Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 7:07AM Movie City News KV Tweets from China Town, Toronto :
“Hearing very positive response to The First Grader, both from Telluride and here, so going to try catch it.”
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 6:57AM Didiseeyouthere tweets from Toronto :
“The story behind the film The First Grader is almost as good as the film. Amazing!”
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 6:50AM In a TIFF Review : “The First Grader was moving, beautiful and inspirational. Crowd got to it’s feet for Oliver Litondo’s portrayal of Maruge.”
I tend to cry during the festival. Movies that might normally get a sniffle or induce a slight redness of the eyes under normal circumstances at TIFF have me bawling uncontrollably. I don’t know if it the energy of the crowd, or just the festival-induced fatigue that lowers my emotional walls to the point where I’m getting weeping along with the battle-scarred directors in Every Little Step watching Jason Tam’s audition.
So I thought I was ready heading in to The First Grader - at least I thought I knew what to expect. The ten-second summary is “an 84 year old man enrolls in primary school after the Kenyan government announces there will be free education for all”. So I figured that I would see some adorable children, a lovable earnest teacher and some flashbacks to the war-torn past that would culminate in an uplifting story of how the human spirit can overcome adversity. We get all of that, but we also get so much more. I can barely write this as some of the images from the film continue to haunt me - as they should. In the film over and over again we hear the argument repeated that children are the future and precious resources should not be wasted on an old man’s education - but the story of the old man is a vital missing piece in the curriculum. In an effort to move past the tribalism and retribution they turned away from learning about the history that shaped what their nation had become.
Two performances stand out - Lwanda Jawar as the young Maruge has almost no dialogue but in the flashbacks he is so intense you don’t need to hear him speak at all. The love for his wife and family, his dedication to his oath and ultimately his pain during his captivity is clearly visible in a gaze that burns through the lens. Oliver Litondo as the older Maruge gives the best performance I have seen in years. I can’t compare it to anything I have seen - I can only say that it was amazing, and in the screening I saw more than half of the crowd got to it’s feet as Litondo came to the stage.
If you have a chance to see this movie, do it. Bring Kleenex, but do it.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 8:14PM By John Horn - Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Telluride, Colo. - Truth can certainly be stranger than fiction. If you look toward the Telluride Film Festival, it might also be stronger.
While the rest of Hollywood turns to far-fetched fantasies of flying superheroes, impossible romances and talking toys, the filmmakers behind the standout movies at the Colorado festival are finding that some of the year’s most powerful stories can be found in real-life events.
While that’s obviously the case with Telluride’s esteemed documentaries, three of the most enthusiastically received dramatic features at the just-concluded festival - the world premieres “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours” and “The First Grader” - are based on the extraordinary accomplishments of actual people. A number of the festival’s other prominent new features, including “The Way Back,” “Of Gods and Men,” “Carlos” and “Incendies,” also have historical events undergirding their foundation.
The narrative allure of such stories is easy. When moviegoers see the words “Based on a true story” just as a film commences, they might grant a movie prospective empathy - the audience is more willing to welcome, both intellectually and emotionally, what it is about to see. That connection was a powerful wave pushing last year’s “The Blind Side.”
Yet any director or writer who strays too far from the factual path can be condemned for fast-and-loose filmmaking. “A Beautiful Mind” was nearly derailed when its makers sanded off several rough patches in mathematician John Nash’s personal life, and “The Hurricane” was knocked out for its liberties with boxer Rubin Carter.
“I remember thinking after ‘3000 Degrees’ that I’ll never do another real-life story, the director and co-writer of “127 Hours,” says of a proposed movie about a Massachusetts firefighting tragedy that fell apart on the eve of production over life-rights issues. “It’s just too complicated. You don’t have control over the material.”
Yet when that true-life material is irresistible, filmmakers can find a way to make a film that is both creatively inventive and factually honest.
The people at the center of “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours” and “The First Grader” could barely be more disparate. The first film, directed by Tom Hooper (“The Damned United”), focuses on King George VI, the monarch who struggled to overcome a crippling speech impediment. The new movie from Boyle, who premiered in Telluride two years ago, recounts the harrowing wilderness experience of Aron Ralston, who amputated his own hand and forearm when pinned by a falling boulder. And “The First Grader,” from director Justin Chadwick, profiles an illiterate 84-year-old Kenyan villager who, after the government promised free education for all, hobbled into an elementary school and wouldn’t leave until he could learn to read.
As unalike (and, outside of Ralston, as potentially unfamiliar) as their stories might be, the characters share an against-all-odds quest that ultimately unites the cheering spectator with the journey. In a way, these are all versions of inspirational tales as recognizable as “Rocky,” “The Karate Kid” or even “The Bad News Bears.” Yet precisely because they are in large part true, “The King’s Speech,” “127 Hours” and “The First Grader” are more affecting.
“The main thing was that it was uplifting,” Chadwick says of his interest in telling the story of “The First Grader’s” Nganga Maruge, a tale that came to filmmakers’ attention in a Los Angeles Times article. “You have to make something that is relevant these days, and it was a really good story.”
Chadwick shot his film, which stars the African actor Oliver Litondo as Maruge and Naomie Harris as his determined teacher, Jane Obinchu, in a remote Kenyan village with no electricity or running water and populated the cast with 200 local schoolchildren, most of whom had never seen a movie or TV show. While Chadwick and screenwriter Ann Peacock (“A Lesson Before Dying”) made several changes to the story (Obinchu in the movie is younger than in real life, there’s a radio announcer adding jokes and exposition), the movie endeavored to get geographic and historical details as accurate as possible.
The scars that Maruge bears on his back as a result of torture under Britain’s colonial rule are replicated in the film on Litondo’s body, and the songs the young students sing throughout the movie are their own creation. “The movie also celebrates the children, and the healing power of children, no matter what terrible things have happened in your life,” Chadwick says.
Boyle says that while it’s easy to look at Ralston’s story as an unimaginable demonstration of superhumanism, he believes that we are all capable of doing the same thing if the situation demanded it. So at many turns throughout “127 Hours,” he and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire”) excised scenes that created barriers between Ralston and the audience, meanwhile adding sequences that connected the trapped hiker to the rest of the world, crowd scenes and memories of an old girlfriend designed to be a magnet helping pull him free. “It may not be factual,” Boyle says of some of the added sequences, “but it’s truthful.”
The film preserves verbatim some of what Ralston says into his video camera during the ordeal, including a disorderly farewell to his parents, because it gives “127 Hours” a verisimilitude that polished scripting might lack. “It’s so slightly awkwardly written - a proper dramatist would never write the speech that way,” Boyle says. “But it felt very natural to leave it like that.”
Were Boyle making a purely fictional film, moviegoers, critics and studio executives would likely dismiss as preposterous some of the small bits in “127 Hours,” particularly a scene where Ralston, once freed and ready to try to be rescued, stops to take a photograph of his severed hand. “If it were in a script, they would say, ‘It’s just obscene. Throw it out.’ But because it really happened, it allows you to do it. And you can see the audience thinking, It must be true.”
As a young English child with a terrible stammer, David Seidler would listen to radio broadcasts of King George VI, who also had an almost incapacitating speech impediment. The King’s World War II addresses reminded Seidler that if the monarch could overcome stuttering, so could he: The king was his elocutionary inspiration.
Seidler grew up to become a screenwriter, writing “Tucker: The Man and his Dream” and numerous television programs, but he never forgot what he heard over the wireless so many decades earlier. He eventually adapted the story of the king and his relationship with his unconventional speech therapist, Lionel Logue, into a play, and the play has now become the movie “The King’s Speech.”
Even though the movie directed by Hooper is about the royal family and unfolds around Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey, “The King’s Speech” follows common themes of friendship, perseverance and trust. Logue was a talented language pathologist (the film was shaped by a trove of his unpublished papers, records and diary entries), but his true gift was companionship. Like any good shrink or comrade, the therapist was able to reveal and manage some of the things - an oppressive childhood, chiefly - that twisted the king’s tongue in knots.
“What I felt the film was really about was that he was saved by friendship,” Hooper says. “Yes, it’s about a man with a stammer. But we all face blocks to becoming our better selves.”
The film is stuffed with period detail - “I’m obsessive about historical accuracy,” says Hooper, who also directed the miniseries John Adams.” One of the film’s most memorable lines comes not from biography, but from something Hooper’s father told the director. Educated in a heartless boarding school, the filmmaker’s dad suffered some of the same confidence-killing treatment as did King George VI.
So when Hooper told his father he was stuck on one scene, his father told him some of the best advice he ever heard was this: “You don’t need to be afraid of the things you were afraid of when you were 5.” It’s Logue’s line to the king now, and it’s part of what makes “The King’s Speech” feel so real.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 12:14PM By Bruce Kirkland - The Toronto Sun
The Toronto International Film Festival turns 35 on Thursday. With 2010 as a transition year, this is a milestone birthday that marks a new era.
An extra day has been added to the traditional schedule, turning the 10 days into 11 that co-directors Piers Handling and Cameron Bailey hope will again shake the world of cinema. More than 300 films have been selected by a stellar team of 19 programmers, including prime-time entries launching their Oscar campaigns. The guest list is the envy of every other filmfest. Plus TIFF opens its swanky if risky new home, the Bell Lightbox, which fronts King Street in the Entertainment District. Bailey jokes that it is about time that the adult-aged TIFF moved out of its parents’ basement into its own house. There is a downtown shift out of Yorkville and the festival is looking to become a 365-day player in the Toronto arts and culture scene.
But the core festival remains the showpiece event on the calendar. Line-ups for tickets stretched two blocks in the sweltering sun on Peter Street this week. Patrons are still looking for the breakout titles. So we offer our annual Hot Tips selection, gleaned from personal experience and insider information. At least one essential film is named from each program, from the mainstream to the esoteric. Enjoy.
Score: A Hockey Musical: Foster Hewitt might be spinning and grinning in his grave. Michael McGowan’s playful, populist movie turns Canadian junior hockey into a musical extravaganza for Opening Night.
Black Swan: American Darren Aronofsky shifts from the ring (The Wrestler) to the classic ballet stage, cranking up the psychological tension like an early Polanski. Natalie Portman co-stars.
The Housemaid: Hyped as “elegant, sexy and dangerous,” this is South Korean filmmaker Im Sang-soo’s controversial re-make of a 1960 erotic thriller, with the victimizer of the original turned into the victim for the inverted contemporary version. It is rife with socio-political overtones.
Biutiful: As one of the finest from the Cannes’ contenders, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s harrowing film chronicles a marginalized Spaniard, played by the brilliant Javier Bardem. He shows how even a petty criminal can find moral redemption.
Another Year: This is another stunner from Cannes. Mike Leigh intimately explores a group of Britons in the twilight of their complicated lives.
The Trip: Switching genres and tones again, prolific British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom takes Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon on a giddy English road trip as themselves, sort of.
Mumbai Diaries: Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan, under the direction of his wife Kiran Rao, opens a new chapter in his career with an acclaimed slice-of-life drama. No music, no dancing!
Blue Valentine: Meticulously crafted and brutally honest, Derek Cianfrance’s film is a study of a broken marriage. Both Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams are brilliant in their portrayals.
Other titles to consider in this rich program: Milcho Manchevski’s Mothers; Julian Schnabel’s Miral; Sturla Gunnarsson’s Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie; Richard Ayoade’s Submarine; Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story; Tran Anh Hung’s Norwegian Wood; Stephen Frears’ Tamara Drewe; Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham; Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies; Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours; Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist.
The Sleeping Beauty: France’s Catherine Breillat, a true poet of cinema, re-invents and modernizes the familiar fairytale.
Essential Killing: Poland’s Jerzy Skolimowski challenges viewers with a mysterious, nearly silent film tale of a Middle Eastern terrorist (Vincent Gallo) who is captured and taken from desert to a snowbound landscape. When he escapes he becomes the one seeking real freedom.
Girlfriend: Justin Lerner’s first feature is a discovery, in style and content. Lerner explores an unlikely, maybe impossible relationship between a young man with Down Syndrome and a single mom and renegade whom he has loved since early childhood. Money figures into their lives.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Werner Herzog plumbs the depths of prehistoric cave art in France, giving TIFF its first 3D documentary.
Pink Saris: Briton Kim Longinotto again explores the world of women, this time finding an activist who specializes in empowering females from India’s Untouchables class.
Our Day Will Come: Romain Gavras, Paris-based son of legendary Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras, emerges as a vibrant filmmaker himself. This unique tale - an alternative reality in today’s messed-up world - slyly positions redheads enemies of the state, the “them” who must be persecuted.
Little Sister: American Richard Bowen works in China to re-tell the original Cinderella story, which originated centuries ago in that culture. Bowen, a cinematographer as well as director, gives TIFF one of its most visually splendid films and provides older children with an elegant tale in Mandarin and English.
Bruce Springsteen and Edward Norton: In a rare public appearance off the concert stage, The Boss will be interviewed by actor pal Norton in TIFF’s newly expanded Mavericks program. This could be a singular highlight of the 2010 filmfest. The session is a spin-off from the world premiere of the Springsteen doc, The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town (playing as a Gala).
Turkey’s Reha Erdem perfectly captures the pulse of his city, Istanbul, which is the focus of this year’s City to City. The film is positioned as “a mix of hard truths and stark poetry” as it balances the forces of ancient Istanbul with the modern.
Aftershock: Chinese director Feng Xiaogang’s drama covers three decades, beginning and ending with devastating earthquakes. It is already a mega-hit of the Chinese cinema, one of its most successful homegrown films ever.
The First Grader: Englishman Justin Chadwick found an inspirational true story in Kenya. It is the saga of an 84-year-old man who goes to class for the first time when the country offers free primary schooling for all.
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame: With Saigon-born director Tsui Hark in charge, Hong Kong cinema fully integrates with mainland Chinese culture, bringing kinetic energy and sophistication to the old ways of the mainland.
Of Gods and Men: Frenchman Xavier Beauvois’ period film is stark, contemplative, haunting and perfectly timely because it explores how religion, race and colonialism collide - with tragedy looming.
Daydream Nation: While Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies (from Special Presentations) is the must-see Canadian film of the featival, Mike Goldbach’s quirky drama is the class of the Canada First! program (part of the Canadian Programming section). Kat Dennings is a teen facing her worst nightmare: Dad is moving her to a tiny nowhere town. The horror!
Promises Written in Water: American actor-filmmaker Vincent Gallo is a certified cinema eccentric, and not just for the transgressive effort, The Brown Bunny. He won’t even let TIFF publish a photo in the program book for this new opus, his third feature. And he will deliver the screening print himself, then shuffle off to Buffalo with it afterwards. Makes you curious.
Ruhr: American James Benning turns his rigorously artful camera on Germany’s industrialized Ruhr Valley for an arresting visual portrait of a man-made landscape. There is beauty in the beast.
The Butcher, the Chef and the Swordsman: Let programmer Colin Geddes describe one-named filmmaker Wuershan’s martial arts whimsy: “A tale of revenge, honour and greed, lightly tossed with scallions and sesame oil and served on a tender bed of steamed pea shoots.” The witching hour is tasty this year.
Other titles to consider: James Gunn’s SUPER with Ellen Page.
