Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

Do you need a daily fix of Cannes? The Toronto Star’s Peter Howell is doing a daily vlog from this year’s festival (which is more than I can say of my own coverage of Hot Docs, heh-heh!). I’ll post today’s vid here but I’m a bit slow on the uptake, as he began doing this yesterday.

Pete’s daily updates can be found here. You can be fairly sure he will be covering all the high profile films at the festival.

Yes, I do plan to tell you a little about the films I saw at Hot Docs but, first, I want to mention something a bit more personal…

Last night, I went to see the new play, Caught in the Acts, a comedy written by my friend Karen Robinet and presented by Theatre Kent.

I knew it would be funny because Karen has a great sense of humour–dark and sharp and quite smart. And it is funny. I really enjoyed it!

The play is about a small-town amateur theatre troupe–much like the one presenting and performing this–that finds itself the recipient of a government arts grant to the tune of fifteen grand. Naturally, they’re pretty excited until they learn the grant comes with a couple strings attached… 1. they must present one of Shakespeare’s plays, and 2. they will be under the direction of once-mighty professional director Tony Symington, whose career has fallen on hard times. Very hard times. They’re not too thrilled about either prospect but they decide to go along with it. Now, there’s a reason you don’t often come across small-town amateur theatre troupes who choose to tackle Shakespeare. Symington (naive? oblivous? in denial?) insists that they can do anything they put their minds to, and pushes ahead. But then rehearsals start and he finds himself with a Hamlet who is a “doood”-spouting dreadlocked eco-geek and a Ghost who injects his performance with spooky oooOOOOOooooOOOoooohs and a getup that features a bed sheet over his head and black socks on his feet and, er, nothing in between. “I didn’t know “Casper The Friendly Ghost” had been adapted for the stage,” snarks one character.

The play is a couple hours long, structured as half a dozen or so acts with a blackout between each for stage and wardrobe changes. I enjoyed the witty banter and subtle hints about some mystery in the past of a couple of the characters, so each act just flew by. The set stayed basically the same throughout–it was the rehearsal space for the Primrose Players–and although it appeared (to this newbie, anyway) as a very small stage, it seemed just the right size for this performance in that there was an feeling of intimacy that, I think, only helped the audience to care more for the characters.

The performances were a real eye-opener for me, as I am not a habitué of the theatre (amateur or professional). I really didn’t know what to expect but I found that the actors gave lively, fun performances and exercised quite skilled comic timing. Tony Symington would’ve loved them!

I spoke with Karen during the intermission and she told me that this is the first time in Theatre Kent’s 31-year history that an original play has been produced. That it was written by a local makes it even more special, I think. Karen works as a journalist and has written for a number of different newspapers in Southwestern Ontario. She is also a veteran of community theatre, and based her play on that experience. I am totally impressed!

Kudos to Karen and to director Glenda Lansens, as well as to the entire cast (Dennis O’Neil, Keith Burnett, Cindy FitzGerald, Mark Stacey, Don McCutcheon, Stewart Morton, Jan Holt , and Annette O’Neil) and crew!

After much thought, I decided I would go down to Toronto for at least a bit of the Hot Docs film festival this year. For quite awhile, I have been trying to decide about it—not really feeling like I was in the mood for it this year, but thinking I’d regret it, later, if I didn’t make the effort. Plus, I’ve read that it can be good to not let grief stop you from doing what you enjoy even if you don’t think you feel like doing it. Apparently, chances are you’ll end up enjoying it despite everything, y’know? Now, normally, I go for the whole 10-day festival, but I decided I would just go for the first Friday-Monday (May 1-4 inclusive) this time. So I got a smaller festival ticket package than usual (10 films + I get in free to all the screenings after 11pm) and made a hotel reservation.

I really hadn’t paid much attention to the newsletters that I’d been receiving from Hot Docs over the past few weeks, so I was delighted to discover that two directors whose films were among my favourites at Hot Docs ‘07 are back this year with new films! And both of them are screening during the period when I’ll be there, hoorah! So I’ve reserved tickets for each screening.

A Hard Name is the new film by Alan Zweig–whose previous film, Lovable, I told you about a couple years ago. Based on that film, a ticket to the world premiere of A Hard Name on May 3rd was the first one I reserved.

I expect this will be very different from Lovable and its two companions in his “mirror trilogy”, Vinyl and I, Curmudgeon, however–this one’s not about himself. In fact, he doesn’t appear onscreen and I’m not sure if we will even hear him offscreen. It features interviews with eight ex-cons who talk about their lives inside and outside. I will go into this film with high expectations.

Unfortuately, I can’t find a trailer to post here. Booooo!

(Incidentally, if anyone reading this happens to have copies of Vinyl and/or I, Curmudgeon and/or Lovable, please let me know. I do have the latter, but only on VHS (!). And, seeing as I never even unpacked my VCR after I moved, the tape is little more than a paperweight.)

Objectified is the new film by Gary Hustwit–whose previous film, Helvetica, I have also told you about. This is the other screening that was important enough to me to make sure I had a ticket in advance.

Objectified is about the design–and the designers–of objects that surround us every day. Director Hustwit: ‘Objectified is a documentary about industrial design; it’s about the manufactured objects we surround ourselves with, and the people who make them. On an average day, each of us uses hundreds of objects. (Don’t believe it? Start counting: alarm clock, light switch, faucet, shampoo bottle, toothbrush, razor…) Who makes all these things, and why do they look and feel the way they do? All of these objects are “designed,” but how can good design make them, and our lives, better?'’

To be honest, though, the first film that caught my attention when I started to look through this year’s schedule was Cat Ladies. As a longtime fan of Cute With Chris, the sight of a film about “cat ladies” (the “crazy” adjective left unsaid) made me practically leap from my seat. It appears to be a relatively sympathetic portrait of four women whose cats fill some kind of emotional void in their lives. One household has only 3 cats… but another has hundreds of them.

And each one comes with a box of poo.^©

I also hope to see Necrobusiness, a film by Swedish filmmakers Richard Solarz and Fredrik von Krusenstjerna. Set in Lodz, Poland, it features feuding funeral home directors, paramedic poisoners, murderous morticians… and it sounds very blackly humourous. Right up my alley, in other words.

I can only find a trailer with its Swedish subtitles but it at least conveys the tone of the film…

Over the Hills and Far Away looks really interesting to me, too. This film, directed by Michael Orion Scott, is about a family dealing with an autistic son who they discover has an unusual bond with horses, and their horseback journey through Mongolia in search of a shaman who can successfully treat him.

In stores tomorrow.

This isn’t quite as good as it should be but the idea is there, at least…

This guy, contrariwise, hits all the right (hilarious) notes.

I just went to the café here at work to get a cup of coffee and noticed the St. Patrick’s Day-themed lunch menu included a little horrorsome item called Corned Beef Pizza.

Which made me throw up in my mouth a little.