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Usually the insane brilliance of avant garde filmmakers would suffer under outside influence, but thus far, that hasn't been the case with Guy Maddin. On the heels of Brand Upon the Brain!, he gave us My Winnipeg, just about the best feature-length public service announcement or ode to a city one could imagine. It was meant to be part of a Canadian city collection that never materialized, and we can thank our lucky stars that his take ever made it to fruition.

And now he's showing the Canadian love again! The NFB has announced that Maddin is making a film called Night Mayor for the NFB's 70th anniversary. There are no details on what this film will entail (not that details ever help describe a Maddin world), but it will be a short drama created after Maddin immersed himself in the NFB archives. "What he has envisioned is an imaginative cinematic riff on the significance of a public film producer."

The Canadian public moviemaking model has created a lot of unique visions over the years (Atom Egoyan, Sarah Polley, David Cronenberg, Don McKellar, Deepa Mehta...) and can you imagine Maddin riffing on any of them?

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Brand Upon the Brain!
If you ever loved the artistry of David Lynch, but thought his films were too dark and incomprehensible, there's Guy Maddin to ride in on a sea of comedic absurdity. With his silent film Brand Upon the Brain! he did something entirely different -- he created the ultimate live theater experience, one that can never be replicated at home unless you're ridiculously rich with a live orchestra, group of foley artists, a celebrity narrator, and a castrato at your disposal. But even still, this Criterion release does a fine job of coming close.

But first, the plot. The film focuses on a young Guy Maddin as he lives on a remote island that holds a lonely orphanage. His mother reigns with an iron fist and peeping watchtower while trying to reverse the weariness of age with her strange, scientist husband. Meanwhile, one of the orphans dies, strange holes are found on some of the kids, and some teen detectives come to investigate, all in the pulsing throb of teenage rebellion and sexuality.

While you can't create the live experience at home, Criterion has done everything possible to make this disc like the live experience. Each screening across Canada and the states had a celebrity narrator, and this disc allows you to choose between the seven narrators, which essentially gives you seven different ways to view the film -- from Maddin himself to Isabella Rossellini, John Ashbery, and Crispin Glover. There's also a documentary with interviews, two new short films, deleted scenes, a trailer, and an essay by Dennis Lim.

Check out James Rocchi's Review | Buy the DVD

One of the greatest things about Guy Maddin is that his accomplishments come out of creativity and a spot-on eye, rather than money and flashy technology. Give the man an old camera, a few actors, and some weird props, and he can make a film that's not only engaging, but also visually stunning. He knows how to make the least become the most, and with the release of My Winnipeg, he's now inspiring others to do the same.

Jam! reports that UK filmmakers are getting a change to get their Maddin on. Both newbie and experienced filmmakers are getting the chance to submit 3-minute odes to their hometown, and Guy says "anything's eligible." Considering the lap-linked Winnipeg, it's not surprising that the doors are wide open...

Anyhow, the online contest is going to give out 1,500 pounds to the winner and a roundtrip flight to ... dum dum dum ... WINNIPEG! Sure, they also get their film screened and included on the UK's DVD release of My Winnipeg. But who cares when you can head to the snowy wonderland? I'm hoping the winner at least gets to choose the season.

If you want more information, head here.

"Winnipeg... Winnipeg... Winnipeg... Snowing, sleepwalking Winnipeg..." When Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg premiered at TIFF, you got a review, then came the exclusive and awesome poster, and then the trailer. Now Cinematical is happy to share the exclusive clip above. If you remember the picture attached to the review, well, this is more of the same -- those knights on a great white chessboard. Or, to be more specific, the frozen-in-the-lake horse heads after the fire of Whittier Park. It's strange, unsettling, and weirdly funny.

A "docu-fantasia" goodbye letter, My Winnipeg is a pseudo documentary where real facts about Winnipeg are intermingled with Guy Maddin's vision of his past, as the fictional Guy, played by Darcy Fehr, heads out of town. Dead dads under rugs, a Golden Boy pageant scandal, sleepwalkers, demolition, a strange and eerie mother played by Ann Savage -- all are present in My Winnipeg, and all of it is damned funny.

The film is now playing in theaters.

I've pretty much taken any opportunity I could get to praise Guy Maddin, and this is no exception. I've reviewed the film from TIFF. I've shared the exclusive poster. And now, you can check out the trailer for My Winnipeg above.

If you're a Maddin fan, a simple text description is enough to begin imagining what the filmmaker would create with his ode to the cold city of Winnipeg, but the trailer is still so very sweet. It offers quick blips to a lot of the film's most memorable moments -- from train rides, to Mom's knowledge of the back seat, to man pageants, to to the other wonders of snowy, sleepwalking Winnipeg. The only thing that's missing is Guy Maddin offering a live narration. If only we could bottle him up and let him out to perform the film whenever we'd want to see it.

Go see it. How can you resist the above? The film is schedule to hit theaters June 13.

This weekend I get to cat sit the two cutest bengals on earth, but the perks of this gig are much more than sitting around, indulging in cable television, and playing with the furry little beasts. It also means I have a huge selection of liquor, wine and beer at my disposal to cook with and imbibe. So, while my mind is scheming up what sort of exotic drink I will make tonight, it's also thinking of alcohol-laden movies.

For this double feature, I'm giving you two of my favorite movies that are completely intertwined with the love of alcohol. One is quirky, but fairly straight-laced, while the other is just insanity, but in the immensely fun sort of way. I give you: Alexander Payne's Sideways and Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World. (If you're looking for even more choices, check out Christopher Campbell's Cinematical Seven from last December.)

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.

That whole Juno/Genie thing isn't the only film news making waves in Canada, and I must say -- this round of news is worse. The Globe and Mail reports that the government is looking to increase restrictions on film tax credits to help cut graphic sex and violence, while an evangelist takes credit for the whole crackdown. "Canadian Heritage officials confirmed yesterday they will be 'expanding slightly' the criteria used for denying tax credits to include grounds such as gratuitous violence, significant sexual content that lacks an educational purpose, or denigration of an identifiable group. More details are promised next week." Well, that's certainly vague, worrisome, and really ... BS. But why should you care?

Think about the work created by the likes of David Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin, and the other filmmakers who have made international names for themselves with their cinematic art -- fare which does tap into the flames the government is looking to extinguish. Cronenberg is dead-on when he says: "The irony is that it is the Canadian films that have given us an international reputation [that] would be most at risk because they are the edgy, relatively low-budget films made by people like me and others that will be targeted by this panel." It already looks like Martin Gero's Young People F*cking, which I reviewed at TIFF, is going to be hit by these changes. Hell, it's title is one of the raciest things about it! It's about sex, but it's not some Shortbus sexfest.

In the midst of Sundance Deals and mainstream news, here are some indie bites:

• While it won't be competing, Jam! reports that Guy Maddin's wonderful film My Winnipeg will screen on the opening night of Berlinale's International Forum of New Cinema program. (Check out my TIFF review here.) Personally, I wish it could compete and then take over the world, but I realize that Maddin hasn't gotten enough recognition yet. (He's seriously one of the most accessible filmmakers of strange fare out there. Go check him out if you haven't already.) While Winnipeg isn't competing, another production with Canadian roots is -- Amos Kollek's Restless.
• Meanwhile, Til Schweiger continues to face problems. After ticking people off with his risque all-ages comedy, now Variety reports that he's quit the German Film Academy in protest. Why? Because Keinohrhasen, the movie that's been making waves, wasn't considered for a German film award. The Academy claims they didn't register in time, and that should it get registered, it could be eligible in 2009. I guess that wasn't good enough for Schweiger.
• Remember that movie ban in China? Well, now Variety reports that The Water Horse will be the first foreign film to screen to bust through the ban, over the previously announced Atonement. The latter is screening on February 22, but Horse nabbed itself a February 16 screen date. Will this "blackout" continue? Is it all just a farce? Stay tuned!

If there's one thing that can be said about Isabella Rossellini, other than praising her talents, is that she knows how to pick interesting filmmakers to collaborate with. She was put on the map for her work in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, and now she's been spending a lot of time with Canada's Guy Maddin. She starred in The Saddest Music in the World, and he helped her make an excellent short, doc film about her father Roberto called My Dad is 100 Years Old. Now she's continuing to make shorts, and Variety reports that she will open Berlin International Film Festival's 38th Forum sidebar with Maddin -- just a year after they screened the Roberto tribute there.

On the second day of the festival, Guy will screen My Winnipeg, his snowy homage to his hometown that I reviewed during TIFF, while Rossellini will contrast his black and white humor with her international premiere of Green Porno, which is looking to be the next step in the actress' sexy filmmaking. Her directorial debut, Oh La La, dealt with cities, sex, and symphonies, whereas this short film is a "collection of three one-minute shorts that explore the mating behaviour of insects." I wonder if that will include the decapitating mating rituals of preying mantises?

If you can't make your way to Berlin to see her take on sexin' insects, or you want to see her in something much more mainstream, you can head to your local theater and see her in The Accidental Husband -- that romcom with Uma Thurman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan -- this March.