Historicist: Life in Wartime
The Daily Photoist: November 9, 2009
Elsewhere in the Ist-a-Verse
Urban Planner: November 9, 2009
Torontoist has never seen an Alejandro Jodorowsky film! Should we be ashamed to admit that? Possibly. We are, however, not ashamed to say we love that crazy guy anyway. Who couldn’t love a guy who killed three hundred rabbits with karate chops for a scene in his most well known work (and occasionally screened by Reg Hartt’s Cineforum) El Topo? Torontoist suspect we’ve lost everyone who likes rabbits. Okay then, how about his plan to film Dune with Salvador Dali as the Emperor? No? Come on! Be honest. Lynch’s version was rubbish.
Anyway! This week we’re going to finally see a Jodorowsky film by heading to the Bloor cinema (506 Bloor W) to see The Holy Mountain, playing nightly until Sunday. Eye’s Jason Anderson called it “a lavish and largely indescribable concoction of satire, surrealism and mysticism.” So we are looking forward to it. Even if it’s probably going to be horrible and make us hate that rabbit murdering lunatic.
Still, no matter how bad it is it can’t be as bad as Because I Said So, which has universally been ripped apart by the critics. As usually we haven’t seen much more than the trailers, but when even the film reviewer for 680 News (We apologize to him, we’ve forgotten his name) is kicking the film to bits you know it’s not a classic. Eye’s Adam Nayman calls it “A women's film that actively hates women”; the Sun’s Liz Braun commits suicide over it (“We discovered the movie was actually co-written by two women, so … we just put our head in the microwave.”) And everyone, all round, laments what has happened to Diane Keaton.
Partition gets a kicking too, this week, with Now’s Glenn Sumi remarking “There are many different kinds of bad movies, but none as dismal as those that desperately want to be the next Doctor Zhivago or The English Patient.” And the Metro's Norm Wilner doesn’t hold back with “Partition is a terrible movie, and it’s terrible in that specifically Canadian way; muzzy-headed, well-intentioned, dramatically inert and obviously phoney.”
Ouch, Norm.
So films are just bad, this week, then? Not true! Sur La Trace D’Igor Rizzi continues at the Royal (608 College) and The Italian has got a lot of good buzz; Adam Nayman considers it “the rare weeper that earns the tears.” That’s important, because who hasn’t choked back tears watching some awful tear jerking tripe and later realized you were fooled into it by a really sad score, or something?
The season continues at Cinematheque Ontario with more Shohei Imamura and Canada’s Top Ten, and the film tonight at the CNISSU’s Free Friday film is Trainspotting (7pm at Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex.) Which has a classic soundtrack, if you believe in the spirit of ’96.
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When I see a trailer for a movie like Because I Said So, I have to wonder who thought it would be a good movie, what artistic merit did they thought it was imbued with, and perhaps more importantly, did they actually think people would flock to see it.
Because I Said So seems so bad that they couldn't even find 30 seconds of slightly amusing footage to use in the advert.
Also, I Kind of like Lynch's Dune "It's my brother Baron...."
Rek:
Your comment very much reminds me of Roger Ebert's famous statement in his review of North:
"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."
The Holy Mountain will own you.
Make a post about what you though about the film after
Psst, you can link to cinssu at www.cinssu.ca
It's ok, it won't bite :D We have a list of all our screenings up there too.
I'll skip that rabbit-killing scene, thanks. He killed 300 rabbits only because he couldn't get 10,000. Charming! He now says he killed them because they started dying accidentally of the heat, but whatever.
I'm an omnivore and I realize there's a certain level of hypocrisy in that, but it seems to be excessive to mass-kill something that you aren't intending to eat. I have another issue with the chicken scene in Pink Flamingos. I realize that they cooked it up and ate it afterwards, but it was tortured in order to get from the state of being alive to being dead.
Not art. (Yeah, yeah, I know that slaughterhouses and meat farms aren't exactly country clubs to the animals either, but that's not my point.)
Marc, what are your feelings on Rules of the Game?
So, The Holy Mountain is roughly as artistically valid as Death Race 2000, but that's not really a problem as Death Race 2000 is great.
I wasn't a fan of the super cute lizards and toads being exploded (or the crucified dog carcasses) but it's fun past that point.
I give it 3 and a half screaming milk spewing cat head nipples out of 5.
Thanks for the pull-quote! And "Partition" really does deserve our full scorn, you know ... it's a terrible, terrible movie, and I took no pleasure in the beat-down.
Well, maybe just a little.