Toronto - What would 3 hitmen do in Bruges, Belgium? Why, they hit - on each other; literally. There’s a lot of (Roman) manly love going on in this fine drama. You get to see the sympathetic sides of each and every tough street personalities. Granted, I think the heroics near the end were a little bit unrealistic, but dammit we need some love in this world and I don’t protest soft spots.

You start out with 2 mob muscles running away after a hit had gone wrong. Of all places, they went to Flemish Bruges. At many early points the film is part BBC, part drama, and 99% Tourism-Bruges sponsored. It IS a UNESCO World Heritage Site, after all. Beneath all the churches, beautiful canals, the famous Belfry, our pair of lackluster goons are swimming in their own guilt. » Read the rest of the entry..

Toronto - Honestly, I don’t know why thrillers aren’t made logically anymore. I just finished watching Funny Games and Butterfly on a Wheel. Let me just say this up front before you start to think I’m recommending something - maybe Butterfly, but not Funny Games.

In case you don’t want to imdb these films, they both deal with hostage situations, where the protagonists (family) is held at gun point to the whim of some lunatics. In Funny Games, a family in a Martha Vineyard type summer house gets oppressed by a pair of polite psychopaths. They are forced to play torturous “games” which are designed to break them down to mindless puppets. In Butterfly, a couple is blackmailed into following instructions from their daughter’s kidnapper. Btw, Funny Games is a remake of the 90s German film by the same name. Very original.
» Read the rest of the entry..

Toronto - Well. What can I say? I was asked to shoot assets that people display in the annual Toronto Caribana parade. Now that I have, I will state that approximately 50% of the population has them, some of whom should not be terribly quick to expose the public to their collection. But I digress.

This year’s Caribana parade, I felt, was beset by Murphy’s Law. » Read the rest of the entry..

Toronto - Jennifer Connelly really shouldn’t do this to herself (and consequently her fans) anymore. Look at the imdb listing of recent offerings from her. Requiem for a Dream, House of Sand and Fog, Little Children, and now Reservation Road. Seriously. Just reading that list made me manically depressed. What, A Beautiful Mind broke that line, but it’s also not entirely happy. Blood Diamond? She was barely a figment of imagination under Archer’s skin. Granted, she was good in each of those films, even discounting nudity and other insane stunts. But there wasn’t one movie where her characters and their cohort aren’t suffering 2hr-long accelerated downward-spirals-with-occasional-derailment to hell. So. Reservation Road certainly wasn’t going to break that tradition.

As soon as the movie starts you can see it’s not going to end well. Two families are portrayed in their prime, and of course the screenplay wouldn’t work in the traditional sense if their paths do not cross. Little Josh gets to play road kill and the lawyer who will handle this exact case decides to perform a hit-and-run. The rest of the film has the father of the boy seek revenge on the lawyer. I thought the most powerful part about the movie was the obsession a wrongful death can grip normal, even excellent characters. Even as calm as the college professor can be in a debate over policies and morality, Ethan still cannot out-run vengeance. But then contrast his reaction to Grace, who came across for me at least to be very cold and unforgiving, you see the other extreme.

I’m still not totally convinced that denial was a solution and I think the screenplay could have been more lenient on Grace to express her grief other than those small bursts of utter devastation. Which is also what I didn’t like about this film. Yes. A sense of total sadness is a powerful thing. But when you require the audience to take that too frequently, they get uncomfortable and really, denial sets in so that we mentally remove the association and even sympathy with the characters. In this case, I prefer the slow creepy demise of House of Sand and Fog and Requiem over the overnight transformation of Reservation Road. Of course, there’s also guilt from the lawyer Dwight. But I felt that was like background decoration to the grief. Sure you want to feel sorry for him, but you also want to see a bullet through his head.

Verdict? JC wasn’t baring twins. But this is still something you want to see if you need to come down from a sugar high.

Toronto - I thought the movie was as weak as this playmobil set made Hellboy look…

Just kidding. The Golden Army turned out to be quite fun. The opening story background with John Hurt as Professor Broom added warmth immediately - reminding us that Hellboy isn’t just some captured animal in a steroid-abuse K9 unit - he has a heart and his is a sad life punctuated by frequent superhuman bouts. And the action is what you were looking for when you paid your admission. In that department this film certainly does not disappoint. All you have to do is to watch the Forest God battle and you’ll be hooked to the sweet animation and graphics. Even when the story is resting at development stages, whether in NYC’s sewers where the elves hide (Galadriel would be pissed…), or back at the paranormal research headquarters, there are tonnes of fist fights, gun battle, vaporous remote control, anonymous devilish creatures killing their human handlers, etc, etc. Comedy is mixed into the fights so HB doesn’t come across a blood-thirsty loose cannon. Messages that coincides with current political climate of saving the earth doesn’t really hurt, either.

I can keep describing the fight scenes where Prince Nuada slaughtered everything in his path with awesome ninjitsu skillz like what you had hoped Yoda would do every time you see him pull out that little green rod, but words can’t do justice. Oh and then the troll market… it’s like Diagon Alley on acid. All very fun and dandy that it almost felt inconsequential - that was the feeling I had - they had gone through the whole 9-yards to create this very organic and vivid setting only to have HB & Co. walk through it like a bad adventure game with non-interactive background where one would mouse-scan for points of interests. A bit of a waste if you ask me. The film did have good moments - like when Hellboy and Abe Sapien sang Can’t smile without you - just like normal guys would. Like I said before, Del Toro did a good job with this movie not only because of freaky character creations like those in Pan’s Labyrinth. It’s because he reminded the audience what Hellboy really is - a human incarnate. And that’s what set this movie above the others. I liked the film, as you can see, but I don’t know where to put it… it’s doesn’t have the simple charm of Pan’s Labyrinth, but it does outdo itself as a blockbuster action flick.

And I kept thinking Wink would be un-spike-roller-mushed after the credits…

Toronto - Yeah, it is a bit shallow of me to review the fringe fest after seeing only two shows. But if you’re from Edmonton, you know that most people who goes to the fringe there don’t even move past the fire breather/juggler, candy floss and carved candles. Street fringe is fun, but there are only so many tricks you can stomach before deciding to keep your $5. So this year I watched the plays. Apparently the Toronto fringe doesn’t even have a street-side to it - so all the more convenient. I went to see Sherlock Holmes & the First English Gentleman, and The Movies (abridged) - first at the Robert Gill theater (hidden in UT’s student center), the other at Theatre Passe Muraille.

Sherlock Holmes has always played the 2nd fiddle to Arsene Lupin for me. He’s never as much fun, charming, or daring, and he always took to himself for information. That is, much of the clues you’d expect to find while reading the cases will not be there, because Sir Doyle didn’t want his hero surpassed. This is a tradition followed strictly in this fringe play. As the story progressed from the initial museum robbery in Paris to diamond theft, next to the British Museum fighting with their own naturalist on a immitation homo ancestralis (erectus, habilis, ergaster, whatever it was). Although it never seemed dull (there was even a point where all 3 actors broke out in full song and dance a la Broadway or too-much-sugar), you really need to take the story in hand and analyze it as you go along, otherwise the jokes and developments become orphaned. Although this were not one of the shows where they posted stars after, I’d say it’s solid entertainment.

The Movies abridged, however, WAS one of those with stars as if Tweety had hit it with a 100lb ACME mallet. This was an non-stop comedy, kind of like the one I watched at the Fringe in Edmonton, a Marx Brothers imitation. The backdrop was that of a Blockbuster clerk who needed to undergo a re-education of all movie genres in order to get his promotion. In the process, the trio of actors makes fun of an array of movies. Elan Farbriarz and Josh Levine handled much of the physical comedy, while the bald-english-sounding-dude (okok Rob Gee) handled the voice. Don’t be disappointed if your favorite movies are not mentioned or parodied - that’s not the point here - the play’s a commentary on the state of North American film industry and how its success has ironically destroyed its roots. Nothing really new to those of you who’s reading this blog anyways… but you really want to listen to the long poem-reading by Rob about horror movies and everything else that is much more horrifying. It’s a thousand words long and his syllables were as solid as Japanese. There’s a reason this was starred - ’tis good.

Btw, whatever happened to “The Adventures of”?