IMAX: Hubble 3D (Director: Toni Myers): I never get tired of space documentaries, especially when they’re as fascinating as Hubble 3D. The film’s breathtaking IMAX footage combined with images from Hubble create a unique cinematic experience.

The Hubble Space Telescope was put into orbit in April 1990 and is the only telescope designed to be serviced by astronauts. In May 2009, NASA sent the crew of the Space Shuttle Atlantis to make vital repairs and upgrades to Hubble. Five spacewalks were required and each of them was captured by an IMAX 3D camera operated by the astronauts.

Director of photography, James Neihouse trained the astronauts for 8 months on basic cinematography and how to use the cumbersome IMAX 3D cameras (they weigh over 250 lb). A roll of IMAX film runs 5,000 feet, weighs 54 pounds and runs 8 minutes. With only one roll of film there was zero margin for error.

During a Q&A session I asked Neihouse if he was happy with the camera work of the astronauts. He said he was “very pleased with the footage” and ended up using about 90% of it in the final film.

Aside from the spacewalk footage, the launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis is spectacular and puts the viewer right on the launch pad. We’ve all seen Shuttle launches before but not like this! The sound recording of the launch is also incredible and required quite a number of microphones (several mics were incinerated or blown trying to record the takeoff).

The thing that impressed me most about this film were the images captured by Hubble. 20 years of Hubble data was used to create some incredible 3D visualizations of several galaxies and solar systems.

“This is star travel, you’re right out there moving in space, said director Toni Myers. The IMAX experience really does make you feel like you’re floating in space. You quickly realize how small our planet and solar system is in the cosmos. I was truly blown away.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s name is featured prominently on the movie poster but his voiceover narration in the film is understated and works quite well. Director Toni Myers gets full marks for using Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s version of Over The Rainbow/What A Wonderful World in the soundtrack.

I should also mention that the I watched the IMAX version of the film at the Ontario Science Centre’s OMNIMAX® Theatre and not the IMAX 3D version of the film. The Ontario Science Centre has an IMAX Dome theatre that wraps around the viewer.

It was interesting to hear James Neihouse say that he enjoyed parts of the film more in an IMAX Dome theatre than the 3D version. I’m curious to see what the 3D version of the film looks like.

IMAX: Hubble 3D opens in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Diego and Denver on March 19th.

Official site of the film

(8/10)

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

IMAX: Hubble 3D

The Runaways (Director: Floria Sigismondi): I grew up just a few years after the members of The Runaways, and so not only did I listen to their music, but also to the music they grew up on. That being said, I had very reasonable expectations for this film. No disrespect to Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning, or director Floria Sigismondi, but I saw it as a film pitched at young women with no knowledge of the music or the era. All I was hoping was that the film would deliver the same energy and fun that the music did for me. Which is why I was so pleasantly surprised by the film’s careful reconstruction of the era, down to the tiniest details, as well as by the believable and energetic performances. Though it’s not in the same echelon as something like Almost Famous, The Runaways deserves to reach audiences far beyond the teenaged demographic.

The arc of a rock and roll movie is pretty standard. The band is formed, learns to play, performs in scruffy dives, achieves breakthrough success, gets into trouble with drugs, booze, and/or sex, begins to hate their success and each other, and then breaks up. Sigismondi doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel, but she does make sure that each stage of the standard rock and roll story feels authentic to the experience of one of the first all-girl rock groups in history. But this is also no straight-ahead girl power tract, for that wouldn’t be historically accurate.

In 1975, the glam rock movement was coming to an end. For the previous five years, male rockers had felt free to experiment with their styles and their sexuality, at least on stage. The success of androgynous rockers like Bowie and Marc Bolan had actually opened the door a crack for women to get into this previously boys-only territory. Performers like Suzi Quatro had ventured into guitar rock, but were always backed by male bands. So when we meet Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart) practicing electric guitar licks in her bedroom, her only career path seems to be to find some guys to play with. Except that’s not what she wants at all. When she spots producer Kim Fowley (a perfectly creepy Michael Shannon) outside Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco (an influential club owned by LA disc jockey Bingenheimer, a man worthy of his own film), she brashly approaches him with her idea for an all-girl rock band. He’s all over the idea, and puts together a four-piece band in short order. But he’s missing the vital piece, a frontwoman who is both sexy and glamorous. When he finds 15-year-old Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning), he gets all that with the added bonus of her “jailbait” status as forbidden fruit.

Earlier, we’d seen the awkward Cherie attempting to crawl out from under her older sister’s shadow. Her love for Bowie gives her a protective mask of glam style, and this is just the look Fowley, Jett, and the newly-christened Runaways are looking for. Sigismondi does an excellent job with both Jett and Currie’s “origin” stories, tapping into the deep feeling of being different from your peers that most creative people feel in high school. Despite their very different appearances and motives for joining the band, the girls quickly bond, with Jett’s interest obviously a little more than friendly.

Fowley is an absolute bastard, and we know early on that he cheats them out of their earnings. But he is dead-on when he tells them that they need to toughen up if they want to play in a man’s world. He has local kids collect trash (including metal cans and pieces of dog shit) to pelt them with while they perform. This isn’t a typical “girl group,” he tells them, they’re learning to play the cock rock that he feels men have been neglecting by wearing lipstick the past few years. “It’s not about women’s lib, it’s about women’s libido,” is his memorable credo for the band. They’re selling sex, the image of out-of-control underage bad girls, and he knows it will be huge. Turns out he’s right. But it will take the band years to get away from his control. For them, female self-empowerment starts as a gimmick and only gradually becomes a truth they can live by.

Their success leads to a recording contract and eventually a tour of Japan, where the wheels start to come off. Jealousies erupt over a sexy photo shoot Fowley arranged just for Currie, and her response is to retreat further into booze and drugs, despite the fact her own father is at home dying from his alcoholism. Though Jett had been her sometime lover, she feels abandoned by her when the band accuse her of being too self-centred. Tired of Fowley’s control and the band’s resentment, she quits.

For Jett, it’s only a temporary hiccup. She’s only ever wanted to play rock music, and her drive will take her to the top of the charts a few years later with her new band, the Blackhearts. Currie continues to struggle with her addictions and after failed attempts at both a solo singing and an acting career, leaves the entertainment business entirely. Years later, she writes her memoir, “Neon Angel,” on which this film is based. As well, Joan Jett served as an executive producer, so hopefully that means both women’s remembrances are accurately portrayed in the film.

Though the story is an old and somewhat predictable one, The Runaways tells it with sass and energy. It’s helped by an amazing soundtrack and as I mentioned above, by authentic performances, both dramatic and musical. Old rockers, take your daughters to this one. You’ll both love it.

Note: Though I haven’t seen the final poster, I assume they’ll use the above one with the stars in it. Sadly, we probably won’t get to see this amazing teaser poster in the theatres.

The Runaways opens in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal on March 19th, expanding nationwide on April 9th.

Official site of the film

(8/10)

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

The Runaways

Beyond Ipanema (Director: Guto Barra): Early on in this documentary about Brazilian music, David Byrne points out that unlike many other countries, Brazil’s principal export has been culture, especially music. The film patiently traces the influence of Brazilian music on North American culture beginning with Carmen Miranda’s first performance in New York City in 1939. Miranda’s string of films throughout the 1940s were immensely popular, and she always insisted on singing a few songs and saying a few lines of dialogue in Brazilian Portuguese. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, American jazz music was influenced by the sounds of bossanova, and a collaboration between Joao Gilberto and Stan Getz led to a huge hit song, “The Girl from Ipanema,” sung by Joao’s wife Astrud. Sergio Mendes and his band Brasil ’66 were also hugely popular in North America during the ‘60s.

Brazilian influence was dormant for nearly the next two decades until David Byrne’s Luaka Bop record label began releasing (or in many cases re-releasing) Brazilian artists in North America again, in the late ‘80s. Since that time, the influence has gone in both directions, with many artists utilizing “mashup” methods to incorporate different elements into their music. As many of the Brazilian commentators note, Brazil has a long history of ingesting outside influences and making them Brazilian, so the birth of DJ culture has been welcomed with open arms.

Unfortunately, the last 15 minutes of the film were unplayable on the screener I received, so my review will not be entirely complete, but my largest criticism of the film to that point is that there just wasn’t enough actual music. This was more of a problem with the classic artists of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and is likely the result of expensive licensing issues, but it detracts in a major way from the film. If any music documentary deserves more than talking heads, even ones as famous as Byrne, Devendra Banhart, and Gilberto Gil, it’s one about a musical culture as vibrant and alive as Brazil’s. Though I was able to note a few bands worth following up (CSS, Garotas Suecas, and almost-forgotten psychedelic pioneers Os Mutantes), I would have loved to see and hear more performances and fewer talking heads (and Talking Heads).

Official site of the film

(6/10)

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

Beyond Ipanema

Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life (Directors: Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski): From the makers of Madame Tutli-Putli comes another innovative short film with a rhyming title. Based on a story by Maurice Sendak, this short (24 minute) film will be included on the Blu-ray DVD release of Where the Wild Things Are, coming out this Tuesday here in Canada.

The story concerns a terrier named Jennie (voiced by Meryl Streep) who senses that something is missing in her life, even though she leads a pampered existence. “There must be more life than having everything,” she says, and sets out to find adventure. When she applies for the job of leading lady at the World Mother Goose Theatre, she’s told she needs more experience. It soon arrives when she hitches a ride with a feline milkman (a milkcat?) and gets a job as a nurse to a baby who won’t eat.

I haven’t read Sendak’s story, but it seems he is taking some familiar fairytale elements and mixing them together with a rather modern heroine. Jennie is bored and spoiled and always hungry. Her rude behaviour and selfishness don’t lend themselves to the reader’s (or viewer’s) sympathy. The directors use a mixture of puppetry and live action to create a very unsettling atmosphere, and soon the action turns frantic, dark, and a bit scary. Certainly younger children might be pretty frightened by this. Unfortunately, the story failed to draw me in and the puppetry never seemed quite as impressive as the stop-motion work the same filmmakers used to great effect in Madame Tutli-Putli. In the end, the film succeeded in creeping me out but never really engaged me.

Official site of the film

(7/10)

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

Higglety Pigglety Pop!

Toronto’s NFB Mediatheque (150 John St.) presents French-language films (with English subtitles) the first Thursday of each month, in partnership with Alliance Française de Toronto, le Bureau du Québec à Toronto, Cinéfranco, the Consulate General of France in Toronto and Théâtre Français de Toronto. Each film screens with one of the NFB’s acclaimed shorts preceding it, and tickets are a ridiculously cheap $6 for adults and $4 for students, seniors, NFB and Alliance Française members. Check out this upcoming schedule:

Thursday March 4, 2010 at 7:30pm

Persepolis (Directors: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi. 2007, France, 96 minutes.)
Winner, Jury Prize, 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

The poignant story of a young girl in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, based on the award-winning graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi.

preceded by
Conte de quartier (Director: Florence Miailhe. 2006, NFB, 16 minutes.)

A crazy day in a neighbourhood under reconstruction: seven characters and a rag doll are swept up in a dizzying chain of events.

Thursday April 1, 2010 at 7:30pm

L’âge de Tènébres (Days of Darkness) (Director: Denys Arcand. 2007, Canada, 104 minutes.)
Nominee, Best Motion Picture, 2008 Genie Awards.

Stuck between dream and reality, a civil servant reinvents himself as a celebrity, escaping from his quiet and desperate life.

preceded by
L’ondée (Rains) (Director: David Coquard-Dassault. 2008, NFB, 8 min.)
Jury Special Mention, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, 2009.

Everyone seeks refuge as a sudden rainstorm is unleashed on a city.

Thursday May 4, 2010 at 7:30pm

Entre les murs (The Class) (Director: Laurent Cantet, . 2008, France, 128 min.)
Winner, Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival, 2008.

A well-intentioned teacher’s classroom ethics are put to the test when his students begin to challenge his methods.

preceded by
Train en folie (Runaway) (Director: Cordell Barker, 2009, NFB, 9 min.)
Winner, Petit Rail d’Or for Best Short Film, Cannes International Film Festival, 2009
One of Canada’s Top Ten Films of 2009 (Short Films)

Happy passengers have a great time on a crowded train, oblivious to the unknown fate that awaits them around the bend.

Post from: Toronto Screen Shots

Ciné-Jeudi at the NFB Mediatheque