VIFF PICKS, week 1

My picks for must-sees at VIFF is in this week's WE

Japan's Tatsumi is one of our VIFF picks

Credit: Supplied

MOVIES: VIFF Picks

Posted By: Andrea Warner

Put on your popcorn-eating pants: It’s VIFF. The beloved film festival celebrates its 30th anniversary with more movies than most people can possibly see. So, over the 17 days of VIFF’s run, WE will provide our picks, previews and reviews of the films that thrill us the most.

THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya
Directed by Pedro Almódovar
Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almódovar specializes in crafting soap-y, enthralling melodrama with more twists and turns than a corn maze. His latest, a loose adaptation of  Thierry Jonquet’s novel Tarantula, is a psycho-sexual horror film that returns Banderas to his native tongue as a plastic surgeon holding a young woman captive, which, oddly, is the least disturbing bit of the film. Sept. 29 (7:00) and Sept. 30 (1:30) at Vogue Theatre.

CLOUDBURST

Starring Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker
Directed by Thom Fitzgerald
Canada comes out strong with this flick about 80-year-old lesbians forced to flee Maine for Nova Scotia after vulgar, fiery Stella (a feisty Dukakis) springs her lover of 30 years, sweet, blind Dot (Fricker), from an old-folks home. It’s funny, heartfelt and full of foul language — and indeed a story everyone needs to see. Oct. 1 (6:45pm) and Oct. 2 (4pm) at Empire Granville 7.

TATSUMI

Starring Bessho Tetsuya, Tatsumi Yoshihiro
Directed by Eric Khoo
Part celebration, part ode, Eric Khoo makes his directorial debut with this animated feature, a tribute to the work of famed artist Tatsumi Yoshihiro, the man who invented gekiga in 1957. Gekiga is a style of manga that fuses darkness and realism, and essentially gave grown-ups permission to view manga as high art instead of kids’ stuff. The film’s base is Yoshihiro’s own award-winning manga autobiography, A Drifting Life, fleshed out by adaptations of five of the artist’s most famous short stories. It’s a visual feast. If you think animation is just for the little ones, see this and get the snob slapped out of you. Oct. 2 (2:45pm) and Oct. 4 (9:30pm) at Empire Granville.

Joan Cusack interview

My interview with Joan Cusack appears online at WestEnder.com

Jessie (Joan Cusack), Buzz (Tim Allen), and Woody (Tom Hanks) return for a new adventure in Toy Story 3.

Joan Cusack’s reanimation in Toy Story 3

Posted By: Andrea Warner

06/25/2010 12:00 AM

Last weekend, Toy Story 3 finally made it to the big screen, in 3D no less, and like almost every Pixar film ever made, became an instant classic. It’s a nice pay-off after the contentious years-long squabble between Disney and Pixar, which ended up delaying the third installment of the franchise for over a decade.
It’s been 10 years well spent. It’s not just that the film is visually stunning (though it is), but that it’s an emotionally resonant story of growing up, moving on, and celebrating the simple pleasures of play. Joan Cusack spoke with WE about her cowgirl character, Jessie, meeting James Bond, and the business of being animated. [Editor’s note: Warning, some story spoilers ahead.]
WE: Was the script as emotional to read as the film was to watch? Because good lord, did I cry.
Joan Cusack: Really? Actually, I expected it more this time, because when I did Toy Story 2 I’d never even done an animated movie at all. There really isn’t a script that you read beforehand, you just kind of meet with the producer and the director — well, it was over four years for this one. You see them once every six months and then once every three, then two months, and you’ll do little pieces of the story, but you don’t even know the whole story all together. When my son was sitting next to me at the screening we went to, he’s like ‘What’s going to happen next?!’ and I’m like ‘I don’t really know!’ [Laughs]
Were you prepared then for the way it came together as a movie? From the bittersweetness of growing up to the terrifying garbage inferno.
I was kind of impressed that they went for it, you know? They really followed the authentic story to its conclusion. They took the story of these toys, that was kind of hinted at in the second one, and said, ‘Well, what happens 10 years later?’ That was so clever. That the little boy’s grown up and it’s such a creative solution to the realities of their situation. You know, just that Disney and Pixar weren’t going to do another one and then, I don’t know, someone bought the other one, and they finally were able to look at the story again. There were so many things that were clever about it. Even just that Buzz was Spanish and that they included our Latin American neighbours in such a nice way. It’s just smart.
Is it strange for you as an actor to be providing one aspect of a character, a voice, that’s obviously incredibly vital, but then trusting a whole other team to put together a face and body and physical motion to it?
It’s definitely different. You couldn’t be in better hands with Pixar, so it’s pretty easy on that level, but it is a different acting chop. Especially in the beginning. I would think I put some emotion in my voice and then they’d play it back and I’d hear it and I would think, ‘No, I must have been using my hands a lot and that didn’t get picked up.’ [Laughs] It’s funny, but you just have to be more animated.
You record in relative isolation then. You and the rest of the cast are never really in the same room together.
No, uh uh. Like, the press junket we did, I did the whole press day with Timothy Dalton, James Bond, which is hilarious to me. I was so taken aback, ‘Oh my God, James Bond all day talking about Toy Story and he was Mr. Pricklepants?’ It’s very imaginative in a way, it’s kind of what kids do. You just imagine everybody has come to life, so you work kind of similarly, so it’s just different.
Do you remember what first attracted you to playing Jessie?
When I first did it, I’d never done anything like that and it was just kind of fun. But then I remember even when we were making it and they were saying something about Jessie and Woody were doing something, I was asking, ‘Ooh, can Jessie save the guy instead of the guy saving Jessie?’ And they were like, ‘Sure, we can play around with that.’ And then I went to Disneyland with my kids when we were out for the opening in LA, and they are lots of princesses and Cinderellas and mermaids and Jessie’s kind of a new kind of Americana, home-grown, doesn’t-need-a-guy girl.
Fully dressed.
It’s kind of cool. It’s like a subtle evolution in a neat way.
That’s really important to show little girls different ways you can grow up, to be self sufficient and equal to anybody else.
Right! And you feel that in society, that it’s happening anyways, and slowly but surely there’s that presence in different professions. It’s interesting that it’s in the movie, too.
It feels very modern in the values that it reflects, particularly how it emphasizes the value of creativity and imagination and getting back to those things we’ve maybe lost a bit.
And playing! I love the little girl, Bonnie. She’s shy but she has this great imagination and passion and love for life. It’s simple. It doesn’t require a lot.
And it doesn’t require money, you know, it transcends one’s station in life to just be able to play with toys you find somewhere and make them your own.
Right, and you personally have taken the time to invest in the way you’re thinking and the way you’re playing. That doesn’t cost anything. It just costs time.
It felt like the movie had some nice closure, but also that it’s poised to move on into something new. Do you anticipate playing Jessie again?
I’ll cross my fingers for that. I think it’s so fun that there’s a little girl at the end with that world. It’s a different world, a girl world, and it hasn’t been shown yet in a modern way. There’s certainly room for a lot of creative storytelling there.
Thanks so much for talking to me.
It’s nice to speak with you, too! And you hang in there, girl reporter! You go too!

Winter's Bone

My piece on Winter's Bone features interviews with director Debra Granik and star Jennifer Lawrence.

Jennifer Lawrence, who plays lead character Ree in the award-winning "Winter’s Bone," credits director Debra Granik for the film’s artistic success. “She asks a lot of questions, which is rare for a director, unfortunately.”

Credit: supplied

Bleak realism key to power of ‘Winter’s Bone’

Posted By: Andrea Warner

06/23/2010 12:00 AM

Writer-director Debra Granik may not be a well-known name, but the buzz bolstering her third and latest film, the critically acclaimed and Sundance award-winning Winter’s Bone, should start to change that. A bleak but beautiful art-house flick, it’s been almost universally lauded as the best film of 2010 thus far — an impressive feat considering it features a cast mostly made up of unknowns and locals from the Ozarks in Missouri, and tackles the subject of backwoods methamphetamine manufacturing and addiction.

Adapted from Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name, Winter’s Bone (opening Friday, June 25) exposes the ravaging effects drugs can have in rural areas, particularly as it becomes virtually impossible to eke out a living from the land alone.

“Surface economies are living in what would be categorically poverty, because it’s not a sustainable way of earning money,” Granik says, over the phone from New York City. “It’s too little, too slow, and variable; it evaporates and closes up and under-employs people... But it always shocks me... trying to be involved or make money from drugs. It’s so unglamorous. It’s weird that so many films have glamorous depictions.”

There’s nothing glamorous about Winter’s Bone. Filmed on location, Granik fully captures the Ozarks’ isolation and rustic beauty, rendered by careful camera work and a lingering, interested eye. It also showcases, without judgment, the barbed-wire loyalty and tension that exists in communities built on survival-by-any-means.

The character of 17-year-old Ree, who is Bone’s beating heart, epitomizes that survival instinct. Already tasked with raising her young brother and sister, and caring for her mentally ill mother, Ree discovers her father has skipped out on his bail — and put their house and land up as his bond. With his court date fast approaching, Ree has to go knocking on some very dark doors to try to get to the bottom of his disappearance and save the family home.

Jennifer Lawrence, the relatively unknown 19-year-old Kentuckian who skillfully portrays Ree, is as frank and direct as the character she plays. She refuses to consider the assertion that her performance anchors the film (because she’s “not a butthead”), but admits that the accolades — and subsequent work offers — pouring in are gratifying, particularly since she considers having played Ree an opportunity to connect with traits she admires in real life. “I like that she doesn’t take no for an answer, and I like that she doesn’t consider failure,” Lawrence says. “I really respect people like that.”

Ree’s strength was also part of what drew Granik to the project. “It’s a good feeling to see a female on screen and be able to root for them and feel like they’re competent, that they’ve got resources and they’re going to use them in different ways,” she says.

Granik was also interested in turning the “so-called coming-of-age story” on its head. “It’s very class driven, how you come of age — like Charles Dickens depicting scrappy kids in London, and it didn’t matter what their education was because they were always learning, either from the streets or elders. You don’t always get a chance to choose who you learn from either. You may learn from criminals, but you don’t have to be one.”

It might be this kind of thoughtfulness Lawrence refers to when she talks about Granik’s attention to detail during filming, from focusing the cinematographer on an icicle melting to depicting the actual skinning and eating of a squirrel. “She’s tremendous,” Lawrence says. “She’s very emotionally accessible. She asks a lot of questions, which is rare for a director, unfortunately.”

Which isn’t to say shooting went off without any hitches. Lawrence admits Granik’s process was occasionally unfathomable. “She has an artistic eye that I have to admit was hard to understand when we were filming, but when I saw the movie I was blown away,” she says. “I remember some of the things she thought were really important at the time [that] I just thought were annoying. Like, ‘Let’s just wrap! Who cares?’ But when I see it, I just think, can you imagine if she didn’t make me do that again? I don’t know if I’ve ever met anybody else who’s got a brain like her.”

Sook Yin Lee and Year of the Carnivore

From WestEnder.com

Sook-Yin Lee on the set of her film, Year of the Carnivore, based on Lee’s own awkward coming-of-age.

Credit: Supplied

In sex and on film, practice makes perfect

Posted By: Andrea Warner

06/16/2010 12:00 AM

Shy is not a word in Sook-Yin Lee’s vocabulary. The Vancouver-born, Toronto-based renaissance woman (writer, director, actor, musician, and TV and radio host) came out as bisexual in 1995, when, as a VJ for MuchMusic, she spontaneously kissed a woman on-air after the Supreme Court of Canada added sexual orientation to Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. She later infamously mooned viewers during her last shift for the same broadcaster in 2001. And four years ago, she almost lost her job as host of CBC Radio One’s Definitely Not the Opera after higher-ups balked at her sexually graphic starring role in John Cameron Mitchell’s movie, Shortbus.

Now, Lee is once again courting controversy as the writer-director of the sexually frank but stunningly soulful Year of the Carnivore (opening Friday, June 18), her highest-profile and most personal feature film to date.

“I really drew upon my first love,” Lee says of her inspiration for writing Carnivore. “I was a gal who was pretty out of touch with myself, my body, my sexuality. I had no boyfriends throughout my childhood and adolescence. When most of the kids were playing spin the bottle, I was not invited.”

She laughs, and continues. “I wasn’t particularly desirable, and I didn’t feel desirable. I was very clueless.”

Lee’s matter-of-fact vulnerability has helped her craft a film that, under the auspices of another director, could have come off as a one-note kink-fest. In Carnivore, Sammy, played by the little-known New York actress Cristin Milioti, is a sexually awkward young woman with a bum leg (a daily reminder of her bout with childhood leukemia) who works undercover security at a grocery store. Eugene (Mark Rendall), a guitarist who busks outside, is the object of her affection. But after the two hit the sheets, he puts the kibosh on a relationship, telling Sammy she needs more experience in the bedroom before they can take things further. She takes his instruction to heart, with results that alternate between hilarious, heartfelt, and positively criminal.

Lee gleefully recounts just how much she mined her own past to flesh out Sammy and Eugene’s journey. As in the film, Lee was also a young woman who needed liquid courage to spill her guts. Literally.

“I felt I needed to confess my feelings, so I got incredibly drunk, because I had no confidence, no courage,” says Lee of the man who jilted her and inspired Carnivore’s central storyline. “I actually fell down the stairs of the Savoy Nightclub in Gastown before picking myself up, going over to his warehouse, and confessing my love. Then I proceeded to vomit all over him. He was really endeared to me, but also really upfront that he didn’t want to be in a relationship and that I was really terrible in the sack.”

Lee describes her ensuing years acquiring sexual experience as the work of a “zealous overachiever.” Eventually, she and her would-be paramour found their way back to each other, but not before making plenty of mistakes along the way.

“The fact of the matter is no one’s really great [at sex] from the get-go, and it rarely plays out like in romance novels or romantic movies,” Lee says. “People aren’t as... well, they’re more fumbly in real life. I really do love the inverted romance and people finding each other, but they have to earn it, they have to go through some hard knocks.”

Some of Sammy’s hard knocks include a variety of interactions that are sure to rile more conservative moviegoers, but even the most overtly shocking scenes (a threesome to help get over the hurdle of postpartum depression) touch on the truth that a good relationship needs good sex and communication to survive. Lee knows, however, that she can’t control the audience’s response to Carnivore’s casual depiction of sexual exploration.

“If people are outraged, that’s their own reaction,” Lee says, laughing. “What I try to do, on Not the Opera and in my writing, is bring myself to the story and the ideas we’re exploring. Not in a way that’s simply navel-gazing, but there’s usually something at its core that I wish to share with people that’s hopefully really useful to them as well. All of my work is drawing from a place of wanting to communicate and connect and share experiences that I’ve been privy to.”

Virginia Madsen

A few weeks late, but I'm finally posting my interview with Virginia Madsen. Who knew Haunting in Connecticut would still be around?

Virginia Madsen's love of horror films and belief in the paranormal pushed her to star in The Haunting in Connecticut.

By Andrea Warner

She’s played the ingenue (Electric Dreams), the sexpot (Third Degree Burn) and the scream queen (Candyman). But it wasn’t until her Oscar-nominated turn in 2004’s Sideways, as wine-loving waitress Maya, that Virginia Madsen finally proved herself a major player in Hollywood.

Now, the honey-blonde starlet is indulging her love of horror and the paranormal with The Haunting in Connecticut (opening March 27), based on the alleged true story of a family terrorized by ghosts.

What attracted you to this movie? Do you like horror films?
Madsen: I do. I’m a huge fan. And I’ve been looking for a good horror script for years! Literally for years. Sometimes they’ll have a good idea or an okay story, but not a good ending, and a lot of times the horror films being made right now aren’t character-driven; they’re just the gore-fest thing, and that’s okay — they’re lucrative, fun, campy. But [with Haunting], I knew by page three that I really cared about this mother and child, and I was intrigued by that, and I found that the story was about the whole family, and I really loved that.

Candyman scared the pants off of me when I was younger.
(Laughs) What I liked about Candyman, and what I like about this movie, is that they play on our most basic childhood fears: what’s behind that mirror; what’s down that hall; what’s under the bed; is someone watching me while I’m in the shower. It’s all the stuff that naturally frightens us around the house. Even as grown-ups, there’s that half a second between where you hear a noise outside the window and you know that it’s just the wind — there’s a half second there where I think, “Monster.” (laughs) You know, it makes no sense at all, but you still do it because you have that basic instinct of fight or flight. You know that’s probably your cat under the bed, but you look and (in a scary voice), “THERE’S THE CAT UNDER THE BED! OH MY GOD!”

So you like being scared?
I love being scared in movies, and I’m a great fan of the genre, but I’m also a great fan of the whole hunt for the proof of the paranormal. There’s just such cool stuff on YouTube — like, really, really great-bad ghost footage. But there are some things on there that you can’t explain. And, I mean, just as when we look into space, we know that it’s naïve at best, arrogant at worst, that we think we’re the only living things in the universe, because of all that we know that we can’t see, much is the same as our life on Earth. There’s so much about our perceived existence that we don’t even know about. So, how are we to just discount all of these experiences as “fake” or “just their imagination.” I’m fascinated by all the different experiences people have had. It’s a scientific fact that there’s cell memory, but what if there’s DNA memory?

Like past-life flashbacks?
Our basic DNA connected to our great, great, great grandmother, and when we see a “ghost,” what if something just goes ‘flash’ in our brain from that ancient DNA memory, and what if we’re actually seeing what our great-grandmother saw when we see a ghost? It’s fascinating stuff, and there’s some investigation about that. Because you can’t just say that millions and millions of people that have experienced something paranormal are just lying or just imagining. But then, how much can we manifest with the power of our own fear?

Bruce McDonald interview

My interview with Bruce McDonald appeared in WE this week. It was such a great time! Hope everyone enjoys it.

Pontypool director Bruce McDonald.

Bruce McDonald dives into Pontypool

It's 9:15 a.m. when Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald (Hard Core Logo, The Tracey Fragments) ambles in to a downtown café. He has a friendly smile underneath his sandy-grey beard, and his trademark Stetson-style hat (this time in black) and jeans make him look like a cross between a cowboy and a biker. He exudes a certain tough-guy cool — something one would expect from a man who has a reputation for making movies that typically feature sex, drugs, and/or rock ’n’ roll in varying combinations.

It’s the 49-year-old director’s second interview of the morning promoting the fantastic new thriller, Pontypool, his first foray into the blood-and-guts horror genre. Based on Tony Burgess’s 1998 novel Pontypool Changes Everything, it centres on a crusty, opinionated morning-show radio host, Grant Mazzy (played by the delightfully grizzled Stephen McHattie), who’s been exiled to the titular small town, broadcasting with his producer and assistant from a church basement. Suddenly, reports start pouring in that some kind of plague is taking over the town, turning people into zombies, and being spread through the English language.

Hard Core Logo, The Tracey Fragments, and now Pontypool — they’re all adaptations from books. Do you have an inclination toward reading something and then wanting to translate those images in your head?

McDonald: Maybe I read a little more than the normal guy. It’s a kick, you know — the heavy lifting is done, in a way. With a book, you don’t just crack it off in a couple months; it’s often years of work and thought... Not all books make great movies, but I do get a satisfaction in passing the torch. I have a great respect for writers — maybe because I wanted to be a writer myself. It also puts you in the unique position of being a one-man “Yay, CanCon!” advocate. And it’s a fairly exuberant “Yay!” because we have some fairly world-class writers. There’s something nice about when you discover there are these gods standing in your backyard.

What was your first reaction to reading Pontypool Changes Everything? Did you immediately want to turn it into something you could texturize?

Well, the book is a strange and mysterious beast; it’s a collage of a lot of different moments organized around the idea of a language virus. That was the thing that really grabbed me. I loved the playfulness of it, and I could see the real terror. Imagine something as familiar as your language turning against you. It reminded me of Hitchcock’s The Birds — something so ordinary, as opposed to the high concept of something from outer space.

There’s a lot to analyze in this film.

That’s why it’s such a good movie to see when you’re high. (laughs)

Almost the entire movie takes place in this underground radio station, in a church basement, and the characters have no visual proof of what’s transpiring outside at first.

Almost like Dr. Strangelove. That’s the whole thing: It was a bit of experiment, in that we thought we could maybe raise the stakes by making our audience cling to our characters. They don’t have the privilege of seeing the director’s cut outside. Just the fact that we stay there with the characters hopefully creates that same sense of unease and, like, What-the-fuck’s-going-on-out-there? feeling.

When you screened it for everyone, did it achieve what you wanted it to?

Making a movie’s kind of an act of will or an act of mass hypnosis, and you’re totally prepared to do it... and you’re like, “Okay, I know I can do this with four actors in a room with my sister’s camera.” So, that was my first imagining of the movie. All the other stuff that happened — the fact that we got Steve McHattie, this great location to shoot it in, that it was photographed so handsomely, that we could afford projectile vomit — we were like, “Holy shit, this is kind of a dream come true.” My original vision was so lame compared to what was actually done by the gang who arrived to do it.

Wendy and Lucy

My review of Wendy and Lucy appears in this week's WE.

WENDY AND LUCY
Starring Michelle Williams
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
4 stars (out of 5)

By Andrea Warner
The string of horrible Hollywood flicks boasting talking dogs with interior voices provided by celebrities (see Beverly Hills Chihauha — actually, don’t) has created four-legged fatigue among many moviegoers. But our furry friends get a second chance to be worthy co-stars in Kelly Reichardt’s evocative and emotionally devastating Wendy and Lucy.

Wendy (a superb Michelle Williams) is a loner in her early twenties, living in her car with her dog, Lucy, en route from Indiana to Alaska in search of a summer job that promises big bucks. It’s a dream that stays just out of reach when Wendy’s car breaks down in a small, rundown town in Oregon, and then Lucy disappears, sending Wendy’s life into a tailspin.

Writer-director Reichardt is an expert in crafting unsettling films that double as quiet character studies, as demonstrated in the 2006 gem Old Joy. Nor does she doesn’t any easy answers here about why Wendy is the way she is. Small moments, like a desperate phone call home or Wendy’s tentative friendship with a security guard, hint at some of her invisible fractures, but we never really understand why she’s gone so far adrift.

Wendy and Lucy is also a bleak foreshadowing of the economic mess in which we’re all mired, where jobs are few and far between, and a series of simple events can prevent upward momentum. (Wendy doesn’t have an address because she lives in her car, and she can’t afford a cellphone, making finding Lucy, much less a job, virtually impossible.)

There’s nary a talking dog in the whole film, but every moment between Wendy and Lucy speaks volumes.

U2 3D Review

Two new reviews appear in today's Westender. I'm posting U2 3D today and How She Move tomorrow.

U2 3D Review—3 stars
By Andrea Warner

U2 3D documents the South American leg of the band’s “Vertigo” tour, and boasts the first 3-D, multi-camera, real-time production. The energy pulses as arms seem to wave right under the audience’s noses and the surround sound of the theatre kicks in with the roar of the crowd when Bono takes the stage.

Most of the 3-D effects are fantastic and focus on magnifying the band, allowing a close-up view of the various guitar, bass and drumming techniques. Among U2 3D’s strongest offerings are nostalgic political anthems “Bullet the Blue Sky”, “New Year’s Day”, and “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”. The Edge’s searing guitar on “Where the Streets Have No Name” and Adam Clayton’s bass on “With or Without You” are reminders of what a genuinely talented group of musicians U2 is.

Bono’s voice is showcased beautifully on “Pride (In the Name of Love)” but his theatrics take on a cheesy note during his father ballad “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own”. U2 3D’s biggest misstep comes during the encore where the producers blow the majority of their effects budget during “The Fly”; it’s a visual onslaught that attacks the eyeballs and is out of place in a film that gracefully toes the line between excess and subtlety.

U2 are consummate professionals, and the band almost never falters once from their carefully constructed mandate. Even U2’s more freestyle moments feel calculated, particularly with the giant projector screens behind them, choreographed to coincide with each well-timed high note. This is one of the drawbacks of the 3-D experience: the flaws of the live show are much more obvious when viewed from a front-row seat inside a movie theatre.

I'm Not There Review

This review is scheduled to appear in Discorder's February issue, out in a couple weeks.

I’m Not There Review
By Andrea Warner

I’m Not There is a brilliant head-trip of a circus and the ringleader in the spotlight of this chaotic and sumptuous visual extravaganza is the man behind the many myths: Bob Dylan.

It takes a lot of parts to make up the whole of any human being, but few figures have so blatantly confounded, entranced and ultimately served to exemplify an entire generation so completely as that of Bob Dylan. Six wonderful actors dig in to the bones of his enigmatic persona, the flesh made real by a superb supporting cast, but still at the film’s end we’re wondering what it all means?

This is the beauty of a director like Todd Haynes tackling the mystery of Dylan: they share a desire to stimulate the imagination and challenge preconceived notions, creating startlingly relatable characters out of the most indulgent and unappealing human traits.

Cate Blanchett as Jude Quinn is a standout amongst some truly wonderful performers, inhabiting Dylan’s most destructive and arrogant side. She finds a brilliant sparring partner in Bruce Greenwood, the BBC arts reporter eager to demystify Quinn as a self-invented narcissist from New Jersey. Each scene between them is a tense and satisfying game of cat and mouse. In Blanchett’s capable hands, every Quinn’s every sentiment is a fragile riddle that dissolves under too much scrutiny.

Marcus Carl Franklin as the 11-year-old, train-hopping child who calls himself Woody Guthrie, is an actor with great instincts and a remarkably mature voice. Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg also shine as a couple unraveling under ego and success.

Throughout the film we’re always clawing at a never-ending glass surface that refracts images surreal and beautiful, raw and ugly, but all hauntingly honest. We’re forced to leave the theatre thinking about who we are in the grand scheme of things. Haynes, like Dylan, is a master at manipulating his audience, but we are all the richer for it.

Three very different movies, all with startling degrees of awesomeness

Hopefully I'll get to post these full reviews next week, but over the last couple weeks I've seen Starting Out in the Evening, Cloverfield and I'm Not There.

How I missed I'm Not There when it first came out is something I'm still trying to reconcile, but alas. I've seen it now and I'm actually a better, more inspired person for it. Honest. I think it just might be Cate Blanchett's best performance.

Starting Out in the Evening stars Frank Langella in, what I believe, is the most phenomenal performance by a male lead in any film from the last year. Lili Taylor is lovely and vibrant as a woman facing 40 trying to figure out her life. A great, intellectual film that makes you want to go home and dig out that book you've been working on sporadically since college.

And, Cloverfield. I know that perhaps it seems like one of these things is not like the other, but just because it's in a different category than the other two movies, doesn't diminish it's appeal. Intimate, explosive and satisfying, it's brutal devastation of Manhattan is a feast for the senses. And, it's a fun popcorn flick that connects.

My first review for the Westender--The Kite Runner

My review ran in last week's Westender, and I'm really excited about working with such an awesome paper.

The Kite Runner Review
By Andrea Warner

The complexities of our childhood actions often misshape and indulge our understanding of the world we grow up in. The Kite Runner, based on the best-selling book of the same name by Khaled Hosseini, and directed by Marc Forster, is a thought-provoking film that asks us to reconcile who we are with who we become.

The story sprawls from 1978 to 2000, focusing on childhood best friends Amir and Hassan. By 1979, Amir's betrayal and subsequent guilt tears the friends apart, and when war comes, the boys are further separated as Amir flees Afghanistan with his father. Entire lives have passed by the time Amir must make a dangerous return to Kabul to rescue Hassan's son from the Taliban.

The first-time actors who play young Amir and Hassan are gifted performers. Homayoun Ershadi, in particular, is remarkable as Amir's father, filling the character with conviction, grace and dignity.

Equally impressive is the choreography of the kite-flying competition that is as intense an air battle as any between fighter pilots. The film does stretch on for 15 minutes too long, and occasionally second-guesses itself with needless exposition.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan is a mystery to most North Americans, who see it alternately as the war-torn playground of the Taliban, a black hole for Canadian troops, or a devastation of women's rights. Thankfully, this film compels us to know Afghanistan better. This is The Kite Runner's real triumph: deftly using Afghanistan as a silent main character. Catalyst and background have never melded so effortlessly.

xx
250 words

30 Days and Counting-Margot at the Wedding

About a month ago I quit my job because I thought I should finally devote my time to writing. I've dabbled, owned my own magazine in the past, and always considered myself a writer, even when I wasn't publishing. Every job I've ever had, regardless of how mundane or perverse or ridiculous, I've managed to convince my bosses to let me pursue some kind of creative project in addition to my normal tasks. This is how I've come to be the creator of two in-house magazines and one very awesome illustrated sex terms dictionary.

So, this past weekend I really threw myself into my role as a freelance writer. I went out and reviewed a film and then sent that review to over 75 publications across North America. If I was a local writer in Omaha, Vermont, Chattanooga or Cincinnati right now, I'd have that sucker printed. Alas, I'm not. To be optimistic, it's only been two days since I blasted every independent paper with my work. It could happen still. But in the mean time, I thought, fuck it: I worked hard on this review. People should get to see it. And I should get to share it with anyone who cares to read it.

Margot at the Wedding Review
By Andrea Warner

In a family, we are all strangers bound by a familial debt to people who know our history; all that we were, all that we overcome, and every misstep in between. Margot at the Wedding is a beautiful and bittersweet exploration of these infinitely complex relationships we’re born into. What does it mean to be a mother or a sister? Can love take refuge in manipulation and cruelty and still be called love? Noah Baumbach, writer and director of Margot has a special knack for this particular type of story, pulling apart families full of wealthy, educated, privileged New Yorkers isolated by their own peculiar brand of dysfunction. This is not surprising, given the similar themes of his last triumph, the quietly explosive The Squid and the Whale.

Nicole Kidman is Margot, a self-absorbed and judgmental writer unraveling by her own hand as she takes solace in diagnosing those around her without ever stopping to appraise her own restless dissatisfaction and manic-depressive tendencies. Jennifer Jason Leigh is Pauline, Margot’s sister, a somewhat masochistic and needy free spirit who has asked Margot to return to their family home for her wedding, even though Pauline hasn’t spoken to Margot in years. The first meeting between the reunited sisters is heavy with tension and hope, as both Kidman and Leigh imbue their characters’ spirits with fiery purpose. Kidman’s long limbs, confident stature and natural stiffness fill the edges of Margot’s fragile superiority. Leigh’s wild mane of hair, alternately wounded and defiant eyes, and her ability to convey the physical impact of Margot’s harsh words with a defeated shoulder or defiant glare lend depth and layers to Pauline’s years in Margot’s shadow. Baumbach has provided incredibly rich material, and it pays off for Kidman and Leigh, who have never been better. Supporting roles from Jack Black and John Turturro as the partners of Pauline and Margot, respectively, add further traction to the tortured sisters, both still wrestling with the long shadow cast by their deceased abusive father.

The other star of this film is Zane Pais, who plays Claude, Margot’s 13-year-old son and confidant. He is a young man directly at the centre of the maelstrom Margot creates around her, seemingly without concern for how she pulls him up and down through the possible end of her marriage, or her casual betrayal of her sister’s confidences. After Margot’s own public undoing, she lashes out at Claude, lying that he’s a disappointment to Pauline, cruelly stripping away all layers of his self-confidence only to finish with “but you’re still handsome”. Claude, like Pauline, is entirely at the mercy of Margot’s destructive bile. But, also like Pauline, he is on the receiving end of her intense gestures of love and manipulation, her ability to make one feel special if you are the lucky recipient of her highly discriminate attentions. Pais is a wonderful young actor, and holds his own fiercely against Kidman. Claude and Margot’s relationship is unorthodox at best, but it’s a victory for Kidman that audiences will find it hard to doubt the sincerity of Margot’s love for her son underneath such painfully selfish actions.

This is a film of grand themes, and like any family gathering, it’s filled with humor, sadness, warmth and unresolved issues itching to surface. But it’s the small moments that are such wonders: the two sisters laughing hysterically like kids; Claude catching sight of his neighborhood tormentor being gently held in his mother’s arms. These observations seem subtle and unobtrusive, but quickly add up once one realizes they are impossible to shake. The dialogue, the backbone of this film, is fluid and reactive—the quick flare-ups between sisters with such a fractious relationship ring true, particularly to anyone who has ever had the push-pull intensity of two people so close, every soft spot becomes a target in the heat of the moment. Margot at the Wedding is a remarkable and intimate film that will occupy space in your mind long after you leave the theater.

666 words