xavierpop's posterous http://xavierpop.posterous.com Most recent posts at xavierpop's posterous posterous.com Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:45:36 -0700 @MovieJay's Review of Restless http://xavierpop.posterous.com/moviejays-review-of-restless http://xavierpop.posterous.com/moviejays-review-of-restless

It's to the credit of director Gus Van Sant that Restless ultimately rises above conventionality and formula into the touching romantic drama that it is. You've seen this material before from Dying Young to Untamed Heart about the complexities involved with young people and dying. There are plenty of slice-of-life flicks to be had, but nary has there been a film that I have been able to call a slice-of-death picture. Restless  is a movie that engages us every ste p of the way with it's two quirky misfits, a young terminally ill woman and the fragile young man she shares her last romance with. Together, their love is fueled by their fascination with mortality in how we see them worshipping at the shrine of death.

Annabel is dying of cancer who after a long fight with cancer has been informed by her doctor that she has roughly three months to live. She lives in a house with her older sister Elizabeth, a woman in her mid-30's, who on the ride home back from the hospital stifles Annabel's attempt at humor almost as if to repress her own dread about the fact of having to eventually lose her baby sister. Elizabeth would rather not have to think about dealing with it while Annabel greets this news with uncommon wisdom and acceptance which immediately draws us to her.

Enoch is a young man, scrawny, awkward and shy, whose at times furtive movements with his head and eyes remind us of a bird. He lost his parents tragically in his boyhood and it appears that's where his zest and wonder for the living world was lost as well.

Traditionally in movies, characters meet in train stations and airports, libraries and shopping malls, bars and clubs. Generic places with predispositions for wacky behavior that often involve misunderstandings. Not so in Restless where the early courtship scenes take place in or outside of funeral homes and at cemeteries.

Annabel and Enoch become aware of each other as mourners at a funeral where a man employed by the funeral home begins to sniff out Enoch as an all-too-regular mourner when Annabel comes in and covers for Enoch, saving them both from further embarrassment and trouble. Outside the funeral home is where their dance begins. What is said between them in these scenes is not as important as the feeling of them. Annabel's winning heart and openness attract Enoch from the land of the dead, a place where his closest confidante is a ghost in the form of a former Japanese WWII pilot named Hiroshi.

Is Hiroshi an imaginary friend or is he a re-incarnation in Enoch's mind of someone else close to him? The movie doesn't care too much to explain this, but that's fine since we simply accept Hiroshi the way he is and the way Enoch sees him. And besides, like Annabel's older sister Elizabeth (who looks down on Enoch as a troubled slacker) Hiroshi is a character who serves as a clear-eyed counter-balance to the two young lovers and their naive hearts which have promised to put cancer and dying on the back-burner while their romance develops.

We feel like we're in good hands with Van Sant here who invests us deeply in all four major characters. From Annabel, played by Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland, Jane Eyre) with touches of sweetness and mysticism to Enoch played with tenderness in his first major film performance by Henry Hopper, son of the late Dennis Hopper, to Elizabeth and Hiroshi, the two older characters who bring weariness and realism to their roles.

I'm doubtful that Restless will find a large audience in these days where younger adult movie-goers tend to run from complexity towards the easy gratification of stuff blowing up real good. That's too bad, because this is a movie worth spending time with even if it is one of Gus Van Sant's "minor" films compared to previous titles like My Own Private Idaho, Elephant, Good Will Hunting, or Last Days. It may be "minor" Van Sant, but it is unique nonetheless in how it not only gathers our sympathy for Annabel and Enoch, but transcends it's story into a meditative experience where we are allowed as an audience to consider our own mortality. Not simply from the perspective o f "what would you do given three months to live?" but something more thoughtful having to do with how we would feel about it and whether we could come to terms with it with as much grace as young Annabel.

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Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:35:20 -0700 #TIFF11 Festival Announces Free Programming http://xavierpop.posterous.com/tiff11-festival-announces-free-programming http://xavierpop.posterous.com/tiff11-festival-announces-free-programming

One of the cool things about TIFF is the free programming  that the festival offer to patrons every year. This year's list is out and of note is Mark Cousins' epic 15-hour documentary The Story of Film.

The question is who is going to stay for the whole thing?

Oh Look! A press release:

Toronto International Film Festival Announces Free Programming

Toronto â€" The 36th Toronto International Film FestivalÃ' today announced its free programming which includes screenings of the World Premiere of Mark Cousins’ epic 15-hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey; Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb’s This is Not a Film â€" a day-in-the-life portrait of filmmaker Jafar Panahi, under house arrest in Iran; and the screening of the winner of the 2011 Cadillac People’s Choice Award. Also open to audiences free of charge is a City to City Panel of filmmakers and programmers exploring the emerging film scene in Buenos Aires as well as a special discussion to accompany the Future Projections installation James Franco and Gus Van Sant: Memories of Idaho.

“The free Festival programming we are presenting honours the Festival’s tradition of celebrating filmmakers and film. Among them the important work of Cousins, Panahi and Mirtahmasb will offer audiences a window into the history and current situation of artists and cinema around the world,” said Piers Handling, Director and CEO, TIFF. “We are happy to be able to offer this access to special screenings and discussions to Festival audiences.”

Free Programming includes:

This is not a Film Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran (Toronto Premiere)

Sentenced to six years in prison and banned from writing and making films for 20 years by the Islamic Republic Court in Tehran, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi waited for the verdict of his court appeal for months. Through the depiction of a day in his life while he’s on house arrest, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (a documentary filmmaker and former assistant director) offer audiences an overview of the current situation of Iranian cinema.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey Mark Cousins, United Kingdom (World Premiere)

Filmed on four continents over six years, this epic 15-hour documentary tells the story of innovation in the movies based on the acclaimed book of the same title by Mark Cousins. Featuring exclusive interviews with legendary filmmakers like Stanley Donen and Abbas Kiarostami, The Story of Film: An Odyssey is a passionate, cinematic journey across 11 decades of cinema, and a thousand films. The film will be screened first in five instalments of three hours each, every morning at 10am from Monday, September 12 to Friday, September 16. On the Festival’s final weekend the film will be screened again: eight hours on Saturday, September 17 and seven hours on Sunday, September 18.

Cadillac People’s Choice Award Winner screening

Once the ballots have been counted, and the winner revealed, the fan favourite film of the Festival will screen on the last day of the Festival â€" Sunday, September 18 â€" at Ryerson Theatre. The winner will be announced that morning.

City to City Panel

Filmmakers whose works are featured in the Festival’s City to City spotlight on Buenos Aires, Festival programmers and industry professionals join together for a lively and interactive discussion of the emerging film scene in Buenos Aires.

A special discussion to accompany James Franco and Gus Van Sant’s Memories of Idaho (1991; 2010 and 2011)

Saturday, September 10 in TIFF Bell Lightbox

In 1991, Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and its central performance by River Phoenix had an enormous cultural impact, not least on a budding young actor named James Franco (127 Hours, James Dean). Now Franco has collaborated with Van Sant to create Memories of Idaho, a meditation on the seminal film in multiple parts. At the work’s core are two new films, projected sequentially, in a darkened, generic space. The first film, My Own Private River, is a feature-length chronological reassemblage of excised scenes and alternate takes from the original shoot, radically foregrounding Phoenix. The second film, Idaho, comes from one of three scripts Van Sant used to create the original film, its Super-8 texture meant to be a “ghost” of his original conception. Van Sant contributes ghosts of his own, large-format photographs of actual Portland street hustlers who appeared in, and provided inspiration and source material for, the film. Present ed at TIFF Bell Lightbox Atrium, 350 King Street West. September 8 to 18. (*One of the film elements of “Memories of Idaho,” My Own Private River, was previously shown at Gagosian Gallery Los Angeles, February 26 to April 9, 2011.)

Tickets for This is Not a Film, The Story of Film, the Cadillac People’s Choice Award winner and City to City panel will be available on a first-come, first-served basis from the relevant venue box office two hours prior to start of the screening.

Admittance to the Memories of Idaho discussion will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis. Space is limited.

 

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