BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW - Review By Greg Klymkiw - WOW! Need a cool movie? Here it is!!! Need a fix of a truly creepy science fiction cult film? Got a few fat doobies to suck back? Forget Ridley Scott's Lugubriously Dull, Bloated, Pretentious PROMETHEUS and just see this movie instead!!!

Beyond The Black Rainbow

(2012) dir. Panos Cosmatos

Starring:
Michael Rogers,
Eva Allan,
Scott Hylands,
Rondelle Reynoldson,
Marilyn Norry

***1/2

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Ah! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Victor, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash." If, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded, and that a modern system of science had been introduced, which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical; under such circumstances, I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside, and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. -- "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

In 1983 the world's foremost scientists tirelessly collaborated with naturopathic healers, forging new and exciting psychiatric pathways. These iconoclasts of mind expansion, secured under a massive glass dome within a secluded arboretum just outside Vancouver, aimed their sights upon, in a word: "happiness".

A short corporate film that opens Beyond The Black Rainbow, was commissioned during this era by the Arboria Institute. Like any good piece of hucksterism, it teases and pleases with the goals and discoveries of its sponsor.

Between images of bucolic splendour, positive on-screen intonations from the corporation's chief scientist and select glimpses of behind-the-scenes activities, a series of tantalizing taglines flash by and include such come-hither gems as:

"A state of mind, a way of being."

"A practical application of an abstract idea."

"Born in a dream to create reality."

"A different way to think. A new way to live. A perfect way to believe."

"A new, better, happier YOU!"

Alas, for young Dr. Barry Nyle (Michael Rogers), a steadfast belief in his mentor Dr. Mercurio Arboria (Scott Hylands) is not unlike that of young Victor Frankenstein's belief in the dangerous alchemical theories of Cornelius Agrippa.

Playing God is not without intermittent highs, but like crack cocaine, the heights of ecstasy lead to dangerous lows. Such dabblings often lead to the loss of all that is dear. Barry learns the hard way when he implements his soul-damning dabbling upon his beautiful daughter Elena (Eva Allan).

Beyond The Black Rainbow features one of the most thrilling debuts in years. Panos Cosmatos, who both wrote and directed this supremely enjoyable first-feature (including the brilliant aforementioned film within the film), is the son of the late and grossly underrated director of Massacre in Rome (a heartbreaking tragedy of WWII with Richard Burton and Marcello Mastroianni), Tombstone (featuring one of the best Doc Hollidays in moviedom, played by Val Kilmer) and Cobra (with Sylvester Stallone's best line of dialogue ever - "Crime is the disease. I'm the cure.").

Though perhaps unfair to the younger Cosmatos, one can't help but think a chip or two of flair and proficiency off the old block managed to find its way into his DNA. That said, the elder Cosmatos, a slam-bang commercially-minded director with considerable panache would never have made a movie as utterly insane as his son has. (Though, in its own perverse fashion, Rambo: First Blood II, occasionally verges on Ecstasy-infused Buñuelian surrealism.)

There's no two ways about it: Beyond The Black Rainbow is a 70s/80s-style "head" film that has "cult" emblazoned upon its celluloid forehead. In fact when I ran a repertory cinema during the same time period the movie harkens back to, it's EXACTLY the sort of picture I'd have been thrilled to get behind and try to generate a cult-friendly theatrical exhibition atmosphere to shoot it up into the midnight movie stratosphere of such "wacky-tobacky" hits as Eraserhead, Pink Flamingos and El Topo. (Sadly, in these days of theatrical, there are fewer venues for a picture like this to succeed and it will likely find its most appreciative audience in the home entertainment arena.)

Gorgeously shot by Norm Li, vigorously edited by Nicholas T. Shepard and blessed with a cool score/soundscape as well as an imaginative production design, the movie is replete with a delicious combination of creepy psychiatric experimentation sequences, dollops of shockingly grotesque bloodletting and several dreamscape montages that are pretty trippy all by their lonesome. If truth be told, the movie can work quite nicely without added stimulants, but far be it from me to deter anyone from enjoying the movie with a massive ingestion of some fine west coast weed.

The pace of the film is slow, but seldom sluggish. Its creepy-crawly tempo alternates between ominous and repellent, yet it's almost always compelling. That said, the movie really does feel about 10-15 minutes too long. Cosmatos and his team have an abundance of cool shit in the movie and I can only imagine how hard it must have been to let any of it go.

From a plot standpoint, things are relatively slender save for the vaguely Frankenstein-ian elements, but one slightly confusing shred of story that could have used some pruning involves Rosemary (Marilyn Norry) an odd-duck second (I think) wife to Barry (or perhaps she's his first and only wife and the gorgeous woman who resembles his daughter in the dream/flashbacks is a result of the Arborian mind control methods gone wrong). However, pruning this character would have resulted in losing an absolutely hilarious (and creepy) deadpan exchange between the clearly disconnected husband and wife.

Besides, confusion is okay. It's a bloody head film with cult appeal, for Christ's sake. If someone is into the picture, they might, if they're even so inclined, figure it out on repeated viewings.

So, what else could have been cut?

There's one elongated trip sequence - mostly in black and white - that probably could have been sliced and diced, but then the movie would be bereft of one of the most insanely overlong trip sequences in recent memory.

Damn! Even I don't want to lose anything.

The movie also has a few elements that resemble, uh, ideas. Thankfully, they're not too offensively obvious and/or obtuse and/or "film-school-ish". In fact, they're frankly, way less ludicrous than Ridley Scott's half-baked philosophical meanderings in Prometheus and one of them is actually kind of cool. Given the early 80s setting, we're blessed with some brief nods to the Panamanian military leader Noriega and Rompin' Ronnie Reagan. This ties in with the 80s Cold War insanity quite nicely. It's also a cool nod to the work of Cosmatos's Dad during this period.

Most engagingly, these touches of Reagan-era nuttiness play perfectly with the whole survivalist mentality prevalent back then (and creeping back even now). At one point, Barry refuses to let Elena see her father. "The world is in chaos and we live in times of great uncertainty and danger," Barry warns in a ruthlessly icy monotone.

Speaking of monotones, I loved all the straight-up performances in the film. Nothing is played for cheesy tongue-in-cheek effect and even the magnificent Scott Hylands, in the role of the Cornelius Agrippa-like founder-mentor, could have easily torn the scenery to shreds, but instead offers up something quite chilling and understated. And I loved Rondelle Reynoldson as a perfectly foul nurse. Conjuring up bad memories of Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Cosmatos also gives the character a well-earned and deliciously disgusting demise.

For me, I got way more bang for my buck out of this modestly budgeted SF whacko-fest than Sir Ridley's plodding mess. I suspect, I might not be alone in this, but like most cult items, it might take some shelf life for the devotion it deserves to discover it.

So settle back, folks.

Fire up a fat doobie and enjoy!

"Beyond The Black Rainbow" is currently in limited theatrical release via Mongrel Media.

FORTUNATE SON - HELD OVER FOR SECOND BLISTERING WEEK IN MONTREAL AT EXCENTRIS! Reviewed By Greg Klymkiw - This important new personal documentary by Tony Asimakopoulos is a journey into the lives of a Greek-Canadian family that makes for a compulsive, sad, funny and profoundly moving experience. It is NOT to be missed!!!

Fortunate Son (2011) dir. Tony Asimakopoulos

****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.” ― Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

I'm truly blessed to have seen an exciting new film that not only moved me - at first, beyond words - but also inspired a flood of thoughts and memories, which all in some fashion are related to the picture itself, but like any great movie, reached out and touched me in ways that forced me to examine so many elements of my own life. I suspect it will do the same for many, many others who are lucky enough to see it.

When an artist delivers nuggets from their own experience, chances are good they will resonate with most of us. When the work is thematically tied to that of family, it's especially hard-hitting. The best of these works will hit us with a roundhouse blow to the gut.

In recent years, the one genre in film that has the power to do this in ways that most other films can only dream about is the personal documentary, but getting the films made and then, once they're made, getting them to an end-user is the real trick.

When it comes to trends, styles and types of stories told, the movie business can be very fickle. It's not the audiences that are mutable - it's the industry itself - and nowhere does this rear its ugly head more than in the world of documentary. Those who hold the purse strings, those who deliver the product to those who deliver the product to the masses crow on, from season to season about what kind of movie is hot and what's not.

What this really means is that many of these entities are unimaginative, lacking vision and/or just plain lazy.

If a movie is great, people will want to see it. That said, some movies need a bit more elbow grease than others. When I started in the business - particularly in the areas of exhibition, marketing and distribution - elbow grease was, more often than not, the norm. Even schmatta-salesman-styled broadcasters, distributors and exhibitors did what I, and others refer to as, uh, work. In fact, the more challenging a great film was, the more these same individuals attacked their calling with relish.

This past year during the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, I spoke with so many filmmakers who talked about the difficulties of getting personal documentaries made. And yes, getting any movie made is difficult, but the general air wafting from the posterior-scented jaw flaps of the powers-that-be to filmmakers with great stories to tell, was that the personal documentary was OUT - unless, of course it had some sort of easily identifiable hook of controversy. Even then, filmmakers who did have this sort of easily-exploitable approach found the financing road difficult due to the collective knee-jerk proclamations of entities bereft of vision.

For me, a documentary with a personal approach - where a filmmaker presents a story close to them, perhaps even about themselves, is filmmaking of both a brave and extremely identifiable order. Their stories often mirror our own - the details might be different, but below the surface, they hit us on emotional and intellectual levels.

The bottom line is that the filmmakers, and most importantly, the end-users, the audience, are the ones who get short shrift when those responsible at decision-making levels are purporting to know what people want. Half the time, they're ill-equipped to know what people want and are looking for easy ways to cover their smelly butts.

A good or great picture will find its audience.

One recent film that demands an audience is a personal documentary by Montreal filmmaker Tony Asimakopoulos. Along with another recent film I've seen (which I'm unable to discuss at this juncture), Fortunate Son is a movie that, for me, resonated on so many levels that I suspect I won't be the only one who is deeply moved by it. While watching, re-watching and thinking about it, I was reminded of so much that was close to me when I saw Asimakopoulos's film.

One thing his movie inspired, not just because of the backdrop of Greek culture, but because of the movie's focus upon the theme of family, is something I hadn't though about for a decade or two.

Specifically, it was this:

I wish I could remember the precise date I saw Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis in concert when he visited Winnipeg in the 1970s, but I think it was sometime between 1972 and 1973 because I went to see him conduct and perform live soon after seeing the 1972 Constantin Costa-Gavras film State of Siege (a movie I loved, with a score by Theodorakis that I loved even more). I also know it was before seeing Sidney Lumet's 1973 Serpico (a movie I loved that hasn't quite stood the test of time, though the Theodorakis score most certainly has).

I remember asking my parents to buy me a ticket to see Theodorakis at the Centennial Concert Hall - mostly because I owned the original vinyl soundtrack recordings to Zorba the Greek, Z and State of Siege. After all, what self-respecting 13-year-old movie geek living in the provincial backwater of Winnipeg would not want to see someone he considered a star. Yes, I had the movie bug so bad, that even as a kid, "stars" to me were not just those in front of the camera, but those behind it.

For some reason I clearly remember it being a Sunday afternoon when I saw Mikis Theodorakis. Live. In-the-flesh. The concert hall was packed to the rafters with Greek-Canadians. There were, however, two Ukrainians in the audience - me and, as I eventually noticed sitting a few rows down, my late Uncle Walter Klymkiw - a great choir master and scholar of Ukrainian Folk Music.

Uncle Walter was kind of a cultural touchstone for me within my ridiculously large extended family of Ukrainians. As a kid, I was always enamoured with his great love and knowledge of literature, theatre and yes, music. Whenever he took the time to engage me in some conversation about something I loved (usually Chekhov, Dickens and Mahler), I'd feel a strange warmth, probably because he was someone who didn't - at least during my childhood - think I was out of my mind for being passionate about something other than the commonplace. (In fairness, my Mom was especially accepting of my obsessions with all things artistic, even if she herself didn't quite get all the obsessions herself and Dad took me to every Peckinpah, Clint Eastwood and John Wayne picture.)

Uncle Walter was family - but not immediate.

This is, perhaps why I get so sentimental when I think about him.

That afternoon at the Centennial Concert Hall was gob-smackingly exhilarating. Theodorakis was not presenting his film scores, but music I'd never heard before - music that chilled me to the bone and perhaps even more so because the audience leapt to their feet after every piece. Electric. That's the only way I can describe it.

I flagged my Uncle down during the intermission. He asked me why I was there. I told him about my love of the Theodorakis movie music and then I asked why he was there. He explained that Theodorakis was a refugee, living in exile away from his beloved Greece where he fought strenuously against a repressive regime. He explained that, like our family - Ukrainians - Theodorakis was fighting for the freedom and culture of his people outside of his own country - Greece.

This definitely struck a chord with me. My own family had numerous founding members of a federation in Canada that was devoted to preserving Ukrainian culture outside of Ukraine as it was being repressed by the Russians after the revolution until the early 90s. (One might say, the repression from Russia is continuing in Ukraine due to the gangsterism of Putin, but that's another story.) In any event, Uncle Walter's revelation to me cast a new light on my appreciation of the second half of the concert and explained the audience reaction in the first half of the concert.

Beyond a new aesthetic appreciation for Theodorakis, I was, even at the time, reminded of the importance of family. A common bond of blood opened my eyes to something new.

Love is a powerful eye-opener and this is what's at the root of Fortunate Son. The above personal memory - a mere shard of my life - came flooding back to me after seeing Asimakopoulos's film, but most importantly, the notion that love and family are why we're all here on this Earth.

Another great thing Fortunate Son reminded me of was Elia Kazan's America America, his great dramatic rendering of his own Greek family's escape from repression in Turkey. This was a movie I'd seen on TV as a kid and I remember what a huge impression it made on me - so much so, that even when I see it now I'm easily able to repress the picture's occasional flaws.

The opening shot of Mount Ararat in Kazan's film seems almost identical to the opening shot in Fortunate Son of a mountain overlooking Azimakopoulos's own parents' Greek village.

In both films, this is an extremely powerful image. It represents an almost pastoral beauty - one that seems to exist in another time and place, but also conjures up thoughts about how far away and seemingly unattainable it is - unless, of course, one chooses the arduous task of climbing it.

For Asimakopoulos and Kazan, their films and the personal tales they tell are not unlike a mountain that must be climbed - to conquer that which seems too formidable, a dragon that must be slain, but requiring obsessive bravery and fortitude to deliver the ultimate blow.

From this opening shot, Asimakopoulos provides a haunting montage of immigrants on a boat, long-ago memories of happy couples celebrating life and love and then juxtaposed with a series of odd, evocative black and white images of a swarthy young goodfella - adorned in a sport coat and staring at himself in the mirror (not unlike that of Jake LaMotta near the end of Raging Bull). The soundtrack to this point has been dappled with its own montage of hollow, barley audible sounds of boats, water, clinking glasses, Greek folk music, laughter and then we get the first words of narration that spell out the journey we're about to take with Asimakopoulos in Fortunate Son.

"Am I a good son?" asks the haunted voice. "Am I a bad son?" And then, in an almost stylized goodfella-from-the-hood fashion: "I dunno."

This is the peak the filmmaker must ascend. We want to immediately to climb it with him. We want to know if he is a good or bad son. We want him to know if he is a good or bad son. And perhaps most indelibly, we're reminded of how all of us wonder the same thing. Are we good kids or bad kids? Are we good parents or bad parents? Are we good husbands and wives or bad husbands and wives?

Or is there no such thing?

Or more truthfully, is goodness found somewhere in the middle - in shades of grey?

The journey Asimakopoulos takes us on makes for a compulsive, sad, funny and profoundly moving experience. We hear about his parents' life in Greece, their immigration to Canada, their life in the New World. We become privy to the story of their roller coaster ride marriage, Tony's childhood, his troubled adolescence and eventual struggle with heroin addiction. We experience his current relationship with his Mom and Dad while also exploring life with his beloved fiance Natalie. We hear and see his parents' patterns of behaviour, both past and present - the laughter, love, tears and conflict. So too do we experience Tony's own love story - fraught with the same emotional challenges that his parents faced and his fear that he is merely repeating the patterns of his life before heroin addiction or worse, the sins (as it were) of his Mother and Father.

Asimakopoulos renders this tale with a skilfully edited blend of archival footage, old home movies, scenes from his student films, experimental work and his first feature film. We get up close and personal shots of his life and that of his parents - deftly interwoven with head-on interviews.

We see the hopes, dreams and lives of a family which, finally, remind us of our own experiences.

At one point Natalie talks about her own parents splitting up and asks Tony about his Mom and Dad. "Do you ever wonder why they stayed together?" she asks.

Without hesitation, Tony responds: "No. Not really."

And for some of us, his response makes perfect sense. Old World families and, to a large extent, previous generations with Old World values might have considered splitting up, but they almost never did. In a sense they're imbued with what I like to think of as the maturity of fortitude.

Yeah, yeah - so life doesn't always deal you the cards you want, but you keep playing the game because whatever losses you might suffer, the elation of the occasional win is too great to give up based upon the whims that so many with New World values and recent generations have inspired.

It's easy to give up, but as Asimakopoulos's film demonstrates, it takes courage, REAL courage to keep going, to keep fighting the good fight, to never say never. (Kind of like the aforementioned film industry decision makers - it's easier to say "No" than have the courage to say "Yes" when something seems difficult.)

This might be the genuine importance of Fortunate Son - it demonstrates the inescapable truth that love is not easy. For love to BE love, for love to really count, it takes work, courage and fortitude. It means giving up ephemeral happiness for that which really counts - the happiness of endurance, of perseverance, of never giving up.

This is ultimately, the importance of family. (Or, in the words of a character in Peckinpah's Ride The High Country: "I want to enter my house justified.")

And sure, Asimakopoulos details what many of us, and even in his own words, describe as "dysfunctional" families. Yeah? So what? All families are dysfunctional to one degree or another.

Again, all that matters is love and family.

Is Tony's Mom seen as over-protective, over-bearing and even judgemental?

Hell, yes.

Who isn't?

At one point, his Mom talks about Tony's fiance and declares: "I prayed you would find a nice girl and we found her, didn't we?"

Some might see the use of "we" as taking a degree of empowerment away from her own son, but does, in fact, present the fact that "we" are all in this together and that for all the trials and tribulations, family reigns supreme.

When Tony talks about kicking his heroin habit, we hear his addiction counsellor well-meaningly talk about Tony's need to get away from the shackles of the family unit. "You needed to get unhooked," he says of Tony leaving his family and while this was a good band-aid solution, we see repeatedly how it's love and family that truly saves the day.

When Tony accompanies his parents to their hometown in Greece, we get glimpses of what life and family was like back in their early years. Family and just how needy family can be is a truth that's both funny and moving.

Tony's Dad (who left Greece in 1967 during the beginning of the junta that Theodorakis fought against) jokes about how every time he went back to Greece to visit his mother, she'd cry and declare how old she was getting and how this would be the "last time" he'd ever see her again. He and Tony laugh good-naturedly when he reveals she said the same thing repeatedly over numerous trips back to see her.

Tony's Mom, on the other hand, paints an entirely different portrait of her connection to Greece and family. At one point, she finds a stone on the ground and thinks it might be nice to take this piece of Greece back with her to Canada. She thinks on it, then places the stone back, saying: "The rock will cry if I take it away from its home."

She sounds like my grandmother.

When she visits her Mother's spartan bedroom - preserved almost like a shrine, she finds some sacred religious artifacts that belonged to her Mother. She firmly declares that she will not leave them behind. "It would be a sin to do so," she says.

Later on, Tony's Mom reveals that she wanted to go back home, but that it was marriage to Tony's Dad in Canada that dashed those dreams. She does not say this with bitterness or regret, but with the aforementioned maturity of fortitude. When she discusses her Mother in Saint-like terms - a single mother who worked herself to the bone to feed her family - she begins to tear-up. Thinking about how much her mother sacrificed for her and how she eventually got sick and died alone is almost too much for her to bear.

As it would be for anyone.

And often, as personal films can do, Fortunate Son takes a turn in the story of this family when his Dad is diagnosed with stomach cancer and we witness the family's terrible and brave struggle to deal with this. Even here, however, there's a mixture of sadness and humour (as typified by the title of Armenian-American William Saroyan's great book and film, "The Human Comedy"). Here's Dad - seriously ill with stomach cancer - and Mom is piling heaps of artery-clogging food on his plate (something Ukrainians understand all too well). Mom even complains she's screwed the food up and heaps salty slabs of cheese on it.

"Put on some Feta to make it taste better," she offers.

And yes, food is very important to this family. We see one scene after another round dinner tables - piled high with culinary delights that watered this Ukrainian's mouth like a geyser. Early in the movie, Tony's Dad is leaving to play cards at the local Greek community bar. Tony's Mom gives him the most delectable list of food to bring home from the grocery store. Towards the end of the film, fearing her husband might die, she reveals to Tony that "I want to die before your Father does. It's better that way." Then she adds: "Because he can take care of himself."

At this point (along with many others in the movie), tears erupted from my eyes.

All I could think about was this: "Who would bring groceries home for her if her husband died first?"

It's a question all of us would ask in similar situations. The details might be different, but the sentiment is the same.

Tony Asimakopoulos is one of Canadian cinema's great unsung talents. His early student films and experimental works and first feature are brimming with a voice that needs to be heard. His work has been charged with a unique underground flavour - a kind of Greek Scorsese boys in the hood quality of obsession with dapplings of George Kuchar melodrama and lurid high contrast visuals. He's taken this style and while not completely abandoning it, he has developed and matured into a fine cinematic storyteller.

Fortunate Son is, quite simply, a genuinely great film.

It's a movie that everyone must see.

And yeah, I can think of a few Greeks who might love it too.

"Fortunate Son" has been held over for second big week at Montreal’s Cinema ExCentris (3536 Blvd,St.Laurent) on Friday june 8 : 12:30pm ; 9pm, Saturday june 9 : 12:30pm ; 9pm, Sunday june 10 : 12:30pm ; 9pm, Monday june 11 : 9pm, Tuesday june 12 : 9pm, Wednesday june 13 : 9pm, Thursday june 14 : 9pm. TONY ASIMAKOPOULOS will be at every screening for a Q and A. The film is in English & Greek, with English & French subtitles. For showtimes check the Excentris website for screening times HERE. Additional playdates in Canada throughout the next few months can be accessed by visiting the EYESTEELFILM website HERE.

HARD CORE LOGO II - Review By Greg Klymkiw - This offbeat and deeply personal sequel to Bruce McDonald's legendary 1996 punk extravaganza is a surprisingly truthful and elegiac tribute to a lost generation.

Hard Core Logo II (2011) dir. Bruce McDonald
Starring: Bruce McDonald, Care Failure, Julian Richings, Shannon Jardine, Peter Moore

****

By Greg Klymkiw

I have to admit that part of my favourable response to Hard Core Logo II is strictly on a personal level. Firstly, my inauguration into the canon of director Bruce McDonald was Roadkill, his crazed rock and road odyssey through Northwestern Ontario. It was the fall of 1989 and during the last year in which I was writing about films. And I really did love writing about movies. I'd been doing so since the late 70s, but I was about to turn a corner in my life and this part of it would be ending a few months or so later.

At the time I was attending the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and in addition to doing some marketing work on behalf of the film co-operative The Winnipeg Film Group, I was moonlighting as a writer for the now-defunct "Cinema Canada" magazine and was presented with the task of reviewing McDonald's movie. It wasn't hard work at all. It was a terrific picture and my delight with it poured from my soul and through my fingertips and into my word processor like shit through the proverbial Canadian Goose.

At the time it reminded me of both David Lynch's Eraserhead and Allan Arkush's Rock n' Roll High School - hypnotic, dream-like, gloriously black and white, energetic, madly nutty,laugh-out-loud funny and pure rock and roll joy.

I've seen it a few times since and I stand by this assessment.

And goddamn! Roadkill was as Canadian as a fucking beaver pelt adorning Norman Jewison's pate. Every surreal moment from my punk years in Winnipeg seemed to spring miraculously to life. Endless nights in dark, now-defunct watering-holes like the "Native Club", "The Royal Albert Arms" and the basement of the "St. Charles Hotel" (AKA "The Chuckles") - seeing everyone who passed through (early XTC, the Popular Mechanix, the notorious rape-rockers The Mentors) to insane seven-hour drives to Thunder Bay to listen to heavy metal bands (often of the local variety) at the Inn-Towner - that miraculous dive where every chick had hair permed-out like Medusa which, under black light it glowed with an almost radioactive "buy-me-some-fuckin-beer-and-maybe-we-can-fuck-eh" come-hither-with-a-stubby quality.

I felt as if I had died and gone to Heaven.

From here I followed Bruce's films passionately. Most of them I loved, some of them I liked and a number of them had me scratching my head with a kind of what-in-the-fuck-are-you-doing-you-psycho response. In 1996, when I saw his Hard Core Logo, which I loved, I remember being swept away by this road movie involving the crazy punker Joe Dick and his band on a comeback tour through the western prairies of Canada and was convinced McDonald would never top the film.

I was wrong, of course. Throughout the years he delivered one terrific picture after another - most notably his brilliant zombie picture set entirely in a rural radio station Pontypool and his truly whacked adaptation of Maureen Medved's novel The Tracy Fragments. The only film of his I didn't see was the notorious Picture Claire. At TIFF it was screening while 9/11 was happening. The night he was showing his "director commentary" cut at the Bloor Cinema, I was in Winnipeg. I'm cool with that. Every director I love has one or two "Holy Grail" pictures that I hope to partake in someday.

So let's fast forward to the present and how seeing Hard Core Logo II hit me where all the best movies should - on a personal level. Firstly, I bring you back to my own personal full-circle coincidence of HCL II being the first McDonald movie I've seen to write about since I stopped writing about movies. And yeah, here I am, 23 years later, back to the future, so to speak - again writing about movies (amongst other writing chores like screenplays and a text book). I have to admit to a certain sentimental attachment going in to seeing HCL II on this level.

Beyond that though, is the personal relationship one forges with certain artists and their art. Bruce was born about a month after me in the same year. He was born in Kingston and grew up in Scarborough. I was conceived in Detroit and born/raised in Winnipeg. Same difference, really. For many years, without knowing each other in any way, shape or form, we grew up with similar interests and experiences. On that level alone, he's a filmmaker who spoke to me as a contemporary and I've lived through 23 years of his work - connecting aesthetically, but also personally - his work seeming to almost umbilically connect to my very being.

This, I'd say, IS extremely important. When a filmmaker connects with audiences on this level, then truly this is an artist worth studying and revering. However, it's especially noteworthy that his work connects with me as a Canadian with shared experiences.

Hard Core Logo II is NOT a retread or reboot. It IS, a sequel. HCL I, a clever mock-doc wherein the lead character blew his brains out on-camera at the end seemed pretty much sequel-proof. What McDonald does, however, is turn the next phase of the tale into a semi-personal and quasi-fictional mock-doc - focusing on the character he himself played, "Bruce" the filmmaker.

And here, 23-years later, "Bruce" is working successfully in American television. He's the creator and director of "The Pilgrim", a ridiculously popular Christian western aimed squarely (and somewhat cynically on the part of the fictional/actual filmmaker) at the moronic religious right. When the star of the series Rufus Melon (a brilliantly scuzzy and hilarious Adrien Dorval) is caught in a horrendous sexual scandal, the show is immediately cancelled and Bruce is without a job.

Where he'd previously been ignoring reports that rock singer Care Failure (played, no less, by Care Failure of "Die Mannequin" fame) has psychically channeled the spirit of the late Hard Core Logo frontman Joe Dick, "Bruce" now drops everything to make a new documentary to reclaim his former glory as an independent filmmaker.

Going the super-kamikaze filmmaking route, he leaves his wife and child home alone and brings along only one crew member - his next door neighbour, the completely bonkers New Age Wiccan video/performance artiste Liz (Shannon Jardine). She mans, as it were, the camera, while he records sound, directs and interviews. He's promised Liz a co-directing credit, but as his personal notes reveal later on, he just needs (and treats her) as a glorified schlepper.

The two of them follow Care to Saskatchewan where she will record a solo album under the guidance of Joe Dick's former mentor Bucky Haight (Julian Richings, repeating his original HCL role and astoundingly proving again why he's one of Canada's greatest character actors).

McDonald and his co-writer Dave Griffith put together a number of scenes which give a strong sense of the drudgery and boredom involved in producing an album but when things threaten to get a bit too languid, we're tossed a few phantasmagorical montage sequences (something McDonald has been obsessed with in his latter output and which are handled with aplomb by editor Duff Smith). These insane patchwork quilts of exorcism, talking animals, flashbacks to Joe Dick blowing his brains out, etc. are worthy of such 70s and 80s head films like Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain and Slava Tsukerman's Liquid Sky.

The dreary Saskatchewan locations also add considerable Canadian chic to the whole affair. I used to think, for example, that looking at the topography surrounding my old hometown whenever I landed in a plane at the Winnipeg International Airport was the most depressing thing in the world. Hard Core Logo II reminded me that NO - landing at the Regina Airport is far more soul-sucking.

We're guided through this oddball low-key tale, contrasting nicely and unexpectedly with HCL's raging drive, through the laid-back journal entries of filmmaker "Bruce". If anything drives the engine of this happily sputtering engine it's exploitation.

Because this is a Canadian film in a Canadian setting with Canadian characters - the exploitation is, not surprisingly, Canadian. That is, characters gently, subtly remind each other how much they're exploiting each other. McDonald's film captures this exploitation ever-so subtly.

There are the newspaper clippings accusing "Bruce" of exploiting Joe Dick from the original film. There's the implication that Care is exploiting the memory of Joe and furthermore, by possibly pretending to be possessed to get "Bruce" to make a film about her. Bucky accuses "Bruce" of exploiting Care. "Bruce" accuses Bucky of exploiting her. Care accuses both of them of exploiting her. "Bruce" and Bucky gently suggest mutual exploitation of the dead Joe Dick. "Bruce" is clearly exploiting the mad schlepper Wiccan and even the disgraced actor Rufus Melon shows up to exploit "Bruce", in order to party with Care and to get a guest spot with CBC's "Strombo" to declare his "healing".

Gentle, subtle exploitation is always the Canadian way. Canadians prefer smiling and alternately stabbing in the back - gently. They almost never look someone squarely in the eyes to gut them.

And within the context of the world McDonald creates - nobody (much like Canadians in reality) seems to want anything of any real import.

Except for one thing.

And this is the surprising, profoundly and deeply moving aspect of Hard Core Logo II. When it is determined what is truly important, a sacrifice is made - one which takes us into an afterlife and where the spirit of love and of family overtakes and overwhelms us.

I must admit to being taken completely off guard here. I should have seen it coming, since the film is strangely bookended with something so uniquely personal that it's often the element that - subtly - sneaks its way through the entire film. And when this sequence occurs, I must admit that I was touched emotionally in ways I never expected. It's both a heartbreaker and a spirit-lifter.

The movie begins, builds and ends with a humanity that's been hinted at in some of McDonald's earlier work, but explodes in ways that will, I think, especially touch a particular generation of Canadian with an equally particular series of experiences.

The movie is probably not for everyone. Those expecting a replay of McDonald's earlier successes will be denied an easy road. He delivers an offbeat journey and one that perfectly exemplifies a segment of the punk generation - that generation (especially, I think, in Canada) that sprouted at the tail-end of the baby boom and created a whole group of rebels who existed between the hippie sellouts and the Gen-X McJobbers.

The real rebels. Those who truly had to pay a price for their ideals and in so doing, continue to clutch desperately and/or longingly at those things everyone thinks they want, but for this generation, when they discover that wondrous thing, they know it's exactly what makes life worth living.

"Hard Core Logo II" is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and other select cinemas across Canada. It is being released by Alliance Films. For information of tickets, playdates and showtimes at TIFF, click HERE.

A LITTLE BIT ZOMBIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - A terrific script is almost undone by wildly erratic direction that veers from overwrought comic styling to TV-styled camera jockeying.

A Little Bit Zombie (2012) dir. Casey Walker
Starring: Kristopher Turner, Crystal Lowe, Shawn Roberts, Kristen Hager, Emilie Ullerup and Stephen McHattie, George Buza, Robert Maillet

**1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

Mixing horror with comedy is a noble enough tradition. An American Werewolf in London, Shaun of the Dead and Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn have become modern classics of this winning hybrid, but what makes them great is that the emphasis is always on horror and the comedy elements stem naturally from the drama. Even Sam Raimi's sequel/remake to his decidedly serious The Evil Dead manages to adhere to this with several clever Looney Tunes homages doubling as whacko POVs whilst Bruce Campbell's Ash is increasingly infused with terror and paranoia.

A Little Bit Zombie breaks this rule, but not too successfully. It's first and foremost a comedy, but as such, seems to just miss the boat on the laughs. I think the problem is that for much of the film, director Casey Walker tries too hard to make it funny. A lot of the performances and comic set-pieces are played broadly to the point of annoyance and seem just plain juvenile. That said, I watched it with my 11-year-old daughter and she laughed all the way through it. Best of all, for her, she was never scared and enjoyed all the jokey violence.

She is, however, 11-years-old.

I ultimately think the movie would have genuinely been so much funnier and possibly even deliciously creepy if Walker had pitched things much straighter. There's frankly an overabundance of "Hey Ma, look at me, I'm funny" mugging amongst a few of the actors.

The movie, however, is paced like shit through a goose and the screenplay is full of so many clever ideas that it still manages to be entertaining enough for a die-hard horror and dark comedy fan like myself. I just wish I didn't have to groan all through the picture - lamenting how one great idea after another kept hitting the floor like lead balloons due to the overwrought pitch of the direction.

It's a great story, though.

Two couples drive to a remote cabin in cottage country to plan the upcoming nuptials of Steve (Kristopher Turner) and Tina (Crystal Lowe). Steve's sister Sarah (Kristin Hager) is a smart, unpretentious lassie and detests her soon-to-be-sister-in-law's prissy consumerist girlie-girl nattering and attitudes. Craig (Shawn Roberts) is both Steve's best friend and Sarah's husband. He's an amiable, dimwitted beefcake with a heart of gold.

When Steve is bitten by an especially aggressive mosquito, his body temperature starts to plummet and no matter what he eats, he immediately barfs it up. Once he starts getting an overwhelming craving for brains, we know trouble is just around the corner.

And yes, just around the corner in the same cottage country region, the grizzled, trigger-happy Max (Stephen McHattie) and the young, brilliant, babe-o-licious scientist Penelope (Emile Ullerup) are deep in the woods, tracking down zombies via some mysterious orb that detects the undead. Max just wants to splatter zombie brain with his shotgun. Penelope is searching for a cure to the zombie disease.

We follow the adventures of both parties until the inevitable showdown.

What's especially cool about the script by Trevor Martin and Christopher Bond is the unique take on Steve's turn to zombie-dom. Steve is still Steve. He just wants to eat brains. That's all. Oh, and he has no pulse. Some of the funniest ideas involve the trio of non-zombies trying to find ways of dealing with Steve's affliction. Even potentially funnier is how the prissy Tina is adamant that the wedding will go as planned.

I say "potentially" because everything that should elicit laughs pretty much doesn't. One is constantly amused with all the cleverly funny ideas, but most of the gags miss their mark.

McHattie is suitably over-the-top, overplaying within the context of the character he's rendering. Max is supposed to be bigger-than-life. Many of the other characters shouldn't be. I just wish someone had told this to Crystal Lowe, for example, who amongst the two beleaguered couples is so broad, that her shrill, nasty harping out-harridans even the most vile harridans we've come to know and love in the movies (notably many of the villainous harpies in the Whatever Happened to Baby Jane-styled thrillers of the early-to-mid-60s).

Even the likeable presence of Kristopher Turner as Steve gets sucked into the realm of the overwrought. When he underplays, he's terrific, but when he pushes the envelope, someone needed to keep him reined in. Shawn Roberts's bigger qualities suit his character and he's genuinely funny. Finally, it is up to Kristen Hagerman and Emile Ullerup to maintain the best balance and deliver consistently enjoyable performances by playing the crazy material straight and subsequently eliciting considerable laughs.

While there are numerous exigencies of production that can contribute to elements being less than perfect, there are so many elements that are right with the picture that I made a point of seeing it twice to pinpoint why it is that it falls short.

It has a clever script (that could have easily been interpreted closer in tone to the aforementioned classic horror pictures with comic elements), there are some genuinely on-the-money performances (and even those that fall short are not without some sporadic merit), the production value is genuinely high and we seldom see the seams of the picture's obvious low budget, the effects are skillfully and imaginatively cheesy in all the right ways, the film is well photographed and finally, the superb editing by Michael Mason addresses the elements of both pace and narrative thrust with occasional cuts of considerable aplomb.

At the end of the day, much of the success or lack thereof, finally must be attributed to the direction. Even on a first viewing, one of the things that bothered me was how so many of the dialogue scenes were shot with endless one-ers and most annoyingly the constant reliance on dirty-over shots. I longed for good master shots and solid two-shots.

There's an early scene where the couples are driving at night in their car. Much of the dialogue is between Steve and Tina in the front seat while Craig and Sarah sleep in the back. Given that this is a long dialogue scene, and especially given that much, if not all of it is rendered in the old reliable poor man's process to makes it seem like the car is actually moving, I simply had no idea why much of the conversation was not composed with a nice two shot of the couple so that their dialogue could play out in a series of longer takes and only when necessary would there be a punch-in on a oner, closeup or dirty-over.

Instead, we seemed to be cutting on virtually every line of dialogue and no nice master two-shot carrying the bulk of the scene. On a first viewing, I chose to be charitable and think that maybe the masters existed, but that the performances could not sustain that approach and it was up to the editor to save the scene and performances by using the remaining camera-jockeyed coverage.

But then, there occurred a lengthy dialogue scene on the shore of the lake and the entire conversation seemed comprised of an identical approach when clearly a much more interesting and effective way to shoot it would have been a complete reverse angle to allow for longer takes in two-shot and only occasional dirty overs, but from the front, which still could have include the lake and surrounding wilderness.

To keep the camera always behind the actors might have worked if there had been a simple wide master, followed by a few dirty overs from behind and then gradually working into the reverse angle so we could actually see the actors dead-on and let good chunks of the scene play in much longer takes.

This kind of dull, though vaguely competent TV-like approach to covering the dialogue, coupled with so much of the great script being pitched far too high suggested that direction was indeed the one primary aspect of what kept A Little Bit Zombie from being more than mildly engaging.

All this said, when I do the math on the picture, it still managed to provide enough entertainment value - even for jaded genre geeks.

So, without further delay, let's do the math:

A Zombie mosquito.

First-rate zombie head explosions and general zombie carnage.

Stephen (God) McHattie.

Some farting.

More vomiting and regurgitation than I've ever seen in one movie.

3 Babes (1 ultra babe, 1 mega babe, 1 nasty babe).

1 manly, good-humoured hunk.

1 fey, sensitive lad for those so inclined.

Good natured, though mild homophobic homo humour.

Biting into a bunny rabbit's head.

Bunny rabbit brain eating.

White Trash Butcher who is a brain gourmand (courtesy of George Buza).

"Clinking" squirrel brains together as "bottoms up" toast.

WWF wrestling maestro Robert Maillet.

A slam-bang CAT-FIGHT twixt Ultra Babe and Nasty Babe.

Ultra Babe and Nasty Babe dolling up like hookers to seduce Robert Maillet.

Slurping brains out of someone's head with a straw.

A final 10 minutes that's so good, it makes up for all the movie's flaws.

And yes, allow me to reiterate - babes.

The sum total: If the above appeals to you - GO FOR IT!

You can, ultimately, do a lot worse than a zombie comedy that's not as funny as it really should be.

"A Little Bit Zombie" is the Closing Night Gala of the Canadian Film Fest at the Royal Theatre in Toronto. For more information, visit the Festival website HERE.

THE UNLEASHED - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Mediocre Canadian paranormal thriller replete with good intentions, but predictable and overlong.

The Unleashed (2011) dir. Manuel H. Da Silva
Starring: Trisha Echeverria, Jessica Salgueiro, Caroline Williams, Malcolm McDowell

*1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

God knows, and those who know me as intimately as Our Lord, are well aware of the fact that I worship the horror genre with a fervour not unlike that of a fundamentalist Bible Thumper and/or dyed-in-the-wool Satanists. I especially enjoy tales of the paranormal and have been waiting patiently for a good movie that uses a Ouija board as more than a simple prop in a scene or two, but in fact, uses the board front and centre.

The Unleashed partially answered my prayers - the movie has mega-Ouija Board action. Alas, the picture is barely watchable. It's too bad. Buried deep within the endless 108-minute running time is the framework for a decent genre effort within the script itself. Unfortunately, someone needed to take an axe to much of the screenplay before the film was shot and most importantly, a decent script editor, or even someone with something resembling taste, might have been able to excise a lot of the dumb dialogue and the endless yapping that doesn't really serve the plot and feels like filler. Even if the script had been shot as written, a good producer and editor might have been able to rescue this plodding would-be thriller in post-production.

The movie begins in a so-far-so-good manner. With a tone of creepy portent over the opening titles, we hear the familiar voice of Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange, O Lucky Man, Time After Time) as he narrates the following:

Along with the modern spiritual movement, there came a widespread interest in communications with the dead. The talking board is yet another tool to inspire hope that a world beyond our own can be reached. The question is this: Are the dead taunting the living or is the living taunting the dead?

Well, Malcolm, I've gotta say (after seeing the whole movie), the REAL question is this: Given that the above is the sum total of your involvement in this picture, were you paid by the hour, the day or the word? There are 52 words. If I had been your agent, I'd have negotiated the rate based on that, but I'm not, so it's a moot point.

In fairness to the producers of the film, McDowell's name does not appear on the film's poster, but much of the hype surrounding the premiere of The Unleashed at the Canadian Film Fest in Toronto was the appearance of everyone's favourite Droog at the red carpet screening.

Given that I personally try to know as little about a movie as possible before I see it, I was super-pumped. All I knew was that I'd be seeing a new low budget Canuck horror feature with a great poster AND the participation of Malcolm McDowell. What kept drifting through my mind as I watched the movie was this? When's Malcolm McDowell showing up? He doesn't. Now you know, so if you see the movie when it opens theatrically, don't bother giving his involvement a moment's thought - just let the picture work its magic.

That said, the movie has virtually no magic - certainly none of the cinematic kind. After Malcolm's narration, we get a decent seance scene set in the late 1800s involving an old crone using a Ouija Board. Decent carnage occurs and we flash forward to the present. We're clumsily introduced to the lead characters - a babe-o-licious woman who's been away from home for eight years and has returned after her Mother dies to deal with the estate, her babe-o-licious best friend from days gone by and a babe-o-licious professor of paranormal studies who is holding a series of lectures at the local secondary school. (Gee, I sure wish I had gone to a secondary school like that!)

So far, so good.

When the returning daughter's friend offers to stay with her in the family house (which, by the way, is haunted), I'm at this point thinking - "Good deal!" I did some quick math: Ouija Boards, carnage, ghosts, haunted house, babes and Sappho-action. Yee-haa! The latter, alas, does not occur (though there is one scene with the two babes in bed, but they're fully clothed and clearly have not been indulging in any forbidden nectar.)

Even worse is the fact that it took the picture 35 or so minutes to give me a tiny shiver of fright. As the film proceeds there were three or four minor jolts, many half-hearted (though nobly-intended) attempts at atmospheric horror, a few decent special effects, unexciting but certainly competent cinematography and a handful of good performances - all of which were elicited by the female actors. (The male actors in the movie are either dull and competent or just plain godawful.)

The movie throws out a couple of plot twists and surprises, but they're the sort that had me thinking early in the movie: "Oh God, I hope they're not going to , , ," And Yup, they do. I saw the ending coming far too early in the proceedings. (Even my 11-year-old daughter, who, by the way, really loved the movie, was bummed out by the ending.) Knowing where a picture will end up doesn't have to ruin it if the ride is worthwhile, but The Unleashed is not The Zipper, but rather, a merry-go-round that keeps stopping and starting.

"The Unleashed" is the Friday night red-carpet gala at this year's Canadian Film Fest running March 28-31 at the Royal Theatre in Toronto. For more information, visit the festival's website HERE.

This is a terrific trailer. Don't let it fool you though. All the best stuff is right here:

THE GUANTANAMO TRAP - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Director Thomas Sellim Wallner has crafted an eminently fascinating and moving film. He delivers a picture that stands as one of the great humanist documentaries of the new millennium.

The Guantanamo Trap (2011) dir. Thomas Sellim Wallner
Starring: Murat Kurnaz, Diane Beaver, Matthew Diaz, Gonzalo Boye

****

By Greg Klymkiw

“Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers.” - Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

America - the real America as promised in its constitution, as exemplified in its (mostly) great people and in the vision of Abraham Lincoln to build an economically powerful empire within its borders (thus rejecting the insane expansionism of Manifest Destiny) and to tirelessly serve the world as a genuine defender of the tenets of democratic human rights - that America is dead.

Currently operating as one of the most corrupt oligarchies in the world, insanely going to war under the guise of Lincoln's great dream but in reality enhancing the economic power of the rich, America has duped millions of its own citizens and both foreign and domestic lenders out of billions of dollars - sending the world into a major economic crisis. The America that now exists has reduced the majority of its populace to an existence of poverty and near-Third World conditions while spending billions on a false war on terrorism.

The cherry on the American Empire's ice cream sundae of Decline is the illegal kidnapping of (mostly) innocent people all over the world. Their subsequent incarceration on Guantanamo includes being held without formal charges, hearings or trials for years and being tortured in order to spill their guts about spurious accusations of terrorist activities.

Yes, tortured.

We all know it. The powers-that-be know it. The victims certainly know it. Alas, the paid pawns of the mainstream media, who also know it, continue to go out of their way to defend the actions of this democratic dictatorship which is ruled by the Christian Right Wing in tandem with the corporate powers who really run America.

Even those on the left betrayed their ideals, reverting, when the going got too tough to the self-preservation and/or nest-feathering their right-wing foes engaged in. A perfect example of this is noted human rights lawyer Barbara Olshansky. She was working for the nonprofit Centre For Constitutional Rights (CFCR) who were suing the government of the United States to acquire the list of all the prisoners (America calls them "detainees") at Guantanamo. Though the U.S. Supreme Court officially ruled that Guantanamo's prisoners were legally allowed to challenge their imprisonment, their potential chief advocates needed to know who they actually were. The military refused to divulge this information; hence, the lawsuit.

At one point, Olshansky met one Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, a Navy lawyer at Guantanamo. He was quite moved by her pleas for the list of prisoners. He finally made the personal decision to furnish these names. He sent them to her in an envelope, the list tucked inside a Valentine card to avoid detection. Receiving this package, she immediately suspected it was a hoax at best, and at worst, a classified document that might potentially compromise American security and safety.

Hello, babe! This is what you were whining for.

Even more horrendous is that Diaz extracted the information from his Guantanamo computer and was himself shocked to find that the documents were not marked classified. Olshansky herself testified that these documents were not marked as classified, so to this day it makes no sense why she suspected they might be.

Instead of using the lists to further her worthy cause, she decided to inform the trial judge that she had them in her possession and then boneheaded-ly allowed a minion from Homeland Security to pick them up. It didn't take long for the FBI and the Justice Department to track the list back to Diaz. Olshansky betrayed her ally - she refused to acknowledge she had ever met or spoken with Diaz and other than her relatively inconsequential testimony at Diaz's trial, she has avoided addressing the matter publicly.

Diaz, of course, was branded a traitor, stripped of his military credentials, his law credentials and served a surprisingly lenient 6-months in prison.

Matthew Diaz is one of four subjects examined in The Guantanamo Trap. Thomas Sellim Wallner's feature length documentary presents a tragic portrait of people caught in the web of Guantanamo's literal and symbolic evil. Diaz's story is especially affecting. This is a young man who lived for the military. It was his way out of a world of uncertainty and where he used his time there to make a living, gain an education and eventually a law degree.

We follow his story, including the aforementioned Olshansky Valentine betrayal, right up to the present where he has no qualifications to do any other work than which he's no longer allowed to pursue. He has no benefits, no pension, a criminal record and a military dismissal which, in spite of his intelligence and experience, presents a formidable hurdle in acquiring the most basic employment. Adding insult to injury, his family home in which his daughter lives has a foreclosure order against it.

Olshansky, on the other hand, continues quite comfortably with her life - writing books, accepting speaking engagements wherein she crows on about human rights abuses and, of course, holds numerous prestigious academic positions.

Diaz tried to do the right thing. He lost his whole life. Olshansky, on the other hand, maintained her nicely feathered nest. She also repeatedly ignored requests from the filmmakers of The Guantanamo Trap to present her side of the story in the film.

No need, one supposes, to tarnish one's comfy position as an - ahem - well-heeled lefty.

What finally makes The Guantanamo Trap both infuriating and almost unbearably sad is that it's ultimately a story of betrayal. The other individuals whose stories we follow were as screwed over by getting caught in Guantanamo's net as poor Diaz.

Murat Kurnaz, a German of Turkish descent was arrested by police in Pakistan and sold to the Americans for a healthy bounty.

A bounty!!!

He was imprisoned in both Afghanistan and eventually in an outdoor cage in Guantanamo - where he was physically and psychologically tortured for five years.

Diane Beaver served as a military lawyer at Guantanamo and wrote a legal memo which supported the use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques. When you see the film, you can be your own judge, but they sure sound like torture to me - in spite of her protestations to the contrary. Though there's no question that she was an integral part of Guantanamo's evil, her orders were to generate a legal opinion on what forms of interrogation could be used.

Beaver, of course, was betrayed by her own government. Not a single entity in authority - all of whom had to provide approvals - did not actually have their names linked to said approvals. Beaver's name is the only official name attached to any document advocating physical and psychological torture. Beaver was hung out to dry as a patsy by the government she continues to declare her loyalty to.

Now a civilian, Beaver is haunted by her legacy and tries to carve out a new life.

Gonzalo Boye is a criminal prosecution lawyer in Spain who is spearheading charges against the Bush administration for illegal incarceration and various war crimes (that include torture). Boye himself was a victim of wrongful incarceration and torture in his home country. During his harrowing fourteen years in prison, he studied to become a lawyer. And now, one of his chief targets is Diane Beaver and his star witness is Murat Kurnaz.

Director Wallner presents these stories with a considerable degree of detachment - he lets the individuals guide their own narratives, and in so doing, the dramatic thrust of the film. As such, the most fascinating revelation - at least for me - is how organized, man-made religion is a driving force for both Kurnaz and Beaver. Kurnaz continually displays his devout Muslim beliefs by refusing to shake hands with women or making a point of avoiding certain foods and/or libations. Beaver mentions, not just once, but twice (and emphatically to boot) that everything happening to her is part of "God's plan".

In "War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning", Chris Hedges notes that the “moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.” Beaver has no self doubt at all with respect to her place in America's "War on Terror" and her own "fundamentalism" is rooted in "God's Plan" - not her own self-will, nor that employed by those who betrayed her. Kurnaz, too, uses his religion to justify his own sexism, potential misogyny and veiled racism.

It's like we're amidst the Crusades - Christians fighting the infidel (and vice-versa) for goals that are lofty and inextricably linked to God or as Hedges notes in "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America" that those who are "numbed by isolation and despair, now seek meaning in a mythical world of intuition, a world that is no longer reality-based, a world of magic.”

Fairy tales, it seems, are at the root of this insanity.

And much as Beaver and others justify what they must do to protect America, Hedges simply and astutely points out that war makes no sense - certainly not in a Christian context since "Jesus was a pacifist."

Wallner has crafted an eminently fascinating and moving film. He was inspired to make it when he was placed on America's terror watch list for five years when he refused to take part in a retinal scan. His shock and anger was so considerable that the impetus was initially vengeance. As he proceeded, he realized he needed to strip away his voice as much as he could in order to present the effects of war upon humanity.

Much as I respect and admire this decision and as terrific as his film is because of it, there is a part of me that wonders about the same film within the context of its maker's art becoming an act of revenge. I try to imagine that film and when I do, I think it might have been equally worthy and certainly just as powerful.

That said, Wallner delivers a picture that stands powerfully on its own two feet as one of the great humanist documentaries of the new millennium.

"The Guantanamo Trap" is now playing in Toronto at the Hot Docs Bloor Cinema via Kinomith. For tickets and showtimes, visit HERE.

CLOUDBURST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Thom Fitzgerald, the director of "The Hanging Garden" delivers a beautifully written ode to love on the run - replete with k.d. lang music, pickup trucks, roadside cafes, Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker and a Nova Scotia that's never looked more heart-achingly beautiful.

Cloudburst (2011) dir. Thom Fitzgerald
Starring: Olympia Dukakis, Brenda Fricker, Ryan Doucette, Kristin Booth

****

By Greg Klymkiw

"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" - Jack Kerouac, On The Road

The open road is freedom, but in reality and in the best popular culture, there is always a point where one must reach the end of the road. Sometimes it's sad and empty, sometimes it's not what you expected, often it's bittersweet. Whatever lies at the end of the journey, it's the ride that should always be the thing. It's what you discover and celebrate on the road that is often far more important than what's waiting there (if anything) when it ends.

Stella (Olympia Dukakis) and Dot (Brenda Fricker) have lived an incredible journey of love and mutual respect as a couple for over 30 years, but when circumstances seemingly beyond their control threaten the joy and happiness they've had, the open road becomes the only real way to obtain a pot of proverbial gold at the end of a new journey.

Family, it seems, is not always defined by blood - it takes love - and for this couple, family comes in the unlikeliest of places and circumstances. Love is what defines lives well lived and this couple have had love in spades, but in order to keep it unfettered from the unwelcome intrusion of a well meaning, but completely out-to-lunch blood relative - public affirmation becomes the ultimate goal. They must marry.

The problem is that they live in the United States and can only gain the legal status as a married couple in Canada. What's a foul-mouthed, cowboy-hat-adorned, k.d. lang-obsessed, self-described old dyke and her jolly, sweet, visually-impaired longtime companion to do? What would you do? Me, I'd hop in my half-ton pickup truck, stock it with k.d. lang CDs, pick up a hunky male hitchhiker headed to visit his ailing Mom in Nova Scotia and cross the 49th parallel to get myself good and hitched - kind of like Stella and Dot do in the lovely, funny and touching new film written and directed by Thom Fitzgerald.

Cloudburst is a movie that needed a deft directorial touch and a script that could take the cliches normally associated with road movies and generate truth, humanity and humour and thankfully, for the most part it succeeds in this regard.

For years I kept wondering when director Thom Fitzgerald, who made one of the most thrilling feature debuts of the 90s, The Hanging Garden, was going to generate a picture that fulfilled the considerable promise displayed in that exquisite heartbreaker of a movie. This is not to discount the intervening years of work, but Cloudburst feels like a return to form and, on occasion, a step or two forward.

Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker are tremendous actresses, but given the emphasis these days upon demographics and the usual requirements from studios and other financiers to cater exclusively to younger audiences, the number of great roles for talents in this august age group are getting fewer-and-far-between-er. Fitzgerald crafted two roles that any great actress would love to sink her teeth into and frankly, Dukakis and Fricker are so captivating, moving and funny, I have to admit it feels like they were born to eventually step into these parts.

Set against the lush, superbly photographed backdrop of Nova Scotia, Fitzgerald took this story, a sort of gentle retirement-age Thelma and Louise, and both wisely and bravely delivered a tale that's as mature as it's downright universal. Love should have no boundaries and his direction indelibly captures a love story that's familiar, but bolstered by such genuine compassion, that I frankly can't imagine any audience not succumbing to it's considerable charms.

There are a few overwrought moments of humour that try a bit too hard, but for the most part, I found myself laughing heartily and genuinely and damn it all, I shed more than a few tears.

It's one of the few unabashedly sentimental celebrations of love I've seen in quite some time. The picture wears its heart proudly on its sleeve and while there's something just a little bit old-fashioned about that, Fitzgerald handles the proceedings with such grace, that everything old becomes happily new again. Some might choose to deny the power of sentiment, but they'd be lying (or just plain foolish). We all need sentiment from time to time and Cloudburst is the right time, the right place and just the right film to make us all feel grateful for the joy that life, with all its ups and downs, bestows upon us and hopefully prepares us for whatever journey we take beyond the end of the road.

"Cloudburst" is the opening night gala presentation at this year's Canadian Film Fest running March 28-31 at the Royal Theatre in Toronto. For more information, visit the festival's website HERE.

GENIE AWARDS 32 - By Greg Klymkiw - Live Coverage

Here are some of my musings during the 32nd Annual Genie Awards as they sprouted from my mind, shot through my fingers and spewed into cyberspace.

By Greg Klymkiw

The pre-show show is now going on for the "less important" awards. They gave the Golden Reel Award to Starbuck. This is still the weirdest award ever - given to the highest grossing Canadian movie of the year. Do the Oscars acknowledge the highest grossing film of the year with an award? No, because supposedly such awards ultimately (or supposedly) have to do with artistic achievement.

A Dangerous Method won Best Art Direction and Production Design. Here in the press room, Richard Crouse is up on a mini-stage interviewing him (and other winners) for our benefit while the pre-show is broadcast without sound. Richard graciously takes a lot of time with the winners and allows ample opportunity for questions from the assembled press corps. Still, there are murmurings from a few that they'd rather be watching the pre-broadcast show onstage.

Crouse is now interviewing the winners of the various short film prizes. I think I will eat my hot buffet while this is going on.

Great, the Jutra prize for first feature films is also deemed unworthy of the live broadcast. Way to support emerging talent, CBC!!!! Winner Anne Emond, director of Nuit #1 is gracious in the press room and Crouse does a lovely job interviewing this clearly intelligent, talented young filmmaker. Too bad the CBC didn't think it was worth broadcasting her win to the rest of Canada.

La Nuit, Elles Dansent / At Night, They Dance is the winner of Best Feature Documentary Award. It's about a family of Belly Dancers. Something tells me Julia Ivanova's movie Family Portrait in Black and White about a woman who cares for unwanted mixed-race orphans in Ukraine got hosed.

Fantastic, they're doing the tribute to great Canadians in the movie business who died during the pre-show. Way to go, CBC. Way to support our cultural heritage and the passing of those who contributed to it, by NOT sharing it with the rest of the country.

I'll grant that Starbuck is not much good, but again it sucks that the Best Original Screenplay Award is presented in the pre-show. Way to go CBC! Way to support screenwriting!

HERE IS MY DELICIOUS MEAL:

The live broadcast has begun. Some guy I've never heard of is singing a lame song.

Viggo - not surprisingly - wins Best Supporting Actor. His speech is going on a bit. Big deal. It's Viggo. The orchestra is playing - signalling to Viggo to get off the stage. Viggo is making a funny Canadiens joke. CBC wants Viggo offstage. Now Viggo is unfurling a Habs flag. They still are trying to urge him to leave. What to go CBC! Real classy! I guess they have something better to air after the Genies. God knows, the CBC would not want to go overtime.

Oh Jesus, they have figure skaters skating during the Best Song nominees. Way to go CBC! Kitsch Galore!

Backstage, Viggo admits to wearing a pair of Ken Dryden's old gitch and that in spite of a few holes in them, they're very clean.

Ingrid Veninger has just asked if she should have some lasagna now. I choose not to stop her.

That cute little girl from Monsieur Lazhar just won. In my heart I knew this was the no-brainer decision, but part of me thought that the Academy would toss a nod to The Whistleblower here. I was wrong. Happily wrong.

Oh Jesus, more figure skating!

This show is moving so fast it's kind of oppressively dull because of it. Sort of like how Michael Bay cuts his movies.

Strombo: Wondering how people are doing in their Genie Pools? Genie Pools? Is this some kind of hot tub?

Had myself a nice cigarette outside while Falardeau picked up his Best Director Genie.

Sorry folks, I'm going to switch to Facebook and Twitter for awhile. See you there.

On the eve of the Genie Awards, Canada's newspaper of record in that dying medium has asked several experts to weigh in on their thoughts regarding the current state of Canadian Cinema. Here are my thoughts in response.

A collection of experts weighed in on "What the Canadian Film Industry Needs Most" via Gayle MacDonald in the March 7, 2012 Edition of the Globe and Mail. On the eve of the 32nd Annual Genie Awards, only one of them directly addressed what I suspect is the real problem. Here then are my responses to some of the comments and my own thoughts on the matter.

What the Canadian Film Industry Needs Most Is Less Punditry. That Said, Here's More Pundrity. It's the Canadian Way!

By Greg Klymkiw

CAMERON BAILEY

Cameron is one of Canada's most astute film critics and since he took over as co-director of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), we're alternately all the better for it (as he seeks out great cinema for us to watch) and all the worse for it (since we don't get to read his punchy, musically-styled prose on cinema on a regular basis). Cameron suggests that English Canadian Cinema needs to snuffle back a bit o' that magical Quebec oxygen. He opines:

"Quebec is turning out films of ambition and depth that look outward rather than just in. I think there's talent equal to Quebec in the rest of Canada, but maybe somebody needs to throw open a window and let some of that air in."

I suspect Cameron would, if given a few more column inches, have admitted the whopping number of Quebec films that do NOT look outward. While many of these indigenously delightful Joual-tinged knee-slappers go through the roof in their home province, they certainly do zero business outside of French Canada (and not just in English Canada, but worldwide and EVEN in French-speaking territories outside of Canada).

Frankly, English Canadian Cinema has, especially since the late 80s and early 90s, often looked outward, and in fact, has performed extremely well in foreign markets. The list includes David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, Patricia Rozema, Vincenzo Natali, Brad Peyton and a whole whack of others. On the homefront, though, things are more dire. I shall opine on this later.

RUBBA NADDA

Rubba Nadda is the director of Sabah, Cairo Time and the upcoming thriller Inescapable. Here are her thoughts:

"Sometimes I just think it needs more balls, more courage. The Canadian industry is so afraid of taking risks. When I took the script for "Inescapable" to the United States, everyone wanted to do it. I got the first support from the States, not from Canada. It’s the Canadian way to hesitate."

I have no quarrels with this. Canada (particularly on the English side) is a country that is far too mired in the sort of bureaucracy that places emphasis on "fairness", "committee" decision-making, political correctness bordering on fascism and pathetically obvious self-serving nest-feathering which results in a seemingly conservative approach to all matters cultural. It's the Canadian way to smile whilst stabbing in the back instead of looking directly into one's eye as they gut you. This dweeb-ish cowardice is abominable. The worst thing is when purse-string holders - even within private business - are more apt to hide behind the proverbial "we". "The committee" is the oft-used term as opposed to "I". We need more people within the system to take personal responsibility for their often wrong-headed decisions - rooted in the kind of "well-meaning" approaches that are hardly a conducive approach to the "balls" and "courage" Ms. Nadda refers to above.

KEVIN DEWALT

Kevin Dewalt is one of Canada's most successful producers from Regina. He hits a nail on the head here that's been bugging me since I started in this industry.

"Canadian films need larger budgets to attract bigger international stars to compete in the international market place. There are tax schemes in Britain for private investors to invest in British films. The King’s Speech is a prime example. Without private-equity funding out of the U.K., this movie would never have been made. By creating similar private-investor programs in Canada, we would be able to increase our budgets and compete more effectively in the global marketplace."

Though I'm not sure larger budgets are ALWAYS going to be the answer, this country desperately needs an aggressive and progressive tax shelter. End of story. Everyone focuses upon the negative aspects of the Canadian tax shelter days, but for all the bad movies generated during that period, the number of artistically and/or commercially significant works produced then equals if not betters what's been generated without it. Filmmakers need the freedom to generate truly private investment. My oft-repeated no-brainer formula of aggressive tax shelters, larger tax credits and substantial tax incentives for marketing, exhibition and distribution may seem simplistic, but there's the old screenwriting adage, KISS ("Keep it simple, stupid") which is best applied to most things in life.

ROBERT LANTOS

Robert Lantos is the closest thing Canada has to a bonafide mogul. He began his illustrious career hawking the New York Erotic Film Festival and steadily built more than enough empires in this business based on his vision and astute dipping into every public trough imaginable. Here is the sum total of his thoughts on this:

"Prime-time access to and meaningful investment from broadcasters, as is the case in France, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and most other countries where films are made."

Thank you, Robert, for your detailed response.

NIV FICHMAN

Niv Fichman is not only a mensch and a half, he's produced one great Canadian film after another. Beginning his career overseeing some of the most world-class arts and culture productions ever made and then delivering gems like Last Night, The Saddest Music in the World and Hobo With a Shotgun, he can certainly be forgiven for his part in the recent career of Paul Gross (most notably Passchendaele and GOD HELP US ALL - Gunless).

"What Canadian film most needs right now is a new voice. The voice of a young generation that grew up with the Internet and YouTube and digital cameras and [video editing software] Final Cut Pro. A generation that has been making films since they were children and self-distributing their work on YouTube."

In theory, I agree. In practise, I think it's unhealthy to encourage the "anyone can make a film" tradition that's sprouted from the digital revolution. I do agree that genuinely talented young voices need to be supported. Interestingly, I think there already exists a new hope in English Canadian Cinema. They call themselves "Astron-6", a filmmaking collective from Winnipeg that's been generating a series of mind-blowing short films and two features for absolutely no money. Their influences have been 80s direct-to-video genre pictures as well as the post-modern flights of fancy already pioneered by their 'Peg confreres John Paizs and Guy Maddin. In 2011 these psycho kids - who are REAL filmmakers with a distinctive voice - delivered one of the most insane sci-fi love letters to the 80s I've ever seen. Imaginative, naughty and knee-splappingly hilarious, MANBORG, replete with tres-cool visuals, was made for just over $1000. Their other triumph is FATHER'S DAY, a truly brilliant splatter-fest that was made for a mere $10,000 (courtesy of Troma's Lloyd Kaufman) and has played theatrically all over the United States. This particular item focuses upon a serial killer from hell who specializes in raping and butchering fathers and is hunted down by a rag-tag group of brave avengers (led by a one-eyed Jason Statham-lookalike). This a truly warped, sick, funny, disgusting and deliciously bum-blasting masterpiece. Niv! These guys need someone just like YOU! Ditch this Paul Gross fellow and embrace the utter madness that is Astron-6.

INGRID VENINGER

Ingrid Veninger might well be cinema’s only living equivalent to a whirling dervish. Like a dervish, she honours her Creator (cinema), her prophets (Cassavetes, Leigh and others), then whips her creative concoction into a frenzy – literally living and breathing cinema – producing film from within herself, her devotion and life itself. Ingrid has produced a whack of features including the mega-Genie-nominated Nurse Fighter Boy and has directed three terrific features including i am a good person/i am a bad person. Here's what she had to offer:

"Exhibition quotas. Our cinemas should be mandated to screen a percentage of Canadian content, just like our television broadcasters and radio. People say, “Theatrical quotas will never happen. It's impossible,” but I say, “People make the impossible happen every day.” Claude Jutra (Mon oncle Antoine) once said, “Not making the films you want to make is awful, but making them and not having them seen is worse.”

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (as I've said this many times before and will keep saying it), English Canada needs an exhibition quota.

In English Canada, there is one primary target: Cineplex Entertainment. The "Canadian" exhibition chain owns and/or controls more screens than anyone in the country. They'll always argue that their only concern is their stockholders and that they'll play any Canadian movie as long as it makes money. That's all well and good when it comes to no-brainer programming choices like the start-studded Cronenberg spanking-fest A Dangerous Method or Michael Dowse's brilliant hockey splatter fest GOON, but what about the rest of the product?

A secondary target for scrutinous ire-infused debate on the state of Canada's domestic motion picture product is the gaggle of domestic film distributors that adhere to the status quo, but in all fairness to them, they're only going to spend money on the marketing necessary to keep the product on screens if they actually GET screens. Cineplex Entertainment is stingy with those. They have far too many Hollywood movies to play (often to empty or near-empty houses given the ridiculous number of screens said product hogs).

There's no two ways about it. English Canadian cinema lags far behind other indigenous industries outside of North America in terms of audience support for its own work. Canadian audiences are not quick to embrace their own cinema, but in order to embrace it at all, the work needs venues. This, of course, is not (and has never been) a problem in Quebec as the province has had very stringent guidelines regarding Quebec-based distributors and a more-than-level playing field for the exhibition of French-language product - thus allowing for the development of audiences ravenous for homegrown movies.

I'd also argue it's not necessarily always the fault of the product, either. Many decent, perfectly entertaining and/or artistically challenging movies get little chance to be seen.

If screens cannot be secured and held onto, there is no real way to adequately develop an interest in domestic product. Until Cineplex Entertainment does the right thing and gets off its lazy corporate duff and waggles its piggy tail in the direction of Canadian cinema and - even at a loss - does its corporate duty with respect to AGGRESSIVELY making DECENT screens available to said product, thus fulfilling their responsibility in supporting cultural initiatives in this country, then things are going to continue their snail-paced incremental changes.

Here are some thoughts I shared at a previous juncture on this site:

I saw Don Shebib's classic Canadian feature Goin' Down the Road when I was a kid at a huge first-run theatre in Winnipeg. I loved it then and loved it more every time I saw it. When I heard Shebib had crafted a sequel, Down the Road Again, I was imbued with a bit of healthy skepticism. That said, I was still excited to see it.

I was out of town for the first two weeks of the film's theatrical run at Cineplex's flagship Toronto venue, the Varsity Cinema. When I returned during the film's third week of release, I hightailed it down to the Varsity (not bothering to check the showtimes as is my wont) and was shocked (genuinely) that it wasn't playing. I quickly accessed my iPhone movie listings and was even more distressed that the movie, at least for that evening, was playing absolutely nowhere in Toronto.

There was, however, one lone screening the following evening at the Royal cinema, everyone's favourite indie venue in Little Italy. What shocked me even more was that Barbara Willis Sweete's film adaptation of Billy Bishop Goes To War was the other film playing at the Royal the same evening - first run and ENDING!!! Okay, my fault for being out of town, I guess. Excuse me all to hell for expecting movies with a reasonable pedigree by Canadian standards were (a) not available on any Cineplex screen in the country's largest city and that (b) they were both ending.

No matter, I sashayed on down the next night to The Royal. I really enjoyed Billy Bishop. I first experienced it as a kid in Winnipeg when John Gray and Eric Peterson presented the play at the Manitoba Theatre Centre's Warehouse venue. I loved it then and was delighted to see a film that preserved its theatrical roots. (I won't rant about one of my many pet-peeves involving the idiotic, myopic assumption on the part of critics and film types who should know better that anything and everything based upon a theatrical piece MUST be opened up for the cinema. Just don't get me started and I promise to stop now.)

My first thought was, "Hmmm, there are wads upon wads of people my age and older who love this play ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY. This would have been a perfect film to platform wide in the Front Row Centre-styled exhibition format that Cineplex has been exploiting in big cities and beyond." I played out a release pattern for the film in my mind whilst waiting for the Shebib to begin: Coast-to-coast, hugely hyped one-shot screenings of the film at the premium Front Row Centre prices. You'd have to blow a decent whack o' dough on advertising, BUT, with the same kind of thought and elbow grease that USED to go into marketing ANY movies (never mind Canadian films), there would be all sorts of alternate advertising venues with far more reasonable ad rates than traditional outlets anyway. As well, there would be an inordinate number of cross-promotions and tie-ins with theatre companies and arts groups across the country. Hell, target theatre schools also - not just including private companies, or even secondary schools, but given that virtually every post-secondary institution has a theatre program, promote the picture there. In any event, my fantasy release of Billy Bishop then included regular screenings one week later in many of the same venues it played at in the Front Row Centre release. Those post-Front-Row screenings may or may not have had numbers to sustain the secondary runs that long, BUT, the important thing is that Canadians would have been able to see the movie on a BIG SCREEN in a COMMUNAL ENVIRONMENT. This, in turn, would have created a far more advantageous bed of hype and anticipation for any number of home entertainment venues.

Alas, the way the movie was released feels like home penetration was the only real goal.

Whose fault was it?

Well, I can't be sure if the film's distributor considered my aforementioned form of theatrical penetration, nor do I know if the movie was even offered Cineplex. What I can say is this. SOMEONE should have thought about it and SOMEONE should have committed to playing it in this fashion. In fact, give the success of these types of special event showings in the Cineplex chain, you'd think someone THERE might have thought about approaching the film's distributor about mounting the film in this fashion.

Here's the thing. The business has changed for the worst, but it's not impossible to reapply good old fashioned showmanship on both sides of the distribution and exhibition fence. I started my life in this business as both a writer ABOUT movies and then as a film buyer on behalf of independent exhibitors in the late 70s and early 80s. I lived through the "old ways", lamented the shift in delivery and accessibility of product and now I get absolutely livid when I see how complacent and lazy both sides have become.

Down the Road Again was an entirely different story. I loved the picture, but also conceded its theatrical appeal would be limited. Limited, yes - but there IS an audience out there that would have loved to see the movie on a big screen. Part of this IS a distribution issue. However, I also think Canada's major exhibitor is shirking its place in creating a proper venue for Canadian cinema. Responsibility to shareholders be damned. Besides, even leaving Canadian Cinema out of the equation, those shareholders are going to have very little to count on if things don't change in the exhibition industry.

And yes, it IS the fault of exhibition - especially within major chains like Cineplex. They offer no real choice. Pure and simple. They rest on the laurels of whatever crap they're handed. I live for much of the year in a remote rural area. Cineplex has a seven-screen multiplex. All the same movies are locked in there for ages. I can assure you that in the late 70s and early 80s, the small market audiences had FAR more CHOICE in what was available than they do now. And idiotically, it's not that the product is NOT there. There's tons of product. Much of it good and much of it never getting screen time. Yes, having to program and promote such product takes time and effort. Yeah? So? Do it. They call it elbow grease.

As for Canadian product, I will ultimately and vigorously ALWAYS point an accusatory finger at Cineplex. Every major country outside of North America had or continues to have strict indigenous content quotas. Many of these countries have leaps and bounds on Canada by decades in this respect. Many of these same countries are making indigenous product that appeals to their national audiences and, in many cases, to international audiences. Much of this product isn't of the blockbuster variety, either. It often provides entertainment to niche audiences - theatrically. These audiences exist because efforts had been made in the past to ensure cultural sovereignty. These movies mostly do NOT compete with Hollywood, anyway. In fact, they enhance the viability and attraction to theatrical exhibition period.

I do not propose legislating exhibition quotas anyway.

I frankly think it would be good for business if Cineplex undertook a major corporate responsibility in exhibiting Canadian films - EVEN IF THEY LOSE MONEY! Oh horrors! Isn't that horrible?

Down the Road Again needed far more marketing and promotion than it got. This, to be sure, a distribution issue. That said, movies like this will NEVER find a theatrical audience if they are not out there. I personally think a movie like Shebib's sequel DEMANDED being placed in more cinemas across the country and held longer - even at a loss. Take one screen in every bloody multiplex and screen Canadian product exclusively. Take another screen in every bloody multiplex and program product of an indie nature exclusively - booking it, if necessary in a repertory style.

Cineplex is a Canadian company.

Forgive me for thinking Canada is different than our neighbours to the south. We are. We have higher literacy rates, more progressive values AND most of all, we ARE innovators. Cineplex should FORCE themselves to exhibit Canadian films at a loss. (I'm sure there are potential tax incentives that can be whipped up for this anyway.)

Why, you say, at a loss? Because there could well be a pot at the end of the rainbow. If the product - good, bad, middle of the road - is made available on a consistent basis, audiences might eventually develop a thirst for a certain type of product that speaks to THEM.

It's worked everywhere else in the world - out there, beyond the confines of North America.

It was, however, legislated. I say again, though, legislation is no longer the answer. Besides, such quotas would fall under provincial jurisdiction, so getting all the provinces on board would be ridiculous. Cineplex as the most powerful exhibitor in the country should legislate it THEMSELVES as corporate cultural policy within their business mandate. They could actually become world leaders in this extraordinary move to actively build an audience. More importantly, they could take a leadership role even beyond Canadian product and offer theatrical accessibility to a far wider range of product.

This, frankly, is good for Canada, good for foreign product, good for Hollywood, good for AMERICAN independents, good for cinema as the greatest artistic medium of all time and MOST IMPORTANTLY, good for the end-users, the customers, the myriad of movie lovers who have been lured away from the communal experience for many different reasons, but most of all, because of a lack of diversity in programming.

In the meantime, though, the true heroes of Canadian theatrical exhibition are Alliance Cinemas, AMC Theatres, Independent Canadian Exhibitors (The Royal, Revue, Winnipeg Film Group Cinematheque, Canadian Film Institute, Pacific Cinematheque, etc.). They all regularly screen Canadian films - both first-run and second. TIFF Bell Lightbox in just over a year has displayed incredible courage and commitment to screening Canadian product theatrically.

They, however, are just a small part of the equation.

It's up to a major corporation like Cineplex to do their duty.