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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Did You Gag on "Killer Joe"?

My screenings these past two weeks -- cram session! -- to complete year end business, have been like one wild tonal shift after another swinging as they have from meta rib-nudging (Seven Psycopaths) to the hormonally twee (Take This Waltz), severely depressed (Oslo August 31st) and on through the defiantly stiff and self-medicated (The Deep Blue Sea)... I can't possibly write about them all. But I did feel the night to blurt out (choke out?) a few sentences on William Friedkin's Killer Joe based on the play of the same name by Tracy Letts.

Friedkin and Letts aren't quite joined at the hip as collaborators go despite the Oscar winning filmmaker taking the cinematic reigns on both Bug and Joe. Letts most acclaimed play August: Osage County went to another filmmaker though it's fascinating to think what Friedkin might have done with the material. He is, after all, at least as willing as Letts to attack his material with edgy flair, wicked humor and artistic abandon... for better and worse.

[NC17 madness and two SPOILER images after the jump]

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Killer Joe"

Hey, that rhymes.

For those of you who don't know the name Tracy Letts, a brief history. The Oklahoman born playwright first came to minor fame as a member of Chicago's lauded theater collective Steppenwolf. Killer Joe was his first play, written in 1991. Over the next two decades his career as a playwright soared, first with the electric and very naked and delusional horror piece Bug (which became a misunderstood movie in 2006) and then he achieved the kind of across the board success that most artists will only ever dream of winning a Tony, a Pulitzer and critical and popular success with August: Osage County. (That super successful play is supposedly on its way to movie theaters in a year or two with Meryl Streep slurring her way through bitchy tirades as its drug addled matriach Violet Weston).

So, in short, a Tracy Letts project is a big deal. So here's screen transfer attempt #2... Killer Joe. Let's break down the trailer with our yes, no, maybe so system.  

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