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Hot Docs Toronto Opening Weekend Review: The Good, the Bad and the Over The Top Rope

Words by David Kirkpatrick

The Good:

The festival’s opener Ai Weiwei deservedly got much of the pre-festival column inches and the film truly lived up to its hype.  The film masterfully overcame the challenge of telling the story of an artist evolving into an activist as well as exposing some home truths about China that we all probably knew but were happier to sweep under the carpet. The film’s subject, with his good humor and relentless creativity in showing defiance, made this a movie that you’d watch three more hours of.

I caught Back to the Square groggy-eyed early on Sunday afternoon in TIFF, not really looking forward to engrossing myself in a politically-charged look at the Arab Spring.  My fears were allayed early on as the opening of the movie was interrupted by a cleverly placed light-hearted short about a man in Egypt who had named his child Facebook in aftermath of the revolution. The main picture centered on five unique stories of Egyptian people in the year following the uprising. What emerged was a story not widely covered in the international media, one of heavier repression and worse living conditions. While not all five stories worked with the same effect, the final two tales of a young girl assaulted by state security, and of a young man whose brother had been jailed for writing a blog were both depressing and compelling in equal measures.

 

On the other end of the doc spectrum, SXSW 2012 winner Beware Mr Baker was the perfect way to rocket launch me into a long weekend of Hot Docs, charting the story of certifiably mad former drummer of 60’s super group Cream (the one with Eric Clapton!), easily the funniest of the docs of the weekend.  Other features such as About Face (interviews with 50+ supermodels and their attitude toward their later years) and Jeff (investigating the impact of the infamous Jeffrey Dahlmer murders on its wider community) hit some high points but both lacked the insight or controversy I was hoping for.

 The Bad:

 The intimate Innis theatre housed the 169 minute marathon look back at how Hollywood movies depict the city of LA in Los Angeles Plays Itself. The length was only one a few things that did not resonate well with many in the audience on Saturday night, as this film did not translate well from the written pieces that preceded it. The movie was structured into three hour-long acts, the content of each seemed to skip almost at random in and out of the theme of the given act. The lack of coherency along with the monotone narration led to at least a quarter of the audience to file out before its completion.

 I feel a little guilty for listing Tundra Book in this section, as I actually enjoyed this look at northern artic native reindeer farmers, but the fly-on-the-wall style did not help draw out the story or any depth from this intensely interesting footage. Having seen Werner Herzog’s Happy People in the last two weeks, it shows a masterclass in humanizing and drawing the narrative from what was a similar tale, one that could have really taken the Tundra Book to higher plains.

 The Over the Top Rope:

 The best films are sometimes the ones you go to seeing knowing nothing and expecting less, and this is exactly the situation I found myself in for the late night screening of Glow on Friday night. This look at the 80’s TV show (standing for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling) followed the stories of the cast members of the first ever female-only pro-wrestling promotion. As a childhood pro-wrestling fan, I am pretty familiar with how 80’s wrestling looked, but I wasn’t alone in my enjoyment. The whole late night audience roared with laughter as one kitsch wrestling character followed another and the camp sketches just kept coming. A real success!  

 

Movies:

Ai Weiwei (Apr 26th 21.30) ; Beware Mr Baker (Apr 27th 18.15); Glow (Apr 27th 23.30); About Face (Apr 28th 15.30); Los Angeles Plays Itself (Apr 28th 19.00); Jeff (Apr 28th 23.30); Back to the Square (Apr 29th 14.00); The Tundra Book (Apr 29th 18.00); Buzkashi (Apr 29th 21.45)

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Doc Review:  I Want my Name Back - TIFF 16th February It was not your usual doc-loving TIFF crowd that packed cinema 1 on Thursday night in the Bell Lightbox for the Roger Paradiso directed I want my name back, a documentary covering the careers of the original and not-so-original members of the 70’s hip hop pioneers the Sugarhill Gang.  With a live performance promised along with a Q&A with the band, the audience was a mix of music fans young and old, a few diehards and a handful of interested spectators, and it’s fair to say that each group came home with what they were hoping for. Most people on the street, myself included, only know the Sugarhill Gang for the mega-selling and genre-spawning hip hop hit ‘Rappers Delight’ from 1979, but the majority probably don’t know much more beyond this. I want my name back brings us on a remarkable journey of huge success, identity theft, arson and a latter day comeback. The story is set in the late 70’s, before the onset of rap or hip hop, where Sugarhill records released Rapper Delight to well-documented acclaim. What was to follow was a story of crooked and mafia-linked label bosses firstly swindled them out of almost the entire royalties of their recording and touring. Remarkably, after the first generation of the label bosses passed on, the second generation stole their band name, their stage names and spent the last 15 years trying to prevent original members playing, while they went out touring themselves under their moniker. This reached it’s heights when the Rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame managed to book the wrong Sugarhill Gang for a performance. The remainder of the movie, followed the original members arduous struggle for justice and simply scrambling living. The story is indeed flabbergasting (and I really have flashed over the details above), and repeatedly has you shaking your head throughout the movie. As a documentary though, it probably doesn’t fully do justice to the band or to this incredible story. We were left scratching our heads at times with what seemed like large chunks of vital information omitted. For example, we are not enlightened into the details of the great swindle, or the backgrounds or the stories of the label bosses in question. We were told the story twice, as about an hour in, we traveled right back to the late 70s for a second time. Overall though, a tremendous story, one that may set a precedent for more of these types of stories to emerge over the coming years, as the band assured us in the Q&A afterward, they were not the only hip hop artists of that era to experience “contractual problems”.  After the Q&A was finished, it was time for the performance, something that I was a little worried about - it was a quiet pre-holiday Thursday evening in a cinema afterall. But Master Gee and Wonder Mike -  the original members of the Sugarhill Gang performing - flawlessly got the crowd to its feet for an entertaining 20 minute set to top off the night. Definitely worth a watch if and when it gets distribution later in the year.

Doc Review:  I Want my Name Back - TIFF 16th February

It was not your usual doc-loving TIFF crowd that packed cinema 1 on Thursday night in the Bell Lightbox for the Roger Paradiso directed I want my name back, a documentary covering the careers of the original and not-so-original members of the 70’s hip hop pioneers the Sugarhill Gang.  With a live performance promised along with a Q&A with the band, the audience was a mix of music fans young and old, a few diehards and a handful of interested spectators, and it’s fair to say that each group came home with what they were hoping for.

Most people on the street, myself included, only know the Sugarhill Gang for the mega-selling and genre-spawning hip hop hit ‘Rappers Delight’ from 1979, but the majority probably don’t know much more beyond this. I want my name back brings us on a remarkable journey of huge success, identity theft, arson and a latter day comeback. The story is set in the late 70’s, before the onset of rap or hip hop, where Sugarhill records released Rapper Delight to well-documented acclaim. What was to follow was a story of crooked and mafia-linked label bosses firstly swindled them out of almost the entire royalties of their recording and touring. Remarkably, after the first generation of the label bosses passed on, the second generation stole their band name, their stage names and spent the last 15 years trying to prevent original members playing, while they went out touring themselves under their moniker. This reached it’s heights when the Rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame managed to book the wrong Sugarhill Gang for a performance. The remainder of the movie, followed the original members arduous struggle for justice and simply scrambling living.

The story is indeed flabbergasting (and I really have flashed over the details above), and repeatedly has you shaking your head throughout the movie. As a documentary though, it probably doesn’t fully do justice to the band or to this incredible story. We were left scratching our heads at times with what seemed like large chunks of vital information omitted. For example, we are not enlightened into the details of the great swindle, or the backgrounds or the stories of the label bosses in question. We were told the story twice, as about an hour in, we traveled right back to the late 70s for a second time. Overall though, a tremendous story, one that may set a precedent for more of these types of stories to emerge over the coming years, as the band assured us in the Q&A afterward, they were not the only hip hop artists of that era to experience “contractual problems”. 

After the Q&A was finished, it was time for the performance, something that I was a little worried about - it was a quiet pre-holiday Thursday evening in a cinema afterall. But Master Gee and Wonder Mike -  the original members of the Sugarhill Gang performing - flawlessly got the crowd to its feet for an entertaining 20 minute set to top off the night. Definitely worth a watch if and when it gets distribution later in the year.

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Sundance Festival’s most anticipated  - Shadow Dancer

The man who brought us such great pillars of documentary film making as Project Nim and Man on Wire, James Marsh, introduced his first feature narrative to Sundance 2012. The movie focuses on the Northern Irish troubles at the time of the peace process when a sympathizer is forced to become an informant. Check out the interview from Sundance here…


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Sundance Festival’s most anticipated  - The Raid


‘Grindhouse’ movie The Raid is not exactly hot off the presses having been screened in last Fall’s TIFF among other festivals, but with action scenes that make Old Boy look a bit turgid, The Raid will surely get some sort of distribution sooner rather than later.


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Sundance Festival’s most anticipated  - Indiegame: The Movie

This movie pushes all of my geeky-doc buttons: computer games, developers, emotive personal journeys, and by the sound of some of the post-Sundance reviews (http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/indie-game-the-movie-is-a-big-hearted-celebration-of-artistic-spirit) and YouTube comments, it could well emerge as one of the documentary highlights of the year.

The movie follows four developers and three games through their divergent journeys into market and seems to be pressing on a point that has been omni-present both in social and commercial worlds for years - that gaming has become all-encompassing and ubiquitous. So regardless of whether you are a gamer or not, this doc will be one to catch. Expect to see this pop up in Toronto in Hot Docs in late April.

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This is how it ends….Shut Up and Play the Hits

One of the most unique-sounding Sundance films this year has to be Shut Up and Play the Hits, which follows LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy in the days leading up to and immediately after his beloved act’s final live performance, at Madison Square Garden last April. Directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, Shut Up intercuts concert footage with intimate access to Murphy as he deals with the fallout from his decision to walk away from such a successful group. The film premieres on Sunday, Jan. 22, at Sundance.

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Doc Review - Into the Abyss - Werner Herzog

Words by David Kirkpatrick

In what has been a fairly prolific period in Herzog’s career, the end of 2011 saw the appearance of ‘Into the Abyss’, having been rushed into release following a successful debut at TIFF.  Having brought his documentary character to the wider masses with the successes of ‘Grizzly Man’ and ‘Encounters at the End of the Earth’, it was always going to be intriguing how his off-balance and often hilarious angles would transfer to the very heavy subject matter of capital punishment. This is something that Herzog, as you’d come to expect, managed to balance admirably with his trademark humanistic style.

As it turns out, this movie was an idea of Herzog’s for the last 20 years and something he has pursued to do in some form in that time. The original intention for ‘Into the Abyss’ was to follow five condemned inmates and their stories, but as it turned out, one case, of Michael Perry and a triple homicide, presented a story of sufficient depth to portray Herzog’s investigation.

The documentary extends its reach to every person involved with the capital punishment process, from arresting officers, families on both sides of the line, guards, ministers, to death-row groupies. This endeavor proved exceptionally successful in, firstly, unearthing a complex tale of lower-class America, and secondly, the often contradictory nature of capital punishment itself.

While I, myself, am an unequivocal fan of Herzog’s documentary style and interviewing techniques, I’m not sure that some of his questioning was quite at home here, in an admittedly difficult environment to do so in. He has also been vocal on ensuring that there was no political push, in which he was mostly successful, but again, it seemed a strain at points to hold back a view or opinion.

Overall, another Herzog success to follow-up from the slightly patchy ‘Cave of Forgotten Dreams’. Herzog himself seems to be making a slightly leftfield move for 2012, starring as a German villain in an upcoming Tom Cruise movie, but there is also another rumored documentary release for 2012. It will be interesting to see if this makes the Oscar nominee list for 2012, against some stiff competition in the doc world this year.

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A tale of two movies at the TIFF Lightbox

Melancholia (2nd Dec); Monty Python and the Holy Grail (3rd Dec)

What better to do in Toronto in the midst of the onset of winter than to bed down in the comfort of the TIFF Bell Lightbox and take in as eclectic a range of movies as their programmers can throw at us.

Whatever my opinions of the individual movies, it speaks volumes that such a diverse couplet can be seen in the same cinema, downtown, within 24 hours of each other.

Friday night offered us up the opportunity to watch the winner of the best actress in this year’s Cannes, Kirsten Dunst, play the role of a depressed bride in the centre of a wealthy, unstable and eccentric extended family in Melancholia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzD0U841LRMO).

What was a reasonably interesting insight on the effects of depression on a person and family, dramatically transformed into a fairly slow-paced and bordering ridiculous sci-fi flick. While the movie was constructed into two acts, the only real connection between these two ‘acts’ were three central characters. There was nothing else to mask the clumsy fusing of two completely different movies of genuinely questionable quality.

Beyond director Lars Von Trier’s WW2 related outbursts in Cannes, I am not sure what else attracted the judges to this fairly farcical affair. In much the same vain as Cannes winner ‘Tree of Life’, the desire to award overly-stylized, unevenly-paced movies this year is beyond me, and may speak of me more than it does of them!

Saturday night though, brought an experience as far removed from Friday’s as I think is possible in one cinema. Monty Python and Holy Grail is the penultimate showing in the late night TIFF series - Python in Excelsis (http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiffbelllightbox/2011/4400000122).

Things I love about this program:

  • Late Night cinema - there needs to be more!
  • Putting classics on the big screen
  • The opportunity to expose newcomers to British Heritage comedy

I was most interested to see who would come to the screenings, and as I expected the vast majority were simply fans (some more die-hard than others) thrilled to get the opportunity to see the cult classic on the large screen. There were also sightings of parents bringing their (now grown-up) kids which really plays into the spirit of what TIFF are trying to do here.

For me, it was difficult to gauge how the humor of Monty Python transferred with the many fans there, but timeless moments (such as the French guard scenes above) showed glimpses of its universality despite its obvious aging and lack of sophistication. 

The last in the series - The Life of Brian - shows in TIFF on the 10th Dec, and probably offers the most accessible of the program, catch it if you can!

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Film Review: “Get Animated!” short showcase at the NFB

Toronto throws up so much great Arts events some can just fly under the radar, and if I hadn’t had the opportunity to catch the last screening “Get Animated!” today at 4pm, then it would have flown under for me too. But thankfully I made it to the screen in the NFB on John St. which is the antithesis of the cineplex across the road.

The National Film Board produced and forged together 7 animated shorts for this showcase, many of which were autobiographical in nature (Big Drive by Anita Lebeau, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors by Ann Marie Fleming, Sunday by Patrick Doyon)  avante gard (CMYK by Marv Newland) to the historical (Wild Life by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby). http://films.nfb.ca/get-animated/screening-programs.php

Wild Life (clip above) was the real standout of the show. It gave a charming and witty account of one of the first English settlers in Alberta and his experience on his “ranch”. The Englishman was mostly homesick and lazy as he sat around on his 90 acres. While he painted himself in letters home to be the all-conquering rancher, the locals warned him politely about the harshness of the winter (a sentiment all too similar to an immigrant!), one that was to be ignored at his peril. This short stood out for it’s ability to tell a story and to connect to a little nugget of Canada’s heritage.

The (often free) events and screenings at the NFB provide more evidence of TO’s burgeoning arts scene and the depth of activities available to the general public with very little searching. With events such as Green Screens and the Real Asian film festival (http://www.reelasian.com/), there are tons of great quality events to be enjoyed.

http://www.nfb.ca/film/wild_life_clip_1

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