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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Quiet Deep Trailer for 'In The Fog'

 




































One of those trailers that, despite the inherent restrictions of the form, speaks of sureness and depth of story.

I found snippets of reviews at an Aussie site, Sharmill Films:

• FOUR STARS ‘In the Fog is an intense, slow-burning and haunting drama.’   Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

 

• FOUR STARS ‘In the Fog is a war movie that foregrounds the emotions of individuals over the spectacle of battle’ Geoff Andrew, Time Out

 

• ‘Loznitsa knows that war exists and won’t go away; rather than indulging in patriotic or pacifistic platitudes, he tries to show what it might do to our souls. And, in this writer’s opinion, he succeeds.’   Geoff Andrew, Time Out

 

• ‘a universal meditation on the human condition, with war as an allegory for life, and fog as a metaphor for mankind’s stumbling progress into the unknown. …it is ultimately worth the journey.’    Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter

 

• ‘a beautifully rigorous piece which will delight cineastes’  Fionnuala Halligan, Screen

 

• ‘In The Fog is a carefully-calibrated three-hander from Sergei Loznitsa, its slow, precise rhythms playing out to compelling effect.’  Fionnuala Halligan, Screen

 

• ‘this very Russian tragedy is a jewel which will surely only burnish with time.’   Fionnuala Halligan, Screen

 

• ‘Classical in a good way, In the Fog explores the moralities of wartime with restraint and exacting execution’   Leslie Felperin, Variety

 

• ‘a delicately complex work of shifting perspectives, and… a contemplation on narrative and the act of storytelling.’   Jonathan Romney, Sight & Sound

 

• ‘The film is extraordinarily acted’   Jonathan Romney, Sight & Sound

• ‘among the handful of truly eloquent and moving films here [at Cannes]’   Jonathan Romney, Sight & Sound

Very convincing. Playing TIFF.























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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.

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• 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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