BENEFITS OF A CLASSICAL EDUCATION

Sorry, Rabbi at the 30th Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:24:01 -0500

Sorry, Rabbi at the 30th Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois:

If you live in Montreal and haven’t seen it yet and want to see it, now’s your chance! February 23rd at 9:45pm at the Cinémathèque québécoise.

Bingham Ray (1954-2012)

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:00:46 -0500

Bingham Ray died this weekend after suffering a stroke at the Sundance Film Festival. He might not have been a household name, but Bingham was, at least to me, one of the most important and committed forces for good in the world of independent film. He founded October Pictures, effectively introduced Mike Leigh to America, was responsible for getting films by everyone from David Lynch to Pedro Almodovar into theaters and the cultural conversation, as it were. (He has a large part in Peter Siskind’s ’90s-indie-film-chronicle Down and Dirty Pictures, largely playing in contrast to the Machiavellian Miramax crew.) Bingham was truly on the side of the angels.

I was lucky enough to meet and spend a few days with him at TIFF 2011, last September, where he was one of the “governors” (basically, mentors/advisors) at a program called Talent Lab I took part in along with a couple dozen other emerging filmmakers. I think I can say we were all very taken with this straight-talking but warmly friendly man, who seemed to make an extra-special effort to get to know us, to hang out with us, to drink with us, to encourage us.

Bingham would sit at the back of the room as we conversed with the other guest speakers, and would often join in the conversation, sometimes with hilarious candour. One of the most memorable moments of the week was when a legendary documentary filmmaker was visiting us, along with a smarmy, glad-handed sycophant who had the title of co-director on his most recent effort, and who seemed to think his opinions were most important to us than the legend in question. It was when this glad-hander interrupted the documentarian on the question “Who are your influences as a filmmaker?” to say, “Well, Marty’s films have always been a huge influence on me,” that Bingham could be heard to say, “What a douche!” and storm out of the room. We all loved him so much for that.

Most important to me, though, was when I had the chance to ask him a question that had been gnawing away at me for a long time. “Is it crazy to be a filmmaker and live in Montreal and not L.A. or New York? Am I out of my mind or wasting my time?” No, Bingham answered. You’re doing the right thing. Tell your own stories, don’t try and make the same films as everyone else. Stay where you are. That meant a lot to me.

I know I’m one of many, many people to have been touched by the man’s wisdom and good nature. There are probably thousands of stories like mine, most from people who knew him far better and longer. But the fact that just a few days’ acquaintance could have such an impact on me, and I know, my fellow Talent Labbers, says a lot about this extraordinary man. Rest in peace, Bingham, you were truly one of the good guys.

While at my family cottage last week over the holidays, I found...

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:51:32 -0500

While at my family cottage last week over the holidays, I found this great old picture of my dad standing in front of his childhood home on Cecil St. in Toronto’s Chinatown, which was once a teeming neighbourhood of Jewish immigrants. Walking through Chinatown yesterday, I happened to pass in front of the same house, and had my friend Norm take a picture of me in the same pose. It’s an exercise in double nostalgia; the first picture, taken some 40 years ago, was shot years after my father and his parents moved uptown and he must have been just passing through, on a day (we can tell from the coat), much like yesterday.

“Hartley Coleridge began life with limitless promise—’all my child might be’—and...

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:02:28 -0500

“Hartley Coleridge began life with limitless promise—’all my child might be’—and ended it universally viewed as a failure. He is remembered not for his poems or his essays, though he wrote some fine ones, but for two things and two things only: he was the son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and he was a disappointment. He has been called a misfit, a dreamer, a sinner, a castaway, a wayward child, a hobgoblin, a flibbertigibbet, a waif, a weird, a pariah, a prodigal, a picturesque ruin, a sensitive plant, an exquisite machine with insufficient steam, the oddest of God’s creatures, and, most frequently—by his father, his mother, his brother, and his sister; by William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle; and by countless others over the years—’Poor Hartley.’”

Anne Fadiman, “The Oakling and the Oak”

“I was perhaps twenty-three when I first ate almost enough caviar—not to mention any caviar at...

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:46:00 -0500

“I was perhaps twenty-three when I first ate almost enough caviar—not to mention any caviar at all that I can now remember. It was one of the best, brightest days of my whole life with my parents, and lunching in the quiet back room at the Café de la Paix was only one part of the luminous whole. My mother ate fresh foie gras, sternly forbidden to her liver, but she loved the cathedral at Strasbourg enough to risk almost any kind of attack, and this truffled slab was so plainly the best of her lifetime that we all agreed it could do her nothing but good, which it did. My father and I ate caviar, probably Sevruga, with green-black smallish beads and a superb challenge of flavor for the iced grassy vodka we used to cleanse our happy palates. We ate three portions apiece, tacitly knowing it could never happen again that anything would be quite so mysteriously perfect in both time and space. The headwaiter sensed all this, which is, of course, why he was world-known, and the portions got larger, and at our third blissful command he simply put the tin in its ice bowl upon our table. It was a regal gesture, like being tapped on the shoulder with a sword. We bowed, served ourselves exactly as he would have done, grain for grain, and had no need for any more. It was reward enough to sit in the almost empty room, chaste rococo in the slanting June sunlight, with the generous tub of pure delight between us, Mother purring there, the vodka seeping slyly through our veins, and real wood strawberries to come, to make us feel like children again and not near-gods. That was a fine introduction to what I hope is a reasonably long life of such occasional bliss.”

M.F.K. Fisher, “Once a Tramp, Always…”

“In the beginning was the Word; so it states on the first page of one of the most important...

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 13:46:14 -0500

“In the beginning was the Word; so it states on the first page of one of the most important books known to us. What is meant in that book is that the Word of God is the source of all creation. But surely the same could be said, figuratively speaking, of every human action? And indeed, words can be said to be the very source of our being, and in fact the very substance of the cosmic life-form we call Man. Spirit, the human soul, our self-awareness, our ability to generalize and think in concepts, to perceive the world as the world (and not just as our locality), and lastly, our capacity for knowing that we will die—and living in spite of that knowledge: surely all these are mediated or actually created by words?”

- Václav Havel (1936-2011)

The best things of 2011

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:14:00 -0500

I used to make a list of the best and worst movies of the year every December for my old employer, and as the season gets chilly and Phil Spector plays on my stereo, and as I contemplate a year spent not being a full-time journalist/critic, I feel that old urge again. Let us then, discuss, my favourite things and experiences of 2011, and let’s not limit them to movies. This is, after all, markslutsky.com. This is my year in review.

If there is one thing that happily links my 2011 favourite, it’s the number of them that were made by, in whole or in part, by friends, acquaintances or countrymen. What does this cultural locavore-ism mean, if anything? Am I becoming limited, provincial? I’d prefer to say I just feel lucky to know so many talented and inspiring people.

Let’s start with food—which, if you know me, is where I always start.

Best meals

A lavish, very drunken dinner at Nora Gray, my favourite new Montreal restaurant, some time, I think, in August, which began with sweetbread raviolis, meatballs and calamari, and which ended with a boozy dance party and knee-slides across the dining room floor.
My second trip to Cabane à Sucre Au Pied de Cochon, which, if anything, surpassed the unbelievable first visit, which I chronicled here last year.
Country ham and apple kimchi at Momofuku Ssäm Bar with the estimable Liz Clayton.
A Viennese feast at SAT FoodLab, my other favourite new opening of 2011, brainchild of my good friend Michelle of An Endless Banquet.

Best adventures

Hiking the Kalalau trail on the Na’Pali coast of Kauai, Hawaii. One of my favourite days ever, one of the greatest places on earth.
A trip to a land called Harmonie in the Laurentians, with Maya, Sarah, Heather, Dan B., ABS, Nadege, Dan C., Nathan, Winder and Aaron.

Best scary experiences
Public speaking figures into both of these: giving a lecture at Trampoline Hall in Toronto in February, through the good offices of Sheila Heti (See “Best books,” below) and pitching my feature comedy Breaking the Band at TIFF’s Pitch This! competition. Both experiences induced about a month of panic attacks, each. (But worth it.)

Best overall thing I did this year, also scary edition
Directed a short movie I wrote, running my own “real” movie set for the first time, and presenting it at TIFF, a dream a long time in the making. Working with my amazing producers John and Aisling all year on that, and many other projects, none of which would have been a twinkle in my eye without their intervention. Meeting a lot of wonderful and talented people at TIFF, Talent Lab and Pitch This!. Special notice also to the brilliant Matt Forsythe, who wins “Best movie poster” of the year.

Best present
A leatherbound book of set photos, from Maya.

Best parties
A Friday or Saturday night sometime in May at Dave, Nathan, Amy and Evan’s place.
Emy and Sarah’s Christmas party.

Weirdest thing I did this year
Tour the pools and spas of Las Vegas.

Best talks

Anthony Kinik on the Evil Eye, at Montreal Trampoline Hall in August.
Miranda July at the Ukrainian Federation in November.

Best books
My favourite two books of the year happen to be written by friends; like I said above, I am lucky to know so many talented people. The Chairs Are Where the People Go, by Misha Glouberman and Sheila Heti, is book of… let’s call them essays. On the subject of… let’s call it life. I will one day write a longer piece explaining in fuller detail my thoughts on this wonderful book, its relationship, at least in my head, to the newspaper columns of early-20th-Century-Vienna as I imagine them, the way it feels almost like a a highly advanced artificial intelligence built to chart and contain Misha’s thoughts and ideas. Read it. The other is The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, by my dear friend Meredith Erickson, David McMillan and Fred Morin. Joe Beef is probably my all-around, all-time favourite restaurant; it has a special place in my heart, and its personality, ethos and of course food are perfectly expressed in this charming book, which I imagine people in 100 years will read to understand what it was like to live in Montréal in the early years of the 21st Century.

Best movies
I’m not going to comment on all of these, except to make special note of Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow. Panos is an old, infrequent friend of mine—we live on different coasts and have spent more time on the phone with each other, talking trash about movies, than in person. Black Rainbow is his first feature and I was really, really happy to discover that it is fucking amazing. I wrote about it here.
Attack the Block - Joe Cornish
Book chon bang hyang (The Day He Arrives) - Hong Sang-soo
Drive - Nicolas Winding Refn
Fright Night - Craig Gillespie
Hanna - Joe Wright
Hugo - Martin Scorsese
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2 - David Yates
Melancholia - Lars von Trier
Midnight in Paris - Woody Allen
Oslo, August 31 - Joachim Trier (please let this come out here, it is probably in my top two or three of the year)
Tree of Life - Terrence Malick (at least one solid hour of it)
Thor - Kenneth Branagh
TrollHunter - André Øverdal
Your Sister’s Sister - Lynne Shelton

Best concert
Sitting feet away from the grand piano when Hans-Joachim Roedelius played here in October.

Best albums
A lot of Canadians on this list. This wasn’t like, a “thing,” it just happened, and I guess that’s cool? But my favourite album, singular, this year, at least right now, is a fairly recent discovery for me, PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake. This album… weaves a spell over me. It is perfect. Listen to it. Love it.
Austra, Feel it Break
Benoit & Sergio, assorted EPs
Destroyer, Kaputt
The Field, Looping State of Mind
Fucked Up, David Comes to Life
Handsome Furs, Sound Kapital
Little Scream, The Golden Record
Shin Joong Hyun, Beautiful Rivers and Mountains
Tycho, Dive
Various artists, Tropical 2
Zomby, Dedication

Best TV
Seeing Jess emerge from the background and knock it out of the park on Mad Men.
Breaking Bad coming together in a masterpiece of plotting and tension.
Best rediscovery, god help me, Star Trek: The Next Generation. This show is a masterpiece. I swear.

Best person
Jack Layton.

Best thing or category I forgot
You tell me.

The Falk-O-Lantern

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:18:00 -0400

My friend Dan Buller and I have this tradition where every year we create a Halloween pumpkin on a favourite theme. Okay, to be completely honest, Dan does most of the creating; I usually “produce” the thing. He’s an incredibly talented artist (and the star of my self-portrait) who makes the most impressive creative achievements look easy—just ask Snoop, who featured him and his work in his latest video.

Our last Halloween project was Robocop: The Pumpkin, which I thought was a fine tribute to a classic film, but this year I thought it would be nice to pay tribute to a recently deceased legend of the screen, the truly great Peter Falk. Naturally, we felt that the best way to memorialize him was in his guise as the great, Dostoyevsky-inspired detective Columbo.

So, this Halloween, I’m very proud to present the 2011 Peter Falk Memorial Pumpkin, or as Dan calls it, the Falk-O-Lantern.

More photos, and the making-of, below:

Happy Halloween!

Sic semper...

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 14:41:35 -0400

Reading about Ghadaffi today, I couldn’t help but think of Suetonius’ Nero chapter in The 12 Caesars.

XLVIII. But this furious impulse subsiding, he wished for some place of privacy, where he might collect his thoughts; and his freedman Phaon offering him his country-house, between the Salarian [626] and Nomentan [627] roads, about four miles from the city, he mounted a horse, barefoot as he was, and in his tunic, only slipping over it an old soiled cloak; with his head muffled up, and an handkerchief before his face, and four persons only to attend him, of whom Sporus was one. He was suddenly struck with horror by an earthquake, and by a flash of lightning which darted full in his face, and heard from the neighbouring camp [628] the shouts of the soldiers, wishing his destruction, and prosperity to Galba. He also heard a traveller they met on the road, say, “They are (377) in pursuit of Nero:” and another ask, “Is there any news in the city about Nero?” Uncovering his face when his horse was started by the scent of a carcase which lay in the road, he was recognized and saluted by an old soldier who had been discharged from the guards. When they came to the lane which turned up to the house, they quitted their horses, and with much difficulty he wound among bushes, and briars, and along a track through a bed of rushes, over which they spread their cloaks for him to walk on. Having reached a wall at the back of the villa, Phaon advised him to hide himself awhile in a sand-pit; when he replied, “I will not go under-ground alive.” Staying there some little time, while preparations were made for bringing him privately into the villa, he took up some water out of a neighbouring tank in his hand, to drink, saying, “This is Nero’s distilled water.” [629] Then his cloak having been torn by the brambles, he pulled out the thorns which stuck in it. At last, being admitted, creeping upon his hands and knees, through a hole made for him in the wall, he lay down in the first closet he came to, upon a miserable pallet, with an old coverlet thrown over it; and being both hungry and thirsty, though he refused some coarse bread that was brought him, he drank a little warm water.

XLIX. All who surrounded him now pressing him to save himself from the indignities which were ready to befall him, he ordered a pit to be sunk before his eyes, of the size of his body, and the bottom to be covered with pieces of marble put together, if any could be found about the house; and water and wood [630], to be got ready for immediate use about his corpse; weeping at every thing that was done, and frequently saying, “What an artist is now about to perish!” Meanwhile, letters being brought in by a servant belonging to Phaon, he snatched them out of his hand, and there read, “That he had been declared an enemy by the senate, and that search was making for him, that he might be punished according to the ancient custom of the Romans.” He then inquired what kind of punishment that was; and being told, that the (378) practice was to strip the criminal naked, and scourge him to death, while his neck was fastened within a forked stake, he was so terrified that he took up two daggers which he had brought with him, and after feeling the points of both, put them up again, saying, “The fatal hour is not yet come.” One while, he begged of Sporus to begin to wail and lament; another while, he entreated that one of them would set him an example by killing himself; and then again, he condemned his own want of resolution in these words: “I yet live to my shame and disgrace: this is not becoming for Nero: it is not becoming. Thou oughtest in such circumstances to have a good heart: Come, then: courage, man!” [631] The horsemen who had received orders to bring him away alive, were now approaching the house. As soon as he heard them coming, he uttered with a trembling voice the following verse,

Hippon m’ okupodon amphi ktupos ouata ballei; [632] The noise of swift-heel’d steeds assails my ears;

he drove a dagger into his throat, being assisted in the act by Epaphroditus, his secretary. A centurion bursting in just as he was half-dead, and applying his cloak to the wound, pretending that he was come to his assistance, he made no other reply but this, “‘Tis too late;” and “Is this your loyalty?” Immediately after pronouncing these words, he expired, with his eyes fixed and starting out of his head, to the terror of all who beheld him. He had requested of his attendants, as the most essential favour, that they would let no one have his head, but that by all means his body might be burnt entire. And this, Icelus, Galba’s freedman, granted.

Peep it real. DVD drops November 1, screenings in Toronto at The...

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:19:39 -0400

Peep it real. DVD drops November 1, screenings in Toronto at The Royal Oct. 21-23.

Movies I have liked so far in 2011

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 16:20:49 -0400

Since I no longer work for a Montreal weekly, I have the luxury to list films that haven’t opened here yet; this is just a list of new films I have seen this year, either here or at festivals elsewhere, and liked. In alphabetical order:

Attack the Block - Joe Cornish
Beyond the Black Rainbow - Panos Cosmatos
Book chon bang hyang (The Day He Arrives) - Hong Sang-soo (I used the Korean title because I really don’t like the English one)
Drive - Nicolas Winding Refn
Fright Night - Craig Gillespie
Hanna - Joe Wright
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2 - David Yates
Melancholia - Lars von Trier
Midnight in Paris - Woody Allen
Oslo, August 31 - Joachim Trier
Tree of Life - Terrence Malick (at least one solid hour of it)
Thor - Kenneth Branagh
TrollHunter - André Øverdal
Your Sister’s Sister - Lynne Shelton
X-Men: First Class - Matthew Vaughn

For the Talent Lab programme I participated in at TIFF this...

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 12:00:21 -0400

For the Talent Lab programme I participated in at TIFF this year, we were asked to create a video “self-portrait,” running less than five minutes and shot on a cell phone. I enlisted my friend Dan Buller to help me. Here it is.

It’s the “scary” Sorry, Rabbi trailer! (With...

Sat, 03 Sep 2011 18:41:29 -0400

It’s the “scary” Sorry, Rabbi trailer! (With apologies to Alexandre Desplat and Roman Polanski.)

Check it out! It’s the official poster for Sorry, Rabbi,...

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:20:41 -0400

Check it out! It’s the official poster for Sorry, Rabbi, designed and illustrated by the brilliant Matthew Forsythe.

This seems as good a time as any to announce our TIFF dates, and that we will also be showing at the Atlantic Film Festival!

TIFF screenings:
Short Cuts Canada 2
Sunday, Sept. 11, 8:45pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox
Monday, Sept. 12, 5pm, Jackman Hall - AGO

AFF screening:
Shorts 5
Thursday, Sept. 22, 9:25pm, Park Lane - Theatre 7

World premiere

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 13:53:39 -0400

So, it’s offish: Sorry, Rabbi will be making its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. I will also be doing some other stuff there. Excited!

Bringing back the motherlode: BEYOND THE BLACK RAINBOW

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 10:00:00 -0400

After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring, Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow is making the “genre” festival rounds—Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, others— where it’s been met with either adulation or confusion. The latter because, I think, Black Rainbow doesn’t fit comfortably in the genre mould, despite the fact that it’s indisputably informed by decades of sci-fi cinema—most specifically the florid fantastical offerings of the 1970s and ‘80s, to which it makes explicit, frequent homage.

In that sense, the film is sci-fi through and through, but at the same time it’s an unabashed art film: slow, challenging, even austere. This isn’t the supposedly grown-ass-man science fiction of Moon or Monsters. It’s something more ambitious, less welcoming, but much more rewarding.

Sculpted from deeply saturated blacks, reds and blues, it’s a film you submerge yourself into like an isolation tank of the kind you might find in the institute where the film mostly take place. Set in a very specific 1983—the VHS 1983 of Brainstorm, The Dead Zone and, of course, Videodrome—Beyond the Black Rainbow slowly, deliberately unspools the story of a frightened young girl (Eva Allan) under observation in the mostly empty Arboria Institute (“Serenity Through Technology”), overseen by the troubled, fascinatingly coiffured Barry Niles (Michael Rogers). Niles’ motives are obscure, his actions and reactions cryptic. Cosmatos lets us space out on the meticulously art-directed Arboria’s tense surroundings, playing scenes out with calculated, even frustrating patience, all wrapped in a period-perfect analog synth score by Jeremy Schmidt (Sinoia Caves, Black Mountain).

And just when its pace feels like it’s about to grate, just when you start to think that Cosmatos is not being so much oblique as stingy with the narrative, the film changes spectacularly, with a truly remarkable, sublimely creepy psychedelic flashback sequence that at once tells you everything you need to know about the first half of the movie and prepares you for the rest. It’s been a while since I’ve seen something so startlingly strange and evocative; I don’t want to say much more about this sequence except that it has been stuck in my imagination for days since I saw it.

And here’s where I’m duty-bound to admit that I know Panos, that we’ve had an intermittent friendship of telephone calls, movie chats and occasional hangs since I first met him at a friend’s apartment sometime in the early 2000s. So take all of this with a big grain of salt if you must—though I spent 10 years as a film critic and I’m pretty sure I know when to trust my gut. Beyond the Black Rainbow is, in my opinion, one of the most refreshingly imaginative and accomplished sci-fi films I’ve seen in years, and certainly one of the most exciting Canadian films in a long, long time. Magnet and Mongrel have picked it up for distribution in the U.S. and Canada, respectively; I hope you get a chance to see it soon.

Picture locked.

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 19:39:48 -0400

Picture locked.

Last week I shot a short film I’d been working on for some years now (if you count writing),...

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 13:22:00 -0400

Last week I shot a short film I’d been working on for some years now (if you count writing), called Sorry, Rabbi. It was kind of a big deal for me. Here’s some pictures from the shoot.

(Standing, l-r: Adam Waito, Sean Michaels, Noah Markowicz, Etan Muskat, Douglas Hollingworth, Dan Beirne. Seated, l-r: Jacob Tierney, Howard Bilerman.) Photo by Dan Haber.

Co-star Jessica Paré and DOP Bobby Shore. Photo by Andi State.

The Hasids with costume/wardrobe designer Jenna Wright. Photo by Darren Curtis.

Art director Veronica Classen, Sean, me, 1st AD Boji Albany and Jenna on the monitor. Photo by Maya Fuhr.

Producer John Christou, me, Jess and Jacob. Photo by Andi State.

Slate. Photo by Maya Fuhr.

photo by Daniel Haber Wrapped on my movie Sorry, Rabbi last...

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:11:00 -0400

photo by Daniel Haber

Wrapped on my movie Sorry, Rabbi last night!

More pics to come soon.

Here is a nice article, about me.

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:55:15 -0400

Here is a nice article, about me.