Category: Entertainment

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TIFF 2007 Picks

So after much delibration, let me present our Toronto International Film Festival picks (a collaborative effort between J. and I). This is by no means a list of the “best” films; it’s more of a strategic list of films that might be hard to see later, and that we have a reasonable chance of getting in to, or that we just felt like including.

First choices:

  • The Exodus. Pang Ho-Cheung, Hong Kong. Because we don’t seen enough Asian movies.
  • I’m Not There. Todd Haynes, USA. Bob Dylan’s life, as defined by the characters he invented.
  • Persepolis. Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, France. A bleak recent history of life in Iran interjected with humour and dreams, animated in stark black & white from the original graphic novels.
  • Short Cuts Canada programme 2. A set of shorts leaning a bit more towards the animated end of the spectrum, with Boar Attack, Madam Tutli-Putli and Dada Dum looking particularly appealing.
  • Silent Light. Carlos Reygadas, Mexico. Mexican Mennonites including Miriam Toews, speaking in Low German? Indeed.

Second choices:

  • Encounters at the End of the World. Werner Herzog, USA. The legendary director does Antarctica.
  • Jellyfish. Shira Geffen & Edgar Keret, Israel. Unsettling Israelis on the brink of emotional chaos, and winner of a Camera d’Or at Cannes.
  • M. Lee Myung-Se, South Korea.
  • The Mourning Forest. Naomi Kawase, France/Japan. An elderly man and young woman contemplating grief amidst stunning nature. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes this year.
  • With Your Permission. Paprika Steen, Denmark/Sweden. Extreme discomfort, all stiff back and flailing arms. And thankfully not dogme.

Not chosen, but looking forward to:

  • L’âge des ténèbres (Days of Darkness). Denys Arcand, Canada. Following up on the great Barbarian Invasions.
  • Eastern Promises. David Cronenberg, UK/Canada. The History of Violence team are back again, with Mortensen accompanied this time by Naomi Watt in a Russian mobster flick.
  • Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Shekhar Kapur, UK. Not at the top of my list, but probably worth seeing.
  • My Kid Could Paint That. Amir Bar-Lev, USA. Documentary about a 4 year old whose abstract artworks have sold for over $300,000.
  • My Winnipeg. Guy Maddin, Canada. Back with another weird one, I imagine.
  • No Country for Old Men. Joel & Ethan Coen, USA. Highly anticipated, based on its trailer.
  • Paranoid Park. Gus Van Sant, France. With Christopher Doyle as cinematographer.
  • Useless. Jia Zhang-Ke, China. About an artist who criticises consumerism’s effects on China; sounds thematically similar to Manufactured Landscapes, even if the art is completely different.

Reviews will show up in the sidebar of this site over the next few weeks, once we see which picks we get in the draw. It won’t be in the RSS feed, so check back at my site periodically.

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Kid Koala

I saw Kid Koala play last night with Bruce and others. I think this is the fourth time I’ve seen him, but he’s still a memorable performer and I had a great time at the show. He did a longer-format set than I’ve seen before, mostly hiphop mashups with his signature turntablist pieces mingled throughout. I actually quite liked the mashups – he’s incredibly fluid and clearly has a wide range of musical tastes, making for some great mixes. For the Toronto crowd, he threw in a hilarious old “Let’s go to Yonge Street” record, which he seamlessly mixed back-and-forth with some scifi tech-house… very slick.

If you’ve never seen him do his Moon River piece, check out the YouTube video below. I love this performance – it was the centrepiece of his “for the romantic couples set” in a velvety red room in the basement of the Vancouver planeterium I saw a few years back. At last night’s show, the video screens showed him carefully moving the needle around the record to play the right notes in the strings section – so cool. He uses three copies of the same Audrey Hepburn record to put this on, and it looked like the strings part might have been the B side of the same record.

[Update: the original YouTube has been taken down, but here’s a video at Daily Motion]

One of these days, I should check out his latest two albums, I suppose!

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A cinematic mix

As you may know, I still occasionally put together little mix CDs. The purpose is usually just to squish a bunch of my favourite tunes into one album, to keep a sort of record of my tastes at a given moment, and to foist the music I like upon unsuspecting friends. After I listen to them dozens of times, the mixes tend to gather lots of sentimental associations. Whenever I hear the tracks on their original albums, they feel somehow wrong – I always anticipate the next track from the mix afterwards, and the real album feels surprising.

Anyways, a new mix. The themes this time? Well, a bit more cinematic than usual; the Amon Tobin and Joe Henry tracks belong in a movie, and Angelo Badalamenti scores all of David Lynch’s films. Plus, my appreciation of the Beastie Boys and Beck has grown since I started watching the fantastic Director’s Label DVDs from Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.

My tastes do seem to be stuck in a rut that doesn’t extend far beyond 2002, but that may just be a result of spending too much time in library of older mp3s. Or it may just be a consequence of the precipitous decline in electronic music since around that date.

E-mail me if you want to listen to the mix. Assuming you’re someone I know, that is.

  1. tracy chapman. fast car. folk, from tracy chapman, 1988.
  2. sufjan stevens. the upper peninsula. folk, from greetings from michigan! the great lakes state, 2003.
  3. buck 65. wicked and weird. hip hop, from talkin’ honky blues, 2003.
  4. beastie boys. sure shot. hip hop, from ill communication, 1994.
  5. amon tobin. four ton mantis [radio edit]. drum & bass / breaks, from supermodified, 2000.
  6. blaze. lovelee dae [isolée mix]. electro / house, 1997, from miss kittin: radio caroline volume 1 (2002).
  7. redagain p & smash j. propella man. electro, 1999, from miss kittin: radio caroline volume 1 (2002).
  8. dj teebee. quiet moment [instrumental mix]. drum & bass, from the legacy, 2004.
  9. angelo badalamenti. the bookhouse boys. soundtrack / jazz, from twin peaks, 1990.
  10. joe henry. stop. pop / jazz, from scar, 2001.
  11. mocean worker feat. mahalia jackson. summertime / sometimes i feel like a motherless child. acid jazz, from home movies from the brainforest, 1998.
  12. the little rabbits. des hommes, des femmes, des enfants et le sexe. pop, from la grande musique, 2001.
  13. mouse on mars. schnick schnack meltmade. ambient / experimental, from autoditacker, 1997.
  14. plaid. porn coconut co. ambient / experimental, from double figure, 2000.
  15. beck. tropicalia. rock, from mutations, 1998.
  16. man or astro-man? tetsuwan atomu. rock / surf, from intravenous television continuum, 1995.
  17. broken social scene. superconnected. rock, from broken social scene, 2005.
  18. the most serene republic. epilogue. rock, from underwater cinematographer, 2006.
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Dubstep warz

I just read a cool article on CBC about the Dubstep sound from South London. It’s apparently a new branch of dub/two-step music, borrowing a little from the darker flavours of drum & bass. As I write, I’m listening to Mary Anne Hobb’s Breezeblock show (January 2006) that threw dubstep onto the world stage. Here’s a link to (low-quality) MP3s of that show if you’re interested.

Despite the newfound hipness of CBC 3, it still feels lame to be taking my musical cues from the CBC website… but whatever.