The ultimate meet-cute: Pseudo-doc’s appeal depends on your tolerance of twee

Your appreciation for Paper Heart, a doc/mockumentary about love, will be closely tied to your appreciation for quirk. Co-star Michael Cera is probably the best barometer: If you find his awkward stammering irresistible, the movie will likely resonate. If the thought of the Arrested Development star wooing an even more awkward comedienne is anathema to you, Paper Heart will be, too.

The film walks the line between reality and scripted romance, alternating between talking-head interviews of actual couples reflecting on their romantic lives and scenes of the budding, (presumably) fictional relationship between indie comic Charlyne Yi and Cera. Yi also throws in some homemade paper-cutout animations to flesh things out, adding to the deluge of quirk.

Still, it’s not as overbearing as it might sound. Yi’s enthusiasm goes a long way towards selling the animations, and her and Cera actually possess enough sweet, fumbling chemistry to make their relationship plausible.

The documentary setting is both a blessing and a curse for the film, though. The real-life interviews add a grounded, unforced sweetness to the proceedings, which makes the handholding twee-ness of the scripted segments easier to take. On the other hand, those same segments only emphasize how planned the relationship between Yi and Cera is. Everything from their meeting to the inevitable conflict feels rote, like they’re included out of obligation to rom-coms past.

Paper Heart has caught some flack for misrepresenting itself and misleading its audience, since (with the exception of the fact that actor Jake Johnson plays director Nicholas Jasenovec in the film) there’s hardly a wink to show that some elements of the movie are fictional. Without that straight-faced approach, though, the film might come across as smug, ironic or overly detached. It’s none of those things — it comes across as nothing if not sincere. Whether that sincerity and the aw-shucks cuteness that comes with it works for you or not, Paper Heart at least deserves some credit for trying something different.

Meet the residents: The Banff Centre expands its embrace of indie rock

Arriving at The Banff Centre late on a Wednesday evening, the complex feels undeniably spooky. Due to a major construction project, the usually open expanses of the centre have become a series of pathways lined with construction fences in Halloween orange. A perfect setting for the October 31 concert that marks the conclusion of The Banff Centre’s second annual Indie Band Residency, maybe, but it’s hardly the warm, collaboration-friendly atmosphere I had expected.

All that changes when the sun comes up. It’s only the third day of the residency and already three of the four bands are palling around at the centre’s breakfast buffet, discussing their plans for the day. Toronto singer-songwriter Basia Bulat is getting ready to finish mixing a song she recorded the night before with guest engineer Steve Albini, who has manned the boards for acts like The Pixies, Nirvana and The Jesus Lizard, as well as Calgary’s Hot Little Rocket and The Cape May. The mixing was supposed to happen the night before, but there was trouble with the tape machine used for the recording — Albini is a purist when it comes to technology and the machine, borrowed by the Banff Centre from Calgary’s Audities Recording, is a bit fussy.

Meanwhile, Mark Hamilton and Foon Yap of Calgary’s Woodpigeon are talking with Chris Leitch and Colin Cowan of Vancouver power-poppers Analog Bell Service about how to best use their morning. Hamilton has recruited Leitch and Cowan to back him up on “An Entanglement of Weeds,” a sombre eight-minute ballad he’ll be recording with Albini later in the day. He and Yap want to buckle down and work a bit more, while Cowan says he can’t work without a steam session — another luxury the centre provides for its residents. He’s mostly joking, of course, though that doesn’t actually stop him from indulging in the sauna.

If that all sounds a bit, well, indulgent, it isn’t meant to be. As an institution devoted to creativity, The Banff Centre provides for its artists and other residents because it expects a lot of them, and the musicians recruited for the Indie Band Residency are no exception. The program, the brainchild of the Banff Centre’s director of music, Barry Schiffman, and the director of audio, Theresa Leonard, is a bit of a departure for the institution, which typically has focused on classical and jazz for its residencies.

“Historically at the Banff Centre, there have always been a lot of classical, contemporary and jazz musicians,” she says. “The only time we would bring in pop musicians would be through the audio [production] program, where we would need to offer training in all styles of music. So Barry was open to turning this into not just a band coming to record with us, but make it an integral part of what Banff does by including indie bands into the life and history of music programs at the Banff Centre.”

Since the program grew from the audio production side of the centre — a work-study program with an international reputation — it’s only natural that the Indie Band Residency has been able to attract world-calibre talent in only its second year. In addition to Albini, the residency also includes sessions with Howard Bilerman, a former member of Arcade Fire who runs the Hotel2Tango with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor; Husky Höskulds, an Icelandic engineer who has worked with the likes of Elvis Costello, Solomon Burke and Tom Waits; Claudio Vena, a conductor and composer renowned for the quality of his arrangements; and Graham Lessard, an engineer who was also with the program in its first year.

What this means for both the engineers and artists is access to some of the most talented professionals in the industry, and Woodpigeon’s afternoon recording session with Albini is proof of the value of that. He seems to know instinctively which mics to use and where to put them, and is more than happy to explain his choices to anyone who asks. For the most part, though, he works quietly, talking to the band only to find out exactly what they want out of the recording experience and to do the occasional bit of trouble-shooting. He’s relaxed and friendly, even outgoing when he’s off the clock — some of the engineers strike up a conversation about his penchant for wolf-related clothing — but when the tape is rolling, he’s strictly professional. In a matter of minutes he takes a rough mix of a performance that the band isn’t entirely satisfied with but has to use due to time constraints. He transforms it into a version that sounds almost like a studio master. It’s clear both the band and the other engineers are impressed.

By early evening, Woodpigeon has its song in the can, Analog Bell Service is ready to record its second track in three days, and all four bands (including Montreal’s The Witchies) are getting ready for a concert on the weekend. The program itself culminates in a performance on Halloween, but Leonard doesn’t think of that as an ending.

“I think it’s leading to new thoughts, new ideas,” she says. “The goal of these programs isn’t for the students to leave with a full-length CD, but to gain experience and to leave with a few tunes recorded, but it’s the drawn attention [of] other bands who might want to come to the centre and become part of a residency…. I think it’s really enriching to be able to not completely change what The Banff Centre stands for and what it has done for years, but to bring a new element to the centre.”

Film review: Unmistaken Child

Depending on your perspective, there are two separate storylines running through the documentary Unmistaken Child. If you believe in reincarnation, director Nati Baratz has captured the story of Buddhist monk Tenzin Zopa’s quest to find the newest corporeal form of his late master, Geshe Lama Konchog. He and other experts examine everything from astrological charts to the direction of smoke plumes at Lama Konchong’s funeral pyre to narrow the search, culminating in their finding and testing a child who seems to match every prediction.
If you don’t believe, though, the story turns from miraculous to tragic. Zopa is clearly lost after the departure of Lama Konchong, who he has served since the age of seven. He tells the camera how he isn’t used to making decisions for himself, how empty his life feels without his best friend and mentor. In this version, he’s searching not for his master but a surrogate, eventually convincing a family to give up their child so he can have his friend back.
Regardless of which storyline you believe to be true, Unmistaken Child makes for interesting viewing. Baratz follows the story with confidence and an eye for atmosphere. When he finds an emotional moment, he lets the camera linger and never once succumbs to the temptation to add his own commentary, an increasingly (and frustratingly) rare quality in a documentarian. Whether the moment is spiritual, like when the child is asked to choose among items that may have belonged to Lama Konchog, or more grounded, like the heart-wrenching scene when the child has his head shaved to become a monk despite his tears and protests, Baratz lets the images speak for themselves.
The one drawback to this approach is the way it keeps the viewer at an arms length from the proceedings. Certain aspects of the monks’ belief system remain unexplained and details like the amount of time that passes between events aren’t always easy to discern. Still, with Zopa at the film’s centre, these moments of frustration rarely last. The monk is clearly thoughtful, sincere and dedicated, which makes his journey an enjoyable one for skeptics and believers alike.

Various Artists - Sweet Treats: Live Sessions from CJSW 90.9 FM

On CJSW, variety is the name of the game. So it’s no surprise that Sweet Treats: Live Sessions from CJSW 90.9 FM (available for a minimum pledge of $120 at this year’s funding drive, from October 23 through October 30) is a more eclectic mix than most. The organ-based jazz of Sinistrio sits between the freeform noise of No Two Eyebrows and the polished gospel harmonies of The Sojourners. Some might call it schizophrenic, but it’s also the best distillation you could hope for of the station’s “anything-that’s-awesome” approach.

It’s unlikely you’ll be equally enthralled by The Bownesians’ CJSW history lesson, Sleepy Sun’s bluesy psychedelia and Grand Analog’s laid-back hip hop, but all are superb examples of their respective genres and the pristine recordings do each song equal justice. Sweet Treats is obviously a labour of love, and every aspect from the sound quality to the artwork to the sequencing that heroically strives to bring order to the proceedings speaks to that. A boundary-stretching listening experience that also supports one of the Calgary music community’s most valuable resources? Delicious.

Review of Where the Wild Things Are

With the possible exception of Calvin & Hobbes, it’s hard to think of a property that would be trickier to adapt than Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. The book only contains nine sentences, but it also holds a great deal of sentimental value to a great many readers, who were drawn in by Wild Things’ skeletal story and rich visuals. Capturing that carefully crafted atmosphere and stretching it to feature length seemed like a fool’s errand — at least until a pitch-perfect trailer showed up in April and had even the most skeptical folks shivering with anticipation.

Just because the trailer lived up to the book didn’t mean the movie would live up to its trailer, though. The good news? It comes pretty darn close. Just not in the ways you might expect. It’s not a burst of nostalgic bombast; it’s a thoughtful take on the confusion that comes from growing up.

The film starts off exceptionally strong. Max (newcomer Max Records) runs amok, roughhousing with his pet dog, throwing snowballs at neighbourhood kids and disrupting his mom’s (Catherine Keener) date. Jonze paces this sequence breathlessly, but he also loads it with nuance. Max isn’t just a rambunctious kid; he’s a child who’s nearing the realization that the world doesn’t revolve around him and he is understandably sad and angry because of it. That’s a lot of emotional heft to fit into the first 15 minutes of a kids’ movie, but Jonze pulls it off.

Oddly, the movie begins to slow down after Max runs away and discovers the wild things (in a break from the book, he actually runs to the woods rather than having his bedroom transform into a forest). From the moment they’re introduced, there’s a melancholy around the monsters that isn’t there in the book. They’re glorious creatures, to be sure — the decision to use actors in costumes with CGI-enhanced faces was absolutely the right choice — but they’re also sad, angry, petty and confused. They sound like adults and look like monsters, but they aren’t any more emotionally developed than children — which makes sense, given that they’re figments of Max’s imagination.

Childish doesn’t mean simple, though, and the actors who play the wild things turn in strong performances all around. That’s no surprise, given the costumes are worn by Paul Dano, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper and James Gandolfini. With that cast, it’s clear that Jonze had no intention of making a kids’ movie — like Sendak, he’s making a piece of art about growing up, something that speaks to kids as clearly as it does to adults.

The trickiest question with a movie like Where the Wild Things Are is how appropriate it actually is for children. No doubt, it’s paced like an adult movie, without the rapid-fire jokes that usually keep kids distracted enough to stay in their seats. Still, at the preview screening, I didn’t hear any kids fussing, despite the fact that the movie started half-an-hour late. And while it has its frightening moments, the scariest to the kids around me didn’t involve any of the wild things — it was a temper tantrum by Max. It might be a challenging film for children, but only because it doesn’t talk down to them, emotionally or otherwise.

Review of Law Abiding Citizen

Director F. Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen wants to be all things to all people. In its opening scenes, it quickly moves from home-invasion horror to legal drama and torture porn before eventually settling comfortably into the thriller template. Beneath it all, it also aims to be an allegory on both America’s domestic justice system and its foreign policy — the film’s central question of whether it’s ever right to negotiate with criminals applies just as well to terrorists.

As could be expected from a film with so many goals, it’s also a mess. Gray and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer spend so much time building up dubious moral dilemmas that they neglect the actual plot. Despite a few genuinely interesting moments (and some decent explosions), the film mostly ends up alternating between cliché and melodrama.

The conflict in Law Abiding Citizen boils down to a difference of opinion. Philadelphia prosecutor Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx) believes that some justice is better than no justice and that plea bargains are a useful tool for making sure that criminals spend at least some time in jail. Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler), on the other hand, would rather let 1,000 innocent men die than see a guilty man cop to a lesser charge. When Clyde’s wife and daughter are brutally murdered in a home invasion, Nick lets one of the guilty men off lightly in exchange for his testimony — it’s a win-win for the prosecutor, as he gets to keep his near-perfect conviction rate and see that some amount of justice is done. Clyde doesn’t see things in quite the same way and he spends the next decade planning an elabourate scheme to take revenge on Nick, the criminals and the whole freaking system — all from inside the prison.

It’s a perfectly serviceable plot, provided you can get past some of the bigger nits (if Clyde’s suspected of masterminding what’s essentially a terrorist plot from inside the prison, why not keep him under constant observation?), but Gray never manages to find the right tone. Butler admirably tries to keep his vigilante grounded, at least emotionally, but that doesn’t jibe with monologues that are a half-step removed from cartoon supervillainy. Add in Foxx’s bland but sincere performance and you have a film whose actors are at odds with its content — it’s too restrained to be a Taken-style action romp, but too over-the-top to be taken seriously.

The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

Now in its 26th year as a band, venerable psych-rock weirdos The Flaming Lips can be forgiven for a little indulgence. The band’s homemade sci-fi flick Christmas on Mars was a curiosity, a mind-bender that tried the patience of even hardcore fans. Clocking in at 73 minutes and containing a slew of abrasive samples and drawn-out jams, Embryonic (the band’s 12th album) could also be safely described as self-indulgent, but the excess works in the band’s favour.

Opening with the bleating, pulsating “Convinced of the Hex,” Embryonic seems determined to avoid locking into a steady groove. As a ballad, “Evil” could have fit in on 1999’s The Soft Bulletin; it’s followed by the two-minute “Aquarius Sabotage,” which kicks in harder and stranger than anything the band has done in the last decade. Conventional tracks like “The Ego’s Last Stand” are matched tit for tat by noodly detours like “Powerless” and the occasionally grating “Virgo Self-Esteem Broadcast.” The shorter songs are far from filler, even when they seem tossed off at first: “I Can Be a Frog,” which is built around animal noises from guest vocalist Karen O, could be written off as a novelty if it weren’t for the convincing sense of melancholy underneath.

That sprawl makes it tricky to pin Embryonic down. In a sense, it’s the band’s Sandinista! or its white album, a sprawling epic based more around a sense of adventure than any particular concept or theme, lyrically or musically. Hopefully, the album also marks yet another fresh start in a musical career that’s already lasted over a quarter of a century.

Review of Enlighten Up

Skepticism is a healthy trait in documentary filmmaking. After all, without a healthy mistrust of their subjects, documentarians would basically be PR flaks.

With Enlighten Up, first-time director Kate Churchill attempts to provide a skeptic’s view of yoga. The twist is that Churchill is a firm believer in the practice as both a physical and spiritual tool. It’s her subject, a journalist named Nick Rosen, who provides the counterpoint. Recruited by Churchill to prove that experiencing yoga can transform anyone’s life, Rosen is taken to numerous studios and temples throughout the U.S. and India in search of enlightenment. It’s an intriguing premise, but Churchill can’t quite keep it under control.

The film’s main trouble stems from the conflict between Rosen and Churchill. Despite being the son of a shamanic faith healer, Rosen approaches the project as a journalist. He’s more interested in facts and the physical world than in anything touchy-feely or spiritual; he even makes a point of interviewing academics to find more reasons to be skeptical. Churchill, meanwhile, seems increasingly frustrated that Rosen doesn’t buy into any of yoga’s more metaphysical benefits, even after months of immersion. She repeatedly scolds Rosen for not taking things seriously and questions his motives for joining the project. For his part, Rosen hedges his answers to Churchill’s questions so often that you begin to wonder if he’s legitimately searching for truth or just enjoying travelling on the director’s dime.

This dynamic is distracting enough that it’s easy to forget the film’s merits — namely, the length it goes to in its search for the essence of yoga. From Indian masters to early American adopters of the practice to a retired professional wrestler who has started up a yoga studio for “regular guys” who don’t buy into mystical mumbo-jumbo, Enlighten Up is comprehensive in the perspectives it presents. It even acknowledges the contradictions in its expert opinions, admitting that there are no easy answers.

If the film was told entirely from Rosen’s perspective, or entirely from Churchill’s, it could be fascinating. With both of them present, though, it occasionally feels more like a battle of wills between filmmaker and subject. It’s interesting in a voyeuristic way, but it sure doesn’t seem like the right way to approach enlightenment.

Review of Dead Snow

All you need to know about Dead Snow is in the press photo that accompanies this story: It is a movie about zombies who are also Nazis. If the idea of combining the tenets of National Socialism with an unyielding thirst for flesh and brains strikes you as silly, ridiculous or just plain dumb, read no further — this is not a film for you. If, on the other hand, it strikes you as awesome — if, say, you were one of the 100-plus people turned away at the door when Dead Snow played at the Calgary International Film Festival this year — then Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola’s second feature has plenty of what you’re looking for.

Dead Snow is unabashedly a B-movie, and it wears its B-movie influences proudly. The self-awareness hits hard and fast. When the cast begins their trek to a remote cabin for a weekend of alcohol and fornication, one of the characters, a film buff, begins listing movies in which groups of horny young people meet grizzly fates in similar situations, including the Evil Dead films. That same film buff is later seen wearing a Braindead T-shirt. Clearly, Wirkola knows his audience.

Listing the characters seems pointless, as they boil down to the usual genre archetypes. The weapons they use are far more interesting. There are the classics: a shotgun and a chainsaw make an appearance. But Wirkola isn’t content to stick with the standbys. Sledgehammers, sickles, Molotov cocktails and skidoo-mounted machine guns all get their due and even the snowy mountain landscape becomes a tool in the heroes’ quest for survival.

As for what distinguishes Nazi zombies from the regular type, aside from the costume, it’s hard to say. They’re faster than old-school Night of the Living Dead zombies but slower than new-fangled Dawn of the Dead zombies and they do seem to have a hierarchy of command, but there’s certainly no ideological bent to their rampage. Still, as far as esthetics go, it works. The contrast between the stark, snowy landscape and the dark hues and vivid reds of the Nazi uniforms (not to mention the copious amounts of blood) is plenty effective.

Dead Snow delivers exactly what it promises, nothing more and nothing less. The plot hits every beat you would expect and the characters are one dimensional, but there are Nazi zombies delivering reams of lovingly crafted gore. Sometimes, that’s enough.

Review of H2Oil

Albertans may experience a sense of déjà vu while watching H2Oil, Shannon Walsh’s documentary about our province’s tarsands development. Most of the material in the film has been well covered in the Calgary media, from the high incidents of cancer in Fort Chipewyan to the death of hundreds of ducks in a Syncrude tailings pond. Still, in covering familiar ground, the film provides a valuable refresher on just what’s happening in Alberta’s north.

As its name implies, H2Oil is primarily concerned with two things, oil and water, and the two are inextricably linked. Extracting the oil from the sands requires massive amounts of fresh water, and the toxic chemicals that are inevitable byproducts of the process are seeping back into the rivers that supply Fort Chip. According to locals like Dr. John O’Connor, those chemicals have led to a massive increase in the town’s cancer rates — a claim that goes against the studies commissioned by the province and by industry, but that is still quite compelling on a circumstantial level.

H2Oil is a very handsome documentary, mixing its talking heads with beautifully rendered animations and stunning aerial photography. News clips of Barack Obama, Stephen Harper and Ed Stelmach also help spice up the proceedings, with Stelmach in particular coming across as either clueless or uncaring. But the heart of the story isn’t the politicians, the statistics, the visuals or even the treatment of our resources for purely economic gain. It’s people like Dr. O’Connor and Allan Adam, chief of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, who are fighting to be heard over the din of big business. There may not be anything new in this doc to convince those who see the tarsands as a blessing, but there’s plenty to rile up the ones who see them as a curse.

Review of The Boys are Back

When dealing with death onscreen, a little emotional honesty goes a long way. It’s what made the opening sequence from Pixar’s Up one the most emotionally resonant treatments of the subject in years and it’s what keeps The Boys are Back from descending into pure melodrama. While it still leans dangerously close to saccharine at times, the film, based on British journalist Simon Carr’s memoir, is saved by a heart-wrenching performance from Clive Owen.

In a major departure from his recent string of thrillers, Owen plays a well-paid, devastatingly handsome sports writer of the sort that only seems to exist in Hollywood depictions of print journalism. He’s not a bad husband and father by any stretch, but he’s also not a very involved one — work keeps him away from his home in Australia for long stretches, but there are always gifts and plenty of smiles when he comes back.

All that changes when his wife dies of cancer. Suddenly, Owen is forced to take on the task of raising his young son (a surprisingly good Nicholas McAnulty) and it’s not a particularly smooth transition. To complicate matters further, his teenaged son from a previous marriage (George MacKay, looking more than a little like Ron Weasley) has decided to move in, making for three sulky boys all under one roof.

It’s a scenario that’s ripe for cheap sentimentality and director Scott Hicks doesn’t always resist the temptation. For a film that’s grounded in well-observed moments like Owen choking back tears on a phone call with his older son, some of the more overly cinematic gestures come across contrived — a series of conversations between Owen and his dead wife being a particularly egregious example. But even when Hicks indulges in pillow fights and water-balloon battles, there’s a joy behind the sentimentality that makes it easy to forgive.

More than anything, though, this is Owen’s show. The typically macho actor seems to revel in the chance to show off his sensitive side, even if that sensitivity is couched in anger or evasiveness most of the time. He hinted at that depth in Children of Men, but never to the extent on display here — looks like he has a safety net if the whole action hero thing doesn’t pan out.

Review of The Invention of Lying

The Office and Extras creator Ricky Gervais’s co-directorial debut is essentially the anti-Liar Liar. Where that Jim Carrey vehicle put an unwillingly honest man in a world that runs on lies big and small, Gervais here plays a schlub of a screenwriter who lives in a world where the idea of telling an untruth has never crossed anyone’s mind — there isn’t even a word in their language for “lie,” or “truth” for that matter. The idea of someone saying something that isn’t literally true is simply unheard of. After a series of humiliations, Gervais has an odd synaptic misfire which gives him the ability to make things up, an ability that puts him on the path to wealth, fame and success.

Most of the humour in The Invention of Lying comes from hearing characters speaking the whole, unvarnished truth, regardless of how it reflects on them. At the start of a date, Jennifer Garner tells Gervais that she dreads how the night will go, given that he’s unattractive and unworthy of her. Plus, Gervais interrupted her masturbation session, which makes for an awkward start to the night. Apparently, the truthfulness of this world includes even lies of omission.

While these jokes do eventually wear thin — there’s a fine line between truthfulness and assholishness, and characters like Tina Fey as Gervais’s secretary and Rob Lowe as his screenwriting rival cross that line with ease — Gervais’s script (co-written with Matthew Robinson) still gets a lot of mileage from the conceit. As a high-concept comedy, Invention gets to cover a lot of ground, from commercialism to religion and societal conventions. Fortunately, Gervais actually has insight into most of those issues, which means the film never gets overly sanctimonious. In fact, some of the best jokes come from the corporate world — an ad for Coke has the slogan “Coca Cola: It’s Very Famous,” while Pepsi uses “Pepsi Cola: For when they don’t have Coke.”

Even when dealing with issues like the origin of religion, Gervais maintains a light touch. Invention is a world away from his awkward, cringe-inducing TV work, which may throw off longtime fans, but is probably a bright move all around. Watching The Office’s David Brent or Extras’ Andy Millman flub their way through life is fine in half-hour doses, but it can actually become stressful in longer doses. The Invention of Lying is a different beast entirely, a warm, friendly comedy with brains behind it. I might want to take back that Liar Liar comparison — accurate as it is, Invention deserves better.