TIFF '23: The Origin of Our Discontents

by Cláudio Alves

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in "Origin"

Dealing with complex sociological issues in cinema is tricky. The risk of didacticism is hard to avoid, but abstraction can also be the enemy of clarity, especially when the filmmakers want to posit movies as an instrument of change, a spike of awareness. Writing about this type of film, I'm often confronted with inner conflicts about how to approach criticism. It's tempting to celebrate cinema that confirms one's worldview and political alignments. But does that alone make for a good film?  Many films at this year's TIFF confront issues of systematized injustice on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, and other forms of identity. Two such films, Ava DuVernay's Origin and Nora El Hourch's Sisterhood present distinct visions though a striking sense of confrontation unites them...

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Almost There: Sidney Poitier in "In the Heat of the Night"

by Cláudio Alves

Last week, we took a look at the cast of A Raisin in the Sun for the Almost There pieces. Among that quartet of fabulous performances, Sidney Poitier's Walter Younger stood out as the most overwhelming one, so full of energy that the claustrophobic set seemed incapable of containing him. This week, we're again exploring the filmography of the first Black man to win the Best Actor Oscar, giving him a solo opportunity to shine. You could actually do an entire miniseries about the many times Poitier might have come close to an Oscar nomination and failed:  A Raisin in the Sun, Edge of the City, Porgy and Bess, A Patch of Blue.

Today, however, we'll be looking at Poitier's 1967 Oscar bid, when the actor starred in three hits, two of which went on to be nominated for Best Picture. Of them, Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night went on to win the big award and features what is probably the best performance of Poitier's career…

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1999 with Nick: Best Cinematography Falls on "Cedars"

This week, in advance of the Oscars, Nick Davis is looking back at the Academy races of 20 years ago, spotlighting movies he’d never seen and what they teach us about those categories, then and now...

Spotlight Movie: Snow Falling on Cedars

Today's case study from the 72nd Academy Awards is a less auspicious instance than yesterday's of a movie sneaking onto Oscar's ballot with just one nomination. I'd also call it an example of good filmmaking that, in context, arguably constitutes bad filmmaking, or at least disappointing and misguided filmmaking. Cinematographer Robert Richardson is not the exclusive or even the primary defendant in the case I’m going to make. He was probably executing to the best of his ability the mandates of a director and a producing team intent on the picturesque. Still, I’m not sure we needed to reward him for following such dubious orders. And now, as so often in this movie, we flash back...

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White Zombie (1932)

 

Have you ever seen any of the early Bela Lugosi movies? Audiences must have been really freaked out by his eyes because the movies kept pushing that stare as the ultimate in horror (Dracula had arrived the year before). White Zombie was the first feature film about zombies, a genre now so common you forget that there had to be a first. The film, now celebrating its 87th birthday, is streaming on Amazon Prime and since it's only 66 minutes long we decided to zip right through yesterday... 

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Believe the hype: "Green Book" is a true crowd pleaser

by Nathaniel R

The final day and a half of the very short but very fun Middleburg Film Festival went by with a whirl. We've since received word on the winners. Though Middleburg is a non-juried festival, the audience votes for a people's choice style prize. The documentary winner was Biggest Little Farm, a film about the director and his wife trying to develop a sustainable farm on 200 acres in California. Farm has been making the festival rounds for the past two months and is aiming for an April 2019 bow in movie theaters.

The narrative feature winner, echoing the crowd-response at TIFF a month earlier, went to Peter Farrelly's Green Book. Green Book was the closing film of the festival and I was able to catch its first screening on Sunday before racing to the airport to return home. The crowd went wild for it and it's worth noting that Middleburg has a more diverse audience than a lot of festivals (that's probably due to the vast social connections of the founder Sheila C Johnson, co-founder of BET who is one of the nation's richest African-American women and very involved in the arts). Sadly I wasn't able to attend the Q&A though I did manage to snap this photo before racing to the airport as the star Viggo Mortensen, the composer Kris Bowers, and director Peter Farrelly entered to a wild standing ovation to discuss the movie... 

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