Poster for 'Finding Vivian Maier'

There's been some talk about this doc but no poster. Well, here one is.

'Finding Vivian Maier' may seem like one of those films you can skip. The title just doesn't have a hook. You can't really tell what it's about. But, rest assured, this is one of the most fascinating stories you'll ever hear.

Maier was a nanny for a family in Chicago in the 1950s. She had, as one would expect, a very quiet life. Never married, didn't have friends, had little money. She did, however, take photographs. Some of the best street work I've ever seen. Some of the best street work that has ever been shot. She also never saw most of her pictures. In fact, much of her film wasn't even developed and remained stored in boxes she took with her from job to job, city to city.

She created about 100,000 images. This, remember, was before digital imagery. Maier shot thousands of rolls of film, each containing 12 exposures. If you haven't seen her work, here's a few shots.

It goes on and on like this. One after the other. Is it thousands or tens of thousands? Astonishing.

You can see more at a site devoted to exhibiting her photographs.

The documentary is directed by John Maloof and Charlie Siskel. It will show at the Toronto International Film Festival and has secured distribution by Sundance Selects.




















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Story Behind 'The Sessions'

Photo by Liz Hafalia/SF Chronicle

This from the SF Chronicle write-up of January 10, 2011 about sex surrogate Cheryl Cohen-Greene (pictured, who is played by Helen Hunt in 'The Sessions') about her work with Mark O'Brien:

• "He told me nobody had ever touched him other than to bathe him, dress him or do a medical procedure. He said that he felt like he was on the outside of a fine restaurant, looking in the window. Everybody in there is having a feast, but he'll never be able to taste that food."

Here's an interview with Hunt from TIFF.



A poem by O'Brien.

The pay is lousy,
no vacations or sick leave,
and the compliments …
You’d rather do without them.

On the plus side, you’re exempt from military service,
get to watch lots of TV
and pay half price at the movies.

They’re out there, my public, dying to ask me what happened to you,
wondering how I pee
and using me as proof

that God is just
and punishes only the wicked.

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Trailer for 'Fin' (The End)

"The end is closer than you think."

I saw a trailer for this a few months back and knew it was one to watch for. Directed by Jorge Torregrossa, 'Fin' will play TIFF. Here's a bit from their write-up:

• As the film begins, a group of friends who have not seen each other for twenty years meet up for a weekend at a remote cabin. Fond reminiscences soon turn to bitter recriminations, however, as the former friends volley blame at each other for an incident long past that none has been able to forget. The tense atmosphere becomes more ominous when they discover that this impromptu reunion has been engineered by the one member of the group who has not shown up: a friend they once referred to as "The Prophet," whom most of the group abandoned when he went into treatment for psychiatric problems. 

• As the reunion approaches its boiling point, a series of inexplicable events occur. All power goes out; clocks and watches freeze at twenty past midnight; cellphones go dead and cars don't start. When the group sets out on foot in search of help, they discover nothing but abandoned homes and vehicles; there is not a single other human being in sight. As the friends desperately wander through the darkness, surrounded by a natural world that now seems to be closing in menacingly upon them, one by one their group gets steadily smaller — and it soon becomes apparent that survival will depend not just on braving the elements, but on facing up to the repressed memories and unspoken guilt that each carries within them.

Yeah, that's something to chew on. The kind of movie you watch at home, with the lights down and phones turned off. Looking forward, and hoping for a Hollywood remake.

Here's a new trailer -- same as the previous one but with subtitles.























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Poster/Trailer for 'I Declare War'

A curious one. Very good poster, off-beat yet compelling trailer. Scheduled at TIFF. Here's a bit of their write-up:

• The neighbourhood kids have been playing war games in the forest all summer, but today there's something different in the air. The rules are the same: no moving base camp; when you’re shot you cannot move until you count ten steamboats; a grenade kills you; you lose when the other general captures your flag.

...

• I Declare War, Robert Wilson and Jason Lapeyre's fascinating, virtually uncategorizable action film about the war games children play, dials up memories of Richard Brooks' Lord of the Flies and Lindsay Anderson’s If..., and like those films it charts the boundaries between innocence and experience, savagery and imagination. But where those films maintained a certain distance from their characters, I Declare War drops us into its pint-sized heroes' mindsets. Wilson and Lapeyre alternate between reality and fantasy, with homemade toy guns replaced with far deadlier-looking AK-47s, and conversations that don’t actually occur

 

• The result is a film that may affect viewers in wildly divergent ways, combining both horror and comedy, mining humour from the notion of a kid pretending to be an adult without any true understanding of the implications of what they’re saying. The effect is similar to that of a Roald Dahl story or some of Donald Barthelme’s more sardonic stuff: unsettling and slyly humourous, with some very sinister undercurrents. I Declare War signals the emergence of two significant new talents on the Canadian scene, and introduces a startlingly skilled troupe of young actors.

Worth a look.

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Trailer for 'Daydream Nation'

Very nicely put together

A.O. Scott At TIFF

Keira Knightley arrives at the premiere of 'The Duchess' at TIFF. A.O. Scott compiled an audio slideshow from the film fest.

I'm So Comfortable With You

Peter Guber and Peter Bart with Keira Knightley at TIFF re: how she selects projects.

Roger Ebert On Juno

The story of how the screenplay for 'Juno' came to be, and the movie's popularity, is a breath of fresh air. Here's Roger Ebert's write-up from TIFF.