In the Long Run: The Robber

By Michael Sicinski

If I were a betting man, I’d have put everything I had on Thomas Arslan’s In the Shadows (ably parsed by Christoph Huber in Cinema Scope 45) as breaking out from the German-language fare at last year’s Berlinale. In addition to being sharp, rigorous, and, to quote Charlie Kaufman’s mom, psychologically taut, In the Shadows owed much more to the classics of the crime genre, and owed it with such dry, almost scholarly wit. This, I thought, was a film that had crossover written all over it. By contrast, Benjamin Heisenberg’s The Robber, a film that is equally accomplished in most every respect, seemed far too knotty and unheimlich, a formalist effort geared mostly to the initiated.

Heisenberg’s debut film Sleeper (2005) premiered at Cannes to mostly positive notices, and it too operates within an inward-folding register. The filmmaker takes what could have been a thriller plot (a young university scientist is asked to monitor his Algerian colleague, who may or may not be a terrorist) and simmers it down to a densely concentrated character study.  The Robber makes Sleeper looks luxuriously novelistic by comparison. Following its competition slot in Berlin, Heisenberg’s latest was a surprise selection for the New York Film Festival, which refocused attention on the film, helping it achieve the commercial release that has eluded most films associated with the so-called Berlin School (including In the Shadows). (more…)

Canada’s Top Ten: Exclusions and Inclusions

Fubar II

By John Semley

On December 8, Canadian filmmaker Reginald Harkema sent out an e-mail, received by colleagues, industry types, journalists, and others whose addresses he had accrued for one reason or another. Bearing the subject heading “Canada’s Top Ten,” Harkema’s e-mail contained the following brief message:

I know Canada is not ready to fete a Charles Manson romantic comedy…

But this is ridiculous.

Reg

Below Harkema’s missive—the “Charles Manson romantic comedy” line was a nod to Leslie, My Name Is Evil, Harkema’s lively pop-art biopic that was snubbed the previous year—was the information that Michael Dowse’s Fubar II, which Harkema edited, had been left out of the Toronto International Film Festival’s Canada’s Top Ten list, its annual roll call of the best in Canadian features and shorts. Published alphabetically, the Top Ten list is really two lists: two juries, comprised of filmmakers (Deborah Chow, Bruce Sweeney), journalists (Linda Barnard, Teri Hart), programmers (Kim Yutani, Agata Smoluch Del Sorbo) and various industry stalwarts select the ten best features and shorts of the year. In order to be considered, the films must have obtained a major theatrical release, or played at a “major” film festival in 2010; this year, the lists were winnowed down from more than 100 submitted films. While Fubar II wasn’t lacking for recognition from TIFF—after missing the boat on the 2002 original (only to see it become the Canadian cult film of the decade), the festival seemed to acknowledge its slip-up by according II the esteemed opening slot of Midnight Madness—its exclusion from the CTT list is telling, not only in light of the film’s surprising verve and freshness but for the possible new directions it suggests for Canadian cinema. (more…)

The Bee’s Knees: The Green Hornet

By Adam Nayman

To begin with, a Gondrian image: a boy sticking his superhero doll out of the window of a moving car to create the appearance of flight. Thus does the first shot of The Green Hornet recall the opening of Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo (2001), with its action figures colliding in negative space, a tactile evocation of childhood playtime, the backseat recast as a boundless imaginative space. I’m not suggesting that Gondry’s much-derided entry in the superhero-movie sweepstakes ranks with Fessenden’s emotionally acute paternal ghost story, but its harsh critical reception thus far—with everyone from Roger Ebert to Film Freak Central’s relentless superhero-cinema advocate Walter Chaw penning grandstanding pans—suggests that its inherent transgressions are similar. (more…)

Beyond the Fringe

Officials struggling to identify chemicals that forced evacuation

VANCOUVER SUN—September 20, 2010

Health, fire and Vancouver city officials admitted Monday they are struggling to identify the chemicals emitting from the crippled Electra tower that forced the evacuation of the entire 21-storey building.

As a result, it could be days before residents and businesses will be able to return to the former BC Hydro head office.

This landmark building at 989 Nelson, completed in 1957 as the head office for BC Electric Company, is a significant example of the Internationalist style of modern architecture. The lobby, plaza and elevator penthouse feature richly coloured glass mosaic tiles by local artist B.C. Binning. (more…)

Youth in Reboot: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

By Robert Koehler

Hollywood youth comedy—that genre made for youths featuring youths—once the dream factory of a new wave of bright young things who were supposed to transform that end of the business over a decade ago, now resembles a stuffed doll mangled and torn to shreds by mangy dogs. Before the August arrival of Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the last youth comedy with any resonance was The House Bunny (2008)— entirely due to the genius of Anna Faris, the funniest actor under 40 years old anywhere on the planet—and even before that, the record remains slim. Yet with one stroke, Scott Pilgrim rewrites the rules, parameters, and standards for the genre, gamely condensing Canadian graphic novelist Bryan Lee O’Malley’s 1000-page, six-part epic and fusing it with fabulously propulsive visual language and comic dialogue that whips by faster and funnier than anything from a Hollywood studio since the heyday of Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond. (more…)

Cinema Scope Top Ten of 2010

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

2. The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu (Andrei Ujica)

3. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)

4. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)

5. Winter Vacation (Li Hongqi)

6. The Strange Case of Angelica (Manoel de Oliveira)

7. I Wish I Knew (Jia Zhangke)

8. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)

9. ATTENBERG (Athina Rachel Tsangari)

10. The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski)

Ten Special Mentions:

Aurora (Cristi Puiu)

Carlos (Olivier Assayas)

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

Cold Weather (Aaron Katz)

Curling (Denis Côté)

Des hommes et des dieux (Xavier Beauvois)

Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)

El Sicario Room 164 (Gianfranco Rosi)

The Social Network (David Fincher)

Unstoppable (Tony Scott)