Fish out of Water. Films Reviewed: What Happened Miss Simone?, The Overnight
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
With the Pan Am / Parapan Am Games coming to Toronto (one field is a pebble’s throw from this station) the city is welcoming strangers from across this hemisphere. There’s a celebration of Panamerican culture in documentaries screening at the Bloor Cinema, as well as short documentaries about Everyday Ambassadors playing as part of PanAmMania and screening at Nathan Phillips Square on July 11th.
This week I’m looking at Fish Out of Water: a documentary about a would-be concert pianist tossed into the worlds of jazz and soul; and a comedy about a young couple from the Pacific Northwest floundering in LA culture.
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Dir: Liz Garbus
Nina Simone, the “High Priestess of Soul” is revered today in Europe and North America as one of the great singers of the 20th century. Her rich low voice is saturated with emotion and musicality. But her life and fame had its ups and downs. How did she go from star to political activist to skid-row torch singer and back to legendary diva? This fantastic bio-documentary traces her uneven path.
Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon into a family of poor black preachers in North Carolina in 1933. By the age of three, she is already playing piano at her mom’s church, and her musical talent catches the eye of many parishioners. One, a white woman, sets up a scholarship fund and
private lessons with a Miss Massinovitch, a strict piano teacher with a Russian-sounding name (she’s actually English). Her goal is to become the first black concert pianist, and her teacher instills in her a love of Bach. She goes on to study at Julliard in New York, but her dreams are crushed when she is refused entry into the prestigious Curtis Institute in Philadelphia – probably because she is black. (This is before integration.)
To earn money, she starts playing piano in Atlantic City bars. And, so her mother doesn’t find out, she plays under the stage name Nina Simone (Niña is Spanish for girl, Simone after French actress Simone Signoret). And when she becomes known for her voice, she is funneled into the slot of “jazz singer” – a popular genre but not something she is 
trained in, nor particularly likes. But with so few career choices available, she can’t pick and choose.
In the 1960s, she starts to tour and marries Andrew Stroud, a former cop who doubles as her manager. He’s hardboiled and conservative, and wants her to stick to hits to bring in the bucks. But Simone is shaken by the bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, killing four little girls. She gravitates toward the civil rights movement and performs at Martin Luther King’s historic march at Selma. Later she writes and performs the song Mississippi Goddamn to show her anger and frustration at the violence and discrimination faced by African Americans across the country..
By the 70s, she is firmly established as a member of the black arts elite. She lives with her husband and daughter in New York state, and her daughter is best friends with their neighbours the Shabazz family, the kids of Malcolm X. But as her fame begins to fade, she divorces her violent husband and her money starts to run out. She flees, first to Liberia with her daughter, and later ends up performing alone in seedy French bars for a handful of francs.
There’s much, much more to her story, and this amazing movie covers it all. Director Liz Garbus takes you right into her life with interviews with her family and close friends. Like in her documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World (2011), she explores the fine lines between genius, fame and madness. Using period footage, photos, and most of all her music, you get a real taste of Nina Simone as a perfectionist diva and incredible singer and pianist, as well as a troubled, lonely woman losing her grip. I strongly recommend this documentary.
The Overnight
Wri/Dir: Patrick Brice
Alex and Emily (Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling) are a young couple with a little son, RJ. Alex is a stay-at-home dad, both optimistic and insecure, with a bad goatee and shlumpy clothes. Emily is a smartly-dressed careerist with little tolerance for her husband’s B.S. They recently moved down to LA from Seattle so Emily can pursue her career. She’s always busy, but Alex is bored. They don’t have any friends and it’s hard to meet new people. And while the two are deeply in love they don’t a great sex life: Alex has body issues. (He thinks his penis is too 
small.)
One day Alex meets Kurt (Jason Schwartzman) at a picnic in the park when they catch their two sons playing together. Seeing a potential friend, they say eagerly yes to a pizza party at Kurt and Charlotte (Judith Godrèche)’s home. They are an older couple, rich successful and privy to the ways of LA. Kurt is a semi-hipster who indulges in odd paintings – he sees himself as the Georgia O’Keefe of anuses. And French Charlotte is an amateur actress, known on the web for a peculiar practice involving her breasts.
But the party takes on a strange turn when the kids are put to bed. Kurt and Charlotte initiate a series of games unknown to the naive out-of-towners. Like fish out of water, they’re unsure whether 
this is how normal people in L.A. behave or if they’re being seduced by a couple of swingers. Will they succumb to the older couple’s seedy charms? Or will they flee the house screaming?
The Overnight is a very funny comedy with a great small cast. It’s almost like a classic drawing room comedy, though bedroom comedy is more accurate. Its humour doesn’t rely on clever lines or pratfalls; it’s the characters and the uncomfortable sexual/social situations they find themselves in that makes it funny.
Though written and directed by Patrick Brice, The Overnight is produced by the Duplass Brothers and has their hallmarks — sexual situations, weirdness, social comedy — all over it. It also has the feel of improvisation within a structured plot. This is a great comedy with an indie feel.
The Overnight opens today in Toronto; check your local listings; and What Happened, Miss Simone is now playing on Netflix.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Northwest. Movies reviewed: Amy, Rear Window, Testament of Youth PLUS NXNE
North. Movies reviewed- Amy, Rear Window, Testament to Youth
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s summertime here in the great white north, so I thought I’d talk about Northern films playing in Toronto. This week, there’s a Memoir of WWI set in North Western Europe, a classic voyeuristic suspense-thriller by the director of North By Northwest; and a documentary playing at NXNE.
Amy
Dir: Asif Kapadia
Amy Winehouse was a soulful jazz singer with an incredible voice. She was born in North London and dead by the age of 27. A new documentary fills in the missing years with grainy camera footage, voicemail messages, TV appearances, studio sessions and private snapshots. It follows her precipitously quick rise to stardom and all that goes with it. And London’s voracious, cannibalistic journo-papparazi who dog her every step. This is an excellent documentary of an artist killed by fame.
(Capsule review.)
Rear Window
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
It’s 1954. LB “Jeff” Jeffries (Jimmy Stewart) is a news photographer for Life Magazine. He lives out of a suitcase in exotic locales in search of the ultimate cover story. But now, with a broken leg, he’s holed up in his inaccessible apartment that’s not friendly to wheelchairs. He’s visited in the daytime by Stella (Thelma Ritter) a plain talking nurse, and in the evening by his high-society girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly). Between visits he stares longingly out his back window at the array of apartments visible just across a courtyard. There’s a newlywed couple, a frustrated musician, a miss lonelyhearts looking for love, a busty single woman, and a travelling salesman with his bed-ridden wife. He’s the ultimate voyeur, witnessing the drama of countless lives displayed just out of his reach. But when he thinks he sees a crime, he feels impotent that there’s nothing he can do to help. And after his old pal the cop refuses to get involved in local squabbles, he enlists Stella and Lisa to launch potentially dangerous investigations that he watches through his rear window. Is it real, or just a man’s overactive imagination.
Rear Window is a fantastic classic Hitchcock movie that captures the frenetic overpopulated American city life in the 50s. It’s filmed with an unusual point of view. We see everything the way Jeff does, through his window looking at the rooms across the street. With so much of our time now spent staring at windows (meaning screens) Rear Window predates our voyeuristic digital lives by half a century.
Testament of Youth
Dir: James Kent
It’s 100 years ago in rural England. Teenaged Vera (Alicia Vikander) lives with her brother Edward (Taron EDGErton) and her mum and dad who made a small fortune in paper mills.
She’s smart, educated, creative and multilingual. She writes poetry. Vera is a twentieth century woman with a mind of her own, ready to explore the world. But the world isn’t ready for her – they treat women as silly and frivolous who shouldn’t waste their time studying at university. Just find a husband, her parents tell her, that’s what women are there for.
And she’s not at a loss for suitors. Young Victor (Colin Morgan) likes her a lot, but she thinks of him as just
a sweet boy. She thinks Roland (Kit Harrington) is a persistent pest (though they do fall in love eventually) Her musically inclined brother Edward and his best friend complete the quartet of young men in her life, and she spends time with all of them keeping up her end of discussions.
Vera is stubborn and driven woman and after a great struggle she lands a place at Oxford, a huge accomplishment at the time when women couldn’t even vote. But no sooner does she start to study when WWI breaks out and all four of the young men in her life rush to join the army for King and country. She wants to do her part too and signs up as a nurse, one of the few professions open to women. But war is not quick and it’s not easy. She ends up at makeshift medical camps in France where she sees death, disease and despair everywhere, on both sides. Who will survive this war, who will die and what will they learn from it all?
There’s some great acting in this movie, including Vikander – she played a sexy robot in Ex Machina, and the two parts couldn’t be more different. But Testament of Youth is based on the classic memoir which gives a rare female Point of View of WWI. So it doesn’t have a movie’s traditional compact story line. It’s plodding and episodic. It felt like a miniseries – a good one maybe with notable actors and high production values – but not one that’s very exciting or gripping or heartbreaking. I didn’t dislike it but it didn’t blow me away, either.
Testament of Youth opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. Hitchcock’s Rear Window is screening in July as part of the series Technicolor Dreams. Go to tiff.net for the schedule. And Amy, along with films like Diamond Tongues and short films from Austin texas curated by Jonathan Demme, are all playing at NXNE films now through Sunday night: go to nxne.com for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks to artist Daniel Young about Young & Giroux’s new installation Berlin 2012/1983 opening at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
At any given moment, we’re surrounded by evidence of past eras along with present. Architectural design and urban planning change slowly despite tumultuous changes in history, politics and government. But over the course of 
a generation change is evident.
How to document and convey this change? Well, a new art installation combining 35 mm film and architectural 
photography does just that. Filmed footage of structures built in 1983 are projected alongside images of buildings from 2012. The film snakes it’s way through the former East and West Berlin, through strip malls, warehouses, Stalinist blocs and private homes. This is a movie but it’s 
not like any film you’ve seen before. It’s a spectacle of the ordinary.
It’s called Berlin 2012/1983, and is opening today at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.
Created by celebrated Sobey award-winning artists Daniel Young and Christian Giroux, the “film” is two hours long. It slowly projects 9 frames per image, one second each, with each discrete image separated by the flickering of a shutter, and the two projectors synchronized to show each pair of images simultaneously.
I spoke with Daniel Young in Toronto to find out more about Berlin 2012/1983.
Novelty. Movies reviewed: Live from New York, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Part of what makes a movie enjoyable is its unpredictability. It has to deliver lots of shocks, laughs and new images to keep the audience watching. So this week I’m looking at three films with increasing degrees of novelty. There’s a documentary about a once-novel TV comedy show; a quirky, high school dramedy based on a novel; and a truly bizarre Scandinavian fantasy about novelty salesmen.
Live From New York
Dir: Bao Nguyen
Saturday Night Live was created 40 years ago by Canadian producer Lorne Michaels as a late-night music and comedy show appealing to the baby boomers. Michaels chose the variety show format, a dying television genre. But unlike most variety shows, the show had a different host each week, supported by a cast of unknown comics called the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, presumably for their adult themes and because the show aired live around midnight each Saturday night.
So far, the show has lasted 40 years, coining countless catch phrases, 
spawning movie stars and way too many terrible films. But is Saturday Night Live actually funny? Not really. (Is it sacrilege to say this?) Its laugh-to-groan ratio is low. And it’s infamous for stretching a single joke over a long drawn-out scene. And if it gets enough laughs, they repeat variations of the same joke, week after week.
This film is a less of a documentary than a hagiographic tribute to the show. It conveniently leaves out the uncomfortable deaths and ODs that have plagued some of the show’s stars. Does that mean the movie is boring? No, just the opposite. In fact, it’s the best way to appreciate SNL — as an anthology of its funniest lines… with all the bad parts cut out.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Dir: Alfonso Gomez-Rejon (based on the novel by Jesse Andrews)
Greg (Thomas Mann) is a shy high school senior in Pittsburg, PA. He doesn’t like school but has learned to navigate the halls without disrupting anything. His dad is a foodie- hippy, prone to lounging around at home in embroidered burlap caftans. Each day he sends Greg to school carrying iron cauldrons of Romanian organ-meat stews stashed in paper bags. Luckily, he can eat them with his best friend, Earl, in Mr McCarthy (a beat poet English teacher)’s 
office. He’s known Earl (R.J. Cyler) since kindergarten. Greg us middle-class white; Earl is black and lives in a rundown part of town. Together they regularly plunder Greg’s Dad’s collection of criterion DVDs as raw material for the film parodies they create (Goddard, Herzog and Bergman).
So Greg’s life is offbeat but normal until his mom throws a wrench into it. A neighbor, Rachel (Olivia Cook) has leukemia and greg is drafted to keep her company. So begins their initially awkward but increasingly deep relationship. Soon Greg and Earl are enlisted to direct their filmmaking skills toward a tribute to Rachel. But when Greg realizes 
that what he does for fun could have real-life consequences… he panics.
Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a self-consciously off-beat movie. The adults – like the kids — are all given quirks: Beat Poet Teacher (Jon Bernthal), Hippy Dad (Nick Offerman), Rachel’s alcoholic single mom (Molly Shannon). But it’s the kids who carry the show, especially Thomas Mann as the everynerd. Though the film seems overly mannered, it’s still very funny. I fell for its humour, its plot and characters. It’s definitely a YA story but it appeals to all ages.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Dir: Roy Andersson
A pair of morose salesmen ply the streets of Gothenberg, Sweden. demonstrating their wares. They sell entertaining novelties. A rubber mask, vampire teeth, Bag o’ Laffs. One is always angry, the other one depressed. Needless to say, they don’t sell many novelties. They rent sterile, windowless rooms in a boarding house, and frequent Limp-Leg Lotta’s — once a boisterous bar, but now filled with sad, old men sitting alone. At some
point, they wander off-map into a sort of a time warp, where an 18th Century gay Swedish king – followed by dozens and dozens of soldiers in three-cornered hats – marches through a modern-day bar on horseback. (Sweden is preparing for battle with Russia.)
Simultaneously, a large flamenco teacher keeps groping her male student, and a school for kids with Down’s Syndrome is putting in a show.
These are just a few of the story lines and gags that fill this strange but hilariously sad movie. It’s set in a timeless era, like a series of New Yorker cartoons brought to life. It’s shot in sepia tones, in a Teutonic, 1920s realist style. The actors all look like they’ve come back from the dead, with pale, powdered fleshy faces and beige clothing. But what does the title “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” mean? You (the viewer) are a pigeon observing humanity, with all its violence and sadness, but unable to do anything about it. It’s depressing, it’s funny, it’s uncategorizable. You’ve got to see it – it’s a great movie… and one with high marks on the novelty scale!
Live from New York played last night at Cineplex, and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl And A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Humanity both open today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Pavan Moondi and Nick Flanagan about their new film Diamond Tongues debuting at NXNE 2015
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Edith is a young Toronto actor waiting for her big break. She even dumps her boyfriend so she can devote herself to her career. But ambition and moxie don’t translate into lead roles in hit movies. Despite her relentless auditions, she’s 
swimming upstream but never moving forward. Forced to deal with crowds of frenemies, mounting letdowns, awkward situations and countless humiliations, Edith is losing touch with her inner goodness.
Still in her early twenties, she’s turning bitter, friendless and alone. Only her bickering best friend Nick keeps her grounded. Is Edith’s heart in danger of turning to stone, with a tongue as sharp as diamonds?
Diamond Tongues is the name of a new film premiering at NXNE on June 21st. Co-
director/writer Pavan Moondi and star Nick Flanagan have created a quintessential Toronto indie film, a tightly-scripted comedy/drama about life as an actor on the hard city streets. I spoke with Nick and Pavan in studio at CIUT about artistic pursuit, acting, co-directing, “making money”, the Coen brothers, improvisation, montage, shooting during a blackout, Toronto, micro-budget films, music, authenticity, July Talk, “blood sausage”… and more!
Disses. Movies reviewed: (Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies, Hungry Hearts, Love & Mercy
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
We’re all tired of being dissed, but there are a lot of disses that just can’t be avoided. This week I’m looking at three “dis” movies. A biopic about a renowned musician diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, an Italian drama about a dysfunctional couple, and a documentary about dishonesty. 
(Dis)honesty: The Truth About Lies
Dir: Yael Melamede
We are all liars. And we all lie about the same things in the same way. Or so says a new documentary about lying. It focuses on the work of Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioural economics and psychology at Duke University and MIT. In an experiment repeated thousands of times all around the world, Ariely tested students in groups asked to self-mark their tests, drop them into a shredder and report to
an official. And they were paid $1 for each correct answer. What they didn’t know was that the tests weren’t actually shredded.
Afterwards, Ariely compared the actual answers on the pages with the fake scores the people had told them. And he found that most people do lie, to the same extent, about the same things all around the world. The movie says a lot more, and also interviews real people, like politicians who cheat on their wives or insider traders on Wall Street, to look at their rationales for dishonesty. This is a very slick, fascinating and easy-to-understand documentary. Excellent film! 
Hungry Hearts
Dir: Saverio Costanzo
Jude (Adam Driver) is an engineer, a tall, well-dressed young man in New York City. Mina (Alba Rohrwacher) is a beautiful, petite Italian woman with pale skin and fiery red hair who works at the Embassy. Somehow the two strangers find themselves locked inside a tiny, grungy basement toilet in Chinatown. Jude is to blame for the horrible stench, and Mina for the constant complaining. The two of them are trapped in a claustrophobic and unhealthy situation.
So what do they do next? They have sex, fall in love, get married and have a baby. If 
only they had followed their first impressions and never met. They soon discovered they are different in every way. Jude likes science, doctors and hospitals. Mina is into fortune tellers, vegetarianism, naturopathy, and instincts. Not a big problem until the baby (known only as “Baby”) comes into the picture. Jude, (the big American) prone to anger and violence, thinks the kid is sick and starving and is not growing big enough or fast enough. Frequently depressed Mina (the cultivated European) thinks the problems are all on Jude’s side. Add Jude’s mother Anne, a real buttinsky, to the picture (played by the venerable Roberta Maxwell) and things quickly escalate. Will they survive the stink, decay and claustrophobia of their dysfunctional life?
While Hungry Hearts has its good points, this is a real drudge of a movie filled with endless bickering, crying, hitting and altogether awfulness. The honeymoon lasts about 90 seconds and the rest of the movie is less torrid sex, more horrid fights. 
Love & Mercy
Dir: Bill Pohlad
It’s the mid 1960s. The Beach Boys is a cheesy pop band known for its catchy tunes, tight harmonies, and its formulaic California sound: all about 
girls, surfing, and roadsters. Most of the members are brothers or cousins, and they’re getting ready for their triumphal tour of Japan, when something happens. Brian Wilson (Paul Dano) has a panic attack on a plane and decides to stay home in L.A. 
While they’re touring, he’s composing, arranging and producing an incredible album.
LA’s famous studio musicians known as the Wrecking Crew provide the music and Brian goes wild. He tosses paper clips onto piano strings to make a plinkier sound. He brings dogs into the studio to bark. He even has them play in two separate keys… at the same time. The result is Pet Sounds, one of the most highly-praised pop albums ever recorded – and rightly so. It even inspired the Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper” album.
This is Brian Wilson in the sixties. The movie’s also about 
Brian Wilson in the 80s (John Cusack). We see him enter a Cadillac showroom where he meets the saleswoman Melinda (Elizabeth Banks), a blue-eyed blonde. It’s the 80s so she has big hair and enormous aquamarine shoulder pads. Brian talks to her slowly and hesitantly, as if he’s never seen a woman before and isn’t used to speaking out loud. They gradually become close, but face a formidable obstacle in the form a man.
Dr. Gene (Paul Giamatti) is a psychiatric Svengali who has taken complete control over 
Brian’s life. What he eats, where he goes, even whom he’s allowed to talk to. He diagnosed Brian as paranoid schizophrenic and has him pumped full of toxic amounts of meds. (That’s why he walks around with his mouth half-open staring off into space.) Can the 1960s Brian bring all his musical dreams to fruition? And can the 1980s Brian ever re-emerge from his medically induced haze?
Love & Mercy is long, detailed and sometimes slow. Its two parts are told chronologically, but the story jumps back and forth between the 60s and the 80s, so you follow both the of them throughout the film. I was left only half-satisfied by the story, but the music…! The music seduced me into listening to Beach Boys music – which I had never taken seriously before — obsessively for about a week afterwards. See it for the music.
Hungry Hearts and Love & Mercy, and (Dis)honesty (at the Bloor Cinema) all open today in Toronto, check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
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