Ann Savage Tagged Articles at Cinematical

While we were curled up in our homes, stuffing ourselves on cookies and ripping open presents, two of our beloved female icons passed away.

By now you've probably heard that Eartha Kitt succumbed to colon cancer on Christmas Day at the age of 81. To me (like many), she'll always be the woman who made rolling, feline rrrrrr's sound perfectly natural and downright sexy on the completely ridiculous and lovable Batman. In more recent years, she voiced Yzma on The Emperor's New Groove series, and played the evil Lola Dede in the adaptation of Anne Rice's Feast of all Saints.

On that very same Christmas Day, The Hollywood Reporter posts that the wonderful Ann Savage passed away at the age of 87. The '40s movie actress had suffered a series of strokes recently, and died in her sleep at a nursing home. To some, she was Sister Harriet from Fire with Fire, to others, she's Guy Maddin's mother in My Winnipeg, and to most, she's the unstoppable, blackmailing dame named Vera from Detour.

Both actresses will be sorely missed. Each put their unstoppable and powerful stamp on Hollywood, and we're all the luckier for having gotten to know them on the big screen. Hop through the jump for a look at Kitt in all of her purring wonder, and the magnetic poll that is Ann Savage as Maddin's mother.

Cinematical has just received this super-awesome poster for Guy Maddin's latest film and docu-fantasia, My Winnipeg (click on the image to enlarge). After sad music and branded brains, Guy was asked to make a doc about his hometown. Of course, for Maddin that meant a blending of documentary and fantasy. Grabbing Darcy Fehr, who also played "Guy Maddin" in Cowards Bend the Knee, and B-movie star Ann Savage (who plays his mother), Guy put his fictional self into his documentary and journeyed through a snowy world of strange public stories and even stranger private stories -- there's rug-straightening, Eatons issues, fires, hockey, and more.

My Winnipeg was one of my favorite films from TIFF last year, and I implore you to give it a chance. Guy Maddin knows how to find the humor in every situation, and present it in a way that is unique, stunning, enjoyable, and inspiring.

Unfortunately, I don't have a release date to share, although the film's website says that it will open at the IFC Center on June 13, as well as On Demand, before rolling out to more cities in the following weeks.

Only Guy Maddin would compose a surreal documentary (or more aptly, "docu-fantasia" as he calls it) on Winnipeg that is all set in the course of a narrated goodbye to the city. Forget odes and technicolor platitudes -- My Winnipeg is a self-mocking look at the cold city that lies in the heart of Canada. But it is one told with warmth -- a film that makes what would seem like a mundane documentary into a funny, charming, relatable and interesting exploration of Maddin's home.

"Winnipeg... Winnipeg... Winnipeg... Snowing, sleepwalking Winnipeg," Maddin describes, before likening the city's famous forks (the conjunction of the Assiniboine and Red rivers) to his mother's bare crotch (the lap). If you've seen his work before, you can probably imagine how this manifests on the screen. But this is only the beginning. In the shadows, mist and visual darkness, Maddin presents a laugh-heavy Winnipeg, whether you're a resident who recognizes the places on-screen and recalls the incidents he re-stages, or just someone who follows his warped and wonderful storytelling style.