Goodbye, Maurice

JA from MNPP here with very sad news indeed - Maurice Sendak, the author most famously of Where the Wild Things Are but also amongst many more In the Night Kitchen and Outside, Over There (which was the basis for the movie Labyrinth) and the illustrator for thrice as many more, passed away today at the age of 83 due to complications from a recent stroke. His most recent book Bumble-Andy just came out last year, and he made the interview rounds reminding many of us just what a brilliant ornery singular man he was. Here's the first part of a wonderful interview he did with Stephen Colbert just in January, and here's part two. It's must watch.

Spike Jonze adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are came out in 2009, and it was my favorite movie of that year; about it I said that Spike Jonze "scraped up not just the book but everything inside myself that's attached to its memory and he spilled it out on the screen, a torrent of beautiful and horrible feelings and thoughts, jumbled up like rawest adolescence itself." Losing Maurice today is making me feel the same way - like a bewildered and angry child, and knowing that he would have smacked me and told me to snap out of it only makes the loss worse. RIP Maurice.

It's Over! Hot Docs '12 Finale Edition

The Hot Docs Festival wrapped late last week and a jury handed out awards on Friday.

Call Me Kuchu

I saw Call Me Kuchu after it won Best International Feature (each year they play three award winners during the festival's last evening). I had tried to avoid the movie because depression and anger aren't emotions I like feeling, especially with something that affects me on such a personal level. The anger is rooted in denial.  I'd like to think that the struggle is over for LGBT people but it isn't in so many communities and countries. 

"Kuchu" is a pejorative umbrella term referring to homosexuals, male or female, for Uganda's homophobic government and majority opinion. Directors Malika Zouhali-Worrall and Katherine Fairfax Wright follow a small group of gay activists in this hostile environment and focus on David Kato in particular. His violent death took place during this documentary's production. His murder sparked outrage in the Western world but Uganda's government and majority resent the Western interference in their policies.

One of the other movies given an additional screening was Nisha Pahuja's The World Before Her, which also  made a splash at Tribeca. It won the top prize of Best Canadian Feature and $10,000. This documentary compares contestants of the Miss India pageant with young women of the same age toting guns in Hindu fundamentalist camps, exposing the lack of options for social and economic mobility of young woman in India. According to the CBC, Pahuja's previous credits include TV doc Diamond Road and it took her two years to gain access to the fundamentalist camps. More award winners after the jump.

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Monday Monologue: Barbara's Revenge

Dame Judi Dench has been on my mind lately what with the eye condition, a new James Bond film coming and Marigold Hotel in theaters. So herewith an article from 2008. If you only started reading The Film Experience in the past few years, it's new to you! May is also Mental Health Awareness Month so let's appreciate some crazy bitches...

They always let you down in the end."

My contrarian opinion of Dame Judi Dench is that sometimes she phones it in. How many ways can one play the quippy unfazeable grande dame? But in Notes on a Scandal (2006), she's unimproveable. Faced with the atypical character of "Barbara Covett", Dench rises and soars. The film's politics are horrendous: boo hiss --an evil predatory spinster lesbian attempts to destroy a heteronormative marriage! But the actress is magnificent, giving the film a metronome precise drip drip of theatrical malice.

My favorite sequence in the film runs from Barbara's inconsolable grief for her lost feline, through the resulting perceived betrayal by Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), who doesn't have time to console her, to the exquisite sequence when she is confronted with another teacher with amorous feelings for Sheba. She boils with vengeance in mind.

You'd like me to ask Mrs Hart if she's inclined to commit adultery with you? I don't want you to suffer more than is necessary. No one should. I couldn't possibly speak for Mrs. Hart but instinct tells me you might not be her type. 

"She's got a type, then?" is her co-worker Brian's sad response. The film has a few exquisite and small supporting turns and Phil Davis (also terrific as the husband to Vera Drake) is aces in this scene, all befuddled crush turned to shell shock.

Kettle's boiled. Dench likes her tea with bile.

Oh it's no reflection on your attractiveness. My impression is that her preference is for the younger man...surprisingly young; Boys, I'm told. Naturally she doesn't discuss any of this with me but I've been hearing some rather alarming rumors about one in particular.

Playground gossip, staffroom whispers and so on. You might know the boy in question. Ummm... Stephen Connelly."

Brian indicates that her tea is ready.

I think the kettle's boiled.

[V.O.] You say the words and it's done. Easy. Judas had the grace to hang himself. But only according to Matthew, the most sentimental of the apostles. Is this the last night of her old life? I wonder how long my messenger will take?

People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely but of the drip drip of long haul no end in sight solitude, they know nothing. What it's like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the laundrette or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor's hand sends a jolt of longing straight to your groin. Of this, Sheba and her like have no clue.

Dench's every line reading is carved out of the tough bark of decades of loneliness and cynicism; if you could cut through Barbara's hardened shell, you'd see disappointment and repression expanding like rings in an ancient tree. As the words escape her, she sharpens them to a lethal point with fermented emotions and curdled wit, wielding them like weapons. Earlier in the film, Barbara refers to herself as a battle axe. For a woman drowning in self-delusion, it's a surprising lucid self-assessment.

"The Exorcist" and Nothingness

[Editor's Note: Beau McCoy is a longtime reader who I met recently. I quite like his writing and have asked him to contribute to the site. I hope you'll encourage him in the comments to return again. He doesn't have a blog so I'm featuring his "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" entry here as a kind of sneak peak to Wednesday night's group activity looking at "The Exorcist". I'm already terrified to follow this entry up. It's quite an opening scene. Are you joining us on Wednesday? -Nathaniel]

by Beau McCoy
There are few horror films whose reputation precedes them quite like The Exorcist (1973). Even if you never see the film, you know it. You know what it's about. You know specific scenes and you know certain images, even if you can't quite remember how you came across them. In much the same way Friedkin intended for certain subliminal imagery to make its way into the film, (using failed makeup tests with a model), the film inserts itself, impermissibly, into the subconscious of those who experience it in one way or another.

When you hear about films, if you're anything like me, there's something that hits you that I've called 'The Wave'. A tsunami of emotion, memory, nostalgia, fear, and regret that gives you opportunity to view yourself viewing that film in a different time. I can't remember much from the early part of my life. There are people who I see after years and I can't recall exactly how it was I knew or met them in the first place. But with a film, it's as though it made its way into me, burrowing itself into my subconscious, or heart, dick, what have you, and when it's called upon, it pops up cheerfully like an old friend to say 'Hey! What have you been up to?' 

The Exorcist, appropriately enough, is not so cheerful. It looms. [Beau's best shot after the jump]

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Take Three: Piper Laurie

Craig (from Dark Eye Socket) here with this week's Take Three. Today: Piper Laurie

Take One: Hesher (2010)
Laurie has played the grandmother figure a few times in recent years (Hounddog, Eulogy, The Dead Girl), but she best conveyed matriarchal feeling last year in Hesher. The film uses the familiar narrative coupling of a loveable old person and unruly younger person connecting despite obvious differences. This time it's carried out with keen subtlety because the people involved are Laurie and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who make this arrangement work in a delightfully fresh way. Their friendship isn’t the main thrust of the narrative, but a key characterful diversion, and the genuinely heartfelt union elevates the film with tiny moments of tender affection.

Laurie's Grandma is there for her grandson (Devin Brochu) through the mourning of his mother and later when Gordon-Levitt’s stoner/drifter crashes the family home. Her open acceptance of the stranger in their home starts as comically baffling but becomes almost profound. A bedroom scene where the Grandma and Hesher share tales of their lives over a bong contains obvious comedy. But Laurie’s performance – especially her indistinct and sweetly sing-song delivery – creates an odd pathos. She's giving us glimpses of her life before old age took its toll. This scene follows an earlier moment where nobody takes her up on her offer to accompany her on her morning walk. Unfazed, yet with a hint of melancholy barely audible to the others, she utters: “Well, you know you’re always invited.” She arouses a rush of emotion in five small words. "Grandma" couldn't might've been a mere peripheral presence or a parody, but she's more than a token old lady in Laurie's hands. 

Godfearing loons and corporate megabitches after the jump

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