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THE WORLD OF APU (Apur Sansar) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #3 of The Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray

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Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) trades riches for poverty in Calcutta.

Father (Sumitra Chatterjee)
and Son (Alok Chatravarty):
A parent must grow up.
The World of Apu (Apu Sansar) (1959) Dir. Satyajit Ray *****
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Swapan Mukherjee, Alok Chakravarty

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To hold a child responsible for the death of the mother when she passes after giving birth is as understandable as it is ultimately appalling. Having been completely orphaned by his late teens, one might think Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) would have had enough experience with losing those closest to him (a beloved sister in early childhood, Dad in his tweens and Mom at age 17), but the fact of the matter is that he's never really grown up, even now in early adulthood. The World of Apu is the final instalment in Satyajit Ray's extraordinary trilogy preceded by Pather Panchali and Aparajito and all three works are based upon the first two novels of the legendary Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. Ray's films comprise an epic coming-of-age tale. Though we see a number of such elements throughout, it's The World of Apu that delivers a final one-two knockout punch to the title character's entrance into manhood. Though the deaths of those he loved dearest always contributed to Apu moving forward, what he needs this time is to discover himself via pure, unconditional love and in some ways, and perhaps because of it, this might be the most emotionally wrenching and satisfying of Ray's trilogy.

The utter simplicity of the story is its greatest strength and as such, this instalment yields perhaps the highest degree of complexity - levels of depth which seem almost unparalleled in other motion picture trilogies and certainly offering one of cinema's greatest and most satisfying family dramas. The World of Apu's deceptively simple three act structure begins with our almost-reluctant protagonist not finishing his studies beyond an intermediate level and setting out upon a life of leisure in his perversely carefree life of poverty and slacking, then marrying the beautiful Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) and discovering a boundless romantic love and finally, upon losing her to childbirth, abandoning his newborn son and launching himself into an aimless odyssey of self-discovery until finally coming to his senses.

These three seemingly straightforward movements all offer vastly different emotional states for our title character which furthermore result in the audience being put through a great deal of genial humour in Act One. Apu is so clearly a layabout here, but he's like a puppy dog who looks at us with his big moist eyes after soiling a rug and though we're momentarily annoyed, we can't find it in our collective hearts to abandon, nor chastise. In fact his slacker qualities seem so delightfully naive that we become as scoldingly bemused as Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee), his old friend from college who tries to encourage him to follow his artistic passion as a writer, but to also please get a job!

It's Pulu who is inadvertently responsible for what might be the best thing to ever happen to Apu. The middle movement of the movie has our title character's pal inviting him to a sumptuous family wedding on a rich estate in the country. The bride Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) not only comes from a filthy rich family, but is also drop-dead-hubba-hubba-salivation-inducing gorgeous. Unfortunately, the worst thing possibly happens when the groom shows up and is stark-raving-major-nervous-breakdown insane and the distraught parents of the bride are on the verge of doing the worst possible thing - cancelling the wedding. In Hindu tradition, if a bride's wedding is cancelled for whatever reason, she becomes cursed to never marry again if a marriage ceremony is not performed within an hour of the appointed time.

Well, guess who's reluctantly enlisted to be of assistance?

Luckily for Apu, he scores bigtime. Even though Aparna is initially horrified by the utter squalor she must live in with her new husband, Cupid's arrow is aimed squarely in their direction. They're a match made in Heaven and soon Aparna is begging Apu to not take an extra tutoring job so he can spend as much time as possible with her. This, frankly, is one hell of a good deal. I have to say, too, that as a director, Ray shines big time in creating several simple, beautiful and wildly romantic set pieces - so much so, that it's pretty safe to proclaim that The World of Apu is easily one of the greatest love stories ever committed to film. (The performances and chemistry between Chatterjee and Tagore are so astounding that both became frequent Ray collaborators and stars in their own right.)

Ah, but as fate will have it, even great love stories can be tempered with tragedy (the best usually are) and the final act of the film is gut wrenching. Without crude melodramatics, the film progresses to a state of melodramatic bliss with the kind of glorious touches at every level that make you realize that melodrama is never a dirty word and nor, frankly, is sentiment. (Like I always say, there's only good melodrama and bad melodrama and when the seams of sentiment aren't frayed, it is a glorious and beautiful thing.) When Apu is finally face-to-face with his long-estranged little boy Kajal (Alok Chakravarty), cinematographer Subrata Mitra and composer Ravi Shankar and their Master filmmaker Mr. Ray work double overtime and offer one breathtaking beat after the next that prove to be truly and genuinely knock-you-on-your-keester moving.

Plenty of tears have flowed throughout this great trilogy, but none will flow more copiously than they do throughout the denouement of The World of Apu. You leave the cinema, the film, this entire epic of humanity soaring higher than you'll ever imagine experiencing.

The Apu Trilogy represents Satyajit Ray's first three films. They are individually and collectively as great as the greatest pictures of all time. If this was all he was able to manage, he'd still be considered up there with the best of the best. Luckily for him, for cinema and for all of humanity, Satyajit Ray made films for 40 years and even his occasional minor works make the major works of most other filmmakers look like cardboard cutout puppet theatre.

The World of Apu is presented with a restored 35mm (yes, real FILM) print at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 5, 2014 at 6:00pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


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AMAZON.UK:


IT'S ONLY MAKE BELIEVE (Eventyrland) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Joys of Liberal Norway Just 4 U

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Norwegian Wood = Hot Norwegian Babe With Phallic Shotgun
It's Only Make Believe (Eventyrland) (2013) Dir. Arild Østin Ommundsen **
Starring: Silje Solomonsen, Iben Østin Hjelle, Vegar Hoel, Egil Birkeland, Ole Romsdal, Fredrik Hana

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Come to lovely Norway
We have lovely fjords
And you will NOT be
Raped Anally unless
you want to be!!!
The first thing our eyes are drawn to in the opening shot of the lightweight Norwegian crime thriller It's Only Make Believe (Eventyrland) is a pair of horking, mean-ass stainless steel clippers which we immediately hope will be used to snip off someone's appendage(s) and/or get slammed repeatedly over a skull. No such luck. A Babe (Silje Solomonsen) and her boyfriend (Fredrik Hana), the holder of the aforementioned clippers, are patiently waiting for an accomplice to show up before they pull a supposedly simple job. This is Norway, you see.

While we wait for the third wheel to appear, our attractive Norwegian leads rest calmly in the dark and talk about how much they love each other since the babe reveals she's preggers with her beau's seed. Seems the lad's Norwegian Wood yielded just the right pay dirt during one of their copulatory trysts. After some soulful yapping, their accomplice doesn't make an appearance, so the babe and her true love wander over to a humungous greenhouse and - SNIP - the cutters open a chain and they wander in.

Finding a whole whack of drugs and a shotgun, they're ready to blow the popcorn stand, but as these things go, someone unexpected shows up. After a mad dash, the babe starts to pump out lead from the shotgun and sooner than you can say Kris Kringle (that's Norwegian, right?), the intruder is lying dead and hubby-to-be is wounded. The result of these shenanigans is that beau-boy survives, but must live the rest of his life as a vegetable in an institution. Happily, as this is Norway, the babe pops the vegetable's progeny and spends ten years in prison.

As it's a Norwegian prison, it pretty much looks like a country club and we never get a single instance of some Linda Blair Born Innocent action with our Norwegian Babe being held down nude on a tile floor whilst being raped with a broom handle. In fact, Norwegian prisons look so humane that instead of, say, John Vernon as the warden pulling some Chained Heat hot tub rape action on our Babe (much like Vernon did to Linda Blair in that immortal 1983 chick-in-prison picture), she saunters out on release day with a friendly and oh-so-genial fatherly hug from a prison official.

Isn't Norway grand?

It's grander than you think, let me tell you. The babe's daughter has been raised by an affluent foster mother and for the little murderess's entire prison term (uh, only ten years for killing one guy and turning another into a vegetable), she's actually been allowed day-trip visits with the kid. Man, those Norwegian hoosegows are really progressive. And now our Babe, who merely popped the little bugger in a nice, clean Norwegian prison hospital, wants to take her spawn from the woman who's been its real mother.

Fat chance. Norway might be liberal, but it's not completely run by bleeding heart retardates. The babe can only get custody of the kid again if she can prove that the pretty little babe-ette daughter (Iben Østin Hjelle) will be better off than she is now. This is going to be quite a challenge since the babe's apartment needs new plumbing and she can't afford it. She pays a visit to the scumbag accomplice (Vegar Hoel) who never showed up that fateful night and he agrees to pay for plumbing. He even helps her steal some paint so she can doll the place up with a few fresh coats and brightly coloured drawings of ponies and other nice girly things.

Isn't Norway a wonderful place?

Well, it's not all peaches and cream in the Land of Liberal Fjords. It seems the brother (Ole Romsdal) - at least I think he's the brother - of the man she killed, is one mean mo-fo who wants to make her pay dearly. With his grotesquely psychotic henchman, who goes by the name of - HAH! - Eddie Vedder (Egil Birkeland), our Babe is going to be in a real Norwegian pickle barrel. She has to do all manner of drug deals to pay off her "debt" and if she refuses, her little girl will be used as the bait to make sure she complies.

She's just got to get out of this sticky wicket somehow, but if you have any doubts that she will, allow me to remind you that this entire ludicrous, precious, but compulsively watchable movie is set in - you guessed it - NORWAY!!! Seriously, it's a great place to raise a family. Just like our babe-o-licious murderess, you can romp around with the daughter you've never really known while lame, on-point Norwegian Eddie-Vedder-wannabe songs play on the soundtrack. In Norway, it's like life stops every so often and turns into a music video.

You know, I can't stress Norway's magnificence enough. Norway, you see, is truly the Land of Make Believe! How make believe is it, you ask? Norway is so make believe that when the bad guy holds down the babe face flat in the dirts, pulls her pants down and orders Eddie Vedder to rape her in the ass, Eddie refuses to do so.

I don't know about you, but I'm booking a one-way ticket to Norway next week. Who wouldn't want to use a bit of that magical Norwegian Wood on Norwegian Babes and be able to refuse orders to forcibly sodomize them in a land of milk, honey and, uh, fjords.

It's Only Make Believe (Eventyrland) opens theatrically at the Carlton Cinemas in Toronto via Vagrant Films. Alas, there are no promotional tie-ins with the Norwegian Tourist Bureau.

WHITEY: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. JAMES J. BULGER - Review By Greg Klymkiw

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A modern masterpiece of chilling criminal shenanigans by Master filmmaker Joe Berlinger is now playing at the Hot Docs Bloor Cinema via Video Services Corp. (VSC) DARE NOT MISS IT ON THE BIG SCREEN!
Alcatraz Mugshot of Boston Mob Boss Whitey Bulger

Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger
Dir. Joe Berlinger (2014) *****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Movies seldom open with the kind of chilling first few minutes that Joe Berlinger's new picture delivers. Stephen Rakes, a gentle white haired teddy bear of a man speaks with a born and bred South Boston accent - the tail-end "r" becomes the telltale "ah", "ing" is always the contraction "'in" and the letter "o", a slightly elongated "aahh". His first few words are an immediately identifiable amalgam of long-ago-lost hope and sadness:
"30 years ago my wife and I purchased a liquor licence and we had the liquor store up and runnin' by Christmas. We poured our heart and soul into it."
A young couple's dream come true becomes a nightmare.
Then lo and behold I gets a knock on my door one night. I'm at the house and my wife is down at the liquor store workin'. And there's Kevin Weeks and Whitey Bulger at the door. . . what the hell did they want? He [Whitey] says 'Ya gotta problem.' I says, 'What problem?' He says, 'Listen, we were hired to kill you. . . you gotta understand, the other liquor stores, they hired us to kill you. . . but what we're gonna do instead of that is we're gonna become your partners.'
Deadly tools of the trade
I says, 'No, you're not becomin' my partners.' And Bulger's just starin' at me and he's grindin' his teeth: 'You don't understand, we're takin' the fuckin' liquor store.' I says, 'It's not for sale.' [Then he says] 'I'll fuckin' kill you. I'll stab you and then I'll kill you.' And then they pulled out a gun and I was like, 'Holy Fuck'. They picked up my kid, my daughter's only a year old. He says, 'It'd be terrible for this kid to grow up without a Father.'"
Stephen Rakes Imitates Whitey Bulger
From here, we're slam-bang even deeper into one of the most harrowing crime pictures ever made. This is no drama, however, but it's certainly imbued with a compulsive narrative expertly unfurled by ace documentary filmmaker Berlinger, co-director with Bruce Sinofsky of the classic West Memphis Three trilogy: Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996) Paradise Lost 2: Revelations (2000) Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory (2011) and his powerful solo effort Crude (that exposed Chevron and its part in destroying the health and lives of tens of thousands of Ecuadorians when a huge chunk of the Rain Forest was irretrievably polluted by oil drilling).

Focusing on the extraordinary trial of Whitey Bulger, Berlinger's new film film works on several levels. First and foremost, it's a savage indictment of the extent to which the F.B.I.'s involvement in Bulger's crime kingdom went far over the line and, in fact, assisted with his reign of terror. Secondly, Berlinger has seemingly unfettered access to archival footage, F.B.I. surveillance film, the prosecution and defence teams, key witnesses (including Bulger's trusty right hand, killer Kevin Weeks) and the myriad of Bulger's victims. Finally, the picture superbly, nerve-shreddingly yields the shocking rags-to-riches rise of Bulger - an epic, Scorsese-like crime thriller presented with the rat-a-tat-tat of a 30s Warner Bros' Slavko Vorkapitch/Robert Wise-edited Gangster movie montages and a kind of jack-hammering "News On The March" coldcock to the face.

Now this is filmmaking!

The picture leaves you breathlessly agog at the utter brutality and sordid corruption of a system that allowed a monster like Bulger to get away with his crimes for so long. The human factor, as represented by Bulger's victims, is often heartbreaking to the point where one is moved to tears. Even more stunning is that Berlinger followed the convoluted trial for so long and with such dogged persistence, that we, the filmmaker and a friend of a key witness are actually present for the sickening on-camera revelation that a victim of Bulger's evil is rubbed out before he gets a chance to testify.

Bulger's kingdom of crime lasted 30 years without a single indictment thanks to the corruption of America's Federal Bureau of Investigation. It's a blight upon the institutional crime fighting apparatus of a government long notorious for looking the other way when it served the most nefarious needs for both individuals to feather their own nests and to shield a country fraught with pure evil in its highest echelons of power and supposed enforcement.

Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity, indeed.

As far as I'm concerned, Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger already has masterpiece status affixed to it and will, no doubt remain a classic of great American cinema long after all of us have gone from this Earth. It's what cinema should be - it's for the ages.

Whitey: The United States of America V. James J. Bulger is now playing at The Bloor Hot Docs Cinema via the visionary Video Services Corp. (VSC). For further information about playmates, showtimes and tickets, please contact the Hot Docs website HERE. The film's international premiere was held at Hot Docs 2014 after its world premiere at Sundance.

Here is a lovely selection of VSC (Video Service Corp.) titles you buy directly from the links below, and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner:

THE APU TRILOGY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - All three Satyajit Ray Classics Reviewed Under One Roof

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Here you will find all three Greg Klymkiw Film Corner reviews of Satyajit Ray's THE APU TRILOGY (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and The World of Apu) bundled together under one roof in this single mega-post. Do not miss a single one of these RESTORED 35mm FILM prints on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the stunning TIFF Cinematheque series courtesy of the visionary programmer James Quandt entitled "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This is easily one of the most important retrospectives ever presented. If you care about cinema, you cannot afford to miss a single one.
Uma Dasgupta plays the sweet, saintly & sadly doomed Durga.

Little Durga & Auntie: Birds of a Feather.
Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road (1955) dir. Satyajit Ray *****
Starring: Subir Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee, Karuna Banerjee, Uma Dasgupta, Runki Banerjee, Chunibala Devi, Tulsi Chakraborty

Review By Greg Klymkiw

From childhood to adolescence, Durga (Runki Banerjee and Uma Dasgupta respectively) has always adored Auntie (Chunibala Devi), but to everyone else, especially Durga's mother Sarbajaya (Karuna Banerjee), the wizened, hobbling, hunched-over old "hag" is not only an annoyance, but a burden. Auntie's feisty, impish and individualistic nature has been a particular thorn in Mom's side as she believes the old woman's been a bad influence upon her first-born. On the surface, Auntie has always adhered to her Old World "place" as a woman in Bengali society, but deep down her spirit has always been modern - ahead of its time, really.

If Auntie can do anything for Durga's future, it's to impart a sense of wonder and adventure within the child (Auntie's a spirited storyteller), but to also encourage her happy, willing young charge to properly utilize her smarts - the kind that allow a woman a depth of understanding in a patriarchal world and to use every bit of cunning at her disposal.

However, the sword on this, cuts two ways.

Pather Panchali begins with the child Durga brazenly (and clearly for the umpteenth time) stealing fruit from the orchards belonging to the neighbours, who are blood relatives of the nastiest kind and as it turns out, have swindled the orchard from Durga's father Harihar (Subir Banerjee). Even at her young age, this isn't lost on Durga, but also, she's a child and as such, their home is surrounded with more than enough fruit for everybody. Most importantly, Durga doesn't steal the fruit for herself, but to give it to Auntie. Lord knows, this pays off in spades for the old gal since the kid is happily plying her with juicy mangoes, a far cry from the spartan slop served up at the deeply impoverished family dinner table. It also irks Mom to no end since she's concerned that Durga's thieving will reflect badly on the family and her upbringing.

For me, Satyajit Roy has always delivered movies with exceptionally varied female characters. Yes, all his characters have depth, but there's something so unique and compelling about his sensitivity towards women. In many ways, he might well be the Neo-Realist Indian equivalent to the great George Cukor in that respect.

Pather Panchali is the first film in a trilogy that focuses upon a male character called Apu and is based on a classical Indian novel rooted in the country's strong tradition of "coming-of-age" stories. In spite of this and a slight shift in the film's perspective when the character of Apu is finally born, it's always been Durga's character who I've been especially drawn to - possibly because Apu (Subir Banerjee), though always compelling to keep one's eye on is, in many ways a very reactive, witness-like presence in the tale, whereas Durga is so vibrant and active.

It's Durga's promise as a human being, as a beautiful, intelligent young woman that, in spite of so many alternately heartbreaking and joyous moments in the film (and threads in the story), is what finally seems the most poignant and tragic of all. For all her chicanery, Durga seems almost saint-like in wanting to use her wiles to assist others. At the same time, she has a curiosity in the ways of the world that suggest how much she desires to maintain her individuality. So many girls of her age have already been in serious training to satisfy their husbands-to-be. She delights in their happiness at attaining these skills, but has virtually no interest in acquiring them herself.

Durga also understands fully the desire of her little brother to see a train, a miracle of the modern world that seems so far removed from their little village. The train, of course, represents flight as well as progress and one of the most magical sequences ever committed to film is an odyssey Durga takes little Apu on to see the train. The train, alas, takes a strange backseat to the journey itself and later in the film, there's a moment where Durga promises Apu a better, more proper opportunity to see the train. (And never, EVER, will a big sister's promise to her little brother be as deeply and passionately moving as this one proves to be.)

Ray's film clearly threw the Indian film industry for a loop. This was no epic melodrama with song and dance routines set against mythical backdrops of the past and relegated to larger-than-life studio sets and backlots. Pather Panchali was born from two major influences - the first being Ray's acquaintanceship with Jean Renoir during the shooting of the French auteur's The River in India and the other being Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (aka The Bicycle Thief). Ray was convinced more than ever that movies could be made in India that pulsated with the life of the country itself and as such, could utilize actual locations and even rely upon amateur actors. Though most of Ray's principal actors in Pather Panchali had a good taste of stage acting prior to their appearance in his film, screen success had eluded them and his supporting performers and even the lead role of Apu were played by "real" people.

The movie has the feeling of being loose and episodic, but beneath this "veneer" of Neo-Realist movie-making was a narrative as strong and solid as one would ever want. It's as if Ray used real life to instigate his film's story beats and though this was completely new for Indian Cinema, it was certainly a rare property in any films of its time (and most certainly in ours). Ray proves meticulous in his compositions and with his cinematographer Subrata Mitra he goes above and beyond the call of duty. Every shot feels utterly exquisite, yet never indulgent. Whether capturing simple dramatic beats, dialogue sequences or dramatic action, the camera calls attention to the salient details within the frame as opposed to itself. Even in the poetic and cerebral sequences, everything feels as if it's in service to the narrative and thematic elements. Ray, of course, wisely selected Ravi Shankar to compose the stunning musical score (one of the very best in movie history) and while it serves to underscore everything it needs to, Shankar goes delectably mad during the poetic sequences - so much so that one either gets completely lost in the ethereal qualities of the imagery or, better yet (as exemplified during a montage of insects dancing across the water) one feels compelled to leap up from one's seat and engage in some manner of dervish-like gymnastics.

One astonishing moment where the film seems to literally meander from the narrative is when Apu watches an Indian brass band, adorned in Colonial fineries, ever-so spirited, yet hilariously out of tune as they blast out a goofy, but heartfelt rendition of "It's a Long Way to Tipperary". Here, the camera leaves the scene and we're afforded a beautiful montage delivering a variety of life (and lives) pulsating around them. This is no mere indulgence, but rather an extraordinary reflection upon the lives of all the people living near our family and as such, a reiteration of what affects them societally, culturally and emotionally, yet doing so to give us a sense that what the family is going through, is as profoundly disappointing and frustrating to so many in this impoverished country.

Throughout the film one senses that Ray is probably most entranced with Durga's character also. If anything, she feels closer to someone who'd be a worthy on-screen surrogate for the filmmaker. It certainly wouldn't be her father Harihar, a man of of letters and intelligence with a desire to be a great writer, but reduced to taking vaguely menial and/or administrative positions to support his family. We're constantly frustrated with this kindly man who is so obviously lacking in real motivation and gumption. His choice to locate the family in his ancestral home in the country instead of raising them in the city is one reason why they all live in such dire poverty, but even worse, why Harihar has wasted his gifts due to his endless procrastination. When he finally admits to his wife Sarbajaya that he gave up on all his dreams, we believe it.

A sequence which Ray handles exquisitely is a conversation between the husband and wife. Sarbajaya attempts to analyze where things went wrong, but to also provide a very solid, intelligent and well-reasoned plan for the family to leave this life of poverty and isolation behind. All Harihar can do is resort to the self-pity of it being too late to make dreams come true that he had abandoned a long time ago.

There's a moment and a manner in which Ray trains his camera on Sarbajaya that's so simple and yet so breathtaking. It's maybe the first time in the film where we see this "traditional" wife display the very vision that her own daughter and even Auntie have had.

"I had dreams, too," Sarbajaya declares. For the first time in the film we genuinely understand her attitudes towards both her daughter and Auntie. It's also a point in the narrative where she displays a shift in how she views her extraordinary daughter. Alas, as things turn out, it comes too late.

This, in fact, might be an especially poignant subtext to the entire film - making the right decisions at the wrong time, all of which seem to resonate with a powerhouse force - especially when characters begin to realize how huge an impact their decisions have had upon them and their family. Needless to say, there is heartache and tragedy to befall the family, but it's their own choice to make the concerted effort to move on. Moving on might be their only salvation and one that so many lives in this world will experience and acknowledge. Never, however, will they face and acknowledge this notion of life itself with the same force Ray delivers on film.

Auntie, of course, knows all about moving on. She sits alone one clear, starry night and sings about her death:

"Those who came after have already gone. Leaving me behind, the poorest of beggars. Night's mantle descends. Row me across to the other side. Oh, hurry, Lord of the Crossings."

It's the other side that not only offers rest to the weary, but hopefully, there's another other side in life, in the here and now - one that can offer contentment beyond eternal rest, but one that rather provides new beginnings. It's the least we can look forward to, strive for and to live out our small and seemingly inconsequential lives as we too embark upon that "little road".

Pather Panchali is presented with a RESTORED 35mm (yes, REAL FILM) PRINT at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 3, 2014 at 6:30pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

When a mother and child must face the world alone.

When a mother must face the world alone.
Aparajito (The Unvanquished) (1956) Dir. Satyajit Roy *****
Starring: Smaran Ghosal, Pinaki Sen Gupta, Karuna Banerjee, Kanu Banerjee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some movies sneak up on you. Aparajito is such a picture. This sequel to Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali and second entry in his Apu Trilogy most definitely delivers the new beginning promised at the end of the previous film. Having left their rural village behind in favour of big city life in Benares, The Roy family are still living in poverty, but existence doesn't seem quite so tenuous. Harihar (Kanu Banerjee) continues his work as a priest and delivers prayers on the banks of the Ganges River while his wife Sarbajaya (Karuna Banerjee) tends to her homemaking chores.

Though the family is more secure than back in the sticks, it's Apu (Pinaki Sen Gupta) who seems especially satisfied with his current lot in life. With an entire city as a playground and the joy he clearly expresses whilst tearing about the teeming populace, Apu seems the happiest of the three, with one exception, one definite want and need. They family lives too far away from a school and Apu does indeed express a desire for an education.

If anything, literacy and education in Apu's life are the real driving forces behind the film's narrative. Interestingly, Ray was always disappointed that there was one key role he had to write out of the film at the last minute due to casting issues, but if truth be told, it's a role that's completely unnecessary and in fact strengthens the education factor in Apu's life and how it transforms the movie into a kind of transcendence one doesn't expect - at least not in the early going.

And, of course, this is one of the ways in which the movie sneaks up on you.

The first chunk of the film is extremely amiable on all fronts. Though Harihar continues to work his butt off for not much more than he was making before, the dough is at least steady and given the tragic events that befell the Roy family in Pather Panchali, it's a relief seeing these three people peacefully living out their lives in the city Sarbajaya always regretted leaving (and in fact, begged Harihar earlier in the previous movie to return to). If Sarabajaya isn't quite living out her "I had dreams once, too" lament from the first of the trilogy, this is still a far cry from the repressive life in Harihar's ancestral home in the country.

Then, like the snakes wending their way mysteriously through every corner of India, we are thrown for a loop narratively as tragedy strikes when we least expect it. Illness takes Harihar from the family in a manner that echoes sweet Durga's passing in Pather Panchali. Mother and Son are forced to leave the city behind and take up new positions in a new home with an affluent family in the country. Sarabajaya works as a domestic while Apu apprentices with an old uncle as a priest.

Life is once again lonely and quiet as before the move to Benares, but Mother and Son bond even closer and at least they aren't subject to the daily trials and tribulations of meddlesome neighbours and nasty relatives. On his way home from his morning chores at the Temple, Apu gazes longingly at all the young boys attending the local school. With his mother's cautious permission, he continues working the Temple by morning and going to school by day.

From leaving the city to this point in the narrative, Ray delivers one stunning emotional and/or poetic set piece after another - all very different in tone from Pather Panchali, but just as stirring and original. The train journey from Benares to the countryside takes on significant resonance for both Apu and his Mother. In Pather Panchali, the train was this distant thing that Apu desperately wished to see properly, but also represented flight and new beginnings.

Certainly, the opening images of Aparajito lead us into the city from the inside of a train's window, but at this latter juncture, Ray affords us an evocative montage of what Sarbajaya sees through the window - gradually diminishing vestiges of civilization and increasingly, endless fields and forests stretching out far and wide under a big, clean sky. This is a new beginning, alright, but one which transforms Sarbajaya's face from resolution, through to deep sadness and finally to a kind of blankness that's the most heartbreaking expression of all.

On a more joyous note, Ray crafts several great sequences involving Apu's education at school and with Sarbajaya, the tone jettisons into a kind of stratospheric elation. The pure jubilance with which Apu explains matters of science, nature and the world to his Mother fill her with pride, amazement and even the thrill of learning new things from her own son.

Eventually, Aparjito moves us into the adolescent years of Apu (now played by Smaran Ghosal) and we begin a new chapter in the lives of Mother and Son. It is here that Ray (as if we didn't already know it with Pather Panchali) firmly establishes his innate gifts as a filmmaker. The turn in the story alternates between joy and sadness. As the young man moves to Calcutta to begin college life and a new job at a printing press business, his mother remains behind in the rural farm where she continues to toil as a domestic and pines for every letter and increasingly infrequent visit from her son.

Eventually, our Apu truly becomes the unbeaten young man of a poverty-stricken existence. Knowledge not only fuels him, but so to does life in a place like Calcutta. As life is wont to do, an empty nest results in both parent and child facing a whole new life, but separated by distance and priorities, they will both be entering these worlds alone. One world yields opportunity, but for an illiterate widow living alone in the middle of nowhere, her world will offer what, sadly, it is only able to. The last third of the film is devastating to say the least, but with devastation comes rebuilding anew.

Once again, surrounding himself with his team of loyal creative crew, including composer Ravi Shankar (who manages to create an equally haunting score as he did in Pather Panchali) and cinematographer Subrata Mitra, Ray was able to generate yet another masterpiece and this time with a production fraught with numerous setbacks. In addition to the aforementioned casting difficulties (an actress who was to play Apu's Calcutta love interest and buggered off when her Old World hubby started giving her guff about having to hug and kiss her leading man), then financing issues (money falling in and out of place), a prolonged two-year on-again-off-again shooting schedule and the threat of monsoons scuttling a major already-planned series of sequences. To the latter, it was the brilliant Mitra who came up with the plan to match the neorealist look of the film by insisting they shoot on a soundstage and recreate sun pouring into a courtyard arrangement with a bit of cheesecloth and bounce boards. Nobody would ever notice the difference.

With his second film, Satyajit Ray proved conclusively that he was already a genuine Master with filmmaking hard-wired into his DNA. Way ahead of his time, he ultimately rendered this haunting tale with maturity, artistry and deep humanity. It turns out, Ray was just like that. As such, Aparjito is just like that, too. It keeps sneaking up on you, lifting you to the Heavens in one fell swoop, then slamming you to the ground the next, knocking the wind out of you, but always offering a hand-up from the misery and suffering, as if to always remind you of life's infinite delight, wonder and mystery.

Aparajito is presented with a restored 35mm (yes, real FILM) print at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 4, 2014 at 6:30pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) trades riches for poverty in Calcutta.

Father (Sumitra Chatterjee)
and Son (Alok Chatravarty):
A parent must grow up.
The World of Apu (Apu Sansar) (1959) Dir. Satyajit Ray *****
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Swapan Mukherjee, Alok Chakravarty

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To hold a child responsible for the death of the mother when she passes after giving birth is as understandable as it is ultimately appalling. Having been completely orphaned by his late teens, one might think Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) would have had enough experience with losing those closest to him (a beloved sister in early childhood, Dad in his tweens and Mom at age 17), but the fact of the matter is that he's never really grown up, even now in early adulthood. The World of Apu is the final instalment in Satyajit Ray's extraordinary trilogy preceded by Pather Panchali and Aparajito and all three works are based upon the first two novels of the legendary Bengali author Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. Ray's films comprise an epic coming-of-age tale. Though we see a number of such elements throughout, it's The World of Apu that delivers a final one-two knockout punch to the title character's entrance into manhood. Though the deaths of those he loved dearest always contributed to Apu moving forward, what he needs this time is to discover himself via pure, unconditional love and in some ways, and perhaps because of it, this might be the most emotionally wrenching and satisfying of Ray's trilogy.

The utter simplicity of the story is its greatest strength and as such, this instalment yields perhaps the highest degree of complexity - levels of depth which seem almost unparalleled in other motion picture trilogies and certainly offering one of cinema's greatest and most satisfying family dramas. The World of Apu's deceptively simple three act structure begins with our almost-reluctant protagonist not finishing his studies beyond an intermediate level and setting out upon a life of leisure in his perversely carefree life of poverty and slacking, then marrying the beautiful Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) and discovering a boundless romantic love and finally, upon losing her to childbirth, abandoning his newborn son and launching himself into an aimless odyssey of self-discovery until finally coming to his senses.

These three seemingly straightforward movements all offer vastly different emotional states for our title character which furthermore result in the audience being put through a great deal of genial humour in Act One. Apu is so clearly a layabout here, but he's like a puppy dog who looks at us with his big moist eyes after soiling a rug and though we're momentarily annoyed, we can't find it in our collective hearts to abandon, nor chastise. In fact his slacker qualities seem so delightfully naive that we become as scoldingly bemused as Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee), his old friend from college who tries to encourage him to follow his artistic passion as a writer, but to also please get a job!

It's Pulu who is inadvertently responsible for what might be the best thing to ever happen to Apu. The middle movement of the movie has our title character's pal inviting him to a sumptuous family wedding on a rich estate in the country. The bride Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) not only comes from a filthy rich family, but is also drop-dead-hubba-hubba-salivation-inducing gorgeous. Unfortunately, the worst thing possibly happens when the groom shows up and is stark-raving-major-nervous-breakdown insane and the distraught parents of the bride are on the verge of doing the worst possible thing - cancelling the wedding. In Hindu tradition, if a bride's wedding is cancelled for whatever reason, she becomes cursed to never marry again if a marriage ceremony is not performed within an hour of the appointed time.

Well, guess who's reluctantly enlisted to be of assistance?

Luckily for Apu, he scores bigtime. Even though Aparna is initially horrified by the utter squalor she must live in with her new husband, Cupid's arrow is aimed squarely in their direction. They're a match made in Heaven and soon Aparna is begging Apu to not take an extra tutoring job so he can spend as much time as possible with her. This, frankly, is one hell of a good deal. I have to say, too, that as a director, Ray shines big time in creating several simple, beautiful and wildly romantic set pieces - so much so, that it's pretty safe to proclaim that The World of Apu is easily one of the greatest love stories ever committed to film. (The performances and chemistry between Chatterjee and Tagore are so astounding that both became frequent Ray collaborators and stars in their own right.)

Ah, but as fate will have it, even great love stories can be tempered with tragedy (the best usually are) and the final act of the film is gut wrenching. Without crude melodramatics, the film progresses to a state of melodramatic bliss with the kind of glorious touches at every level that make you realize that melodrama is never a dirty word and nor, frankly, is sentiment. (Like I always say, there's only good melodrama and bad melodrama and when the seams of sentiment aren't frayed, it is a glorious and beautiful thing.) When Apu is finally face-to-face with his long-estranged little boy Kajal (Alok Chakravarty), cinematographer Subrata Mitra and composer Ravi Shankar and their Master filmmaker Mr. Ray work double overtime and offer one breathtaking beat after the next that prove to be truly and genuinely knock-you-on-your-keester moving.

Plenty of tears have flowed throughout this great trilogy, but none will flow more copiously than they do throughout the denouement of The World of Apu. You leave the cinema, the film, this entire epic of humanity soaring higher than you'll ever imagine experiencing.

The Apu Trilogy represents Satyajit Ray's first three films. They are individually and collectively as great as the greatest pictures of all time. If this was all he was able to manage, he'd still be considered up there with the best of the best. Luckily for him, for cinema and for all of humanity, Satyajit Ray made films for 40 years and even his occasional minor works make the major works of most other filmmakers look like cardboard cutout puppet theatre.

The World of Apu is presented with a restored 35mm (yes, real FILM) print at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 5, 2014 at 6:00pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE FOREST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Films of Satyajit Roy #TiffBellLightbox

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Sekhar (Robi Ghosh), Asim (Soumitra Chatterjee) and
Hari (Samit Bhanja) have imbibed in foul rural liquor
and share in delectably rollicking manly camaraderie.
Days and Nights in the Forest (1969) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Soumitra Chatterjee, Sharmila Tagore, Samit Bhanja, Subhendu Chatterjee, Rabi Ghosh, Pahari Sanyal, Kaveri Bose, Simi Garewal

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The tradition of male bonding in the cinema is a time honoured indulgence which has yielded some of the great pictures of all time. In a world of Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni, Barry Levinson's Diner and Tin Men, Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, Hal Ashby's The Last Detail, Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, John Milius's Big Wednesday, Donald Shebib's Goin' Down The Road, Alexander Payne's Sideways and yes, even Todd Phillips's The Hangover, there are none that quite have the unique power of Satyajit Ray's hilarious, powerful and deeply moving Days and Nights in the Forest. At times, Ray seems to tower above everybody.

The gentlemen from Calcutta have secured the services
of a "lowly" local to run errands, but are too busy
smoking and drinking to look him in the face.
In some ways, Payne's Sideways might come closest in terms of its inclusion and portrayal of strong female characters within the mix, but even that picture somehow pales in comparison to Ray's astounding 1969 masterpiece (yes, another one). What knocks Days and Nights in the Forest clear out of the ballpark is that its very core lies in exposing the utter madness and, to my mind, horror of colonialism upon indigenous societies which have suffered the cruel forced impositions of cultural domination by "civilized" nations. This is not to say Ray's approach is overtly political since such bludgeons are not in his cinematic vocabulary, but like his best films, it's a force that's so often roiling beneath the surface. If anything, Ray follows in the footsteps of Jean Renoir's immortal dramatic examinations of class and society - notably, The Rules of the Game. It is here he lays the track that divides town and country, Old World and New World, the upper middle class and those on the lowest rungs.

Sharmila Tagore is reunited with World of Apu co-star Soumitra Chatterjee.
The film opens with our four protagonists on a freewheeling road trip to the Palmau forests. The men engage in the kind of crude, hilarious banter one associates with such closely quartered camaraderie in both life and the movies. They couldn't be more different from each other and a good part of their machine-gun-paced patter involves the requisite slagging of their respective faults and traits, the quips and jabs always hovering on the border twixt the good-natured and the slashing.

The Alpha Male of the bunch is the attractive, cool-as-a-cucumber Asim (Soumitra Chatterjee, the title star of The World of Apu) and his followers are the goofy perpetual class clown Sekhar (Robi Ghosh), the dour play-it-by-the-book bureaucrat Sanjoy (Subhendu Chatterjee) and the pro-cricket champ Hari (Samit Bhanja) who's licking the wounds of a recent break-up. Upon entering the clearly rural state of Bihar, they stop at a village that the men immediately accept and proclaim as backwards.

They hire a dirt poor local to show them the way to the nearest state-run holiday bungalows and decide to keep him along as their personal slave. Proclaiming to all that they're of Calcutta's V.I.P. class, they've not bothered to secure the necessary reservation and permission slip to stay and insistently bribe the bungalow gatekeeper, knowing full well that he could lose his job. They order him about with the disdain they've tossed at their serving boy and demand a variety of services that are normally the purview of the man's wife, but ignoring his explanation that she's severely ill, they insist he perform the tasks they require.

Duli (Simi Garewal), the local "Native Girl"
is ripe for exploitation by the exploited.
The shenanigans continue when the fellows head to the village to wreak more imperialist-inspired havoc. They end up going to the local booze can where they guzzle back the most foul locally-distilled rotgut, get stinkingly drunk and make fun of the dark-complectioned "native" girls, whilst also praising their potential virtues as whores. Hari, however, is genuinely enamoured by the earthy charms displayed by the ravishing dusky tribal gal Duli (Simi Garewal).

The next day, the hung-over gents notice two gorgeously attired gals from the city who elegantly parade down the road. They follow them to their rustic, though clearly upscale cottage and spend a perfectly peaceful Jean-Renoir-like afternoon with these affluent Calcutta-born-and-raised babes. Aparna (Sharmila Tagore, Apu's bride in The World of Apu) and her widowed sister-in-law Jaya (Kaveri Bose) reside there with a garrulous old coot who is respectively their father and father-in-law. Cool cat Asim takes a fancy to Aparna whilst Sanjoy zeroes in on Jaya. Sekhar, as per usual, is just his nutty, good-humoured self. The ladies are unavailable later that evening, but all agree to convene the next morning at the cottage for breakfast.

The evening turns into an even more indulgent spree of boozing and carousing at the booze can, culminating in an insane romp in the middle of a country highway where they end up stopping a car and continuing to act as boors. Unbeknownst to our drunken louts, the high-class city chicks are in the car. Rather than express annoyance, the gals yuck it up big time as these Calcutta gentlemen romp about like frat boys.

The next day turns into an almost blow-by-blow fancy-schmancy Jean-Renoir-like picnic with mock-erudite conversation and a delightful parlour-style game which ends up revealing a whole lot about each one of the characters.

Fun and Games.
Not Always Fun.
Amidst all the aforementioned fun and games, though, Ray gradually metes out the dark undercurrents of this tale - the events themselves become more savage and eventually, even explosively violent, however the beats of the tale also reveal the deeply disturbing and resonant thematic subtexts. As Pauline Kael noted in her original review of the film, Ray presents "the subtlest, most plangent study of the cultural tragedy of imperialism; the young men are self-parodies - clowns who ape the worst snobberies of the British." And though these snobberies are amongst the worst, what ultimately hits you is this idea that virtually every corner of this nation has been tainted in one way or another by colonialism. For our clutch of young men of the self-proclaimed VIP persuasion, these Vitelloni of Calcutta, the film trenchantly (at least in terms of its deepest, darkest satirical elements) reveals the demands/burdens placed upon the strata of those who have bought into established (and establishment) modes of interaction and lifestyle.

This is the real journey undertaken by Ray's charmingly loutish protagonists. Whether they learn something (and/or change) or not (and yes, some do), ultimately seems less a concern than the journey itself and furthermore, these men at least recognize that they have disrupted a way of life (and in so doing, have created a mirror of their own lives for themselves to peer deeply into). In a sense, this almost forces them to acknowledge the (purported) 16th Century utterance by the British preacher John Bradford: "There, but for the Grace of God, go I." In fact, the four protagonists of Days and Nights in the Forest are as much the "I" of the phrase as those they have chosen, cavalierly, to exploit.

The colonized become the colonizers. The cycle of exploitation continues ever deeper, entrenched to the point that one wonders when it finally ends.

If it ever ends at all.

Days and Nights in the Forest is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 6, 2014 at 3:30pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

KANCHENJUNGHA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque

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Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!
Left: Loving Mother, Dutiful Daughter - Right: Subservient Wife, Traditional Husband

KANCHENJUNGHA
Kanchenjungha (1962) ***** Dir. Satyajit Ray Starring: Chhabi Biswas, Karuna Bannerjee, Anil Chatterjee, Alaknanda Roy, Anubha Gupta, Arun Mukherjee, Subrata Sen, Sibani Singh, Vidya Sinha, Pahari Sanyal, N.Visanathan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Why accept a life of endless submission?" says Labanya (Karuna Bannerjee) to her daughter Monisha (Alaknanda Roy). Labanya knows a thing or two about arranged marriages and though she's never wanted for anything material, her life under the yoke of rich, powerful and conservative hubby Indranath (Chhabi Biswas) has meant slavish adherence to traditional household roles. Has he been cruel, physically or verbally abusive? No, but he's essentially expected a homemaker and baby maker rather than an equal partner. Labanya has, however, suffered the sexist indignity enough. Her only unmarried daughter must not suffer likewise.

All she really wants is her smart, beloved, kind, beautiful and charming daughter to finish her education, live her life as a modern woman and most of all, to marry for love. This will prove to be more easily desired than done. Indranath has assembled the whole family for a deluxe vacation in Darjeeling which overlooks the spectacular Mount Kanchenjungha, the second highest peak in the Himalayas. The conservative industrialist has two goals. One is to catch as many glimpses of the mountains as possible, the other is to provide a romantic backdrop for Mr.Banerjee (N.Visanathan), a wealthy young business associate to propose marriage (approved fully by Indranath) to daughter Monisha. Views of the Himalayas have proven elusive due to constant mist, but on the last day of the vacation, Indranath sets things up so Bannerje and Monisha will have as many opportunities as possible for "romance" and a formal marriage proposal.

Kanchenjungha is a first for Satyajit Ray on a number of fronts. Firstly, the film represents Ray's debut with an original screenplay written all on his lonesome (previous works were adaptations of existing literary material). Secondly, it was Ray's first film shot in colour (via his favourite cinematographer Subrata Mitra). Finally, he designed his screenplay so the action takes place over the course of one day and primarily plays out in real time over the course of the film's 102 minutes.

And what a perfect 102 minutes it is.

Ray's big challenge is to seamlessly create a kind of cinematic roundelay as all the assembled amongst Indranath's family meet, part, converge and careen along the same paths of Darjeeling's viewing mall of the Himalayas, all awaiting the moment when Bannerjee will pop the big question to Monisha. An even bigger challenge, and hence his desire to shoot in colour, is that Ray uses the ever shifting weather patterns of the mountain resort to contrast, parallel and even exerta considerable influence over the moods and actions of his characters.

And damn, if it doesn't work perfectly.

We meet Indranath's eldest daughter, an actress who long ago succumbed to an unhappy marriage arranged by her father to a man who knows all too well how badly these things can turn out. She harbours a secret, but little does she know the extent to which her cynical alcoholic husband knows all about it. And then, there is the one thing that keeps the marriage together, the sweet child endlessly indulged with a pony ride which never seems to have an end. When it does, will reconciliation or, at least, acceptance be possible? Nature will have its say.

There's Indranath's son, a goofy layabout Casanova who pretends to be a Bollywood hotshot in order to score with as many babes as possible. However, no family gathering (in both life and the movies) would be complete without a nutty Uncle who is the complete opposite of his industrialist brother and wishes to genuinely savour the nature of the mountain locale and does so rather obsessively with his handy-dandy birders' guide.

THE SPANNER IN THE WORKS IS ALWAYS LOVE.
And because human comedy with dollops of melodrama must always include a major spanner in the works, nobody, but nobody counted upon the appearance of the brother of the family's long-dead tutor who has his bright, handsome, young nephew Ashoke (Arun Mukherjee) in tow. Ashoke's Uncle sees Indranath as a perfect person to give his nephew a job, but everyone gets more than they bargained for when the dashing young student meets and seems to connect with Monisha. For her part, Monisha does everything humanly possible to foil Bannerjee's attempts to propose marriage. Can love be far behind?

And through it all, nature progresses in its own way - from blazing sunlight to overcast skies to mist rising, obliterating all views, then the mist and clouds dissipating until all that remains is the bright, glorious sun shining upon the gorgeous snow-capped peaks of Mount Kanchenjungha. The dialogue crackles, the characters reveal all we need to know through their delightful conversations and the weather itself parallels the emotions and actions of all the characters, save perhaps for Indranath himself. He's been blind to the natural beauty, but also the feelings of his whole family. He's an island unto himself and as such might always have no awareness of anything but his own petty superiority.

Love, however, exists and Ray creates a film in which its overwhelming force and power have the potential to obliterate the status quo. Love usually conquers all in fairy tales, and though this is no fairy tale in a traditional sense, we still hope and pine and stamp our little tootsies to demand that love swallow everything whole along its rightful path, so that warmth and tenderness will take precedence over tradition and what's "proper".

The Gospel According to Satyajit Ray is that propriety has no business getting in the way of Cupid's powerful arrow. Kanchenjungha is a bubbling champagne that is often tempered with bitterness, but nature as always, will have its way and there is, finally, nothing more natural and overwhelming than the love that washes over all.

Kanchenjungha is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 10, 2014 at 9:00pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

LIFE ITSELF - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Moving Doc on Ebert at TIFF Bell Lightbox & other Cdn venues via VSC

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Roger Ebert to me as a very young man:
"Kid, you never, ever need to be ashamed admitting
to anyone how much you love Beyond the Valley of the Dolls."

Reprobate Corner: Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert
A MATCH MADE IN BIG BOOBIE HEAVEN
Life Itself (2014) ****
Dir. Steve James

Review By Greg Klymkiw

What I loved most about Roger Ebert was not his film criticism. In 1988 I was promoting my first feature film as a producer and was afforded the happy opportunity to sit on a panel discussion at a film festival that was being moderated by my hero. Not Roger Ebert the film critic (though I always enjoyed his film reviews), but Roger Ebert the screenwriter. Yes! Screenwriter! Roger Ebert had penned one of my favourite movies of all time and I impatiently counted down every minute for the panel to end so I could corner him.

One of the most outrageous scenes in movie history
is Erica Gavin giving a blow job in her sleep,
sucking back on the cold metal of a handgun, which
provides the kind of cum shot that could
only come (so to speak) from Russ Meyer.
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Written by the late, great film critic Roger Ebert.
Ebert's script for this insane 1970 cult classic was not only perfectly suited to its phenomenal director, but as such, still holds up as one of the most brilliantly daffy and irreverent pieces of screenwriting in any American film from its period. He'd written the script for none other than Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - a film so many had trashed for all the wrong reasons and one that only the most cultured cineastes could appreciate.

So upon cornering the great man, I stammered out a few words about his great script. I wasn't embarrassed to be admitting how much I loved Meyer's movie, but I was, frankly just plain nervous. I was in my 20s, dipping my toe into the film festival world for the first time and here before me was my idol. He smiled at me and said, "Kid, you never,ever need to be ashamed admitting to anyone how much you love Beyond the Valley of the Dolls." He took me out for a coffee and over the course of an hour we talked about Russ Meyer. He even told me all about the ghost writing he did on other Meyer pictures - mostly the insanely over-the-top manly-man dialogue Russ would put in the mouths of his studs.

This, for me, was a dream come true. Over the years, I'd run into Ebert on the film festival circuits. I'd usually never have to remind him who I was. I was the fat kid who loved Beyond the Valley of the Dolls more than life itself.

* * *

Steve James's documentary portrait of Ebert, taking the same title as the Great Man's memoirs Life Itself, is a beautiful, touching and heart wrenching portrait of a man that most anyone who loves movies worshipped and/or admired. Shot primarily during the last few months of Ebert's life, James focuses on Ebert's indomitable will to live. This brave, brilliant man who loved movies - perhaps not more than life itself, but who most certainly loved life for the myriad of blessings it afforded, including the movies, takes on an aura of saintliness that seems perfectly apt.

The last years of Ebert's life produced some of his best work as a writer. He embraced social media early on, and when he was stricken with cancer and then further assaulted by the horrendous surgery that butchered his lower jaw and took away his ability to speak with that distinctly mellifluous voice, Ebert wrote with a vengeance - on FaceBook, on his Blog, his marvellous, seemingly endless Tweets and, of course, the reviews. It's odd, but in those years, I'd always turn to Ebert's reviews soon after I saw a movie and wrote about it, just to see where his own head was at with the picture. I'm probably imagining things, but it seemed to me that he entered a far more philosophical phase - not just in his personal writings, but in his film criticism as well. In any event, I at least felt like Ebert had entered into a new phase as a writer and I'm grateful to have turned to his work first during this period.

I'm also grateful this film exists.

James has made a very solid and fine picture. He hits all the biographical points one would want - childhood, university newspaper, early years as a journalist, television star, his rivalry/friendship with Gene Siskel (almost unbearably moving in Siskel's final year) and marriage to his warm, wonderful Chazz, the love of his life. And yes, though I might have preferred an entire feature film about it, James does NOT ignore Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, though I'll admit a tiny shred of disappointment that Martin Scorsese doesn't quite wax more enthusiastically about the picture's considerable virtues and instead offers that the classic sex-and-violence-drenched satire/melodrama went over his head.

The film is superbly apportioned with a treasure trove of footage (including hilarious outs from "At the Movies"), film clips, archival footage, interviews with the likes of Martin Scorsese, friends, family and finally, the sad, harrowing and yet inspirational glimpse into Ebert's last years. The film also features narration taken directly from the text of Ebert's lovely book "Life Itself" read by a really terrific Ebert sound-alike voice actor.

Life Itself is a film of great humour, warmth and tears. And yes, I shed more than a few. You'd have to be inhuman not to.

Life Itself plays theatrically via Video Services Corp. (VSC) at the following venues:

Opens July 11
Toronto – TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St. W
Montreal – Cinéma du Parc, 3575 Avenue du Parc
Ottawa – Mayfair Theatre, 1074 Bank St

Opens July 13
Vancouver – RIO Theatre, 1660 East Broadway St.

Opens July 25
London – Hyland Cinema, 240 Wharncliffe Rd S
Waterloo – Princess Cinema, 6 Princess St. W
Victoria – The Vic, 808 Douglas St

Opens Sept 12
Winnipeg – Cinematheque – 100 Arthur St.

CHARULATA (The Lonely Wife) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque - See it on the BIG SCREEN then BUY the stunning Criterion Collection BRD 2-OWN-4-EVER!

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Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!


Don't forget to order the stunning Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Charulata.

Madhabi Mukherjee as Charulata: Seeing the world through opera glasses.
Illustration by Satyajit Ray himself
Charulata (1964) Dir. Satyajit Ray *****
Starring: Madhabi Mukherjee, Sailen Mukherjee, Soumitra Chatterjee, Syamal Ghosal, Gitali Roy

There are many extraordinary things about Satyajit Ray's great melodrama Charulata, but first and foremost is the grey zone he so delicately explores in this adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore's short story "Nastanirh" (The Broken Nest). If anything, it's these shadings which contribute the most to the romantic and tragic elements of this deeply moving love triangle and Ray's touch here has never been more expertly applied with respect to this perspective. Collaborating with his favourite cinematographer Subrata Mitra and the superlative editor Dulal Dutta, Ray plays out the vast majority of the action within the expanse of a highly upscale Calcutta home, alternating between the vast, gorgeous emptiness of the setting and the emotional claustrophobia which infuses the space through the eyes of the film's title character (played by the babe-o-licious Madhabi Mukherjee). It is through the lenses of an ornate pair of opera glasses that Charu gets glimpses of the world outside the coldly beautiful interiors so expertly designed by art director Bansi Chandragupta.

In the late 19th century, India is still under British rule, but in Calcutta the Bengali culture is taking further steps to assert itself in spite of the colonial yoke and Bhupati (Sailen Mukherjee) uses his upper class status to not roll over and feather his own nest, but to assert the notion of freedom. He does this by running a political newspaper from a corner of his palatial home and in spite of his friends and associates expressing concern that Bhupati could get into trouble with the authorities, he shrugs this off and maintains his belief that free speech is a paramount tenet of Britain and that he's doing nothing wrong. In a sense, he's right about this but his newspaper continues to suffer from low circulation and minimal ad revenue which keeps his attention too strongly upon business rather than his passion and vision to guide the paper creatively.

Bhupati is an honest, educated and intelligent man. He also prides himself upon being an extremely liberal and forward thinking member of his class. You would think this would make him a perfect husband for beautiful Charu. Her interest in the arts and culture, as well as her intelligence and literacy, is not at all lost on Bhupati and is the thing that makes him love her desperately. He's so enamoured with her brains (and considerable beauty), that he even encourages her to express herself artistically as a writer. Given the usual domestic patriarchy Ray has often explored in his films, this truly sounds like a marriage made in Heaven.

Here, however, are those damnable shades of grey. Bhupati is so obsessed with his newspaper that he seldom has time to be a friend, lover and equal life partner to the smart, sensitive Charu. More out of boredom, rather than anything else, she consumes herself with the deathly dull management of the household and apart from her occasional readings, she lives an incredibly lonely life, often spying activities in the outside world through her opera glasses.

Even this is not lost upon Bhupati. Within the context of an ages-old patriarchal culture, this sensitivity to her needs makes him a more-than-deserving recipient of canonization. Bhupati hits upon an amazing win-win (or so he thinks) situation. First of all, he summons Charu's big brother Umapada (Syamal Ghosal) and his wifey Manda (Gitali Roy) to come and live as family under their roof. Umapada has been looking for a good job and Bhupati puts his brother-in-law in charge of the day-to-day business operations of the paper. So far, so good. He assumes Manda will be excellent company for Charu. Wrong-O, Bhupati. Just because Manda is a woman and Charu is a woman, doesn't mean they're going to be good friends. As liberal as our want-to-be newspaper magnate is, he still carries the kind of patriarchal assumptions that offer no help at all. Manda is a catty, cheap and vulgar young lady with no interest in much of anything save for lolling about and/or playing stupid card games.

Luckily, Bhupati has also extended an open invitation to his young, educated, intelligent and sensitive cousin Amal (Soumitra Chatterjee). He encourages Amal to spend time with Charu and coax her to work on her writing. This sounds pretty win-win, but goddamn those shades of grey. Amal and Charu are matched perfectly on both artistic and intellectual levels and they spend virtually every waking hour together discussing art, philosophy, literature and writing. They even undertake to write creatively on their own work and critique it for each other.

Seeing two young people fall in love because they're both smart and attracted to their respective minds is pretty damn sexy. Ray handles this courtship as slowly and carefully as it plays out. Every gaze, gesture and nuance has weight, but they're all exclamatory points on the creative and intellectual intercourse between the two. That said, it doesn't hurt that Charu is a babe and that Amal is a young, studly dreamboat. Good looks, however, are genuinely secondary, as is sexual magnetism - these things blossom from the mind melding. Besides, if looks played into it, Sailen Mukherjee as Buphati is no slouch in the looks department either.

Disaster and betrayal loom, of course, but they come with the force of a hurricane as one (for the audience) is from an expected source and - at least initially - the other is wholly unexpected (though in retrospect, not a surprise). While the film ultimately leads us to a place of redemption and forgiveness, once we get there, Ray doesn't cop out. As in life, he takes us to the precipice, but refuses to placate us or his characters. Instead, he piles on the chill of a freeze.

And make no mistake. This is Satyajit Ray we're talking about here. It's a deep, deep freeze.

And it's devastating.

Charulata is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

See it on the big screen, then be sure to buy the outstanding Criterion Collection edition via the various Amazon links below. The Criterion Blu-Ray of Charulata is another treasure trove of delights that make the disc a must-buy and mega-keeper. Included is the stunning all-new restoration in a 2K digital film transfer, with my ever-favourite uncompressed monaural soundtrack. All new mini-docs featuring interviews with actors Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee, Indian film scholar Moinak Biswas and Bengali cultural historian Supriya Chaudhuri are detailed and full of valuable supplementary insights. I always love Gideon Backmann audio interviews and Criterion includes a doozy with Ray himself. The new English subtitle translation is a marvel and definitely a step forward from the already fine translation in the 1990s Merchant Ivory Foundation restoration. The lovely booklet includes an excellent essay by Philip Kemp and a truly astounding interview with Ray by the inimitable Andrew Robinson.


DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

PIKOO (Pikoor Diary) & SADGATI ( The Deliverance) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Two Short Mid-Length Television Films by Satyajit Ray - The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque

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Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!


The evil of castes in Sadgati (above),
the tragedy of infidelity in Pikoo (below).
Satyajit Ray used the medium of idiocy to transmit
work that tackled important themes that genuinely affected
and continue to affect the lives of people all over the world.
Two Short
Television Films
By Satyajit Ray


Pikoo [Pikoor Diary] (1980) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Arjun Guha Thakurta, Aparna Sen, Promod Ganguli, Victor Banerjee, Soven Lahiri

Sadgati [Deliverance] (1981) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Om Puri, Mohan Agashe, Gita Siddharth, Smita Patil, Richa Mishra

Review By
Greg Klymkiw


Prepare to be devastated. Satyajit Ray's in the house. Two short films he made for television during the 1980s and in glorious colour, no less (juxtaposing the lush, stunning compositions with the dark subject matter), are movies that pack enormous wallops from within their slender running times, a mere 28 minutes for Pikoo and a slightly longer mid-length running time at 52 minutes for Sadgati.

We're talking 80 minutes to be completely drained by Ray's staggering portraits of infidelity and India's foul, backwards caste system respectively. Both movies offer far more food for thought and dramatic punch than the vast majority of films made back then. As for now, most films do little more than offer ephemeral frissons for audiences too indoctrinated to realize they've being force-fed buckets of faecal matter by cash-grubbing, cynical nest-featherers. These two films are both monumental achievements and stand as a testament to their filmmaker, but also the visionary broadcasters who allowed Ray to make these stunning, short one-off dramas. There are certainly few, if any, contemporary broadcasters who'd allow this now and chances are, none of them know who Satyajit Ray was anyway and worse, wouldn't know great filmmaking even if it was represented by some meaty schwance slapping them in the face through a glory hole with a little sign dangling from said appendage that specifically indicated the content of the communion host they were about to receive down their greedy gullets.

Pikoo creates a slice of life in the acrimonious existence of an affluent family which results in a tragic event that should have been avoided, but given the social conditions a patriarchal society creates, it almost seems inevitable. Much of this tale is recounted through the eyes of a little boy, the title character. His love for his Mother and Grandfather are passionate and intense, though his feelings for his father seem almost non-existent. Ray provides a hint in the film's opening that the patriarch of this household is an uncommunicative, absent prig who spends more time preparing himself for a day at work than bothering to even acknowledge his sweet little boy. All poor Pikoo can get is a half-hearted wave from his Dad as the distracted breadwinner drives off to work.

Pikoo's mother affords the boy with love and attention, but even she is distracted. Firstly, she's more than a tad preoccupied by learning that her husband is aware of her infidelity. Strangely and just a bit selfishly, and in spite of the fact that she and her husband have argued all night (which we find out when Pikoo confides this to his ailing grandfather), the lonely Jezebel spends far too much time fretting that her lover (described to Pikoo as an interior decorator who must be addressed as "Uncle") will carve out time from his day to come over and deliver the vigorous poking she requires.

The story unravels with canny simplicity and leads to a horrendous moment of reckoning that affects everyone, but especially the innocent party in this whole sordid affair - a sweet little boy who is far too young to be aware of the sickening reality of his family's domestic strife and worst of all, having to make a discovery that will haunt him forever.

If Pikoo isn't enough to drag you through hot coals, Sadgati (aka Deliverance) will pretty much stuff you screaming into the flames dancing ever-so menacingly in a wood-burning stove. A tanner wishes to receive a blessing and advice on the most auspicious day to hold his daughter's wedding. The local Panditji (Hindu Brahmin Priest) is more than willing to oblige, but as the tanner is of the lowest social strata, our Man o' God cavalierly demands the father-in-law-to-be perform the most menial, back-breaking physical labour.

What occurs is one of the most harrowing and savage indictments of India's caste system imaginable. The Holy Man regards the Tanner with such contempt that his demands are tantamount to torture. He knows the poor guy recently suffered from a debilitating fever, yet he forces him to chop wood from a petrified log using only a dull, rusty axe. The task is impossible, but the Paditji takes an almost sadistic pleasure in both humiliating the man and forcing him to carry out the physically draining work in the hot sun, without food, drink or adequate rest. As the tanner goes about the business of sheer futility, the Panditji takes naps. Between naps, he barks out orders and insults.

The result of this act of psychopathic abuse is cruel and pointless. The aftermath is even more sickening. Ray uses colour in this film to its fullest juxtapositional effect. You will, I guarantee you, never forget the gorgeous sunset upon the rich dark countryside as a man's rotting corpse is dragged through the mud and unceremoniously dumped with utter disdain.

Pikoo and Sadgati are, once again, two more masterworks from Satyajit Ray. Whether he delivered feature drama, short works of fiction and even occasional documentary portraits, there are few filmmakers who have (or ever will) achieve the long string of greatness he delivered.

Pikoo & Sadgati are presented together at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 11, 2014 at 9:30pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

DOC OF THE DEAD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ho-Hum feature-length doc on zombies a lame DVD extra at best.

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How can a self-respecting documentary purporting to be the ultimate of its
kind, not deal with the astonishing zombie output from poverty row studios
that gave us classics like KING OF THE ZOMBIES with Mantan Moreland?
Doc of the Dead (2014) Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe *

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I have no idea who this movie is for.

By purporting to be the ultimate feature-length documentary about the zombie phenomenon in popular culture, it sets itself up for the big fall. This woefully inadequate picture fails miserably on all counts. It doesn't even cut the mustard as a glorified DVD extra which it most closely resembles. On the zombie movie front, it includes nothing any self-respecting genre geek wouldn't already know (leaving out tons of important references) and worst of all, meandering all-over-the-place when it leaves the movies behind and delves into the cultural aspects of zombies.

The historical and anthropological notions of zombie-ism (eg. voodoo and its relationship to zombies in Haitian culture and the like) gets short shrift in favour of ludicrous notions about apocalyptic zombie visions coming out of 9/11. Spending way too much time dealing with fan-based loser-dom is also beyond the pale. If the movie is not just supposed to be about zombie movies, then sadly, it doesn't even begin to the scratch the surface of what would have been truly fascinating. Never mind voodoo, what about Santeria, somnambulism and other weirdness in the real world that are tied ever-so fascinatingly and inextricably into the whole fabric of living dead activities?

As far as its attention to zombies in the movies, Doc of the Dead pretty much blows chunks. It spends far too little time on early zombie movies of the White Zombie variety and commits the ultimate sin by proclaiming it as the first to delve into the "living dead" when such elements like corpse reanimation and (yup, my favourite) somnambulism run rampant through silent cinema (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, anyone?). The doc indulges in an equally egregious blasphemy by skipping over a wide swath of zombie or zombie-like elements in 40s, 50s and early 60s movies, especially some truly great work from the poverty row studios and independents. It doesn't delve deeply (if at all) into the Italian, Spanish, Asian, Mexican and even Soviet zombie cinema until finally settling into the birth of the contemporary zombie movie phenomena via George A. Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead and onwards.

Not that Romero's film is a slouch in that department. I first saw it as a kid on a 16mm film print at the age of ten and it not only scared the living shit out of me, but it holds up to this day as one of the creepiest horror movies of all time. My major quibble is just how much zombie material in cinema Doc of the Dead ignores.

Of course, it's always fun to listen to irascible old masters like George Romero, Tom Savini and Bruce Campbell talk at length and happily, the movie doesn't skimp in this direction. I could, however, have used less footage from panel discussions and I found the whole fast zombie versus slow zombie and infection versus reanimated corpses debates, deathly dull - wearing out its welcome to distraction.

I could also have used less of Simon (Shaun of the Dead) Pegg. I love the man's movie, but his manner of addressing the subject annoyingly wavers twixt self-serious and tongue-in-cheek and proves to be more bothersome than insightful. I pretty much even objected to dealing with the "World War Z" phenomenon, especially considering that the film version ranks as the worst zombie movie of all time.

And really, I've always had no use for the knot-headed fans who doll up in their zombie finery and engage in zombie parades (or zombie walks as they're most often referred to). I'm sorry the movie even bothers with them. If I wanted to attend a Star Trek convention on film (but with zombies instead of Kirk and Spock lookalikes), I'd probably be in the market for a cheap razor and hot bath.

Life, even after death, seems a tad too short for this movie. I had to see it. You don't.

Doc of the Dead is in theatrical release via Kinosmith.

THE BIG CITY (MAHANAGAR) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Newly RESTORED 35mm FILM PRINT during The Films of Satyajit Ray @ TIFF Bell Lightbox #tiffcinematheque AND in the STUNNING BRD & DVD from the visionary home entertainment label the CRITERION COLLECTION!!! See it on the BIG SCREEN, then BUY it to OWN FOREVER!!!

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Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!


THE BIG CITY (MAHANAGAR) in a RESTORED 35mm FILM PRINT @ #TiffBellLightbox
and on gorgeous BLU-RAY and DVD from THE CRITERION COLLECTION!!!

Anil Chatterjee dolls up in Satyajit Ray's The Big City (Mahanagar).
Directors who made art films in the 50s, 60s and 70s understood that they
had to cast GREAT ACTRESSES who were also MAJOR LEAGUE BABES!!!
Gorgeous new cover art by Marian Bantjes
for the extras-laden Criterion Blu-Ray.
The Big City [Mahanagar] (1963) *****
Dir. Satyajit Ray
Starring: Madhabi Mukherjee, Anil Chatterjee, Jaya Bhaduri, Haren Chatterjee, Sefalika Devi, Prasenjit Sarkar, Haradhan Banerjee, Vicky Redwood

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Big City [Mahanagar] is such a great picture that even though it suffers somewhat from a rushed, unearned ending, its joys and virtues are many. Satyajit Ray delivers yet another masterpiece for the ages. This lovely amalgam of family drama and love story is once again another example of just how ahead of his time Ray was. The central character is female and she drives the entire engine of the story. Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) is a young, hard-working housewife who toils with a face of happiness and tries to reserve any expressions of concern to herself. Though her husband Subrata (Anil Chatterjee) has a decent lower middle class job in the city as a loans officer at a bank, his financial obligations are almost ruinous. Not only is his salary supporting a wife, but also their little boy Pintu (Prasenjit Sarkar), Arati's still unmarried teenage sister and student Bani (Jaya Bhaduri), his father Priyogopal (Haren Chatterjee) and mother Sarojini (Sefalika Devi).

The family lives paycheque to paycheque and Arati is occasionally forced to borrow certain staples from the neighbours. Priyogopal is a former school teacher, now old, infirm and needing new prescription lenses so he can properly see his crossword puzzles. Bani feels guilt about going to school when she should be bringing in income (especially when she's chided that she won't need an education since she's a woman and will inevitably get married). Sarojini even feels like she and her husband are milestones around the neck of this young family. The pressures of poverty are considerable which, of course, brings considerable shame to Subrata.

Things take a positive turn when husband and wife decide that an extra income is needed and well within their grasp. After all, there are plenty of people to run the household, so it's not as if Arati can't take on another job.

Here the film springs into a joyous mode as Arati, for the first time in her life, leaves the confines of home and hearth to work as a door-to-door saleslady, hawking knitting machines along with a team of young woman. Arati discovers a new found independence, but in so doing, realizes she has a great gift for sales and it doesn't take long for her to earn a promotion as the head of the whole team. The money she starts bringing into the household is considerable.

Madhabi Mukherjee is such a stirring, stunning, sexy presence in this film. It's no wonder she was one of India's biggest and brightest stars, as well as being a favourite of Ray's (she starred in his wonderful Charulata). Her role demands wearing a variety of masks - some tried and true, but others all new. Mukherjee handles Arati's blossoming with steadily mounting subtlety and it's also no wonder her role was so appealing to her as an actress. Women, were so often second fiddles in Indian cinema, but not in Satyajit Ray's films and especially not in Mahanagar.

All is not sweetness, light and empowerment. Ray deftly handles the new burdens facing both Arati and her family. Her child misses her, Arati feels even more ashamed at how well his wife is doing in the business world and his father is appalled that his son would be such a weak man that he'd allow his wife to work. For his part, Priyogopal has always had a chip on his shoulder about slaving for years as a schoolteacher and now, in his august years, lives with no pension and under his son's roof. He's proud that all his former students went on to become such successful and rich professional men, but he also feels they owe him something, so he begins a campaign to track them all down and essentially beg money from them - money he feels they owe him.

On the work front, Arati is also faced with a huge challenge. Though her boss clearly values her, she's not too impressed with how he's been prejudicially treating one of the employees, an Anglo-Indian woman who is not only her friend, but the constant butt of the boss's disdain. Arati has some big decisions to make and one of them involves taking a huge stand against the injustices perpetrated by her boss.

The film is so stirring, funny, touching and tender that after having seen it a few times now, I'm still disappointed with the manner in which it resolves all of the conflicts so quickly. Ray has been so careful to take his time wending his way through the tale and yet in the most crucial moments, the storytelling seems to falter. What transpires makes complete narrative sense, but how he gets us there seems too pat and unearned.

And you know what? It doesn't matter. The movie is otherwise infused with such greatness that it still has stood the test of time as yet another Satyajit Ray masterpiece. He really was one of the best filmmakers of all time. We're so blessed he was able to make the films he wanted his way in an industry that was never too open to the kind of contemporary realities facing India that Ray explored so often and so well.

Mahanagar (The Big City) is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox on July 12, 2014 at 3:45pm as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". NOTE: THIS IS A RESTORED 35MM. This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

After you've seen this on a big screen, you'll absolutely kill to own the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray. This is a film to cherish and Criterion has pulled out all the stops with the supplements. In addition to the all-new restored 2K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack, the disc includes a brand new interview with Madhabi Mukherjee, a terrific short doc/interview with Suranjan Ganguly entitled Satyajit Ray and the Modern Woman, The Coward, a wonderful 1965 short feature by Ray about modern female identity starring Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee, B.D. Darga's excellent 1974 short documentary Satyajit Ray, great English subtitles newly translated and the de rigour Criterion booklet that has an essay by scholar Chandak Sengoopta and a 1980s interview with Ray by the inimitable Andrew Robinson.


DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

THE INNER EYE, SIKKIM, BALA, TWO: FOUR SHORTS BY SATYAJIT RAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw #TiffBellLightbox

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Don't miss a single one of these great films on display at TIFF Bell Lightbox in the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". From visionary programmer James Quandt, this is one of the most important retrospectives ever presented in Canada. If you care about cinema, you can't afford to miss even one. Heed the warning below!!! The Film Corner & Mr. Neeson mean business!!!


Few directors looked as cool as Satyajit Ray
when he had a cigarette dangling from his lips.

Sikkim (1972) Dir. Satyajit Ray 52mins. *****
Review By Greg Klymkiw

This exquisite portrait of life in the Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim was banned for many years in India and only recently has been revived and lovingly restored in 35mm. If all geographic documentaries were as intelligent, tasteful and compelling as this I'd be glued to whatever specialty channel was broadcasting them for hours, days, weeks, months, if not years on end. Thank God, for my life and general well being, that only Sikkim exists and towers well above the best of this genre of film. It has a simple, but effective structure - we're introduced to the kingdom, delivered a punchy informative history, follow the activities of its inhabitants, get to meet the royal family and finally follow a massive cultural festival in its glory. Ray, in his great dramas surely rivalled Ingmar Bergman in terms of capturing the indelible landscapes of the human face. Here, in this documentary, he continues the tradition. The film's gorgeously shot, beautifully written and expertly narrated by Ray himself. This is not only filmmaking at its finest, but an important slice of a time and place that now remains etched upon celluloid forever.

The Inner Eye (1972)
Dir. Satyajit Ray 20mins. ****

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is probably one of the best, if not the best documentary portrait of a visual artist I've ever seen.

Ray focuses on the great Indian visual artist Binod Behari Mukherjee (with whom Ray studied). Ray again writes gorgeous narration, delivers it beautifully and captures the essence of this astounding treasure of Indian art by ultimately letting the man and the work speak for itself.

Ray delivers a deft series of biographical details, captures the artist's philosophies on art and life and maybe inadvertently opens a window upon Ray's great visual work as a filmmaker by the manner in which he presents Mukherjee's art.

Of course, the most extraordinary aspect of this tale is that the Master himself eventually went blind, but tapped into his "inner eye" to keep creating stunning work in spite of his handicap.

A truly beautiful and inspirational experience and Ray captures it in only 20 minutes. It's 20 minutes wherein life seems to stand still and we get a glimpse into one of fine art's great geniuses.


Bala (1976) Dir. Satyajit Ray 29mins. ***1/2
Review By Greg Klymkiw

Balasaraswati (known by her more popular diminutive stage name Bala) was already in her 60s when this documentary portrait of her was made. This prima ballerina who specialized in the art of the Bharatanatyam dance had continued to practice her art. Using a wealth of archival materials, Ray delivers the fascinating biographical details of her life, renders aspects of her contemporary life and frames everything within the context of two full dances. Ray captures her dancing simply and beautifully - once in the studio, and again out against a stunning natural backdrop. He keeps a mostly fixed position and only moves his camera with her movement. The dances themselves are so spectacular that one interview subject talks about how Bala's dance had the legendary Martha Graham shuddering and weeping with astonishment. Ray's indelible portrait is such that we do not doubt this for a second.

Two (1964) Dir. Satyajit Ray 15mins. ****
Review By Greg Klymkiw

This simple, beautifully shot (in gorgeous black and white) fable of haves and have-nots is as delightfully entertaining as it is deeply and profoundly moving. Ray tells his tale with no dialogue whatsoever. A little rich boy on the second floor of his family's home plays alone with his huge collection of expensive toys. At one point, he looks outside the window and sees a poverty-stricken youth also playing by himself. The two lads make a connection, but soon the rich boy is demonstrating all his wonderful toys in a gloatingly uncharitable manner. The film turns into a rivalry between two children on the extreme opposites of social strata. Where it ends up, finally, is a heartbreaker. Such is the art of Maestro Satyajit Ray.

The Inner Eye: Four Shorts (THE INNER EYE, SIKKIM, BALA, TWO) By Satyajit Ray is presented at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Tuesday, July 15, 2014 at 8:45 p.m. as part of the TIFF Cinematheque series "The Sun and the Moon: The Films of Satyajit Ray". NOTE: Sikkim IS A RESTORED 35MM FILM PRINT & Two IS A RESTORED 16MM FILM PRINT. This might be your only chance to see this masterpiece the way it was meant to be seen, so get your tickets NOW and GO. Visit the TIFF website for further details by clicking HERE.

DON'T FORGET TO BUY YOUR SATYAJIT RAY MOVIES FROM THE LINKS TO AMAZON.CA, AMAZON.COM and AMAZON.UK, BELOW. DOING SO WILL ASSIST WITH THE ONGOING MAINTENANCE OF THE FILM CORNER.

*BUYERS PLEASE NOTE* Amazon.ca (Canadian Amazon) has a relatively cruddy collection of Satyajit Ray product and generally shitty prices. Amazon.com has a huge selection of materials (including music and books) and decent prices. Amazon.UK has a GREAT selection of Satyajit Ray movies from a very cool company called Artificial Eye (second these days only to the Criterion Collection). Any decent Chinatown sells region-free Blu-Ray and DVD players for peanuts. Just get one (or several - they can be that cheap) and don't be afraid of ordering from foreign regions. The fucking film companies should just merge the formats into one acceptable delivery method worldwide. Besides, you can order anything you want from any country anyway.

AMAZON.CA:


AMAZON.COM:



AMAZON.UK:

RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Phillip K. Dick adaptation ends short run @ The Royal

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It's Dashiki Day in Outer Space. Come one. Come all.

Is it Sarah Jessica Harper?
Nope. It's Alanis Morrisette!
Radio Free Albemuth (2010) **
Dir. John Alan Simon
Starring: Jonathan Scarfe, Shea Whigham, Katheryn Winnick, Scott Wilson, Alanis Morrisette, Hanna Hall

Review By Greg Klymkiw

We will be saved by a man in a dashiki. He will be blonde and he will be beautiful. He will be Nicholas Brady (Jonathan Scarfe), a former Berkeley record store clerk who receives directives from aliens in his dreams to move to Los Angeles with pretty preggers wifey Rachel (Scarlett Johansson lookalike Katheryn Winnick). There he becomes a record company executive and with the help of his science fiction novelist buddy Phil (Shea Whigham) and a long-faced, toothy subversive (Alanis Morrisette), Dashiki Boy attempts to overthrow the fascist U.S. President Fremont (Scott WIlson) by releasing a hit song with subliminal lyrics.

Yeah, right. Don't bogart that joint.

Based upon Phillip K. Dick's posthumously published novel, Radio Free Albemuth is set in an alternate reality during the 1980s wherein America is ruled by the iron fist of a Right Wing nut-bar and his team of KGB-styled agents and a Hitler-Youth-like organization called Friends of the American People. The film represents the life's work of director John Alan Simon who has toiled for several years to get his labour of love to an audience.

He needn't have bothered.

Radio Free Albemuth is the kind of low budget independent movie that gives its ilk a bad name. The picture is ploddingly earnest, boringly competent and suffers egregiously from a low budget that reduces its lofty ambitions to a series of endless dialogue set pieces in real world close quarters that makes the movie feel ludicrously underpopulated and where its otherworldly flip side is drained of all dramatic investiture by special effects so dreadful that they aren't even pleasantly laughable, just bad. Whatever ambitions this work might have had are blunted by its cudgel-like attempt to extol the virtues of activism in a manner that reminds one of the sequence in John Carpenter's They Live where Rowdy Roddy Piper insists that Keith David wear the special glasses to see the truth. If you can imagine that scene running for 110 minutes, but without the over-the-top fisticuffs, then you'll have some idea of how it feels like to watch Radio Free Albemuth.

I love science fiction movies that place the emphasis on ideas over mindless action - so much so that I want to credit Mr. Simon's movie for taking the high road. Unfortunately, there's something just too bland, lifeless and uninteresting about his plodding by-the-numbers approach that does the material a major disservice. Given that it's set in an alternate reality (and in the 80s, no less), the picture demanded some kind of post-modernist stylistic frisson to jettison us into territory we could embrace with excitement instead of rejecting with suppressed (and often, not-so-stifled) yawns.

About the best that I can say about Radio Free Albemuth is that as mediocre as it is, it's almost the kind of science fiction movie I'd happily take over the tedious Edge of Tomorrow. "Almost", however is the key word here.

Radio Free Albemuth is ending a very short run this week at The Royal Cinema in Toronto and playing spottily in similar engagements across North America.

Some of my favourite science fiction movies that favour ideas over action can be purchased directly from the Amazon links below:


THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 40th Anniversary Restoration @TheRoyalCinema & FantAsia2014 in Montreal (includes presentation of Lifetime Achievement Award To Director Tobe Hooper)

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LEATHERFACE (Gunnar Hansen) - MASTER BUTCHER

Preamble:
On the occasion of a painstaking restoration in honour of the films's 40th Anniversay, a reminiscence of my first taste of the blade, 38 years ago:


I first saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre on May 6, 1976 at Cinema 3, the long-gone Winnipeg art cinema at the corner of Ellice and Sherbrooke, tucked within a cool little one-block-strip that housed the Prairie Allied Booking Association (film buyers for hundreds of small-town movie theatres), Canfilm (where most 16mm feature film prints were stored and shipped out of) and the Winnipeg branch office of Universal Pictures (which hawked the studio's films to hardtops and ozoners in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario). Cinema 3 was my home away from home during my teen years and was where I saw actual film prints of the very best in classic and contemporary cinema. On this gorgeous spring night, a few days after my 17th birthday, I drove downtown from North End Winnipeg to see a double bill of Andy Warhol's Frankenstein by Paul Morrissey (aka Flesh For Frankenstein) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I'd seen neither film at this point. The Warhol film was first released when I needed my Mom and Dad to take me. Though my folks were surprisingly liberal and took me to see anything I asked them to, I'd oft-bestow some mercy upon them and not request their adult accompaniment to movies I knew would probably disgust them.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre eluded me as the only first-run engagement it garnered in town was at a drive-in movie theatre before I could legally drive a car. Though the notorious horror film found its natural home in drive-in theatres, I'm happy, however, that my first taste of it was at Cinema 3, the birthplace of so many of my cherry-popping alternative-to-the-mainstream movie experiences.

And I can assure you, my memories of seeing it for the first time are vivid. I was as horrified and sickened as I was energized. Gooseflesh overtook my body as much for the sheer terror the movie generated as for its dazzling virtuoso filmmaking. Shot after shot, cut after cut, I knew I was seeing something I'd never seen before and experiencing my hair standing on end in ways that has never coursed through me in all of my seventeen years on Earth. When the last frame of picture cut-out abruptly in the famous Leatherface chainsaw ballet pirouettes at the end of the film, I felt like I'd been socked in the solar plexus and left breathless. I stayed rigidly in my chair, still clawing the arm rests on either side of me until the lights came up and I was forced to stagger out into a clear-skied, pitch-black Winnipeg night, rip a cigarette out of the deck in my front pocket, jam the fucker in my mouth, light it and suck back the toxins into my body, fuelling it with as much nicotine as humanly possible.

I knew I was hooked. I knew I'd have to see it again. And again. And yet again.

To that end, a couple of years later, I had begun working in the movie business as a film buyer, programmer and film critic. I not only kept seeing movies at Cinema 3, but on Friday afternoons I'd head on over to the little film plaza next door to have lunch with the Universal branch manager and a couple of old bookers from Prairie Allied at a nearby strip club. Once properly fed (usually Salisbury Steak with boiled potatoes and drenched in watery gravy) and soused (on several shared bottles of Gimli Goose), I'd stroll into Canfilm to borrow 16mm prints of whatever movies were lying around the shipping room for the weekend, then drive them home to screen on my Bell and Howell Autoload projector.

And occasionally I'd even take a 16mm print of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to watch on my own or to introduce to friends. A couple of years after that, when booking my own repertory cinema, I played the masterpiece endlessly, often stepping into the auditorium to watch the movie with hundreds of shocked (and usually stoned) audiences. In the 38 years since I first saw the film, it's played an important part in my life. I can't imagine a world without it.

* * * * *


It's ALWAYS about the MEAT!!!
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) Dir. Tobe Hooper *****
Starring: Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, Gunnar Hansen, John Dugan, William Vail, Teri McMinn, Robert Courtin, John Henry Faulk, John Larroquette

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"There are moments when we cannot believe that what is happening is really true. Pinch yourself and you may find out that it is." - A horoscope read aloud during The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

What hit me when I first saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is how brilliantly the movie is sectioned into two separate, yet inextricably linked halves, the first being a simple narrative set-up for its especially harrowing second half. Creepily building during the first 40 minutes, with occasional exclamatory jolts of violence, the picture delivers a solid bedrock from which it plunges you headlong into the second 40 minutes, a relentless nightmare on film. This is not a passive experience - you're slammed deep into the maw of pure, sheer, unrelenting terror.

Beg all you like. The nightmare never seems to end. When it finally does, the utter dread and revulsion generated by the whole experience stays with you forever. This, of course, is not because of the gore, or the extremity of the violence, but rather because the tone of the movie is so unlike anything you will have experienced. Even with all the slasher films, torture porn and moronically graphic remakes that have assailed contemporary audiences over the past decade, none of them come close to the disquieting power and intelligence with which The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is so astonishingly infused with.

The film opens with the de rigueur 70s white on black credit crawl, read aloud by a sombre off-screen narrator (John Larroquette - yes, the John Larroquette). The slow, almost methodical accent Larroquette places upon the words "tragedy" and "invalid brother" is undeniably creepy, but when he places an almost lugubrious emphasis upon the words "had", "very, very", "the mad and macabre" and finally his halting, deliberate and portentous tone and rhythm of the final words of narration, the title of the film itself, you're pretty much convinced before you see a frame of picture that you'll be expunging more than a few bricks o' waste matter.

"The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. It is all the more tragic in that they were young. But, had they lived very, very long lives, they could not have expected nor would they have wished to see as much of the mad and macabre as they were to see that day. For them an idyllic summer afternoon drive became a nightmare. The events of that day were to lead to the discovery of one of the most bizarre crimes in the annals of American history, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
- The full text of John Larroquette's sombre narration over black as the titles crawl slowly upwards.
Once the white light of the credits disappear, we're left in pitch black and begin to hear heavy breathing, sounds of digging, tearing, ripping and sawing until we're jolted out of our seat by the sound and image of a flash bulb going off. We remain in the black, but every so often, the sounds of flashbulbs signal brief images of the most grisly kind until the tinny sounds of a transistor radio broadcast the sound of a news report as we fade slowly up from black into the blazing sun and we peer into the face of something utterly horrendous as the camera slowly pulls back to reveal a sight that's equally sickening. The news report describes what we're seeing as the top Texas news story until the movie dissolves into a title credit sequence up against extreme closeups of the sun as it emits solar flares and the newscaster continues with more news - all of it of the disastrous variety: oil spills, suicides, various acts of criminal activity.

The sun roils violently as the heavens overlook our fair planet and we're introduced to a world that seems completely off-kilter. We're introduced to our protagonists in short order, five young twenty-somethings in a van, out for a sunday drive. Sally (Marilyn Burns), her wheelchair-bound brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), Sally's boyfriend, Jerry (Allen Danziger) and another couple, Kirk (William Vail) and Pam (Teri McMinn) have stopped to investigate the site of the aforementioned grisly discovery. Franklin is left alone in the van and he peers out through the open sliding door on the side to see a raft of law enforcement officials, reporters and local citizens buzzing about.

Franklin's eyes turn to the ground, where lying askew and unkempt is an old drunk (John Henry Faulk) who looks upside down at the chubby, sweating invalid peering down at him. The old man chortles manically and gurgles out the following creepy words of portent:
"Things happen here abouts, things they don't tell about. I sees things, but they say that it's just an old man talking. You laugh at an old man? It's them that laughs that knows better."
There's no two ways about it - shit is going to happen and it's not going to be pretty.

The film follows our van full of young folk as they drive out to an old farmhouse that rests on property owned by Sally and Franklin. On the way, they make the mistake of picking up a smelly, facially scarred hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) waiting outside of a slaughterhouse. Their creepy passenger regales them with tales of how cattle used to be slaughtered in the "old days."

"They did it with a sledge," the creep says with a big grin. "The cows died better that way."

After passing around photos of butchered cattle, the hitchhiker performers a painful ritual upon himself, then instigates an altercation (of the shocking and violent variety), until he's tossed out of the van and our young people make the unwise decision of pressing on. Even more unwise is that they're seriously low on gas and when informed by the proprietor (Jim Siedow) of a gas station that his tanks are dry, they decide to press on - not before, purchasing some tasty Texas Barbecue for their sojourn. Once they get to the old Franklin homestead, Kirk and Pam excuse themselves to go take a dip in an old swimming hole out back. Sadly, the hole is dried up, but happily, Kirk spies a nearby farmhouse that appears to be powered by a generator. He and Pam saunter over to buy some gas.

This proves to not be a good idea.

When Kirk and Pam don't return, Sally's boyfriend Jerry goes looking for them.

This also proves to not be a good idea.

Soon it is dark. Sally and her crippled brother are left alone. It's here where the movie, building on what's preceded, shifts gears into overdrive and the nightmare begins.

What this eye sees, you do NOT want to see!

In many ways, I think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a perfect movie. I really have no idea precisely how many times I've seen it all the way through, but I suspect it has to be at least 50 full viewings. Not once over the 38 years since I first saw it has the film disappointed. It always delivers, and then some. The movie goes so far beyond what once would expect from a low-budget horror movie marketed to drive-in theatres and grind houses.

Its richness is beyond belief.

At the forefront is Kim Henkel and director Tobe Hooper's terrific screenplay. As mentioned, they've created a structure that shouldn't work, but does (and with flying colours). What contributes to making the separation between narrative and experiential so successful are all the superb details they've layered the screenplay with.

Firstly, there's the whole notion of the sun, moon and planets. Speckled throughout the film are references to the weather, time of year and the various ramifications of the astrological and planetary signs, my favourite being the whole "Saturn in retrograde" motif. Pam is the astrology nut amongst the group and is glued to her horoscope book. Given some of the strange events happening in Texas, she reads the following aloud:

"The condition of retro gradation is contrary or inharmonious to the regular direction of actual movement in the zodiac, and is, in that respect, evil. When malefic planets are in retrograde, and Saturn is malefic their maleficies are increased."

Pam is chided by her friends for her beliefs, yet within the overall context of the film, they'd have all been far wiser to heed her. Then again, she might have also fared a touch better if she herself had adhered more closely to this dire prediction. After all, this is an astrological period when individuals should be assessing their motives and needs and most importantly, to learn when they MUST say no or yes. Alas, several missteps are taken by our protagonists with respect to this. Where the script shines, is that our villains also push against the natural order of things and they too face dire circumstances.

Planets in retrograde are an especially interesting phenomenon. From the perspective of an Earth view, these planets actually seem to be slowing down and moving backwards, their orbit reversing unnaturally. The screenplay is replete with such skewed perspectives from both the protagonists and antagonists. Within the context of the more narrative-based first half of the film and especially during the second nightmare half, the perspectives of the characters and, frankly, even our perspectives as audience members seem to be spinning in reverse, though they are, in fact, moving forward.

The other interesting aspect to Hooper's and Henkel's screenplay is the family dynamic of the antagonists. There's Grandpa (John Dugan) the grand, old patriarch who is reduced to a wizened infirm state and sits mostly alone with the mummified corpse of his wife and family dog. In spite of this, his grandsons worship the ground he hobbles upon - after all, Grandpa was a legendary slaughterhouse worker when cattle were killed the "old way" with a "sledge". He was, as one of the boys says, "the best killer there ever was."

Separated at Birth? Milton Berle, famous comedian (left) & actor Jim Siedow as the "Cook" in TCM.

The three brothers take on a variety of domestic roles. The hulking, mentally retarded Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) is possibly the real heir apparent to Grandpa - his prowess with a sledge hammer and a chainsaw are unparalleled and yet, he fulfills an almost feminine hausfrau role, donning a female wig and dolling up his mask made of dried human flesh with oodles of makeup and lipstick. The Hitchhiker is clearly the family hothead, whilst the gas station attendant is, within the perverse context of this family of killers, the voice of reason. The Hitchhiker taunts him with insults like, "You're just a cook." His considered response is the simple, "I just can't take no pleasure in killing." However, always the voice of reason, of balance, he adds, "There's just some things you gotta do. Don't mean you have to like it."

The screenplay is also rife with the most morbid black humour and it's this aspect of the writing that keeps the film always compelling and entertaining. The horror is occasionally tempered with some of the most hilarious actions and lines of dialogue. One of my all-time favourite moments NEVER fails to make me scream with laughter. After beating Sally viciously with a broom handle. tying her up, shoving a potato sack over her head and forcing her into his truck, "The Cook" starts the engine, looks over to an open door and the light pouring out from inside, turns the truck off, races back to the gas station office, flips the lights off and locks the door. Once he's back in the truck, he looks over at potato-sacked Sally, and like some cross between a Southern gentleman and down-home sage, he remarks, "Sorry to keep you waiting, young lady. I had to lock up the shop and turn the lights off. The cost of electricity these days is enough to drive a man like me out of business."

FRANKLIN:
He's fat, detestably obnoxious
and a cripple in a wheelchair.
One of the best elements of the writing is the deft strokes used to define all the characters and even going so far as to accentuate negative characteristics in the protagonists and almost positive traits in the villains. The character that is, by far, the most bravely written (and beautifully acted by Paul A. Partain) is that of Franklin, the invalid. Larroquette's opening narration places a great deal of emphasis upon Franklin being handicapped and how tragic it is that this crippled young man is subjected to the indignities of this horrific scenario, but that he suffers several indignities, is utterly hilarious.

Franklin is horrid. He's a whining, spoiled and nasty young man and whether he's seen taking a tumble on his wheelchair down a steep ditch while he's trying to pee, or having his fat arm sliced open with a straight razor or even his brutal encounter with a chainsaw, he's the butt of innumerable sick jokes. And damn, if he doesn't deserve it. Franklin is easily one of the most detestable victims in any horror film. There's no sentiment here in his being crippled.

Franklin's a complete asshole. When he finally gets what's coming to him, we're slapping our knees with uncontrollable laughter.

From a purely technical standpoint. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a triumph. The art direction is out of this world, especially the way in which the farmhouse of the psychopaths is dressed. It's replete with such sickening touches as human body parts adorning the furniture (at one point, Sally is forced to sit in a chair wherein the arms are literal human arms that have been severed) and every nook and cranny seems layered with years of filth, blood and all manner of viscera. At times, the grime is so odious that you can almost smell how thick and foul the air is. The makeup, special effects and gore are first-rate. There's nothing digital here, it's the real thing. Hooper and Wayne Bell's score and the latter's sound design work is a thing of absolute wonder, jangling your nerves and sticking resolutely in your craw. Daniel Pearl's cinematography is so stunning, both in composition, lighting and movement that it's hard to believe this movie was made for practically nothing. Even when you adjust for inflation, the base budget of this film was $60,000 and it not only puts virtually every low budget film ever made to shame, the dazzling imagination and virtuosity of this film makes even mega-budgeted work look like crap. Shot on gorgeous 16mm reversal film stock and recorded magnetically, then mixed for an optical track, there are few films that look and sound as good as this one.

Finally, though, it is Tobe Hooper's bravura direction that is the real star here. There isn't a single moment you aren't on edge and in the final half of the film, you will experience a nightmare on celluloid. There terror is relentless. It goes on and on and on and then, when you think you can catch your breath, forget about it. Those dreams we have where we're being pursued and no matter how hard we try to elude our pursuer, we just can't and then, there are those moments where within the nightmare itself, we pass out, then come to and think we're waking up from the nightmare until our eyes focus upon a few details and something's just not right and then, out of nowhere, a sound or action pierces our space and we're once again, smack dab in the middle of that which we think we've escaped.

But there's no escape. Not even when the nightmare ends. For me, this movie is so great, I never want the nightmare to end. I'm more than happy to live it over and over again.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has been painstakingly restored from its original 16mm reversal stock via 4K digital means. It plays in limited release and at film festivals. Please see it on a big screen. In Canada, if you live in Toronto or Montreal, you have no excuse to miss this great film on the big screen. In Toronto the film unspools at The Royal Cinema until July 23. This grand old neighbourhood movie cinema, converted into sound mixing studios and screening venue features the most impeccable sound, picture and acoustics. For showtime and tickets, visit The Royal website HERE. In Montreal, the film screens at the illustrious FantAsia 2014 on July 30 at 9:45 PM in the Concordia Hall Theatre. The film will be preceded by the presentation of a FantAsia Lifetime Achievement Award to none other than Tobe Hooper. Visit the FantAsia website for tickets and info HERE.

THE HOOLIGAN FACTORY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lame Goodfellas of Hooliganism Wannabe @FantAsia2014

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I demand you see my comedy that's not funny.
The Hooligan Factory (2014) *
Dir. Nick Nevern
Starring: Jason Maza, Nick Nevern

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Danny (Jason Maza) is an unemployed slacker and football hooligan forced to fend for himself when his Grandfather leaves England to live in Australia. Now homeless, he's plucked from poverty and obscurity by Dex (director Nick Nevern), England's most notorious hooligan. Danny will soon be mentored in the fine art of brutishness by the best of the best. Dex has just been released from an extended stay in the hoosegow and he's yearning to get his old crew back together and wreak vengeance upon his prime hooligan rival. The problem is that times have changed and Dex is living in the past, but for good honest blokes, rekindling former glories and learning some valuable life lessons all round (or not) is within reach for those with the passion and fortitude to make it happen.

Ugh!

Frantic, frenetic, but ultimately never funny, the purported comedy The Hooligan Factory resorts to hoary male-bonding cliches to try endearing us to a clutch of dull, brutish and generally brain-bereft sports hooligans.

I've always found the notion of hooligans vaguely amusing. What's not to love? You've basically got a bunch of pathetic losers who are behind their regional football team so passionately that they're ready to engage in gang warfare fisticuffs with fans of rival teams. They're supposedly team booster clubs, but really, they're a herd of idiots who booze themselves into a rage before engaging in wanton destruction, vandalism and violence. They're little more than street gangs and in reality are probably the lowest order of organized criminals imaginable.

Well, maybe they're not so funny after all.

That said, there's probably a lot of room to extract humour from this subculture, but I think it would only work best within a strictly satirical context (which this movie unsuccessfully flirts with) or as straight-up kitchen sink crime melodrama with dollops of absurdist humour rooted in the extreme behaviour patterns of hooliganism (which it also tries to tackle). The picture mucks about a myriad of approaches, but does none of them well.

Those unlucky enough to have to sit through this execrable nonsense will be faced with a movie that's about as funny as having a humungous infected cyst lodged deeply in one's rectum being lanced with a sharp razor that's been sterilized fresh off a Bunsen Burner. Everything is pitched as if it's meant to be funny, but is in reality just plain loud, moronically broad, so tiresome it borders on being deathly dull and worst of all, is saddled with a predictable been-there-done-that storyline.

It's bad enough that The Hooligan Factory is woefully derivative of fellow Brits Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) and Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels), but without their natural sense of humour and virtuoso directorial prowess, but when the screenplay pathetically attempts to ape Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, the movie crosses into territory from which you absolutely know is going to result in a dreadful picture. In that respect, it doesn't disappoint. It's as bad as you know it's going to be within the first five minutes of watching it.

The Hooligan Factory had its Canadian Premiere at the FantAsia International Film Festival 2014 in Montreal.


ZOMBIE TV - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lowbrow Zombie Spoof Delivers Scads of Knee-Slappers @FantAsia2014

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Surprise contestant on Zombie Wrestling: A HUMAN CANNIBAL!!!
A Virgin's Orgasm
Zombie TV (2013) ***
Dir. Maelie Makuno, Naoya Tashiro, Yoshihiro Nishimura
Starring: Ayumi Kuroki, Maki Mizui, Hiroko Yashiki, Jiji Bu, Iona

Review By Greg Klymkiw

In a world overrun by zombies, why wouldn't there be a specialty cable channel devoted to them? Indeed, that's what we get here: an 80-minute what-if sampling of said station in one of the year's most foul, grotesque and tasteless comedies. It's guaranteed to induce spontaneous urination from laughing long, hard and most prodigiously.

Zombie music videos? Of course. Zombie aerobics? Absolutely essential. Zombie beauty tips? Every lady zombie wants to look her best. And these are the relatively normal offerings on Zombie TV.

Nothing is sacred in this delectably idiotic, decidedly lowbrow and scattershot indulgence in hilarity of the flesh-slurping zombie kind. Do you find addled senior citizens funny? I know I do. Imagine an addled senior citizen zombie who has his own lifestyle show entitled "Zombie Walker" wherein the cameras follow the stumbling, bumbling, bone-headed Grandpa Zombie as he wanders through Tokyo shopping plazas to sample the multitudinous wares of only the finest shops and eateries. Zombies are clumsy and messy at the best of times, but when they're old, they're especially prone to accidentally breaking things or slopping their food all over themselves. And, of course, when senior citizen zombies moronically misplace their dentures, eating raw human flesh becomes nigh impossible.

And who doesn't enjoy regular professional wrestling matches? God knows I do, especially when they involve zombies. But, wait just a goddamn second, the latest episode of "Zombie Wrestling" has a surprise opponent for the champion Zombie wrassler. Normally, a live human being tied to a post in the middle of the ring is the quarry that two zombies must wrassle over, but not so this time. A human being has challenged the zombie and it's none other than a savage cannibal from the deepest, darkest, most backwards and savage jungle. With a frizzy afro, tusks jammed into his nostrils, white war paint adorning his blackface makeup and attired in a comfortable grass skirt to ensure better agility, he's bound and determined to beat a zombie to eat some raw human flesh. Who will survive? What will be left of them?

Delights of the flesh-eating variety are also to be found in the adventures of the beautiful, petulant and oh-so picky Pink Zombie as random humans beg her to bite them so they too can become one of the living dead. Yes, the residents of Tokyo are cottoning on to the fact that being a zombie is a pretty good deal - no cares, no job, now woes and lots of yummy human flesh to devour. It's Tokyo, after all. Last I heard they had one humungous population. Plenty of good eating in the Land of Nippon - if you're a zombie.

SQUEEZE THOSE
ZOMBIE FUN-BAGS
If continuing drama is your cup of green tea, there's plenty o'that on Zombie TV. One gripping tale involves an office worker who is bitten by a zombie, but continues to go to work as best she can - and nobody really notices much of a difference. Such is life as a worker-bee in a fluorescent-bathed corporate office. Eventually our heroine assists her lonely, grotesquely fat colleague by turning her into a zombie. It's the ultimate life-changer, don't you know? And, of course, one of the most touching dramas involves a male virgin hiding from zombies until he spots a living dead missy with the hugest breasts he's ever seen in his life. Will he risk all to squeeze those "water balloon fun bags"?

I'm sure you get the idea by now of what you're in for if you choose to partake of Zombie TV. Like all scattershot spoofs, it's hit and miss, but when it hits, it hits big, and you'll probably need major knee surgery from slapping it too hard.

Zombie TV enjoyed its Canadian Premiere
at the FantAsia 2014 International Film Festival in Montreal.

FROM VEGAS TO MACAU aka "Ao Men feng yun"/"The Man From Macau" - Review By Greg Klymkiw - He's bigger than Jesus, Cooler than Elvis: CHOW YUN FAT rocks 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival - JE ME SOUVIENS!

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JESUS, ALLAH, BUDDHA:
MOVE THE FUCK OVER!

GOD is in the house!
FROM VEGAS TO MACAU (2014) ***
Dir. Wong Jing
Starring: Chow Yun-Fat, Nicholas Tse, Chapman To, Philip Ng, Gao Hu

Capsule Review By Greg Klymkiw

Is there anyone alive cooler than Chow Yun-Fat? Uh, no. Bar none, the man rocks and he's back in the role that made him famous - Ken, the God of Gamblers. And what a God he proves to be! Jesus, Allah, Buddha: Move the fuck over, Ken is Lord and Master. The man can read cards like no other, he's sly as a fox, sexier than the devil himself and cooler than Elvis! Ken teams up with a tripartite army of law enforcement army and a burgeoning master hustler Cool (Nicholas Tse, no slouch in the "cool" department) and his Robin Hood-like team of daring young men who rob from the syndicate to give to the poor. When Cool's Dad is kidnapped by the organized crime scumbags, our heroes must do battle with the revoltingly nasty Mr. Ko (Gao Hu). In addition to his kung-fu-like prowess at flinging poker cards like deadly blades, Ken's got more than a few tricks up his sleeve. He also has a babe-o-licious daughter Rainbow (Kimmy Tong). What's a great HK action comedy without a babe? (There's more than a few wandering about here.) Directed by the legendary Wong Jing (so prolific, he's directed enough films to rival the population of Hong Kong) and with superb fight choreography by Nicky Li, this is a frothy delight that happily brings us back to the pre-1997 glory days of HK cinema. So ante up, varmint. God awaits!

THE HARVEST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Samantha Morton porks into the New Kathy Bates - @FantAsia2014

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Ladies and Gentlemen,
presenting the heir apparent to Kathy Bates in MISERY:
Samantha Morton in THE HARVEST.

The Harvest (2013) ***
Dir. John McNaughton
Starring: Samantha Morton, Michael Shannon, Peter Fonda, Natasha Calis, Charlie Tahan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A pudgy, pushy small town doctor (Samantha Morton) and her subservient hubby (Michael Shannon), a male nurse no less, are treating their terminally ill little boy (Charlie Tahan) at home. The lad is very lonely. When he's befriended by a new girl in the neighbourhood (Natasha Calis), Porcine Mama gets her back up and refuses to let her son have a friend. Kids will be kids, though, and they persist in surreptitious play-dates. This annoys Mama to no end and she becomes even more unhinged than when we first met her.

She foists verbal, psychological and eventually physical abuse on her crippled dying son. Dad, being a male nurse, and therefore (of course) subservient, can barely stick up for the lad. It doesn't take too long for Samantha Morton to give Kathy Bates in Misery a run for her money in the psycho sweepstakes. As well, Morton is porking out to Bates dimensions, though it's still a case of close, but no cigar in the chub department.

This very strange film feels like an ABC Movie of the Week from the 70s. This is not necessarily a bad thing since there were plenty of decent thrillers to come out of that wave of small-screen cinema. That said, The Harvest isn't in Duel territory, but closer to the vicinity of Bad Ronald, Crowhaven Farm, A Taste of Evil, The Failing of Raymond, Revenge and any number of others which blended melodrama with suspense and often starred actresses just slightly out of their prime like Shelley Winters, Jane Wyman, Suzanne Pleshette, Hope Lange, Barbara Stanwyck - all of whom delivering terrific performances in spite of either chubbing out and/or indulging in too much plastic surgery.

And Samantha Morton is no slouch in conveying the requisite just-past-prime-time evil harridan gymnastics. It's impossible to take one's eyes of Morton - not for the same reasons 17-years-ago when she charmed us in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown, but rather because her commitment and intensity is full-steam-ahead evil. She creates a seemingly flawed, but ultimately psychopathic child abuser and as the film progresses and reveals, something a whole lot worse. It's a great performance.

Sadly, the rest of the cast just isn't quite up to her level of thespian muscle-flexing. Michael Shannon, stout yeoman as always, is genuinely good, but it's painful to watch him slinking around so cretinously. Yes, I know, I know. He's playing a MALE nurse and as such, can only convey a subservience that's in line with that of a whinging castrato.

The real problem are the child actors. They have no chemistry, zero screen presence and their abilities fall somewhere in the contemporary continuing TV series range of acting. Given the importance of these characters to the film, their sub-par emoting really drags the movie down.

The Harvest just doesn't have the old snap, crackle and pop stylistics of the director John McNaughton of old. He handles the suspense admirably enough, but visually, the movie seems flat and a bit lifeless. This is certainly a far cry from the man who gave us Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and (hubba-hubba) Wild Things. Clearly he wanted to stretch his wings here into some manner of To Kill a Mockingbird territory, but it ends up just feeling a bit dirge-like. Given that we're dealing with a fat harridan abusing her crippled terminally ill child, where in the hell is the humour? I'm not kidding. This movie needed some genuinely nasty nyuck-nyucks.

I will say, I did - in spite of everything - enjoy Stephen Lancellotti's writing. The screenplay initially offers an original take on the thriller genre, but about halfway through the movie when I was able to easily piece together where it was ultimately going, I felt like I was just putting in time on the old punch clock. Predictability reigned supreme and each mark it hit that I assumed it would hit, felt like a traitorous stab in the gut.

It seems like McNaughton wanted to be a kinder, gentler genre filmmaker with The Harvest, but I do hope this is a temporary aberration on his part. The melodrama is all there, but the grimy, gritty and dirty sludge bath one really wants from a picture like this is woefully missing.

The Harvest had its International Premiere at the 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.

COLD EYES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stunning Korean remake of Johnnie To HK cop hit @FantAsia2014

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"Mmmm. I want whatever that gentleman has in his mouth in my mouth."
All Cops in Korea are Ultra-Babe-O-Licious!
Cold Eyes (2013) ****
Dir. Jo Ui-seok, Kim Byung-seo
Starring: Sol Kyung-gu, Jung Woo-sung, Han Hyo-joo, Jin Kyung, Lee Junho, Kim Byung-ok

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Whenever I see a slam-bang, supremely stylish and rock-solid Asian action thriller like Cold Eyes, I always shake my head and wonder why so many ludicrously-budgeted American studio pictures of a similar ilk are poorly directed and stupid? Who are the morons? The filmmakers or the audiences? I suspect both are equally deficient. The American directors have no real filmmaking talent and American audiences are bereft of brain. Since Americans are too stupid to watch anything in a language other than their own, the prospect of an American remake seems even more idiotic since they'd manage to take a terse, simple and intelligent script and just make it lugubrious, unnecessarily complicated (not complex, either - that word isn't in the American vocabulary) and just flat-out dumb. Astoundingly, Cold Eyes IS a remake of Johnnie To's solid meat-and-potatoes (or, if you will, BBQ pork and white rice) 2007 Hong Kong thriller Eye in the Sky. Given that To is no slouch, it's especially cool that co-directors Jo Ui-seok and Kim Byung-seo deliver a picture that blows his off the map (and most every American cop thriller from the past twenty-or-so years).

There are elements of Cold Eyes that are tried and true - a young cop (and, happily, a major BABE), has a lot to learn, but is still hand-picked by a tough-as-nails senior detective who knows that the "heart" is there in spades. After all, having the right stuff - in his books - trumps by-rote technical proficiency in the field. When she joins the team of high-tech surveillance detectives, a vicious and heretofore unidentified group of bank robbers led by a high-tech criminal mastermind, have successfully committed one similarly-styled job too many and the team is pumped to take the filth down.

Set against the energy-charged labyrinth that is Séoul, Cold Eyes is a tense, edge-of-the-seat cat and mouse action thriller that's replete with astonishing chases on foot and in moving vehicles, daring stunts, superb hand-to-hand fight scenes, shockingly blood thirsty violence and all the requisite and compelling cop/criminal dualities that any action aficionado will enjoy. The "cold eyes" of the title is an especially rich visual and emotional motif and refers to the ability to see everything in such detached detail on surveillance missions (and in the case of the villain. on a major heist), that one's mind becomes a sort of picture-perfect databank to supplement the gadgetry with the human element.

The surveillance sequences themselves have the kind of William Friedkin French Connection-styled doggedness that lets you see and feel the pulse of the streets and the monotony (without being a dull watch) of the days, weeks and even months of eyeballing as the most effective form of detective work. Much of the film is charged with the kind of short shots, quick cutting and hand-held work that just seems sloppy and noisy in virtually all contemporary American films and here demonstrates the genuine artistry of its filmmakers since there is never an unnecessary shot, virtuoso compositions and cuts driven by dramatic thrust as opposed to pure visceral propulsion.

Cold Eyes makes for a glorious big-screen experience and I'd urge viewers to do what they can to enjoy the movie that way. If not, try to watch it at home on high-def Blu-Ray (fuck streaming, digital downloads and DVD).

Cold Eyes recently screened at the 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival following a premiere at TIFF 2013.

GMO OMG - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Annoying, 1-sided personal doc about the GMO controversy misses boat.

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Is it possible to take a documentary
seriously that incorporates the moronic
social networking acronym OMG in its title?
Yes. If the movie is actually good.
This one isn't.
GMO OMG (2013) *
Dir. Jeremy Seifert

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I sincerely believe everyone should see this horrendous film - not because it's any good, but because it's important for audiences to experience how a dreadfully one-sided and all-over-the-map piece of misguided, independently-produced propaganda like GMO OMG can be just as dangerous to progressive thought and exploration of issues that affect all of us, as propaganda on the flip side which comes from heavily-financed and approved corporate and political interests.

Let it be said, though, that these days, I have a fairly strong bias of acceptance when it comes to films dealing with environmental concerns. Firstly, I've always been against corporate culture, ideology and bureaucracy. I believe it's downright evil. Secondly, I've also been extremely skeptical about any political process and feel it's usually little more than legal organized crime devoted primarily to nest-feathering of the most blatant and petty kind. Thirdly, and most importantly, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I came late in life to caring about our world in any green sense, but frankly, to use the well-worn, but perfectly reasonable expression: better late than never.

I've become especially committed to animal rights and hugely aware (and mindful) of both energy and environmental issues. To the latter, I've gone so far as to live completely off the grid, grow my own consumable food product (including free-range animal product of the egg variety) and rescuing animals from torture and inhumane slaughter. When I encounter films dealing with any of the aforementioned, I prick up my ears, sharpen my eyes and drink in the myriad of cinematic perspectives on such issues. That said, I demand the films be good - aesthetically and by extension, ideologically. GMO OMG is neither.

Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert is just your regular garden-variety Dad who became alarmed when he discovered just how much food he and his family consumed was derived from genetic modification. He chose to become a bargain basement Michael Moore and explore the world of GMOs by making a film about it. Fair enough, but what he's wrought is not only poor filmmaking, but does little more than preach to the (ignorant) converted. Even worse is that it places a valuable tool in the hands of scumbag corporations like Monsanto which employs vicious strong-arm tactics to foist their product upon food producers and consumers.

At the beginning of the film, Seifert professes to know very little about GMOs until hearing about them, so he first engages in what will be his uncompromising approach to investigative journalism as he asks ordinary Americans in the street what they think about eating GMOs. Well shucks, it turns out that the folks he approaches known nothing about GMOs and frankly, have never even heard of them. What this proves is the ignorance of the American people, or at least, the ignorance of the American people he approaches in his random fashion.

What the film ignores, is that many Canadians are well aware of GMOs (and proudly) since Canadian scientists at the University of Manitoba in the 70s first developed the exquisite and healthy Canola Oil (modified Rapeseed) which has become one of the biggest crops in North America. Yes, corporate scumbags in the 90s began adding herbicide resistant properties to the seed, but the only real threat here has been of the patent copyright variety. The only mention of Canola in Seifert's film appears to be in one of the many slick animated charts which look and sound like they're providing solid information, but are, in fact, delivering a whole lot of nothing.

Seifert includes images of Haitians burning GMO seed donated to them from Monsanto. Fair enough, the people of Haiti wish to grow their own natural variety of seeds and have bought into the anti-GMO lobby, but there's no investigation as to the corporate ramifications of rejecting Monsanto's donation and a whole lot of negative information about the dangers of not using "natural" products. Last I heard, human beings were "natural" and while some have used their considerable natural brain power to genetically/chemically treat a lot of things that are generally considered bad for you (Big Tobacco, anyone?), the film never makes any attempt (save for getting nowhere with Monsanto) to explore what the positives might be with respect to GMOs.

He interviews a variety of farmers about GMOs - some agin, others for and yet many on the fencepost. His line of questions are just plain scattered. At one point, and seemingly by default, he engages in a decent enough conversation with one farmer, then interrupts the flow, fumbles for a stupid question (which most of them appear to be throughout the film) and idiotically asks the gentleman if he's a God-fearin' church-goer and how this affects his use of seeds that might well be seen (moronically) as playing God. This is a dumb question on a number of levels, but mostly because it's a cheap (and clumsy) attempt to play into Right Wing Christian morality with respect to GMOs and, of course, the fact that many thinking people don't believe or are rightly skeptical of the notion of God within the context of what's been seeded (so to speak) by organized crime, oops, I mean, religion.

And let us, for a moment, get back to the Monsanto issue. The real problem here is that they are forcing farmers to use their product in a manner in which the corporation decides, at prices the corporation sets and then engages in endless legal harassment (the right of all God-Given Corporate assholes) of those rejecting them on a number of levels. Seifert touches on this, but he's more interested in getting Monsanto and its ilk to discuss and/or release their own scientific findings with respect to the safety and production issues of their seed. This is fair enough, but all we get here is the fact that Seifert's getting the runaround on the telephone (Duh! No surprises here, really) and when he physically enters Monsanto, all we hear is an audio recording of his conversation at the front desk wherein he is told to leave. The cameras remain outside until he returns to express his frustration.

Bud, if you really want to be Michael Moore, why aren't you in there with your cameras and worse yet, why are you giving up so easily? Afraid of getting arrested? That's commitment for you.

Okay, so Monsanto doesn't want to reveal any of this info and is being sneaky about it. The fact remains that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the U.S. of A. has its own guidelines with respect to GMOs and has not only given them an okay, but seeing as it's based upon what Seifert and many others charge is a potentially low level of scientific investigation, where are the raft of scientists not employed by Monsanto and/or the FDA who agree with this? Where are all the politicians and bureaucrats who do agree? Why do we only meet one anti-GMO politician who wants greater openness with respect to the whole issue? Aren't there more? If not, why not? Seifert even whines about the legality of patenting seeds. How, he wonders, can life be owned by a corporation? Hey Bud, try taking a Business 101 course sometime.

While Seifert dredges up one scientist in Europe who's come up with some fairly damning evidence against GMOs, were there no others who could agree with him? And what about those scientists who refuted the findings? What do they have to say about it? Specifically, that is. Could they be right? Who says so? Why? Beats me. The film sheds no light on this.

Aside from what feels like a whole lot of personal home movie footage in the movie, Seifert engages in a series of conversations, photo-ops and experiments (strictly for the cameras) with his own kids. One of the little shavers always looks especially terrified - not, I suspect, by truly understanding the ramifications of GMOs, but by his potentially crazy Dad making him do a bunch of stuff that seems a whole lot scarier (to me, anyway) than any of the doom and gloom Seifert espouses.

One jaw-droppingly stupid and seemingly unnecessary "experiment" is when Seifert talks about how kids used to be able to run free and wild through corn rows, but that nowadays, because of genetic modification, the corn is full of potentially poisonous pesticides hard-wired into its DNA, making it dangerous to do so. What does the filmmaker do? He adorns his kidlets with heavy-duty, scary-looking body suits and air masks and forces them into the cornfields for the edification of the cameras. The suits are heavy and hot and once they're doffed, he and the children are drenched with sweat and out of breath.

Perhaps this isn't child abuse to the precise letter of the law, but it sure damn well feels like it. This and other such sequences with the kids seem so creepy, that I almost think that if the film were directed and produced by someone other than Seifert, that it might have, Sherman's March-style, turned into being about something altogether different from what it started to be about: a documentary about a committed, well-intentioned Dad with a bunch of half-baked ideas, running around trying to prove them and putting his kids through hell in order to do.

I might have actually enjoyed that movie instead of having to infer it from the available footage in this one. Watching Seifert's kids gaze longingly out the window on a hot summer day as an ice cream truck rings its bell and seeing that they can't run out and grab a yummy cone because Dad tells them it has GMOs in it, has got to be seen to be believed.

There are many outright laughable items in this movie, but one of the biggest for me is that it would have you believe everything is genetically modified. There is, however, such a thing as ages-old breeding: all natural and all part of the long-accepted practice of shaping our agricultural product, uh, naturally.

On a separate note, the movie is jam-packed with a whole bunch of slanted, sentimental montage sequences meant to bolster Seifert's thesis (whatever it ultimately is, anyway) and uses some of the most sickeningly twee original music I've ever had the displeasure to suffer through. The tunes are warbled by a group called The Jubilee Singers. If, God forbid, you actually like it, I'm sure it's available on the film's website along with other paraphernalia related to the film. It's strictly of the Kumbaya, My Lord variety, but if you're into it, knock yourself out.

Here's what I think you need to do. See this movie. However, see it at the myriad of independent cinemas that are playing the film across North America - you'll at least be putting money in their pockets. God knows, they deserve it. If you miss it on a big screen, though, skip it. No need putting money in the pockets of anyone else associated with this dreadful and, in its own way, dangerous, ill-informed propaganda.

GMO OMG opens for a limited run at Toronto's first-rate independent cinema, The Royal, on July 25, 2014. It's also playing in a variety of independent theatrical and non-theatrical venues across North America.

Here are some genuinely GREAT documentaries dealing with a variety of environmental issues (and/or just plain great documentaries) that you can buy at Amazon via accessing the various links below directly, and in so doing, assisting with the maintenance of The Film Corner.

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