As a means of rounding up Toronto’s various cinematic goings-on each week, Movie Mondays compiles the best rep cinema and art house screenings, special presentations, lectures, and limited engagements.
Still from Norman McLaren’s Neighbours courtesy the NFB.
The internets were all abuzz this week when Torontoist broke that a new rep cinema would be opening on Queen and Spadina. Kevin Smith even tweeted it! Yes! That Kevin Smith! But while we all eagerly await the grand opening of the Toronto Underground Cinema next month (they will surely prove a welcome addition to this weekly film round-up), Toronto’s other movie houses are still chugging along, busy as ever. Thursday also marks the kick-off of a little festival called Hot Docs, which is basically the largest documentary film festival in North America. No big deal.
The Revue (400 Roncesvalles Avenue)
If you can’t hold your horses until Thursday to get your documentary fix, The Revue’s terrific Canadian Cinema in Revue series is unspooling Peter Lynch’s sweetly funny 1995 doc Project Grizzly on Tuesday. Produced by the NFB, Project Grizzly would neatly fit a double-bill with Werner Herzog’s more acclaimed bear-doc Grizzly Man. Like Grizzly Man’s loopy Timothy Treadwell, Project Grizzly star Troy Hurtubise finds himself making a career out of his obsession with the majestic bears. But unlike Treadwell, who preferred to present himself nakedly to the bears as one of their peers, Hurtubise had a Robocop-inspired epiphany and began cooking up burdensome body armour that would protect him from attack while studying the bears. Project Grizzly details Hurtubise’s testing of his heavily-played Ursus suits (in once scene he pays a biker gang to whoop his chrome-plated ass) and his grizzly confrontation with equal parts humour and compassion.
NFB Mediatheque (150 John Street)
Speaking of the National Film Board, the Mediatheque on John Street launches an exciting new offer this week. Starting on Saturday, the Mediatheque’s collection of over 5,500 NFB films will be available to watch on their nifty digital viewing stations for free. That’s right—free! So, for any of you tightwads who have been too cheap to pony up the previously outrageous $2 admission fee to dig into the NFB’s vast library of documentaries, animations, dramas and other Canadian goodies, now’s your chance to get yourself edumacated. This is a permanent offer that the Mediatheque is launching in association with the CineRobotheque in Montreal. It’s also a dream come true for the six of you who have always wanted to watch Don Owens’ Nobody Waved Good-bye, Norman McLaren’s Oscar-winning Neighbours, and Log Driver’s Waltz back-to-back-to-back.
The Fox (2236 Queen Street East)
As if seeing every NFB movie for free wasn’t enough to meet your weekly Can Con quota, The Fox Theatre in the Beaches is screening the recent Canadian comedy Cooking With Stella starting Wednesday. Directed by Dilep Mehta (brother of Bollywood/Hollywood and Water director Deepa Mehta, who also co-wrote Stella’s screenplay), this one stars Don McKellar as a Canadian chef abroad in India with his diplomat wife (Lisa Ray), whose relationship with his live-in cook Stella (Seema Biswas) helps broaden his culinary and cultural horizons. More than just a light culture shock comedy, Mehta has described the film as “an iron fist in a velvet glove,” being driven more by serious issues surrounding the Canadian-Indian diaspora.
The Bloor (506 Bloor Street West)
While this week does see The Bloor screening the latest formalist exercises from masters like Michael Haneke (The White Ribbon) and Martin Scorsese (Shutter Island), the real stand-out screening is 1972’s The Deathmaster on Thursday. The film stars B-horror icon Robert Quarry as a vampire who washes up in California and insinuates himself into a hippie commune. A tacky attempt to cash in on the post-Manson craze of Age of Aquarius doper cultists (see also: Ivan Reitman’s 1974 flick Cannibal Girls), The Deathmaster is the sort of cheesy period schlock you’ve come to expect from the Bloor (you know, in addition to Michael Haneke movies).
Multiple Venues
As mentioned earlier, the Canadian International Documentary Festival (AKA Hot Docs) begins on Thursday. Over 170 documentary features and shorts will be screening across the city, from Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex Avenue) to the Winter Garden Theatre (189 Yonge Street), to the rooftop at the Cumberland Garage (148 Cumberland Street). For more info on Hot Docs, check out their website. And again, make sure to keep checking Torontoist during the festival for our up-to-date coverage.
