December 2011

Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism

by James McNally on December 20, 2011

in Critics,Special Events

Kevin Courrier

Now before you think that I’m breaking out of my writer’s block with a ven­geance, based on that title, I’ll have to let you down ever so easily. It’s actu­ally the title of a really inter­esting film lec­ture series coming up at the Miles Nadal JCC. Each Monday night from January 16 through March 26, from 7:00 until about 9:00, critic and author Kevin Courrier (Critics at Large) is going to examine this meaty-sounding sub­ject with a selec­tion of film clips. The films under dis­cus­sion make this sound fascinating:

  • Monday January 16: The Kennedy Era (The Godfather, Part II, The Manchurian Candidate, JFK assas­sin­a­tion news coverage)
  • Monday January 23: The Johnson Era (Bonnie and Clyde, Dr. Strangelove, In the Heat of the Night, Cool Hand Luke, Night of the Living Dead, The Wild Bunch, Bullitt)
Midnight Cowboy
  • Monday January 30: The Nixon Era (Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, Alice’s Restaurant, Dirty Harry, Billy Jack)
  • Monday February 6: The Carter Era (The Conversation, All the President’s Men, Taxi Driver, Winter Kills, Who’ll Stop the Rain, Nashville, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, Star Wars)
  • Monday February 13: The Reagan Era (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Blow Out, Pennies from Heaven, Diner, The Border, The Survivors, Moscow on the Hudson, Under Fire)
  • Monday February 20: No class
  • Monday February 27: The Bush Era (Field of Dreams, True Believer)
Primary Colors
  • Monday March 5: The Clinton Era (Primary Colors, Forrest Gump, JFK, In the Line of Fire, Love Field, Three Kings, The Contender, Wag the Dog, The West Wing (TV))
  • Monday March 12: No class
  • Monday March 19: The GW Bush Era (We Were Soldiers, Tears of the Sun, The 25th Hour, Team America: World Police, Fahrenheit/Fahrenhype 9/11)
  • Monday March 26: The Obama Era (Rachel Getting Married, Definitely, Maybe, No Country for Old Men, Charlie Wilson’s War, The Hurt Locker, The Visitor)

Tickets are $12 for each class ($6 for stu­dents) or $100 for the entire series, and are avail­able in person at the Miles Nadal JCC inform­a­tion desk (750 Spadina Ave. at Bloor St.). Hope to see you there!

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Announcing Shorts That Are Not Pants!

by James McNally on December 14, 2011

in Personal,Special Events

Shorts That Are Not Pants

I know things have been pretty quiet around here since my big philo­soph­ical post last month. And while I’m still exper­i­en­cing writer’s block when it comes to reviewing indi­vidual films, I haven’t been sit­ting around feeling sorry for myself. In fact, I’m busier than ever. In addi­tion to coordin­ating the second edi­tion of the CAST Awards (look for an announce­ment early in the new year), I’ve decided to take my long-gestating idea for a shorts screening public.

I’ve always enjoyed short films, but seeing them out­side of fest­ivals has never been easy. In fact, even at fest­ivals, they’re usu­ally bundled together in unprom­ising sounding pack­ages like “Canadian Shorts 1″ or “Programme 6.” And the problem at the spec­tac­ular Worldwide Short Film Festival, where they group the films them­at­ic­ally, is just over­load. I’ve always wanted to curate a reg­ular pro­gram of films that would be some­thing like a mix­tape, and in 2009, I started doing it on a small scale.

I’d been a huge fan of Wholphin, a DVD “magazine” of short films from the people behind McSweeney’s, ever since the first one came out in 2005. By 2009, I was still amazed that hardly anyone I knew had heard of it, so I decided to screen a selec­tion of films for a small group of friends at my apart­ment. It was a hit, and not only because of the cup­cakes my wife thought­fully provided. After run­ning a few more of these nights, I wanted to share my enthu­siasm and some great films with the rest of the city. Starting last winter, I began researching venues and licensing fees and pos­sible part­ners, and I’m very happy to announce that we’re finally launching!

On January 13, 2012, at 7pm, Shorts That Are Not Pants will screen our inaug­ural pro­gram of inter­na­tional and Canadian shorts at the NFB Mediatheque (150 John St. at Richmond). I’ll refer you to the site for more details, but I sin­cerely hope you’ll join us at the start of this new adventure.

My plan is to make this a quarterly event, and we hope to be working with a variety of part­ners. For the first screening, we’re showing the entirety of the Future Shorts Pop Up Festival lineup, as well as a couple of won­derful anim­ated Canadian shorts from the National Film Board. But I’m excited by the fact that there is such a wealth of great material out there that has either never been screened before in Toronto, or was buried amongst hun­dreds of other films at fest­ivals. I’m looking for­ward to dis­cov­ering and sharing films with you, live and on the big screen. Hopefully we’ll even get a group together after the screen­ings to dis­cuss the films over a drink. Short films are worthy of your atten­tion, and I hope to demon­strate that to a larger audi­ence than just the dozen I’ve been cram­ming into my apart­ment. I hope you’ll join us!

You can buy tickets for just $8 in advance. At the door, tickets will be $10, or $5 if you’re crazy enough to show up in shorts. Even if you can’t make it and want to sup­port the series, buy a ticket and just let me know that’s your inten­tion. Of course, men­tioning us on Twitter (follow us here), Facebook (we have a page) or any­where else online or off would be helpful, too. I’m cer­tainly not hoping to make money on this, but it would be great if I didn’t lose too much. :)

Tagged as: shorts

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Blind Spots Series 2012

by James McNally on December 4, 2011 · 18 comments

in Blind Spots,Lists

Blind Spots

Every time I get together with other film blog­gers here in Toronto, some­body inev­it­ably gasps in horror as someone else admits that they haven’t seen a par­tic­ular movie. This has always been amusing to me, because, you know, everyone has their cine­matic blind spots. Though there is no Official Canon of Films You’re Supposed to Have Seen™, some­times we act as if there is. And there are def­in­itely films that, as a cinephile, I know I should have seen by now, but just have never gotten around to. Hence the idea for the Blind Spot series.

I shared this idea with Ryan McNeil a few weeks back and he’s already gotten the jump on me in posting his list, but the gist of the idea is that I’m going to list a dozen films below. Films I feel somehow guilty or silly for not having seen yet. I’ve some­times nodded along to dis­cus­sions of these films, hoping nobody would ask me my opinion. By the end of 2012, I will be armed with my own opin­ions on them, along with a small sense of accomplishment.

My hope is to watch and post some­thing about each film on this list during 2012. Though I have many many more than 12 on my blind spot list, for this first attempt, I’m going to try to bal­ance Hollywood films with for­eign and doc­u­mentary films. Ideally, I’ll post once a month, but I’m not holding myself to that and neither should you. Here goes (and no gasping!):

  • Raging Bull (1980, Director: Martin Scorsese)*
  • Knife in the Water (1962, Director: Roman Polanski)*
  • Nashville (1975, Director: Robert Altman)
  • L’Atalante (1934, Director: Jean Vigo)*
  • Gone with the Wind (1939, Director: Victor Fleming)
  • Psycho (1960, Director: Alfred Hitchcock)
  • Blue Velvet (1986, Director: David Lynch)*
  • The Conformist (1970, Director: Bernardo Bertolucci)*
  • Jules and Jim (1962, Director: Francois Truffaut)
  • Grey Gardens (1975, Directors: Albert and David Maysles with Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer)
  • Cabaret (1972, Director: Bob Fosse)
  • Tokyo Story (1953, Director: Yasujirô Ozu)

Films marked with an asterisk (*) are ones I have actu­ally owned on DVD for quite a while now.

You are more than wel­come to join me in this enter­prise. Come up with your own list, post in the com­ments and/or on your blog, and let’s keep each other account­able for expanding our know­ledge of cinema next year!

Thanks to Flickr user atomische (Tom Geibel) for making his image avail­able under a Creative Commons license.

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Animation Express 2

by James McNally on December 2, 2011

in DVD

Animation Express 2 Blu-ray

Animation Express 2 (Directors: Various): It’s hard to believe it’s been two years since the National Film Board of Canada released the ori­ginal Animation Express col­lec­tion. I raved about that col­lec­tion, and although sequels are usu­ally not as good as the ori­ginal, this second col­lec­tion is just as stuffed with treas­ures as the first.

Particular favour­ites include the exper­i­mental CMYK, where printer’s marks dance around the screen to the music of the Quatuor Bozzini quartet, and Wild Life in which an Englishman trades his bowler hat for a cowboy hat, coming to Alberta in 1909 to try his hand at ranching. It doesn’t quite work out in this whim­sical and yet haunting film.

The DVD con­tains 20 more (and the Blu-ray 26 more!) and while I don’t like all of them quite as much as the two above (I par­tic­u­larly didn’t like the Meryl Streep and Forest Whitaker-voiced Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life), this col­lec­tion con­tinues to gather the very best in Canadian anim­a­tion, some of the most-awarded work in the world.

P.S. Though I’ll be posting more about this later, you can see both CMYK and Wild Life on the big screen as part of a new shorts screening series I’m launching in January. Behold Shorts That Are Not Pants. Hope you can join us!

Tagged as: animation, blu-ray, nfb

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