Overall I enjoyed the festival. The average quality is high, it’s a real public festival like Rotterdam and i saw some unpolished diamonds, even some polished ones. My highlights:
- Slumdog Millionaire. For once I agree with the public’s choice – in Rotterdam I never do -, a fantastic, overwhelming happening;
- The Burning Plain. had a rather critical welcome here in Toronto, but I am still fascinated by the marvelous plot and also here: the devil is in the detail (no spoiler, though);
- A Year Ago in Winter, beautiful acting , I still hear the Bayern accent of Josef Bierbichler;
- Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, a way to make – if possible – war imaginable;
But that’s only a small part of more, beautiful screenings: Snow, New York I love you, Disgrace, Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love, Three Monkeys, Plus tard tu comprendras, RocknRolla, Linha de Passe, Goodbye Solo.
So what about a disappointing festival like the below par
Toronto blog of cinema.nl tells me, without persuading me that they have seen an lot of movies at all.
I had only two disappointing screenings: the Canadian movie Paschendaele and Radio Love, and the latter was rather a question of taste ( I did not like the sense of humour in the movie).
International Film Festival Rotterdam, cinema
tiff, TIFF 2008, TIFF08, Toronto International Film Festival
John Malkovich, Youssou N’dour, both present and in the movie, two world premieres, the 2008 winner of Cannes’ best director award, and that all in in one day: Let’s say it could be worse, isn’t it?
- In the kitschy Winter Garden Theatre the world premiere of Disgrace from the famous novel of J.M. Coetzee. I never finished reading the novel, so I was fairly blank in watchin’ this movie. Well, John Malkovich was als always John Malkovich, what is terrific and bad at the same time. The central theme of the book/movie, the voluntarity of Lucy to been humbled, was not really convincing. “ Like a dog, Yes, like a dog.” And was the role of black dogman Petrus not too small? Still rating ***1/2 (of 5 possible)
- I already described my enthousiasm over the documentary about Youssou N’dour and after a night sleep, it rests. Particularly I liked the personal touch of the movie in combination with the after 9-11-2001 images, taken from the street – Church Street NYC- where I was just a few years ago. Rating ****.
- Three Monkeys of Cannes winning director Nuri Bilge Ceylan was a nice “small” movie on the matter of betrayal and faith with a very intriguing start – no spoilers here
-. Rating ****
- And for the start of the day the Chinese Ocean Flame, a Romeo and Juliette drama, packed in a HongKong style, exaggerated crime scene. And a beautiful ocean. Rating ***.
general
Ceylan, cinema, Coetzee, Disgrace, Ocean flame, Three monkeys, tiff, TIFF 2008, TIFF08, Youssou Ndour
5:30 PM: and then there was the line. Used to the chaotic mess of people for the start of a movie at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the smaller brother of TIFF, I was totally surprised by that tidy line of waiting people, half an hour before the start already far around the corner of the block from Church Street.
My first movie of the festival was an impressive, touching one, Plus Tard, je comprendas of the Israeli director Amos Gitai. It was a classic movie about the great drama of the 20th century in the context of a French/Jewish family , based on the autobiography of Jérôme Cléments, president of Arte, the European cultural TV Channel.
Most impressing in the movie was what not been said: about the choices made in the famliy, about the Holocaust. And the image of almost childlike happy German and French policemen and soldiers, finding what there where looking for in a small French village in the Vichy- south: an older Jewish couple, says more about the madness of mankind then other images with brutal violence.
Grand old lady Jeanne Moreau, 80 now, played the role of the Jewish (grand) mother in an very convincing way, showing all the dilemmas of those who survived the Holocaust.
Uncategorized
Amos Gitai, Arte, cinema, Jeanne Moreau, tiff, TIFF 2008, TIFF08
