar Kays, Mel & Tim. Wattstax also featured James Alexander, Raymond Allen, Isaac Hayes, Luther Ingram, Jesse Jackson, Albert King, Ted Lange, Little Milton and Richard Pryor.
Guest stars include: Erykah Badu, Mos Def, Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Kanye West and more.
Michel Gondry is totally awesome. He grew up in Versailles with a family who was very influenced by pop music. When he was young, Gondry wanted to be a painter or an inventor. In the 80s he entered in an art school in Paris where he could develop his graphic skills and where he also met friends with whom he created a pop-rock band called Oui-Oui. Gondry was the drummer of the band and also directed their video clips in which it was possible to see his strange world, influenced by the 60s and by his childhood.
One of his videos was shown on MTV and when Björk saw it, she asked him to make her first solo video for ‘Human Behaviour’. The partnership is famous: Gondry directed five other Björk’s videos, benefiting by the huge budgets. This led to commissions for other artists around the world, including Massive Attack. He also made a lot of commercials for Gap, Smirnoff, Air France, Nike, Coca Cola, Adidas, Polaroid and Levi – the latter making him the most highly-awarded director for a one-off commercial. Hollywood became interested in Gondry’s success and he began directing feature films, including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he and his co-writers won an Oscar.
2. Tideland – Terry Gilliam
After her mother dies from a heroin overdose, Jeliza-Rose is taken from the big city to a rural farmhouse by her father. As she tries to settle into a new life in a house her father had purchased for his now-deceased mother, Jeliza-Rose’s attempts to deal with what’s happened result in increasingly odd behavior, as she begins to communicate mainly with her bodiless Barbie doll heads and Dell, a neighborhood woman who always wears a beekeeper’s veil.
How can you not want to watch any new movie made by the same dude who directed: The Brothers Grimm (2005), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Twelve Monkeys (1995), The Fisher King (1991), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Brazil (1985), Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983), Time Bandits (1981), Jabberwocky (1977), and Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). You just have to check it out; it’s a moral imperative.
3. Brokeback Mountain – Ang Lee
Brokeback Mountain (2005), is based on a short story by E.Annie Proulx. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway and Randy Quaid, it is a raw, powerful story of two young men, a Wyoming ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, who meet in the summer of 1963 sheepherding in the harsh, high grasslands of contemporary Wyoming and form an unorthodox yet life-long bond–by turns ecstatic, bitter and conflicted.
Born in 1954 in Pingtung, Taiwan, Ang Lee has become one of today’s greatest contemporary filmmakers. At NYU, he served as Assistant Director on Spike Lee’s student film, Joe’s Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983). After Lee wrote a couple of screenplays, he eventually appeared on the film scene with Pushing Hands (1992), a dramatic-comedy reflecting on generational conflicts and cultural adaptation, centering on the metaphor of the grandfather’s Tai-Chi technique of “Pushing Hands”.
The Wedding Banquet (1993) as Lee’s next film, an exploration of cultural and generational conflicts through a homosexual Chinese man who feigns a marriage in order to satisfy the traditional demands of his Taiwanese parents – it garnered Golden Globe and Oscar nominations, and won a Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The third movie in his trilogy of Taiwanese-Culture/Generation films, all of them featuring his patriarch figure Sihung Lung, was Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), which received a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination.
Lee followed this with Sense and Sensibility (1995), his first Hollywood-mainstream movie. It acquired a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and won Best Adapted Screenplay, for the film’s screenwriter and lead actress, Emma Thompson. Lee was also voted the year’s Best Director by the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle. Lee and frequent collaborator James Schamus next filmed The Ice Storm (1997), an adaptation of Rick Moody’s novel involving 1970s New England Suburbia.
The Ice Storm acquired the 1997 Best Screenplay at Cannes for screenwriter James Schamus, among other accolades. The Civil War drama Ride With The Devil (1999) soon followed and received critical praise, but it was Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), that is considered one of his greatest works, a sprawling period film and martial-arts epic that dealt with love, loyalty and loss – it swept the Oscar nominations, eventually winning Best Foreign Language Film, as well as Best Director at the Golden Globes, and became the highest grossing foreign-language film ever released in America. Lee then filmed the comic-book adaptation, Hulk (2003) – an elegantly and skillfully shot film with nice action scenes.
4. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride – Mike Johnson/Tim Burton
Victor (Johnny Depp) is traveling home with his friend to get married to his fiancee Victoria (Emily Watson). The two stop to rest in the woods, and as a joke, Victor puts his wedding ring on a finger-shaped stick in the ground and says his wedding vows. The stick turns out to be a rotted finger belonging to a murdered girl (Helena Bonham-Carter), who returns as a zombie and insists that she is now Victor’s lawfully wedded wife.
Do I really need to elaborate further on who Tim Burton is? Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Nightmare Before Christmas, Big Fish, hello?
5. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story – Michael Winterbottom
Much better and much funnier than I ever expected as I had anticipated quite a complex ‘drama’ type storyline based on my feeble attempts to read the book. I was extremely surprised by the whole thing actually, as I have tried several times to read the book and I just don’t understand it…so was expecting to not understand the film either, but it was great…it did jump around a bit, but he told you when he was getting ahead of himself so you always knew where you were and it was easy to follow.
The blank page was discussed when they were talking about how to make the film longer…and they showed a blank screen for a few moments before deciding that the audience wouldn’t find it that interesting…it was then that they decided that they would include the Widow Wadman scenes and talked about who should play her.
Rob Brydon then had quite a funny scene with Steve Coogan saying that he couldn’t possibly do the love scenes with Gillian Anderson as he has posters of her and owns the entire XF collection and she is his absolute complete ideal woman and how he has sexual feelings for her which I found rather funny.
So yeah, it was incredibly funny! I have never laughed that much at a film in my entire life. The funniest parts were between Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as themselves, and as Michael Winterbottom told us in the Q+A afterwards, they were pretty much ad-libbed. Also liked the scene in the barn where they lowered Steve Coogan upside down into massive fake womb…and then proceeded to have an argument with him about how realistic it was!
6. Beowulf & Grendel – Sturla Gunnarsson
Adapted from the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, Beowulf, BEOWULF & GRENDEL is a medieval adventure that tells the blood-soaked tale of a Norse warrior’s battle against the great and murderous troll, Grendel. Heads will roll in this provocative take on the first major work of English literature.
Out of allegiance to the King Hrothgar, the much respected Lord of the Danes, Beowulf leads a troop of warriors across the sea to rid a village of the marauding monster. The monster, Grendel, is not a creature of mythic powers, but one of flesh and blood – immense flesh and raging blood, driven by a vengeance from being wronged, while Beowulf, a victorious soldier in his own right, has become increasingly troubled by the hero-myth rising up around his exploits.
Beowulf’s willingness to kill on behalf of Hrothgar wavers when it becomes clear that the King is more responsible for the troll’s rampages than was first apparent. As a soldier, Beowulf is unaccustomed to hesitating. His relationship with the mesmerizing witch, Selma, creates deeper confusion. Swinging his sword at a great, stinking beast is no longer such a simple act.
The story is set in barbarous Northern Europe where the reign of the many-gods is giving way to one – the southern invader, Christ. Beowulf is a man caught between sides in this great shift, his simple code transforming and falling apart before his eyes. Building toward an inevitable and terrible battle, this is a tale where vengeance, loyalty and mercy powerfully entwine. A story of blood and beer and sweat, BEOWULF & GRENDEL strips away the mask of the hero-myth, leaving a raw and tangled tale that rings true through the centuries.
7. 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous – Stewart Main
Set in New Zealand in the summer of 1975, 50 Ways of Saying Fabulous is the beguiling story of 12 year-old Billy, who is about to discover that growing up is a lot more confusing than he could have ever imagined. He is a farmer’s only son who is out of step with the other boys at his school. He feels they only want to fight and play rugby and while he tries to be the same, he feels he was never cut out to be a farmer or a rugby player.
Instead, he prefers to dream about an imaginary life in outer space. In this world, a turnip paddock becomes a lunar landscape and a cow’s tail a head of beautiful blonde hair which transforms him into “Lana” the heroine of his favourite TV show. With the arrival of Roy, the class freak, and Jamie the sexy young farm labourer Billy’s world is changed forever.
As he learns about his sexuality, everything he knows is called into question, including his lifelong loyalty to his best friend, tomboy Louise, whose world is changing alongside his. Set in New Zealand’s stunning Central Otago landscape, 50 Ways Of Saying Fabulous carries the audience along with Billy as he embarks on life as teenager. Director Stewart Main says his film “shows how the most extraordinary events can occur to wonderfully ordinary people – it celebrates difference and being true to one’s self.” 50 Ways Of Saying Fabulous a fresh telling of sexual awakening, infinitely real, funny and moving by turns.
8. The Great Yokai War – Takashi Miike
Takashi Miike was born in the small town Yao on the outskirts of Osaka, Japan. His main interest growing up was motorbikes, and for a while he harboured ambitions to race professionally. At the age of 18 Miike went to study at the film school in Yokohama founded by renowned director Shohei Imamura, primarily because there were no entrance exams.
By his own accounts Miike was a undisciplined student and attended few classes, and when a local TV company came scouting for unpaid production assistants the school nominated the one pupil who never showed up. He spent almost a decade working in television, in many different roles, before becoming an assistant director in film to, amongst others, his old mentor Imamura. The ‘V-Cinema’ (Direct to Video) boom of the early 90s was to be his break into directing his own films, as newly formed companies hired cheap young film makers to crank out low budget action movies.
Miike’s first theatrically distributed film was the 1995 ‘Shinjuku Triad Society’, and from then on he alternated V-Cinema films with higher budgeted pictures. His international breakthrough came with 1999’s ‘Audition’ and Miike has an ever expanding cult following in the west.
A notoriously prolific director Miike has directed (at time of writing) 60+ films in his 13 years as director, known for their explicit and taboo representations of violence and sex in films like ‘Visitor Q’, ‘Ichi the Killer’ and the ‘Dead or Alive’ Trilogy. His films are often very provocative, containing ambiguous and/or truly bizarre endings. Frequently casts Renji Ishibashi, Sho Aikawa, Riki Takeuchi, Ren Osugi and Susumu Terajima. Strong sense of childhood nostalgia is present in almost all of his films, along with a glorification of friendship and traditional family units.
9. Water – Deepa Mehta (gala)
Set in the 1930s during the rise of the independence struggles against British colonial rule, the film examines the plight of a group of widows forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi. It focuses on a relationship between one of the widows, who wants to escape the social restrictions imposed on widows, and a man who is from a lower caste and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi.
10. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit – Nick Park/Steve Box (gala)
It’s ‘vege-mania’ in Wallace and Gromit’s neighborhood, and our two enterprising chums are cashing in with their humane pest-control outfit, “Anti-Pesto.” With only days to go before the annual Giant Vegetable Competition, business is booming, but Wallace & Gromit are finding out that running a “humane” pest control outfit has its drawbacks as their West Wallaby Street home fills to the brim with captive rabbits.
Suddenly, a huge, mysterious, veg-ravaging “beast” begins attacking the town’s sacred vegetable plots at night, and the competition hostess, Lady Tottington, commissions Anti-Pesto to catch it and save the day. Lying in wait, however, is Lady Tottington’s snobby suitor, Victor Quartermaine, who’d rather shoot the beast and secure the position of local hero-not to mention Lady Tottingon’s hand in marriage.
With the fate of the competition in the balance, Lady Tottington is eventually forced to allow Victor to hunt down the vegetable chomping marauder. Little does she know that Victor’s real intent could have dire consequences for her …and our two heroes.
I (heart) Wallace and Gromit. Bring it on.
Okay, totally unrelated, but…photos.com or google images? Because I have SO used those stock photos when I did the Spark!Co. film site. Seriously, I did, your icon made me do a double take. *g*
Google is my one-stop shop for all things imagey.
And, let’s be serious, for all things period.
I bow down to the altar of Google. It is the source of my mysterious web-fu.
hee. I ran out of images on our stock sites that I like & went to google. I couldn’t remember which one that was from, I’d seen so many by the time I was done.
And totally. Serious all the time. Totally, totally.
psst – pull my finger.
i really want to partake in TIFF goodness this year! here’s hoping i can survive the madness of moving and actually get a chance to purchase a ticket. hmm.