More scenes from a film festival

I’m overdue for another report from the film festival which ended last weekend.

Keriann studies her options

One of my favourite parts of the EIFF is the Sobey’s Lunchbox Shorts, held every lunch hour during week.

MJ rocks the funky specs

For ten bucks you get a 45 minute program of short films from around the world plus lunch provided by the sponsor – perfect for people who work downtown.

The lunches are awesome – a choice of 5 or 6 really substantial sandwiches, a cookie (turtle was the best) and juice or water. It made me wish they gave out sandwiches before the evening movies too. In fact, now I want a sandwich with every movie I see.

The films? They were pretty good too. In fact, I’d say there wasn’t a real stinker in the bunch, which is a rare feat. My favourite was called Chili & Cheese: A Condimental Rift. Despite the unpromisingly clunky title it was a lovely little character piece about a former physician turned convience store owner, his employee and a troublesome customer. Nicely detailed, shrewdly observed, with nuanced performances – well done!

I also enjoyed The Wednesdays, about an elderly couple who take ecstasy to help get them through hump day, Multiple Choice, a comedy with a very effective punchline, and Trolls, which has to do with what 9-year-olds imagine sex is about (something to do with collecting points).

I was less impressed with Gone Fishing, which won the grand jury award for best short film (and awards at other festivals). I though it was overly slick and inauthentically nostalgic, the way tv commercials for anything “old fashioned” are.

Keriann suffering the zombie-like effects of film festival overload

There, now I’ve reviewed the washrooms and sandwiches at the EIFF. My work as a critic is done.

Scenes from a film festival

Director Dilip Mehta, actor Don McKellar and programmer Tony King at the Q&A following the opening night gala Cooking With Stella.

Torn between attending the afterparty or seeing Not Quite Hollywood, a documentary about “Ozploitation” movies (Australian exploitation movies of the 70s, like the Mad Max films), I was swayed by the lure of free Indian food and the sponsors’ wine, beer and Irish whiskey…

…not to mention the opportunity to meet and chat with triple threat Canandian film icon Don McKellar (actor/screenwriter/director, and now a Tony award winner to boot).

Ukulele cover band The Be Arthurs.

The Empire Theatres complex has been renovated since last year’s festival. The lobby area is a bit monochrome and subdued but sure beats the old 80’s brass and glass shopping mall ambience it used to have.

The auditoriums have been converted to stadium seating with great sightlines and comfy new seats…

…with lots of legroom.

The absolutely spotless washrooms look like they could be aboard Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 orbiting space station.

The appropriately named hand dryers sound like jet aircraft taking off, especially when several of them are going at once.

So after 3 days I’ve seen 6 features and a program of short films – and I’m reviewing a bathroom.

Bye Bye Blues Blues

Watched Anne Wheeler’s fine Bye Bye Blues in Churchill Square last night. It was an unseasonably warm fall evening, very pleasant for sitting outdoors watching a movie.

It’s just wrong that this 20 year old film hasn’t had a dvd release. C’mon Canadian producers & distributors, get your shit together. And EIFF get your shit together too – show movies in their proper aspect ratio (end of rant).

My Saturday

Breakfast: pancakes with real maple syrup, sausage, two eggs sunny side up and endless cups of the most wonderful smelling and tasting coffee.

What the heck? The Emergency Relief thrift store was open on Good Friday but not today?

The new art gallery under construction. It seems you either hate it or hate it. I think I like it. Right now it looks like something collapsed – this is what it’s supposed to look like when it’s finished:

webcam

Bought my ticket to see this dude.

To the library for cds and dvds

but my membership had lapsed and I didn’t want to wait in line to renew and risk a parking ticket.

Made the thrift rounds in the northeast part of town which I don’t get to very often.

…because it sucks. No thrift finds. I also trolled a couple of Giant Tiger stores I hadn’t been to before for remaindered dvds.

Score.

Late lunch at Sunterra market on the south side. Delicious soup (more like a stew) chock full of chicken chunks in spicy coconut milk broth. Then grocery shopping at Spinelli’s for pizza fixin’s.

Homemade pizza with bocconcini, feta and olives.

Enjoy your Easter.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

(With apologies to I’m Learning to Share)

This has been a fine week all around.

1. Film Feast

I went to a mess o’ films at the EIFF (Edmonton International Film Festival).

Bruce McDonald (Highway 61, Hard Core Logo) and Stephen McHattie, director and star, respectively, of the cerebral Canadian “vampire” film Pontypool.

Steve “Lips” Kudlow of the Canadian heavy metal band Anvil. Sacha Gervasi’s documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil was a real charmer. I also liked Man On Wire about Philip Petit’s guerrilla highwire walk between the twin towers in 1974, and the Spanish horror film [REC], a movie so wonderfully scary grown men were screaming like little girls.

2. Indian Summer

The weather has been wonderful – as nice a fall as you could ask for. As often as I could I walked downtown to festival screenings, about an hour each way through the river valley.

3. You can always go…

saturday farmer’s market, 104th street

Downtown doesn’t seem as desolate as it’s been. I guess all the new condos are starting to make a positive impact with lots of new stores and services starting to pop up to meet the demand, and human activity taking place at street level.

I’ve  been taking pictures of my favourite downtown buildings. Above and below: The Federal Public Building, sort of a truncated art deco skyscraper.

It’s been vacant since 1989 but it’s being refurbished and will reopen in 2011.

Above and below: Free Masons’ Hall.

4. Birthday Brunch

For Sandra’s birthday we took her to the Santa Maria Goretti Community Centre for Sunday pranzo (lunch).

She looks amazed and appalled by my present.

5. Velvet Vahine

I found an authentic fake Leeteg black velvet painting at the Sally Ann for 5 bucks. If it was a genuine Leeteg it would be worth a few thousand, but it’s an authorized copy, apparently painted in Japan in the 60s. I’m still happy – it will look nice in my home tiki bar (when I have one).

6. Up From Down Under

My niece returned from nearly two years in Australia. We took advantage of the good weather to hang around at outdoor cafes.

She took this picture of me that delights me so much I think I’ll use it as my avatar for everything.

7. Moai-to-Eye

We discovered this flock (is that the collective noun?) of Moai at a landscaping place near my favourite Goodwill store.

That’s all.

good advice

Squaresville

This has to be my favourite mid-century house in Edmonton…

…quite possibly because it reminds me of my favourite movie – Jacque Tati’s Mon Oncle.

Fear and catering

There’s a film shoot going on at the lovely old clinker brick church on the next block. The street is lined with film trucks and equipment. I walked by this evening and saw my friend Rachel in her catering van and we had a little chat (I tried to take her picture but she ran away). I found out they’re shooting a TV series called Fear Itself – a horror anthology that’s going to air on NBC this summer. John Landis (American Werewolf in London) is one of the directors. This article has episode summaries.

This isn’t the first time this church has been a movie location. Michael Ironside used it in his directorial debut, The Arrangement (which he also starred in and wrote). I don’t think it was ever released theatrically (in North America, anyway), but I did catch bits of it on TV once.

In that film, Edmonton locations stood in for Chicago. It’s unlikely Fear Itself is set in Edmonton either – this town never gets to play itself in movies.

The Dollar Show

I went to a movie today with my friend Gaenor – except that she calls it going to “the show.” We went to “the dollar show” which is her name for Movies 12 (it used to cost a dollar at one time – now it’s a whopping $3.50 to see a second run movie).

Gaenor loves the dollar show. It reminds her of ’70s/’80s New Wave style (per Wikipedia: “a desire to embrace contemporary synthetic materials as a protest and celebration of plastic. This involved the use of spandex, bright colors (such as fluorescents), and mass-produced, tawdry jewelry and ornaments, typified by the dayglo aesthetic of the band X-Ray Spex. As a fashion movement, then, New Wave was both a post-modern belief in creative pastiche and a continuation of Pop Art’s satire and fascination with manufacturing.)

It just makes me want to poke my eyes out.

I’m pretty sure Gaenor would be thrilled to have her birthday in the party room at the dollar show.

The movie we saw was Persepolis, which I adored. It was almost worth the irreversible retinal damage.

The only crime here is the decor.

Red Deer, AB

knocked up nightly

Paramount Importance

I’m totally bummed by the news that a Calgary developer (Procura Real Estate Services) wants to demolish Edmonton’s Paramount Theatre to build a 40 storey office/condo building. The Paramount opened in 1952 as the flagship of the Famous Players cinema chain in Edmonton. It played all the big blockbuster films until it closed as a movie theatre in 2003, a victim of suburban multiplexes and home video. Since then, it had a brief life as a “multipurpose arts facility” and is currently a church.

The building is a prime example of the Modern style of architecture and embodies mid-century cool in its sleek, sophisticated lines (this article from a real estate newspaper has a nice appreciation of the building). If it’s torn down, Edmonton will lose an important piece of its architectural history and another chunk of its soul! Procura president George Schleussel doesn’t agree, of course. “I did not see any historical importance to what is there,” Schleussel told the Edmonton Journal, “I think the downtown needs modern, good quality retail storefronts.”

I agree that Jasper Avenue needs more storefront action to revive the cold, cold corpse of downtown. I’m always struck by how much street life downtown used to have in old photos. It changed in the 1970s during an oil-fueled economic boom eerily similar to what we’re experiencing today. In a frenzy of con(de)struction, most of the human-scaled buildings were razed to erect highrise towers that have no engagement with life at street level.

I’m dubious that the building proposed will be the saviour of downtown. It’s more likely to be another undistinguished, life-sucking monolith like the IPL tower to the immediate east (left in the picture above), which took out the historic Strand Theatre.

I have many movie-going memories of the Paramount, but I’ll only offer this one: cutting class with some high school buddies to go to the first screening of The Exorcist in 1973. It was pretty heady stuff – the place was packed, we were underage and worried we’d be busted before we could get in, and there was so much buzz about the movie (people barfing, passing out, speaking in tongues) that we feared for our very souls, sanity and life. As it turns out, we didn’t have to worry about demonic possession – the crowd was so giddy and noisy (quieting down only to watch Linda Blair spew pea-soup vomit) that we could barely hear the film.