Gem-Hunting in the Dark

I’m always excited to peruse the month’s cinema schedule, but this month I’m particularly excited. Looking at the schedule, you might wonder why—after the first week of April, no sleeper blockbuster like Quartet, no big-budget digital showcase like Life of Pi, no Oscar-winning documentary like Searching for Sugarman. But that’s exactly why I’m itching to get in the popcorn line. Instead of stuff (even great stuff) that you might catch in the cineplex—Though why would you when you could support your local indie cinema?—for the rest of the month the programming is full of those wonderful gems whose shine usually gets drowned out by the media glare that’s trained on the latest blockbusters.

The thing that indie bookstores and cinemas do that chains and cineplexes don’t is to introduce you to the book or movie you didn’t know you’d love, and this month is full of potential cinematic trysts, from Leviathan, a cutting-edge documentary that chronicles the blood and rough beauty of life inside an industrial fishing trawler, to The Gatekeepers, which gives a previously-unreachable perspective on Middle East politics from inside one of the most efficient and secretive security organizations in the world, Israel’s Shin Bet. Or, on the fiction side, we range from the Godfather, the classic American immigrant film that is both startlingly violent and unexpectedly moving, to No, a Chilean film about an advertiser who helped a crowd of overly-earnest leftists use marketing to fight a dictator.

But there are two films I’m especially excited about. The first is the Essential Cinema screening of Wim Wenders’s Wings of Desire, a film that is achingly beautiful and romantic—and by romantic, I’m referring to the deeper sense of that word, in which love is a bold leap (or, in this case, fall) whose joy is intensified and purified by the acceptance of its inescapable transience. It’s no accident that in order to fall in love, the angel Damiel also has to fall into time, or that this blooming relationship between celestial being and sublunary trapeze artist is set in the bleak, wall-scarred landscape of cold-war Berlin, “the front line of the last gasp,” as Bruce Cockburn put it. The result is a visual and verbal poem that seduces the eye and stirs the heart. People who love cinema usually fall hard for it.

The second film this week that I’m eagerly anticipating (which, now that I think about it, also focuses on time), is 56 Up, director Michael Apted’s latest installment in what is commonly acknowledged to be one of the greatest documentary projects ever undertaken. In 1964, Apted was a researcher for a British documentary film called Seven Up! which followed twenty seven-year-olds from a broad spectrum of social classes and situations. Since then, he has checked in with fourteen of the children every seven years and made a series of documentaries based on where they are at in their lives, following them through education and work, achieved ambitions and lost dreams, long-lasting marriages and personal disasters. Those children are now 56, and watching their lives unfold over the course of the eight films and fifty years suggests so much not only about the individual paths of the participants, but about life itself and what determines how we negotiate it. The Up films provide endless fodder for conversation about people, eras, and ideas. If you’re hopping in at this point in the series, no worries; Apted gives introductions to each of the people in his films as he goes, and you can always catch up either before or after the film by renting the films from your friendly independent video store or browsing about on the web.

See you at the cinema!

- Bruce

Wings of Desire: Tuesday 8:30, Wednesday 6:30
56 Up: Thursday 6:30, Saturday & Sunday 1:30

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Life of Pi

The only essay I wrote during my lit undergrad that I didn't think was pure bunk was a post-war Canadian fiction piece on Life of Pi. Like myself at the time, the paper was bloated and rambling and never quite figured out what it meant to say. Whatever point there was had something to do with the significance of pi as a mathematical concept within Yann Martel's story about a story. Here's the gist: pi is a number that prattles into infinity, seemingly without pattern, on account of it attempts to describe a perfect circle which, because of molecular stubble, does not exist in nature. Pi, then, describes a desire for perfection and order in a rough and unwieldy reality. And in the same twelve-or-so pages I tried to argue the relevance of animal fable and polytheistic religions as they relate to that mathematical concept, and how the lot of these concepts explain the text of Life of Pi.

I take a bit of heart in seeing these ideas reflected in Ang Lee's film. It's almost as though my education wasn't analogous to turning a pile of money into a pyre.

If you're among the few who didn't read Martel's book back in the early oughts, here's a survey of the story: we have young Pi Patel, short for Piscine. He's a kid "keen on God." In each religion he finds some relevance, though his interest in all religions confuses the adults in his life, who believe he should find one God and settle. "All religions are true," he quotes. "I just want to love God." His family owns a zoo in Pondicherry, but is selling it to move to Canada. En route, the cargo ship carrying them and their menagerie goes down. Pi, along with a few of his aforementioned animals--a zebra, a hyena, an orangutan, and a tiger--are seemingly the sole survivors. Pi's story purports to be one that will make a person believe in God.

 "Telling stories is highly recommended," recommends the survival manual Pi finds on the lifeboat he uneasily shares with his tiger, Richard Parker. And that's what we have in Life of Pi: stories. Regardless of the merits of Martel's book, I think it's its unabashed love and belief in stories that so hooked people. It's a tad presumptuous to presume that 9/11 had anything to do with the book's reception and juggernaut success, but I think there is something to that. The violence of that event was so egregious, and our own North American reality was so shaken, that the running sentiment was that fiction or entertainment or art of any kind were somehow irresponsible in its wake. But I think the recommendation of Pi's manual is absolute. Times have always been tough--one might say that "toughness" is a perennial quality of life--and stories have always been a means of swallowing and digesting that sometimes unfathomable toughness. In times of troubling randomness, we seek stories of order; in times riddled with flaw, we root out perfect stories.

In Lee's film, the imperfect scenario of tragedy resides within the perfect world of its Oscar-winning cinematography. There was some controversy over whether or not such digitally-crafted visuals deserve a cinematography recognition--and I somewhat side with these concerns--but what are, effectively, the paintings of Pi adrift are stunning, and rich, and lonely. There's no assurance that Pi's story will make you believe in God, but it goes a long way to explain the want or need to believe, to glean order and intention in the world, to smooth out that stubbly circle.

- Andrew

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Guelph Movie Club: I’m Going to Make You an Episode You Can’t Refuse

We’re going to the mattresses...er...movie theatre seats for the next GMC. That’s right folks, Episode Four of the Guelph Movie Club is The Godfather. Thursday, April 25th at 7:30 p.m., dust off your tuxedo and spend a little time with the Family.

As usual, we hope you'll come early and stay late to share a fine Italian Red (or a pint) in the Green Room and talk movies. After the movie, you'll have a chance to cast your ballot for Episode Five, so start thinking.

Once the short list of movies for Episode 5 is available, you can visit the Bookshelf Facebook and Twitter pages for voting and more details!

Till then, see you in the future (and at the movies),

Danny W.

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The Essential Cinema Series

This year the Bookshelf Cinema marks its 25th anniversary. Much has changed, much has remained the same, and much remains worth celebrating. The cinema exists within the larger whole of The Bookshelf, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year as well.

The upcoming year holds many opportunities to celebrate these milestones, but my goal with this announcement is to herald a new, ongoing film series that starts this month: Essential Cinema. This series will give us a chance to re-visit some of the most notable films of our first twenty-five years, and to celebrate repertory cinema in general by screening some of the best movies of all time.

This idea has been stewing on the back burner for a while now. Ironically, it has been made more possible by our new digital projection equipment and the growing list of previously unavailable film prints now available as newly minted digital copies.

The recently established Guelph Movie Club (GMC) has also proven to be an inspiration for the Essential Cinema series. The GMC grew out of audience demand for older movies to be shared in a theatrical setting, and all GMC films are chosen by the moviegoers themselves. Yes, the titles are often available in other viewing formats, but the GMC mandate was for public screenings and informal gatherings before and/or after shows to gather and talk about movies. The initial GMC choices have leaned in the direction of relatively recent Hollywood titles (although who knows what members might pick in the future); the birth of the Essential Cinema series is, in part, a response to frequent requests for older or more international film choices. Regardless of the programming format, one thing is certain, and that is the shared enjoyment of publicly-screened classic movies.

We are launching the series with two notable films from our first year of operation. Wim Wender's award-winning Wings of Desire (Apr 9 & 10) delighted Bookshelf audiences during what was just our second program of Sept/Oct 1988.

And the following year we brought Steven Soderbergh's debut film to Guelph: sex, lies and videotape (Apr 30) is largely seen as the film that started the indie filmmaking movement in the US and is still considered the template for the hundreds of filmmakers working outside of the Hollywood studio system today.

There you have it, the cinema programming birth of a notion.

Join us in this celebration of cinema history, brought to life onscreen in your local rep cinema.

 Hoping to see you in the dark,

 Peter

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Silver Linings Playbook

In all honesty, I'm kind of an "every silver lining has its cloud" kind of guy. At the same time, I'm not an egregiously gloomy Gus. I don't have expectations that things will come out shiny and jake in the end, and so can be pleased when they happen to turn out that way and am unsurprised when they don't. I have tried and am trying still to leaven my outlook. A major hindrance is that I just can't stomach the--what are to me--platitudes and homilies that ride sidecar on the way to a friendlier relationship with life's hardships.

Silver Linings Playbook is about coping, and how coping can be either a positive process or a negative destination. Pat (Bradley Cooper) is the one character who has the "insane stamp" on his hand (undiagnosed bipolar with mood swings). Without his father's knowledge, Pat's mother checks him out of the hospital he'd been sent to after finding his wife in the shower with the high school geography teacher and trashing him. Pat Sr. (Robert De Niro) has lost his job and now bets on the Philadelphia Eagles for a living. A superstitious gambler, he interprets Pat's return as good "juju" for the Eagles.

Out of the bin, Pat is driven to get well--jogging, reading all the books on his wife's high school English curriculum, generally trying to adopt a silver linings-riddled outlook--with the endgame of winning his wife back. Invited to a dinner party by his friend Ronnie, himself cracking under the pressures of work, marriage, and a new baby, Pat meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a young widow out to out-crazy Pat. From here we set out on an examination of who's got problems, who knows it, who doesn't, who's willing to work on it, and who refuses still to admit that they've got problems in the first place. On the surface a romantic comedy, Silver Linings Playbook is one of the most articulate, entertaining examples of the "well" using the "unwell" as proof of their own wellness. It's a troubling way to look at your life: concern for the well-being of others becomes proof of your own well-being. What this movie does best is turn that wrongheaded logic on its head. 

There's also some romance in there. I promise.

Most everyone swaddles themselves in their own melange of self-help sayings. We tend to hiccup them up like tics, I'm sure most of us not even noticing we're doing it, and we do so so readily that any colour of support gets blanched out. What's charming about Silver Linings Playbook, and about Pat as a character, is his insistence to enliven these tossed-off comforts, to actually live by and draw strength from them. He brings to mind Say Anything...'s Lloyd Dobler and his "dare to be great" drive. It's an energy we don't see much of, in our media or in our lives, all so sodden and droopy with irony. Between Pat and Tiffany there's an astounding amount of gumption and positivity that, thanks to Cooper and Lawrence, never feels like tin. These kids breathe a real interesting life into those limp platitudes, so much so that--I'm serious--I caught a few legitimate winks of silver in there somewhere.

P.S. As long as we're talking about coping mechanisms, I also couldn't stop thinking about Serenity Now through Playbook. Any Seinfeld fans out there? 

- Andrew

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Get Out of the House, but No Need to Get Outta Town

Here's a heads-up about a couple of movies coming in early April. It means that you have to get up, leave the house, and make your way to the cinema, but I think it's worth it. And if you're in or near Guelph, it's better than driving further away. Both films are playing on the April 5 weekend (exact dates and times are still to be confirmed) and I hope this blog announcement will reach some, if not all, of the many voices requesting them.

Searching for Sugarman Returns!

The Oscar-winning doc is back and it begs to be seen and shared with a cinema audience. For more information, see Barb's reaction to the film and Andrew's meditation on how Sugar Man provokes thought about artistic quality and its sometimes tenuous relationship to actual fame.

Cloudburst comes to Guelph!

This indie film from director Thom Fitzgerald (The Hanging Garden) stars Oscar-winning actresses Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker. Thankfully, this film was on our radar before it opened in Toronto (March 8) to strong reviews and we booked it, pronto. It also got an extra media push from Johanna Schneller's great interview piece in the Globe and Mail. 

To all who have requested these two films, watch our site next week for exact dates and showtimes, and pass the word.

-Peter

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Tatsumi

I'm one of those hold-outs you hear about; one of those unconverted. I appreciate the place graphic novels and the like have in literature, feel it's deserved and certainly expanding, but I'm just not much of a reader of them. When it happens that I do pick one up, the problem is I bolt the book. I read the bursts of text and look at the artwork for only the barest information. I don't know if Tatsumi will change the way or degree to which I read visual lit, but it was a great experience to have my hand held on a stroll through this movement. 

In North America there's been this underground struggle (which has now entered the mainstream) to have a clear line drawn between comics and graphic novels. It may not be news to you like it was to me that a similar fractioning occurred in Japan--predating, I believe, the revolution in our hemisphere--with manga and gekiga. Translated, manga gives us "irresponsible pictures," and gekiga "dramatic pictures." At the forefront of this ideological schism was Yoshihiro Tatsumi, whose life and work we're concerned with here. As a youngster, he flourished with irresponsibility, but as an adult found that his form didn't jibe with the changes that were occurring both in Japan and the world. In his Gekiga Manifesto (which I can only find quotes of online) he writes,

Story manga has been vitalized through the influence exerted by the supersonic development of other media such as film, television, and radio.... Manga and gekiga differ in methodology, but perhaps, more importantly, in their readerships. The demand for manga, written for adolescents, i.e., those readers between childhood and adulthood, has never been answered, because there has never been a forum for such writings. The hitherto neglected reader segment is gekiga's intended target.

And this target was a youth culture that was becoming increasingly political in the 60s, whose own stories were increasingly dramatic.

Tatsumi draws from Tatsumi's autobiography, A Drifting Life, and intersperses it with animations of his short stories. The autobiographical interstitials can rely sometime too heavily on foreknowledge of the artist and his contexts, but are nonetheless interesting. For the uninitiated, like myself, the film is worth your while for Tastumi's stories, of which there are five: "Hell," "Beloved Monkey," "Just a Man," "Occupied," and "Good-bye." Context aside, these are some of the most compelling, engaging, sometimes parabolic stories I've lately been exposed to. The five stories are at times Bukowskian in their grimness and griminess, each with an almost EC Comics-like twist morality ending. For sheer storytelling prowess alone, Tatsumi is worth the initiated and uninitiated's time.

You may be, like me, essentially out of step with the revolutions in storytelling that have been happening under and aboveground for decades, or you may be entrenched in this stuff. Whatever your affiliation, Tatsumi comes across as a celebration and exploration of storytelling, and of the man who had the right kind of knife to carve out a way to do it.

- Andrew

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