Daniel Garber talks with Sook-Yin Lee and Dan Beirne about Paying for It
Photographs by Jeff Harris
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s the late 1990s in Toronto.
Sunny and Chester — a VJ and a cartoonist — live together in a house in Kensington Market. Up to now, they’ve been in a loving, monogamous relationship but their sex-life is kaput. So Sunny suggests they broaden their sexual outlook, and seek new partners.
This leaves a void in Chester’s life: sex. Finding a new girlfriend is out of the question. Dating is costly, time-consuming and rarely leads to sex. So he decides to try a different path. What will happen to Chester’s and Sunny’s lives when he starts “paying for it”?
Paying for It is a new film about sex work and relationships, told from the point of view of the John. It’s brilliant, shocking, hilarious and touching. Based on Chester Brown’s graphic novel by the same name, it’s directed and co-written by Sook-Yin Lee. The film stars Dan Beirne as Chester and Emily Lê as Sunny. Dan is a prolific Canadian TV and film actor who is also one of the funniest and most underrated actors working today. Dan has starred in countless TV shows and movies including Great Great Great and The Twentieth Century. The multi-talented Sook-Yin is a producer, director, actor, and musician who began as a VJ on MuchMusic, and went on to direct films like Octavio is Dead, and starring in pictures like Shortbus.
Paying for It is having its world premiere at TIFF on Friday, September 6th at 930 PM.
I spoke with Sook-Yin Lee and Dan Beirne in-person and in-studio at CIUT 89.5 FM.
International Women’s Day! Film reviewed: Analogue Revolution
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Wednesday is International Women’s Day, a national holiday in many countries though not in North America. And changes have been slow coming in the film industry, but they are happening. Since the first academy awards, more than a century ago, less than two dozen films directed by women have ever been nominated for best picture. This year, there are three… and these numbers are steadily growing.
So if you want to celebrate movies at home, CBC Gem is featuring movies about women this month, including 20th Century Women a coming of age drama set in the 1980s starring Greta Gerwig, Annette Benning and Elle Fanning. MUBI is featuring films with female cinematographers, including Saint Omer, the compelling French courtroom drama, and The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão, the mysterious drama about two sisters in Rio de Janeiro, separated against their will. And NFB has an International Women’s Day Playlist available for free on their website, including Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again; Margaret Atwood – A Word after a Word after a Word is Power; and The Boxing Girls of Kabul. Lots to watch at home.
So this week, also in honour of International Women’s Day, I’m looking at one new documentary about the history of modern feminism in Canada as seen through its media.
Analogue Revolution
Wri/Dir: Marusya Bociurkiw
It’s 1967, and Canada is celebrating 100 years since Confederation. There’s a burst of national pride and an explosion of tiny, independent publishing houses producing CanCon (Canadian Content) throughout the country. This was also the time when feminism gained support, and women were in the spotlight, fighting the system, en masse. They expressed themselves in books, magazines, literary journals and newspapersl. Press Gang in Vancouver and Broadside magazine in Toronto were seminal to the movement.
Women’s own bodies were a central topic, as doctors, at the time, required a husband or father’s consent for a woman to request an operation like a tubal ligation. So in the late 1968, The Montreal Health Press published a birth control guide book for women that — in contemporary parlance — went viral. One American clinic ordered
50 thousand copies right after it was published, and students on campuses across the continent were snapping it up. It was sold at cost. Writing about IUDs, diaphragms and abortion was still illegal at the time, so this book played a crucial role in the women’s movement.
Radio, too was a major force, including shows Dykes on Mykes the longest running lesbian radio show in the world on CKUT-FM in Montreal. Travelling women’s film festivals carried their movies across the country showing the movies in small town church basements on the way.
In the 1970s, the National Film Board opened a new section known simply as Studio D, a bare-bones area where women workshopped and made documentaries. The filmmaker interviews filmmakers like Bonny Sher Klein whose Not a Love Story: A Film About 
Pornography was both controversial and widely watched. Janis Cole and Holly Dale’s crucial documentaries P4W Prison for Women and Hookers on Davie also came out of Studio D.
This momentum continued producing hundreds of publications across the country. Tens of thousands of people marched through city streets on International Women’s Day while others reclaimed the streets at night to stop violence against women. And the movement shifted from one centred on civil rights, women’s bodies, and pay equity, to one stressing individual rights, racial inequity and gender theory. But successive austerity governments in the 1990s effectively destroyed all but a few small publications that relied on government grants to stay afloat.
Analogue Revolution is a comprehensive look at the feminist movement in Canada from the 1960s through the 90s and beyond. It covers massive territory — from a high school filmmaker in Saskatoon, to a Ukrainian Feminist women’s group out of Edmonton to publications in Halifax. There are extensive interviews with Quebecoise activists and writers, people of colour, radical feminists, nudists, and indigenous activists, as the movement changed decade by decade. It features new and vintage footage of Susan Cole, Audre Lorde, Judy Rebick, and many others. The Toronto Women’s Bookstore — the country’s biggest feminist bookstore, which was also firebombed by American anti-abortion militants — is notable by it’s absence… but you can’t include everything.
Analogue Revolution is an important and fascinating history of a movement.
Analogue Revolution is playing tonight at 630 and tomorrow afternoon at 1:30 at the Hot Docs cinema on Bloor st in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Bikes and books. Films reviewed: The Last Rider, Umberto Eco: A Library of the World
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Summertime and Toronto is melting. Luckily there are lots of new movies playing at festivals, both indoors and out. The ICFF is showing great movies from Morocco to China at the distillery district throughout July. Art of Documentary Film Festival is on next Saturday, July 15th, at Innis Town Hall Theatre featuring a talk by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson, the great Toronto directors who brought us Scarborough. And later this month keep an eye out for the Female Eye Film Fest featuring memorable movies and shorts directed by women.
But this week I’m looking at two new documentaries that stimulate the body and the mind. There’s an Italian film about books and American one about Bikes.
The Last Rider
Wri/Dir: Alex Holmes (Maiden)
It’s 1989. Greg LeMond is a champion professional cyclist who was the first American ever to win the Tour de France. He has trained since a teenager in Lake Tahoe, growing up with a gut-knowledge of their mountains and steep roads. He meets Cathy, his future wife, like in a movie, at a Holiday Inn. He is soon recruited as a member of the Renault team, moves to France for training, and becomes world famous. Cathy comes with him, dropping out of College.
But after winning the Tour, he falls into a deep depression, followed by a terrible accident: he is accidentally shot and almost killed on a turkey hunt with his family. This happens while Cathy is in labour, so Greg barely gets a chance to see their newborn for weeks. But after a few years of recovery, they decide he should try once again.. Not to win the Tour de France, but just to see if he can finish it (remember: competitive cycling, especially climbing up 
gruelling Alpen roads like in the Tour, requires absolute perfection in strength, skill and stamina— and Greg still has metal pellets riddling his body!)
But to everyone’s surprise, it becomes a three way race for Greg, Pedro Delgado and Laurent Fignon. Who will wear the yellow jersey?
The Last Rider is a biographical sports doc about that historical and exciting race in 1989. It’s 75% period video footage — the Tour de France is heavily photographed, start to finish — and 25% new taking-head interviews with LeMond, his family and many participants in that race. 1989 was before the dirty side of professional cycling — all the scandals, illegal drugs and supplements that became endemic in the sport — so there is a sense of innocence and pathos permeating this story. I am not a big fan of the sport — I barely follow it — but it was still an exciting watch.
Umberto Eco: A Library of the World
Dir: Davide Ferrario
Umberto Eco is a writer, novelist and semiotician from Piedmont, Italy. He writes books — including international bestselling novels like The Name the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum — and academic essays and treatises. He also accumulates and reads an astonishingly diverse number of books. And though he is an academic, he avoids ranking books by their moral or political value, ignoring the usual canons of good vs bad literature.
His shelves are filled with Charlie Brown bobble heads beside Voltaire, devoting equal space to fumetti — low-brow italian comics — and pulp fiction, as he does to obscure codices scribed by medieval monks. The more obscure the better. There are illuminated manuscripts of animals with human heads. And — unlike the current vogue of labelling works as misinformation, disinformation or “fake news” — Eco loves writers who churn out huge quantities of books of dubious credibility and provenance. Like the 17th-century German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who studied and wrote about practically everything, including travelogues of China (despite never having been there), and treatises on mathematics, music, medicine, the tower of Babel and Egyptian hieroglyphics. There’s always room for mysticism, conspiracy theories and apostate Cathars. Eco died in 2016 but left behind a stupendous collection of books, including his own 
Umberto Eco: A Library of the World is a fascinating, esoteric and aesthetically pleasing documentary about Eco and his writing, the books he read, and about libraries worldwide. Members of his family tell their stories and they and actors recite aloud some of Eco’s works, both profound and mundane. There are also 
If you like Umberto Eco’s work, this is a must-see; and if you’ve never heard of him watch this movie — you’ll learn learn a thing or two.
Umbertio Eco: A Library of the World starts next Friday at Hot Docs cinema, and The Last Rider which recently opened in Toronto is playing later this month at the Lavazza INCLUCITY FESTIVAL in the distillery district; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Jim Shedden about Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Photo of Jim Shedden by Brody White.
Since motion pictures took the world by storm, Canadian mainstream movies have been dominated by Hollywood. But avant-garde, independent and experimental films have a very different history. Pioneers like Norman MacLaren and Arthur Lipsett at the NFB, and artists like Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland established Canadian films on the world’s stage. And creativity exploded after 1967 in a surge of national expression. But what makes a film experimental, what makes it Canadian, and how have these criteria changed over the past century?
Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada is a monumental, 
landmark book released this week, accompanied by a series of screenings at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto. The screenings are curated by — and the book edited by — Barbara Sternberg and Jim Shedden. It includes a meticulous history of experimental film by Mike Zryd, a series of filmographies and profiles of the major players by Stephen Broomer, shorter bios compiled by Jim and Barbara who also wrote the preface, and it’s beautifully illustrated with contemporary photos of the filmmakers and stills from the films themselves.
Jim Shedden is a curator of inter-disciplinary exhibitions and head of the publishing program at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
I spoke with Jim via Zoom in Toronto.
Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada is now available from Goose Lane Editions.
Exploding. Films reviewed: Atlantics, The Mystery of Henri Pick, Waves
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto Fall film festivals this weekend include Blood in the Snow, featuring Canadian horror and genre films, with the festival’s first short film from Newfoundland called New Woman. And CineFranco features French-language films from Ontario and around the world.
This week I’m looking at three new movies about metaphoric explosions. There’s a literary explosion in France, spontaneous combustion of a marital bed in Senegal, and a highschool wr3stle4 in Florida who feels ready to explode.
Atlantics
Wri/Dir Mati Diop
It’s Dakar, Senegal.
Ada (Mame Bineta Sane) is a pretty young woman set to marry a guy named Omar. He drives a swank car, lives in an expensive apartment and comes from a rich family. So why isn’t she happy? Because she’s in love with Suleiman (Traore) a handsome construction worker, building a monstrous tower in the city. She made out with him in the sand just yesterday – they’re a committed couple. Ada wants to hang with her friends Fanta and Dior at a beachside bar, not cooped up in a kitchen as a good pious wife.
But what she doesn’t realize is Suleiman has disappeared. None of the construction workers ever got paid, so they all hopped aboard a sailboat for a chance at better work in Europe. This means the kiss on the beach may have been their last one. So she goes ahead with the wedding, until… weird things start to happen. Their marital bed burst into flames. Strange-looking people appear inside high-security condos demanding retribution. And a 
diligent police inspector thinks Ada and Suleiman are behind it all. Will Ada marry her true love or the arranged marriage? And what is the cause of these supernatural events in downtown Dakar?
Atlantics is a fascinating study of life in urban west Africa seen through the eyes of a young woman. It combines contemporary problems – wealth distribution, the spread of viruses, and migrant workers – with a dose of magic realism. It’s shot around the Atlantic beaches of Dakar giving it all a glowing and haunting feel, an entirely new image unseen in west African films.
Atlantics is Senegal’s choice for best foreign film Oscar.
The Mystery of Henri Pick
Wri/Dir: Rémi Bezançon
Daphné and Fred are a young couple in Brittany with a literary bent. Daphné works for a major publisher and Fred is promoting his first novel. They have high hopes. So when Jean Michel Rouche (Fabrice Luchini) – the hugely popular TV literary critic – skips the promised review of his book (sorry, we’re out of time) they are both deeply disappointed. To pull herself out of the dumps, she visits a unique bookstore only for the “refusée”. That is, manuscripts that have been rejected by publishers.
And after looking at shelf after shelf of terrible writing she finds a masterpiece, a passionate love story about the dying days of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin! It’s erotic 
and sublime, a literary gem. She rushes it to her publisher, an instant bestseller. What’s especially intriguing is it was written by a certain Henri Pick, a pizza maker who died two years earlier. To promote the book, Daphné brings Henri’s widow and his adult daughter Joséphine (Camille Cottin) to Paris for an interview with the book critic, live on TV.
But things go awry when Rouche says he doesn’t believe a pizza maker – who owns no books and has never written a word in his life – could have penned such a 
masterpiece. In the mayhem that ensues he’s fired from the TV show and his wife leaves him. But he won’t let it drop. Soon he’s travelling across the country to find out who really wrote the novel. Was it Henri Pick? And will Jean Michel’s obsession lead to his ruin?
They Mystery of Henri Pick is a light comedy with a literary twist. It’s cute, somewhat funny, and well acted, with lots of cameos by greats like Hanna Schygulla. And it gives you a peek into the complex and arcane world of the French literary obsession.
Entertaining movie.
Waves
Wri/Dir: Trey Edward Shults
Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is a Florida high school senior headed for glory. He’s a champion wrestler, a top student and in love with his girlfriend Alexis. He lives in a beautiful upper middle class home with his father (Sterling K Brown) his mom (Renée Elise Goldsberry) and his sister Emily (Taylor Russell). Hhis doctor tells him to take it easy – he’s straining his body to the point of permanent injury, and the pain is getting worse. But his dad is pressuring him to win! win! win! for ultimate success. And the opiates he’s popping 
to stop the pain are messing up his mind. Until…he can’t take it anymore and it all explodes in a terrible event.
But wait… the movie is only half over!
Waves is basically two short films played back to back. The second film takes place later on, this one focussing on Tyler’s sister Emily. Emily is still at a school where her brother’s name is a pariah. She’s pursued by the sympathetic Luke (Lucas Hedges), one of Tyler’s wrestling teammates. What does he want from her?
Meanwhile her father finally opens up to his neglected daughter: was everything his fault for pushing his son too hard?
Waves is an unusual family drama, told in two related stories. Does its two-part structure work? Ultimately yes, though at first it left me feeling confused and puzzled. Beautifully shot with nice music, Waves also has a uniformly good cast, but Kelvin Harrison Jr in particular is terrific. Following his great performances in It Comes at Night and Luce, Harrison is once again playing a teenaged boy with a dark side, each time creating an entirely different (and almost unrecognizable) new character.
Shults with Harrison is a force to be reckoned with.
Waves opens today in Toronto; check your local lostings; Atlantics starts at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and The Mystery of Henri Pick is playing at the Hotdocs Cinema as part of Cinefranco.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Indie movies. Films reviewed: Sundowners, The Only Living Boy in New York, Patti Cake$
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
A soundtrack can make or break an indie movie. This week I’m looking at three independent movies about people in their twenties where music sets the tone. There are two guys from Toronto heading to Mexico fuelled by contemporary Canadian music; a lovestruck guy in Manhattan described in a Simon and Garfunkle song; and a white woman in New Jersey with hip hop in her soul.
Sundowners
Wri/Dir: Pavan Moondi
Alex and Justin are good friends with dead-end jobs. Alex (Phil Hanley) is skinny and tall with a perpetual five o’clock shadow. He’s single, shy and frustrated. He earns a meagre living videotaping weddings, and lets his douche-y boss walk all over him. Justin (Luke Lalonde: Born Ruffians) is smiley and gregarious but, with him, girlfriends rarely stick around. He lives with his demented grandmother, and works long hours on a telemarketing complaint line. They are both a hair’s breadth away from quitting their jobs.
So when Alex’s boss offers to fly him on an all-expense-paid trip to a Mexican resort to film a wedding, he takes it. And he gets free tickets for Justin, too – he just has to pretend he’s a cameraman, even though he’s never lifted a camera in his life. Will the trip prove to be their downfall? Will it change 
their lives? And will Alex finally meet a woman he’s compatible with, even if it’s just for the weekend?
Sundowners is another feature by Pavan Moondi, and like Diamond Tongues it features Canadian musicians both in the cast and on the soundtrack. It’s a comedy, but isn’t full of one- liners. It’s more about the characters and the odd and awkward social situations they find themselves in. The plot is very basic, and some of the jokes are hit and miss, but the movie itself is still a pleasure to watch.
The Only Living Boy in New York
Dir: Marc Webb
Thomas (Callum Turner) is a college drop out living in the lower east side. He’s tall, thin and pale and wears harry potter glasses. He’s originally from the upper west side where his parents still live. His mom (Cynthia Nixon) is artsie but bipolar and fragile. His Dad (Pierce Brosnan) is a failed novelist but a very successful book publisher. Thomas has literary ambitions, too, but they were quashed when his dad dismissed his writing as just adequate.
Thomas is madly in love with the pretty and smart Mimi (Kiersey Clemons) ever since she told him she loves Nabokov. But Mimi just wants to be friends. What to do?
Then one night, Thomas and Mimi spot his dad at a nightclub kissing a beautiful woman. Who is she and what does this mean? Are they having an affair? Her name is Johanna (Kate 
Beckinsale) and she’s a freelance editor. Thomas confronts her – why are you ruining my parents’ marriage? She replies: You want to make love to me, Thomas, you just don’t realize it. What? Thomas is shocked… but intrigued.
Will these flirtations lead to an affair? What would Mimi think? 
And what secrets are his parents hiding?
The Only Living Boy in New York is an enjoyable romance set against a glamorous, literary Manhattan. The movie is narrated by a gruff old man (Jeff Bridges) who mysteriously appears in Thomas’s apartment building to offer sage advice. The problem is almost everybody talks like they’re narrating their own books all the time. People don’t talk like that — not even writers. But I liked the movie anyway, with all it’s romantic surprises. And Callum Turner – actor/model – does Thomas very well. In fact the whole cast is great. Another enjoyable film.
Patti Cake$
Dir: Geremie Jasper
Patti (Danielle Macdonald) is a working-class Jersey Girl who lives with her Mom and Grandma (Cathy Moriarty) somewhere off the Turnpike. She’s heavy-set with long curly blonde hair, who dresses in 90s hiphop gear and hoop earings. Bullies call her Dumbo. Her best friend is Jhery 
(Siddharth Dhananjay) a pharmacist who takes of his white coat at night and dons a do-rag. He and Patti long to leave New Jersey with their hip hop duo and relocate in the Emerald city (New York) but so far, no go. Barb (Bridget Everett) her mom, also almost made it big singing in a rock band, but not big enough. 
Now she just drinks away her sorrows. Patti works in a low grade Karaoke bar just to pay off her mom’s tab.
Enter Bastard, aka Antichrist (Mamoudou Athie), a mysterious african-american man she meets at an open mic night. He’s tall and skinny dressed in black with short fdreads and multiple piercings. His music is some weird combination of death metal, goth, punk and hiphop. When he says anything it’s with a vaguely English accent. He claims to 
be a hobo, riding the rails across America. He lives in a shack in the woods, just beyond the gates of hell, filled with sound equipment and satanic ritual objects. Patti longs to get to know him better. But can these three urban misfits together record a track good enough to bring them the recognition they crave? And can Patti, Mom and Nana find common ground?
Patti Cakes is like a hilarious, non-stop music video. It’s also a heartwarming look at a mythical, mystical New Jersey town and its inhabitants. The director, Geremie Jasper, also wrote the script and the lyrics to most of the songs and they’re all brilliant. As are all the cast. And guess what? The actress playing Patti isn’t from Jersey… she’s Australian!
Brilliant.
Sundowners, Patti Cake$ and The Only Living Boy in New York 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.
Schocken and Scribner’s. Films reviewed: Vita Activa — The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, Genius
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Movies based on books are a dime a dozen: there’s a movie option for every bestseller. But what about movies about the books and writers themselves? This week I’m looking at movies set in the mid-20th century when books really were important. There’s a documentary about a philosopher who pulls her observations together; and a biopic about an editor who cuts lengthy manuscripts apart.
Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt
Dir: Ada Ushpiz
It’s 1963 in Jerusalem. Adolph Eichmann is on trial there as the primary architect of the mass murder perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Covering the trial for the New Yorker is Hanna Arendt noted German-Jewish philosopher. She observes the ultimate bland bureaucrat in a glass box who claims he has no hatred of the Jews he slaughtered and says he is not an ideologue. Arendt observes it all, and coins the term the Banality of Evil to describe it. This sets off a huge controversy. Critics accuse her of minimizing the enormity of Nazi crimes, humanizing the criminal and even partially blaming the victims.
How did she go from a girl from Hanover to a philosopher/journalist in
Jerusalem? The path was not direct. This documentary covers the history of her life, both academic and personal, and her philosophy and writings.
Arendt lived through what she wrote about. Born in Hanover, Arendt was raised by her mother. She studied at the University of Marburg under philospher Martin Heidegger (her sometime lover) just before the Nazis came to power in 1933. She was kicked out of school and suddenly found herself — an ordinary German — as part of a group denounced and dehumanized by government propaganda: the refugees who had fled war and revolution across Europe. What disheartened her 
most was to see German intellectuals (including Heidegger), the very people she revered and was devoting her life to study, incorporating Nazi rhetoric into their own writing and speeches.
She fled to Paris and continued her work. There she witnessed the rise of extremism and totalitarianism across Europe. Imprisoned in a concentration camp by the French, she escaped and made it to New York, where she wrote about totalitarianism, guilt and responsibility.
This film is a historical document that uses recorded interviews – in English, French and German — to explain her ideas and the events in her 
life. It’s illustrated by newsreel footage, government propaganda as well as film from the Eichmann trial. Her writing and letters are read by off-screen actors. And both her critics and supporters — including Karl Jaspers and Judith Butler — are given airtime.
This is a rich and beautiful look at the work and life of Hannah Arendt. It also deals with the debate on her philosophy and the controversies around her coverage of the Eichmann trial. I think this films does a better job than the dramas made about her life.
Genius
Dir: Michael Grandage
Max Perkins (Colin Firth) is a top editor at Scribners and sons, a major New York publisher of fiction. He’s known for championing an unknown writer. He picks up a messy pile of paper, cuts out the unnecessary parts and rewrites it Boom – instant bestseller. Max – known for the fedora he never takes off his head — is the invisible force behind F Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. He’s the one who edited The Great Gatsby and The Sun Also Rises.
When he’s not at work he’s commuting to the outer suburbs, a bastion of Anglo privilege and conservatism with his wife Louise (Laura Linney) and their five daughters.
But suddenly something upsets the apple cart. A manuscript 
arrives, courtesy of Broadway costume designer Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman). She’s married with children but champion an unknown writer whose work has been rejected across the industry. He reads it it and is blown away. And who appears his door but Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law), a youngish man with messy hair and a brown suit with a heavy southern drawl. He shouts and performs rather than converses. As soon as they meet, the older, bookish Max and the young undisciplined Tom become fast friends and devote all their time trying to convert 1000s of messy pages a pile into a coherent readable novel. Cut, cut, cut says Max. But this is my life! 
protests Tom. The book is published to phenomenal success. And then on to the next manuscript to the chagrine of their famileis and livers But will their bromance outlast Tom’s brush with fame?
Genius is an interesting film about writing and editing. That’s what I liked about it.
(Full disclosure: when I’m not reviewing movies I’m editing books – that’s my other job.) I love editing… but is it ever exciting? The movie is filled with writers typing and scribbling, and scribbling away passages with a red pencil. But what the movie really needs is a good edit! It’s filled with tons of speechifying and grandstanding (and dare I say overacting?) Do real writers, even famous ones, talk like they write? Of course not. But in this movie they do.
It’s done as a period piece, complete with beautiful interwar cityscapes, 
period costumes and cars, and a great cast. But somehow this movie manages to be both bookish and overwrought.
Spring festival season continues with ICFF, the Italian Contemporary Film Festival and the Toronto Japanese Film Festival, and NIFF, the Niagara Integrated Film Festival. Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt opens today in Toronto, check your local listings; Genius starts next week in Toronto and Vancouver.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Off the Beaten Track. Movies Reviewed: Serena, Gemma Bovery, Corner Gas: the Movie
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Urban life getting you down? Here are three movies set in small towns. A gothic drama in the Smoky Mountains of Carolina; a comedy in a Saskatchewan town where there’s not a whole lot going on; and a comic drama in Normandy… with a literary twist.
Serena
Dir: Susanne Bier
George Pemberton (Bradley Cooper) is a lumber baron in the roaring 20s. He’s also a big-game hunter, searching for the elusive panther. He dreams of clear-cutting the smoky mountains of North Carolina, and, with the profits, expanding into the rain forests of Brazil. But he’s a good guy — you can tell because he chops his own wood and saves his workers’ lives. There would be no 
problems at all, if it weren’t for those meddling government types. They want to make it into a national park, just because of its breathtaking scenic beauty, and the rare flora and fauna living in those foggy, tree-covered mountains.
But everything changes when he spots a blonde woman at a horse show. Serena (Jennifer Lawrence) is a strong and independent woman from out west and born to the wood. Beautiful, glamorous and tough as nails, she’s as comfortable in an evening gown as she is on horseback. She can 
kill a rattler with an axe from across a field and is handy with a rifle. He proposes on the spot and makes her a full partner in his business… to the chagrin of his male colleagues. But Wall Street crashes and tough times follow. Things start to fray at the edges. There’s Galloway (Rhys Ifans) a sketchy ex-con with “the sight”: Serena once appeared in a vision so he’ll protect her to the death. And there’s talk George might have an illegitimate son in the village. And his partners are losing faith in the business. Can Serena and George find happiness in a lumber camp? Or will it drag them into a spiral of jealousy, revenge and madness?
Susanne Bier is a well-known Danish director, and Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence scored in two big hits: Silver Lining Playbook and American Hustle. Is this three for the win? Not a chance. It’s a clunky potboiler with a confusing and messy story, and extremely uneven acting. Lawrence plays it to the hilt as a deranged, screeching devil-woman, while Cooper sticks to the single-emotion style of acting. Whether it’s shock, lust, anger, or bewilderment, he just stares off into space with his mouth slightly open. Serena is not awful, it kept me watching and interested, but it’s just not very good.
Gemma Bovery
Dir: Anne Fontaine
Martin (Fabrice Luchini) is an intellectual from Paris. He moves to small-town Normandy, near Rouen, to take over his dad’s bakery. He likes kneading dough and pondering great literature. His wife is a world-weary realist, and his teenaged son prefers Call of Duty to French culture. But dad’s thoughts are still filled with the 19th century novels of Flaubert. So imagine his surprise when a young English couple that moves into the dilapidated house next door, shares the names of the characters in Madame Bovery! Down-to-earth Charles repairs furniture, while his bored wife Gemma (Gemma Atherton) decorates homes with trompe d’oeil to make them appear older. And just like Madame Bovery, she craves a more exciting 
life.
Martin, though, knows the book well and feels he can predict every thought they will have and every word they will say. Soon enough, he sees her making eyes at the town rake, handsome Hervé (Niels Schneider: J’ai tué ma mère, Les amours imaginaires) a local squire living in a nearby castle. Don’t go with him, it can only lead to ruin! Martin thinks. In his mind he sees them in period costume, dancing in the ballroom. In reality, the quaint town, including the aristocracy, is crumbling all around him. Martin tries to manipulate the local characters – using secret methods – to save them from their novelistic fates. But will it work?
The entire film is narrated, at times directly to the camera, by Martin himself. He takes us through the story, mainly to the various dinner parties, where people speak fractured English and French. He is especially incensed by a nouveau riche couple, an English/French marriage who see French culture as merely wine and Camembert.
Gemma Bovery is two movies in one. There’s Flaubert’s novel reenacted in Martin’s head, and there’s a satirical look at contemporary France. Because of the meta- aspects of the film, you don’t feel as deeply invested in the characters’ lives; you’re always a step away from what’s happening. But it more than makes up for that with its cleverness. And because it’s an Anne Fontaine movie, it carries that sensual, erotic tone she’s so good at. And the actors, especially the beautiful Gemma Atherton, are a joy to watch. I like this movie.
Corner Gas: The Movie
Dir: Brent Butt
If you’ve ever watched Canadian TV, you’re probably familiar with Dog River, Saskatchewan. It’s an uneventful prairie town known mainly for its gas station, its coffee sho
p, and its wise-cracking locals. There’s dry Brent at the gas station (Brent Butt), his dad and mum — cranky Oscar and rational Emma (Eric Peterson, Janet Wright), pretty Lacey at the coffee shop (Gabrielle Miller), and the local police. 
Then there’s the incorrigible Hank (Fred Ewanuick) and the trickster Wanda (the very hilarious Nancy Robertson).
Nothing ever happens there, right? Wrong! To turn a sitcom into a feature film, you need an epic plot. In this film the town goes bankrupt, the people run amok, and Tim Horton’s starts sniffing at the real estate. Their only hope? A Toronto contest looking for the quaintest town in Canada. Can they pull it all together in time? Not bloody likely… it’s a
comedy, folks.
Believe it or not, I only saw the TV show once. It felt too slow paced, so I couldn’t get into it. Clearly, I’m not one of its fans (who are legion). But the movie? It was surprisingly funny. There are corny parts and some gags fall flat of course, but on the whole the humour is clever, inventive, ironic… even subversive. And it does all this without any potty laughs, frat boy nudges, boobies, four-letter words, dumb blondes, racial and ethnic stereotypes or fat jokes. Not a small accomplishment.
So if you’re looking for Canadian humour, here it is, and then some.
Gemma Bovery and Serena both open today in Toronto. Check your local listings. And Corner Gas: the Movie is playing now through the weekend. Also in Toronto, look out for the MUFF society — specializing in girl-tastic pics for women — kicks off their monthly series with Spice World (yes, I do mean that Spice Girl movie) only at the Royal. And First to Fall – a documentary about two students in Canada who volunteered to fight with the rebels in Libya — is finally screening in Toronto, tonight at the Jayu Human Rights Film Festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. I interviewed the directors last summer.
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 Jason Kieffer about his new comic ZANTA: THE LIVING LEGEND
Hi, this is Daniel Garber for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Unless you arrived in Toronto very recently, you’ve probably encountered the once ubiquitous character who walks shirtless down Yonge street, flexing his muscles and wearing a Santa Claus hat. He’s a reality show 
waiting to happen.
I’m talking, of course about Zanta, Toronto’s legendary street performer, all-around shock-disturber and general maniac. But, for some reason, Zanta was “banned” from downtown Toronto, and thrown into jail just for performing his act.
Toronto cartoonist and illustrator Jason Kieffer (above, left) probes this fascinating story in a new comic book ZANTA: THE LIVING LEGEND. In his first radio interview, he talks about Zanta’s history, the illegal arrests he suffered, and Kieffer’s own views on comics, art, civil rights, and the unusual characters that make a city great.
May 17, 2012 Inside Out and Upside Down. Movies Reviewed: The Dictator, The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche, Bullhead PLUS CFC Short Film Fest
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies, for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, genre and mainstream movies, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
The Festivals continue in Toronto, and coming on June 5th is the CFC Short Film Festival, which proves once and for all, it’s not the size (of movies) it’s the motion. Or something like that… You know all those Oscars for sort films , but never get a chance to see them? Well these are the ones that might be nominated for next year’s awards. There are movies featuring celebs like Michael Fassbender, David Duchovny, Charlotte Rampling and Anna Paquin. In short films! And they’re all grouped in categories like “Homeland Security”, “Indie Comedy Showcase”, and “The Night Shift” – which will be showing at late hours, soft of a Midnight Madness Mini-me… It all sponsored by the Canadian Film Centre, and it starts on June 5th
And NXNE, where music conquers all – and that includes their movies – is coming on June 11th. But right now, starting last night, it’s time for the friendly and fascinating LGBT Film Festival, Toronto’s own Inside Out. And if you think its all rainbow ring necklaces and coming-out stories, well, you’re wrong. It’s a very diverse, multi-genre collection of movies, some of which push the limits of the conventional. There are movies from Canada, and around the world: Scandinavia, the US, even Vietnam. Comedies, dramas, romance, documentaries, and lots of sex, of course. Something to satisfy every sexuality and interest. I’m talking about a couple movies today, a Belgian one about cows, and a Canadian one about white oak trees…! But first, a new comedy, you may have heard about.
The Dictator
Dir: Larry Charles
Aladeen (Sacha Baron Cohen) is the military dictator of a North African kingdom. He’s cruel and unpredictable, quietly sentencing to death anyone who disagrees with him. Like Saddam Hussein he has a series of identical doubles to take the bullets from any assassin out to get him, and a Gaddafi- style band of beautiful women soldiers to protect him. He’s a world pariah, and like Kim Jong-il is set to test-launch a nuclear WMD. But what he doesn’t know is that his trusted Tamir (Ben Kingsley) is the one trying to depose him and make his homeland a pseudo-democracy controlled by big oil.
So, on a trip to NYC to speak before the UN, he is kidnapped by a racist American torturer, until he manages to escape… but without his trademark beard and clothing he is just another man. So in a bid to seize back his country at a UN meeting, he falls in with a hippy named Zoey (Anna Faris) who works in an organic food co-op.
OK, this is a new type of movie for Sacha Baron Cohen – different from Borat and Bruno. Instead of getting its laughs in fake documentaries by forcing unsuspecting ordinary people into embarrassing encounters with an invented character, this one has a script by a four-person writing team, music, other actors, old-school film plots and special effects. Presumably it’s because too many people recognize him to trick anyone. So he’s abandoned his revolutionary style of youtube filmmaking for an ordinary comedy. But does it work? I have to admit, at times, flashbacks of those 
awful, fish-out-of-water comedies with Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler at their worst popped into my mind… but it was better than those, because he’s a good actor, and funnier, wittier, and, even now, more subversive with his parodies of both the rabid right and the flaky left. He stays with the simultaneously self-centred — but somehow self-deprecating — nature of his over-the-top characters. Comic actress Anna Faris was great as his “straight-man” foil.
And, except for a few painfully awful sequences, I thought it was funny. It kept me laughing – or at least smiling — for most of the movie.
The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche
Dir: Maya Gallus
Jalna, a book about a rich family won the Atlantic prize for best novel in the 20s, propelling its unknown author to international fame and fortune and dozens of bestsellers about this patrician, horsey collection of matriarchs and patriarchs, grandmothers, lovers and cruel siblings, a sort of an on-going saga at the Whiteoaks mansion. But what’s interesting about it is the hidden life of the Canadian author Mazo de la Roche.
Mazo de la Roche (born, in Newmarket as the decidedly unglamorous Masie Roach) created a persona for herself woven with false stories and mythical status. And even more interesting was her “Boston Marriage” to a woman, Caroline Clement, her adopted sister. Together they adopted two children and ran a novelistic empire. In an era when homosexuality was both illegal, and taboo, her lesbian readers saw her disguised subtexts of relationships and exalted in her hidden codes.
Her story is told half as a conventional documentary with talking heads, and half as a theatrical, dramatic reading of Mazo and Caroline’s life, played by two actors.
The movie brings in her descendents, old photos, and great Canadian novelists like 
Marie-Claire Blais and Susan Swan to comment on the influence these largely forgotten novels had on her readers.
This is a good, entertaining NFB documentary, and it’s made by a great director, Maya Gallus, who does amazing documentaries about women that always grab you – like last year’s Dish: Women, Waitressing & the Art of Service.
Bullhead (Rundskop)
Dir: Michael R. Roskam
Jackie (Mattias Schoenaerts) is a Flemish cattle farmer in Belgium. He’s big and built, partly from heavy work, and partly from his steroid injections. He’s generally brooding but gentle, but on occasion loses it, in a rush of roid-rage. Like cows, like people. To speed up the growth rate of his cattle, he gets involved in the illegal purchase of growth hormones.
Flashback to two decades earlier, we watch him and his best friend Diederik, spotting a pretty girl on a French-speaking Walloon farm. Jackie keeps wanting to go back so he can talk to her again, and Diederik tags along. But on one of those visits he’s caught by a crazed bully, her big brother, who brutally attacks little Jackie… smashing his balls with a huge rock. I kid you not. Diderik doesn’t come to his defense and then is prevented from testifying against the bully who permanently injured his best friend.
Now, back in the present, Jackie is still taking the testosterone that let him 
grow to manhood, and he and Diederik are working together again, buying steroids. And Jackie is trying to talk one more time to the girl from that fatal day, who now works in a perfume shop in the French part of Belgium. And Diederik, meanwhile, has a bro-crush on his ball-less boyhood buddy, even as the police are looking for people to blame for a shooting, perhaps tied to the hormone trafficking.
This is a great movie, if a long one. It’s one of those slow-build dramas, where for the frst half you barely know what’s going on, but by the second hour it becomes gripping, filled with tension – sexual courtship, criminals vs cops, gay and straight, Male Female, French and Dutch, all in a hugely 
complicated but moving drama. Bullhead was the Belgian entry for Academy award for Best Foreign Language Picture, and it’s having its Toronto debut at Inside Out.
The Dictator just opened, check your local listings, and Bullhead, The Mystery of Mazo de la Roche, She Said Boom and many more great movies are playing at the Inside Out Festival: go to insideout.ca for more info.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my web site CulturalMining.com.
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