Reviews

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TIFF 2008 Reviews (2)

Those who follow my Film Festival reviews will know that I have missed my personal deadline of Thanksgiving weekend by a long shot.  Now I’m hoping to be done by the end of October.

A great deal of transit-related activity has been getting in the way.

Two films that I saw at the festival have now opened in Toronto, and I am pushing their reviews out the door while they’re still vaguely current.

These are:

  • Religulous
  • Happy-Go-Lucky

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TIFF 2008 Reviews (1)

When I started to write this, Toronto’s film festival had only been over for a week.  Those ten days for me are almost an alternate universe.  Closing night always brings a mixture of relief that I won’t have to queue up for a 9:00 am screening and ennui that it’s all over.

Events of the past month in transit-land have preoccupied me, and now, in early October, I am finally getting to the business of converting rough notes into fair text.  Over the next few weeks, I will publish them aiming for completion before my personal deadline of Thanksgiving weekend.  (For those who don’t know the background, I started this practice back in 1986 when “online” meant a single-line dialup BBS with an entirely text-based interface.  The world of online reviewing is huge now, but I keep up the tradition both for friends who ask “what did you see”, but tire after I have spoken for 20 minutes and show no sign of stopping.)

The 2008 festival, for me, was good, but not great.  Three stars.  Lots of solid, worthwhile films, a few gems and a few dogs, but there was no day where I went from screening to screening buoyed on the cumulative effect of what came before.

This post contains general comments about the festival itself together with reviews of:

  • Plus tard, tu comprendras
  • Passchendaele
  • 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould

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The Winter Garden’s Moon Shines Again

With the Film Festival making good use of the Winter Garden theatre, I’ve been in that house a few times recently.  One vital piece of decor was not in working order: the moon in the sky over the stage, house left.

Theatre lights are important, and the Winter Garden’s moon is a key part of the decor.  I wrote to the Ontario Heritage Foundation about this, and here’s their reply:

Hi. Thank you for your enquiry about the moon in the Winter Garden’s “sky”. The bulb that lights up the moon had burned out late last week. Because we’ve had both daytime and evening screenings all week unfortunately there was no time to change the bulb. Today, things are somewhat less hectic upstairs, with only one screening in the W.G. at 8 pm. The light bulb will be changed today and the moon will shine once again! Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Arnie Lappin
Marketing & Communications Coordinator
Elgin & Winter Garden Theatre Centre

Long may it shine!

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Film Festival 2008 — Early Reviews

Starting next week, I will begin to post reviews of the films I’ve seen at this year’s Film Festival.  Meanwhile, a brief overview.  The films are listed in the order I saw them.

  • Plus tard, tu comprendras ***
  • Passchendaele **½
  • 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould **** (1993)
  • 33 Scenes From Life **½
  • The Biggest Chinese Restaurant in the World **
  • Every Little Step *****
  • Dean Spanley ***
  • Is There Anybody There? ****
  • Witch Hunt **½
  • Séraphine ****
  • Hunger ***
  • Religulous *
  • Katia’s Sister ***
  • The Hurt Locker **
  • The Wrestler ***
  • Birdsong 0
  • Happy-Go-Lucky ***
  • Adoration ***½
  • Four Nights With Anna **½
  • Good ****
  • Fifty Dead Men Walking **
  • Synecdoche, New York **
  • Toronto Stories ***
  • Me and Orson Welles ***½
  • Who Do You Love ****
  • $5 A Day ***
  • Blood Trail ***
  • Lovely, Still **½
  • Adam Resurrected ****
  • Of Time and the City **½

Full descriptions of the films, albeit with the festival programmers’ usual rosy glow, can be found on the festival website.

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Stratford Reviewed 2008 (5):

Astute readers will have noticed the lack of activity here recently due to my three-day trip up to Stratford.  I won’t put long reviews here for the most part (you can read far more about the productions on the festival’s own website), but will give a feeling for what I saw and what’s worth your attention.  Three more reviews will come in the next article in this series.

What really shone out at Stratford was the sense of company, the sense that this was a group of actors working (with one notable exception) together.  Seasoned veterans and stars shared the stage with young actors and they worked as one.  Even the solo performances concentrated on the character and the story, not on “look at me” trickery.

This post includes reviews of:

  • Hughie
  • Krapp’s Last Tape
  • Caesar & Cleopatra
  • Hamlet

Continue reading →

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Stratford Reviewed (4): All’s Well That Ends Well

This week took me back to Stratford for a performance of All’s Well at the Festival Theatre.

The play turns on the premise that a country lass, Helena, orphan daughter a medical doctor of great renown, manages to save the King of France’s life using the most revered of her father’s potions.  For this, she is rewarded with her choice as husband of any man in the King’s power to command.  Of course, she picks the one real idiot, Bertram, a young lord who thinks she is far beneath him and not worthy of his attention.  Although the marriage is enforced by the King, Bertram is off to the wars in Italy, never to return until Helena can win the ring from his finger and carry his child, difficult feats at the best of times over long distances.  But it’s Shakespeare, and there’s always a way involving disguise, seduction and the wooing of the fool with his own ego.

There is much to like in this production directed by Marti Maraden who was briefly part of the troika of Stratford artistic directors who succeeded Richard Monette.  Much to like, but not to love.

Daniela Vlaskalic struck me as a rather one-dimensional Helena, and she doesn’t get to do much more than pine and plot.  Even the plotting depends as much on luck as skill, and one can’t help wondering how Helena managed to be in exactly the right place at the right time.  As the clever daughter of a doctor, one would expect her to show great skill and intelligence (I can’t help thinking by comparison with Kate in Shrew), but that’s not how Vlaskalic plays Helena.

Jeff Lillico as Bertram is saddled with an unsympathetic role from the outset.  He thinks he’s hot stuff even to the point of defying the King’s wishes (a chorus of “off with his head” would have ended the play rather too soon), and despite his behaviour, the King lets Bertram go off to war rather than settling down with his new wife.  When we see Bertram in his military guise, he’s a good if somewhat misguided leader with a friend, Parolles, whose swagger disguises a complete lack of military skill or daring.  Helena does manage to get both ring and child, and in the end Bertram is properly contrite.  He may be a lord, but it’s his generals who know what they are doing.  Fortunately, peace breaks out.

The real strength of this production lies elsewhere. 

Martha Henry is the Countess of Rossillion with the majesty that Henry can muster, but here muted both as Helena’s surrogate mother and as a friend of the King.  I can imagine Martha Henry eating poor Bertram alive for his impudence, but that’s not her role.

Brian Dennehy, in his first Shakespearean role (!), is the King of France.  He’s rather avuncular, and as we first see him, weary of those who cannot relieve his medical problems.  Once cured, there’s strength, but used sparingly.  I liked Dennehy’s reading of the part, although by the end of the performance he had slipped into a somewhat more natural delivery than suited his role.

Stephen Ouimette is Lord Lafew, the King’s right hand man.  He echoes Dennehy’s genteel manner, but tells us much of his private thoughts about other characters with looks rather than words.

Finally, Juan Chioran as Parolles the braggart is a delight.  He is completely full of himself, but easily undone after a mock capture by his own company.  Ever helpful to the “enemy” he quickly gives a complete and unflattering assessment of his compatriots.  This is a wonderful role for any actor, but it should not overshadow the rest of the play as it does here.

In all, this All’s Well took a while to get off the ground, and had delightful spots.  A production worth seeing if you’re in Stratford for something else, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it.