Richard sits in with Marcia MacMillan to have a look at the weekend’s new movies, the Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” the coming-of-age story “Edge of Seventeen,” Miles Teller as real life boxer Vinny Paz in “Bleed for This” and “Nocturnal Animals” with Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal.
Watch the whole thing HERE!
Richard will host a special afternoon with Oscar winning Brokeback Mountain composer Gustavo Santaolalla at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on February 9, 2014.
From TIFF.net: The Grammy-winning singer, guitarist and composer joins us during the world premiere of the dance musical Arrabal (running Feb 4 to April 20 at Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre) for a special screening of Ang Lee’s Academy Award-winning drama, for which he received an Oscar for Best Original Score.
More info HERE!
I have a feeling that “Life of Pi’s” success as a novel—it sold 7 million copies and won the Man Booked Prize—lay in its ability to be all things to all people. Readers projected their own interpretations on the story of a boy set adrift in a small boat with only a tiger for a companion. Some saw a touching coming-of-age story, others an adventure tale, while other saw it as a spiritual allegory à la Saint Bette of Midler’s “God is watching us… From a distance,” scripture.
The movie, from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” director Ang Lee, brings all those themes to vivid life in a film that adheres to the book but is completely cinematic.
Based on Yann Martel’s popular 2001 novel, Suraj Sharma stars as Piscine Molitor “Pi” Patel, a sixteen year-old boy orphaned literally set adrift after the freighter his family was taking from India to a new life in Canada, sinks. He escapes in a lifeboat with a several wild animals, refugees from Pi’s family zoo–an orangutan, hyena, a wounded zebra and a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Using ingenuity, plus his instincts for survival and spirituality, he keeps the tiger tame until his destiny becomes clear.
“Life of Pi” is a risky movie that doesn’t take many big chances. Bringing this metaphorical and introspective story to the screen was a challenging and risky venture in itself, but in its execution Lee leans on old-fashioned storytelling. Two thirds of the movie involves man and beast, alone at sea and while there is considerable use of computer generated images–the computer generated tiger is completely believable, and beautifully done—the focus is always kept on the Pi’s journey from inquisitive kid to self-reliant survivor.
It’s during this long section that Lee’s hand is most evident, particularly in a few tense moments when the main character and the tiger try to forge an uneasy truce. The unusual story is complimented by many startlingly beautiful images, like a full moon illuminating a sea brimming with jellyfish, turning them into incandescent underwater lanterns or an island overflowing with meerkats.
The segments that book end the film, however, are less successful. The set-up involves a writer (Rafe Spall) discussing the wild story with a middle-aged Pi (Irrfan Khan). It’s an old-hat way of providing context, and while Khan’s performance is terrific, the exposition that drives these scenes is of the “so what happened next” variety.
Like the main character “Life of Pi” drifts off course from time to time, but despite some ill advised magic realism and some repetition, Lee steers the story into safe, comforting waters.
Director Ang Lee is a restless spirit. His twelve films have seen him change genres faster than most of us change our underwear. His past films include a big budget comic book adaptation, a Chinese martial arts epic, a Civil War drama, an Academy Award winning period piece, and, of course, the gay cowboy movie. He’s on the move again for his new film, Lust, Caution, this time to 1940s Shanghai.
Based on a short story by Eileen Chang, Lust, Caution is a sprawling espionage thriller set in WWII-era Shanghai. A young freedom fighter, Wang Jiazhi (Tang Wei), places herself in harm’s way to infiltrate the life of a powerful political figure, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). Their relationship becomes complicated when her hatred leads to a twisted kind of respect, and perhaps even love.
Lust, Caution is a beautifully made, ambitious film, but doesn’t have quite enough interesting story to warrant its two-and-a-half-hour running time. Lee takes his time setting up the story, slowly drawing the viewer into a world of political intrigue. He carefully sets the stage, using film language borrowed from the great political thrillers of the 1940s and lighting leading lady Tang Wei as though she was a femme fatale from a film noir.
For my money he’s too cautious with the set up. The first hour, while beautiful looking, is unfocussed and rambling. The essence of the story is quite simple, and in some ways bears a striking similarity to the Paul Verhoeven film Black Book from earlier this year. We have a politically aware young woman who uses her feminine charms to woo a highly placed enemy. She hates him enough to want him dead, and yet is entranced by him. The emotion is complicated, but the story isn’t.
It should also be mentioned that Lee has not shied away from the sexual nature of the unusual couple’s relationship. The sex scenes can only be described as just this side of hard-core, and certainly contains more S&M than you usually get from Academy Award winning directors.
Lust, Caution has its moments—the brutal stabbing of a suspected spy, some beautifully directed scenes of the women passing the time by playing mah jong—and some charismatic performances from its leads, but is too diluted to be truly effective or moving.
Just in time for the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock festival comes a movie that outlines how a music and arts fair named for one small upstate New York town ended up in a completely different location. Taking Woodstock, from Brokeback Mountain director Ang Lee, is based on the much disputed memoir of Elliot Tiber, a young Catskills motel manager. In it he tells of how an article in the newspaper and a carton of the “best chocolate milk in New York” helped find the history-making festival a home.
When we first meet Elliot (Demetri Martin) he’s a closeted gay man closing his decorating business in Greenwich Village to return to his humble roots as the part-time manager of his parent’s seedy Catskills motel. He has big plans for the place—renaming it a resort is just the first step—but business has been bad and they are on the verge of defaulting on their mortgage. After reading an article about a music festival’s location woes he senses an opportunity to lease out some of his own land and maybe rent a few rooms. Turns out his land is too swampy but dairy farmer Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) steps in and suddenly the festival has a home and Elliot’s run down motel becomes the headquarters of what would become the biggest concert of the 1960s.
In Taking Woodstock Ang Lee had the chance to make a large scale film about a pivotal cultural event, but for better and for worse, has instead focused on Elliot’s personal journey. The story has many possibilities—it could have explored the small town attitude toward the hippie kids who invaded the Catskills (“Meshugana, barefoot, hairy people” says Elliot’s mom) or the racism encountered by Elliot and his Jewish immigrant family or the logistics of building a concert arena in a farmer’s field or Elliot’s traditional family’s feelings about his homosexuality. Lee touches on all these subjects, but only lightly grazes them. In their place we get a mildly interesting coming-of-age story with some good laughs, some dubious history and a feel-good vibe.
The film’s central theme, that Woodstock’s peace and love aura had a transformative effect on everyone present that weekend, is quite sweet, if a little naïve. Lee piles it on thick, and perhaps errs on the side of sentimentality a bit too often to allow the film to taken as anything other than a look back through rose colored glasses at an event that makes boomers nostalgic.
Another sticking point is the music, or rather the lack thereof. We only ever see the Woodstock stage from a distance—the bands look and sound, as one high character says, “like ants making thunder”—and the rest of the soundtrack is a random (and uninspired) collection of boomer faves from the late Sixties.
Having said all that, Taking Woodstock is enjoyable enough, although a tad long at two hours (a long, trippy acid sequence could easily have been shortened or clipped altogether). Lee has meticulously recreated the era, effectively mimics the concert movie’s split screen and has drawn solid performances from his cast (it must be hard to pull off the script’s large amount of “far outs” and “groovys” with a straight face), but I wish the movie actually stood for something. The Sixties were all about standing up and being heard, but Taking Woodstock is content to speak in a whisper.
