NYC repertory theatres live!

Travelling on the east coast this summer and zipping in and out of New York it has been a treat to visit some of the city’s well known – and still existing! – repertory cinemas. I’ve seen films at two so far – Village East Cinemas on Second Ave. in the East Village, and at Cinema Village (left) on 12th St. a couple of blocks west of Broadway in Greenwich Village.....Village East has Hebrew writing on its cornerstone because it opened as the Yiddish Art Theatre in 1926. It has had several incarnations as a film and stage spot but was last restored in 1992 and renamed Village East and has seven screens. It is part of the Angelika Film Center chain. Angelika’s flagship is further west on Houston St....The film I saw at East Village last Wednesday was 30 Beats (Alexis Lloyd) a distinctively New York movie. But which shows that even when made in the Big Apple movies can be just as bad as second rate Canadian films (or even some considered first rate, but I’m being catty). The movie is about a series of rather coincidental romantic and sexual couplings among a circle of people during a hot New York summer, not unlike what we’ve been experiencing on the East Coast this year. But the topic by this first time director – and it shows his inexperience - has been done many times before. The acting is below par (even veteran Jennifer Tilly doesn’t give the script much umph). The writing is surprisingly poor and ridden with clichés.....Then yesterday I saw Falling Overnight, written, filmed and directed by Conrad Jackson. It’s a dating movie, or more explicitly an almost minute-by-minute depiction of what happens between two Los Angeleans who meet accidentally and fall for one another. The movie is shot largely in close-up and captures rather well the nuances of emotion and the in-between-the lines meanings of small talk. It also has a great soundtrack.

My new indie film It Girl

Can I say I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with Greta Gerwig, (left) right here, in public? It didn’t take much, just a screening of her role in Whit Stillman’s recent Damsels in Distress. Who, I wondered, was this brainy if slightly sardonic femme, who looked like she just graduated from an Ivy League college, which in fact she has, Barnard, the traditional female equivalent. In Damsels, also set in an east coast university (natch) Gerwig plays Violet Wister, who leads a group of co-eds in an effort to undermine the crude and boorish values of the male students in their midst. Yes, I thought at that moment, I want to see more of this actress – more & more! And, as if someone was answering my prayers, along comes the new movie Lola Versus (Daryl Wein) which has opened in Toronto and I await it in Detroit (hopefully). True to form, Gerwig plays a late-20s weary of the world young woman who, when her fiancé dumps her, descends into an existential crisis (what else?). But this movie, like Damsels, is a comedy, and a smart knowing one at that. Set in New York City (natch) I can imagine the acerbic barbs Gerwig’s Lola shoots at contemporary bourgeois bohemian life in the Big Apple......Up to now my favourite Indie It Girl has been Parker Posey (right), aka Queen of the Indies as she’s known in the industry. Posey, smart, offbeat, sexy and simply beautiful, had long been living in a kind of indie film ghetto since the early 1990s but has poked her head into a few roles in bigger films like 1998’s You’ve Got Mail (Nora Ephron) and 2006’s Superman Returns (Bryan Singer). But she is much more famous for her roles in small independent movies such as the Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman (1996) and Best in Show (2000). Posey’s first big role was in 1992’s Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater). Her latest was in last month’s HBO’s Hemingway & Gellhorn (Philip Kaufman) as journalist Martha Gellhorn playing opposite Clive Owen as husband Ernest Hemingway.....I still love Posey, so maybe I have two indie It Girls now. What a harem!

The Detroit Film Theatre’s summer series has moved from its namesake home at the DIA to the DIA’s smaller but also beautiful Lecture Hall. The 1927 DFT (left), one of Detroit’s most beautiful theatres, underwent major renovations a few years ago which both modernized it and returned it to its original elegance. But this time the work is on the marble staircase and windows in the upstairs Crystal Gallery, where the cafe is located, both of which needed renovations and repairs.

From Mussolini to Woody Allen

Cinecittà, the acclaimed 99-acre Italian studio that has seen a recent revival (see Windsor Detroit Film, May 2, 2011) and has been home to some of the late 20th centuries’ most famous movies – Ben Hur (William Wyler 1959), La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini 1960) and Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1963), even Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002) – may be a revered cinematic gem. But few in the film industry would pay respect, and rightly so, to its origins. It was founded by none other than 1930s Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini, believe it or not, had a passion for the arts and not simply as propaganda tool for the Fascists. But in this case the production of movies was very much a vehicle for his political cause. In fact the studio was given the slogan “Cinema is the most powerful weapon.” Cinecittà was partly destroyed by Allied bombings during the Second World War. After the war it was used as a giant refugee camp. The lack of studio facilities forced filmmakers out on the streets, creating the famed Italian neorealist cinema, “which amounted to a complete rebirth of the medium,” says art critic Robert Hughes in his recent book Rome, A Cultural, Visual and Personal History. Neorealist directors include Vittorio De Sica, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini. In fact, Hughes says, great Italian art in the form of painting, sculpture and architecture, pretty much ended in the 20th century, to be replaced by the country’s genius in film.....All this simply heightens my interest in Woody Allen’s new movie, due out July 6 (at the Main and presumably in Windsor theatres), To Rome with Love, a romantic comedy (picture above left) in both English and Italian. Following on his other European pictures set in London, Barcelona and Paris, it will be interesting to see Allen’s take on the Eternal City. The cast includes Penélope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Judy Davis, Ellen Page and Allen himself in his first acting role since his Scoop in 2006.

Windsor festival grows (and grows again?)

Good news for Windsor cinephiles (and our friends in Detroit of course). The Windsor International Film Festival (WIFF) is adding an extra day to its schedule this November. And WIFF is also looking at filling the gap – at least a little bit - after the loss of Windsor’s only downtown movie theatre, the Palace, earlier this year. WIFF director Peter Coady says people have been approaching him about launching additional monthly screenings at the Capitol Theatre, WIFF’s home. Up to now WIFF has been screening usually once-a-month films in addition to the November festival. Those screenings have been interrupted of late because of renovations to the Capitol. The city took over the theatre and the Windsor Symphony Orchestra is managing it. But renovations need to be made before the theatre can be re-opened this fall. Coady says he’s heard from people asking WIFF if it can “step up to the plate” and show at least another monthly screening. There wouldn’t be mainstream fare (thank goodness!) but WIFF would stick to its “mandate” of showing independent, art house and foreign films.....Meanwhile WIFF is expanding to another day with the gala opening night being Wednesday Nov. 7 rather than the usual Thursday with the fest closing the following Sunday. The premiere, as usual, will be a Canadian film which features the director and/or actor(s) in attendance. The reason for the extra day also owes to the Palace closure (to make way for The Windsor Star’s new offices). “We’re going to open a day earlier because we needed another day or so to fill the void left by losing the four screens at the Palace,” Coady says. Prior to the main festival there are nights devoted to showcasing local filmmakers’ and students’ works, and  screenings of two Canadian and two US films in cooperation with the Detroit Film Theatre.....One of the last screenings at the Capitol was a series of short films in February which sold out. Coincidentally Coady was about to leave for this week’s Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival (www.worldwideshortfilmfestival.com) “I couldn’t believe there’d be that much interest in short film,” he says. “The irony is I’m leaving to to go down to Toronto for this short film festival that starts tonight. I figure that if there’s that much interest in short film, here we go. If I can find some good short films I’m going to include (them) in our regular program.”

Uninspired and uninspiring

The Detroit Film Theatre’s summer schedule is out and it’s all classics. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles 1941) (left) opens the series June 23, with All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone 1930) closing it Aug. 25. Seems rather ho-hum to me and it’s not that I’m not interested in classic films. But how many times have we been exposed to Citizen Kane? Moreover all these films can be rented on DVD. To see the entire schedule click on the link at right.

In April The Globe and Mail ran an article reporting Toronto’s new TIFF Bell Lightbox was not drawing big enough audience.  “People have come. But not, it seems, in the numbers (management) might have been hoping,” the story said. The article doesn’t mention a reason why this might be so: the uninspired programming. I raised this in a post last Dec. 5. The Lightbox is an amazing building, with five cinemas (1400 seats), two restaurants and a film museum. But the movies screened, at least when I’ve checked the schedule, don’t vary a whole heck of a lot from what any other art house cinema would show. For example, tonight’s schedule is We Have a Pope (Nanni Moretti 2011), Where Do We Go Now? (Nadine Labaki 2011) and Marley (Kevin MacDonald 2012), all films that have already or soon will be screened in Detroit. No problem with that of course. But the Bell Lightbox, which is headquarters to the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), by its very nature aspires to be a significant outlet for film. So why isn’t there more imaginative programming? Why not have at least one or two cinemas every night screening more obscure international films, or movies by unheralded directors or fantastic films that hardly see the light of day? Otherwise the Lightbox is simply a glorified neighbourhood repertory theatre. 

Cohen's hilarious grossness continues

The Dictator, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest, isn’t quite as funny as Cohen's Borat (2006) and Brüno (2009) because it’s scripted whereas the former were spontaneous “mockumentaries” directed at unsuspecting victims. It takes awhile for this movie, also directed by Larry Charles, to get going. But after that, the film is almost as good as its predecessors. In fact it’s uncanny – or maybe not – how the movie spoofs the real world standoff between the United Nations and government of Iran. Cohen’s character Admiral General Aladeen of the Republic of Wadiya refuses to let weapons inspectors determine whether his scientists are making weapon grade uranium. His character is a composite of the excesses of every maniacal dictator out there, complete with the gold-lined palaces and pathological temper, ordering executions on the slightest whim. But Aladeen comes closest in looks and personality – with the over the top uniforms minus the beard – to ill-fated Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. (The film is dedicated to North Korean’s deceased “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il!) Overlay Cohen’s Borat and Brüno characters’ cross-cultural stupidity and general outrageousness and you have Aladeen. The film, like the two earlier ones, is filled with sight gags – often of the very gross variety - as Aladeen comes to New York to make a speech to the UN. Improbably he falls in love with the manager of a Brooklyn natural foods store Zoey (Anna Farris) whose political views are diametrically opposed to his. All this takes place against the backdrop of his plotting uncle Tamir (Ben Kingsley) who wants him rid of so Tamir can democratize Wadiya and skim the oil profits. The movie suffers because, unlike Borat and Brüno, it’s not spontaneous. It’s also a bit of a tired theme, as per Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) and Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971).  Cohen however loves to take on extreme archetypes – Borat as the Eastern European dork, Brüno as the gay Austrian fashion journalist, and now an over-the-top dictator. What will his next character be? I can’t image but I’m sure we’ll immediately recognize it. 

You don't have to be of a certain age

I had to laugh when showing up for a noon time screening of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at the Maple (also at Devonshire and Lakeshore). Virtually everybody in the theatre was women of a certain age – and the men they dragged there of course - mirroring the aged or elderly characters in this comedy-drama from Bill Madden (Shakespeare in Love).  Marigold has a stellar cast of some of England’s top actors – of a senior age – and that is what has drawn in this crowd of PBS and British costume drama (Downton Abbey, anyone?) fans. The characters include Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Ronald Pickup. The film is all about retirees and their search for a little meaning, if a bit of fun, in the waning years of their lives. The group meets while in transit from London to Jaipur, India to retire to the Marigold Hotel, which is a little down at the heels compared to what the brochures said. It’s run by super enthusiastic Sonny (Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire) who’s never at a loss for talking up the positive when there is negative all around. Each person in this ensemble has their own story of course. Dench (Evelyn) has sold off her English home to pay her late husband’s debts and finds work as a call centre consultant. Smith (Muriel) is a former housekeeper, released from employment and who ironically must go to India for a cheap hip replacement among people she, a racist, looks down on. Wilkinson (Graham) is a retired high court judge who returns to India, his boyhood home, in part to find his long lost homosexual lover. Nighy (Douglas) and Jean (Penelope Wilton) are a long married couple whose relationship is coming apart at the seams. Norman (Pickup) and Madge (Celia Imrie) are both on the make except not for each other. This movie is more fun than I expected with plenty of good lines from a cast that mocks themselves as much as anything. (Madge: “single by choice just not my choice”; Muriel: ”if I can’t pronounce I can’t eat it”). But there is enough gravity to create well-rounded stories with the underlying levity of Sonny’s eternal off-kilter optimism. You don’t have to be of an advanced age to enjoy this.