CLOUDBURST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - DO NOT MISS Thom Fitzgerald's hilarious AND moving love story at Toronto's Inside Out LGBT Film Festival on Friday, May 25, 7:15pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox

Cloudburst (2011) dir. Thom Fitzgerald
Starring: Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker, Ryan Doucette, Kristin Booth

****

By Greg Klymkiw

"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - Jack Kerouac, On The Road

The open road is freedom, but in reality and in the best popular culture, there is always a point where one must reach the end of the road. Sometimes it's sad and empty, sometimes it's not what you expected, often it's bittersweet. Whatever lies at the end of the journey, it's the ride that should always be the thing. It's what you discover and celebrate on the road that is often far more important than what's waiting there (if anything) when it ends.

Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dot (Brenda Fricker) have lived an incredible journey of love and mutual respect as a couple for over 30 years, but when circumstances seemingly beyond their control threaten the joy and happiness they've had, the open road becomes the only real way to obtain a pot of proverbial gold at the end of a new journey.

Family, it seems, is not always defined by blood - it takes love - and for this couple, family comes in the unlikeliest of places and circumstances. Love is what defines lives well lived and this couple have had love in spades, but in order to keep it unfettered from the unwelcome intrusion of a well meaning, but completely out-to-lunch blood relative - public affirmation becomes the ultimate goal. They must marry.

The problem is that they live in the United States and can only gain the legal status as a married couple in Canada. What's a foul-mouthed, cowboy-hat-adorned, k.d. lang-obsessed, self-described old dyke and her jolly, sweet, visually-impaired longtime companion to do? What would you do? Me, I'd hop in my half-ton pickup truck, stock it with k.d. lang CDs, pick up a hunky male hitchhiker headed to visit his ailing Mom in Nova Scotia and cross the 49th parallel to get myself good and hitched - kind of like Stella and Dot do in the lovely, funny and touching new film written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald.

Cloudburst is a movie that needed a deft directorial touch and a script that could take the cliches normally associated with road movies and generate truth, humanity and humour and thankfully, for the most part it succeeds in this regard.

For years I kept wondering when director Thom Fitzgerald, who made one of the most thrilling feature debuts of the 90s, The Hanging Garden, was going to generate a picture that fulfilled the considerable promise displayed in that exquisite heartbreaker of a movie. This is not to discount the intervening years of work, but Cloudburst feels like a return to form and, on occasion, a step or two forward.

Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker are tremendous actresses, but given the emphasis these days upon demographics and the usual requirements from studios and other financiers to cater exclusively to younger audiences, the number of great roles for talents in this august age group are getting fewer-and-far-between-er. Fitzgerald crafted two roles that any great actress would love to sink her teeth into and frankly, Dukakis and Fricker are so captivating, moving and funny, I have to admit it feels like they were born to eventually step into these parts.

Set against the lush, superbly photographed backdrop of Nova Scotia, Fitzgerald took this story, a sort of gentle retirement-age Thelma and Louise, and both wisely and bravely delivered a tale that's as mature as it's downright universal. Love should have no boundaries and his direction indelibly captures a love story that's familiar, but bolstered by such genuine compassion, that I frankly can't imagine any audience not succumbing to it's considerable charms.

There are a few overwrought moments of humour that try a bit too hard, but for the most part, I found myself laughing heartily and genuinely and damn it all, I shed more than a few tears.

It's one of the few unabashedly sentimental celebrations of love I've seen in quite some time. The picture wears its heart proudly on its sleeve and while there's something just a little bit old-fashioned about that, Fitzgerald handles the proceedings with such grace, that everything old becomes happily new again. Some might choose to deny the power of sentiment, but they'd be lying (or just plain foolish). We all need sentiment from time to time and Cloudburst is the right time, the right place and just the right film to make us all feel grateful for the joy that life, with all its ups and downs, bestows upon us and hopefully prepares us for whatever journey we take beyond the end of the road.

"Cloudburst" is playing at Toronto's Inside Out LGBT Film Festival on Friday, May 25, 7:15pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox . For more information, visit the festival's website HERE.



Here are some Thom Fitzgerald movies you buy directly from here (and support this site) via Amazon.com and Amazon.ca:

LA HAINE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The classic 1995 depiction of life in the banlieues of Paris is now available on a magnificent Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection. The movie is as vital now as it ever was and the package includes a cornucopia of fabulous features to enhance your experience. This is a must-see, must-own work of art!

La Haine (1995) dir. Mathieu Kassovitz

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, Saïd Taghmaoui

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

La Haine was theatrically released 17 years ago, but feels like it could have been made yesterday. Mathieu Kassovitz's rage-fuelled portrait of violence and poverty in the housing projects of Paris within the above-ground-catacomb-like banlieues, pulsates with the raw energy of late-60s-early-70s political thrillers by the likes of Costa-Gavras, but is also charged with the same slice-of-life energy the young Martin Scorsese brought to bear in Who's That Knocking At My Door and Mean Streets.

On the surface, we have the simple tale of three best friends living in the aforementioned slums who have all been affected in different ways by a massive riot kicked off when the police, in a racially-motivated act of thuggery, beat a young man who now lies in a coma and possibly near death. Kassovitz follows Vinz (Cassel), Saïd (Taghoumi) and Hubert (Koundé), a Jew, an Arab and French-African respectively as they encounter a series of prejudicial harassments by the police as they semi-aimlessly attempt to get through a day just after the banlieues have been besieged by the carnage.

The young man who was murdered was a close pal of Vinz and when he finds a .44 Magnum lost by a cop during the urban mêlée, he hopes to gain neighbourhood "respect" by vowing to kill a cop in retaliation. Hubert is a sleek, powerful, though gentle boxer who's managed to make a place for himself in the world by owning a gym, but overnight he's become a member of the disenfranchised once again as his pride and joy has been gutted by a riot-enflamed fire. Saïd longs to escape life in the slums, but also feels powerless to truly leave them and his immediate aim is to collect a debt from a mid-level drug kingpin.

Kassovitz, though he shot in colour, exposes and filters all his shots for black and white, which the film was eventually released on. Though it's not "true" monochrome, it comes damn close and most astoundingly, though he has chosen to shoot handheld, there's not a single shot that isn't superbly composed. Even more thrilling is that it's seldom handheld in the whirly-cam-herky-jerky miasma so popular in low budget films and most annoyingly, in mega-budgeted contemporary blockbusters, usually from directors with no eye who attempt to be cool and "cinematic" (and sadly, manage to pull the wool over the many eyes of both public and critics).

The blocking and use of actual locations is masterly - all the more astounding as Kassovitz was in his late-20s when he made this film. Within the magnificent compositions, the movements of those in-frame and the camera itself are always rooted in both dramatic beats and emotion - no fakery or fancy-schmancy here. Kassovitz has nothing to prove other than to expose the lives of the people who live in the banlieues in a vivid, vital fashion.

Even more stunning is how the youthful helmer handles a sequence where the trio "journey" to Paris. Reminiscent, though not "borrowed" from The Warriors, Walter Hill's amazing 70s kaleidoscope of never-never-Land gang violence, the point of view feels so true to the experience of the characters - allowing us to feel their own wonder and amazement at being transported into the urban bustle of Gay Paree. The various neighbourhoods in Hill's film felt like distinctively different worlds and not in the same city at all - so too is this captured by Kassovitz in La Haine.

In the banlieues, we are so immersed in an immediacy and reality, it feels like Kassovitz was born and raised there (which he wasn't, though he and his team spent a considerable amount of time living there prior to shooting).

His entire cast, including many non-actors from the banlieues is always first-rate, but the revelation upon the film's initial release and astounding even now is the controlled intensity of the brilliant Vincent Cassel (most notably and recently seen as the equally intense ballet impresario in Aronofsky's Black Swan).

Head-on, Cassel is a triangle-domed seething dragon - his enormous crown holding globes for eyes - watery worlds casting roiling seas of hatred upon us and all who dare look upon him. In profile, he's like a bald eagle crossed with a sort of punk extra-terrestrial je ne sais quoi who would, if he had any, eat his newborn straight from the stirrup-spread loins of mummy - making sure to savour as much of the glistening blood and globs of afterbirth with Mephistophelian relish.

His idol is none other than Travis Bickle, DeNiro's psychotic cabbie in Scorsese's Taxi Driver. His recreations of the "Are you talking to me?" mirror sequence chill to the bone. Many filmmakers have, over the years, referenced Scorsese, but save for Boogie Nights, most of these sequences feel more like homage than story and/or character beats. Here again, it's rooted completely in the world of the film. Someone like Vinz - not only in the 90s, but frankly in any age beyond the 70s would, to varying degrees choose someone like Travis Bickle to idolize.

This, finally brings us to the truly staggering genius and power of La Haine proper and its vitality to both the generation it represents and subsequent generations. The movie on every level is timeless and I suspect its importance to both film art and society at large will continue to live and breathe for years, if not decades to come.

The gap between rich and poor as presented by Kassovitz feels no different than what faces the world today and in fact, has become wider and will frighteningly continue to do so. At any stage I suspect his great picture will always feel modern - his classical style adorned with the flourish of cinéma vérité and its shattering portrait of have-nots within a police state makes it then, now and forever a universal work of art.

Some have suggested (always in positive terms) that the film's ending is ambiguous. If you watch the film with open eyes, you'll see this is absolutely not true. A pair of eyes close in the final frames, but in so doing reflect the sad truth for many of us - that no matter what our dreams might be in this world of shit we live in, what we see is what we get.

La Haine sees what we all see, or what we choose not to see.

The picture is definitely headed for masterpiece status.

"La Haine" is currently available in a brand new and phenomenally sumptuous visual rendering on Blu-Ray from the virtually untouchable Criterion Collection. It's accompanied by a number of interesting features which I urge you to watch AFTER you see the movie (even if you HAVE seen the movie before). It's best to let the picture work its magic upon you before diving into the goodies provided. One of my favourites is actually an introductory message from actor-director Jodie Foster who so loved the film that she bankrolled and masterminded its journey to North American audiences in the 90s. (It did extremely well, grossing about $300,000 which 17 years ago was pretty astounding for a black and white French film of such dark subject matter.)

Foster's perceptions are on the money, but it's also wonderful to experience her clear and genuine love for the movie. It's exciting and kind of infectious. And not to belittle her words or intelligence, but it seems like she harbours a mad crush on Kassovitz. The transfer was supervised and the entire edition is one of Criterion's Director-Approved editions. Other wonderful features include a commentary track, a solid documentary on the film, a featurette on the banlieue, production footage, deleted and extended scenes all accompanied by Kassovitz rendering after-comments, the usual array of photos and trailers, plus a terrific booklet, the highlight of which is an appreciation by Costa-Gavras himself.

What's really odd is that the movie was never released on DVD and only available on VHS. Happily, Criterion remedied this situation a couple of years ago and now, we have an even superior home format to see the movie on. This movie, however, is NOT worth renting, downloading, streaming, netflixing or any other inferior method of delivery. JUST BUY IT!!!

Feel Free to support this site by purchasing "La Haine" from Amazon.com or Amazon.ca with the handy dandy links below:

ON THE BOWERY - "The Films of Lionel Rogosin Volume 1" - From the visionary Milestone Films - Review by Greg Klymkiw - Anyone who cares about cinema will add this important work to their collection. Rogosin gave a powerful voice to the disenfranchised, paved new roads for cinéma vérité and inspired subsequent generations of filmmakers.

On The Bowery (1956) die. Lionel Rogosin
Starring: Ray Salter, Gorman Hendricks

*****

By Greg Klymkiw

"Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." - John Cassavetes

"Postwar America experienced a dramatic economic expansion, sustained prosperity, and a huge population increase. By the 1950s, the United States ... manufactured half the world's goods, possessed over 40 percent of the world's income, and had by far the highest standard of living."- National Archives, USA

Postwar prosperity in America is a myth - bought and paid for at a very dear cost to a generation of forgotten men. This had far-reaching implications upon future generations and the nation as a whole. The ramifications of a somewhat spurious development of a middle class are felt today in ways the American people probably never imagined.

Not even in their wildest dreams would anyone have conjured the near-dystopian widening between rich and poor that's so prevalent in today's America. It's a history of building up a teat-suckling dependence upon greed and waste on the backs of those most vulnerable and susceptible to exploitation. During the early post-war era, this facade-of-plenty engendered escape in bottles of cheap booze and a class of working men who were sneered at - if and when they were noticed or remembered at all.

Cinema and indeed, mankind as a whole, owes a debt of gratitude to the late filmmaker Lionel Rogosin. Inspired by the Italian neorealist movement and in particular, the work of Vittorio (Bicycle Thieves) DeSica as well as the groundbreaking docudrama work of Robert (Nanook of the North) Flaherty and Lewis Milestone's evocative film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, Rogosin created an important body of work. He gave voice to the disenfranchised in a style that built upon his chief influences and his own life experience experience whilst developing a unique style that was all his own.

Rogosin influenced such diverse talents as Cassavetes (Shadows), Scorsese (Who's That Knocking at My Door?) and the realist vérité of UK's "Angry Young Man" genre, including John Schlesinger (Terminus, Midnight Cowboy).

Rogosin earned a degree in Chemical Engineering at Yale and was poised to join his father's textile firm when World War II interrupted these career plans and he ended up serving in the Navy. His experiences during the war and especially after the war, when he travelled through the debris of a decimated Europe, affected him deeply. Returning to America, he did not stay with his father's firm long, deciding to pursue his interest in human rights, activism and cinema.

His ultimate goal was to create work that would benefit mankind.

On The Bowery was his first film - so extraordinary that it attracted the attention of the British film collective the Free Cinema - whose members included Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reizs and Tony Richardson. Along with Schlesinger, Rogosin was a chief influence upon the New Wave of British Cinema and they were the movers and shakers behind presenting his work to British audiences.

John Cassavetes declared: "Rogosin is probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time." He tempers the justifiable hyperbole with the word "probably", but it's certainly no stretch to place Lionel Rogosin in the unequivocal pantheon of great documentarians of all time. Cassavetes's respect for Rogosin was merely the tip of the iceberg.

In fact, Rogosin's importance to cinema has seldom been paralleled. He pioneered the forward movement of cinéma vérité (using the camera to provoke reality by blending "fly-on-the-wall" direct cinema with stylized approaches and specific set-ups that utilize overt narrative technique), thus forging a path that opened up a whole world of great filmmaking. I'd argue strenuously that without Rogosin, things might well have been a lot different.

The art form, the genre of documentary itself might not have easily yielded the work subsequently provided by the likes of Sinofsky/Berlinger, Michael Moore, Nick Broomfield, Ulrich Seidl, Claude Jutra, Michel Brault, Allan King, Albert/David Maysles, Alan Zweig, Peter Lynch, Nik Sheehan, D.A. Pennebaker, Fredrik Gertten, Barbara Kopple and frankly, a list that could stretch on for a few more miles.

On The Bowery, his first film (and surely one of the great first films in the history of cinema), focuses the camera upon the lives of America's forgotten men who lived in the squalor of the Bowery in New York City. Once an upscale neighbourhood, the Bowery transformed - almost overnight - into a symbol of urban blight.

When the city built a series of overhead train tracks in the area, it created an endless cacophony and worse, it blocked the daylight - enshrouding the Bowery in darkness, shadow and shade.

Slats of hazy sun crept into the district like a ghostly filter. Occasional dollops of sunlight where no track existed played tricks on the eye and seemed even brighter, more hyper-intense than it normally would have been.

Seedy hotels, flophouses, pawn shops, soup kitchens and sleazy taverns became the lifeblood of the district. Attracting a generation-or-three of men who had suffered through war, these aimlessly shell-shocked victims of American prosperity and might, eked out a living as seasonal and migratory labourers - many of whom "rode the rails", risking the brutality of rail bulls, a criminal element and even incarceration.

They sought cheap rent and cheap booze to drown their pain and sorrow. Blowing their earnings on potent mescal and beer chasers, a lot of them couldn't even afford flea-bitten flophouses and lived on the street. The Bowery ran rampant with homelessness.

Essentially, Rogosin fashioned a "dramatic" construct to examine the lives of these men. He found two exceptional real-life personalities and followed the simple tale of Ray Salter and Gorman Hendricks whilst using montages of the Bowery and its residents as transitional bookends and punctuation marks. All the gnarled, grizzled and blotchy mugs Rogosin picked to populate the film are completely and without qualification photogenic in extremis.

Ray Salter, however, was a rugged, handsome and relatively young man who came to the Bowery with money in his pocket and a spring in his step. With his two-fisted good looks - a Joel McCrae-type with a Barrymore profile - Ray was so critically praised and profiled in magazines and newspapers that he eventually received numerous offers to act in Hollywood.

Sadly, this was not in the cards for poor Ray.

The tale told in On The Bowery is true. At a sleazy bar, Ray meets the friendly Bowery veteran Gorman. In short order, they become close friends. Of a sort.


Ray is slyly coerced into buying so many rounds of drinks that he eventually pawns a good many of his possessions. There are, however, a few items dear to Ray and he won't part with them, but in one massive blind drunk, he passes out on the street and what little he has left is stolen and hocked.

While dependent upon alcohol, Ray still maintains hopes and dreams of kicking the demon fire water and leave "The Life" of the Bowery behind.

Ray was, no doubt an alcoholic to begin with, but over time, like all the rest, he's sucked into the patterns so deep-seeded in the place and time. His desire to dry-out is sadly not strong enough to withstand the physiological toll alcohol takes upon him. Even in this day and age, alcoholism is a horribly misunderstood disease that's compounded by societal prejudice - ascribing personal "weakness" to the affliction. While help exists now, it's still far from adequate. In Ray's day, help was virtually non-existent.

As for poor Ray, the Hollywood dream dried up when he hit the open road and was never seen nor heard from ever again. Given the cards dealt to America's forgotten men, this is not so much a mystery, but the reality of what happened to so much of humanity.

The squalor and poverty in On The Bowery is, at times, shocking - not, however, because we're agog at how things were. In a sense, this portrait of disenfranchisement, whilst very specific to the postwar era and a neighbourhood long-transformed and almost gentrified, the sad fact of the matter is that the lives of Ray, Gorman and all the others in this film continue all over the world and in North America specifically, these conditions are escalating to a frightening degree.

Rogosin's camera eye never flinches from the filth, pain and inhumanity perpetrated against these men of the Bowery.

There are women too - alcoholic old whores offering their bodies in the bars to anyone who will buy them drinks. In some cases, they're hoping their johns will have a place to sleep for the night or vice versa.

Most of the men who can afford it, though, will stay in flophouses - no women allowed - where they're shoved into open-ceilinged cubicles covered with wire cages.


The men are essentially incarcerated - perhaps not in literal jails or prisons, but by the indigent lifestyle they've been forced into. The scenes in the flophouses are so evocative, one can almost recoil from the stench of filth, sweat and disease.

The film is replete, however, with so many aspects of humanity. A lot of what's extraordinary in the picture are the unbelievably funny, poignant and even dangerous moments captured in the bars where we follow mildly "improvised" conversations between the men. Rogosin "sets-up" certain "scenarios", but what we see is ultimately the real thing. Ray and Gorman are a great team - not only cinematically, but within the reality that unfolds - one of father-son, veteran-naif and teacher-student.

What the film ultimately exposes are the forgotten men - all those who were (and still are) abandoned, by society, family (if any are even left) and (like so many war vets) their country.

Rogosin's almost benign provocation of these men exposes their very hearts and minds. This, if anything, is what makes this one of the most stunningly moving portraits of humanity ever committed to film. Rogosin gives them a voice and presence they deserve - or at the least, a celluloid epitaph instead of a potter's field.

They're humanized in ways only the camera can achieve. Rogosin's sensitive caring eye helps us get to know these sad, yet extraordinary "ordinary" men who gave up everything for their country.

Everything!


Holding on to what scraps of existence are left for them, numbing their deep pain with booze and finding a sense of family with each other, Lionel Rogosin - documentary filmmaker extraordinaire - gives them a voice and on film, a place in the world.

The men of the Bowery, lest we forget, are remembered forever.

"On The Bowery: The Films of Lionel Rogosin" is available on a sumptuous Blu-Ray or DVD package from Milestone Films. Not only do you get the stunning restoration of the title film, but it includes Rogosin's powerful 1957 short "Out" which deals with the displaced person refugee camps in Europe and his exquisite experimental documentary "Good Times, Wonderful Times" which juxtaposes the pretensions on display during a bourgeois party with the most sickening footage from the Holocaust and Hiroshima. Add to this mix a collection of archival films and several eye-opening documentaries on Rogosin and the making of "On The Bowery" and you have a magnificent item to cherish, study and watch over and over again.

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BULLHEAD (RUNDSKOP) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Staggering Belgian crime melodrama an absolute MUST-SEE at Inside Out 2012, Toronto's LGBT Film Festival - Sunday, May 20, 9:30pm @ TIFF Bell Lightbox Cinema #1

BullHead (Rundskop) dir. Michael R. Roskam (2011)

Starring: Matthias Schoenaerts, Jeroen Perceval, Jeanne Dandoy

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's all about meat.

A super-buff stud works out maniacally in the dark after plunging steroids into his firm, sleek buttocks.

A cow's belly is sliced open without painkiller - whereupon, a pair of huge, powerful hands rip a calf from within and deposit the dazed newborn covered with glistening viscera into a filthy metal tub.

A brick is lifted high in the air - seemingly trying to touch the heavens before it is slammed down repeatedly to smash a pair of testicles to a pulp.

An ecstasy-and-booze-filled ladies man is dragged out of the glare of a lone street lamp and hauled into the shadows of night where he's so viciously beaten that he'll live his life as a vegetable.

Covert dinner meetings between thugs - fuelled by booze and sumptuously-prepared steaks - occur surreptitiously on farms, in barns and within feed warehouses. Deals, deliveries and alliances are discussed as forks and knives dig savagely into slabs of meat on platters garnished with little more than boiled potatoes - soaking up pools of blood and fat that ooze from the steroid-enhanced comestibles.

Bucolic Belgian farmlands at dusk and twilight mask an evil criminal world of organized steroid users and purveyors - peddling livestock pumped to the max with growth-and-fat-enhancing drugs.

This is the strange and compelling world of Michael R. Roskam's powerful Best Foreign Language Academy Award Nominee from Beligium - the unique and harrowing crime melodrama Bull Head. It's a dark, classic tale of friendship and betrayal against one of the most original backdrops for any gangster film ever made. This world of double-crosses, filthy brute force and intimidation of the worst kind is like transplanting the gangsters of Goodfellas into the roles of two-fisted laconic farmers, veterinarians and feed suppliers - in Belgium, no less.

It's film noir crossed with a sprawling, operatic, Visconti-like virtuosity, yet tinged with the earthy stench of cow shit mixed with the sour metallic odour of blood.

This is one great and original gangster picture. From the innocence of childhood to the corruption-tarnished cusp between youth and middle age, writer-director Michael R. Roskam charts the friendship between Jacky (Matthias Schoenaerts) and Diederik (Jeroen Perceval). As kids they are groomed for a life in illicit meat manufacturing and their lives are as inextricably linked as they are estranged after an early tragedy results in a dizzying criminal ascension and a downward-spiralling fate.

Roskam's screenplay brilliantly lays out a myriad of crooked relationships, complex and virtually impenetrable "business deals" and friendships that are as intense as they are fraught with guilt mixed with immoral layers. The ins and outs of the "mysteries" become as obtuse as those in The Big Sleep. At times, we think we have a grasp on what's happening, but the layers of plot are ultimately too thick to follow. It almost doesn't matter. What we know for certain is that bad shit is coming down. That's all we really need to know.

Through it all is the staggering performance of Matthias Schoenaerts - brooding, physical and steeped in humanity. His eyes are extraordinary - shifting in one moment from soulful to dead like a shark.

Roskam's mise-en-scene is first rate. His compositions are painterly and the cinematography manages to capture a sense of dreariness so that it's positively exciting - etching night exteriors like masterly impressionist paintings and dramatic picture compositions that are as thrilling as they're simplistically evocative in terms of both spatial geography and the ever-shifting dynamics of the characters.

The pace is out of this world. It's not machine-gun-like in any way, but weirdly evokes the country life - it's slow, but never lugubrious. Roskam hooks us like a Master and leads us where he needs to and wants to - on HIS terms and those that the story demands.

Early in the film, we hear a life manifesto that boils down to one thing - everything is fucked.

And so it is in Bull Head. It's gloriously, deliriously and viciously fucked - an amoral, cynical, nihilistic and narcissistic 70s style of nastiness brought miraculously to life in a contemporary world of cow shit and gangsters.

We even get some redemption, but a steep price is paid for it.

As it should be.

"Bullhead" is playing at Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2012. For tickets, visit the festival's website HERE

TURN ME ON GODDAMMIT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - This terrific, stylish and intelligent Norwegian teen sex comedy from a female perspective is a must-see for all and signals the appearance of a vital, new filmmaker.

Turn Me On, Goddammit! (2011) Jannicke Systad Jacobsen

Starring: Helene Bergsholm, Matias Myren, Henriette Steenstrup, Malin Bjørhovde, Beate Støfring, Jon Bleiklie Devik

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

She's 15-years-old and horny. So, what's a girl to do? She calls a phone sex service and masturbates on the kitchen floor while her perplexed dog watches and whimpers. He's 15-years-old and has a crush on a pretty girl. So, what's a boy to do? He approaches the girl stealthily outside a dance at the local community centre, opens his fly, whips out his schwance and pokes her with it.

Ah, young love in Skoddeheimen, Norway.

Alma (Bergsholm) is overflowing with teenage love hormones. The results, at least for her, are not pretty, but for those who make the effort to see this terrific little movie, the results yield a laugh-out-loud funny and at times, delicately moving experience. Based upon Olaug Nilssen's novel, Writer-director Jacobsen delivers a lovely portrait of young teenage women in a cloistered, repressed rural environment where anyone with any imagination and/or intelligence wants to escape at the earliest opportunity.

The movie has a lovely low-key deadpan quality that allows it to burst with the stuff of life and make the laughs so much more resonant than in typical American (and Male-centric) sex comedies. The picture's controlled personal style signals the arrival of a brilliant new filmmaking talent and gives us a great female character in a world mostly bereft of them. Alma is, quite simply, a brand new motion picture icon as emblematic as any of the silver screen's great characters - Scarlett O'Hara, Benjamin Braddock and yes, even the immortal Stifler.

When Alma reveals to her best friend Sara (Bjørhovde) and Sara's vain, mean-spirited sister Ingrid (Støfring) that Artur (Myren) has poked her with his penis, she quickly becomes a pariah in the small town. Ingrid carries a torch for Artur and as the Queen-Teen-Bee of Skoddenheimen begins to jealously and nastily spread rumours about Alma, declaring her persona non grata, poor Alma finds herself in social jeopardy. Ingrid even orders, in her catty bullying fashion, that sibling Sara is not allowed to fraternize with Alma.

Our heroine is shunned by all and earns the oft-repeated monicker "Dikk-Alma". Even the annoying brats who seem to perpetually bounce on a front yard trampoline which Alma passes everyday on her way home chant tauntingly: "Dikk-Alma-Dikk-Alma-Dikk-Alma-Dikk-Alma-Dikk-Alma".

Her sex fantasies run totally amuck. Not only does she concoct imaginary lovemaking with dreamboat Artur, but conjures up an early morning visit from Ingrid who demands, Dominatrix-like, that Alma squeeze her "fat tits" and go down on her.

When Alma's Mother (Steenstrup) makes the shocking discovery that her child has racked-up a whopping phone sex bill she orders her to get a part-time job to pay it off. She takes a clerk position at the local grocery store run by Sebjørn (Devik), Sara and Ingrid's Dad. Alma's sex fantasies now include her nebbish boss driven to predatory Casanova-like distraction by her sex-starved presence.

When Sebjørn discovers that Alma has been stealing porn magazines from his store, he informs Alma's Mom of this strange employee theft. This definitely causes a rift in that sacred of all relationships, that of Mother and Daughter, but their special emotional bond takes an even-deeper plunge into the chasm that opens up when Alma stops hiding her need for sex and defiantly indulges in obsessive (and very loud) vocal masturbation sessions behind the locked door of her bedroom.

It's kind of like a gender-bended Portnoy's Complaint (minus the Mounds-wrapper spunk receptacle) and we're even blessed with Alma sniffing her fingers to make sure the stench of masturbatory activities will not prove too obvious when she goes out in public.

Turn Me On, Goddammit! is one of the most delightful and original teen comedies ever made. It's not only great entertainment, but I also urge parents to take their own kids to see the movie. On a recent long car ride up to the cottage, my 11-year-old daughter was, as is her wont, sitting in the backseat with a portable DVD player and headphones - helping herself to whatever movies were in my briefcase. Unbeknownst to me she watched a preview screener of this very movie. When it was over, she announced: "Wow! What a great movie!"

"Oh?" I queried, "What movie was that, sweetie?"

"Turn Me On, Goddammit!" she replied.

I was briefly mortified, but as she discussed the movie with me, the shock dissipated and happily transformed to delight that good cinema knows no boundaries. The movie spoke to her in terms of relationships with her own girlfriends, the general attitudes at school towards boys and bullying and very touchingly, how the movie perfectly captured her own horrendous experience from when she went to school while living in a small town. I realized just how important this movie might be for pre-teen and teen girls who are inundated with the juvenile antics of boys that are thrust down their throats ad nauseam by the Hollywood hit machine.

As well, I was even more - as a parent - relieved that she pointed out how drugs and alcohol played a role in Alma's trials and tribulations. The movie is NOT moralistic on this point, but just simply realistic and matter-of-fact. Proof positive that reality, not head-hammering is what can allow any audience member, regardless of age, to view what's onscreen and make their own minds up about what they see.

Don't miss this one! It's a winner all the way!

"Turn Me On, Goddammit! is currently in release via Mongrel Media. In Toronto it is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. For Tickets and Info, visit the TIFF website HERE

DARK SHADOWS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Gothic Horror Classic Reduced To Mild Fish-Out-Of-Water Comedy

Dark Shadows (2012) Dir. Tim Burton

Starring: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfieffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jackie Earle Haley, Bella Heathcote, Johnny Lee Miller, Alice Cooper, Christopher Lee

**1/2

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Living in a place that had no cable television until I was 11 years old meant that during the first four years of its on-air life, I could only read about the great Dan Curtis television soap opera Dark Shadows in Forrest J. Ackerman's legendary genre magazine "Famous Monsters of Filmland". Worse yet, when the daily dose of horror was finally available in my hometown it was a season and a half away from its untimely demise. Even more depressing was that I lived in Central Time - one hour behind Eastern Time, which meant the gothic serial devoted to vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts and other supernatural delights aired 30 minutes before school was out.

Needless to say, I found many excuses to feign illness in order to watch Dark Shadows with some sort of regularity. In more ways than one, I was the sickest kid in my school!

In 1970 the Grand Guignol tragedy of vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) came to the big screen with the terrifying House of Dark Shadows and creator Dan Curtis pulled out all the stops - high production value, delectable makeup effects and buckets of blood. It scared the living bejesus out of me.

I saw the creepy, blood-soaked chiller repeatedly during its first-run engagement in the majestic old Winnipeg picture palace the Metropolitan Cinema and partook in numerous screenings at a variety of sleazy North Main Street grind houses. A year later I saw it again on a double bill with the lesser, though watchable psychological horror of Night of Dark Shadows.

I collected the lurid quarterly Gold Key comic series (plus the wonderful Gold Key Comic Digest one-off), the magnificent blood-red-bordered trading cards and over thirty novels from Paperback Library with their distinctive pale green covers.

How could any red-blooded horror fan not love Dark Shadows?

The primary storyline dealt with the mysterious aristocrat Barnabas Collins who showed up to the grand Collins mansion to claim his rightful place as heir of the estate. He meets a woman who resembles his beloved, long-dead Jossette and locks horns with Angelique the witch who forced Jossette to plunge from the cliffs to her death and turned Barnabas into a vampire when he spurned her romantic designs upon him.

Add to the mix the household matriarch, her children, the ne'er-do-well playboy loafer, the werewolf Quentin Collins, the weird alcoholic caretaker and, of course, Dr. Julia Hoffman - a sort of Van Helsing vampire expert who had no interest in slaying the bloodsuckers, but rather, is obsessed with finding a cure for vampirism. House of Dark Shadows was closest to the series in terms of story than all the other offshoot adaptations, but ultimately, anything that bore the stamp of Dark Shadows was more than enough for its rabid fans.

Dan Curtis was a genuine visionary in the world of television drama. In addition to Dark Shadows, he delivered a phenomenal TV adaptation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with the inimitable Jack Palance and later cast the crazy, old Ukrainian character actor in a TV movie of Dracula. Curtis delivered the astounding character of Kolchak, The Night Stalker, a reporter who specialized in sniffing out stories about the supernatural and in addition to numerous horror-themed series and specials, Curtis also delivered the epic mini-series The Winds of War. Though pulpier in his approach than Rod Serling, Curtis was easily in the same sphere of creator-as-superstar.

It was with considerable anticipation that I went to see Tim Burton's Dark Shadows 2012 with Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins. When Burton is on his game, there are few who can match his sheer moviemaking bravado and distinctive style. I especially loved his somewhat overlooked and underrated Sweeney Todd which was dazzlingly creepy and delectably dark in the humour department.

The intensity of my excitement at the prospect of Burton adapting Dark Shadows turned out, however, to match the intensity of my disappointment with the final product.

The central tale is true to the original, the movie has style to burn and Depp plays Barnabas beautifully (and with no tongue in cheek). I loved the supporting cast - especially Michelle Pfeiffer as the Collins family matriarch and Jackie Earle Haley as the boozing caretaker.

So what's wrong?

Well, what went "right" is that it's occasionally creepy, often funny (usually when the blood spurts insanely) and the look of the film is sumptuously imaginative. Sadly, it's a movie that has no idea of what it wants to be.

The movie takes place in 1972 (one year after the original TV show went off the air) and amidst the faithful narrative mentioned above, what Burton has created amounts to little more than a fish out of water tale - with a centuries-dead Barnabas traipsing through one gag after another that pays lips service to the gothic proceedings, but seems more interested in having a straight-faced Depp react to the strangeness of 70s society and culture.

This is definitely good for a few laughs, but the overall feeling upon leaving the cinema is wondering what might have been if the movie tackled the material for the pure, gothic horror and instead added daubs of dark humour and occasional fish out of water yucks.

The movie is a mess. That said, it's an amiable mess and certainly worth seeing on a big screen - but only on a cheap movie night or in a discount cinema. Because of this, I can't imagine either Dan Curtis or Barnabas Collins resting easy in their graves.

HERE is what Tim Burton's Dark Shadows could have been:



And HERE, is what Tim Burton delivered:



Here's some great original Dark Shadows and Dan Curtis material which you might wish to order directly from the following links Amazon.com and Amazon.ca which will help support the publication of this website:

BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!* - CUMMING SOON TO VANCOUVER - Interview with Director Fredrik Gertten and Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stunning documentary in the tradition of American Paranoid Thrillers of the 70s is Now in theatrical release via Kinosmith and CUMMING to Vancouver after playing at Toronto's Bloor Hot Docs Cinema and Hot Docs Film Festivals and The ByTown in Ottawa.

A Conversation With Fredrik Gertten - Director of BIG BOYS GONE BANANAS!*

By Greg Klymkiw

The feelings engendered by the great paranoid thrillers of 70s American Cinema are alive and well again - crackling with the same terror, dread and mounting odds against one man or a handful of individuals who are fighting oppressive, almost dystopian, virtually Orwellian dark forces.

The difference, though, is that our central figure is NOT Warren Beatty in Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View, stumbling upon a corporation devoted to political assassination.

Our protagonist is NOT Donald Sutherland's Department of Health bureaucrat in Philip Kaufman's brilliant re-working of Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers where under the creepy spire of San Francisco's Trans-America tower he battles the ultimate scourge upon the human race.

Nor are we watching Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman playing Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein in All The President's Men (Pakula again), skulking about dark underground parking lots in search of the truth behind the Watergate conspiracy.

The 70s paranoid thriller has, in fact, been reborn in Fredrik Gertten's stunning documentary feature Big Boys Gone Bananas!* and in spite of the title, and though the movie features absurdity of the most extreme kind, we are also not dealing with a Will Ferrell comedy.

This is a straight-up mystery thriller. That said, it's a true story. And what we see is what was actually happening to the film's central figure - Gertten himself - a documentary filmmaker embroiled in the dark, nasty manipulations of an evil corporate entity.

Fredrik Gertten, filmmaker, does not, however, consider himself an activist or a revolutionary or a political filmmaker. In a Skype conversation with the Swedish filmmaker, he made it very clear to me that his primary agenda is to tell good stories - END of story.

"My whole job as a documentary filmmaker was to get the feelings I experienced into my film," said Gertten. "Living the story intimately - to get these personal feelings out to my audience - this was the big challenge of doing the film. Evoking feeling should be the challenge of doing any film."

But this is not just any film. Big Boys Gone Bananas!* is a movie created out of the struggle which ensued after Gertten finished his documentary BANANAS!*, the harrowing tale of the Dole corporation's exploitation of Nicaraguan fruit workers. "This is not necessarily a controversial thing," Gertten asserts. Perhaps not, but there is controversy inherent in both works. In fact, beyond the Battle Royal between the poisoned migrant workers in the first film and the truth-seeker under attack in the second - both parties caught in a fierce struggle with one of America's hugest multinational corporations - I truly believe that we have in Fredrik Gertten something that all filmmakers should aspire to.

Gertten tells both stories with head-on commitment, but not the sort one normally associates with documentary filmmaking. "Filmmaking without passion is very boring even if the message is the right one," said Gertten. "I never considered myself as a political filmmaker or a campaign filmmaker or an activist. I might be a political person or an activist when I'm not on the job making films, but this is the thing - making a film is my job and I want to make a film that can travel into hearts and minds and that's something different. I never think 'Oh, I'm going to do something controversial.' That would be a stupid setup. I want to tell a good story. And of course I want to make this story hit people emotionally in ways that people can reflect upon their own lives and life itself."

Much as I think he would wince at the very thought, I personally consider Gertten's two most recent films to be acts of heroism. Both are great pictures and yes, they both tell great stories, but Gertten's stellar work as a storyteller is proof positive that all artists have the potential to be heroes.

Whether Gertten wants to believe it or not, he is to me, and no doubt many others, a hero.

The films work on two levels. Firstly, they're both supremely entertaining and represent filmmaking of the highest order. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, they are - pure and simple - GREAT STORIES well told that have had, and will continue to have the power to effect change for the better.

Once Gertten completed BANANAS!*, he was poised to launch it to the world in competition at the L.A. Film Festival, but Dole reared its ugly head and not only sued the filmmaker, then copied their legal position to the film festival and all its corporate sponsors - including the L.A. Times. Scandalously, The Times published a horrendously slanted full page business article that presented ONLY Dole's point of view. More slanted media news reports followed and Gertten found himself in a position where the film festival was bowing to all the pressure that was being manipulated and fully orchestrated by Dole.

Gertten made his way to Los Angeles and decided to have cameras running in order to potentially capture Dole serving him with a summons. "A filmmaker is always making film," said Gertten. "As a documentary filmmaker, anytime I have a camera running, there is the potential to make a movie."

Personally, I was appalled that a film festival would allow itself to be swayed by Dole, a corporate giant so willing to go to any lengths to suppress the truth about its disgusting practices - nefarious activities which resulted in knowingly using a pesticide that caused sterility in the Nicaraguan workers.

During our chat, however, Gertten seemed far more charitable than I on this matter and suggested the festival was not necessarily questioning his work or integrity as a filmmaker, but in believing the Dole arguments wished not only to protect themselves, but Gertten - believing that he had been duped by his subjects into presenting blatant falsehoods as fact.

Honest to Christ!

I can't ever imagine being so gracious. I was even more appalled that all the major corporate sponsors of the film festival were swallowing Dole's rancid geysers of spurious cum so willingly, so greedily - especially since the sponsors included many leading lights of the entertainment business who should have been more than happy to rally in Gertten's defence.

Gertten, however, revealed to me that the corporate sponsors weren't all against him and notes that it was a clear 50/50 split in terms of those who wanted to back him and those who didn't.

As far as I'm concerned, the 50% who didn't support Gertten at the time are the lowest, bottom feeding scum - or in the words of the late, great, Johnny Cash - they're lower than a "dirty, old, egg-sucking hound."

The actions of Dole and the cowardice of the powers-that-purported-to-be, resulted in a cowardly compromise undertaken by the festival. They withdrew Gertten's film from official competition and presented it in the least flattering venue - along with a strong disclaimer presented by the festival director prior to the screening.

One of the things I was most curious about in this process was the fact that Gertten was able to fight Dole with the assistance of a powerful litigation lawyer. The cost of fighting such dark forces would normally be so cost-prohibitive to any independent filmmaker that Gertten admits to being thankful that Bananas!* had insurance in place for just such an occurrence.

Most people outside the film industry (and certainly even young, aspiring filmmakers) are completely unaware of the scourge/blessing called Errors and Omissions insurance. I personally detest that it even became a requirement of making films when it really reared its ugly head in the late 80s. Worst of all, it became de rigueur because of America - a country that increasingly became one of the most litigious empires in the world. In most countries outside North America - even to this very day - Errors and Omissions is not a requirement to secure production financing, distribution and broadcast sales. Alas, if one wants any penetration into the North American marketplace, it is an absolute must.

For me, Errors and Omissions was just another excuse to add more costs to making movies and to put money into the greedy pockets of lawyers and insurance companies. E&O is not cheap. The insurance is term-based, needs to be renewed at various intervals during the entire life of a film and in order for a company to even grant it to you, they will usually require that an approved list of lawyers examine every aspect of your proposed film to ensure there is nothing remotely litigious.

To my mind, E&O insurance is already an attack against free speech - an act of censorship that occurs even before a movie is made.

Worst of all, the insurance carries ridiculous deductibles. I asked Gertten if Bananas*! was especially difficult to clear for E&O. Surprisingly, the lawyers gave his film a clean bill of health with no exclusions whatsoever. The deductible, however, was utterly ludicrous. It was a standard $10,000 USD. In the scheme of things, this seems a low price to pay for all the legal fees if you do get sued, but ask any independent filmmaker how easy it is to come up with $10-grand to secure said legal services and you'll get another story altogether.

Like any insurance, once you make a claim - any claim - this affects one's future ability to get insurance at a reasonable cost and with a less usurious deductible. Gertten admits that securing affordable Errors and Omissions insurance on Big Boys Gone Bananas!* proved to be a huge ordeal. It eventually worked out, but the journey to even secure it was most arduous.

Thankfully it did.

Big Boys Gone Bananas!* is an important film!

HOWEVER, at the risk of turning audiences off and fucking Mr. Gertten over even more than he has been, allow me to stress that Big Boys... is must-see ENTERTAINMENT!!! It's thrilling, scary, absurdly funny and on a par with any of the aforementioned kick-ass 70s thrillers.

"I aim my films at everybody," said Gertten. "The problem is, of course, that if my films are running on CBC or other such broadcast outlets, people will see the short pitch and then say, 'Oh, that sounds boring.'" And yeah, the short pitches for Bananas!* (Nicaraguan fruit-pickers exploited by a corporation) and Big Boys. . . (filmmaker fights a corporation for the right to free speech) are definitely the stuff to turn off everyone but the already-converted.

Telling stories that carry such weighty issues can easily get lost in the shuffle and is always a challenge to get them seen by wider audiences. Gertten adds: "I've gotten amazing reviews for my film, but many of those same reviews will say 'This is a very important film'. Who wants to see an important film? People want to be entertained. Reviewers tend to underline the "important" stuff instead of talking about the storytelling - which is a bit frustrating."

Here though, I'll briefly thump my own tub, by revealing Gertten's feelings about my written assessment of his film when it first appeared during the Hot Docs 2012 Film Festival.

"I liked your review because you were passionate yourself when you wrote it," said Gertten.

I interjected by saying I wasn't only passionate when I reviewed his film, but pissed right off. One and the same thing, I guess, but nothing makes my blood boil more than corporate, oligarchical steam-rolling, the more fascistic elements of political correctness, censorship and the squashing of free-speech.

"Well," added Gertten, "Like I said, I get so many top grade reviews but many of them are very boring texts. I think that's a crisis for documentary films that the reviewers want to be so on the course with the subject matter rather than on the filmmaking. When people read that a film is important, they will sometimes even take that at face value. A critic tells a little bit about the story, goes blah-blah-blah about the issues and it ends up with people coming up to me and saying: 'Oh this was a very important film! Congratulations Fredrik!' I'll then ask, 'Have you seen the film?' And the response is often, 'Oh no, not yet, but you did a great job.' People forget that a film is not a tweet, its not an article, it's not a thesis or an op-ed. A film is actually an emotional experience. If you do a film well, it stays with you. And that's why we as filmmakers work so hard to tell the story."

Of course, the best stories, at their root ARE simple. It's the simplicity which yields layers of complexity. It's the twists and turns a story takes from a very simple premiss that delivers complexity. One of the things that always drives me crazy in either young filmmakers, or any filmmakers who have an agenda of commitment rather than the goal of a story well told, is that too many films - documentaries especially, but also dramas or even experimental works - have NOTHING but the layers. The layers are the "cool shit", but if they're not hanging from a solid structure, all you get are the layers.

The math is simple.

Layers - simple, solid structure = Shit.

Gertten essentially concurs. "Bananas!* is a very complex story, but the bottom line for me is very simple - we see the faces of the people who pick our bananas and we understand they have been suffering and now we wonder, 'What banana should I buy?' Big Boys Go Bananas!* is also a very complex story, but in the end, the bottom line is very simple - 'Are you in favour of democracy? Are you in favour of free media?' Well then, don't sue filmmakers. Don't suppress them with your P.R. machine. If you want to be a part of society, then respect the rules of society. This goes for any corporation. You can't talk about democracy and fight it at the same time - which Dole did with me."

But given - especially in North America - how media and journalism have become mere propagandistic mouthpieces for corporate powers, government and, if you will, the New World Order, I'm somewhat disheartened that audiences are getting used to a new brand of reportage and storytelling. I asked Gertten if he believes audiences even want to be told the truth.

"That's a very special question," he responds. He thinks on it a moment and then asserts: "Of course! I think people want the truth, but they also want to be entertained and that goes for all of us. Sometimes we get entertained by fake stories and a lot of stuff in the media right now is fake. That creates a very special challenge for filmmakers - especially documentary filmmakers. If we want to do films that can reach out to a mass audience, we have to make films that are as well done as traditional narrative-based dramas and all the other stuff. It has to be exciting. We also have to do films that are reaching out to people. On the other hand, I don't think that people are stupid and I know when people see my films nobody is left out."

Gertten asserts and reiterates that his films inspire more than "a few experiences that will stay with people. When they enter a grocery store they don't want to buy sprayed bananas or when they open a newspaper they ask if an op-ed has been planted by a P.R. firm. If my films can make that happen within people then that's great. But they have to see the film. It's not enough to read a tweet."

As much as I've compared Gerrten's contemporary documentary films to the great thrillers of the 70s, he's quick to note the stereotypical pigeon-holing of documentary filmmaking that was especially prevalent in the 70s and how there are residual effects of that even today.

"You don't have to be left wing to do documentaries" he half-jokes. "People can be right wing. They can be whatever they are. You can be commerical, you can be alternative. We are, finally, professional filmmakers. Documentary is a genre. We constantly work with a narrative arc. When we edit our films we use the same language dramatic filmmakers use to tell the story. It's classical knowledge and we use it."

Before wrapping up our conversation, I had one pressing question. Given that Gertten's storytelling skills are so strong and that his documentary work excels on the level of great thrillers, does he ever imagine tackling a straight-up narrative drama?"

His response was short, sweet and definitive.

"Actually, no."

Here is a version of the review I published online during the Hot Docs 2012 film festival.

Big Boys Gone Bananas!* (2012) dir. Fredrik Gertten ****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In the summer of 2009 I became aware of a curious case wherein Fredrik Gertten, a documentary filmmaker from Sweden (along with his producing partners) was being sued by the Dole corporate fruit bats and that the Los Angeles Film Festival had yanked his film Bananas*! out of official competition and relegated it to a special screening.

The internet media coverage I read - even at the time - seemed slanted against the filmmaker and his expose of Dole's exploitation of fruit workers in Nicaragua. Sounded to me like the Dreaded Dole Dandies were irresponsibly and knowingly using pesticides that caused sterility in numerous men working the fields.

My response to this was typical - of me! I scoured the cupboards to see if there were any cans or packages with the Dole label. Thank Christ, there were none - nor were there any fresh fruits in the fridge.

I hate throwing out food, but I would have anyway. From that day on, I have never purchased anything with Dole's name attached to it. Without knowing more than the seemingly spurious accounts in the articles about the lawsuit, I sided with the filmmaker - AGAINST Dole.

They're a corporation, after all. A multi-national corporation at that. I simply have no use for such entities. As far as I'm concerned, they're all criminals - organized criminals.

What sickened me even more than the attack by Dole upon an artist's God-Given right to free speech was the appalling behaviour of the Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF). A film festival - no matter how big, small or (in the case of the LAFF) inconsequential - has a duty to ALWAYS support artists. End of story. No arguments allowed. Anyone who disagrees can crawl back into whatever pro-censorship-anti-free-speech slime pit of fascism they crawled out of. Hopefully, I won't see you in Hell as I had to renounce Satan at my Godson Illya's christening some time ago.

So, I finally saw Bananas*! two weeks ago. It's a powerful, shocking and moving film about Dole's corporate irresponsibility to its own workers. (I'll review the film under separate cover here at KFC soon.) A few days later, I watched Gertten's new picture, Big Boys Gone Bananas!* and I am so happy he made this film.

From a personal standpoint, it says and exposes the truth behind everything I believe in about American (and by extension, Canadian) imperialist corporate culture - how most governments, politicians and bureaucrats are mere pawns and puppets in "democracies" that are little more than corporate-owned totalitarian states.

That mainstream media is becoming increasingly useless.

That the notion that free speech exists is drastically diminishing.

And last, but not least, the idiotic hoops a filmmaker must go through to protect themselves from nuisance suits launched by corporate scumbags.

All of this is simply beyond the pale.

Once he was slapped with a huge lawsuit from Dole, Gertten wisely began to document his struggle on film. What he captures is borderline surreal.

He and his co-producers go into research/confab mode immediately, but are also plunged into the nightmare of the LAFF threatening not to show the film. Dole, not only brought suit against Gertten and partners, but sent their claims to the festival itself and all of its corporate sponsors. (Many of these sponsors are a Who's Who of entertainment and media power brokers - shame on all of them for not lifting a finger.)

Every single newspaper of record began running huge articles about the lawsuit - slanting everything on the side of Dole, basically reprinting Dole's press releases and most egregiously, not bothering to check sources. They were bought and paid for, no doubt.

The LAFF did the most cowardly thing of all. At first they tried to appease Dole and came up with some solutions/options for Gertten which you really need to see the film to discover. You won't believe it if you just see it here in black and white. The festival's suggested appeasements all side with Dole and essentially would force Gertten to go against everything artistic expression stands for.

When the moronic suggestions were rightly rejected, the festival pulled the movie from official competition, shoved it into a cinema far out of the festival zone and planned to read a statement regarding their cowardly stand prior to the screening.

On the night of the screening, Gertten is introduced by Dawn Hudson (who is now the CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - AMPAS - which, should speak volumes already, and if it doesn't, there's no hope for you) then-director of the festival. She invites him to take the stage. He approaches and she motions for him to speak. He balks. He's been promised that she'll read the cowardly statement before his speech to the audience. She feigns surprise, but finally gives in and reads the statement. (Do any of these cowards have any self-respect?)

She uses the word "fraudulent" to describe the film's primary subject (even though she admits this same subject is fighting this with the bar association and criminal prosecutors). Though carefully worded so that she, nor the festival are overtly questioning Gertten's credibility, it's clearly slanted to put notions in the minds of the audience that the film they're about to watch is a potential crock.

The cowardly words she mouth-pieces are:

"We are not eager to be sued. Nor, given what we know, do we believe that BANANAS!* - in its present form - presents a fair or accurate portrait. . ."

Darling Dawn, all you REALLY know is that this complex case is not over yet and that a multinational corporation is threatening to sue everyone's ass to protect its own rectal opening.

Her final words to the audience are the biggest spoonful of bull-feces-laden-sugar to help the medicine of the cowardly go down:

". . . we are showing this film - out of competition - as a case study, to illuminate a timely exploration of what makes (and doesn’t make) a responsible documentary."

Give me a break.

I hope Dawn Hudson is enjoying her plum job with the Academy Awards geezers. Checking out her woeful acting credits on the IMDB suggests she shifted her thespian abilities to being a shill for the interests of the Status Quo.

What follows in the film is like some kind of Kafka nightmare through the eyes of a David Lynchian dreamscape. It's unbelievably cruel, nasty and terrifying. Sometimes it's so absurd, you want to laugh. Can this really happen in a democratic society? Well, considering democracy is dead - at least in North America - the answer would be a resounding, "Yes!" Deep pockets usually equals justice.

Ultimately, to see an artist go through the legal torture inflicted upon him by Dole (and everyone on their payroll) is as stomach-turning as it is anger-inducing.

His producer, for example, gets an anonymous letter suggesting she disavow herself from Gertten and the film. It even strongly implies that "money will flow" to her future productions if she does so (also implying, she's finished if she doesn't).

Dole hires a public relations firm to contact every major journalist in the world (including a whole bunch of them in Sweden), promising one-on-one access to the Dole side of the story.

News item upon news item in every media known to man flings mud upon Gertten and places Dole on a pedestal.

People close to Gertten feel like they're under constant surveillance.

Canadian Co-producer Bart Simpson laments that even in Canada, artists would never receive the kind of media and government support Gerrten received in his home country - against Dole. As a Canadian, I can only agree.

A supposed advocate for free speech compares Gertten's expose of Dole to the most horrendous piece of Nazi propaganda, The Eternal Jew.

Bloggers, forum posters - obviously Dole plants - were writing the most damning things about Gertten and his film.

Even when things seem to be turning in his favour, Gertten has more battles to fight.

Gertten never backs down.

By the end of the film, though, I do wonder how many other artists would bother to persevere in similar circumstances? What Hell the film drags us through is disheartening - even though Gertten's first movie, after years of struggle - can now be seen.

As a filmmaker, I thoroughly commiserated with Mr. Gertten. Years earlier I'd gone through a not dissimilar nightmare over a controversial work I produced and co-wrote. My experience, while horrendous at the time, seems now like kid-stuff compared to the horrors Gertten went through.

The bottom line is that when artists are under attack, we are all under attack.

"Big Boys Gone Bananas!*" is currently in theatrical release via Kinosmith.

DIY ART & LIFE: A DAY WITH JOE SWANBERG ("ART HISTORY", "THE ZONE", "SILVER BULLETS") Review By Greg Klymkiw - Mumblecore Madness Invades Toronto on May 13, 2012, the Christian Sabbath (or, for those so inclined, The Day of Simon, a day of rejoicing, happiness, feasting, remembrance and contemplation of both the challenges and triumphs of Simon, who during his reign, kept Israel pure from the filthy paws of the Heathen.)

DIY Art & Life: A Day with Joe Swanberg - Art History, The Zone, Silver Bullets dir. Joe Swanberg ***

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is not a slag or a backhanded compliment, but seeing three recent works by the mumblecore pioneer Joe Swanberg (Art History, The Zone and Silver Bullets) is, at least for me, a day of rejoicing in discovering samples of the early work of a young filmmaker who displays the sort of artistry that's best contemplated within the context of what's to come.

In other words, I admired these pictures, but I didn't really like them all that much. They're pretentious, full of themselves and focus, somewhat annoyingly, on the (seemingly) weighty relationship between the medium of cinema, the act of filmmaking and the contemporary lives of a new generation of twenty-somethings.

But you've gotta see them. Kind of like medicine, but the kind we all enjoy - Gummie Kids Tylenol laced with acid. It's cinematic medicine that goes down like the bastard progeny quim-popped by a union of Mary Poppins and Timothy Leary (but perhaps spliced with the seed of Henry Miller).

The trio of short features (think novella for a literary comparison) comprise Swanberg's Full Moon trilogy. They are - ugh - improvised. This, is not necessarily a dirty word for me, but as naturalistic as the performances and dialogue are within the clearly manipulated mise en scène, I always felt distant from the characters - which, I'll admit, might even be the point - but in so doing, Swanberg seems to be clearly drawing a line and daring us to cross over or "go home".

This strange "take it or leave it" attitude (whether intentional or not) will, for many audiences - even those of us who are inclined to appreciate new forms of storytelling on film - provide a barrier from investing in the lives of those on-screen.

Though each of the movies (and collectively, the trilogy) are endowed with a series of solid narrative arcs, Swanberg's very approach continually subverts and obfuscates story to a point where the thing that drives our interest forward are not the traditional beats of character or constructive format, but his very gifted visual panache (that borders deliciously on the fetishistic) and, perhaps most importantly, the astounding ability to create tension through tone and atmosphere.

Swanberg is clearly the real thing.

That said, watching this trilogy is more exciting when one imagines a time when Swanberg will invest his voice and style in work that adheres far more closely to traditional rules of cinematic storytelling - creating a solid construct with which he can pull us into the lives of the characters, their journey and, at the same time, snap bits and pieces off the architecture - not just because he can, but because it will contribute to telling a story that sucks us in so deep that his subversion of the medium acts as a genuine story beat - jolting us, yet always moving us forward.

Watching these films is, aside from their considerable visual and tonal virtues, a total blast. It's one of the few times I've experienced early works of a filmmaker, whom I'm convinced is on the road to making movies that are going to completely knock us on our collective asses. Experiencing said works before he joins the pantheon of visionary directors who collectively respect the history of the medium, subvert the shit out of it and still make movies that will preach beyond the confines of the "converted" is a roller coaster ride very much worth taking.

Usually, one watches early works of directors we admire in retrospect. For me, this is probably best exemplified in the shorts of Martin Scorsese (It's Not Just You, Murray!, The Big Shave and the wildly contrasting post-Mean Streets documentary Italianamerican), David Cronenberg (Stereo and Crimes of the Future) and David Lynch (The Grandmother). Seeing those movies in retrospect provided a fascinating glimpse at what followed, but seeing Swanberg's stuff NOW is the complete opposite of this experience. Here we have a chance, to see - in this day and age - a whole mess of cool shit that's going to transform into something even cooler and, perchance, be infused with a greater lasting value than what's currently on display.

With that, I briefly give you the narratives to all three pictures. They're worth recounting.

In Art History, we follow a low budget director during the making of a micro-budgeted sex-drenched independent art film. The filmmaker's jealousy intensifies as the leading lady falls for her leading man - resulting in disastrous aesthetic consequences. In The Zone a couple and their female roommate are seduced by a mysterious visitor whose charms prove ephemeral and result in a major upsetting of the idyll of the twenty-somethings' apple cart. Silver Bullets, the third film in Swanberg's trilogy charts a young actress' attraction to her director (of a werewolf picture, no less) as her live-in boyfriend expresses dismay over her acceptance of work in the film and gradually descends into a pit of depressive paranoia.

There's not a darn thing wrong with any of these narratives, though Swanberg's pseudo-Cassavettes-influenced improvisations blended with the meta-film approach to story are played up in extremis and always keep us at arms' length from appreciating the journeys fully. In spite of this, there is a bounty of pure, glorious cinema to feast upon - lighting and compositions of exquisite taste and a dazzling bravery in holding many of the shots longer than most films do in this age of ADD-inspired shooting and cutting.

The tone of all three films is extremely creepy and though it seems like narrative and character are the casualties, Swanberg delivers the goods in providing his strong original voice and it is his style that ultimately rules the day.

My favourite of the three is The Zone. I found it delectably unpleasant to the max and even vaguely enjoyed how it intentionally ran out of steam.

Swanberg is also quite comfortable indulging himself in the kind of fetishistic behind-the-camera impulses that have always made for great work (but in the works of most young filmmakers often falls flat).

Within the mainstream, Alfred Hitchcock and, to a certain extent, David Lynch, explored their particular penchants to a point where the act of both filmmaking and viewing the films are endowed with unique fetishistic qualities for makers, viewers and participants alike. Jan Svankmajer in his decidedly non-mainstream Conspirators of Pleasure broke all sorts of barriers and plunged us into a delightfully strange miasma of kink. And lest we forget the perverse Austrian Ulrich Seidl who, in both documentary and drama plunged us into all manner of fetishistic depravity to expose the humanity in the extremities of human behaviour. (Anyone who's seen Seidl's Dog Days and Jesus, You Know might find similar, though muted comparison points in Swanberg's trilogy.)

The aforementioned filmmakers all crossed my mind while watching Swanberg's work.

This is a good thing.

For me, the thrill of seeing the birth of a new voice, the anticipation of what this voice will add to the future of cinema whilst taking its own unique place in the pantheon of cinematic immortality is worth its weight in gold.

Toronto audiences are blessed with the opportunity to spend several hours with Swanberg and his films as Ultra 8 Pictures, CINSSU and Refocus present DIY Art & Life: A Day with Joe Swanberg at Innis Town Hall (University of Toronto campus) on Sunday May 13th beginning at 4:00pm and lasting into the deep, dark night. Tickets are available HERE or by emailing katarina@ultra8.ca