don mckellar Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I have a few obscure heroes in show business. One of them, as I note here from time to time, is Vincenzo Natali, best known for Cube, but also for an awesome little techno-thriller called Cypher, an offbeat, surreal comedy called Nothing, and the forthcoming Splice (which I would commit atrocities to see right now). He shares my fascination with the unknown and otherworldly, and expresses it on the screen in unfailingly creative and intelligent ways. Another example along the same lines is Don McKellar, whose Last Night is one of the most perfect little movies I've ever seen (though his participation in last year's godawful Blindness shall not go unpunished).

A third hero of mine is Andrew Niccol. I didn't think much of Lord of War, but all of his other projects have been conceptually brilliant in ways that are very much on my wavelength: The Truman Show (which Peter Weir directed from Niccol's screenplay) is probably my favorite film of the 90s (though that changes from week to week); Gattaca is deservingly becoming a sci-fi classic; and Simone is tragically underrated. He's smart, he's careful, and he has a wonderful imagination. Oh, and his just-announced next project, The Cross, is destined to rock my world.

Last night, James and I had tickets to the TIFF premiere of Blindness, adapted from the Nobel Prize-winning book by José Saramago. James reviewed Blindness when we saw the film at Cannes, but I'd heard through the Telluride grapevine that the film had undergone a substantial edit since then. The cut we saw back in May was overlayed with a heavy, expositional voiceover throughout that completely killed the film, which I otherwise had liked quite a bit. So when I heard there was a re-edit playing here at TIFF, I knew we had to see it.

I'm happy to report that the newly edited version of Blindness is a vast improvement over what we saw at Cannes. Not only did director Fernando Meirelles (who also made one of the best films ever, City of God) remove the irritating and distracting voiceover, but as a result of doing so had to significantly re-cut, and in the process ended up with a much, much better film. He's tightened it up a lot, particularly a very troublesome bit concerning a major character arc shift for Julianne Moore's character, The Doctor's Wife, which was one of the parts I most had trouble with at Cannes. And while the film's running time is about the same, it now paces much quicker and thus feels like a tauter, shorter film that's much more engaging.

UPDATE: Here's the trailer in Quicktime quality.

Of all the films I'm looking forward to this fall, Blindness ranks fairly high up there. Canadian distributor Alliance has just made available a full trailer that proves to be fairly intriguing, as an optometrist (Mark Ruffalo) and his seemingly immune wife (Julianne Moore) cope with an inexplicable epidemic of sight loss.

I'm a sucker for most anything vaguely apocalyptic, and while this very well could turn out to be akin to watching the first act of Children of Men through a milk-filled mask (which I've done, mind you), the prestige behind the project* says otherwise. We have acclaimed screenwriter Don McKellar adapting Nobel-Laureate José Saramago's novel, with Academy Award nominee Fernando Meirelles directing a cast that also includes Danny Glover, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alice Braga, and Sandra Oh.

I must say, going off that taste and last spring's teaser, I still like the look, sound, and feel of this one, especially Moore's little retort (you know the one), and that's not to mention that any trailer which employs John Murphy's underrated score from last year's Sunshine to set a rightfully ominous tone is always fine by me. We'll get to see (sorry) what trials and tribulations await the world on September 19th.

*Not to mention Rocchi's review of the film from its Cannes world premiere.

"You won't fool the children of the revolution." -- T-Rex

Yeah, but what if the children of the revolution are fooling themselves? That's the central question of Reg Harkema's prickly, perverse and poverty-riddled new comedy Monkey Warfare -- a comedy that, bizarrely, has more in it to talk about than 90% of most dramas. In Toronto, Dan (Don McKellar) and his life-partner-in-crime Linda (Tracy Wright) make something like a living thanks to careful scavenging from other people's refuse and long-term rent control. Dan and Linda are living outside society -- yet still in the heart of it in downtown Toronto - because they have to: Years ago, as part of an act of protest, they severely burnt a security guard. Dan and Linda's relationship used to burn with revolutionary fervor, but now it's just embers -- they're tired, of life on the run and with each other. Their biggest solace, social crutch and anesthesia is weed -- and their supply dries up without much warning.

Chance has Dan meet Susan (Nadia Litz), and her youth and idealism appeals to Dan's jaded sensibilities -- as well as the fact that she's a smoking hottie with access to marijuana. Liz is distrustful of Susan and Dan's friendship for a number of reasons -- what if Susan's a cop? -- but Dan's not worried: "She's not that kind of heat." Dan shows Susan how he lives -- scrounging thrift stores for hidden treasures, jacking restorable furniture from the streetside when it's abandoned -- and she asks him about what it was like to be a real revolutionary. As Dan and Linda's neighborhood starts gentrifying, Susan begins acting on the principles Dan and Linda articulate -- with extreme methods, and extreme results.