October 3-4, 2010
Mao's
Last Dancer
Director:
Bruce Beresford
Cast:
Chi
Cao, Bruce Greenwood, Kyle MacLachlan, Amanda Schull
Run
Time:
117
minutes Country:
Australia
Year:
2010
Language:
English, Mandarin with English subtitles
An
official selection of the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival®
and brought to the screen by
acclaimed director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Black Robe),
Mao’s Last Dancer tells the inspiring true story of Li Cunxin.
Born in
1961, Li lived with his six brothers and impoverished parents in China’s
Shandong Province. His family was destined to be labourers, but when
recruiters from Madame Mao’s ballet academy in Beijing swept through his
single-room school in search of untapped talent to mould into the future
leading lights of the Cultural Revolution, eleven-year-old Li was selected,
and committed to a strange new life of stringent training, both artistic and
ideological.
Practicing by candlelight and jumping up stairs with sandbags tied to his
ankles to build his strength while his peers slept, Li (excellently played
as a young adult by dancer Chi Cao) became the school’s top dancer.
Discovered by Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood, Star Trek, I’m Not There),
the artistic director of the Houston Ballet and part of the first American
cultural delegation to Communist China, Li is given the opportunity to be
one of the first exchange students allowed by Mao’s regime to go to America.
After a brief bout with culture shock – Houston’s malls and so-called
Chinese restaurants were alien spheres to him – he quickly fell in love with
America’s freedom and one of its winsome daughters. When his exchange ended,
Li refused to return to China, leading to a dramatic standoff at the
consulate that made headlines across the United States.
Mao’s
Last Dancer
features
some of the most viscerally potent dance ever captured in a fiction film. It
also reminds us of the sacrifice ideological defectors make, and of a
not-so-distant time when artistic freedom was a human-rights issue –
certainly relevant given recent international headlines about nations trying
to control the flow of ideas and artists across their borders. Personal
passions, it seems, can almost always trump the political if you are
willing to go the distance to find your life.
“The themes may soar but
everything else - the dialogue, the performances, the direction, the
dancing itself - is credibly grounded. That makes for a very pleasing
contrast. Not many movies bring their uplift down to earth.” - Rick Groen,
The Globe and Mail
October 17-18, 2010
I Am Love
Director:
Luca Guadagnino
Cast:
Tilda Swinton, Flavio Parenti, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo
Delbono
Run
Time:
120
minutes
Country:
Italy
Year:
2010
Language:
Italian
with English subtitles
Watch the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhbTeBneRVU
An official selection of the 2009 Toronto International Film
Festival®, I Am Love moves through the cultivated world of a wealthy
and distinguished Milanese family. Exquisitely shot, beautifully paced and
conceived, it is a film of ritual and order, centered on a massive mansion
whose airy rooms convey the power and stature of the Recchi family.
The story begins as the family gathers to celebrate the birthday of
its patriarch, the man who built their small empire. Handsome grandson
Edoardo (Flavio Parenti) introduces his new girlfriend to the family; his
sister, Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher, Quiet Chaos), presents a
painting she has made to her grandfather; a young man who beat the
unbeatable Edoardo in a race earlier in the day makes a surprise appearance
on the doorstep; and finally, the grandfather announces his succession plan
to his family. All of these events mark the beginning of a narrative that
sees the carefully controlled, hyper-refined sphere of the Recchis come
under increasing strain. Slowly, but inexorably, a series of apparently
small, almost innocuous, transgressions begins to unsettle the veneer of
manners and etiquette. Edoardo’s parents’ relationship undergoes its first
strains, the stranger that topped him in the race turns out to be a central
character in the drama, and his sister’s life follows its own striking and
separate path. Finally, the family business that is the source of all their
wealth and comfort falls under siege.
Director Luca Guadagnino has made a superb film that touches on
many different complexities. Sexual and class politics play a key role, as
wonderfully controlled moments of passion and emotion suddenly trouble the
surface placidity. Featuring a cast headed by Tilda Swinton (Michael
Clayton, Burn After Reading), speaking Italian and Russian, this is a
film in which tradition and modernity collide. A stunning work.
“ A
gorgeously costumed and styled piece of work.” – Peter Bradshaw, The
Guardian
November 7-8, 2010
Please Give
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Cast: Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, Amanda Peet, Rebecca Hall
Run Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Watch the trailer:
http://showhype.com/video/please-give-trailer-hd-2010/
The holy
trinity of our consumer society: The wanting, the getting, the guilt.
Nicole Holofcener’s new movie, Please Give, is a complex contemporary fable
about a group of New Yorkers and the things they fancy: The right jeans, a
bigger apartment, a younger woman, a decent friendship. It’s a wonderful
movie full of people you wish you knew in real life, and like most of
Holofcener’s movies, it’s a remarkable combination of comedy and tragedy.
Catherine Keener stars as Kate. She and her husband Alex
(Oliver Platt) run a vintage furniture store in a trendy neighbourhood in
Manhattan. Much of what they sell comes from the homes of dead people; they
buy a lot of these items from the impatient adult children of the deceased,
who view their parents’ hoarded goods as trash. Kate feels guilty about
buying a lot of this furniture for next to nothing; then she feels guilty
for selling it in the store at high prices.
Kate is a bundle of guilt. She’s endlessly handing out cash to homeless
people and obsessively searching for just the right volunteer position.
Kate’s need to do good provides some of the blackest black humour in this
very dark comedy.
Living next to Kate and her little family is an elderly woman who is cared
for by her two granddaughters, played by Amanda Peet and Rebecca Hall. These
women and Kate’s family have an odd relationship, because Kate has purchased
the old woman’s apartment — and when she dies, Kate can expand her living
space. It’s a ghoulish but not unusual real estate transaction in Manhattan.
And it causes friction, as you’d expect. Relationships between the two
families become more complex still when Amanda Peet’s character starts
flirting with Kate’s husband.
Please Give isn’t about much, but it’s about everything — sex and money, for
starters, as well as what we value, what we possess, what we throw away.
Holofcener’s story is about growing up and it’s about living and dying and
what counts in the end. For all that serious material, it’s funny and it’s
unpredictable.
Holofcener’s characters are fully alive, thanks to her writing and her deft
casting. Please Give is full of lovely little actor surprises, such as the
magnificent Lois Smith, or a cameo from Sarah Vowell, or the Dick Van Dyke
Show’s Ann Guilbert, here playing the cranky old lady next door.
Holofcener has made four interesting films for very little money (including
2006’s Friends With Money, 2001’s Lovely & Amazing and 1996’s Walking and
Talking). Lately, she has expressed a wish to work with bigger budgets, and
one can only hope Please Give is the film that will help grant her wish.
November 21 - 22, 2010
Wasteland
Director:
Lucy Walker
and Karen Harley
Run Time:
99 minutes
Country:
USA
Year:
2010
Language:
English
Ratings:
ON PG / BC NR / AB
NR / SK NR / MB PG / PQ NR / Maritimes NR
Watch the trailer:
http://www.wastelandmovie.com/ndxz-studio/site/flash/trailer.html
Audiences at this year’s
Sundance Film Festival®
and Hot Docs Festival
were absolutely floored by Waste Land, Lucy Walker’s (The Devil’s
Playground) documentary about the people who survive on refuse from the
world’s largest landfill site, outside Rio de Janeiro.
Artist Vik Muniz is
the primary subject, as the film follows him to the Jardim Gramacho dump to
employ the landfill’s inhabitants to work on an art project. But as we meet
these “catadores,” it is they who steal the film’s spotlight. Resilient and
extremely innovative in their ability to recycle almost anything, the locals
embrace Muniz and his project in a surprisingly sophisticated manner. After
all, they’ve been ferociously reading cast-off books from the likes of
Machiavelli and Nietzsche over the years. As Muniz becomes increasingly
close to the catadores, they become the inspiration for his art, while they
in turn, are inspired by their involvement in the artistic process. It is
this rare, dually-illuminating scenario which captures significant media
attention, catapulting the once faceless garbage pickers to international
fame.
The film is extremely
well-crafted and never focuses on the political issues at the expense of the
individuals who inhabit the dump, and the use of time-lapse photography to
demonstrate the laborious creation of Muniz’s art is used to great effect.
The tone of the film is uplifting overall, giving the audience real hope
for many of the people living in a corner of the world that rarely sees any
attention at all.
“A joy to watch…” –
John DeFore, The Hollywood Reporter
