I read this book, Cairo, at work the other day. It’s a comic about a few young people doing stuff in contemporary Cairo. There’s a djinn and an accidental Israeli spy, travels to the Under-Nile, a hookah, gangsters, you know. Not bad, though I wouldn’t actually buy it. It killed a break pretty well. My favourite aspect was the under-river because it reminded me of My Winnipeg’s under-Forks.

This end-of-year list was initially conceived back in January of 2009 as a rough guide to my favourites from the previous year. It has since been revised to include most of the titles I didn’t manage to get to until later on, so while it seems rather late in coming for those who’ve been following the blog, I assure you it’s worth it! While many opinions on the filmic crop of 2008 have already been divulged on these pages, I still find it rather exciting to lay them all out and come up with some kind of order. Some of you will notice that I won’t yet be mentioning the five (or so) honourable mentions; that info will be saved until the latter part of the list, just so as to keep things interesting. I hope you enjoy reading through it as much as I enjoyed creating it, and be sure to look out not only for the second part of this list but also the 2009 edition which should be posted around January/February of next year.

20. Man on Wire | James Marsh

The first thing we are greeted with when embarking on James Marsh’s Oscar-nominated documentary Man on Wire is the enthusiasm of its subject, French wire-walker Philippe Petit. His broken English, wild hand gestures and frequently-disappearing eyebrows are somewhat infectious, and it is this wonderful personality that raises Man on Wire from a documentary about a single passion to… [MORE]

19. The Chaser | Na Hong-jin

Based on a true story, the recent Korean box office smash Chugyeogja or The Chaser has caused quite a stir since debuting at the Berlin film festival back in February of last year. It took a while but the film finally made its European release in September and has already been picked up by Warner Bros. for a 2010 remake that will involve Leonardo DiCaprio and The Departed writer William Monahan… [MORE]

18. Waltz with Bashir | Ari Folman

As with James Marsh’s Man on Wire, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is an interesting and unique take on the documentary genre that positively shook critics’ circles upon release, scooping a truckload of awards and an Oscar nomination to boot. Man on Wire plays with the  genre to create something that could only be described as a heist-documentary film, whereas Waltz with Bashir refines it through… [MORE]

17. Lake Tahoe | Fernando Eimbcke

A father dies, a mother mourns. A son wanders the streets. This is not Lake Tahoe, but the Yucatán, Mexico – specifically a tranquil little peninsula town defined by its expansive pale blue horizons, crumbling architecture, weed-infested streets and curious, somewhat over-friendly locals. It is an unfortunate telegraph post just outside this small town of Chicxulub that our young protagonist, Juan, the Son… [MORE]

16. Snow Angels | David Gordon Green

David Gordon Green’s overlooked and under-celebrated fourth full-length feature Snow Angels is a film about adults lost – lost in love upon a landscape buried under never-ceasing snowfall. It is a tale as bleak as this pure white landscape; purity that violently contradicts the lives of our two central characters Annie and Glenn. Divorcees with a child in tow, their relationship has run aground upon rocky… [MORE]

15. My Winnipeg | Guy Maddin

“Winnipeg. Winnipeg, Winnipeg. Snowy, sleepwalking Winnipeg…” So begins Guy Maddin’s ninth feature film and quaint tribute to his home town of Winnipeg, Manitoba. My Winnipeg is by far the most personal of Maddin’s work to date, lacking the abstract blurriness of Brand Upon the Brain but excelling thanks to a certain breed of self-analysis that the director has long-since perfected. Indeed if… [MORE]

14. In Bruges | Martin McDonagh

It is a rare occurrence when a modern playwright turns his hand to film directing, and rarer still when said candidate has not yet escaped his thirties. British-born Martin McDonagh is rather an emphatic exception to this notion it would seem. After scripting numerous acclaimed theatrical and radio plays (and being nominated for a Tony Award on four separate occasions), the playwright shifted his gaze to film… [MORE]

13. The Fall | Tarsem Singh

Tarsem Singh’s The Fall is one of those filmic curiosities that come along every so often and at the same time not often enough. An elaborate project that has been years in the making, it has struggled to find investment and, subsequently, an audience to which it could be marketed to, before becoming stuck in a seemingly never-ending run of festival screenings. Since its conception almost half a… [MORE]

12. WALL·E | Andrew Stanton

In this day and age where theatrical releases are commonly referred to as ‘international events’, it baffles me that the staggered release is still so widely implemented. Pixar, just like their parent company Disney have always made their money in the hot summer months. A time when kids are experiencing a waning need to be entertained, and their parents are looking for the perfect way to fulfil… [MORE]

11. Let the Right One In | Tomas Alfredson

It’s a shame that the expression ‘knocked for six’ is largely unknown outside England and Australia, for it describes rather well the feet-swept feeling one may experience with a well-made thriller every so often. “Stunned, shocked, astounded or overwhelmed” are some of the synonyms offered for this cricket-oriented idiom, which is exactly how I felt after sitting through the Swedish vampire flick… [MORE]

The second part of this list can be found here >>>

The Dark Knight

There is a point where the few lingering opinions in any opposition must be swept aside in order to establish facts. With “The Dark Knight,” Christoper Nolan crafted that rare gem of a film that’s greatness is mutually agreed upon by critics and casual filmgoers alike. “The Dark Knight” is a truly masterful film, and that’s a fact.

Wendy and Lucy

This heartwarming story about a woman’s search for her lost dog brings some minimalist flavor to the big movie-centric 2008. “Wendy and Lucy” follows the less is more school of thought, but manages to deliver such a poignant look at the current economic struggle that it’s hard to dismiss.

Snow Angels

David Gordon Greene is one of the few young directors whose substance matches his style. Greene’s films are always populated with rich, down home types of characters that deliver their lines with such a human gracelessness that it’s hard to tell whether what you’re watching is a movie or some episode out of someone’s life.

Rachel Getting Married

In my family, there is always some sort of feud going on. People are constantly taking sides against each other and favoritism runs amuck in the hierarchy of family life. Problems just don’t go away because everyone  is together. In fact, they’re exacerbated. “Rachel Getting Married” brings this glaring reality to the surface and delivers a real family film that makes the darkness of “Little Miss Sunshine” look like sunshine and roses.

Hunger

It’s a difficult thing watching a man fall apart. The message of “Hunger” does not reside in politics, but in the visualization of a man starving himself to death. Actor Michael Fassbender went on a medically monitored crash diet (blows away Christian Bale’s famed weight loss for “The Machinist) in order to give this role the gruesome accuracy present in the final product. The result is a very affecting image that undoubtedly makes this a must see.

The Wrestler

Aronofsky’s “Wrestler” is like bottled nostalgia. I spent so much of my childhood completely absorbed by the world of professional wrestling that it’s hard not to feel a connection for this movie. Aside from that, Aronofsky shows us a world after the fame, a world filled with battered old men. Mickey Rourke plays one of these men and delivers a perfomance that is so touching it moved me to tears. Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Rourke) is like every kid’s hero, eventually they must grow old and fade away.

My Winnipeg

Hometowns have an endearing quality that almost makes them judgement-proof. There are too many memories and too much lingering nostalgia for hometowns to be analyzed with anything but a kind eye. Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg” is an ode to this feeling and a celebration to all of us who planted our roots firmly in one place.

In Bruges

“In Bruges” is caught in a constant struggle of what it wants to be. It wafts back and forth between an extremely dark (damn near pitchblack) comedy and an intense, contemplative drama; however, this never onced hindered my enjoyment of “Bruges.” Collin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson’s reparte in the movie is incredibly entertaining and both deliver the performance of their respective careers. “Bruges” manages to simultaneously deliver one of the funniest and darkest movies of 2008.

Let the Right One In

Tomas Alfredson’s “Let the Right One In” is best described as the antithesis to 2008’s other vampire film, “Twilight.” There’s certainly a story about teenagers and growing up to be found here but “Let the Right One In” never forgets that this is also a story about vampires. Vampires feed off of people, it’s a fact of nature, or rather, supernature. Twilight forgot this simple fact (among other things). “Let the Right One In” is a horrifying teenage romance that doesn’t skimp on the gore and is easily the best movie about vampiric lore ever made.

Wall-E

“Wall-E” strives for many things, and in typical Pixar fashion, achieves all of them. “Wall-E” is a cautionary tale about the dangers of consumerism, an effective romance, and a damn decent science fiction movie all wrapped into one. Pixar has crafted a brilliant film that’s as much a technical marvel as it is a landmark in storytelling for the production company. Also, the film’s usage of “It Only Takes a Moment” from 1969’s “Hello Dolly!” is by far the greatest song usage to come out of 2008. Once again, Pixar has brought the world together in a collective “wow” at the brilliance of their work.

I worked Info/Ref on Saturday and it was pretty fun. They get a bit more variety in what people ask for. Well, not variety in form I guess, but somehow it feels a bit more satisfying dealing with their questions. Or maybe I just like doing something different.

One guy I helped was looking first for Old English lettering and then once we found a good typography book he wanted to know where the books on snakes were. He was so planning a tattoo.

And there was a lady who almost got mad at me when a book that the computer said was checked in wasn’t. She was an older woman looking for information on Rheumatoid Arthritis and Plantar Fasciitis and had called about those topics earlier. She seemed a little confused when I asked her if someone had put a book aside for her, saying “Oh yes that’s very nice.” It quickly was determined that no one had. We quickly found the arthritis books but the lone book in Horizon that mentioned plantar fasciitis wasn’t on the shelf. This was when she got annoyed so I asked her to wait while I looked for something else. Eventually I found books on pain relief that had nothing specific to PF but more importantly I grabbed some podiatry books which did. And the rejoicing deafened all those around us. Or not.

And I got to work in the Local History Room for an hour. I didn’t have to answer any questions and spent my time reading My Winnipeg since they didn’t have any tasks for me to do. It was a nice time. Very quiet.

Yesterday back at Special Services, I met one of our Print Handicapped patrons and helped her get some audio books. She’s a British lady, probably in her 80s, who gets jokes. She and Bruce traded banter slowly. She just takes a moment to hear and it almost feels like she’s translating what people say before she responds with a pretty sharp, sort of random kind of joke back. Very neat. We found her some Margaret Atwood books (because she feels she’s finally ready to try reading her after so many years hearing her name) and a biography of “a man whose name I don’t want to say too loudly – Pierre Elliott Trudeau.”

My Winnipeg | Guy Maddin, 2008

“Winnipeg. Winnipeg, Winnipeg. Snowy, sleepwalking Winnipeg…” So begins Guy Maddin’s ninth feature film and quaint tribute to his home town of Winnipeg, Manitoba. My Winnipeg is by far the most personal of Maddin’s work to date, lacking the abstract blurriness of Brand Upon the Brain but excelling thanks to a certain breed of self-analysis that the director has long-since perfected. Indeed if Brand Upon the Brain was born out of artistry, My Winnipeg has been born out of love for a single place and everything it stands for. While the concept here may sound relatively straightforward, any experiencers of Maddin’s unique approach to filmmaking would assume it is anything but. Such an assumption would be correct, of course, as all autobiographical traits are handled in a refreshingly playful manner by Maddin. He drafts in fellow Winnipegger Darcy Fehr to play himself and pulls the aged Hollywood actress Ann Savage out of her 25-year retirement to play his own Mother. Maddin’s approach to detailing his own, snowbound place of birth is a sardonic but loving one. He reacts scornfully to the city’s decision to tear down several old and memorable buildings, yet at the same time shares with us his wonder at Winnipeg’s famed back roads and old-world charm.

Watching My Winnipeg I couldn’t help but be reminded of the American author Bill Bryson’s semi-autobiographical novel The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Both book and film take an attentive yet rather derisive look back at a childhood in the fifties/sixties, questioning some of the aspects of life that so many took for granted back then. Maddin, like Bryson goes into great detail when concerning his hometown and its traditions. Both writer and filmmaker seem almost obsessively interested in the smaller headlines, the kind of headlines that help define a town. There is a single sequence in My Winnipeg for example that talks about an incident at Winnipeg’s Whittier Park in 1926 where a stable fire caused a stampede of horses to – with nowhere else to run – plunge headlong into a freezing river. The evidence of their short-lived terror could be seen upon their faces the following morning, and their frozen heads would remain a bizarre tourist attraction of sorts for the remainder of Winnipeg’s long winter that year. Maddin goes on to comment on the romantic walks and subsequent baby boom that the so-titled Horses’ Heads inspired. “Humans born of horses”; the closing line to a sequence that helps illustrate Maddin’s morbid curiosity and blackened sense of humour, two aspects that drive the film along.

Our Rating:

10th Annual Golden Trailer Award Winners

Show Category Winners

Best Action

Fast and Furious, AV Squad, Universal

Best Animation/Family

WALL-E, Craig Murray Productions, The Walt Disney Studios

Best Comedy

Bruno, The Ant Farm, Universal Pictures

Best Documentary

Man on Wire, The Editpool, Icon Film Distribution

Best Drama

Frost/Nixon, Empire Design, Working Title Films

Best Horror

The Unborn, Buddha Jones, Rogue Pictures

Best Independent Trailer

The Wrestler, Mark Woollen & Associates, Fox Searchlight

Best Music

Where the Wild Things Are, The Ant Farm, Warner Bros.

Best Romance

500 Days of Summer, Mark Woollen & Associates, Fox Searchlight

Best Thriller

Angels & Demons, Trailer Park, Sony Pictures

Best Video Game Trailer

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Eyestorm Productions, Lucasarts

Best Voice Over

Tropic Thunder, Buddha Jones, DreamWorks

Golden Fleece

The Spirit, Seismic Productions, Lionsgate

Most Original

My Winnipeg, Kinetic Trailers, IFC Films

Summer 2009 Blockbuster

Star Trek, Aspect Ratio, Paramount Pictures

Trashiest Trailer

One Eyed Monster, The Refinery, Liberation Entertainment

Best In Show

Star Trek, Aspect Ratio, Paramount Pictures

The Virginia Theatre in Champaign, IL

On the weekend of April 21st – 25th, I had the privilege of attending Ebertfest 2009 – Roger Ebert’s annual film festival that celebrates overlooked and underappreciated films. This was the 11th version of the festival, still hosted at the beautiful Virginia Theatre in Champaign, Illinois, and for five days over 1,000 film enthusiasts got together to completely immerse themselves in the world of cinema.

Twelve films in all were selected, each accompanied by a variety of directors, producers, and actors, and they ranged from silent classics (“The Last Command”) to recent critical favorites (“Frozen River”). Two of the films, “Sita Sings the Blues” and “Begging Naked”, are still without distribution – rare occurrences in which Roger gets the time to watch anonymous films that he had been sent in the mail. He fell in love with both, and decided that it was time to share them with the world.

Festival director Nate Kohn, Chaz Ebert, and Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert, the host of the festival, returned this year to introduce each film with the help of his British computer voice system that he’s dubbed “Sir Lawrence”. For those unaware, Ebert was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in early 2002, and after several surgeries he’s lost the ability to speak. The man, however, is still incredibly upbeat and animated. When his wife, Chaz, was trying to introduce the guests and Roger himself, Roger would peak out from behind the curtain and make humorous gestures to the crowd. Regardless of what you think about him as a reviewer (there is a huge backlash after his recent four star reviews for films like “Lakeview Terrace” and “Knowing”), he’s nothing short of an inspiration.

The crowd was at it’s most lively during Saturday evening’s screening of “Nothing But the Truth”. Matt Dillon and director Rod Lurie were present, and it was quite apparent that many attendees came only to swoon over Dillon in person. Quite the opposite reaction, however, was the uncomfortable silence that accompanied a rap performance by “Trouble the Water”’s Kimberly & Scott Roberts. The victims of Hurricane Katrina passionately sung on stage, requesting that the audience “put their hands up” while we sat on them. There’s no questioning that the crowd loved the film, but a loud rap performance in front of a mostly elderly audience is not the best way to close out a day of watching films.

"Frozen River" director Courtney Hunt and star Misty Upham

What struck me as so remarkable about the festival was how passionate everybody was. While I agree that films should be experienced on the big screen, I tend to get aggravated by the theater experience – the cell phones, the snickering, the teenagers making out, the crunching of popcorn, the last few sips of an empty slushie. In the Virginia Theatre, however, the crowd was completely respectable and silent. It was one of those rare occasions where, at times, i’d forget I wasn’t the only one in the venue.

To me, the three home runs of the festival were “Begging Naked”, “The Last Command”, and “Sita Sings the Blues”. “Begging Naked” is a documentary about a homeless sex worker with tremendous artistic talent. Her paintings were auctioned in a building across the street immediately following the conclusion of the film, and they were all sold by the time the next film had started. I would love to tell you where you can see it, however it has yet to be picked up by a distributor. Keep your eyes on beggingnaked.com. “The Last Command” is the 1928 silent film that won Emil Jannings the first ever Academy Award for Best Actor. In the film, Jannings plays a Russian general who fled the country after revolutionists embarrassed him. He now works as an extra in a film where he gets to reprise his role as a Russian leader. The Alloy Orchestra played their own live score for the film, which made for a completely immersive and unforgettable screening. I’d buy my festival pass for next year for their appearance alone. “Sita Sings the Blues” is a strange animated film that adapts the classic Indian tale, “The Ramayana”, and accompanies the material with the jazz vocals of 1920’s jazz singer Annette Hanshaw. The film’s director, Nina Paley, is so infuriated by the world of copyright that she put her film up for free online. Watch it at sitasingstheblues.com, or search the title on YouTube. It doesn’t matter where you get it, just make sure that you see it.

Chaz Ebert introduces "The Last Command"

The festival is everything a film fan could want. The films are wonderful and new, the audience is passionate, and the special guests are humble and gracious. Ebertfest is a true celebration – a loveletter to filmmaking and an avoidance of pretensions and glamour. I had one of the most memorable weekends of my life, and i’m already anxiously awaiting next year’s festival.

Photos taken by (Thompson-McClellan Photography).

Now that school is out and finals are over I can continue to devote time to adding things to the good ole movie review blog. I’d also like to encourage all of the people who read this who feel like they have opinions about the goodness of movies they watch to start or restart or get working on their own blogs because movie reviews should be a community thing. With that said, The Dark Knight was a bad movie.

I would also like to take this time to hawk The Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion which is an amazing record that just came out, you should check it out, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Yet its still recognizeably comforting. Check it out here.

—

I had the amazing opportunity to eat lunch with Ang Lee and producer James Schamus this semester. No, it’s not because I have a movie review blog, it was a raffle that I somehow won. In retrospect it was a good lunch, but I certainly regret not ordering more, as it was all paid for by the College of Letters and Sciences. I should’ve just ordered every entree. Or maybe see if they’d get me wine? Whatever, having free steak for lunch was pretty good. It was in the swank faculty club too, for all I know Robert Oppenheimer used to dine in the seat I sat in. Actually for all I know they just bought that chair. Whatever.

Yeahhhh!! Free food and Ang Lee and some other people. He had tandoori chicken for lunch, with tea, and cherry pie for dessert. I never figured Tiawanese movie directors would be into something as American as Cherry Pie…

And now some reviews

—–

- STAR TREK – (2009)

Dir: JJ Abrams; Star:Chris Pines, Zachary Quinto
JJ Abrams takes control over the long running series, steering it in a new direction with old characters, but with a new outlook. It’s as if the characters we’ve known and loved are simply re-realized with modern sensibilities. The story is clever and sets up an entire new series of films that are separate.. yet similar.. to those of the original series, so really the possibilities are endless. It essentially has to do with Romulans, and the rise of young James Kirk as he meets his friends who we should all recognize. Abrams and the cast really pull through and build off the characters who have already been developed to really build sympathy right from the start. The special effects are outstanding as expected, and Abrams actually tries to simulate the soundless-ness of space, for the first time in a Star Trek movie, although he folds to mainstream appeal and slowly has sound creep in. There’s a surprising amount of humor hear, which works well with the vivid, buoyant characterization and slam-bang action, all with enough back story and reintroduction of past elements that forshadow other episodes of the series. A high caliber entertainment and a great entry to the Star Trek Saga.

- MY WINNIPEG- (2007)

Dir:  Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin’s autobiographical self proclaimed docu-fantasia is really a look at his hometown (Winnipeg) and his childhood which he populates with myth and fantasy creating a sense of nostalgia akin to anyone’s nostalgic affection for their childhood home. Except Maddin’s nostalgia is dark, mystical, and vividly cinematic. A post-modern tour-de-force that blends archival footage, recreation, poetry, and a metaphorical train ride. Maddin tries to film his way out of the town where sleepwalkers walk and horses freeze in the river only to become the destination for star crossed lovers. He utilizes a slew of techniques from a variety of genres to make a film that’s equal parts film noir and surreal, all within the frame of documentary. In doing so Maddin has evoked emotion and mood as never before realized in film, where interesting embellishments are more fascinating than truth and the psyche is blurred with reality. My Winnipeg is a film like none other, one that astounds the mind with its persistent barrage of artistic imagery and determined narration, and one that provokes a mood of mysterious nostalgia that is strangely comforting. A genreless, timeless masterwork by a filmmaker at the top of his creative game.

- FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL – (2008)

Dir: Nicholas Stoller; Star:Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand
Oh Judd Apatow, why are your movies soo good? This is of course no exception, with a perfect blend of comedy and sentimentality that is as fresh as writer/star Jason Segel’s presence here. Segel plays a guy whose girlfriend breaks up with him, so he goe sto Hawaii to recover only to find out that his ex is staying at the same hotel! Brand is fantastic as the ex’s new boyfriend, a silly charicature of British pop stars caught up in their ridiculous extravagance (dats terribOW!). Hits all the right notes, an undeniably funny movie.

- SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK – (2008)

Dir: Charlie Kaufman; Star:Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Postmodern, quirky, internal writer Kaufman takes his hand at directing here, following Hoffman who plays a struggling theater director who reanalyzes his life by producing a lifesize replica of New York City as a theater. Self reflexive as always, Kaufman delves further into the mind by bringing it to the cinematic world. Very interesting, when it’s not getting too lost in its own musings, it’s often hard to maintain interest or follow, but it will probably be more rewarding on repeat viewings.

- NICK AND NORA’s INFINITE PLAYLIST- (2008)

Dir:  Peter Sollett; Star:Michael Cera, Kat Dennings
I’m not quite sure why this movie was made.. It’s essentially about a teenager in New York City who breaks up with his girlfriend and finds a new one in one night while trying to find some band named “Fluffy” which is playing somewhere in the city (A band with that name would never be popular..). Sound like a good plot? No? Well, that’s because it isn’t, if you could even call it that. The characters are underdeveloped, shallow, and predictable, thanks mostly to the terrible screenplay. For all I can tell the film climaxes with a hand job, literally, no pun intended. That’s some good writing, guys.  Gooood writing. The best character here is probably New York City, whose vibrance is somewhat decently captured in this short night. It also features this -faux indie rock soundtrack that plays throughout, yes even over conversations, that makes it all feel like some sort of disgusting prolonged introduction. You can tell the producers were trying to tap into that “Indie”-core audience that Juno snagged last year, and this isn’t one twelfth the movie that was. A waste of time.

- TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE- (2007)

Dir:  Alex Gibney
Oscar winning documentary about the torture of prisoners in US detention camps during the War on Terror, revolving around an innocent taxi driver who was tortured to death in Afghanistan, although grand in its scope covering torture of all kinds and the abuse of human rights by US leadership. Supported by a slew of testimonials and cases that are relentlessly shocking. A frighteningly difficult film to watch that seems all the more so important because it is.

- RELIGULOUS- (2008)
Bill Maher’s documentary against religion attacks the issue by depicting an endless series of various religions at their most ridiculous, allowing his comedic wit to come through all in the effort to promote reason instead of blind faith. Pointed and well conceived, albeit a relatively standard treatment. Maher is equal parts funny and annoying, and the film itself may seem a little lax at times due to his style, but the message is sharp.

- AMERICAN TEEN – (2008)

Nanette Burnstein’s “documentary” following a few stereotypical kids (the jock, the nerd, the artsy girl etc) through their senior year in high school. There’s a certain level of contrivance and manipulation at play, but the emotions feel uniquely real, and the whole thing is compulsively watcheable. Their personalities are so varied but it’s the common bonds between the players  that hits the strongest. If you don’t go into this expecting a hardcore documentary, you’ll probably find it to be a rewardingly different experience.

Director: Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin’s “My Winnipeg” is, as he calls it, a “docu-fantasia”. He was given funds to create a documentary about Winnipeg, a forgotten town in Manitoba, and instead created a very personal and intimate portrait of, as it turns out, himself. The film is still about Winnipeg, and Maddin passionately defends that several of the absurd scenarios in the film are grounded in some truth, but it’s more about the connection between the filmmaker and his hometown. By revisiting the town, or the town he perceived it to be, he’s able to make sense of his sexuality, childhood, and identity.

Maddin, in the film, is played by Darcy Fehr (although narrated by Maddin himself). Fehr sits on an icy train with hypnotic and surreal landscapes. At one point, a projection of his mother’s watchful eye peers out and makes sure he’s not up to any trouble. Winnipeg, Maddin says, is a town of sleepwalkers, and it’s time for him to leave the city for good – again. In his effort to escape the town and make sense of his history, he takes on a peculiar project. By filming his own childhood, it will allow him to escape Winnipeg. He casts actors to play his family and a dog to play his long dead dog. The only part that didn’t need recasting was his father. They simply dug him up and put him under the family room rug.

It’s hard to make clear sense of “My Winnipeg”. When Maddin recalls a daily television series from his childhood called “Ledge Man”, which featured a man ready to jump from a ledge everyday until his mother talked him out of it, we feel the urge to Google it if only to prove the film wrong. But that’s not the point. I wouldn’t necessarily call it simply allegorical, either – it’s literally true, but not necessarily literally true to, say, the Chamber of Commerce. This is Maddin’s recollection, and who are we to doubt what he’s presenting to us?

The film is stylized as an old silent film. The images, all in a heavy contrasted black and white, jump around the screen and are broken up by title cards that move as quickly as subliminal advertisements. The acting, such as that of the star of the 1945 noir cult classic “Detour”, Ann Savage, is over-the-top and absurdly melodramatic. There’s a scene where Fehr’s sister comes home in tears saying she’s hit a deer, and has patches of blood and fur on her car to prove it. Savage, playing Fehr’s mother, is convinced that the only thing that went down was fornication in the back seat.

“My Winnipeg” is worth seeing if only because you’ve never seen anything else like it. It’s a film completely void of any restraint, and it’s an irresistible expression of filmmaking freedom. A joy to watch.

-Eugene Osudar

I’m told the Thursday before Good Friday is the busiest bar day in Winnipeg. Is this true of everywhere, North America? I’ve been reading music biographies, trudging through Joe Strummer and Redemption Song and now Paul Weller: The Changing Man. The Writer (Paolo Hewitt) gives The Reader the thesis in the intro and there, it’s done. Wad! Leave some mystery. I like that chapters are given song titles, like “Going Underground”, a fave Paul Weller song, or “Walls Come Tumbling Down” (Style Council), another fave, like the Jam’s “In The City” (that the Wind Ups nearly always open their sets with). The Writer gives context to songs and where Mr. Paul Weller’s head/heart/space was in the time of writing and recording and the source of the song’s inspiration and/or piracy. Thievery is the act of loving music. And a form of flattery or flatulence. Depending on the point of view of them that were stolen from and those that benefit from the theft of riffs and ideas.

So, Winnipeg was insane on Thursdy night. I didn’t see the free show at Shannon’s Irish Pub with Dan Mangan and Hey Rosetta! I Love Hey Rosetta! And i didn’t go see Brock Zenam with Dan Walsh playing original Tom Waits carnival songs (okay, i’m an OM, OxyMoron) opening for Sask’s Deep Dark Woods at the Times Change(d). I love the Times Change(d), this love is shared by so many musicians who have played the high and lonesome club. In conversations here and there are some of the Times lovers: Geoff Berner, Elliott Brood, United Steel Workers of Montreal, Nathan, well, list all Wpg. bands who have ever played there, like the powerfully sensuous Oh My Darling, the Undesirables, on and on and on.

I didn’t see the Paul Stanleys at the Academy Food and Drinks. The Kiss tribute band (does that sound better than Kiss cover band? They are a cover band and I love bands who cover great songs, my favorite band in Wpg., The Wind Ups are a cover band, I love them! Whole Lotta Angus cover strict time Bon Scott AC/DC, I love them!  The Braggarts, who sadly are no more, cover Irish songs and punk it up, I love(d) them!!!!) (Love! That’s what music is, it’s a passion and a lust and a desire to fire and dance and move and dream that you are the The Lead Singer, the Joey Ramone, the Bon Scott, dead in a car, vomit lodged firmly in the inner pipes, yeah! rock ‘n’ roll death!). The Paul Stanleys up the cover band ante, they all dress like Paul Stanley! Oh, Whole Lotta Angus all dress like Angus Young. Who stole from whom? Who was inspired by whom? See, it’s flattery or flatulence…

I didn’t see Walkie Talkie, who played after a brilliant set by a band that I did dance to at the Cavern. And I am told, by an angel, that they are waaaaay better than the brilliant band that I danced to. Another loca(l) band that i gotta see, and dance to. Adding to my list of 60, sixty, bands that are awesome in My Winnipeg/Uptown Magazine’s John Kendle sings the praises of Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg. On John’s Facebook, something about holding back the tears. Holding back the years, in my Winnipeg. I love you Winnipeg. Suck that Vancouver, suck that Toronto. We rock! You wads simply suck!

I didn’t see loca(l) indie musicians (Flying Fox and the Hunter Gatherers, Liptonians, Chic Gamine) performing the songs of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Park Theater. i still don’t know how that went. Good Friday coming, Easter long weekend. Jesus Christ Superstar! Had to be, hot/hot/hot!

I didn’t really get to see the Sweet Nothings and American Flamewhip at Hooligan’s because I was dancing elsewhere. I love those bands. I did catch the Sweet Nothings’ last song, a Replacements cover that i couldn’t (re)place(meant) (does that qualify as a pissing/poor word pun/play?) in my spinning, swirling brain. I danced.

Cross-posted at More Intelligent Life.

For viewers unfamiliar with the baroque, Shakespearean quality of Terence Davies’ films, a perfectly natural response to the first five minutes of Of Time and the City, Davies’ most recent work since his 2000 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, is this:

Jesus. Is the whole thing going to be like this?

That, at least, was my reaction.

The documentary, Davies’ first, opens with no shortage of grandiosity on Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral, a meditative camera gazing solemnly at the church’s central altarpiece while Davies’ narration rolls in slowly and theatrically as if he’s channeling the voice of God. Brilliant, he may be, but aesthetically modest, he is not.

Of Time and the City, Davies’ “love song and eulogy” to his hometown of Liverpool is just as masterful as he intends it to be, if slightly funnier than the somber crowd at Film Forum was willing to let on. A pastiche of Liverpudlian history mixed with Davies’ own, the documentary chronicles the evolution of the city from the early 1950s (poverty, Catholicism and the Korean War) to Davies’ teenage years in the mid-60s (burgeoning homosexuality, the discovery of film, and to his horror, The Beatles) and beyond, eventually culminating in a return to the hometown that Davies no longer recognizes as his own.

Liberally interspersing Eliot and Marlowe quotes over archival footage, Davies’ cinematic bildungsroman aspires to Joycean dimensions, and surprisingly, often reaches them. After casting the tragedy and exaltation of youth within the stoic march of history, the final scene has Davies filming spectrally over today’s Liverpool, a hub of enlightened capitalism long removed from the memory of its decrepit, mid-century charm.

Towards the end of Of Time and the City, Davies muses that “people often meet their destiny on the road they take to avoid it,” and in My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin’s contribution to the genre of urban homage/auto-documentary, Maddin seems to have taken this notion literally. The film, which has been described as a “fugue to origins,” a “docu-fantasia,” and, most spectacularly, “a deranged post-Freudian proletarian fantasy,” begins with a half-asleep actor proxy named Guy Maddin leaving Winnipeg by train in the midst of a snowstorm. This bizarre, somnambulant moment sets the pace for the rest of the film, a rewriting of personal and public histories with the city at “the heart of the heart of the continent” as palimpsest. For, Maddin, an experimental filmmaker best known for 2003’s The Saddest Music in the World – a Great Depression era musical comedy starring Isabella Rossellini – My Winnipeg is a somewhere between an homage to his hometown and a desperate attempt to bury it through fiction and sleights of hand.

Unable to escape Winnipeg, Maddin layers over the memories of its past with fiction, treating the city as a canvas for his own feverish visions. Unmarked alleyways constitute a secret city within a city; homeless Winnipeggers, banished from the streets, create an alternate society on the city’s rooftops; and Maddin’s own childhood memories are starkly reenacted in black-and-white by a team of actors hired specifically for the occasion. “What’s a city without its ghosts?” Maddin asks, and so constructs My Winnipeg around them.

While both Of Time and the City and My Winnipeg deal with returns to hometowns once happily abandoned, they’re also elegies to cities lost. From the vantage points of a self-willed exile and a prisoner to history, each film commemorates the past with such grace and nostalgia that they achieve a sense of intimacy rarely captured in film. As such, the documentaries are less about escape than discovery, and regardless of how the directors return home – through Sibelius or surrealism – in doing so, they reveal what happens when we finally do encounter our destinies while attempting to avoid them. To paraphrase Davies’ beloved Eliot, it is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

With 2008 officially kaput, a retrospective perspective in film is in order. Now, I claim no expertise in this field, just an active familiarity. I lacked the proper resources (viz. residence in New York or LA, where a majority of movies actually worth pursuing are shown) to catch up on every film released in the past year that I actually wanted to watch, nor the infinite moolah (or patience) to sit through the recent spate of industry-termed “Oscar contenders.” So unlike echt movie reviewers, I have not watched over 200 films released in the past year, only 80 (thanks largely to Netflix and the Olympia Film Society). At least I get to watch films I actually want to see.

Films I have yet to see, omitting ones I don’t care too much to see, include: “Rachel Getting Married,” “The Wrestler,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Waltz With Bashir,” “Ballast,” “I’ve Loved You For So Long,” “A Christmas Tale,” and “The Class.” And so to my personal list which reflects my view of today but not necessarily tomorrow, in alphabetical order:

“The Dark Knight”: It felt weird when among my mostly 20-something, male-dominated friends, I was the most impressed by this billion dollar grossing, critically acclaimed blockbuster. Maybe it had something to do with a story about a billionaire using money and brains to become a crime fighting hero for the people seemed a little tired after seeing Tony Stark do pretty much the same thing one month or so earlier. However, what made “TDK” (using fan-boy lingo) stand out was a strong ensemble (particularly Gary Oldman and Heath Ledger), a beautiful integration of IMAX sequences (really giving life to the usually forgettable segue aerials), a strong script positing a simplistic but absorbing exegesis on the duality of man (balderdash mostly, but whatever), and, since I’m a guy, the action sequences (the batbike scene in IMAX along with the freeway chase in “Tell No One” were the only times last year I was literally on the edge of my seat). Now I will admit that the battle at Trump Tower felt a little too video-gamey for my normal taste; but the conclusion, with Heath Ledger suspended upside down while delivering a monologue that slowly turns the viewer’s world upside down—literally, with the camera actually doing a full 180—before his eternal exit from the silver screen and this terrestrial plane was especially poignant.

“The Edge of Heaven”: Fatih Akin’s story of overlapping families and accidents wins my official (and without clout) best film of the year award. I suppose a word would suffice for my award (get it?), and the word is “Huzzah.” Three pairs of parent and child weave in and out of each others’ lives, crossing borders (between Germany and Turkey—Mr. Akin was born in Hamburg to Turkish parents—whose border also played a prominent role in the whimsical “In July” and the hardened “Head-On”) and sharing and repairing grief. Eventually tragedy strikes, and the fact that chapter titles foretell each misfortune does little to soften the impact. What remains is only loss—of kin, of identity, of nationality—and the remaining characters spend the rest of the film trying to fill the void or to sew it up. The final scene maintained as the credits roll, involving a child on a shore waiting patiently for a parent and a last chance at completeness, was my favorite of the year.

“Encounters at the End of the World”: Werner Herzog likes to center his films on an eccentric character, usually with an unhealthy obsession. Some of these obsessions have included conquering the New World (“Aguirre, the Wrath of God”), conquering a mountain (“Fitzcarraldo”), conquering the sky (“White Diamond”), conquering nature (“Grizzly Man”), or just conquering the absurd (“My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski”). With “Encounters,” Herzog found a community of people of this ilk, himself included, and in Antarctica of all places. Despite ubiquitous intimations of humankind’s imminent extermination (Herzog’s bread and butter), ample room remains for uninterrupted minutes (which can feel like days if you let them) of pristine and escalating beauty, full of sights and sounds more bizarre and breathtaking than any CGI Hollywood concoction. This easily—which is not easy—beat out “Wall-E” as the most beautiful film of the year. It is amazing how other-worldly this world can be.

“Let the Right One In”: Without a doubt the best Swedish vampire flick I’ve seen this year, heck, this millennium. While “Twilight” ate up the ticket counters, Tomas Alfredson’s film managed to capture the awkwardness and isolation of adolescence. Moral of this tale: misery loves company, as long as you watch each other’s back. Maybe with America’s taste for J-horror finally sated execs have moved to Europe for fresh scares, first to Spain (“Quarantine” was a remake of the trite but still chilling ”[•REC]“) and now Sweden. Slated for 2010, I will refrain from premature judgment of the American remake, but I can only hope it brings a larger audience to the original.

“Man On Wire”: When I first heard of a documentary about some guy who liked to walk on wires, I wasn’t initially hooked. Of course, I hadn’t been introduced to the daring young funambulist who is Philippe Petit (although not young in the interviews—young at heart maybe), who needed about five minutes on the camera to completely win me over using only charm. James Marsh’s film chronicles the events that end (not much of a spoiler here) in Mr. Petit’s 45-minute high wire promenade between the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in August of 1974. The film played like a 50s heist film in the hands of Woody Allen. I was a bit surprised that this will get my vote as funniest movie of the year, especially since it was impossible for this viewer to exorcise images of 9/11 despite no overt references to the incident. But maybe what affected me most was the complementary relationship between these two events: one an utter tragedy, the other a triumph of life and pleasure and a reminder of that sometimes the sky is not a limit but an obstacle.

“Paranoid Park”: Like “Wendy and Lucy,” Gus Van Sant’s film of teenage angst and discovery was shot on location in Portland, Oregon. It’s always a treat to recognize landmarks (although, having gone to school in Chicago made “The Dark Knight” feel like a homecoming), but this didn’t earn it too many extra credit points. This film was based on a young adult novel of the same name, but the story’s linearity was stripped to a minimum as Van Sant relied on his character’s confusion about an accident—and sexuality, looming adulthood, parent’s divorce—to patch together a dream. And in this dream, people fly on skateboards. Wong Kar-Wai frequent cinematographer Christopher Doyle was key to the resulting dream world, with Rain Li also credited as co-cinematographer (I think the Super 8 footage?). Until this year with “Milk”—garnering awards left and right, mostly deserved—Van Sant was on hiatus from the commercial Hollywood film (since “Finding Forrester,” which I wholeheartedly loathe, to put it mildly) and instead chose to explore the silent victim/culprit through long takes, slow movements and brooding consciousness. This is the culmination of his art.

“Reprise”: Maybe more important than studying where art comes from is finding out how an artist is formed. That is, simplistically, the premise of this first feature from Norwegian director Joachim Trier (yes relation to Lars von Trier). The villain of this story is fame. When two best friends simultaneously submit their manuscripts, the viewer is quickly taken away to a world of what-ifs and maybes before being plopped back in front of the two friends turned splintered success and determined failure. Scaling sophistication without pretention is a feat in itself, but “Reprise” also meets the ambition and purpose of its two artists as young men and shows how an artist is formed with Mr. Trier.

“Synecdoche, New York”: Last year, after watching David Lynch’s “Inland Empire,” I found myself scratching my head more than anything else, but I loved it. With “Synecdoche,” Charlie Kaufman’s first stint in the big chair, I had a similar experience, although I felt less violated. Maybe I felt a bit like someone found a hidden door to my brain in an office building and spent two hours controlling me at will (nothing dirty). Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a theater director in Schenectady, NY, who wins a MacArthur Grant (which brings to mind Stephen Colbert, hand proffered, palm forward, opening and closing, “Genius grant, please”) after his wife (an artist in miniatures) leaves with daughter to stardom in Europe where she can be around happy people. Cotard responds by staging a production of his own life on the grandest of scales, including a slightly scaled down reconstruction of his city (take that miniaturist!), that spans decades (or is it a minute?) and has an audience only in the performers and the viewer. (Manohla Dargis wrote an informative piece here, which may serve to provide a more coherent analysis.) Synecdoche is a word for a part standing for a whole or a whole for a part. So, if we are just part of the bigger picture, what the hell is it a picture of? Maybe we’re in the dark as much as Cotard, but at least we’re not alone.

“The Visitor”: In Tom McCarthy’s second feature as writer/director (following “The Station Agent,” about a little trainspotter who just wants to be left alone) Richard Jenkins is the show. A recent widower, Mr. Jenkin’s Walter Vale takes halfhearted piano lessons in an effort to cling to whatever vestige of his deceased wife, a former concert pianist, he can touch. Going to New York to give a speech about a paper he didn’t author, he finds his apartment occupied by two unexpected guests. After much ado he lets them stay, and soon he finds anew a forgotten excitment for life as he picks up drumming and taking in what it means to be around people. An unfortunate and topical (post-9/11 paranoia policy) mistake later, Vale finds a purpose and maybe more. Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Jenkins, through genuine care and craft, prevent the story from devolving into what seems at a cursory glance the territory of clichéd melodrama. It is a toss up for me whether Mr. Jenkins or Sean Penn in “Milk” is more deserving of a Best Actor trophy. The last scene, as the subway and the credits roll, stayed with me far past the “No Animals Were Harmed” notice, much like the last jog in “The Savages” did last year.

“Wall-E”: Unfolding with a cheery, obfuscated track from “Hello Dolly” onto a modern landscape of skyscrapers that—as the smog clears—becomes a towering inferno of refuse, Andrew Stanton’s film finds our lone hero and traveler looking for nothing but treasure and love in the land that time seemingly forgot. This dystopian Disney story eschews didacticism in favor of heart, as our hero helps a galactic cruiseline—and a movie theater—full of humans slowly remember how to be human again. While the second act doesn’t quite live up to the ethereal, Chaplinesque opening, Pixar brings us its most satisfying movie yet.

***

Other movies I enjoyed that may in the future find their ways onto a revised list (not to mention potentially the movies I’ve not seen, listed above) include: Michel Gondry’s quirky look at communal creativity, “Be Kind, Rewind;” the effervescent and sometimes transcendental “Happy-Go-Lucky;” the (literally) visceral “Inside” that Nathan Lee aptly tagged with: “Say hello to the motherfucking anti-’Juno;’ ” Guy Maddin’s latest bout of somnambulating madness, “My Winnipeg;” a pulp thriller and sleeper hit from France, “Tell No One;” a beautifully photographed documentary about the Three Gorges Dam and the lives it will uproot and upend, “Up the Yangtze;” and Kelly Reichardt’s quiet glimpse at the steep cost of freedom, “Wendy and Lucy.”

Two other movies of interest that I didn’t include since I watched them in 2007 or close enough, but are making a lot of lists now, are the disturbing but necessary  “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” and the grandly magnificent “There Will Be Blood.”

***

And with that, we can only wait and see what 2009 has to offer.

The waiting is over and the decisions are final! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, drawn from last week’s worthy short lists, the winners of the first annual No Ordinary Fool Film Awards are as follows:

The NOFFA for Best Original Score – Jan A.P. Kaczmarek (The Visitor)

The NOFFA for Best Picture from a Major Studio - There Will Be Blood

The NOFFA for Best Irish Film – Eden

The NOFFA for Best Animated Feature Film – Waltz With Bashir

The NOFFA for Best Documentary Feature - My Winnipeg

The NOFFA for Best Cinematography – Far North

The NOFFA for Best Adapted Screenplay – Gomorrah

The NOFFA for Best Original Screenplay – Lars & The Real Girl

The NOFFA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role – Hafsia Herzi (Couscous)

The NOFFA for Best Actor in a Supporting Role - Jérémie Renier (The Silence of Lorna)

The NOFFA for Best Actress in a Leading Role – Kristin Scott Thomas (I’ve Loved You So Long)

The NOFFA for Best Actor in a Leading Role – Michael Fassbender (Hunger)

The NOFFA for Best Director – Steve McQueen (Hunger)

The NOFFA for Best Picture- Hunger

So, the ground-breaking Hunger is this year’s big winner, scooping the award in three of the six categories in which it was nominated. This is thoroughly deserved, as it is a remarkable work from beginning to end.

The most disappointed nominees will be Happy-Go-Lucky, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and The Orphanage. All three were superb films and deservedly nominated in multiple categories. However, they are all going home empty-handed. These virtual awards of ours are a real lesson in tough love, I am afraid.

Anyway, here is to another superb year in 2009! Looking at what is currently in the pipeline, there is already a great deal to be looking forward to!

The greatest film writer in the history of the world adds Synecdoche to his list of Best Films of the Year.

Not sure that I concur, although part of me wonders if I should watch it again.

“Synecdoche, New York“ The year’s most endlessly debated film. Screenwriter Charles Kaufman (“Adaptation,” “Being John Malkovich“), in his directing debut, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theater director mired in a long-running rehearsal that may be life itself. Much controversy about the identities and even genders of some of the characters, in a film that should never be seen unless you’ve already seen it at least once.

And look who won Ebert’s “Special Jury” prize:

“My Winnipeg“ Guy Maddin’s latest dispatch from inside his imagination is a “history” of his home town, which becomes a mixture of the very slightly plausible, the convincing but unlikely, the fantastical, the fevered, the absurd, the preposterous, and the nostalgic. Oddly enough, when it’s over, you have a deeper and, in a crazy way, more “real” portrait of Winnipeg than a conventional doc might have provided–and certainly a far more entertaining one. Will be at Ebertfest 2009.

Guy Maddin’s ‘My Winnipeg’ is one of the most touching and absorbing films I have ever seen. The film is a surrealist revisitation of the director’s childhood seen through a lens of his early life succumbed to his controlling mother and the overwhelming, sedating effect of the forever-winterly Winnipeg lying the very heart of the American continent. The genre of the film was quite rightfully branded as ‘docu-fantasia’. ‘Winnipeg, my Winnipeg’ is a repetitive cry of Guy Maddin’s reminiscences as he attempts to escape the city of sleepwalking and sleepliving, where the homeless sleep on the roofs of skyscrapers, buildings are torn, and life itself seems to disappear in the almost hypnotic spell of the city.

This is Guy Maddin’s director statement for ‘My Winnipeg’:

In 1888, William Cornelius Van Horne, the great railway man who against long odds built the Canadian Pacific Railroad across our vast nation, established in Winnipeg a tradition that survives to this day. That year, on the first day of winter, Van Horne held a city-wide scavenger hunt. Every one of the young town’s residents was given a treasure map and invited to participate. First prize was a one-way ticket on the next train out of town. The secret hope behind this contest was that after a long day spent combing through the city’s nooks and crannies, Winnipeggers would discover that the real treasure was here all along, that it was Winnipeg itself. And for the longest time, Horne’s trick worked – especially on me.

As a filmmaker who has spent his entire fifty years in Winnipeg, I’ve been enchanted, intoxicated and benighted by the city of my birth – it’s been my muse since long before I ever picked up a camera. I’ve fallen in love with the place, not only for what it was while I loved it, but for what it used to be and for what it could be again!!! Like a heedless, irrational suitor I have invested all my hopes for the future in it, only to be left heartbroken by the cold-bloodedly “progressive” course it insists on taking as it navigates itself inexorably away from the enchantment I once knew into the bland oblivion and mediocrity it craves for itself. With my hopes mutinied I have grown bitterly disillusioned with my home town.

But before I flee, I must review for my own nostalgic delectation all that has so sweetly mattered to me about this once-beguiling wonderland, for no more curious a place exists in all of North America, or anywhere else! I will revisit for one last time the streets of Winnipeg – my Winnipeg – and locate for the viewer the magic spots that I cherish, where one can merely point a finger and the past will come springing up like so much artesian well water. There’s something strange, something dreamy going on here, where pedestrians would rather use back lanes than front streets; where our homeless hide en masse on the rooftops of abandoned skyscrapers; and where a strange civic law requires you to admit for a night any former owner or resident of your current home.

By winding my way though the very birthplaces of my personal mythologies, by attempting to understand the very nature of memory even while it fabricates what turns out to be an illusory Winnipeg for itself, and by facing down, in a series of singular domestic experiments, the possessive power of my own family, perhaps I can unlock the mysterious forces which occultly bind many a human heart to the past. Perhaps I can finally define for myself the true meaning of “home” and make the shackles which bind me here simply fall away.

Many-a-qualities attract me in this film. The dream-like reality of the stretched days and seasons reminds me of my final days in the snowy Krakow and the endless dark journeys I used to take on the city’s tramlines. The cold skies, the chronic lack of sunlight and the white city lights are just about all I can remember from that overly long winter that drove me away. ‘My Winnipeg’ is a semi-silent film, but the moments of Guy Maddin’s monologue are a great treat – the language falls somewhere close to Bruno Schulz’s writings and their hyper-poetic descriptiveness.

Ah! Ah ha ha ha!

I switched it up on you. I said I was going to watch one thing and ended up on something else.

In your face.

Well, here’s this now…

What’s a (insert name of film here)?: Hard to say, actually. Guy Maddin returns to his childhood home in Winnipeg, hires actors to play his family (dog included) and reenacts key moments from his childhood that he fears have scarred him to the point of atrophy. He also narrates the film in odd poetic verse, lamenting his inability to leave Winnipeg while almost simultaneously decrying the destruction of the city he once knew. It’s all shot in black and white (well, most of it). Maddin describes the thing as a “docu-fantasia” if that helps.

Who did this to you?: Guy Maddin “conceived” and directed, Ann Savage starred, and Jody Shapiro shot.

Why now?: I was walking through Blockbuster this weekend and saw it sitting on the shelf. For some reason I didn’t realize it was out on DVD yet, so I was both surprised and delighted enough by this revelation to pull a copy from the shelf, tuck it deep inside the flap of my coat and shuffle towards the exit.

Did you like it?: Yeah, actually. If this had come out in 2008 it’d be in my top 10.

How come?: This was the exact sort of palate cleanser that I needed today, being that it was both surprisingly funny and oddly introspective yet pithy (under 90 minutes!). Guy Maddin narrates almost the whole way through—I’ve heard tell that he “preformed” the movie live at a few film festivals last year, which I’d kill to see—and does a bang up job of it. It seems like I’ve been talking about prose a little too often for a feature that’s meant to talk about movies, but the quality of the narration, when not short, declarative and repetitive (like I said, a lot of it sounds like poetic verse) is really pretty in its own sort of melodramatic way. It’s pretty clear that Maddin is having fun talking up and tearing down the different aspects of his home town with lines like, “Urine! Breastmilk! Sweat! The hockey cathedral’s holy trinity of odors! These are the smells that will haunt this site forever, no matter what blasphemy is built here in its stead! And rest assured, it will be a blasphemy!” There are a lot of lines like that, and Maddin sells pretty much every one of them.

Maddin’s secret history of Winnipeg—some of which seems plausible and most of which doesn’t—is what keeps this movie from being an 80 minute bit of art house wankage. There’s mention of secret streets and warring factions of cab drivers that are segregated by the routes they take. There are ghosts and séances, complete with photographs of cotton strands billowing out of the mouths and noses of psychics. There are ancient hockey teams that re-unite (some of them returning from beyond the grave) in a crumbling stadium in an effort to save Winnipeg from the dastardly NHL, which over 30 years ago robbed Winnipeg of all its best players, leaving the town with only a decaying arena to remember them by. And the forks. The forks. The forks beneath the forks. The way Maddin sells it, it’s an easy place to fall in love with.

What else?: Everything else involves Maddin’s mom (played by the late Ann Savage) and the aforementioned actors he hired to play out some of his family’s more bizarre moments. This stuff is great too, particularly the first few scenes of the movie where Savage’s face fills the screen and you can hear Maddin feeding her lines from off camera. He tells her things like, “Okay, a little angrier.” In a film filled with manipulation this is one of the few hints you’re ever going to get that Maddin isn’t actually obsessed with his mother’s “lap.”

What’s the moral?: Things were better when you were a kid, and also infinitely more terrifying.

Are you sure you want this to be your written record of how you feel about this movie?: This is the first review I’ve written for this thing that I feel genuinely good about. I may have hit my stride, finally.

Best Scene: There are a lot, including the re-united hockey team full of old men playing in a stadium that is currently being demolished. I’ll stick with that for the sake of brevity.

Breast Scene?: Yeah, a few. There are also the “lap” scenes, which may be a little too creepy to reveal here. Just rent the film and enjoy for yourself. Oh, and there’s also a scene of naked man-ass. For the ladies.

Death Scene?: I don’t remember seeing anyone die, but there are two key moments in the film when Maddin mentions the death of his 16-year-old brother and his dad. Both of those get called back later in the film and they’re both disturbing and funny in their own right. One involves a corpse in the living room and the other is a faintly sexual mother/son reunion in the snow.

Weirdest Scene: Jeez. Hard to say. I’m inclined to mention a scene involving a pack of horses that got caught neck deep in a frozen river and apparently acted as an aphrodisiac for young Winnpeg couples. Suffice it to say that there are too many to mention.

Worst Scene: I wasn’t crazy about the séance involving spiritual communication through the use of interpretive dance (seriously), but it does involve the incorruptible Mayor Cornish, so it’s not all bad.

What’s next?: That’s a good question! I think I’m going to celebrate having finished a bit of work by going to see Rachel Getting Married, but that’s tonight, so that’s cheating. Like I said, maybe Savage Streets, Fat Girl or some other such thing. Y’all make the call.

360 Days Left.

Ann Savage as Yank Magazine pinup girl

I just read the sad news that iconic femme fatale actress Ann Savage has passed away. She was the star of cult classics like the low-budget noir Detour (1945) and Guy Maddin’s “docu-fantasia” My Winnipeg (2007). She will be sorely missed.

10. My Winnipeg

Canadian oddball surrealist Guy Maddin creates a masterpiece about his hometown, leading me to believe that if you live in Winnipeg, you must think like this man. Astonishing visuals and a surprisingly warm feeling.

9. Standard Operating Procedure

Errol Morris takes on the current mindset that torture is okay because the ends justify the means. Or do they? Morris, the legendary documentarian, makes a strong case that maybe, just maybe, what happens in Iraq should not stay in Iraq, and that those who excuse the methods as necessary need to think about what is ultimately more important- humanity or being right.

8. In Bruges

A sleeper, this droll little film about two hit men in the titular Belgian city is honestly one of the most charming, funniest films of the entire year. And Colin Farrell is actually good in this one!

7. Wall-E

It’s brave to use silence in film. It’s braver still when you use it in an animated film designed to get kids thinking. Entire stretches of Wall-E have no dialogue. But visually, it makes an impact that no Pixar film has done since Toy Story.

6. Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist

So sue me, I love this joyful little film about two people connecting over music. Possibly because that’s how I meet everyone myself. Charming, funny, and perfectly shot. Kat Dennings is one of this years great discoveries.

5. Rachel Getting Married

This tragic tale of family and pain remains the one film that truly made me feel all year long. Anne Hathaway’s Kym is a revelation. Rarely have I wanted to be a part of such a family. But I really wanted to be there. Props to Bill Irwin’s devoted, broken father, and Debra Winger’s astringent, vicious mother.

4. Tropic Thunder

Yes, the plot is more confusing than a Joyce novel. But I enjoy Joyce. And the performances are as such as I didn’t care the film made no sense, particularly Robert Downey Jr.’s amazing performance as method man extraordinaire Kirk Lazarus, Matthew McConaughey’s surprisingly sharp turn as the world’s most devoted agent, and a stunning Tom Cruise cameo that made me forget I now hate him.

3. The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan has done the impossible- make an accessible superhero film that doesn’t distract from the mythology, but actually adds to it. Christian Bale is by far the best, most believable Bruce Wayne in cinema history, and Heath Ledger’s Joker is a villain for the ages.

2. Slumdog Millionaire

This delightfully charming film tells a story of class and achievement, hope and despair, and game shows. An Early front runner for best picture during this award season, it would have been my number one, if not the fact I had more fun and totally adore one other film more. No other list will have it at number one, but I can’t help myself.

1. Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Jason Segel did the impossible- he took the Judd Apatow formula and made it sweeter, raunchier, and funnier. This charming little love story/ break up disaster tale balances the sad story of Peter with the destructive overtures the world throws at him. Mila Kunis shines as the girl he meets in Hawaii, Kristin Bell is a perfect bitch, and Russell Brand’s star making turn is the greasiest, funniest thing on the big screen all year.