Steven desJardins (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} stevendj) wrote,@ 2007-09-09 22:08:00 |
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TIFF Talk
I'm about halfway through my stay in Toronto, and so far I've seen five movies. The biggest name stars I've seen are Nancy Kwan, Kate Bosworth, and Sigourney Weaver. I gather such namedropping is obligatory among TIFF attendees, who are automatically every celebrity's best buddies. ("I have a question for Sigourney...")
My first movie was Hollywood Chinese, a documentary about the history of Chinese-Americans in movies, and it was interesting to see both the minor roles Asian-Americans did succeed in getting in movies and the long procession of stereotypes they were mostly forced into, plus all the white actors made up to play starring Asian roles like Fu Manchu and Genghis Khan. There were a couple of movies that were very good for Asian actors, notably "Flower Drum Song", but it wasn't really until the late '80's that movies with largely Asian casts really began to be produced. Very interesting.
Before that I spent a few hours at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, which is definitely worth a trip if you like pottery. The permanent collection is stronger on European pottery than Chinese or Japanese, but I was lucky enough to show up right before a docent tour of a special exhibition which had a lot of Chinese pieces, so I got a nice balance.
Friday was frustrating, since most of the movies I wanted to see were sold out. If they hadn't all been sold out, though, I doubt if I would have gotten tickets to The Visitor, a very enjoyable movie by the director of The Station Agent, and my favorite fiction movie of the festival so far. The protagonist is a tweedy economics professor who's doing the bare minimum of work necessary to keep his job, a cold and unsympathetic character, who's been frozen ever since the death of his wife. When he goes to New York for a conference, visiting the apartment he owns there for the first time in decades, he discovers a pair of recent immigrants living there. As he gets to know them, he begins to feel genuine warmth for Tarek, and questions the worth of his own life. It's quite strident in denouncing our treatment of illegal immigrants, in our collective indifference to the value they bring to us, but beyond that it's a story of transformation and hope. The performance of the protagonist is a bit distracting—I could never quite forget I was watching an actor, and one with impeccable comic timing—but the performances of the immigrants are outstanding.
Saturday I had lunch Mary Pugh, a friend from grad school, and met her two-year-old son. We went to Flower Drum Song, which was impressive for its time, but forty-six years later seems a bit corny.
Today I went to The Dictator Hunter and The Girl in the Park, and devised a scheme withvelochicdunord to register celebritydoughnuts.ca and apply for press passes to next year's festival.
The Dictator Hunter is about a human rights lawyer's effort to bring the ex-dictator of Chad (now in exile in Senegal) to justice. The local alt-weekly didn't like it, and I can see how it could have been tightened up, but the subject is an interesting one and it's encouraging to see Senegal and the African Union show at least lip service to the idea that these crimes can't simply be ignored. In practice, nobody is willing to deal with the problem, so they all pass the buck to somebody else, but each time the buck passes, the simple fact that the courts or the President of Senegal or whoever took the matter seriously makes it harder for the next buck-passee to simply ignore the issue, until finally a meeting of the African Union resolves that Senegal is obligated to try the case. It's still uncertain that justice will be done, but every incremental step towards establishing accountability for government murders and torturers serves to discourage current leaders from committing these types of abuses.
The Girl in the Park is about a woman whose three-year-old daughter vanishes from the park one day (in a you turn your back for a second, and never see her again kind of way). Sixteen years later, the mother, who has never really recovered, sees a young woman who reminds her of her daughter, and lies to save her from being arrested for shoplifting. The girl and Weaver forge a tenuous relationship, and it's never quite clear if the girl has figured out that Weaver thinks she's her daughter and is running a con, or if the hints that's she's really the lost daughter are all in Weaver's imagination, or if she actually is the lost daughter. And in the end I'm not sure it matters—they need each other, they help each other cope, and so neither will establish the truth. Sigourney Weaver's been in a bunch of good movies lately; it's nice to see her getting good roles, and good roles getting her.
I'm about halfway through my stay in Toronto, and so far I've seen five movies. The biggest name stars I've seen are Nancy Kwan, Kate Bosworth, and Sigourney Weaver. I gather such namedropping is obligatory among TIFF attendees, who are automatically every celebrity's best buddies. ("I have a question for Sigourney...")
My first movie was Hollywood Chinese, a documentary about the history of Chinese-Americans in movies, and it was interesting to see both the minor roles Asian-Americans did succeed in getting in movies and the long procession of stereotypes they were mostly forced into, plus all the white actors made up to play starring Asian roles like Fu Manchu and Genghis Khan. There were a couple of movies that were very good for Asian actors, notably "Flower Drum Song", but it wasn't really until the late '80's that movies with largely Asian casts really began to be produced. Very interesting.
Before that I spent a few hours at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, which is definitely worth a trip if you like pottery. The permanent collection is stronger on European pottery than Chinese or Japanese, but I was lucky enough to show up right before a docent tour of a special exhibition which had a lot of Chinese pieces, so I got a nice balance.
Friday was frustrating, since most of the movies I wanted to see were sold out. If they hadn't all been sold out, though, I doubt if I would have gotten tickets to The Visitor, a very enjoyable movie by the director of The Station Agent, and my favorite fiction movie of the festival so far. The protagonist is a tweedy economics professor who's doing the bare minimum of work necessary to keep his job, a cold and unsympathetic character, who's been frozen ever since the death of his wife. When he goes to New York for a conference, visiting the apartment he owns there for the first time in decades, he discovers a pair of recent immigrants living there. As he gets to know them, he begins to feel genuine warmth for Tarek, and questions the worth of his own life. It's quite strident in denouncing our treatment of illegal immigrants, in our collective indifference to the value they bring to us, but beyond that it's a story of transformation and hope. The performance of the protagonist is a bit distracting—I could never quite forget I was watching an actor, and one with impeccable comic timing—but the performances of the immigrants are outstanding.
Saturday I had lunch Mary Pugh, a friend from grad school, and met her two-year-old son. We went to Flower Drum Song, which was impressive for its time, but forty-six years later seems a bit corny.
Today I went to The Dictator Hunter and The Girl in the Park, and devised a scheme with
velochicdunord to register celebritydoughnuts.ca and apply for press passes to next year's festival.The Dictator Hunter is about a human rights lawyer's effort to bring the ex-dictator of Chad (now in exile in Senegal) to justice. The local alt-weekly didn't like it, and I can see how it could have been tightened up, but the subject is an interesting one and it's encouraging to see Senegal and the African Union show at least lip service to the idea that these crimes can't simply be ignored. In practice, nobody is willing to deal with the problem, so they all pass the buck to somebody else, but each time the buck passes, the simple fact that the courts or the President of Senegal or whoever took the matter seriously makes it harder for the next buck-passee to simply ignore the issue, until finally a meeting of the African Union resolves that Senegal is obligated to try the case. It's still uncertain that justice will be done, but every incremental step towards establishing accountability for government murders and torturers serves to discourage current leaders from committing these types of abuses.
The Girl in the Park is about a woman whose three-year-old daughter vanishes from the park one day (in a you turn your back for a second, and never see her again kind of way). Sixteen years later, the mother, who has never really recovered, sees a young woman who reminds her of her daughter, and lies to save her from being arrested for shoplifting. The girl and Weaver forge a tenuous relationship, and it's never quite clear if the girl has figured out that Weaver thinks she's her daughter and is running a con, or if the hints that's she's really the lost daughter are all in Weaver's imagination, or if she actually is the lost daughter. And in the end I'm not sure it matters—they need each other, they help each other cope, and so neither will establish the truth. Sigourney Weaver's been in a bunch of good movies lately; it's nice to see her getting good roles, and good roles getting her.
