Slugbaby
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I don't normally pay attention to the nationality of a film. But BCBC was just SO CANADIAN, and that was integral to the story, that it was unusually relevant.
In a Film Festival, the nationality is the hardest thing to bypass and miss. As an example, a few years back, an Iranian film was making the rounds ... "Divorce Iranian Style" ... and of course, the audience was next to nill, and it was an incredible piece of work, that showed a lot more about the men and women, than just a divorce and what not ... it was not exactly a film per se, but sort of a news story following through things, and the revelations were insane, to you and I, the Western minds!
Likewise, one film that has helped me a lot was "The Island on Bird Street", which was kinda buried as a "child film" since it dealt mainly with the survival of a kid and his friendship with a mouse ... and in the end, it was not about the mouse ... it was a bout survival in WW2 ... right in the middle of it. And it was a heck of a film, but I was the only reviewer that saw the film for what it was ... instead of a silly story for kids, which (in this case) it really wasn't!
There are other films that I have had a lot of appreciation for ... Pedro Olea's The Fencing Master (where the fudge is a subtitled English version of that?) is the best fencing film EVER done, and makes the Hollywood guys look like mannequins! Carlos Saura's Carmen, is an updated version of the story, this time, the new dance against the old dance ... and it is fiery and off its rocker ... "you dance with your eyes, not your ass!" ... is a line that really busts out all over this film! And the camera? Yeah! All over! Saura's no stranger to dance in his films, having done many of them by this time including a trilogy by Lorca (including Blood Wedding) and later he did "Tango" and other dance films, that are also hypnotic in their own way. For me, though "Carmen" stands out, because in many ways it is the perfect view/idea of the changes in the arts in the past many years! The Dutch family of films are weird and mostly handheld, but they have a nice individual touch, and usually totally off the wall stories. The French, as usual, have their "I don't give a damn" humor all over some of these, and on occasion an Epic film full of costumes and such. "All the Mornings of the World" was sold out here and needed some more showings to appease the folks at the Festival.
The other one that is big here, is Pedro Almodovar, though I think he has fallen to really trivial, and unable to put together a story that is not only fun to do, but also crazy. For me, "Talk to Her" is his last good film, but nothing like the previous 4 or 5 before, with "High Heels" taking the cake as the most fun film in that whole listing.
Other than that, I have been trying to have the Film Center here do a retrospective of Luis Bunuel, with his really early stuff also shown ... a lot of which is not even available on the market, except in cheap Mexican DVD's with nothing in them, and not even subtitles! Another film maker whose early stuff is fun to watch is Jean-Luc Godard, because he breaks every single anything in film history intentionally and makes fun of it on top of it! This, of course, throws people off really bad, since most viewers are so stuck on "entertainment" and "action" that seeing something like this, takes away their enjoyment of the film.
Orson Welles, would be a great one to do a retro on ... just for a chance to see "Chimes at Midnight" again, would be worth it all for me. But very few people know much about him, except "Citizen Kane" which is a great film, but hardly his best!
Yay for Film Festivals ... I can actually see a Canadian Film!