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.

WAKE IN FRIGHT (aka OUTBACK) - This extraordinary classic Australian film by the acclaimed Canadian director Ted Kotcheff ("The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz"), was, at a mere 30-years-old, a Cannes Palme D'Or nominee and the first film to revitalize Down Under as an important force in cinema, was ONE WEEK AWAY FROM HAVING ITS ORIGINAL NEGATIVES DESTROYED.

Wake in Fright – also known as: Outback (1971) Dir. Ted Kotcheff
Starring: Donald Pleasance, Gary Bond, Chips Rafferty, Al Thomas, Jack Thompson, Peter Whittle and Sylvia Kay

****

By Greg Klymkiw

It seems unthinkable in this day and age of film preservation and restoration that a motion picture classic made – not during the silent period of the early 20th century, but in 1971, a Cannes Palme D’Or nominee no less, and often cited (along with Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout from the same year) as the beginning of Australia’s revitalization as a filmmaking force – was one week away from having all of its original negative elements destroyed. After a two-year search all over the world at his own expense, the film’s editor Anthony Buckley finally discovered the elements in the bowels of the CBS vaults in Pittsburgh (no less) in a pile of items marked to be “junked” (industry parlance for “destroyed”) and, I reiterate, ONE WEEK from the date he found them.

Because of his Herculean efforts as well as the frame-by-frame restoration by the National Film and Sound Archives of Australia and Deluxe Labs, Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright (released outside of Australia as Outback) has a new lease on life – to shock and mesmerize audiences all over the world. Screened at Cannes in May of 2009 (only one of two features ever to be screened on two separate occasions at Cannes) and in a special presentation featuring Kotcheff in a personal dialogue on the film at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival, Wake in Fright stands as one of the most powerful explorations of male savagery in the context of a topography that seems as rugged and barren as the surface of the Moon. In a world of Samuel Fuller and Sam Peckinpah, Kotcheff’s brilliant film holds its own.

I first saw the movie when I was about 13 or 14 years old as Outback during a late night showing on the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corporation) when, during this time, Canadian content guidelines allowed for the broadcast of ANY film that came from Britain’s Commonwealth to meet said guidelines. (Because of this, we saw some really fine movies and TV series during the 60s and 70s.) It was a movie that completely bewildered and obsessed me. Even a full frame standard telecine transfer did not detract from its strangeness, its terrible and terrifying beauty and its depiction of a world so foreign to my own, yet seeming to be imbued with a quality that suggested to me, even then, that what I was seeing was the stuff of life itself. For over thirty years I looked and waited, seemingly in vain, to see it again. To think I almost didn’t have that opportunity because of the aforementioned disappearance and death sentence is now, after seeing it again much older and (hopefully) wiser (on a big screen in a pristine, lovingly restored 35mm print), makes me feel like I have been witness to a miracle.

And what a miracle this movie is! Kotcheff, the Canadian born, raised and trained director (trained via and not unlike Norman Jewison, within the legendary CBC television drama department of the late 50s and early 60s), has made his fair share of good pictures – most notably the Berlin Golden Bear Award winner The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, the droll Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? and the first and, by far, the best of the Rambo pictures First Blood – but nothing in his canon comes close to the mind boggling perfection of Wake in Fright.

Stunningly photographed by Brian West, the picture opens on one spot of the desolation that is the outback of Australia and the camera proceeds to do a slow 360 degree turn – shocking us with the reality that the land is the same whichever direction one looks and that it seems to go on forever. Into this environment we’re introduced to the impeccably groomed and fussily attired schoolteacher John Grant (Gary Bond) who is about to leave the two-building rail town for a much-needed vacation to Sydney.

Grant describes his position as being enslaved to the Ministry of Education as they have required all new teachers to post a one-thousand-dollar bond to ensure they serve their entire first term in the most desolate postings imaginable. During a stopover in the bleak mining town of Bundanyabba, Grant meets Jock (played by legendary Aussie actor Chips Rafferty), an amiable policeman who plies him with beer and gets him into a card game where he loses all of his money. Stranded, perpetually drunk and eventually and brain-numbingly hung-over, Grant is hosted by a motley crew of locals (several hard drinking macho men and one extremely horny single female) who proceed to take him into the very heart of the Australian darkness.

Grant is practically force-fed steady supplies of beer, seduced by the lonely woman (which is scuttled when he pukes while trying to penetrate her), taken on a mad, drunken and vicious kangaroo hunt and finally locked in a sweaty, smelly and almost violently homoerotic coupling with the mad alcoholic doctor Tydon (a malevolent Donald Pleasance).

At first, we are shown a passive observer, but as the film progresses, he regresses to the same savage state as the men he initially holds his nose up to and he decidedly and actively engages in acts so barbaric that he is forced to confront his inner demons to the point where he is sickened to the point of contemplating suicide.

Not unlike the world of playwrights Eugene O’Neill and Edward Albee, we find ourselves in the realm of alcohol-fueled depravity and game playing. Like any respectable Walpurgisnacht, booze is sloshed into empty cups with abandon and full cups are drained greedily, but these pagans who celebrate ARE the tortured spirits walking amongst the living and any bonfires they create seemed to be aimed squarely at themselves. Furthermore, the movie presents a “Paradise Lost” situation where depravity is merely presented and much like John Milton’s “hero”, Grant makes a conscious choice to immerse himself in the foul macho shenanigans like a pig in shit.

This is one daring, nasty piece of work and without question, the movie Kotcheff will ultimately be best remembered for. He not only elicits fine performances from a stellar cast, but his mise-en-scene is pretty much perfect.

It’s also no coincidence that he is Canadian and perhaps the perfect director outside of Australia to have tackled this story so rooted in that nation’s pathology. Given that the vast majority of Canada’s population resides within 100 kms along the Canadian and U.S. border, the rest of this vast country north of the 49th parallel is not unlike the world of the Australian outback. (To all non-Canadians: just think of a land populated by SCTV’s hosers Bob and Doug McKenzie – seemingly benign, but below the simpleton surface, a roiling, frustrated, angry, bitter nation of moose-hunting psychopaths.)

As well, it is no surprise that it was Anthony Buckley, the editor of the film, who searched high and low for the lost negative elements, since the cutting in this picture has few equals. For the most part, things are delivered at a steady, unobtrusive pace, but when we’re in the territory of dreams or overtly physical action, the editing veers from measured to positively Eisensteinian. At times, the action borders on the hypnotic, while at other points, it’s as jarring and disturbing as the images and action engaged in by the characters.

This action, as designed by director Kotcheff, is expertly blocked. His shot choices are impeccable and most importantly, he seems perfectly at home in capturing the claustrophobic nature of both barren exteriors and interiors – where the only way to break free is to rage against the dying of the light that has, for the characters who populate this world, become life itself.

This picture rages, alright!

It’s one hell of a ride and we’re all the better for it.

Sadly, the movie appears to not be available on any home entertainment format outside of Australia. A PAL version is available here:



Here is an extended item from Australian television:

MONSIEUR LAZHAR - French Canada's Oscar Nominee is a crock; an entertaining and well acted crock, but a crock nevertheless.

Monsieur Lazhar (2011) dir. Phillipe Falardeau
Starring: Fellag, Émilien Néron, Sophie Nélisse, Danielle Proulx

**

By Greg Klymkiw

When a popular teacher in a Montreal public elementary school commits suicide, she is replaced by the title character Monsieur Lazhar (Fellag), an Algerian immigrant who helps the children heal while hiding his own political refugee status as well as the fact that his wife and children were murdered by extremist terrorists in his home country.

Lazhar blends "old world" teaching methods with clearly personal and unconventional approaches. He eschews curriculum in favour of both practical AND philosophical areas more suited to genuinely providing deeper learning to kids who have clearly been traumatized by this horrific action. His insistence upon using Balzac for dictation opens up areas of learning that otherwise would have been ignored. This even inspires a gifted young student, his pet, to suggest he try using Jack London's immortal "White Fang" instead of the Balzac. This is one of many lovely details that desperately compel one to forgive the serious storytelling flaws that keep the film from attaining the greatness it should otherwise have attained.

The kids fall in love with this rascally Algerian and so do we. (There's also a delightful sub-plot where one of his colleagues falls for him romantically.) A large part of the character's winning qualities are due to Fellag's exquisite performance. Lazhar's good humour, his zest for teaching, his love of children are all worn on this magnificent actor's sleeve whilst he alternately displays, deep in his eyes, the pain of loss that haunts him.

The hurt the kids feel from the suicide of their teacher is tackled by Lazhar's sensitive handling of the problem. He makes a difference in their lives - he's a teacher AND a friend.

This all sounds like perfect Oscar bait to me: Immigrant mends his broken heart by mending the broken hearts of children. And sure enough, the movie has garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film, a whack of Genie Award (Canada's "Oscar") nominations, a spot on the TIFF Canada Top Ten, glowing reviews, The Toronto Film Critics prize for Best Canadian feature film and excellent box office. The movie is well made in so many respects (lovely mise-en-scene, great performances all around and a heart nestled firmly in the right place), but the story itself is rife with far too many lapses in logic and/or credibility for the movie to be taken seriously as anything but a feel-good wallow for the less-discriminating.

Lazhar's journey allows HIM to live with the pain and guilt he feels for his own family being slaughtered by extremists in Algeria and make no mistake - this NOTION is profoundly moving, but it's an element of the tale that sadly loses the depth it could have had.

The narrative's first major stumbling block occurs early on when it is revealed that there are no takers for the replacement position because of the perceived stigma attached to replacing a teacher who has hung herself in her own classroom. This plot detail stunned me. Things might be different in La Belle Province, but given the fact that there are jobless teachers all over the country who can't get work, let alone steady work, it's pretty much impossible to buy that the school's principal (Danielle Proulx) can't fill the open spot.

Granted, things in Quebec tend to march to the beat of their own drum more than in English Canada (or for that matter, the rest of the world), but given the strength of unions - particularly teaching unions - issues of seniority, etc. would definitely come into play here no matter what the circumstance.

I also grant that over ten years ago there was a weird generational cusp period all over North America where a teacher shortage did indeed exist and substitute teachers with little or no qualifications were hired at the discretion of principals in emergency situations. The movie appears to be contemporary and if, at any point it emphasizes being set during the turn of the new millennium, it does so rather ineffectively.

Here's the problem with such a lack of attention to these details. All the aforementioned speed bumps paraded through my thoughts while watching the movie and severely impeded my ability to go with the flow.

Further to the above, then, is that Lazhar is hired by merely dropping off his resume, expressing an emphatic interest in teaching AND the fake excuse the movie delivers about not being able to find a replacement for the teacher who snapped her neck. Again, the requirements to get a teaching job with any school board are so stringent and the hiring process so carefully regulated, that this is absolutely impossible to swallow. (Sure, stuff can slip through the cracks, but for this to register narratively in a believable manner, would have required a much more careful set-up.)

Other impediments to the flow of the drama are the fact that Lazhar is required to do is fill out some Ministry forms shoved at him by the principal and that while awaiting a ruling from the courts as to his eligibility to be considered a landed immigrant on the basis of political asylum, he seems to be completely oblivious to the seriousness of misrepresenting himself in order to get a job as a teacher. Astonishingly, we know early on that he actually ran a restaurant in Algeria and that his late wife was, in fact, a teacher. Surely such an understandable need to continue her work in the "new world" is a lovely character-touch, but is not at all exploited for its value in terms of both the moral issue of misrepresentation and the tension/conflict this could have added to the narrative.

Some might argue that all movies (and all stories, for that matter) require - to certain degrees - a suspension of disbelief. Yes, true; to an extent. But given that the above elements are so huge, so overwhelming that no matter how beautifully acted and directed the proceedings are, no matter how exquisite individual scenes and sequences are, no matter how important the themes of healing and acceptance are - if a movie doesn't do its job and address narrative elements that have so much potential to provide stumbling blocks, then the picture is not doing its job - period.

I'm willing to concede that this problem might have more to do with the original source material used to adapt the tale to film. Evelyne de la Cheneliere's play "Bachir Lazhar", a one-man show, would have been written closer to the period when a teaching shortage existed. That this appears to have been completely ignored in the film's journey from stage to screen is, however, a major lapse.

Given director Falardeau's welcome lack of the annoying Quebecois stylistic excess of the majority of the province's artier fare and his attempt to provide a mise-en-scene that's rooted in reality, it's shocking to me that the screenplay never bothered to address any of the above issues in any serious fashion. I still can't, for the life of me, figure out (or buy) how Lazhar got the job in light of everything detailed above.

As the movie unfolds, it's very hard to just sit back and enjoy the movie. I'd argue these holes and unaddressed issues would have all been easy fixes. In fact, if more had been made of the fact that Lazhar had to have brazenly and intentionally falsified his qualifications, there might even have been added elements of suspense in terms of his courtroom battle to gain political refugee status.

If Monsieur Lazhar was some Hollywood nonsense like Dangerous Minds, it might have been a bit easier to swallow, but because Falardeau is clearly a gifted filmmaker dealing with a story infused with important thematic issues of healing in a world so rife with strife, the narrative flaws are a bitter pill. It is not only hard to swallow, but ultimately, impossible to swallow. The movie tries to shove an oversized horse pill down our throats and in so doing, inspires our collective gag reflexes to work overtime.

So much in this film is so beautiful and yet, in spite of a desire to fall in love with it, I was unable to do so because of its sloppy storytelling.

That said, the tale's dishonesty might be enough to win it a surprise Oscar over the powerful Iranian favourite A Separation. Such a win, however, might well open the floodgates for more of the same. This will be a good thing, if any subsequent works inspired by Monsieur Lazhar take better care addressing basic issues of logic.

"Monsieur Lazhar" is nominated for a Best Foreign Language Oscar and currently in theatrical release via e-One. In Toronto, it is playing to sellout houses at the Toronto International Film Festival TIFF Bell Lightbox.

DANCING IN THE DARK - Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Open Vault Series at TIFF Bell LightBox presents Leon Marr's classic 1986 film adaptation of Joan Barfoot's novel examining the mental breakdown of a model wife infused with 50s values.

Dancing in the Dark (1986) dir. Leon Marr
Starring Martha Henry, Neil Munro, Richard Monette, Rosemary Dunsmore

***1/2

By Greg Klymkiw

"I'd like to go home, please. I didn't get the cleaning done."
- Edna's final words to the court before sentence is pronounced in Leon Marr's DANCING IN THE DARK

If there are greater performances in Canadian cinema than that rendered by Martha Henry in Dancing in the Dark, I'd sure like to know what they are. Released in 1986 on the heels of triumphant screenings at film festivals in Cannes, New York and Toronto, Henry's portrait of a woman who finds freedom in her own thoughts, represents the heights all actors in Canada were henceforth forced to aspire to.

Henry raised the bar and it remains where she left it - surely as untouched, unsullied and soaring as high as Edna, the character she plays who is released from the servitude of patriarchal expectations when she's incarcerated in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Twenty five years after Dancing in the Dark first electrified audiences worldwide, it is now, with the passage of time, easy to see why. For all the strides and advancement made by the feminist movement to that point, the expectations placed upon women of a certain generation - especially those within the middle class - remained locked in a 1950s deep freezer.

Subservience and complacency were still considered virtues of womanhood among a generation of men and women - especially within the rigid WASP Presbyterianism of Toronto and virtually any enclave in Canada ruled by a need to live up to the homogeneous perfection (and/or aspiration to) the values instilled in English Canadians by the Old Money power brokers. A woman had to be June Cleaver in extremis and this is precisely the character Martha Henry plays so brilliantly.

Seamlessly shifting from present to future, from internal to external, director Leon Marr leads us through a world where Edna - on a daily basis - provides a perfect home for hubby. She has no voice, no identity, no other purpose on this earth other than to clean, cook, lend an ear to her husband's endless talk about himself and his career and submit, on occasion, to his needs in the nuptial chamber.

Edna worships her husband. To Edna, he is perfection incarnate. Yet, when he betrays her by having an affair with his secretary, the act is shocking to Edna - not so much because of the infidelity, but because, in its very ordinary tawdriness, she realizes how much of herself she has devoted to someone who is far from extraordinary.

Edna has betrayed herself. She's sacrificed her identity for mediocrity, for banality, for the pinnacle of all that is so horrendously ordinary - her husband.

For much of the film's running time, Henry's performance is wordless. The voice-over narration, derived from the journals she keeps in an asylum she'll spend the rest of her days in, creep over endless shots of Edna scrubbing, dusting, sweeping, vacuuming and cooking. Marr's camera focuses obsessively on all the mundane details of Edna's life. Henry retains a pokerface throughout. Her rigidity is what allows for those moments when, through the smallest gesture and in her eyes, we see the gradual breakdown of a woman pummelled by societal expectation. She is, without question, chained to the shackles of servitude, of slavish devotion to all that is her husband.

Even more astounding, is that Henry manages to convey how Edna has, on her own, made this choice and yet, in some of the most exquisite moments ever committed to celluloid, a combination of Marr's compositions and Henry's controlled performance betrays the reality that choices can be made that are really no choice at all. It is a choice of nurture and influence - a pervasive demand set by a society rooted in patriarchy, allowing no conscious room to breathe, to act, to live.

Towards the end of the film, there are a series of shots and moments worthy of Bergman and from Henry, a performance to rival any great piece of acting rendered by the likes of Liv Ullman and Harriet Anderson. Marr, via Vic Sarin's stunning cinematography, places the lens in close on Henry's face and what is revealed is finally so shattering, so emotional, so raw - that we are plunged into a time and place that seems long ago, yet infused with a universality that cannot fail to touch audiences now as it did then and will continue to do so for generations to come.

Some might find the notion of salvation and freedom through madness - especially by the act of murdering the person who represents the reason for the central character's slave-like existence - to be arcane and/or dated. I'd argue this presents a very real, albeit tragic triumph over subjugation. The actions presented throughout the film mirror the suffering heroines of Douglas Sirk (and/or virtually all) melodramas of that period in American cinema where women would often give up everything for their man. This often extended to murdering them in order to preserve the purity of what once was. The difference here, though, is that Edna gives up everything to finally see who she is, who she COULD have been, instead of what she became.

This is the stuff of great drama. Marr employs ACTIONS that are melodramatic, but he renders them, along with Henry's great performance, in ways that are closer to neo-realism. Because of this, it's a trifle bothersome that the only aspect of the film that doesn't always ring true are the endless voiceovers. Edna's prose style in her journals is far too literary (and literal) and from time to time, one is taken out of the drama in ways that make one wish Marr had been far more sparing with his use of the journal readings/writings. What he does/did by draping them wall-to-wall, can be commended for the almost insane audacity of doing so, but watching the film now, there are s myriad of great moments BECAUSE of Marr's astounding mise-en-scene and Henry's perfect performance where one wishes he'd have placed more faith in the drudgery and repetition of the banalities of both the world and character on display.

All that said, though, Dancing in the Dark is a classic of English Canadian cinema that still has the power to shock and move. One of the bravest things Marr does during the final minutes of the film is cut all sound from the track when Edna commits murder. It's brilliant, actually. We see a character find her voice - in silence,

This, ladies and gentlemen, is cinema!

On Wednesday, January 25 at 7:30pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox features writer-director Leon Marr and actress Martha Henry to introduce a special screening of "Dancing in the Dark". The Canadian Open Vault programme is one of TIFF’s most important efforts to make the country’s rich cinematic heritage accessible to audiences.

DON'T MISS GUY MADDIN'S "KEYHOLE" and a host of other Canadian films (features and shorts) representing TIFF's CTT at the TIFF BELL LIGHTBOX

TIFF CTT

By Greg Klymkiw

Every December since that hallowed year when man was supposed to go to Jupiter and meet the Star Child, a jury of filmmakers, critics and other noted mavens of movie culture in Canada would assess and award the acronymous accolades now referred to as the TIFF CTT, or, if you will, the Canadian Top Ten. This genuine honour is primarily due to the tireless efforts of Steve Gravestock, head honcho of all things Canuckian at the TIFF cineaste dude ranch (or, if one must, Associate Director of Canadian Programming at the Toronto International Film Festival).

Following the announcements of what constituted the best films in Canada would be screenings of all the honoured titles at the Cinematheque Ontario - now better known as the premiere art house in Canada, the TIFF Bell LightBox, year-round home to Canada's largest, most star-studded film festival. The screenings are another way for movie-lovers to get another gander at these movies before they go on to first-run engagements.

And I reiterate, all this and more is possible through the efforts of one ass-kicking man of cinema and his partner in crime Magali Simard (TIFF's Senior Coordinator of Canadian Programming). Like the late, great Jack Palance as Curly in the immortal "City Slickers", Gravestock calls the shots for all wanna-be cowpokes - guiding them amisdst the joys and splendours of all Maple-infused movies the whole year through - year after year.

The bonus here, for all the films, is the publicity they receive, but I think, more importantly, they get to be screened theatrically in a communal atmosphere via the best means of projection since those halcyon days when most big-chain cinemas sported first-rate union projectionists instead of the underpaid, glorified concession staff and/or manager trainees who push buttons at the big box emporiums, mostly operated in this country by one faceless corporate entity that cares only about pleasing its shareholders rather than providing good, old-fashioned showmanship and first-rate presentation (and worse, displaying very little corporate responsibility in supporting homegrown product).

Seeing this selection of Canadian films at TIFF Bell Lightbox, might be one's only chance (at least in English Canada) to see these films properly presented and in an atmosphere conducive to the true celebration of cinema (save for the few independents and other festivals that actually care about what they show and HOW they show it).

There are a couple of notable omissions on the CTT list. The most egregious snub is Ingrid Veninger's astonishing no-budget joy-fest "i am a good person/i am a bad person" (Cassavetes meets "Bridesmaids"). The no-surprise omission is one of the most delectably original Canadian films just this side of Maddinville, the grotesquely hilarious splatter/sodomy-fest "Father's Day" from the brilliant Winnipeg filmmaking collective Astron-6. No matter, if the Gods are smiling, maybe TIFF Bell Lightbox will have the courage and foresight to program these two films a bit later.

The TIFF Bell Lightbox CTT mini-festival includes the following:

"Monsieur Lazhar", Jan6, 4PM
"Keyhole", Jan6, 7PM & Jan7, 4PM
"Edwin Boyd", Jan6, 9:30PM & Jan 8, 3PM
"Hobo With A Shotgun", Jan7, 9PM & Jan10 4PM
"Canada's Top Ten Shorts Programme A", Jan8, 7PM
"Canada's Top Ten Shorts Programme B", Jan8, 8:30PM
"Starbuck", Jan10, 7PM & Jan11, 3PM & Jan13, 3PM
"Marécages", Jan11, 7PM & Jan12, 3PM
"A Dangerous Method", Jan 12, 7PM
"Café de flore", Jan 13, 9PM & Jan15, 5:30 PM
"Le Vendeur", Jan 14, 6PM & Sunday Jan15, 12PM
"Take This Waltz", Jan14 9PM & Jan15 3PM

Guy Maddin's "KEYHOLE" made my TEN BEST FILMS OF 2011 List and the astounding Louis Negin from "KEYHOLE" made my Best Supporting Actor of 2011 Citation at KLYMKIW FILM CORNER(KFC) and Steve Gravestock (via my nod to TIFF), "Take This Waltz" helmer Sarah Polley, Guy Maddin and his screenwriter George Toles all made my 2011 TOP 10 HEROES IN CANADIAN CINEMA here at CANADIAN FILM CORNER(CFC).

The absolute MUST NOT MISS EVENT is Guy Maddin's "KEYHOLE". Below you'll find a slight rewrite of the full version of a review I wrote that was published last fall in "Electric Sheep Magazine - a deviant view of cinema". Read it and go! Or don't read it, go and then read it. Most of all, GO! I assure you that you'll have never seen nor will ever see anything like "KEYHOLE" ever again.

And below the "KEYHOLE" review, you'll find my merciless pan of Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method", a slight rewrite of a piece previously published by Electric Sheep Magazine.

Again I urge you to see the CTT movies at LightBox to support their efforts in promoting and screening both Canadian and THEN, if you love any of the movies you see there, see them AGAIN if and when they open theatrically. I reiterate that Cineplex should be a leader in programming a much wider variety of product - Canadian and otherwise. I even suggest people do their second helpings of stuff they like at LightBox and/or any cinema OTHER than Cineplex. Screw the Man, until the Man does what's right - not just for their customers, but for BUSINESS and to fulfill their corporate responsibility to the community at large. Until those losers earn their right to be winners, do not give them money unless you absolutely have to. Also, if you go to Cineplex, it's soooo easy to sneak in your own food and beverages. Keep doing that, too - UNLESS they start doing the right thing.

KEYHOLE

Keyhole (2011) dir. Guy Maddin
Starring: Jason Patric, Louis Negin, Udo Kier, Isabella Rossellini

****

By Greg Klymkiw

Full disclosure: I produced Guy Maddin’s first three feature films, lived with him as a roommate (I was Oscar Madison to his Felix Unger – Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple sprang miraculously to life on the top two floors of a ramshackle old house near Winnipeg’s Little Italy district), continue to love him as one of my dearest friends and consider his brilliant screenwriting partner George E. Toles to be nothing less than my surrogate big brother.

Most importantly, I am one of Maddin’s biggest fans and refuse to believe I am not able to objectively review his work. Objectively, then, allow me to declare that I loved Keyhole. What’s not to love? Blending Warner Brothers gangster styling of the 30s, film noir of the 40s and 50s, Greek tragedy, Sirk-like melodrama and odd dapplings of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, it is, like all Maddin’s work, best designed to experience as a dream on film. Like Terence Davies, Maddin is one of the few living filmmakers who understands the poetic properties of cinema, and this, frankly, is to be cherished as much as any perfectly wrought narrative.

This is not to say narrative does NOT exist in Maddin’s work. If you really must, dig deep and you will find it. That, however, wouldn’t be very much fun. One has a better time with Maddin’s pictures just letting them HAPPEN to you.

The elements concocted in Keyhole to allow for full experiential mind-fucking involve the insanely named gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric as you’ve never seen him before – playing straight, yet feeling like he belongs to another cinematic era), who drags his kids (one dead, but miraculously sprung to life, the other seemingly alive, but not remembered by his Dad) into a haunted house surrounded by guns-a-blazing.

Populated with a variety of tough guys and babe-o-licious molls, Ulysses is faced with ghosts of both the living and the dead, including his wife Hyacinth (Isabella Rossellini – gorgeous as always and imbued with all the necessary qualities to render melodrama with joy and humanity), her frequently nude father (the brilliant Louis Negin – perhaps one of the world’s greatest living character actors, who frankly should be cast in every movie ever made), chained to his bed, uttering the richly ripe George Toles dialogue and Udo Kier (the greatest fucking actor in the world), whose appearance in this movie is so inspired I’ll let you discover for yourself the greatness of both the role and Udo himself.

Keyhole is, without a doubt, one of the most perversely funny movies I’ve seen in ages and includes Maddin’s trademark visual tapestry of the most alternately gorgeous and insanely inspired kind. For movie geeks, literary freaks and Greek tragedy-o-philes, the movie is blessed with added treats to gobble down voraciously.

Like all of Maddin’s work, it’s not all fun and games. Beneath the surface of its mad inspiration lurks a melancholy and thematic richness. For me, what’s so important and moving about the film is its literal and thematic exploration of a space. Strongly evoking that sense of how our lives are inextricably linked to so many places (or a place) and how they in turn are populated with things – inanimate objects that become more animate once we project our memories upon them – or how said places inspire reminiscence of said objects which, in turn, inspire further memories, Keyhole is as profound and sad as it’s a crazed laugh riot.

Of all the pieces about the movie that I bothered to read (after I saw the movie), I was shocked that NOBODY – NOT ONE FUCKING CRITIC – picked up on the overwhelming theme of PLACE and the SPIRIT of all those THINGS that live and breathe in our minds. It was the first thing to weigh heavily upon me when I first saw the movie. It has seldom been approached in the movies – and, for my money – NO MORE POIGNANTLY AND BRILLIANTLY than rendered by Maddin, Toles and their visionary young producer Jody Shapiro.

All the ghosts of the living and the dead (to paraphrase Joyce), the animate and inanimate, the real and the imagined, these are the things that haunt us to our graves, and perhaps beyond. And they all populate the strange, magical and haunting world of Keyhole – a world most of us, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, live in. We are all ghosts and are, in turn, haunted by them.

A Dangerous Method

A Dangerous Method (2011) dir. David Cronenberg
Starring: Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortensen and Keira Knightley

*

By Greg Klymkiw

When David Cronenberg is good, he is very, very good.

When he is bad, he’s cerebral.

A Dangerous Method is dour, dull and decidedly humourless. That said, the first few minutes do suggest we’re in for a hootenanny of the highest order. The score, oozing with portent over a twitching, howling, clearly bonkers Keira Knightley, thrashing about in a horse-drawn carriage as it hurtles towards Carl Jung’s Swiss nuthouse, initially suggested a belly flop into the maw first pried open by such Cold War wacko-fests like The Snake Pit or Shock Corridor.

Alas, Cronenberg seems to have abandoned his pulp sensibilities and instead appears to be making an Atom Egoyan movie fused with Masterpiece Theatre. Sorry David, Atom Egoyan makes the best Atom Egoyan movies. And Egoyan has never, nor will he ever make Masterpiece Theatre. However, if Cronenberg himself genuinely fused Masterpiece Theatre with The Snake Pit and, say, Salon Kitty or The Story of O, with dollops of the madhouse scenes in Ken Russell's The Music Lovers, then he might have generated something not guaranteed to induce snores.

Cronenberg’s unwelcome return to the cold and clinical approach from his pre-Eastern Promises and A History of Violence oeuvres quashes all hope for a rollicking good wallow in lunacy.

Come on, David, we’re dealing with psychoanalysis and sex here.

A little oomph might have been in order. (Or as Norman Jewison is wont to say, "A little bit of the old razzle-dazzle.")

Lord knows Cronenberg’s dealt deliciously with psychoanalysis and sex before – most notably in The Brood. It starred a visibly inebriated Oliver Reed, crazily cooing about "the Shape of Rage" amid spurts of horrific violence laced with a riveting creepy tone. Most notably the movie provided us with the indelible image of a semi-nude, utterly barmy Samantha Eggar adorned with monstrous pus sacks dangling from her flesh, licking globs of gooey, chunky afterbirth from a glistening mutant baby expunged from one of the aforementioned pus sacks.

Now, THAT'S entertainment!

Annoyingly, no similar shenanigans are on view in A Dangerous Method. It’s pretty much a Masterpiece Theatre-styled period chamber drama with with Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) jousting with his mentor-rival Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen) betwixt spanking sessions with Keira Knightley, a daft want-to-be-psychiatrist with Daddy issues.

Sadly, no proper views of open palms connecting with buttocks or slap imprints on said buttocks are afforded to us.

A pity.

For more info and tix, visit the TIFF website.

Here's my original coverage of TIFF 2011 (including the two above films) for Electric Sheep.

GREG KLYMKIW'S CFC PRESENTS THE TOP 10 HEROES OF CANADIAN FILM IN 2011

Greg Klymkiw's CFC presents the TOP TEN HEROES of CANADIAN FILM in 2011

By Greg Klymkiw

TOP TEN HEROES IN CANADIAN CINEMA (2011)
(in alphabetical order, by first letter of name/company)

Astron-6: The brilliant Winnipeg-spawned filmmaking collective (Adam Brooks, Jeremy Gillespie, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney and Steven Kosanski) delivered not ONE, but TWO astounding no-budget feature films this year. MANBORG was replete with mega-martial-arts, chase scenes, ATVs that fly, Tron-like arena jousts and plenty of shit that blew up real good. The movie was made for a thousand smackers, shot on glorious DV-CAM and included tons of in-camera and rudimentary effects resembling early 80s community cable blue screen and there is not one damn thing in the movie that looks awful (thanks in good measure to director Steven Kostanski who is also one of the very best special effects geniuses in Canada. Father's Day, is a bum-blasting gore-fest of the highest order wherein a one-eyed, stalwart Jason Statham-like hero kicks mega-butt (as it were) to track down a heinous serial killer from Hades who specializes in sodomizing and butchering hapless Dads. The movie is the ultimate evil bastard child sprung from the loins of a daisy chain twixt Guy Maddin, John Paizs, early David Cronenberg, Herschel Gordon Lewis and Abel Ferrara's The Driller Killer. The picture happily combines the effects of asbestos-tinged drinking water in Winnipeg with the Bukkake splatter of the coolest artistic influences imaginable. It was co-produced by the legendary Lloyd Kaufmann and Troma Films and it opens theatrically in New York in January.

Dan Lyon: I am the first person in the world to vigorously slag bureaucrats - in the public, private and non-profit sectors - for a variety of excellent reasons I won't bother going into here (though anyone who reads Chris Hedges or, uh, Franz Kafka, will know why they are, ultimately, evil). Dan Lyon is the head honcho of the Ontario branch of Canada's chief public financing agency Telefilm Canada. By rights, I guess this technically makes him a bureaucrat, but I've never thought of him this way because, frankly, he comes from a very real place in the world of film. Dan toiled away as a chief executive with Astral Films (and its various/subsequent theatrical distribution off-shoots) for mucho-moons. He was, with his late, great colleague, the inimitable Jim Murphy, a huge champion of the much-beloved Canuck feminist werewolf cult film Ginger Snaps and was the first executive IN THE WORLD (I repeat - IN THE WORLD) to pony up real dollars and cents support for Roman Polanski's The Pianist when it was in its earliest stages - a script. When he left the private sector to command the Ontario office of Telefilm Canada he secured two of the film industry's best script editors, Carrie Paubst-Shaughnessy and Anne Fenn, to buttress his team of creative analysts. (I personally had a great deal of experience with Carrie when she brilliantly contributed to the training of a number of young filmmakers I worked with in the area of story editing. As anyone who knows me, KNOWS, I do not suffer fools of any kind and her tutelage was of the highest order - so much so that within minutes after my first encounter with her I was easily able to expunge my usual "Yeah, tell me something I don't know" bile.) I have heard testimonials from innumerable sources - mostly writers (some burgeoning, others seasoned) - to know how valuable Dan and his team are at a creative level. I hope the recent boneheaded changes to Telefilm's feature development policies, which are the result of some head-office bean-counter's vision-bereft survey of trough-gobblers, won't have dire consequences upon the great work this office, under Dan's leadership, will be able to continue. Dan, like the very best executives in the film industry anywhere (in both historic and contemporary contexts) is NOT a bureaucrat. He's a filmmaker. Oh yeah, and he's cool. At a party last year, my wife asked me who Dan was. When I explained briefly that he ran the Ontario Telefilm office, she replied, almost incredulously, "Wow! He's really cool." That is, of course, what this country needs. Fewer nest-featherers with no vision and more cool dudes like Dan. (And thank Jesus H. Christ! Dan's office had NOTHING to do with the cinematic coat hanger abortion that is Passchendaele.)

Donald Shebib: As a movie nut since childhood, I'm happy and proud to say I saw many of the coolest movies in movie theatres in my pre-teen and teen years and they include such counter-culture Canadian pictures by Don Shebib as Rip-Off, Between Friends and yes, his legendary Goin' Down The Road, a movie that practically invented English Canadian cinema with its neorealist portrait of two losers from the Maritimes making their way in the big smoke, Toronto. For me, as a crazed lover of movies, Shebib continued to deliver the goods. I loved Heartaches and Fish Hawk and yes, even Running Brave (which Shebib used a nom-de-plume for his credit). Alas, much of his output for many years was unavailable to me as I gave up cable in the mid-80s and watched virtually no television since that time (where it appears he eventually did much of his later work in). In 2011 Shebib crafted Down the Road Again, a deeply moving and funny sequel that works as a continuation to a movie beloved by so many Canadians, but also works if one has never seen the original. It's a great movie about fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, friendships that last beyond the grave and most of all, the open roads of this magnificent country, Canada. Shebib's the real thing and I'm grateful he made this movie. I know he'd probably hate such effusive hyperbole, but screw it - I think he's a living patron saint of all of us who thought that maybe, just maybe, we could make movies in this country - movies that spoke to our own experience and that hopefully touched people beyond our borders. I know (yes, I was this much of a geek as a kid) that when I first read, as a youth, Pauline Kael's review of Goin' Down The Road, it infused me with considerable pride. Shebib's the man!

Foresight Features: Foresight Features is a powerhouse new force in Canadian cinema from the wilds of Collingwood. This burgeoning Canadian company produced Exit Humanity (post-Civil War western with… wait for it… ZOMBIES) and the delightful Monster Brawl (a completely whacko mocku-pay-per-view event with… wait for it… WRASSLIN' MONSTERS). These guys (in particular, helmers John Geddes and Jesse T. Cook) are making cool movies with extremely high production value, micro budgets, private financing, tons of sweat equity and no dining at the Telefilm Canada trough. They've signed with Anchor Bay and frankly, one of their productions is a natural for wide exploitation through the Cineplex Entertainment chain. Monster Brawl DEMANDS the biggest support and resources to go into launching this insane movie as a major theatrical special event not unlike the Front Row Centre or big screen wrasslin' matches. I wonder if Cineplex is cool enough to do this BIGTIME? Oh, allow me to add that the two aforementioned features from Foresight collectively include such astonishing cult figures in starring and supporting roles like: Dave (Kids in the Hall) Foley, Art (The Brood, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Face Off) Hindle, Robert (300) Maillet, Jimmy ("The Mouth From The South") Hart, Herb (UFC Martial Artist and Ref) Dean, Kevin (WWE, WCW and TNA Champ) Nash, Lance (FUCKING) Henriksen, Dee (E.T., Cujo, The Howling) Wallace, Stephen (James Dean, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, A History of Violence) McHattie, Bill (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects) Moseley and Brian (the real, the original, the one, the only, the scariest Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann's Manhunter) Cox. If Foresight isn't about showmanship, then nothing is.

Guy Maddin and George Toles: In this year of Our Lord 2011, Canadian cinema's national treasure delivered the utterly insane feature film Keyhole, a tantalizing amalgam of Warner Brothers gangster styling of the 30s, film noir of the 40s and 50s, Greek tragedy, Sirk-like melodrama, odd dapplings of Samuel Beckett’s "Endgame", Jean-Paul Sartre’s "No Exit" and, of course, male genitals - starring Jason Patric, Isabella Rossellini, Udo Kier and the incomparable Louis Negin. By extension, his longtime screenwriter George Toles shares the heroism of cinema I loft in Maddin's direction. He's a great writer, a brilliant critic, a superb actor and theatre director and frankly, the best goddamn teacher of film, theatre and English Literature in this country. In 2011, let us also not forget that Maddin presided over the madness of two astonishing productions of his cult classic Tales From The Gimli Hospital at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and Lincoln Centre in New York that featured an original score, played live with musicians and singers, live narration by Udo Kier, live soundscape and foley and in one of the shows, live projections. Nobody, and I mean NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-BODY, makes movies like Guy Maddin. Yeah, full disclosure (blah-blah-blah), I produced his first three features, was his Oscar Madison-like roommate long ago in the 'Peg and overall pal amongst the 'Peg Drones that slacked as if our lives depended on it, benignly stalked young ladies we didn't know (nor ever would), haunted cafes, record stores, flea markets, drank cocoa whilst spinning 78 recordings of fruity tenors, taking midnight drives to Lockport and Gimli whilst playing Paul Whiteman or Bing Crosby or Edith Day full blast on tapedecks and committing to 13-hour pilgrimages on the open road to Minneapolis to see Twins games, but screw it! First and foremost, I'm his biggest fan! And damn! He makes great movies!

Independent Canadian Exhibitors (The Royal, Revue, Winnipeg Film Group Cinematheque, Canadian Film Institute, Pacific Cinematheque, etc.), Alliance Cinemas, AMC Theatres, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF), Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and pretty much anyone who publicly exhibits films except the "proudly Canadian" (self-proclaimed) Cineplex Inc.: 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, 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, as of this writing, I can't be sure if the film's distributor considered this sort of theatrical penetration, nor do I know if they even offered the movie to 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. I'm sure they'd argue that their responsibility is to their shareholders. Well, never mind Canadian movies, 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 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 this 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? Look, Down the Road Again needed far more marketing and promotion than it got. This is 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 - even 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. Look, it's worked everywhere else in the world - out there, beyond the confines of North America.

It was, however, legislated. I say again - why legislate? Cineplex as the most powerful exhibitor in the country should legislate it as cultural policy within their corporate 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, let us pause and acknowledge the true heroes of Canadian theatrical exhibition. It sure ain't Cineplex - at least until they consider getting their act together on this front. Canadian product has had a home at all my aforementioned picks for heroism accolades. Alliance Cinemas, AMC Theatres, Independent Canadian Exhibitors (The Royal, Revue, Winnipeg Film Group Cinematheque, Canadian Film Institute, Pacific Cinematheque, etc.) 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. In 2011, the tiny, fan-run Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF) screened what must be a record number of Canadian genre films (features and shorts) - many of them winners. The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) also continues a leadership role in supporting Canadian film - not just with festival screenings, but such important initiatives as the Film Circuit (bringing fine cinema from Canada and the world to rural locales) and their ongoing work archiving and contributing to the restoration of Canadian cinema. Heroes deserving of special mention in the organization for this year would include Steve Gravestock who oversees all matters Canuckian, Colin Geddes who does Midnight Madness and selected whack-job stuff in other serctions and the incomparable Julie Lofthouse in the TIFF film reference Library.

Good on TIFF and all the aforementioned, but whose turn it is now? Allow me to quote directly for the Cineplex website:

"Cineplex Inc. ("Cineplex") is the largest motion picture exhibitor in Canada and owns, leases or has a joint-venture interest in 130 theatres with 1,352 screens serving approximately 70 million guests annually. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, Cineplex operates theatres from British Columbia to Quebec and is the exclusive provider of UltraAVX™ and the largest exhibitor of digital, 3D and IMAX projection technologies in the country. Proudly Canadian and with a workforce of approximately 10,000 employees, the company operates the following top tier brands: Cineplex Odeon, Galaxy, Famous Players, Colossus, Coliseum, SilverCity, Cinema City and Scotiabank Theatres. Cineplex shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol "CGX"."

Great! Let's see some of the real leadership and innovation that makes so many Canadians proud of Canada. Cineplex declares they're "Proudly Canadian". Great. Let's see it. For real.

Ingrid Veninger: I've said it before, I'll say it again - Ingrid Veninger might well be cinema’s only living equivalent to a whirling dervish. Like a dervish, she honours her Creator (cinema), her prophets (John Cassavetes, Mike Leigh and others of a very noble tradition), then whips her imaginary concoctions into a frenzy – literally living and breathing cinema – producing work from within herself, her devotion and life in all its joy and sadness. In addition to be a terrific actress, she's one of our country's most visionary producers and her astounding work here includes Charles Officer's Nurse Fighter Boy (which she co-wrote also) and Peter Mettler's mind blowing Gambling, Gods and LSD. She's a teacher and mentor to all those with passion and a desire to create cinema. This year, she delivered up her third feature i am a good person/i am a bad person, a micro-budgeted romp through the European film festival circuit that tells a funny and moving Mother-Daughter story. The picture is full of humour, gentle bits of human comedy and (surprisingly) full-on Bridesmaids-style blowjob and scatological knee-slappers. A worthy addition to her rapidly accelerating canon of features as a director including Only (which she co-directed with Simon Reynolds) and Modra.

Jody Shapiro and Robin Cass: These two gentlemen produced two of the best Canadian films of 2011. Shapiro delivered the goods with Guy Maddin's Keyhole and Cass did what everyone said couldn't/shouldn't be done. In so doing, he produced a terrific sequel to one of the most beloved, iconographic Canadian films of all time, Don Shebib's Goin' Down the Road followup Down the Road Again. Cass, with his Triptych Media partner Anna Stratton continue to place their faith in our country's writers. Shapiro, is also some kind of wonderful - a great photographer and director in his own right and a lover of cool movies. With producers like these, I still hold out hope that Canada as a filmmaking force will explode.

Sarah Polley: Earlier this year, within the context of a cinematic tribute to the late Jack Layton in the UK-based Electric Sheep Magazine, I had the opportunity to finally put into words why I love Sarah Polley. I'll reprint them here now because she really is, to my mind one of our country's great heroes. Sarah is not only one of the best actors in Canada, but she has proven to be one of the country's best filmmakers, serving up the astounding short drama I Shout Love, the tremendously moving Academy Award-nominated Away from Her and her soon-to-be-released Take This Waltz starring one of the world’s most gifted Canadian funny men, Seth Rogen. Sarah Polley is a maverick. I love mavericks and I most certainly love Sarah. As if she isn’t/wasn’t busy enough, Sarah always made time for ‘the little guy’. Since her earliest years, the former child star of Terry (out-of-his-fucking-mind) Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the beloved family TV drama Road to Avonlea Polley had maverick qualities and activism hard-wired into her genetic code. For example, at the height of its popularity, Polley up and left Avonlea in protest over the increasing ‘Americanization’ of the Canadian series produced by Canuck Kevin Sullivan in collaboration with Disney. And, speaking of Disney, it’s been reported that she attended some public function the Mouse-Eared conglomerate was sponsoring and refused a dim-witted studio executive’s demand that she remove a peace-sign button affixed to her blouse. Who needs peace when you can start another useless fucking war? Through her teens and 20s Sarah continued to confound and delight movie fans the world over as she blossomed into adulthood – engaging in several political protests wherein she was physically assaulted by goons (uh, the fine members of Toronto’s Police Department), while on the silver screen she performed some truly major-zombie-ass-kicking in Zack Snyder’s surprisingly effective remake of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead and butted heads with a crazed creature created from gelatinous amphibian goo cloned with her character’s own DNA in Vincenzo Natali’s deliciously fucked-in-the-head monster movie Splice. Sarah became revered and respected as one of our country’s most powerful and persuasive activists and artists. Socially, politically and culturally, Sarah Polley has led the way on so many fronts and, I might add, NOT in that annoyingly fashionable way contemporary Hollywood stars have done. Sarah was an activist early on in her life – long before celebrity activism became so degraded. She came by it truthfully, honestly and one might even say, innocently. Like the late Jack Layton, she has always fought for the rights of what’s genuinely right. She’s also funny and has one of the most perverse senses of humour I’ve ever encountered. Sarah Polley is probably one of 10 people on this planet who actually gets the insanely muted knee-slappers that Atom Egoyan occasionally dollops like globs of rich sour cream into the dour, though flavourful borscht of his movies. She’s also a thoughtful and generous human being. She's a star, but she sure doesn't act like one. And I do love her seemingly ages-old belief in a quota for Canadian theatrical features. She kicks ass! There's nobody like her.

S. Wyeth Clarkson: I first met Wyeth Clarkson in 1997 when he was studying editing. He was a GREAT editor. His instincts were pure, his craft impeccable and most of all, he was a filmmaker - first and foremost. As the years progressed, he partnered with his visionary pal Phil Daniels and together they formed Travesty Productions and have since produced several features, documentaries and shorts. 2011 was the year he brought to bear his most ambitious project to date. The Mountie is an old fashioned western replete with a strange blend of 70s cynicism, grit and, I kid you not lush panoramas and a weirdly affecting sentimental streak that would have made John Ford proud. It's a solid picture and one that Canadians would have enjoyed on a big screen - if they could find it. Clarkson took the figure of the Mountie, Canada's iconic red-coated crime-fighter and imbued it with a sense of myth that was both unabashedly Canadian and yet presented in homage to a myriad of great western traditions. His dream was to open the movie nationwide on Canada Day long weekend. It was, from an exhibition standpoint a total no-brainer. What happened was (apologies to his company's monicker) a travesty. Pictures speak louder than words, however, so let's examine this from that standpoint. As a Canadian, if I saw the following trailer repeatedly splashed in front of every movie I saw for two or three months before it opened, I'd have been there on Canada Day where it should have been - on a few hundred screens coast to coast. I doubt I'd have been alone. That, of course, would only have been possible if Cineplex Inc. had the guts to truly be "proudly Canadian" and programmed this trailer and subsequently, the film itself, with the same vigour as they do with Hollywood blockbusters people are avoiding like the plague. If Cineplex had any courage and vision to do this, the release would have no doubt received a huge amount of Prints and Ads support from Telefilm Canada. Watch this trailer. Okay, so now you've seen it. If you're into genre pictures and a Canadian, I defy you to tell me you wouldn't have been curious to lay down your dollars and see this movie in a theatre. What Clarkson ended up with was a handful of screens - mostly on AMC and/or independents, plus a prints and ads budget commensurate with such a small release. The numbers weren't great, but they were surprisingly on a par, if not higher than a number of Hollywood releases within the same multiplexes. Clarkson pushed and pushed to get screens. He got them, but not what he imagined and certainly not what he deserved. He made a cool movie that is even cooler in light of the fact that Canada, as a nation, strapped on extremely comfy kneepads during the Golden Age of Hollywood and struck a deal with the devil. Hollywood basically said, "Hey Canada, don't make feature films. Make documentaries and animated movies and educational films. Let US make movies about Canada. It'll be good for tourism." Canada swallowed this jism greedily and we ended up with no feature film policy and no quota system (unlike virtually every other major country in the world). What Hollywood produced in this deal worthy of Mephistopheles were hundreds of sub-par B-movies set in Canada, featuring some second unit or stock footage of Canada and often about - you guessed it - MOUNTIES!!! Good deal, Canada.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that flooding the screens with trailers for Canadian movies and ensuring screen time for said Canadian films is going to be the immediate solution, but given that Canada NEVER had an official policy (beyond the National Film Board of Canada) on feature film during the first 60-or-so years of cinema's history, something has to start somewhere.

A few years ago, sitting in the Cineplex flagship Varsity Cinema in Toronto, I watched a mediocre horror picture that had a decent, though not exceptionally large audience. Earlier that day I had just seen a trailer for Paul Fox's terrific Canadian horror picture The Dark Hours in a private screening. If Cineplex had exercised their corporate responsibility to Canadian film culture and played the trailer in front of every crappy and/or (God forbid!) good genre film and agreed to open the movie in more than ONE cinema in Toronto as they grudgingly did, I'd bet most people seeing the trailer would have been thrilled to go see the movie when it opened. Take a look. Again, I defy anyone who loves genre pictures to say they wouldn't have seen the movie after seeing that trailer, especially if Cineplex had committed to a whack o' screens which, in turn, would have given the distributor incentive to spend the money needed to hype it (and in fact, get a good whack of the dough to do this from Telefilm Canada).

Another example of 'Twas not to be.

That said, Wyeth Clarkson continues to fight the good fight - lobbying for accessibility to Canadian cinema on Canadian screens. Most of all, though, he's writing a new screenplay. Let's hope that by the time that movie is ready to be seen, there WILL be a system in place to provide the accessibility that Canadian films (and, in fact, all indie productions from a variety of countries) deserve.