This year also marks another expansion of the festival’s mandate with the premiere of its first interactive media conference, NXNEi. The conference kicked off the festival ahead of both the film and music schedules on Monday the 14th, though unlike the other two components which are far-reaching, it was restricted entirely to the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

NXNEi can safely be called a success and seemingly much-needed, considering it sold out, despite a limited mainstream media push, and included web luminaries such as the creative and audacious Ze Frank. With NXNEi, the festival in general took another step towards perhaps one day matching its venerable sister festival, South By Southwest, which has become unmissable both for indie music and new media followers.

This year, NXNE’s music lineup features 650 bands over five days and 50 venues with an increasingly kick-ass and extensive free lineup at Yonge and Dundas Square which includes not only The Raveonettes (8 pm on Sat. 19th),  Iggy and the Stooges (9:30 pm on Sat. 19th), and De La Soul (9 pm on Sun. 20th) but also 21 other great bands over four days (Thurs. 18th – Sun. 20th). In addition, there will be free shows all over the city from Union Station to Bellevue Park in Kensington with less established (and unspecified on the website at least) bands throughout the day. Single showcase tickets are available at the door of the venues, and the other two ticket options are 5 day festival ($50) or 1 day festival ($25) wristbands.

Check out some media show recommendations for further intel.

• Now Magazine
• Eye Weekly
• Torontoist
• blogTO

Up is one of the best films of 2009, having the perfect balance of humour, romance, and adventure: an instant classic. I am a reluctant watcher of animated films; I loved Toy Story and Finding Nemo, but am part of a minority that did not like Wall-E, so the fact that I loved Up so much is a testament to its pure and wonderful movie magic. After losing his lifelong partner and wife, Carl Frederickson (voiced by Ed Asner) decides to attach thousands of helium balloons to his house to achieve his and his wife’s lifelong dream of visiting Paradise Falls in South America and seek adventure. But the diligent Wilderness Explorer, Russell, unexpectedly goes with him, having camped out on Carl’s porch the night before in an attempt to catch a “snipe” and earn his “assisting the elderly badge”.

Up bears great resemblance to its predecessors – it’s no surprise that its writers were also on the writing team of the aforementioned films – but the writing in Up is much much richer; it is a masterpiece in “showing” the story rather than just “telling” it. There is a brilliant and touching montage at the beginning of the film as we watch Carl and his wife Ellie meet as children, get married, and build a life together. There is no dialogue but we watch as they fix up their new house, we watch as they save money for Paradise Falls, but inevitably have to use those savings to pay for various emergencies – a broken tire, medical bills, and a leaky roof – delaying the achievement of their dream. We also watch the rituals that they build together: picnicking and watching the clouds, and reading together in their chairs while holding hands. We see their love, their disappointments, their hardships, and their happiness. And I cannot watch this montage without weeping like a baby, because it is so sweet, so well-observed. We do not need to be told their hopes and dreams, we watch them and see the hope in their faces. Amazingly, the rest of the movie is as good as this first sequence.

Up is very rich in details of childhood, of old age, of dogs, and of friendship. The eager young Russell, likely 7 or 8, is innocent, chatty, full of curiosity, and ready for adventure; he is just like the young Carl Frederickson we met. Frederickson is world-wearied and somewhat grouchy but still full of life and seeking adventure, despite smelling like prunes, walking around with a walker with tennis balls covering its feet, and hearing aids that like to whistle loudly. Frederickson and Russell are both sorting through pain of losing a loved one; Frederickson lost his wife and Russell’s father largely abandoned him. Inevitably, they learn to like and love each other; the journey is touching and not ever forced.

Perhaps one of my favourite things about Up is that it is clearly written by dog lovers; as a dog owner myself, I greatly appreciate this. Upon landing in South America, Carl and Russell meet a dog, which has a device installed on it to allow it to talk. This is a recipe for side-splitting humour, especially if you are a dog owner. The dog, Dug, introduces himself and interacts with Carl and Russell, but is prone to stopping mid-sentence because of a “squirrel” (crying “squirrel!”). When Carl removes one of his tennis balls from his walker for the dog to fetch it, Dug happily says “Oh I want the ball! I will go fetch the ball now and bring it back to you!”. They also meet a large and friendly bird, who Dug is searching for to bring back to his master. Upon meeting her, Dug kindly asks the bird “oh please oh please will you be my prisoner?” And that’s just the beginning. There’s much more dog humour to come, so if you are a dog owner, expect you may leave the film with a sore side.

What ensues is a well put-together plot which basically follows the predictable adventure formula of Toy Story and the lot: Carl meets his lifelong hero who went to Paradise Falls, his hero is a disappointment and wants to hurt the big bird, Carl and Russell bond and save the day. But Up is much better crafted than its predecessors: there is more than adventure, more realistic interplay between the main characters, and great humour. Because it’s about dreaming and adventure, we can forgive the ridiculous displays of “physics”, often relating to the house and its flight; after all I was happy to accept talking dog. Carl and Russell are living a dream and we are delighted to go along for the ride. The result is the best family film, and undoubtedly the best animated film, to date since Toy Story, but don’t be fooled by the “PG” rating: it’s a fun time for all ages.

Micmacs, or orignally Micmas à tire-largiot, is a French film by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the man who directed Amélie. Now, I’m sure some of you are asking, “How on earth will this ever escape the shadow cast by the ever so amazing Amélie?” Well, all I can say is that, even to all the die-hard Amélie lovers out there, Micmacs will not disappoint.

The film is about Bazil, a man who lost his father to a landmine when he was a little boy. His life takes a turn for the worse when he comes into the path of a stray bullet in a strange shooting incident which leaves him stuck with a bullet in his head for the rest of his life. When he comes out of the hospital, his life doesn’t get any better: he loses his job at a video store and is left to live on the streets. One day, he comes across a band of misfits – each with a unique talent – who live in a junkyard and repairs objects. One day Bazil discovers the two presidents of the companies that made the weapons that killed his father and wounded his head, which leads to a grand scheme of revenge that enlists the help of his new strange friends.

Micmacs begins a bit slowly but as soon as the plot for revenge is revealed, Jeunet constantly surprises his audience with  extraordinarily clever humour and quirky storyline. Dany Boon was well cast for the role of Bazil, our shy, neurotic but unfortunate mastermind. However, a great round of applause should be given to Omar Sy who was Remington, an overly exuberant poet in the group of misfits that Bazil comes to regard as family, and Julie Ferrier, the contortionist that is Bazil’s love interest. Another special mention should also be given to Raphael Beau, who composed the charming music that went very well with the film.

All in all, Micmacs is a breath of fresh air and a must see for this summer.

Image taken from here.

It would seem strange that anyone would want to see a documentary about a parking lot, but director Meghan Eckman has been able to craft in The Parking Lot Movie an interesting, funny, and revealing film. It is not so much about the physical space of the parking lot, but the people, culture, and life revelations and lessons that can be gained from minimum wage labour at a very peculiar parking lot in Charlottesville, named the Corner Parking Lot. Run by a laid back, hands on employee-centered owner, the Corner Parking Lot in the university town of Charlottesville acts as a counter-cultural counterpoint to the mostly straitlaced conservative rich town and its inhabitants. Its attendants are, as a group, almost entirely over-educated, many being PhD candidates, masters or bachelor students in anthropology, philosophy and other such contemplative disciplines in social science and humanities, and/or artistic leaning, consisting of many band members and solo artists both musical and visual. All are young men who, while being outcasts in the town, have found solace in mindless employment in the seemingly socially and culturally detached, but centrally located nexus of the triangular parking lot. The movie embraces the humour and banality of the work at the parking lot while fully exploring the philosophical conundrums of too much brain power and plenty of time that prompts many in depth often grandiose, yet earnest ponderings from the attendants on the meaning of life, society and class conflict. In a stark criticism of our society and culture, the film shows how little respect many people pay to minimum wage workers who have little recourse other than moral judgment of their customers, at least amongst themselves. It  also shows the ridiculous sense of entitlement and arrogance that is imbued in people who are simultaneously willing to pay ridiculous prices for Hummers and Land Rovers but harp and complain about paying 50 cents to park their car. The main characters are all intriguing underdogs who are all somewhat socially maladjusted but have, from their job in the parking lot, gained a core group of friends, camaraderie, and perspective. Many begin initially aimless but through the course of the film slowly discover who and what is important to them and by the end, most have moved on from their parking lot job back into “real life” with a better understanding of themselves. The film ends with, out of the dozen or so featured attendants, 5 becoming university professors, several being active and variously successful musicians, and others in less vaunted positions in academia. Filled with hilarious one liners, megalomaniacal posturing, and subtle clever insights, The Parking Lot Movie is definitely a film worth seeing that emphasizes that minimum wage doesn’t mean worthless, in jobs or people.4

1991 The Year Punk Broke (D:David Markey; USA)

1991 The Year That Punk Broke is an archival documentary that is rarely seen and unavailable in DVD. Through the use of performance footage and behind the scenes footage, it chronicles the  Sonic Youths 1991 European tour with Nirvana and Dinosaur Jr., among other bands. Filmed by Markey, a close friend of Sonic Youth, the film shows a very raw, casual, often whimsical snapshot of a specific point in time for the aforementioned artists that shows the jovial, mutual affections and  interactions between the various members that includes everything from Kurt Cobain having lipstick put on him by Kim Gordon to Dave Grohl talking to fruit. A especially revealing and candid scene has Thurston Moore waxing poetic about the difference between early tours where Sonic Youth played to mostly empty rooms to their film present tour headlining filled arenas. The centerpiece of the documentary is definitely the myriad of excellent quality and full song performances by all the bands, sandwiched between the revealing behind the scenes stuff, that captures a live almost-there quality with fantastic professional video editing and sound quality. Giving a vivid context for the meaning and impact of the doc, Hot Docs wisely had Damian Abraham of Toronto hardcore band Fucked Up give a short, but impassioned intro where he related how the film had changed his life when he saw it at 13. He explained how its direct energy and rawness convinced him to give up the “hippy music” of The Grateful Dead and others and embrace punk and hardcore full on. It is indeed in my opinion this visceral, honest and non-pretentious quality of the film that is its greatest strength. Between the hi-jinks and blissful performances, the film captures and distills a moment in punk.

The People Vs. George Lucas (D:Alexandre Philippe; USA)

The highly anticipated  The People Vs. George Lucas is ultimately, and perhaps unfortunately in the opinion of some, a friendly and loving expose into fan reaction to the second half of the Lucas legacy, including the Special Edition versions of the original Star Wars trilogy and the umm… disappointing quality of the Star Wars’ prequels. It explores the issue of cultural ownership and whether or not something so embraced, integral, and absorbed into pop culture and popular consciousness such as Star Wars becomes in a way owned by the fans and should not be tampered with even by the creator and legal owner of the intellectual property. Featuring candid interviews of fans, cultural pundits, and other filmmakers and Lucas mentors’ like Francis Ford Coppola, interspersed with tons of great clips from fan made videos, homages and remakes, Philippe creates a film that reveals the extraordinary alive and endlessly detailed debate and embrace of the Star Wars franchise by members of the public.

The bulk of the film centers around the impact the franchise had on fans and the rapid ascent of Lucas to the status of god after the original trilogy and his increasingly dramatic fall to become the devil in response to his unilateral “adjustments” to the original trilogy and the critical disaster of the prequels. The film effectively and passionately through interviews, recreates an oral history of the sense of the anger, outrage and confusion the fans had and continue to hold of Lucas’ unilateral changes to the original trilogy and his decision to discontinue and remove all availability of to the original versions. The latter move is seen by almost all as tantamount to rewriting history and an arrogant crime against those who had loved and supported Star Wars as it was. The film emphasizes that in today’s participatory culture, any art is a dynamic relationship between the creator and the fans, where everyone perhaps should have certain rights, rather than a static product subject to the complete whims of the creator. The film also equally aptly depicts the massive anticipation, eagerness, and expectation that the prequels were met with and the slow sad admission of their ultimate, in the opinion of many, horrible quality. Through such a recounting, the documentary explores the debate on whether the legacy of a creation can be damaged by that which follows, or whether it is possible, in the words of fans, that “George Lucas raped their childhood”.

What arises most dramatically from the documentary is a portrait of a complicated and conflicting person in Lucas that, on one hand is a militant creator and business man all about control, ownership and profit, but also on the other hand a completely open, embracing and daring true artist willing to push the boundaries of what is possible in special effects. This dichotomy is especially epitomized in his harsh totalitarian obliteration of the original version of the classic trilogy, contrasted by his vigorous encouragement of fan creations derived from Star Wars that lesser people may have prosecuted. Most poignantly is that in either case, the documentary reveals a person who has been trapped by the success of Star Wars and by the endless pressure from fans for more.

Hot Docs Audience Top Ten

1. THUNDER SOUL (D: Mark Landsman; USA)A DRUMMER’S DREAM (D: John Walker; Canada)
2. A DRUMMER’S DREAM (D: John Walker; Canada)
3. MY LIFE WITH CARLOS (D: German Berger; Chile, Spain, Germany)
4. AUTUMN GOLD (D: Jan Tenhaven; Austria, Germany)
5. LEAVE THEM LAUGHING (D: John Zaritsky; Canada, USA)
6. RUSH: BEYOND THE LIGHTED STAGE (D: Scot McFadyen, Sam Dunn; Canada)
7. LISTEN TO THIS (D: Juan Baquero; Canada)
8. A SMALL ACT (D: Jennifer Arnold; USA)
9. WASTE LAND (D: Lucy Walker; UK, Brazil)
10. MARWENCOL (D: Jeff Malmberg; USA)

Hot Docs Recap 1

The 17th Annual Hot Docs Festival wrapped up on Sunday, May the 9th with the highest attendance ever with approximately 136,000 attendees, 170 plus of worthy and intriguing films, and the often revealing film festival advantage of Q & A sessions by the directors and producers of many of the films. We at blogUT tried valiantly to see a wide variety of films using previews, synopsis diving, and random serendipity to discover the best of the best, but have somehow missed the most well loved highlights of the festival (as judged by the Hot Docs 2010 audience award). This is, however, no slight against the consistently fantastic films we did manage to see. Out of the 10 most loved films by the audience, we managed to see just one, the fantastic Marwencol, an inspiring story of a hate crime victim who creates an eponymous 1/16th scale model Belgian town circa WWII and filled it with complex story lines in order to help resolve his anger and fear from a near death inducing beating. We also somehow managed to miss all of the films that won awards (again with the exception of Marwencol that won the HBO sponsored Emerging Artist Award). Most sadly, we missed the internationally critically acclaimed and massively sold out  A Film Unfinished, a daring deconstruction of an unfinished Nazi propaganda film that depicted the Jewish ghettos as happy and quaint residential communities, which won the festival’s top prize of Best International Feature. Other major award winners we did not see were The Oath, a character study of a once bodyguard and driver to Bin Laden, which won the Special Jury Prize for international feature, and In the Name of the Family, an exploration of honour killings of girls in North America that was named Best Canadian Feature.

So what did we managed to see? Over the eleven days of the festival we caught 9 films and it is a testament to the quality of the festival that despite all but one not being audience favourites or award winners they were all thought provoking, emotionally poignant, often funny and insightful, and powerful. As such, in the next few posts blogUT will review and dissect the slight portion of the 2010 edition of Hot Docs that we were lucky enough to experience. Today we start off after the jump with Marwencol and Talhotblond.

Marwencol (D: Jeff Malmberg; USA)

First up in our recap is the above mentioned documentary Marwencol that follows Mark Hogancamp’s self-directed therapy for a brutal beating he suffered due to being a cross-dresser. In recovery he created a model town alternate reality that he populated with fantastic characters like a time traveling Russian witch and idealized versions of himself and his loved ones. The town was and continues to be an innovative attempt by Hogancamp to resolve his psychological trauma for which his health insurance had repeatedly refused to provide therapy. Through the fabricated story lines of revenge and empowerment that he inhabited the town with, the documentary explores in an earnest (but not naive way) how Hogancamp used the scale models and alternate world to help him solidify and resolve the spiritual and emotional ramifications of being beaten nearly to death. At the same time, the film also aptly tracks the additional benefit of how the model building also helped him to physically recuperate and relearn basic skills lost to brain damage through the intricately controlled fine motor skills needed to build, paint and arrange them.

The film is, however, much more than about the model town and its metaphorical, psychological, and practical benefits and is ultimately a much wider encompassing yet intimate character study. For a film with such peculiar subject matter which could have easily become patronizing and condescending, Marwencol is a confident and accomplished debut for director Jeff Malmberg who steers it past saccharine into a deftly handled and compassionate study into the remarkable individual of Hogancamp. While the premise invokes a nutshell criticism of large social debates of tolerance and hate crimes, the failure of inadequate and profit focused health insurance in the United States, and artistic commodification of the socially marginalized and dispossessed, Malmberg manages to avoid preaching or rehashing old rhetoric while still managing to explore the effects of all three by focusing on the individuals involved and the personal effects these larger social issues have on them. What emerges most strikingly from the film is the emotional strength and self awareness of Hogancamp, in his refusal to descend into bitterness and bravely strive towards a life of fulfillment and dignity despite the many hardships and limitations he has to overcome, and also the kindness, acceptance, and support of those around him. Wisely, Malmberg does not at first reveal why Hogancamp was beaten and only midway through the documentary reveals it was due to cross-dressing, allowing the audience to not only form a relationship to him as a person without any prejudice, but also allowing the audience to journey with Hogancamp as he slowly comes to terms and learns of why he was beaten since he himself remembers little of the events surrounding the beating. This adds poignancy to Hogancamp’s brave later embrace of who he was and is, and his refusal to let the beating and the fear to instill shame or dissuade his slow continual exploration of his cross-dressing.

The second stage of the film follows Hogancamp’s reactions to being “discovered” by the art world when New York art aficionados stumble across his photography that depicts the stories of his the model town. The film shows the fear and apprehension, but also the grace of Hogancamp as he is, after years of relative isolation and safety within a small community of loved ones, thrust into the New York city art scene. This second half of the film implicitly debates the nature of art, art as performance or personal reverie, and the potential benefits and disadvantages to those who have the title of art bestowed upon them from outside. Here the film also takes a very personal individual view of the process through depicting the tumultuous emotions that Hogancamp experiences in his debate on whether to embrace and take part in an art show of his work or to remain unknown and sheltered in the small town where he lives. Ultimately Marwencol is a testament to the strength that is necessary to rebuild a life of meaning after a devastating event and how meaning in whatever form it is embodied is essential to our sense of self and agency.

Talhotblond (D: Barbara Schroeder; USA)

Talhotblond is a story so sensational, convoluted, and tragic that one has trouble believing it truly happened rather than being just an episode of CSI. More than that, the fact that it is so unknown by the general public in today’s age of tabloid frenzy is almost incomprehensible. The documentary chronicles the sad evolution of an Internet love affair between a 40-something married with children man who re-imagines himself as an 18 year old marine, and a teenage girl that ends in murder and devastation for three families. There even is a last chapter reveal that is nothing less than scripted brilliance that juxtaposes the entire episode starkly and is further damning criticism to the dire desperate ennui of living in modern society. I won’t divulge here the details of the reveal so as not to destroy the effect and to help encourage people to watch this documentary.

Taking place in the deep south of the United States, Talhotblond, which is the screen name of the girl, reveals that truly the most addictive drug is that of the possibility of being someone else. Through one-on-one interviews of almost all of the individuals involved, pictures, and revealing snippets of thousands of pages of recovered IM texts and emails, the story slowly unfolds to show a lonely, unhappy man as he virtually gets deeply involved with an 18 year old girl and falls in love, becomes increasingly deluded and ultimately psychotic, fully collapsing into his fantasy persona and in a rage killing a competitor for the girl’s love. What is truly damning about the events covered is not that it is ultimately the fault of a single depressed and mentally unstable individual but the fact that all parties involved acted selfishly, arrogantly, and callously. In fact, the whole situation in its entirety is a brutal indictment on our society that is increasingly populated by deeply unhappy, angry, alienated individuals who feel powerless and worthless compared to an idealized paragon of being young, beautiful, and in love.

Personally, I had several grievances with the directorial choices in this film and while the documentary competently reveals the story, it almost does so in a fabricated way which distances the already sensational and unbelievable events even further. This was evidenced by the fits of laughter by the audience in wholly inappropriate places, especially if one remembers that the events depicted happened to real people. Several choices contribute to this effect but none were more distracting than the directorial choice to have the murdered competitor for the girl’s love, a 22 year old actual once marine, voiced by an actor who gives voice-overs throughout the film. The film is actually introduced and framed by this disembodied voice, reminiscent to similar cinematic choices exploited much more effectively and appropriately in films like American Beauty. In this way the director, Schroeder muddies the difference between a documentary and a tabloid expose. Other decisions such as having the IM and email text exchanges between the participants displayed on screen in neon blue or pink text in an advancing animation, the specifically structured and manipulated to achieve sensationalist effect final reveal rather than a more straightforward depiction, and the inclusion of the almost comically vague and meaningless philosophical musings of the case psychologist further detract from the experience. Ultimately the director should have trusted the subject of the documentary to be of enough interest by itself, which it clearly was, rather than have dressed it up with superficial effects.

Nicholas Philibert’s Nénette is a 70-minute film in which we constantly observe 40-year-old orangutan, Nénette, and her two orangutan companions, through the glass, in her captive habitat at a Paris zoo. Orangutans live to 30-35 years in the wild, so Nénette is quite old, but Philibert has us questioning, throughout the movie, if those extra years were worth the price of captivity.

Philibert puts us in the place of a visitor to the zoo, constantly gazing at but never interacting with Nénette through the glass. Nénette, for the most part, provides little entertainment, sitting still with a world-wearied expression on her face. Philibert fills the soundtrack with voiceovers of zoo visitors talking about Nénette, watching Nénette, pondering Nénette’s thoughts, and sometimes making absurd assumptions. At seventy minutes, the film feels rather long. We are desperate to see Nénette do something -anything – and in the absence of action, we make up a story about how Nénette must be feeling and thinking, just as the zoo visitors do.

Orangutans share many anatomical similarities to humans such as the hairless face and sunken eyes. But they also have a large lump below the neck; many visitors were fascinated by Nénette’s lump, which is not a breast, but is not comparable to any other part of human anatomy. Visitors gawk at the lump, as do we. The lump’s purpose is not explained until very near the end: it stores a large amount of air, which when appropriately compressed, allows orangutans to let out a very loud noise which can be heard from miles away, to warn other orangutans of danger.

We never hear Nénette make this loud cry; in captivity, she has no need to use it, the zookeeper reminds us. We learn that Nénette has had three mates, and has borne four babies, one of which still resides with her. A few years ago, when Nénette lost her third mate, the zookeepers decided to give her a break and not find her another mate; they keep her son with her for company. However, because they are uncertain of whether incest is forbidden in orangutan society, Nénette is on the birth control pill, which is slipped into her yogurt each day. They want to ensure there is no chance that Nénette will be impregnated by her son and they have no way to tell if she is yet menopausal: menstruation leaves no traces of blood in orangutans, we are told.

The film questions the ethics behind keeping animals captive and human selfishness in wanting to be able to observe these animals at all times. Yet it is interesting to use Nénette, an orangutan, as the subject for such an argument, as she has many human characteristics: we watch her unscrew the lid to a jug of tea and drink her tea with her yogurt, switching between the two as a human would. The zookeepers emphasize how orangutans – and Nénette – are very emotionally expressive and perceptive: you can tell Nénette’s feelings in her eyes. Yet orangutans are less communicative than other apes, like chimpanzees: orangutans have no capacity for speech or sounds aside from the one loud cry.

While we hear reference to the zookeepers’ relationships with Nénette, we never see their interactions together. This makes it ever-increasingly difficult to judge Nénette’s full situation and social environment for we only see her in her “natural” habitat with the other orangutans, and largely, during visiting hours. This, of course, is the point, as we are meant to be put in the shoes of the visitors. I found it disappointing, however, that with an opportunity to show and teach interesting things about orangutans in a film, the film gave us little information about Nénette, about orangutans, and about how humans form or fail to form relationships with the orangutans. This is a large missed opportunity.

Nénette is an interesting character but watching her sit calmly becomes monotonous after an hour, despite the interesting, if somewhat repetitive, commentary. Perhaps Philibert would have done better using the same material in a short rather than a feature length film. The point would be made, the scenes would be interesting, and you would leave the theatre wanting more rather than yawning just a little. That being said, this is a very well-made, very well-shot film: the small, enclosed environment never becomes tiresome. Some of the shots of Nénette are utterly gorgeous and fascinating and the audio voiceovers are well chosen and manage to tell a story. Nevertheless, it need not have been so long, and would likely have been more effective and poignant as a short film.

What: Kings of Pastry
When: Friday, May 7th @ 11AM
Where: The ROM theatre
How: The film is sold out for the screening so you’ll need to show up AT LEAST 1 hour early and stand in the rush line. It’s during the day so it’ll be free for students if you can get in. HotDocs keeps a set of tickets for press (like me), so once these are unclaimed (15 minutes before the film) they’ll start to let the Rush line in — bring something to sit on and to read!

Every year, HotDocs selects a few documentary gems, which later become great successes (like Helvetica from 2007) and seeing them at HotDocs before they are known is always a pleasure. The trick, however, is finding these films beneath the large mass of films by neophyte directors with inchoate ideas and the ridiculous notion that documentary filmmaking is merely the art of pointing a camera at anything “real”.

So far, I’ve seen two big winners at this year’s festival: Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker’s Kings of Pastry and the great Steven Soderbergh’s And Everything is Going Fine. Kings of Pastry plays again this Friday at 11AM at the ROM: it is RUSH only so show up early (no later than an hour in advance if you want to make sure you get into the movie) but it is worth the wait.

Kings of Pastry is about a group of sixteen chefs who are finalists for the MOF (Meilleurs Ouvriers de France) competition, a French competition for pastry chefs to show their cooking prowess and earn the very prestigious striped collar. Kings of Pastry focuses on three chefs: we watch them prepare for the competition, revise their pastry inventions, and finally participate in the competition.

The process by which these chefs craft pastries is utterly fascinating: a feat of structural engineering. A delicious dessert is a prerequisite for success but by no means a guarantee; presentation is equally important. One of the challenges of the MOF competition is to make a sugar sculpture, which, by nature of the material, is extremely fragile, meaning the MOF candidates must be very inventive (and careful) to ensure that their pastry is structurally sound and does not break when moved. Structural integrity is This also an issue for every other pastry, and the chefs achieve this by carefully planning and considering, at minimum, the ingredients, the thickness of materials, and the cooking time required.

Perhaps even more fascinating than the structural engineering behind these pastries is the iterative design process – yes, design process – that these chefs undergo to arrive at the perfect pastry. In one scene, we see five different versions of the same puff pastry, each with different arrangements, as one of the chefs tries to decide which pastry he wants to present at the competition. Each participant must make a large wedding cake sculpture, and the one chef we follow most closely designs and redesigns the cake many times, largely in an effort to ensure that it can support its own weight.

Although Kings of Pastry chronicles a competition, it does not feel forced or scripted and it does not follow a formula like American Idol, to use a crude example. Hegedus and Pennebaker focus on the story behind making the pastries and the art and dedication that goes into this trade, with many mouth-watering shots of these gastronomical works of art, which is absolutely mesmerizing. Last year, Nora Ephron made another movie for the epicure, Julie and Julia, about the trials and tribulations of two ambitious chefs and featured many delectable shots of gourmet French cuisine; Kings of Pastry does an equally good job of photographing food and celebrating the epicure culture, though it focuses on the story behind that special food group, dessert that has its own separate compartment in everyone’s stomach. Kings of Pastry, like Julie and Julia, celebrates the art of cooking and it’s sure to leave you craving an incredibly fancy French pastry dessert by the end of the film.

Steven Soderbergh’s film, And Everything is Going Fine, is a continuation of Soderbergh’s obsession with the actor/performer Spaulding Gray. Soderbergh made Gray’s Anatomy in 1996, which was an eighty-minute film version of one of Gray’s monologues. And Everything is Gone Fine is essentially a mash-up of old recordings of Gray’s various monologue performances interspersed with the occasional personal interview (between, presumably, Soderbergh and Gray) and television interview.

Spalding Gray is a fascinating storyteller who uses stories from his own life as fodder for – or, rather, exact material for – his stage performances, which usually take the form of ninety minute monologues. Soderbergh cuts together a myriad of these stories to give a fairly good and broad picture of Spalding Gray the storyteller and the man. The intent behind the interviews seems to be to try to establish, if it is even possible, what the difference is between Gray’s stage persona and his day-to-day persona. Gray tends to be very blunt and candid in his monologues, discussing everything from his mother’s suicide to his explorations into homosexuality. This begs the question: are there any stories that are too personal for him to tell? Unfortunately, this idea is somewhat inchoate and not very well explored, which makes the film somewhat unsatisfying.

I also felt that the film dragged a little bit and I was looking at my watch by the one-hour mark. This may be largely because the film was almost entirely non-stop interviews with or monologues by Spalding Gray: no family members, friends, or co-workers were interviewed to give different perspectives. Granted, Gray’s monologues are engaging so this approach is not wholly flawed. Nevertheless, I found that the more I heard Gray speak, the more interesting and damaged he seemed to be, the more sympathetic he was, and yet, simultaneously, the more he became unlikable. Gray had a difficult life, which may help to explain some of his hurtful and cruel actions towards the people he was most intimate with, such as cheating on his wife repeatedly. But the more details I discovered about Gray’s various indiscretions, the more repulsive I found him, the less interested I was in hearing his point of view on sex, love, and death: his favourite topics.

I should probably note that I am an extremely big Soderbergh fan. I have seen all of his films – with the exception of Gray’s Anatomy and the unwatchable Full Frontal – and Soderbergh is a really creative and innovative director and storyteller. It is, therefore, no surprise that And Everything is Going Fine looks like it has been made by a pro, even with the many VHS-quality scenes. The film is well-paced, well-cut, and thoughtfully put together. This is also Soderbergh’s first documentary. He knows how to tell a story but perhaps has not fully mastered this medium yet. Nevertheless, some of the best documentaries were made by filmmakers who did not start in documentary filmmaking (Sydney Pollack’s Sketches of Frank Gehry, Wehrner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World) because it takes a filmmaker to understand how to tell a story on film. Documentary filmmaking is more than just filming real people and real thing; telling a story and doing so with good cinematography is essential. Soderbergh’s And Everything is Going Fine is a flawed but good film that tells a good story and I look forward to future documentaries by Soderbergh.

On Friday the 29th, Hot Docs, North America’s largest and most important documentary festival, revved up for its 17th year. In the past, documentaries have been stigmatized as boring, staid, and educational in the worst “this is a bad 50’s educational school video” sense. However, reality is indeed often weirder than the more popular and box office-grossing fiction.

As each permutation of reality unfolds on tabloid websites, increasingly for better or worse, documentaries have continued to give greater depth and context to both the sensational and the often-forgotten. Documentaries have become better, more potent, diverse, and engaging than ever. Hot Docs as a festival has also evolved, becoming an event for world and Canadian debuts of new and challenging films while increasingly trying to dispel the unglamorous past of documentaries by reaching out to younger viewers.

This year, Hot Docs continues its very successful Late Night Series of documentaries screened at 11:59pm almost every night of the festival at the Bloor Cinema for the low, low price of $5 to be purchased at the venue day of. This includes some rarely seen but seminal films like 1991 The Year Punk Broke, which catalogs Sonic Youth’s 1991 tour with featured performance footage of The Ramones, Dinosaur Jr., and rare early Nirvana.

Also being screened in the late night series is the sure-to-be-soon-cult-film The People vs. George Lucas. The film is about… well I give you one guess: *cough* Prequels *cough* and the ummm reactions of fans and critics, commentators, devotees and haters alike. If $5 is still not enough value for you, Hot Docs has an All-you-can-eat Late Night Pass that gets you one ticket to every post-11 pm screening (9 in total).

Hot Docs has a sadly-promoted perk for students where every film screened before 6 pm is free to students with student cards. All you have to do is show up to the venue box office beforehand on the day of the screening and ask for a free student ticket.

This year, Hot Docs has also partnered with Brooklyn based Rooftop Films to screen films on — surprise — a rooftop. Well, more like the top open air level of a parking garage in Yorkville. The Rooftop Docs Series will feature three nights of films under the stars including a series of shorts and the aptly fitting The Parking Lot Movie, a highly-rated film about vastly over-educated (apparently including a university professor) parking attendants that have made the job a spiritual quest. Getting on the digital boat as well, Hot Docs now offers purchase and viewing of past Hot Docs’ favourites on iTunes.

Check out these film reviews to help you pick which ones you want to see:

• Eye Weekly
• Now Magazine
• blogTO
• Torontoist
• Toronto Star
• Globe and Mail
• National Post

BlogUTs picks for Sunday are the light romantic comedy Tricheuse/So Woman! at 7:15PM (reviewed below), the great Costa Gravas’s (director of the chilling but brilliant Missing) drama, East of Eden at 3:00PM, and Le Petit Nicolas, a family-appropriate comedy at 5:15PM, based on the nostalgic children’s books by René Goscinny, which I enjoyed very much  as a child.

Tricheuse (or So Woman! by its English title) has a recycled plot, very similar to Peter Weir’s Green Card, which itself was nothing new, about Clemence, who convinces her immigrant piano tuner, Farid, whose name she can’t remember or pronounce, to bring his two daughters to live with her so she can fake being married in order to secure her apartment and a lucrative litigation job which she needs to salvage her career. Since the piano tuner can barely afford electricity, he gets something out of the deal. Of course, they fight initially as their personalities and cultures clash: she is self-absorbed, superficial, and has a proclivity for boy toys, while he is the ultimate family man who cooks and cares for his daughter. But in the end, they fall in love, and all the conventions of a romantic comedy are met.

Tricheuse is a sweet film and a funny film and there are many scenes of mistaken identities worth a watch. For example, when Clemence’s landlord asks what Farid does for a living, she makes up a wild lie that he is a great sculptor; the building then requests that he make a sculpture for the courtyard and so Farid uses bicycles, toasters, and other objects to craft something similar to one of Clemence’s modern art sculptures in her apartment. When Clemence teaches the eldest how to write an essay, her teacher claims that plagiarism must be at work, so Clemence comes into the school to defend her as a parent and a lawyer. There are also moments of drama when Clemence gets Farid’s daughters to open up to her about their mother and they bond, though sometimes these feel a little emotionally forced.

Tricheuse is not a great film, but despite its predictability, it has some unexpected sophistication and turns, which make it a light enjoyable see for a Sunday afternoon.

Cinefranco, one of the best small film festivals in Toronto, showcases French cinema from France, Canada, and other French-speaking countries that often won’t play in cinemas outside of France or Quebec. This year the festival has moved to the AMC Yonge & Dundas, a much better venue which provides comfortable seating, great screens, and stadium seating – you can still read the subtitles should someone tall choose to sit in front of you. Past years have showcased such gems as La Naissance des Pieuvres (2008), Ensemble C’est Tout (2008), and Peindre ou Faire L’Amour (2007). This year’s festival offers up a wide variety of films from comedy to drama.

Today’s schedule included a lovely laugh-out-loud comedy from France, Le Coach, about a life coach, Max (Richard Berry) who, in an effort to pay off his large gambling debts, takes on a job to coach a hopeless engineer, Patrick Jean-Paul Rouve), into becoming a good manager who can seal the deal with a difficult and important client. The engineer is a mess – from his bad clothes, to his total push-over attitude, to his tendency to get incredibly frazzled whenever having an important conversation, be it with a boss or a beautiful woman. And since the engineer’s bosses erroneously believe him to be the nephew of the CEO, the life coach is forbidden from revealing his true identity and forced instead to train the engineer under the guise of being a 50-year-old intern doing photocopies. Of course, hilarity ensues.

Max begins by trying to teach Patrick how to behave around women, to spark confidence, and coaches him on a date with the office beauty Vanessa (Anne Marivin). Patrick is completely pathetic: he complains about the wait when Vanessa arrives late, he very loudly slurps his coke through the straw, and by following Max’s advice to “observe and imitate” Vanessa’s actions, Patrick ends up twirling his hair and running his finger across his lips. It’s embarrassing to watch him, and yet, for some miraculous reason, Vanessa likes him for exactly who he is.

Patrick is no better at office politics than he is with women, so similar gags occur. A cruel ambitious colleague in the office works as the evil villain, attempting to sabotage Patrick’s every move, and Max, the man who knows how to do just about everything except clean up his life and make a friend, helps with the rest. The movie is predictable: they bag the client, Patrick bags the girl, Max pays off his debts, and Max learns to make a friend in Patrick while fixing his relationship with his wife. But the point here is the journey, and the journey kept me smiling and laughing throughout. Definitely look for this one on DVD, and in the meantime, check out some of the other comedies that Cinefranco has to offer!