DAY 10 - /* mama? c'est fini */ - the last day at TIFF - Nothing is Private, Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge, Amazing Journey, Glory to the Filmmaker!

cue The Bugs Bunny Show theme

Can this really be the last day ?
Alarm clock ... check
Pulse ... check
Breakfast ... are you kidding ?
RUN!

Subway from Bloor Station to Osgoode station: 12 minutes
Run from Osgoode station to Scotiabank theatre: 7 minutes
Run up the esclator: 2 minutes
Climbing to the top of the theatre ... heart attack city

Le voyage du ballon rouge
10 a.m.
Scotiabank 1

As one would expect from Chinese director Hou Hsiao-hsienLe voyage du ballon rouge est to be très lègere - an homage to the original 1956 le Ballon Rouge from Albert Lamorisse which followed a red balloon's fanciful path through Paris. Juliette Binoche as Suzanne is a harried mother taking care of her son on her own in Paris while she juggles a career as a puppet master and playwright. The puppets are a metaphor for the strings she pulls and the helplessness in her life. Bringing a semblance of balance to her life is the Taiwanese film student Song Fang hired as the nanny for her son Simon. Song as a creative exercise makes her own film on a small handheld camera following Simon walking around Paris with a red balloon. The rest of the film is very reminiscent of the claustrophia of Interiors or Cache with its static single camera shots in Suzanne's crowded apartment. Most of Suzanne's woes center around juggling her busy schedule, her ex-husband's friend Marc from downstairs who lives with his girlfriend in their other apartment without paying rent, and trying to find the lease agreement so she can evict him as well as trying to find space for her stepdaughter currently living in Brussels with her grandfather but expected to study in Paris in the fall. Expecting Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge to have a certain lightness, it just does not quite measure up. However, the sojourns of Suzanne and Song and the last shot of the balloon flying over the city is Paris at its most evocative.

Cin cin a mon ballon rouge


Amazing Journey : The Story of The Who
2:30 p.m.
VISA Elgin

The kids are alright ...

May 27, 2005

The Who needs your help

Townshend, Daltrey looking for footage from fans

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- The two surviving members of The Who are producing a documentary about the British rock band's turbulent history, an ongoing 40-year saga of death, drugs and timeless tunes.
Guitarist/songwriter Pete Townshend and singer Roger Daltrey have joined forces on the feature-length project with Murray Lerner, an Oscar-winning documentary director who first filmed the band during the 1970 Isle of Wight festival.
Tentatively titled "My Generation: Who's Still Who" -- a reference to their breakthrough 1965 hit "My Generation" -- the film is scheduled to come out next year. Lerner said there are plans for a theatrical release, a CD and a multi-disc DVD set. "There will be very unusual stuff, hopefully, that never was seen before," Lerner told Reuters. "We're looking for material like fights between them, on and off the stage, unruly fans that make it difficult, weird incidents on the stage, interviews with ex-wives and girlfriends."
To that end, the filmmakers have set up a Web site, http://www.thewhomovie.com, seeking material from fans.

Come on the amazing journey
And learn all you should know
- from Tommy

The Elgin audience was ready to rock out for this grand theatrical screening of Amazing Journey : The Story of The Who. We scored the best seat in the house, first balcony, first row, dead centre which made the experience extra sweet. This is the very theatre that did hold the original Tommy and floor level seat T50 was the very seat sat in by Pete Townshend.

Amazing Journey, the movie compiles interviews and much unseen documented footage throughout their career as their story is unfolded told through the analogy of the various tracks of a double vinyl album: side one begins with a quick flashback through the iconic images that represent the Who, the Pete Townshend windmill, the climactic laser shots from Won't Get Fooled Again with Townshend sliding on his knees, then setting out to tell the story beginning with a tribute to John Entwistle with his addiction to H [ the department store Harrods where Entwistle lavishly shopped for clothes and shoes in quantity which led to his often bankruptcy ] ... from the various lineup and name changes, the pre-Who days of The Detours to The Who to The High Numbers and back to The Who ...

From a collection of thousands of reels of unarchived film material and photographs, some never before seen and archived for posterity for this project, The Who's history is brought to screen, the Who's stylish conversion to becoming Mods, the anthem My Generation, concept album The Who Sell Out, the rock opera Tommy, Lifehouse which becomes Who's Next, the mod album Quadrophenia about the clash between Mods and Rockers in Brighton 1964, the next step to the movies Tommy and Quadrophenia, the influence of managers Kit Lambert and Shal Talmy, the tragedy of Cincinnati 1973, side four ending with The Who as it stands today: the duo of Daltry and Townshend performing Tea and Theatre. The directors of Amazing Journey only this surviving pair who have become great friends could live up to the legacy of being The Who.

Of course, The Who just would not be The Who without Keith Moon and it is such a joy and sadness to see this dynamic personality and maniacal drummer in performancewho lived life at maximum r&b. The historical performance on The Smothers Brothers show with the blown-up drumkit is shown to full effect.

Amazing Journey : The Story of The Who is an amazing compendium of interviews with Daltrey and Townshend, the two surviving members of The Who "filmed" in high-def which just leaps off the screen, along with a new generation of fans and musicians influenced by the Who, such as Eddie Vedder, The Edge, ex-drummer Kenny Jones, Steve Jones from The Professionals and the Sex Pistols, Noel Gallagher, even Sting.

The Amazing Journey which is actually set to be released on double disc DVD on November 5 is the bookend to The Kids Are Alright and should more than satisfy addicts of The Who. The film comprises disc one, and the second disc promises more extras, interviews. And the director told me there is hope of another concert footage disc. Of course, no home system will be able to match the size of the screen or the speaker system of The Elgin.


NOTHING IS PRIVATE
6:00 p.m.
Ryerson

You're a good girl.

A hotly sought ticket at TIFF07 with even a fourth screening added for press/industry and the public, but we were back for the last time at Ryerson in the balcony.

In Nothing is Private, nothing is private, not even a girl's passage into womanhood. The most dangerous suburban 9/11 film at TIFF07, what goes on behind closed doors with Jasira - a naive yet sexually aware 13-year-old Lebanese-American girl who is the subject of male desire - is the focus of Nothing is Private.

What appears superficially to be another indie film with the scene's top actors - Maria Bello and Toni Collette for starters [ what would a TIFF be without Toni Collette ? ] along with Aaron Eckhart [also in the festival with Bill] and Peter Macdissi [ from Six Feet Under ] is subverted by the fact that this is Alan Ball behind the helm and the screenplay - a dark return to American Beauty form - the music is right for the era: Edie Brickell, REM ... as President Bush sends his troops off to the Gulf War to bring down Saddam Hussein as seen on CNN.

After her mother Gail discovers what her daughter was doing with Gail's boyfriend, Jasira is sent across the country to her father in the heart of Texas where she can learn what it is like to live under the control of a male. Jasira is going through the process of what it is like to becoming a woman, but she is given little sympathy or support, even her mother takes her strict father's side when he says Jasira will not be allowed to wear a tampon. Jasira's father Rifat has no sympathy for the invaded side, he has become just as Americanized as his neighbours, cheering just as much for the elimination of Saddam as any American, which includes a US Army reservist [Eckhart]and his mean son who uses a variety of derogatory terms such as "t head" "c jockey" "sand " . But in the process of settling in, Jasira's father sets her up with a job to babysit the neighbour's son. While babysitting, the son Zack blithely reads his father's collection of Parade porn magazines and curiously Jasira picks one up and has a fantasy reaction with the girls in the pages and in the process has her first "O".

The father discovers her reading his magazines one night, and asks her why she is reading them. He is stunned when she says she likes them because they give her an orgasm. Jasira is not unattractive by any means and he falls at that moment under the spell of her body and proceeds to caress her which she does not resist ... and then there is her new highschool boy friend who just happens to be black ...

The turn Nothing is Private takes from that point on is a seriously twisted black look at sexuality, prejudice, and what is goodness and innocence. There is a feeling of almost utter helplessness as this young girl Jasira is at the beck and whim of the males who crave and control her subjecting her to unspeakable mental and physical abuse - but by the end who has the upper hand?

GLORY TO THE FILMMAKER!
9:30 p.m.
Varsity 8

Venice prize for Japanese helmer - good for Takeshi Kitano !

It is 9:30 pm on the last day and this is not the last film of our TIFF07?

So we come to the Varsity 8 for the first time this festival - this is without doubt our least favourite place to see films because of its old fashioned seating and the bumpy tall heads that get in the way - nonetheless the Varsity 8 the last of the largescale grand traditional movie theatres [seating around 1200]. Kitano is worth the sacrifice.


It all started with a gangster film like this
After hitting a creative rut, director Takeshi Kitano deconstructs his career after he publicly vows to never again make a gangster movie.

Beware Office K: puppet Kitano and alter ego "Beat" Takeshi appear on screen in Kantoku Banzai! - a glorious upbeat send-off of the genre movies.

Pondering his new direction, he deftly demonstrates several plotlines which show Kitano's deftness with genres. His first effort Retirement is in the line of Yasujiro Ozu whom international directors such as Wim Wenders admire shows assuredness but after he asks:
Who wants to see a boring film that spends thirty minutes just showing its characters drinking liquor and tea? he aborts the project. Team K delves into other genres that are definitely off the beaten path for Kitano, but shown with a deft hand: a reflective period piece not entirely unlike Goodfellas, a romance, Americans remake Japanese horror movies all the time so he conceives a J-horror piece called Noh Theatre [complete with outtakes!], another samurai period piece Blue Ninja 2: the Return - all ideas that get turned down or bog down in the director's disillusionment of repeating himself. Time after time, puppet K [who represents the depressed version of Kitano ] throws himself off a bridge or commits other suicidal acts after each defeat. But one idea catches on: maybe a CG piece - about a meteor about to hit Earth. As the ever-present narrator notes that in a Hollywood version a H-bomb would be sent up to destroy it - but Kitano has his own story: The Day After. Starring a mother and daughter team - the mother outrageously dressed, the daughter with a duck puppet on her arm. And somewhere along the way the end of the world is on its way.

As Kitano literally blows up his career in an apocalyptic ending: out of The Life of Brian is borne Glory to the Filmmaker ! [ Hopefully Glory to the Filmmaker is not career suicide - but the DVD is slated for Japanese release on 11/11. ]

Now what?

Vexille
11:45 p.m.
Varsity 6

Vexille is a post-modern look at the evolution of mankind done in an evolved 3D version of CGI anime. Vexille is a nihilistic look at a future where humanity in a new era of biotechnology fears the potential to be replaced by machine.

Futuristic Japan 2077 : a country to be feared and worshipped as Japan goes into self-imposed isolation in defiance of a worldwide U.N. treaty ban on bio and robot technological advancement. The huge Japanese monopoly DAIWA shuts down the walls of Japan to the world, and only silence has come out of the country over the past 10 years.

Special Agent Vexille works with the American organization SWORD who target the head of DAIWA in a commando raid, and in the aftermath of battle come out with a leg which they discover is a radical new advancement in biotechnology that threatens the evolution of humanity.

A dazzling animated look at an I, Robot world from director Sori complemented with a techno soundtrack from Paul Oakenfold, Vexille's CG animation is 3D rendered almost down to 2D with human characters on the scale of the first Final Fantasy movie, and lots of realistic violence, warcraft, weapons of war, guns, and the deadly whirling metalloid worms called JAGS which bore through metal in nothing flat.