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D.O.A.P. Tagged Articles at Cinematical

From the Editor's Desk, Sept. 21

by James Rocchi Sep 21st 2006 // 12:33PM

Filed under: Comedy », Foreign Language », Columns », Toronto International Film Festival », From the Editor's Desk », Cinematical Indie »

Being in back in San Francisco from Toronto is mind-blowing, really. You go from three, four, five movies a day to ... well, one or two. You can get a proper burrito. You cannot get a Tim Horton's donut. And you have to re-negotiate your relationship with your cat. But you find yourself living in San Francisco thinking about it through the movies you saw in Toronto -- how the sounds of sirens in the Panhandle makes you flash back to Monkey Warfare, which may be the best thing you saw at TIFF. Or the headlines make you think of Catch a Fire's portrait of how bad police work in a war on terror creates more terror. Or you wake up fumbling from a dream you were having -- but was it your dream, or the visions in Brand Upon the Brain or Pan's Labyrinth, which are both stuck in your head like an unforgettable tune? Even the movies you see when you're back get filtered through the lens of Toronto -- how All the King's Men makes you flash back on one interesting moment in the over-hyped, unjustly awarded mess that is Death of a President. If you're reading this, then your life is probably like that, too -- the world of movies becoming a way you see the world. It's time to go see another movie -- School for Scoundrels, and you could use a laugh -- but you can pause from writing a new daily short column about movies and news (and thinking too much about podcasting problems and reviews to write) to talk with your local café owner, who loved The Proposition, and still walk there on time to get a little sunshine before the latest round of the story-teller's darkness. And what film are you seeing the world through, lately?

See you tomorrow,

J.

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TIFF Review: Death of a President (D.O.A.P.)

by James Rocchi Sep 12th 2006 // 7:02PM

Filed under: Drama », Thrillers », Mystery & Suspense », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports », Toronto International Film Festival »



Occasionally, on the festival circuit, there's a movie that garners significant press before it even opens, and mainstream press at that. The controversy could be political, artistic or any one of a number of things. This year at Toronto, the as-yet-unseen-but-buzzed-about buzz flick was Death of a President -- a British mockumentary promising a look at a hypothetical 2007 assassination of George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States. Coyly listed in the program guides as D.O.A.P., the film's mere existence and outline caused a controversy, and incited strong feelings from both the Right-wing blogosphere and Kevin Costner (raising the question of which of those is actually less relevant). Political filmmaking about what-ifs is nothing new, nor are mock-docs about politically charged realities. C.S.A: The Confederate States of and It Happened Here both come to mind, as well as much of the work of Peter Watkins. Death of a President, it seemed, might be the newest entry into the field. Or public outrage over its essential plot might make the film disappear, a casualty of a just-declared War on Premises. ...

The proof, however, would be in the pudding -- and today on an overcast Toronto morning, the line for the pudding went around the block from the Cumberland theater. Having seen the film, I'll share the following observations about Death of a President: First, the press-and-industry screening this morning did, in fact, receive some applause as the credits rolled -- neither timid golf-claps nor an exultant celebration, but some. The second fact about Death of a President is even more stark and essential: It's not very good. Death of a President is not made as a broad-scale look at what might happen to the world, the state of things in the event of the murder of George W. Bush, or whoever may hold the office of the presidency. It's a tired, tedious mix of procedural-style storytelling, in which we're asked to engage in a slow-crawl mystery: Who really killed George W. Bush in October, 2007?

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