Hot Docs: Interior. Leather Bar.

Reports from the 2013 Hot Docs Film Festival

Paolo here. Because I tend to overreact to thing I proclaimed that last year's Hot Docs film festival here in Toronto was 'overtly sexual'! As it turns out, last year's crop had more diverse topics: death, culture, loss, legacy. And the same can be said about the documentaries this year but we won't abandon the docs about sex. Here's one now, James Franco's Interior. Leather Bar.

[NSFW Franco provocations after the jump]

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Hot Docs: Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer

Amir here, reporting from the Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto.

Most critics who take notes during screenings will testify that, at least once, they’ve encountered a film that renders their notes useless. Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer was one of those films, which is fitting since co-directors Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin manage to capture the anarchic spirit of Pussy Riot quite authentically. Having started my notes with a relatively balanced number of positive and negative points, I found myself with almost a page full of crossed-out complaints and a film I felt compelled and excited by in equal measure.

Pussy Riot, an HBO produced documentary, follows Nadia, Katia and Masha, the three leading members of the now infamous Pussy Riot movement – a group of feminists who organize spontaneous demonstrations against the totalitarian Putin regime in Russia. [more]

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A Voyage to the Link

Retronaut Amazingly sexist rejection letter from Walt Disney to an aspiring female artist
Technicolor Disney has reference photos for animation mashed-up with final art. Cool 
LA Times AMPAS may expand past 6,000 members this year. They're talking about diversifying and may relax their membership cap
Cinema Blend 80s/90s hitmaker Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction) to return after a long absence for another sexual thriller, this one about an open marriage and a trail of bodies. Expect big stars to headline as the troubled couple.
Out Soderbergh interviewing Soderbergh? The director's gay brother talks to him about Behind the Candelabra. (Someone remind me why this isn't opening in movie theaters again?)

Empire Ryan Reynolds for Tarsem Singh's Selfless? This only leads to one logical question...
My New Plaid Pants what kind of revealing costumes will Tarsem put him in? 
Variety Jane Fonda about to get the immortalizing hand-in-cement treatment
Playbill the revival of Cabaret on Broadway already has Alan Cumming returning as the emcee but they're obviously looking for a starry Sally. Initial rumors said Anne Hathaway but now Emma Stone is the rumor
Slate "the secret autobiography of Tom Cruise" ...what's behind the grinning mask?
Guardian Pedro Almodóvar calls I'm So Excited his "gayest film ever". Hmmm. It's also supposed to be some sort of metaphor for Spain's economic crisis.

one more thing...
I was just bitching about Into the Woods but the idea of a new movie musical version of Guys & Dolls sounds great. Especially since the original film version isn't exactly a "classic" outside of being, well, old. It's especially good news if both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Channing Tatum really are on board. But if it doesn't get a good director I'll worry. A lot. 

off cinema
i09 huge breakthrough in artificial skin. How long until we see Blade Runner style replicants? 
Gothamist last three days to see Edvard Munch's "The Scream" at MoMA. When I was last there I wrote about Tilda Swinton in a box but I neglected to tell you how embarrassed for everyone I was when I went to see The Scream. People were not looking at it but posing beside it with their Scream Face on (which always ended up looking more "Home Alone Face"). some people were so confused about the pose/provenance that they were doing Monkey See, Monkey Do. TRAGIC!  

Watching "Hugo" at MoMA

In the middle of a nearby exhibit about architecture, there's a 3D screen showing pieces of Hugo because of the famous train station set. My bestie snapped a photo of me unawares looking on (above). Some of the scenes they played weren't even set-specific though. Unfortunately this meant that I couldn't even escape Chloe Moretz at MoMA.

Also tragic!

Into The... Trainwreck?

For those of you who've had the pleasure of seeing Stephen Sondheim's classic Into the Woods (1986) on stage, you know that, like most of the great composer's once-prolific oeuvre, it is very particularly a Work of Theater. Some artists' skill sets transfer easily between stage, screen, television and literature and so on but others do not. Certain geniuses are so tied to a particular medium they become it; Stephen Sondheim IS Musical Theater. 

But musical theater is different from musical cinema. Naturally compromises will have to be made. The person doing the new compromising is Rob Marshall who Hollywood is still giving the musicals to, presumably because of the huge success of Chicago (2002) and not the floppery of Nine (2009). So yes, compromises must be made...  but they do not have to be made in casting. Many star actors -- if you're forced to cast that way -- have great singing voices. Les Misérables may have botched its casting of Javert (Ugh. Russell Crowe) but elsewhere Tom Hooper seemed to understand that beautiful melodic musical-friendly trained voices were required and could be found in big stars (Hathaway, Hackman, Seyfried) and rising ones (Tveit & Redmayne) and he cast accordingly... except for that bit about letting Helena Bonham-Carter "sing" again post-Sweeney Todd.

Unfortunately Hollywood loves to repeat its mistakes and somehow Sweeney Todd did NOT result in Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham-Carter being lifetime banned from future musicals ...

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A Place in Your Cinematic Mind

What's going on in that movie-lovin' head of yours today?

Tell mama ...
Tell mama all.