Too bad this swell One Sheet is a gajillion times better than the film, a film of such spectacular awfulness that neither Andrew nor I could bring ourselves to write about it at last years TIFF. Poor George.

***UPDATED (watermark gone!), And high resolution version here.

And boo to websites that watermark a well designed one-sheet. Wow, You were first! Yet, you wreck the effect of some designers hard work. Boo.

Maybe a bit book cover-ish, but most assuredly the best One Sheet to come alon this early into 2010.

I missed its screening at TIFF last september and heard nary a peep about the film, but the catalogue entry offers some more stills from the film as well as this description:

This dreamy, languorous film has a Viscontian sense of aristocratic values to it. Exquisitely shot, beautifully paced and conceived, I Am Love moves through the cultivated world of a wealthy and distinguished industrial family. It is a film of ritual and order, centred on a massive Milanese mansion whose airy rooms convey the power and stature of the Recchi family. Servants glide up elegant staircases to serve dishes of gracefully prepared food to a family that has gathered to celebrate the birthday of its patriarch, the man who built this small empire.

You can now take a look at RowThree’s bookmarks at any time of your choosing simply by clicking the “delicious” button to your left. It looks remarkably similar to this:

• Analyzing 2009
  What story can be told of the film industry in 2009? The story, as I see it, is Hollywood’s realization that it must do a better job of protecting the financial viability of franchise films from being undermined by an increasingly voracious and savvy viewing public that is constantly searching for a greater degree of access to and control over the film properties to which they have become attached.
• Movie Posters of the Decade
  Trawling through databases of all the movie posters released in the past ten years and trying to remember my ten favorites, two things stand out: that only a very small percentage qualify as great pieces of design in their own right and that my favorite posters have little bearing on my favorite films.
• Dissertations on His Dudeness
  Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1998 movie, “The Big Lebowski,” which stars Jeff Bridges as a beatific, pot-smoking, bowling-obsessed slacker known as the Dude, snuck up on the English-speaking world during the ’00s: it became, stealthily, the decade’s most venerated cult film. It’s got that elusive and addictive quality that a great midnight movie has to have: it blissfully widens and expands in your mind upon repeat viewings.
• Criticwatch 2009: The Whores of the Year
  “The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its “circle of life” is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short.”
• God, Gaia, and Avatar
  Another year, another accoutrement of whores to accompany those who put some actual thought into film. The death of the film critic has been greatly exaggerated, but as always the rise of the quote whores and anonymous fanboy bloggers has gone ruefully under-reported.
• Unwatchable Avatar: Hollywood Greed Could Kill 3D
  Like millions of others, I saw Avatar last weekend. I loved it—despite the 3D, not because of it. Admittedly, my seat was shitty and I wear eyeglasses, but if the experience isn’t guaranteed, 3D will fail.
• The man who is scaling Mt. Criterion film by film
  The Criterion Collection is the standard bearer among high-quality DVDs, but he wasn’t associated with them, except in an indirect way: He has set himself the goal of seeing and writing about every single film in the Collection!
• Too Big to Fail: The 34th Toronto International Film Festival
  Firmly established as the pre-eminent film event in North America, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) seems less compromised than comfortable. Rumours of a few years ago that TIFF was cutting back on adventurous programming may or may not have been accurate, but quite a few strange little items are still finding their way into the festival.
• Current Decade Rates as Worst in 50 Years
  Not really movie related (not directly anyway), but we wanted to share. As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have a generally negative (50%) rather than a generally positive (27%) impression of the past 10 years.
• Larry Gross’s Four Most Underreported / Misreported Movie Stories Of 2009
  The Hangover, The Road, Zoe Kazan, Funny People. Have at it; Larry is not shy with his opinion.
• 40 Brilliant Robot Artworks
  Robots have been a driving force in technological innovations and in multimedia roles. From movies such as Star Wars, i,Robot, Wall-E, and Terminator, to videogames, and even real life with the Mars Rover, robots have advanced significantly over the past years in both design and functionality. As with any expanding field, artists often create conceptual works to help direct and illustrate.
• Going Na’vi: Why Avatar’s politics are more revolutionary than its images
  Cameron is blunt when it comes to Avatar’s political overtones. But rather than a clunky work of agitprop the movie can—and, I think, ought to—be seen as a polemic, which makes criticism of its obviousness beside the point. Having Lang’s colonel refer to his plan to bomb the Na’vi into submission with the words “shock and awe” is not subtle, but it’s not meant to be. Cameron means to be confrontational, and to be sure, audiences looking for a diverting night out are not allowed to overlook the parallels.

• Bad Lieutenant (1992) – Ed Howard, Only the Cinema
  A thoughtful and visceral review of the original Bad Lieutenant: “Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant is a film entirely built around its central performance, Harvey Keitel’s fearless, unfettered turn as a corrupt, unnamed New York City police lieutenant. Keitel delivers a performance of unrelenting power and intensity, a nasty, ugly portrayal of a man on a mission of self-destruction. He staggers through a filthy, dimly lit vision of New York, doing drugs in grimy apartments and even grimier hallways, pulling out his gun at a moment’s provocation, engaging in sordid sexual exploits even though he actually seems barely interested, and must have so many drugs in his system that real sexuality is impossible anyway. It’s a sloppy, crazy performance, and Keitel pours himself into it, breathing life into this bottom-dwelling man, this guy who, for no discernible reason, seems bent on bringing himself to the lowest possible place.”
• façade: Forgotten ’50s Femmes
  An appreciation and call to remember 1950s B-movie actresses like Barbara Rush, Julie Adams, Delores Michaels, Dana Wynter, Patricia Owens, and Martha Hyers.
• Top 10 Comedies of 2009
  The comedy tide turned a bit in 2009. Titans dropped while underdogs soared. Alpha males were KO’d while beta males throw punishing right hooks — in quality, at least. Box office is another story.
• TIFF Announces Canada’s Top Ten 2009
  Alphabetically: Cairo Time; Carcasses; Crackie; Defendor; La Donation; J’ai tué ma mère; Passenger Side; Polytechnique; The Trotsky; The Wild Hunt
• Meet the ‘Shock Jocks’ of movie criticism: Armond White and Fiore Mastracci
  Two film reviewers who attract gallons of bile from those who consider themselves discerning fans are Fiore Mastracci and Armond White. Mastracci is a film teacher from Pittsburgh with a blog and a cable television show, who writes reviews for (in his own words), “those who remember when films had and expounded on American and family values” [..] Armond White, meanwhile, is no idiot. He writes for the Manhattan freesheet New York Press, and is currently the chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle. When he gave a bad review to the otherwise-acclaimed South African sci-fi thriller District 9 this summer, the web erupted in outrage.

I love lists. Most of the time lists are just a bunch of middle brow stuff voted on by committee which is usually not particularly interesting except for those that put the list together.

But thanks to an email from our own Kurt Halfyard I got to look at a list that I’m reprinting here for three reasons: One, it’s thought provoking and stretches the limits of art and dumps most of the Hollywood garbage that is out there for actually good titles. Two, I haven’t even heard of a lot of these titles and can’t wait to dive into more. And three, the site it was originally posted on doesn’t allow commenting unless you’re a registered member and I wanna discuss!

I couldn’t find the info as to who or how this list was put together other than the original post’s opening paragraph which simply states, “60 film historians, festival programmers and archivists from around the world.” So here is the best 30 films TIFF has offered up in its existence. It’s actually more like 50 with ties but who cares? I think this list is more about discovery than it is about the rankings.

Film titles and countries of origin are followed by the number of votes each film received.

1. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand) – 53 votes

2. Platform (Jia Zhang-ke, Hong Kong, China/China/Japan/France) – 49 votes

3. Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke, China) – 48 votes

4. Beau travail (Claire Denis, France) – 46 votes

5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong, China) – 43 votes

6. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, France/Thailand/Germany/Italy) – 38 votes

7. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania) – 35 votes

Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, Hungary) – 35 votes

8. Éloge de l’amour ( In Praise of Love ) (Jean-Luc Godard, Switzerland/ France) – 34 votes

9. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania) – 33 votes

10. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/France/Netherlands) – 32 votes

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Episode 139b:
The second part of episode 139 concentrates all of our remaining energy on recapping the ‘09 TIFF experience. A top 5 list of sorts as well as a complete wrap-up and overview of the Midnight Madness programming from Colin Geddes. And yeah, we’re up til 4am… for YOU!

Thanks for listening!

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Cinecast (Andrew and Halfyard show)
After the Credits (Marina and Co.)
Mamo! (Matt and Matt)
ALL the RowThree Podcasts on one feed
All posts and discussions from RowThree

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A beautifully told, classic coming of age tale through the eyes of a mature, cultured 16 year old growing up in suburban London in the 1960’s, Jenny (Carey Mulligan). Attending an all-girls school, she is by far the most inspired of her peers, the biggest dreamer. Though the dreams of her stern parents have their little girl studying at Oxford next year (and Jenny has the credentials and talent to see it through) her greatest joys come from listening to her Juliette Greco albums, as oppose to playing her cello, and speaking French instead of her dry school-book Latin. With Jenny’s cross into womanhood playing out for the duration of the film, this familiar struggle is an on going battle between her institutional obligations, and the new world she is carefully escorted into as she seeks her path in life.

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We hope you have enjoyed the extensive coverage Row Three managed to spew out onto the internet over the 10 day madness of the Toronto International Film Fest, or tiff as it is know pretty much known. As a final palette cleanser to the festival all those of us that contribute around here, from the Mamo! Matts (B. and P.) to Rot, Andrew and myself, managed to give a quick summary and a tag [Best], [Worst], [Loved], [Liked], [Disappointed], [Hated] for each of the films we saw. It is all loosely organized below to give you as much of a snapshot as possible for expect and look forward to over the next 18 months as these films creep into moviehouses (and VOD, DVD, etc.) outside of the festival circuit.

The SHORT version:

Most Loved: Enter The Void (Kurt, Matt P., Matt B.), Collapse (Rot) and Mr. Nobody (Andrew)
Most Loathed: George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead (Kurt, Andrew), Wheat (Matt B.), Police Adjective (Rot), Nymph (Matt P.)

The MASSIVE summary of this years festival is tucked under the seat.

And our FULL REVIEWS during TIFF 09 are found by clicking the Big White Banner.

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As a kid, I remember being haunted by a magazine article I had come across which spoke of “very natural” group masturbation sessions among young males. In this phenomenon pubescent boys, apparently in the winters of their respective latency periods, raid their fathers’ and brothers’ smut collections and all have it out together.

Rick Jacobson’s “Bitch Slap”, which premiered at last week’s Toronto International Film Festival, carries on this rich tradition handily. Read More

George Clooney has come full circle in his stardom. Getting a romantic and engaging ‘time-out’ with Jennifer Lopez after she blows off a couple of traveling corporate types flirting in the lounge, his character in the latest Jason Reitman comedy, Ryan Bingham, is exactly one of those transient and boring corporate drones. Being George Clooney (particularly in a suit) he still manages to find a willing and no-strings-attached lady friend in the gorgeous and mature Vera Farmiga. But I am getting ahead of myself here, Ryan makes a living downsizing employees for corporations timid (for personal or legal reason) of doing the dirty work (involuntary severance packages). This means a lot of time on the road between auto companies and banking institutions, you know the places hit the hardest in late 2008.

Bingham has also downsized his own life, whether because of the emotional toll his job takes (albeit is is damn good at it), or for other less clear reasons, to become the self-described “wealthiest homeless man in America.” No long term relationships and little connection with his extended family, he is happy to only spend a small fraction of the year in his tiny barely adorned apartment. Instead his existence is all transience and freedom; in hotel suites, courtesy lounges and other travel-holding zones across America. All the while collecting loyalty points. Lots and lots of Loyalty points. It is not the money or the ability to travel around the world several times on his accumulated tally, it is the status of the thing. He is proud and confident to skip airport and check-in, to board and exit airports in the most efficient manner possible rewarded by his status, but also has the goal of hitting a point total that earns him a recognition only 7 other people have achieved in their lifetime (“less than have walked on the moon”) and he is well under 50.

Much like his life, his baggage is smallest of carry on bags packed efficiently with neat, anonymous suits and toiletries. Rolling smoothly along from town to town he also gives paid talks on how to be the most efficient business traveler, using an empty backpack as a metaphor for mobility and movement as a metaphor for life. Material things like a house or a car weigh you down, and relationships are the heaviest, he pontificates to the other road warriors. The philosophy he spouts in his ballroom seminars is practically a pithy and institutionalized version of Tyler Durden’s 20th century ‘freedom-from-stuff monologues’ in Fight Club. Ironic that Bingham (the shiny mirror image of ragged Durden) is often wearing that cornflower blue tie to match his pressed suits. Philosophy is so malleable these days.

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