HOCUS FOCUS:
TIFF 2002 is over but our bitching is not
I wasn't there to witness it, but Roger Ebert's alleged hissyfit outside the press & industry screening of Far From Heaven for being denied access to the full-capacity venue was the conversational icebreaker of preference for the last half of this year's Toronto International Film Festival. Jolly Roger once bawled out a female usher friend of mine for the presence of "too much treble" in a film's soundtrack, so I'm inclined to believe the broken-telephone version of the Far From Heaven incident. (Ebert's account in the Chicago Sun-Times reads suspiciously like one of Homer Simpson's pleasant morning-after recollections.) But I will say that Roger's subsequent crusade against the inextricable linking of press and industry for non-public screenings holds merit, even if it's ingrained. Industry players are notorious for "sampling:" taking up a spot that could be used by a journalist, then jumping ship fifteen minutes in--by which point nobody is allowed in to replace them, anyway.
What's Roger Ebert doing seeing Far From Heaven at the TIFF, though? The damn thing is guaranteed a general release and it's going to preview like mad before then, regardless. He should be concentrating on finding product that could truly benefit from his upturned thumb post-Festival; instead, he does what your prickiest friend would and limits his attendance to the films with hype just so he can say he saw them before you.
Perhaps I'm the pot calling the kettle black; most of what I've reviewed from TIFF 2002 will open nationally. For me, it's a combination of refusing to screen anything in the morning to avoid a horrendous rush-hour commute, wanting to see that which a glut of DVDs may delay me from seeing when it finally comes out, and being a die-hard auteurist. Thus, choosing Ken Park, for example, was a no-brainer: it screened at 2pm on the Wednesday afternoon, is all but guaranteed a very short theatrical lifespan, and was co-directed by one of my faves, Larry Clark.
Clark could be spotted outside that P&I showing, looking very un-Larry in a dapper sports coat with a cell phone affixed to his ear. Other celebrities sighted, for posterity: Robert Duvall; Molly Parker; Stephen Baldwin; Martin Short (dressed as his TV alter ego, Jiminy Glick); Ralph Fiennes; Ararat's Mr. Serious David Alpay; and Ivan Reitman. Old marrieds Atom Egoyan and Arsinée Khanjian were in attendance at Ken Park, sitting one row apart--maybe that way, if you find one you can't harass the other.
Egoyan needed to see Ken Park, in my humble opinion: his Ararat treats the Armenian Genocide so antiseptically you wonder if he's lost all touch with his anger. It's a resounding failure, limp and without resonance or visceral impact. I've already received hate mail for my Standing in the Shadows of Motown capsule, a picture that chides us for overlooking The Funk Brothers (the studio musicians on many a Motown favourite) only to treat them like wallpaper by placing such current musicians as Joan Osborne front and centre in new performances of hit singles, but I will say that I'd watch it ahead of Ararat again. While Standing in the Shadows of Motown is utterly disposable, Ararat's intellectual posturing does its ostensible subject matter a huge disservice.
You can read my remaining capsules here. The only film I saw but elected not to review is Black and White, mainly because my screening was ruined at critical junctures by milling about in the next theatre. The Cumberland's sweatboxes are as sound-proof as tissue paper, and unfortunately, while our doors--the entranceways to cinema 4--were closed, cinema 3's were wide open as the audience applauded the genius of whatever was unspooling inside. All the same, Black and White was among the least ambitious movies I ventured into last week, hardly poised to make a splash. Too, it wastes both Robert Carlyle and Kerry Fox in roles that, despite having a basis in reality, were no doubt more closely modelled after Perry Mason and Della Street, respectively.
roundtable
Pronunciation: 'raun(d)-"tA-b&l
Function: noun Date: 14th century
1 a : capitalized R&T : the large circular table of King Arthur and his knights b : the knights of King Arthur
2 a free-for-all in which self-absorbed journalists flog a seated luminary with questions without due consideration for their peers
Neither can I be bothered to conjure up a piece on the Auto Focus roundtable. Film Freak Central has up to this point enjoyed the privilege of conducting its interviews one on one without much interference from publicists; I'm afraid it's going to have to stay that way from now on, cost be damned--for better or worse, this site always has delivered unique coverage and always will. Junket situations are for the birds, besides: I was plopped down at one of three tables with four other members of the Canadian press, a couple of whom I read regularly (NOW Magazine's best writer Cameron Bailey was seated across from me). Paul Schrader, Willem Dafoe, and Greg Kinnear were brought in to do twenty minutes individually with each group.
The reporter with the most aggressive personality ends up asking the highest number of questions and vice versa; queries are not posted in an orderly fashion. Schrader, bless him, recognized that I was drowning in this scenario and interrupted my verbose colleague Chris in order to give me a turn. Caught off guard, I blurted out, "Why did you choose to pixellate one of the sex scenes instead of excising it?" I don't even remember what he said in response--I can't bear to listen to the tape. (Later I asked him if Bob Crane was killed with a tripod in real-life or if Schrader was just paying homage to Michael Powell. (The former.)) Dafoe, thrown by a Speed 2 question from Bailey, was utterly charming, though I didn't get a word in edgewise when he was up at bat; I inquired of Kinnear, "Did anyone try to discourage you from playing Bob Crane?" (Don't recall his reply, either.) As with Schrader and Dafoe, Kinnear's sit-down failed to follow a particular line of questioning, and I have to wonder what purpose grabbing a soundbite or two and leaving serves. Granted, not every publication has the editorial leeway that we do, nor loves movies this big. Thanks for facilitating that love once more around, Gabrielle and co..-Bill Chambers
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