Random Roles

I have a lot of love for the nerdlingers over at the AV Club. They've got the quippy, mordant tone of their father site The Onion, but levelled at popular culture and the maybe-less-popular culture that they're ebullient about. Daily they offer a great pulse-taking of what's new and what's awesome and what's lame, but definitely worth checking out are their running features. Especially edifying are My Year Of Flops, I Watched This On Purpose, and Commentary Tracks Of The Damned. If ever you're feeling like a hopeless lame-o, subsisting solely on the Cheetos and Funyuns of our garbage culture, you can buck up, because you're freaking Fonzie compared to these ostensibly pocket protector-wearing geekazoids.

It's the AV Club's love of and for the ancillary that's laudatory, for culture's a quilt... or a rich tapestry... or something like that. Whatever thing in your linen closet that culture's like, it's animated more by people you've never heard of or rarely hear of than by the people who end up on magazine covers and talk shows. But even if you don't know the names of peripheral proponents of culture, you'll probably recognize them. Random Roles offers a nice cataloging of some of your favorite characters as well as those you didn't realize were your favorites. Recognize these guys?: Stephen Tobolowsky? William Atherton? Wallace Shawn? Jean-Claude Van Damme?

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Upcoming Stephen King Short Film Fest (Oct. 28)

Word has been swirling around the Royal City that some films based on Stephen King short stories will be playing at the Bookshelf Cinema. That's right!

Thanks to local filmmaker Peter Szabo, we're hosting a one-night event called the Short Chills and Thrills Film Fest on Sunday, October 28, at 9:00 p.m. The bestselling novelist has generously offered any filmmaker the film rights to his short stories with a few conditions: a one dollar fee must be paid for the film rights, the film may only be screened at festivals, and profits cannot be made by the filmmaker.

Donations will be accepted at the screening ($5 suggested), with proceeds going to Guelph's media arts centre, Ed Video.

Peter is currently curating submissions from other filmmakers who have also made film adaptations of Mr King's stories, and we'll update you on his efforts as the program comes together. October 28 promises to be an exciting and very cool night at the cinema.

Here's a link to the trailer for Peter's film Love Never Dies, from Mr King's short story entitled “Nona”:

Angus McLellan (Ed Video and Bookshelf Cinemastaffer) also interviewed Peter Szabo last year about his film.

More to come!

-Peter

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The Master is Coming!

Yes, as Andrew mentioned, P.T. Anderson's latest critically-acclaimed work is Bookshelf bound. Dates are yet to be confirmed, but it looks like early-mid November will see The Master coming to a Bookshelf Cinema screen (hopefully) near you.

 It's a visually stunning monster of a work that boasts bravura perfs from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joachim Phoenix, with Amy Adams intensely present in a truly supporting role. Thespian kudos abound.

Look also for Deepa Mehta's adaptation of Salman Rushdie's prize-winning novel, Midnight's Children, in mid-to-late November. Much-requested repeat titles will include The Intouchables and Beasts of the Southern Wild.

But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, look to tomorrow's entry for news, details, and a trailer for the Short Chills and Thrills Film Fest, October 28.

 -Peter 

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Rebelle

Adjectives I've been hearing from goers exiting recent films nuzzle in the rubric of Wonderful, Hilarious, and Inspiring. There's been a tangible tone to our program of late, and I'd never say there's anything wrong with that. One of cinema's great animating qualities is the swift kick it gives to our own life and the way we think about its keister while also entertaining us. But it's easy to forget the other side of the scale.

Rebelle (AKA War Witch) is Canada's submission to the Oscar's Best Foreign Language category. Here's the plot as laid out by director Kim Nguyen: "Komona, a 14-year-old girl, tells her unborn child growing inside her the story of her life since she has been at war. Everything started when she was abducted by the rebel army at the age of 12. For two years she was forced to carry an AK 47 and kill people. Her only respite comes from her 15-year-old friend, a boy called Magician, who helps her and listens to her. As they experience the horrors and daily grind of war, Komona and Magician fall in love." 

Worth highlighting here is "the daily grind of war" and "Komona and Magician fall in love." Our Western narrative of strife, at its most egregious, tends to be a 10 on an amp knob that goes to 11 and beyond. War and its attendant atrocity aren't subjects anyone should have to dwell on daily, but no one promised us (and if they did, they were lying) that the human experience would be kind. We've had a lot of lightheartedness at the Cinema this summer, and while Rebelle might be light on lightness, there's no paucity of heart. And, if we're being honest and a squidge maudlin, film--and any old art--is at its best and most invaluable when it's recalibrating our day-to-day understanding of what life's essentials really seriously are. 

If you've been enjoying the films that we've lately had on our schedule, we hope you won't shy away from Rebelle. You might not leave feeling optimistic about the world and what we do to it sometimes, but hopefully you'll leave feeling optimistic about the capacity for goodness in said world.

- Andrew

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Robot & Frank

Frank Langella is no slouch, but frankly (ED: Sorry) he has never had the guts to cash--in my opinion--the cheque he signed way back in 1987. Maybe you remember a little picture starring a gigantic man, Masters of the Universe? You may not know this, but Langella played the rotten, boney-faced, theretofore-animated villain Skeletor--not to be mistaken with the villain he portrayed in Frost/Nixon. Here's the Oscar nominee on that particular role:

With Robot & Frank, Langella is finally getting in line behind the bank's velvet stanchions. It's the future (somewhere between 1987 and whatever future/dimension Skeletor ruled) and Frank is a thriving grump and retired ne'er-do-well who has a new-fangled robot helper foisted on him by Stephen Tyler's daughter. The curmudgeon resists his new bot bud...until he realizes that the machine may be a means for him to reconnect with his past lawlessness. The heartfelt mayhem that ensues can only be (I assume, because this movie has yet to show in our theater) a contemporary melange of E.T., Short Circuit, Cocoon, and Monkey Shines.

- Andrew

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A Display of Emotion Is All Right

I can't say whether anything's been shored up just yet, but going on the trailer that played before Iron Sky last night, The Master might could be coming to The Cinema in the future. I've been licking my chops for this movie since the first trailer (edited by Paul Thomas Anderson) appeared at the beginning of the year. Inchoate reviews from friends range from "It's, like, the best thing..." to "I'm, er, not sure what that was...." I still can't wait to see this film, whatever it is.

A tidbit of trivia I'd heard about PTA's previous film, There Will Be Blood, had the auteur visiting John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on a daily basis during filming. Putting a finger on the sensitive connections between the two films involves more scrounging and head-scratching and reading B. Traven's original book than I can do right now, but comparing the venerable director's unmistakable voice with Daniel Day Lewis' performance of Daniel Plainview somehow says everything--or at least cocks a knowing eyebrow.

Now, with The Master, I've done some rudimentary Internet scrounging to slake my anticipation. And I find that once again PTA admits to his visits to the John Huston well, specifically a documentary Huston made for the US Government during WW II. Let There Be Light is a disturbing and affecting look at PTS syndrome that feels sometimes like an old classroom movie. If you're anticipating The Master like I am, then you could do worse than spending an hour with sometimes heartbreakingly jangled men. It may make for a good primer.

-Andrew

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Iron Sky

October 10 and 11 at 9:00 p.m.

Listen up: Nazis on the moon. Sarah Palin is president. We're not saying that this is Citizen Kane and we're not saying this is Plan 9 From Outer Space. We're not even saying Iron Sky will be the best worst movie you've ever seen. We're saying: Nazis on the moon. Sarah Palin is president. Even though we're showing this movie at 9 p.m., it's got midnight movie written all over it.

B Movies and Cult Movies have made a real comeback, hitting their stride probably with Generation X's mobius strip-esque sense of irony. Ed Wood celebrated the history and charm of bad movies, and Grindhouse charged them up and tricked them out--especially with the interstitial "trailers." The lines have lately become so thin between movies that set out to be a stylized kind of bad, movies that just are bad, and movies that have no idea they're bad. We'll let you decide where Iron Sky lands in that geography. 

What this movie has in spades is brio and humour. And Moon Nazis and President Palin. Whether or not it will achieve a place on your bookshelf along with the rest of your favourite cult films (ED: When does a bookshelf stop being a bookshelf, by the way? If all you've got on there are gewgaws, CDs, and movies, why not just call it shelving?) will be a decision made by time and an Internet chockablock with raving nerds. Because all us guys in the cinema are total jocks, you know...

- Andrew

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