Here’s my second journal as executive editor. It’s a good one. There’s a comic story about a father saving his house from a sinkhole, an essay on how the US military uses a clever trick to distract the enemy, a story about a talking spider and a poem called “Circumcision in a McDonald’s Bathroom.” My editorial makes fun of Snooki and Justin Bieber’s “books” — a very generous term. You can find it in selected bookstores in Canada. $8.50 CAD
The Bard is certainly no stranger to silver screen reincarnations of his teenage double-suicides. But a movie like Gnomeo and Juliet he couldn’t have seen coming. [Click here to read my latest Eye Weekly review]
If you haven’t noticed, I finally gave in and switched the name of my blog from the delusional 500 Movies, 365 Days to the pragmatic Mostly Movies. I don’t like doing it, but if you’re juggling three jobs and you get an email from a complete stranger saying he’s disappointed that you’ve discontinued your regular posting (Hi, by the way!), it’s time to concede to the fact that a 24-hour day is, well, really only 24 hours long.
I’m almost done my editorial internship at Eye Weekly, a Toronto alternative magazine. After that, I’ll be regularly freelancing stories at the Toronto Star, where I currently work as a web editorial assistant, and focusing my energies on Existere, an arts and literary journal (now sold in selected bookstores in Canada, by the way).
Tomorrow, I’m going to review another movie for Eye Weekly. It’s called Gnomeo and Juliet, which stars — cross my heart and hope to die — James McAvoy and Emily Blunt.
Oh and Ozzy Osbourne and Michael Caine. That’s right you heard me.
If you can’t already tell by the title and the unexpected cast, this movie is going to be a hoot! I normally don’t like covering movies, because it means I have to venture into the theatre too early, coffee in hand, and sit with a pen and paper to scribble notes in the dark. Alone. Maybe I’ll bump into Jason Anderson or Peter Howell? Please?
And here’s the story I freelanced for the Toronto Star‘s Healthzone. This one’s for my late grandmother Maura Irlandez Nartea (as she wrote in her hilarious last will and testament, really, more like an amazing love letter), the sweetest, gentlest, and yes, I would argue, the funniest and most fun-loving woman and who I miss very much.
It’s a story about chronic pain and as my interview subject, Beverley Perkins, mother of the lead actress in Ginger Snaps, Emily Perkins, broke down crying during our interview, I think of my grandmother who also experienced a lot of pain when she was ill but who, even then, never lost her sense of humour. You don’t hear about chronic pain a lot, and there’s a lot of misunderstanding as to what it really is. I hope to shed light on this condition in my article. Enjoy!
Finding could lead to cure for chronic pain
Try describing this to your doctor: something about the size of an egg is lodged up about six inches up your rectum. And it’s burning.
This visceral pain came like a lightning for Beverley Perkins in the middle of the most unlikely activity: reading a book. Doctors in Vancouver where she is based, baffled by her unusual condition, gave her suppositories, creams and pills, but nothing could touch the pain.
One doctor gave her an exasperated look and prescribed her a drug for schizophrenia. But Perkins had something else in mind: she wanted to be paralyzed from the waist down.
Professor Min Zhuo, a neuroscientist and pharmacologist at the University of Toronto, who released his new findings last month on a potential cure for chronic pain, notes that patients can be driven to even more desperate measures than Perkins was contemplating. “When a patient is in a lot of chronic pain, at a certain level, it could drive them to suicide,” he said.
He and a team of Canadian and South Korean scientists have discovered the key to an inhibitor peptide called psuedosubstrate inhibitory peptide (ZIP) that can stop what plagues chronic pain sufferers like Perkins – pain memories.
Zhuo predicts that since ZIP targets the protein responsible for memory storage, not just for pain, but also for everything one learns and remembers, the possible side effect is memory loss.
“I do believe, however, that our memory process is much more sophisticated than we imagine,” he said, elaborating that long-term memories, like your parents’ name and your hometown, might be left untouched. He hopes that only short-term memories like what movie you saw the other day might be erased along with the overactive pain-signal memory. For sufferers, however, this is a downside they might be willing to accept. Keep reading
Director Andrey Konchalovskiy (whose extensive background in film includes 1989′s Hollywood crossover Tango & Cash) takes a crack at Christmas classic The Nutcracker, boldly trading the tulle for a twist: setting it in a dystopian world transformed by the anthropomorphic rats who rule over humanity. Yet The Nutcracker has little punch on the 3-D screen. Sure, it succeeds in making snowflakes come at you and it transports your stomach atop a rollercoaster in some of its aerial shots, but with the plot and character development left as afterthoughts, E.T.A. Hoffman’s source text would have been better served by dainty twists and jetés than by this Nutcracker‘s strained, lugging plot.
Though the script does not lack a J.K. Rowling–style imagination and humour (sights include a pet shark, manufactured dark clouds fueled by confiscated toys, photos of sobbing children as an art collection), it also feels recycled from better movies. Konchalovskiy’s world is such a hodgepodge of deus ex machina, age-inappropriate violence and obligatory setpieces. Despite the pitch-perfect lead performance by child prodigy Elle Fanning, it’s hard to overlook the movie’s missteps.
(Published in Eye Weekly)
Harvey Pekar, October 8, 1939 – July 12, 2010
“If you think reading comics about your life seems strange, try watching a play about it. God only knows how I’ll feel when I see this movie.” – Harvey Pekar
While in school, I did my time of hard manual labour at a factory with a colorful cast of characters, and, after seeing American Splendor, I knew I should’ve anthologized my interactions with them. These people fashioned body parts in all their unpalatable, lifelike details out of dough, and lusted over female coworkers sporting unglamorous hairnet, shapeless, unflattering all-white uniform and big honking safety shoes. One of them confided about making a killing driving up north digging through outhouses looking for bottles, which, in turn, spurned a conversation about starting a website called “Models and Bottles.”
For visionary comic writer Harvey Pekar, these blue-collar workers and their workaday comedies would have been fodder for what probably could’ve been an even funnier comic strip.
When Pekar said in the movie, “Ordinary life is so complex,” I got flashbacks of my own movie-worthy moments, like when I was watching two broken machines by myself as dough kept piling up on the ground and searing hot pans climbed on top of each other as they are ushered into a broken conveyor belt. I had to manually take these pans out, which, on top of being heavy and hot, are also magnetized to the belts. Or when I was waitressing/hostessing/bussing/bartending at a restaurant as the business phone and the bell in the kitchen played an annoying duet.
Needless to say, Pekar was my hero. He understood how the art of surviving an underwhelming life, loneliness and failures can be entertainment – even art – on its own, and we can be our own life’s comic relief. Pekar’s own real life was immortalized in a comic strip within a play within a movie within a documentary in American Splendor.
You might consider Pekar an everyday man, the anti-hero with uneventful life so un-cinematic it would not translate well into film. But who needs a life that fits neatly into a Hollywood plot structure complete with drama, climactic explosions, resolutions and a clear, marketable genre when you have a weird voice problem that lasts for months, a first date with someone who suggests you guys skip courtship and just get hitched, a coworker who gives you his gourmet jelly beans in Lent, have a falling out with David Freaking Letterman and retain a filing clerk job while also playing the superhero in your own comic book?
Pekar found all the golden moments in his life – the shit parts of it – and invites everyone to laugh with him. Even the glamorous parts of his life stink of humility. Throughout the movie, as far as I know, Pekar wore no mask. He is himself with Letterman the way he is himself with his coworker friend who is a self-proclaimed nerd and his peculiar wife who is a self-diagnosed anemic.
Paul Giamatti, as Pekar, is one talented actor for making a bored, world-weary person so engrossing to watch. His performance is so expressive that it barely needs words. He expresses ennui, disdain, abjectness and happiness with magnetic realism.
Writer-director Berman and Pulcini also layered the autobiographical film with magnetic realism. American Splendor the movie is Pekar-saturated. The fake but very real Pekar goes off to appear in the David Letterman show and out comes the real Pekar in the real footage. The real Pekar narrates the documentary of making his autobiographical movie based on his autobiographical comic book and graphic novel. Pekar’s coworkers and wife also appears in the documentary.
The metafictional quality of this work is outstanding, mirroring a mirror facing a mirror in a series of self-reflexive observations that are not really entirely about himself but very much about the people around him, too. So many Pekars appear in the film – the animated, the fictional and the real. Perspectives of him vary as well. Pekar is illustrated in his comics by various artists. His wife, Joyce Brabner and illustrator Frank Stack also narrate his story, particularly the period when he battled cancer.
What’s peculiar about this film is that it doesn’t really focus on the glamorous or cinematic part of Pekar’s life. It’s not a dramatic film about Pekar battling cancer, which was the obvious choice for a Hollywood film. It’s about Pekar in the everyday – washing dishes, commuting to work, scribbling, interacting with quirky characters, getting dumped, waxing philosophic about his doppelgangers in the phonebook and shoving gourmet jellybeans into his mouth. But how does it all work? How does the mundane dominate a movie and still be cinematic? These are the details and colours one inserts in a work of art. If you minimize the plot and highlight the colour, do you still have a movie? American Splendor answers that question.
Directed and written by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini
Directed by Mike Nichols (2003)
“Do you wanna be nice, or do you want to be effective?” - Roy Cohn
Angels in America is essentially a long conversation about identity – a grand debate on race, sexual orientation, politics and religion. Adapted from a stage play, it retains its theatricality in its conversations and its fantastical scenes that is reminiscent of Shakespearean drama. As a film, it’s a bit jarring to see such complications in plot as the psyche of the characters are given an arena to play out the grandeurs and layers of their desires, guilt and disappointments, the revelatory chimeras and the working out of intricate psychologies.
Millennium Approaches is thematically heavy. It introduces us to two sets of couples, one homosexual and one a Mormon marriage. The former, on the surface, appears well-adjusted. Louis and Prior have healthy conversations, and they appear to enjoy each other’s company. However, the strength of their love is soon tested by Prior’s announcement that he’s afflicted with AIDS. Louis has doubts he can stick around and care for Prior and he, indeed, quickly bolts during Prior’s first hospitalization.
The Mormon marriage, on the other hand, has no pretentions of healthiness. It is a sexless marriage, troubled by the wife Harper’s valium addiction and psychosis and her husband Joe’s secret homosexual desires.
And then there’s Roy Cohn – lots of political clout but is missing a soul. He understands the underpinnings of society and works hard at staying on top, even at the cost of alienating his identity and the group he falls under. Played by Al Pacino, Roy Cohn is a believable monster, a racist, homophobic bully who finds himself suddenly at the mercy of his AIDS-ridden body.
What’s different about Tony Kushner’s Angels in America? It’s opinionated, exemplary and indulgent. Nothing about it is subtle. Its characters converse with others, themselves and with the figments of their imaginations. It is an operatic production that melds the fantastic with reality a little too heavily. The fantastic parts are uncomfortable to watch because it reveals the characters in uncomfortable depths. For instance, Harper’s desire for escape from the realities of her failed marriage transforms into a scene in the Antarctica where she is alone with her desires and actualizes them in painful self-delusions.
Kushner’s Angels in America is an epic journey, tough to travel, but as we inch closer to the second part, we feel that the elaborate way we got there is building up to a fantastic climax that will end either majestically or tragically.
Cover of About a Boy (Widescreen Edition)
Christine: You will end up childless and alone.
Will: Well, fingers crossed, yeah.
So, what could About a Boy be about? Well, with Hugh Grant on the cover, it’s safe to say it would be about love, it would be about redemption and it would be about these two things broken down to two parts romance, two parts comedy, four parts cute, insert your garden variety rom-com plot here.
Just from the cover, I could tell that serendipity would bring these father-and-son-type figures together a la Big Daddy, they would swap life lessons, and the ending, on cue, would feed us the familiar bromide of feel-good clichés.
But just as our protagonist Marcus, a 12-year-old vegetarian with a bowl cut and an indifference to fashion, no longer questions why candies are being propelled at his direction, we start to see beyond the blunt bangs on his forehead. We see a child engrossed by his newfound father figure, Will, who mostly just lies in front of a TV and, alternatively, lies elaborately to single mothers to score what he hopes are short-lived relationships with them.
Marcus couldn’t have found a worse mentor and friend but he clings to him to delay the fear of possibly finding his hippie mother (Toni Collette) post suicide attempt again. All of a sudden, this is not just another Mickey Blue Eyes or Notting Hill. This is something dark, not just about a boy, but about clinical depression, childhood trauma, bullying, divorce, suicide and deception – all while trying to tilt towards comedy and lightness.
As the movie sheds its clichés, it begins to unravel its delicate layers of emotion that are simply unrecognizable with this type of film. There really is something about the “boys”: Even though it’s hard to warm up to them, by the end, you want to cast them in a Snuggie infomercial.
And though I mockingly (and correctly) predicted that Hugh Grant and the kid would break out into a song at the climax, that number was so funny that it beats Toni Collete’s dance number with Abigail Breslin in Little Miss Sunshine in 2006, which is also about a family of misfits.
About a Boy shows that risky comedy about more daring themes, combined with a spunky script and absorbing performances, is enough to salvage the most cringe-worthy of romantic comedies.
Patrick Bateman is a splendor in symmetry. But when he’s not returning videotapes, flexing and admiring his deltoids and biceps or running his fingers through his tumble of wavy, full-bodied hair, you’ll soon see that, on the inside, he’s the equivalent of the horrors of his refrigerator containing a woman’s shrink-wrapped head.
Christian Bale, as Bateman, exudes comical pomp. He speaks with affected sophistication, which is especially fitting in the disproportionately dramatic scene of business card rivalry, complete with the chilling-wind sound effects. In their showdown of whose business card has the most tasteful tint of white, they equal Alicia Silverstone’s Cher in Clueless with their cutthroat corporate version. Bateman even says “Oh my God” over his colleague’s use of watermark.
However, this trifle talk showcases great characterization – how competition and superiority complexes have created nothing but two-dimensional personalities in the vapid corporate world. Much like their bone, off-white, eggshell and pale nimbus business cards, these characters’ dullness only differ in small gradation of shades.
As for the one of the more unique murders, Bateman transforms the atmosphere to one of unexpected levity, as he prances around like Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura, plays the upbeat “Hip to be Square” and dons a raincoat over his suit for the rain of blood to come. Bateman grins as he executes, then turns maniacal as his no-longer competitor’s blood splashes on his flawless skin and over-coiffed hair.
Which is what this film is all about: the undoing of the ideal. Even though they could be interpreted as real or imagined, these murders being mere episodes of Bateman’s imagination makes for a stronger satire. It seems fitting that this emasculated man with inferior bone-white business card imagines the murder of his colleague, who chooses a superior off-white, in an ironically pristine apartment.
But Bateman’s imagination never materializes. He tries to create disorder in his ordered reality and elevate himself by eliminating all that is wrong in his world (panhandlers, cats, hookers, threatening competitors), but his colleagues, lawyer and the real world ultimately dismiss him.
Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the prettiest of them all. Bateman: YOU are, stud.
I know that you’ve been playing The Band nonstop in my unexplained absence.
The blog comes back tomorrow, because today I have, wait for it, a hockey game! Yay for beer and nachos and guys in protective gear beating the crap out of the other guy’s protective gear. And oh yeah, shooting the plastic thing in the net with a stick.
But enough about hockey and the grammatically incorrect Maple Leafs.
Tomorrow I continue plowing through The Best DVDs You’ve Never Seen, Just Missed or Almost Forgotten, but this time, I’m going on a hunt for films I actually haven’t seen, just missed or have almost forgotten, which means a trip to Blockbuster. There’s nothing more I enjoy than going through the movie shelves and movie hunting. I discovered gems like A Simple Plan, Swimming Pool and Mean Creek that way.
In the mean time, resume playing The Band on loop.
Three intense Toronto After Dark Film Fest fans clarifying what a "human centipede" is, clearly for those who are in denial. Courtesy of Bloor Cinema.
The horror started before the film did: the movie was sold out. This, after my panicked marathon trying to outwalk all the other horror fans trying to get to the end of the line. I actually managed to overtake more than a handful of them that I might as well have raised money for charity. With the fear-inducing score from Jaws or, better yet, Inception playing in my head, I reached the end of the serpentine queue at some dark street around the corner from the Bloor Cinema.
Oh, but the swelling score came back, angrier and more threatening than ever, as my friend and I came to a horrifying realization of a sold-out show and had to leave the line of what I could only imagine looked like a human centipede from the sky. Thankfully, the Bloor is huge and, after waiting for Godot in the rush line, we managed to score some balcony tickets where the audience was more rowdy and delirious (blame the high altitude and the thinner air). You also have to play a little bit of musical chairs up there, because, well, you just don’t want vertically-blessed audience members obscuring your view of the good . . . segments of the show.
Tom Six’s The Human Centipede is arguably the most controversial horror film in the long and perturbed history of the genre that had its fair share of severed zombie heads, exorcists and their creaking body parts, axe-wielding evil dolls, dead people who don’t know they’re dead, aliens, dinosaurs, haunted TV sets and, lately, piranhas.
Horrifically original, The Human Centipede incited judgmental commentaries from passersby (“Who in their right mind . . .”). I’m in my right mind, and I can’t help but feel intrigued by this film’s daring premise.
The horror genre had suffered stagnancy and had become that one big, decaying recycling plant that NIMBYists have been trying to get rid of. There are just too many fangs and blood that screams ketchup on the silver screen these days.
And here comes a filmmaker with a great name – Tom Six – and a cinematographer, also with a great name – Goof de Koning – making a movie about a mad surgeon who wants to make a triumvirate digestive tract: connecting multiple human pipe systems, mouth-to-anus and call it the human centipede. It’s not a family film, but what makes the likes of The Exorcist, Hostel and Saw more acceptable than this evil surgeon’s horror show? It’s disgusting, depraved and horrific, yes, but what is horror if not disgusting, depraved and horrific anyway?
The idea is a little hard to swallow, but Tom Six gets six stars for ingenuity. It's fiction guys. Put your pitchforks and torches down.
Tom Six executes an original idea the way Charlie Kaufman executes an original idea, but why does the former get a lot of heat for pushing the envelope? Tom Six actually does not indulge in blood and graphic details, as many readily assume. A lot is implied, and the idea is executed in a tasteful manner, with good, calculated artistic choices. The result is an original, thought-provoking, horrifying and intentionally funny film.
Are Six’s risks justified? Let’s put it this way: I’ve never been in a theatre more entertained than the Bloor Cinema that Friday night. We laughed, gasped, shielded our eyes, dug our nails into the next person’s arm, moved our butts to the edge of our seats and laughed some more. I intend to fill awkward silences I encounter from now on with the story of these two poor girls and their shitty fate: being silenced by anus. This, my friends, is what no-nonsense horror is all about.
The Toronto Underground Cinema is playing The Human Centipede from August 28 to September 3. They have a sick “centipede deal” — admit three for the price of two. Don’t worry, I don’t think this deal intends to facilitate a centipede surgery on triumvirates. I hope.
(Note: This trailer is very underwhelming and is not representative of how great this movie is. Yes, the opening is cliche, but it’s done with a sense of humour that is not evident in this trailer. In fact, all the best parts are saved for the actual movie, which is a good thing, so don’t let this trailer fool you.)
