Sunday, September 10 11:45 AM CUMBERLAND 3
In this collection I expected Cloudbreaker to be interesting and Christ In Wood to be hilarious. In the end, I was glad I went, but only because I never would've known how awesome Brian Stockton and his Saskatchewan are if I hadn't.
That's what happens with shorts, you get bad movies, but they're only 15 minutes long at most. The really good ones that you'll find are worth going through everything to get to them.
This set was mostly "blah" until the final one, which had me singing the theme song all the way to my next movie.
I'll now do a brief review of each piece...
Cloudbreaker: An interesting story of a status native who feels more attached to his ethnic past than to his present or even perhaps his humanity. Nothing amazing here, I'd been hoping for a bit more from it, but it's certainly not bad.
Christ In Wood: A very surreal story (read as: inconsistent world that makes little apparent sense) that leads up to a wooden christ figure dancing in a bathtub (hey, if you can walk on water, you could dance on it too, right?) that could be considered the height of the piece. It's followed however by a faceless "exterminator" who apparently deals with this kind of problem on a regular basis. Very strange. I'm still not sure if I really liked it or not.
The Double Woman: This is a modern dance piece with a story kind of wrapped around it. I didn't much care for the dancing or the story.
Pretty Broken: Produced by and starring Chantal Kreviazuk (and apparently having a lot to do with her recent album or something), this story is pretty much about mental illness in general, and bipolar in specific. After the showing, there were lots of people who had to say how much her music had effected them and how they were glad she had made it because mental illness had "touched" their lives, and there was "resonance", and I stopped listening when I heard the fandom switch click to ON. So if you're really into Chantal or mental illness, you'll probably really like it. I didn't get anything out of it.
Les Eaux Mortes: Husband and wife living on a farm, wife dies, husband has great difficulty carrying on. The depth of their love is quite apparent. Well done. Just not terribly interesting.
A L'ombre: Life in a womans prison is difficult. Even more so when you've got a son on the outside world who is your only reluctant contact to your previous life. Again, well done, but not captivating or anything.
Saskatchewan 3: This is it, the 1 absolutely terrific piece in the set. It makes me want, no NEED to see the previous two entries. Part geneology study, part whimsical reminiscence, part PowerPoint presentation, this short is all about the director and his love of the place he grew up. By all that I've said, it should be _awful_, like watching someones home videos, but it is in fact fantastic. What makes it great is that the director _knows_ that Saskatchewan is a flat chunk of land that hardly anyone cares about, and is able to transmute this in to pure entertainment through the catalyst of his love for his home. An excerpt:
"After an exile of 7 years in the terrible place known as 'Toronto', I returned to my native homeland of Saskatchewan!". Seeing as it's being said at the TORONTO International Film Festival, that could easily cause some raised hackles. The way he says it though makes it obvious that he's trying to get you, yes _you_ specifically, in the 8th row, 5th from the left, to laugh. Boy, did I ever laugh. There is great talent in this director, I hope he finds another project that shows it as well. Meanwhile, I have to find the two other shorts in the series...