Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra! Oh, that naughty Liberace!

Screens at TIFF May 26th, 9 p.m. Streams Live / HBO,  fresh from Cannes Debut

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Written by Richard LaGravenese, based on book by Scott Thorson

Starring Michael Douglas, Matt Damon

Rating 3.5/5

The highly anticipated biopic of Liberace in his later years stars a brilliantly transformed Michael Douglas as Lee and Matt Damon as his driver/lover Scott Thorson, set against a gilt and mirror fantasy land that acts as a character.  The cheese camp factor is higher than high, as Soderbergh told Deadline ““Here are two Oscar-winning stars, heterosexual icons, and they are gaying it up like nobody’s business”, but irons itself out.  By the end the film is something altogether different and emotional.  

Douglas and Damon are totally committed to their roles and do great work.  Liberace’s signature personal style is well known, and Douglas nails it.  Thorson isn’t known outside archival news footage but Damon creates a recognisable identify.  Both deserve kudos for what they’ve achieved in telling this story, a combination of fairy tale excess and humiliation, with some realism.

Liberace’s late life “divorce” from chauffeur Scott Thorson made screaming headlines in the mid-eighties. And Liberace had never publically acknowledged being gay.  The naïve Thorson had few resources to fight and Liberace the highest paid performer in the world had canny lawyers and a savvy right hand man Seymour Heller.  Thorson demanded $113M, he received $95k.  Liberace had promised to look after him for life and lavished gifts on him, but he denied the agreement and reclaimed the booty.

The reason for the break, according to the film, was Liberace’s voracious sexual appetite and habit of taking protégés under his wing. Thorson knowingly replaced one when he moved in with “Lee”.  And then it was his turn to be tossed aside when a younger make and model came along.   There were problems with their sex life that “forced” Lee to look elsewhere.  Who knows the truth?

An interesting choice for Soderbergh’s “last” film. He will apparently no longer make features, but stick to TV series and documentaries.   Soderbergh has stated that he is dismayed by the state of the film business today.  Nevertheless, he poured money and heart into this project which celebrates the Liberace legacy, acknowledging his years as one of the world’s most beloved entertainers, and what went on behind the gold and crystal walls.   It’s juicy, gorgeous in its own way, and runs the gamut of emotions, faked and real. 

 

Chow's Version The Hangover Part III

Five Chow Facts from Ken Jeong - The Hangover Part III

By Anne Brodie May 22, 2013, 14:59 GMT

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Leslie Chow’s evil genius is ramped up to warp speed in The Hangover Part III. He is the film. The Wolf Pack’s final outing has Chow leading the boys – Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis – down the road to hell just when you figured they knew enough not to.
Apparently not so. Once again they fall into Chow’s sticky web of manipulation and madness.
Ken Jeong, Chow’s keeper had a few things to say about him when he dropped by to chat in Toronto:

• Chow knows how to handle each guy. It came instinctively. There was something in the first movie I improvised, why I liked or hated each guy. I said to Cooper “I don’t like you, you’re not my type, you’re too good looking” and to Ed “I like you. You have this approachable beauty” and for Al “I like that your fat”.
And I had working knowledge of these guys from having worked with them all. But Chow does something specially, “Hi nutty, hi blue eyes, hi fatty”. He just marginalizes them into five words. Chow mimics what the audience is thinking. It’s a meta joke. Chow IS a meta joke.

• Chow is the only character who you can go so over the top with you want to go and it’s still within the realm of his character. He's not over the top for over the tops sake, he’s Chow is over the top. It’s a perfect fit but in this movie because Chow is such an expanded role, I have to credit Todd for finessing my performance. Instinctively I’d go for something bigger in my performance and he would reign me in to get from point A to point B in the film. He'd say "You can't put any mustard on that".
In the karaoke scene, any actor with a mic is going to sing well, that’s the geo and instinct of the actor. My instinct was to rock it out and maybe get a Grammy and then Todd says “What are you doing? Chow has to be vulnerable now, he needs these guys there is desperation. Isn’t it more interesting if he’s an international criminal who is afraid to go onstage? Maybe he can sing great in real life in the bathroom, but maybe in public he’s completely scared.
That was all Todd, at the end he knows he did a bad job singing and he just swats away that mic. That was all Todd beat for beat, guiding me. I can’t take credit for any of that! He just knows tone so well. He has a sophistication I just haven’t seen in comedy. I bonded with Todd early on, when I decided to come out of the truck naked in the first film, it bonded us. He knew that the actor behind the character has a vivid imagination.

• I can’t say enough great things about those guys, Bradley Ed and Zach. They’re egoless diva-free leads. They set the tone of the whole movie. People are shocked to see how low key we all are in really life, we save it all for the camera and we have a free exchange of ideas were friends and co-workers who trust each other.
Collaboration and trust by the third movie I felt I could say anything. Complete trust, that’s what I’m going to miss about the hangover franchise.

• I’m afraid of heights so I worked with stunt director for six weeks to desensitize myself from his fear of heights so I could hang glide over Las Vegas. I’d go every night after taping Community and be in a harness 10 feet and then 20 and then 30 and subsequently moving at a fast rate and eventually doing that 30 foot drop.
It was a combination of about six to eight weeks of me getting over my mental block and executing it and physically it was the greatest day of my acting career.

• Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and David Letterman influenced me, for some reason they stick out. They’re geniuses, which I’m not. They have a sense of fearlessness which I admire and David Letterman influenced me even though I'm nothing like them, but there was a sense of fearlessness that I admired and then there was Dana Carvey on SNL, an actor who can find the funny and later in life there was Will Farrell and Steve Carrell Sacha Baron Cohen. So many influences it’s ridiculous.
Zach and I have been friends for 15 years, he’s a big influence and he was always the funniest guy. He’s the funniest guy there is now. I’ve worked with everybody in comedy and no one makes me laugh harder than Zach. Zach is the quickest ad libber and improviser I know. He’s quick to the draw with the lines. So many funny things we’ve done in outtakes. He makes me feel like a four year old kid.

The Rep for Film Stalwarts.

The Rep

Documentary

Written and Directed by Morgan White

Rating: 4/5

 

Opens in Toronto at the Revue Cinema on May 22 & 23, then a week at the Projection Booth on May 24, Ottawa’s Mayfair Theatre May 29 & 30, Winnipeg’s Cinematheque April 26-28, and RPL Film Theatre in Regina June 6-9.

The Rep is a brave, sad and moving documentary on the dying gasps of the beloved dinosaur – the repertory cinema.  Featuring interviews with rep theatre owners, filmmakers Kevin Smith, John Waters, Atom Egoyan, George A. Romero, and Bruce McDonald, and fans, film critics and projectionists, it is clear the rep experience is fading into the past.   But why?   It’s a terrific way of seeing the old movies.   Or is it?

Repertory cinema has been popular for decades.  Tiny ma and pa run theatres serve communities by bringing rare, classic and other non – mainstream fare to the big screen.  Experiencing film in a community of strangers in the dark is fun and festive; those theatres are usually comfy and communal and loaded with movie memorabilia and passion. 

Years ago it was hard to find films.  You had a week or so to catch one in a theatre and you might never see it again except on TV years later.  A movie you loved you might expect to see once in your lifetime.  The home entertainment industry and the internet made movie cherry picking ridiculously easy.  You could be your own film festival producer and access films all day, anywhere.

Some brave souls still run successful rep theatres, but interviews with owners in Toronto, Los Angeles, somewhere in Idaho, Portland, New York and recognise that it’s is nearly extinct but express hope for the future against all evidence to the contrary.  People are lazy.  They prefer to sit home and watch any film they want on the internet.  They don’t want to dress and park and go out.

The Rep focuses on the sad story of the Toronto Underground Cinema. Three wide eyed film fans, Nigel Agnew, Charlie Lawton and Alex Woodside, are besotted with films of the 80’s.  They love them so much they took over a theatre space in the heart of downtown Toronto.  Film fan and critic Andrew Parker helped out.

As suggested in The Rep, film obsessives believe the world is in tune with their tastes.  But it seems a stretch to expect people to pay money to see an 80’s horror B movie. 

The men had no business experience, little instinct for the job but passion drove them forward through poverty and disappointment.  Their naïveté and the public’s changing habits worked against them from the beginning.     

The Underground threw a free screening and 400 attendees said they’d be back for paid seats.  But there was no reason to believe they would be.  It was more like twenty people to four people.  Adam West made an appearance, and fans came, but how often can an Adam West show up?

Apparently other forces were at work which may have trumped all these reasons behind the Underground’s closure.  The landlord was involved in legal and financial imbroglios running into the millions. They lost the space.

Even so.

The public taste has irrevocably shifted for all time.  Kids who grew up computing don’t have much interest in olde tyme theatres.  Movie fans enjoyed rep theatres for years but these days they live in the burbs, or are too busy and can see what they want on TV – you know, like The Voice? 

 

 

 

Blame It On Boredom!

Albert Nerenberg 's Boredom: The Documentary Makes its Toronto Premiere Royal May 21st @ 7 pm

Boredom, Nerenberg’s vastly entertaining doc states the superficial obvious with plenty of people propping up his case.  And it’s that boredom is a deleterious thing, a contributor to heart disease and death, an inspiration to mayhem and a condition common to us all.  “Bored to death”.   Who of us has not said they were at one time or another?

Losing his iPhone led Nerenberg to focus on boredom.   He was living what became his thesis.  He felt agitation, irritation, boredom and anger and came to the conclusion that people without their electronic screens suffer, feeling suddenly left out, useless, disconnected, anxious, bored.   And he discovered evidence that supported the feeling he had, that his brain sped up while bored and not in a good way.

                                            Filmmaker Albert Nerenberg

One of the most radical cases Nerenberg makes is that traditional school not only leads children directly into an atmosphere of extreme boredom, causing curiosity and intellect to stop cold,  it creates a deep desire to escape.  Not much can be learned under those circumstances.  It seems the most learning and physical health-creating happens at recess when kids are running around playing, socialising and whatnot.

That’s a pretty broad swath to cut.  I enjoyed school and wasn’t often bored, but I realise many people are.  Everyone’s different and everyone has his own story.

The film posits that long periods of boredom can lead to risky behaviours, thrill seeking, dangerous driving and riots for starters.  It certainly makes sense.  But in no way is this a “real” study as much as it is a “Reefer Madness” kind of exercise. 

Some academics are interviewed and medical facts are tossed around, which is all good, but at its heart this is just fun to watch.  And it sure is fun.  Nerenberg’s the guy behind the hilariously “factual” film Stupidity. 

The Occupy movement, famous for being about nothing really, is blamed on boredom.  The Occupy lifestyle certainly seems to be a fun cure for some.   Meetings, in business are written off as boring and anti-productive.  Addiction is also apparently due to boring environments and drugs relieve boredom.

The best thing here is the suggestion that standing instead of boredom- inducing sitting is good for the brain and in fact is the cure to all of our ills.  Sitting “kills” us as certainly as boredom can.

Boredom the film is anything but.  But don’t take it as Gospel.  I am going to try standing more often.

From Mrs. Robinson - Reflections on the Hot Docs doc Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf's

Mrs Robinson
RETAIL NIRVANA

Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s, Matthew Miele’s bracing doc on New York’s mecca of merchandise is gossipy, extravagant and gorgeous. Pulled together sophisticates in Chanel suits and Louboutins stride purposefully into Manhattan’s great luxe emporium at the foot of Central Park. For generations, well-heeled ladies have traipsed through this block-long temple, the former home of the Vanderbilt family. The stores gleaming lights and surfaces, and touches of mirror and crystal frame some of the richest merchandise in the world. If you love shopping, you know Bergdorf’s, it’s that iconic. Karl Lagerfeld, Joan Rivers, Michael Kors, The Olsen Twins, Candice Bergen and Christian Louboutin make appearances, as well as a colourful parade of Bergdorf’s top designers who jockey for floor space. The real stars here may be the “ladies who lunch.” They are a fascinating breed and unique to NYC. It’s impossible to tell their age - a clue to their wealth and singular focus. Bergdorf’s is their spiritual home and all this decadence feels so wicked and yet so good. And the gossip! Worth seeing for the Yoko Ono story alone…At Bloor Hot Docs Cinema May 17-23.

Michael Gondry's The We and the I TIFF May 17

The We and The I

Michel Gondry

Starring

TIFF Bell Lightbox May 17, Vancouver in June.

Rating: 4/5

 

Michael Gondry’s surreal directing choices has included  Please Be Kind Rewind,  The Green Hornet,  The Flight of the Conchords, The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and concert films for Bjork, Massive Attack, Chemical Brothers and Dave Chappelle.  What?  The French filmmaker’s métier, the places the bridge and tunnel people go from Manhattan is the setting for The We and The I, the world of Please Be Kind and others.  The films are remarkably intimate, conceived and made on a tiny scale and set in just one or two places.  The people there are just folks having another day.  As opposed to The Green Hornet or Spotless Mind.

The We and The I is set on a Bronx city bus, jammed with highschoolers and a few brave regular citizens on the last day of school.  The teens are bursting with excitement; school’s done and the world awaits.  Some aren’t quite as hopeful as they go through their situations that day.

Imagine sitting on that bus, the things you’d hear and see and share, snippets of conversation here and there, overlapping and misheard remarks, shows of power and sex and the division between the kids based on cultural types – the nerd, the artist, the rabble-rousers, the sexy girl, the quiet kid, the smart girl, the outcast, the social leaders and of course the bus driver.

 

Everything seems to be happening, stories are told and tempers flare.  Kids pick on each other and on the passengers.  They’re testing their strength and moves.  We’re so close it’s like we’re in the middle of it, like being one of them.  Gondry directs the action incredibly subtly, without intruding on the kids, making it feel like a documentary rather than a narrative drama.

Nothing happens and everything happens from the time the kids get out of school and on the bus to the end of the road when darkness has fallen and the bus is empty.  They’ve all gone back to the realities of their lives that they talked about.  The kid who makes up elaborate lies about what a player he is, the musician whose guitar the bullies broke, the sexy girl defending her brother, so many storylines interwoven, and so expertly and seamlessly.  A repeating image is from a phone – a young man who falls on the floor that’s been buttered by the guy shooting it.  Remember it.

Gondry shoots short sequences in random order, but as the film and the day progresses, the episodes get a little longer and plot like.  Genuine things are starting to emerge.  Some kids are getting the truth dished out, and dealing with it.   It’s an ordinary day, and then all of a sudden, it isn’t.

The We and the I is breathtaking at times, and it’s remarkable how much we care for these kids and how quickly.   Like the bus driver who dotes on them and worries about them.   Its innocent, experienced and life and death and it’s never dull.  Brilliant film director and young actors.

As for Gondry’s interesting choices, The We and The I  is a good one.

Star Trek Into Darkness is Loud, Big and Fab!

Star Trek: Into Darkness – Movie Review

By Anne Brodie May 16, 2013, 14:04 GMT

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In Summer 2013, pioneering director J.J. Abrams will deliver an explosive action thriller that takes "Star Trek Into Darkness." When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis. With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt ...more

J.J. Abrams’ epic continuation of the Star Trek series, Star Trek: Into Darkness is both suitably mythic and evocative of the old stories and blindingly new. It adds considerable luster to the latest iteration of the franchise and handily connects with moviegoers, Trekkers, Trekkies or not.
It’s not just that it’s splendidly huge and ambitious, or that it features blood red forests, new magical horizons or new ideas, it is simply a film that successfully brings together the trappings of Star Trek canon and makes them new and relevant.
It also serves up one of the best villain in Star Trek history, a Starfleet officer gone bad called John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) who is really ... well, you’ll have to find out. His first crime is a massive bomb attack on London, not a pretty reminder of the events in Boston or 9/11, etc.
It is merciless and deadly as citizens fall and you have to wonder how this kind of thing becomes standard entertainment. That’s another story. But that’s the kind of man he is, mocking, vicious and determined. He exhilarates the film which at times settles briefly into complacency.
The mission is to put him down decisively before he can do more damage. In order to kill him, the crew must journey into a war zone – is there any other kind in space? The battle scenes are visually hard to follow and the thing goes soft, but things heat up again.
Nothing has changed with Kirk and Spock; they are still Sci-Fi’s longest-married old couple, griping and connecting, both so different and completed by the other. Even in their sentences. They embody the heart and soul of the Star Trek conundrum, the struggle between Vulcan and human sensibilities. Both appear to die. Spock’s volcano experience is particularly gruesome.
They’re still funny. They’re about to be separated and Kirk says to Spock that he’ll miss him. Spock looks at him in confusion, but somehow wanting to reciprocate. Kirk laughs, shakes his head and walks off.
Starfleet Science Officer Dr. Carol Marcus (Alice Eve) returns to the fold for the first time since The Wrath of Khan back in 1982 and intrudes on Spock’s bailiwick. She’s the daughter of Admiral Alexander Marcus but aboard the ship under an assumed name in an act of rebellion against him. She gains a foothold but doesn’t do much just yet except attract Kirk.
The film is many things, reflecting the mind of Abrams, its intelligent, richly drawn, ingenious, bold and unexpected, bringing new life to the well-known characters. The situations may not be new or go where they haven’t been before, but it the story is written on a huge canvas and entertains on the grand scale.
Visit the movie database for more information.
Written by Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelhof, based on Gene Roddenberry’s television series
Directed by J.J. Abrams
Opens: May 16th
Runtime: 132 minutes
MPAA:
Country: US
Language: English