Ang Lee Works His Magic Once Again!

There are only two Canadian writers whose Booker-Prize-winning novels were adapted and made into movies. Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient not only won The Booker Prize in 1992, but the film, directed by the late Antony Minghella in 1996, also won nine Academy Awards. Now, French Canadian author Yann Martel's Man-Booker-Prize-winning Life of Pi (2002) will probably experience the same glory at the Oscars next February. Award-winning director Ang Lee (one of my favourites) once again works his magic behind the camera and, lo and behold, Life of Pi shot in 3D is such a visual feast!

Everything, good or bad, is beautiful and visually stunning in the movie - the storm, the zoo, the sky, sunset and sunrise, even the animal-kill-animal scenes. A lot of people and critics have juxtaposed this movie to Avatar in terms of visual and technological supremacy, but because I haven't watched James Cameron's movie, I cannot compare. I cannot simply imagine Life of Pi shot without 3D technology. How else can anybody capture the wonders of God's creation?

For somebody like me who never have any particular affinity or interest in wild animals or even pets, I'm in awe of all the animals, mammals, fish and birds in this flick, particularly the tiger. Ang Lee has disclosed in many media interviews that he has used four real Bengal tigers for the movie, but for most of the tiger shots on the lifeboat, they are CGI creations. Teenaged principal actor Suraj Sharma plays the 16-year-old Pi extremely well given that he has never had any acting experience prior to this movie. Apparently, he didn't even intend to go for the audition but accompanied his brother instead. At the end, Ang Lee picked Sharma out of 3,000 other teenagers.

But what's most intriguing about the movie is the faith of Pi in God. He's raised a Hindu, believes in Christ and practises Islam as well. To Pi, all three faiths can merge and co-exist as one. During Pi's struggle for survival, he constantly converses with God. The movie also has numerous metaphors relating to the Christian faith - Noah's ark immediately comes to mind.

Towards the end of the movie, we all draw our own conclusions as to what really happened during the shipwreck. But as a Canadian, I'm proud of Yann Martel's inspiring novel and the movie's location shoots in Montreal in addiiton to India and Taiwan. I'm even more proud of Chinese-American director Ang Lee, who, in his own modest yet confident demeanor, presented another accomplishment as a multi-talented director and artist. The enthusiastic applause from the audience indicates that this movie is not only a critics' favourite, but also a cinematic work of art appreciated by all.

Hitchcock: A Focus On Strong Actors

Watching Hitchcock is like watching the movie A Week With Marilyn. Because everybody knows what really happened to these iconic characters in Hollywood, we, as the audience, form our own views as to whether this movie is true to reality or even whether we like it or not as an art form. But you don't have to like or know Alfred Hitchcock to really enjoy this movie. The focus is on the strong actors, from principal to supporting - Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson and Toni Collette.

Hopkins is hardly recognizable with his prosthetic makeup and fat suit, but he still gives a very strong performance. Helen Mirren, as Hitchcock's wife Alma Reville, once again outshines everybody and her performance might earn her another Oscar nomination. Johansson already looks the part with her blonde wig, but I still have to give her credit for playing Janet Leigh, the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis, with such charm and glamor. In those days, movie stars do look like movie stars! On the other hand, why would a talented actor like Toni Collette accept the role of Hichcock's assistant Peggy? Michael Stuhlberg's performance as the big Hollywood talent agent Lew Wasserman is a bit weak, and Andrew Garfield would have been more convincing as Anthony Perkins than James D'Arcy. Jessica Biel never strikes me as a good actor and she even looks tired as Vera Miles in this flick.

The film is not about the director Hitchcock. Its emphasis is on the love story and relationship between the renowned director and his wife Alma. Their relationship came to a crisis when Hitchcock was shooting the movie Psycho. We learned that even a successful box office director had to be at the mercy of the big Hollywood studios and behind the success, his pride, ego, insecurities, jealousy, obsessions with his characters and fantasies for blonde screen sirens almost engulfed him in his own artistic world. Hitchcock's determination to make an unusual movie best demonstrated that the best artists are those who take risks and experiment with new, innovative ideas and approaches no matter how high the stakes are.

Having the character Hitchcock play Prologue and Epilogue to the movie is an interesting approach. But having the real psycho Norman Bates appear throughout the movie does not work as well unless the director Sacha Gervasi wants us to think that Hitchcock himself is a bit of a psycho himself!

Ben Affleck Matures As Director

It's the time of the year when everybody is talking about which movies would be considered as Oscar contenders. The Master, Lincoln and Argo are all on the favourites' list. All three are based on true stories or events although The Master is a fictional depiction of a true-life cult religion leader.

I haven't seen Lincoln yet, but Argo would definitely win some Oscars if not the Best Director award for Ben Affleck. At the time when tension, once again, arises in the Middle East, particularly in Iran, this real story which happened in the '70s is very timely and relevant.

I was never a fan of Affleck's as an actor, but I saw all three of his feature films which are all excellent. Gone Baby Gone and The Town both took place in small towns near Boston and have a melancholic tone to the story treatment. But Argo is history - a very funny and suspenseful portrait of a real event. As one could imagine, nobody could probably film in Tehran now, so most of the movie was shot in nearby Turkey. In addition to Affleck, who plays CIA agent Tony Mendez, a cast of veteran actors support him - Canadian Victor Garber as the Canadian Ambassador to Iran; Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as Mendez's CIA boss; John Goodman as Hollywood makeup director John Chambers; Alan Arkin as Hollywood producer Lester Siegel; and Tate Donovan (Damages) as the leader of the U.S. embassy staff in Tehran.

The movie keeps you sitting on the edge of your seat from beginning to end. The attention to detail is superb - from the hairstyle to the props and furniture to the wardrobe. The real protagonist Tony Mendez, I read, was very involved in the production of the movie and has now become a good friend of Affleck's. Canada had a huge role to play in the successful rescue of the embassy hostages and, in spite of some criticisms from Canadian media about the movie's disproportionate emphasis on the heroism of the CIA agent, I thought due credit has been given to the Canadian Ambassdaor who made this whole escape possible.

Chris Terrio, who wrote the screenplay, deserves an Oscar nomination. Not only are the dialogues funny, witty and tense, they also absolutely form the important skeleton to the entire movie. Dirty politics are still at play here, but at least all hostages have been rescued due to a silly but brilliant idea.

Ben Affleck has come a long  way from his Good Will Hunting and JLo-love-affair days. Film critics have even been calling him the Warren Beatty of the 21st century. He has definitely matured as a feature film director who deserved the thunderous applauses at most Argo screenings here in Toronto!

Best 007 Movie In 50-Year Bond Franchise

By now, almost every single review I've read on Skyfall is beyond excellence. Having watched the first show in Canada, I cannot but agree! Not only is it engaging, exciting and sexy, it's visually stunning and as close to reality and logic as a movie on James Bond could ever get.

Kudos first go to director Sam Mandes whose training in classical theatre, including Shakespeare, probably explains why this is the first Bond movie that's poetic not only in storyline and screenplay, but also in its visual glory and structural perfection. This is the first Bond movie that is not related to any previously-published Ian Fleming James Bond short story or novel. In fact, Mendes said that Skyfall does "not connect" with the two previous Bond movies - Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. That's why the film is so much more creative and full of pleasant surprises.

Second to the director, credit should go to the script and screenplay writers - award-winning Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon) and John Logan (RED, Hauptmann and Never The Sinner). The screenplay is so witty that in spite of all the tensions created between Bond and the villain, the sense of humour makes you laugh throughout the movie and marvel at the writers. In an interview with CNN, Daniel Craig revealed that he had a lot of input on the screenplay and the writers actually listened to him and took some of his suggestions.

A lot of questions have come up about where the 25th Bond movie was shot. Well, the correct answers are Glen Etive, Highland, Scotland; Smithfield Market, Holborn, London, England; London, England; Shanghai, China; Surrey, England; Adana, Turkey; and Istanbul, Turkey. The rest were either studio shots or digital recreations. This is also the first time that a Bond movie has filmed in China.

If anybody has doubts about the cast, let's take a look at the number of individual Academy Awards from this film's cast and crew. Sam Mendes won an Academy Award from American Beauty; Javier Bardem who plays an impressive villain (Kevin Spacey was offered but turned down the role) has two nominations and one win (No Country For Old Men). Ralph Fiennes as M's new boss has two award nominations while Albert Finney and Judi Dench each has five nominations. This leaves only Daniel Craig and Ben Whishaw (as Q) with the thinnest resume. Everybody raves about Bardem as the villain Raoul Silva in this movie, but I actually think we should give both Craig and Whishaw their deserving credit. The latter was proclaimed by many critics as one of the best young actors of his generation and I thought his performance as Q is funny, cute and outstanding!

I read that Daniel Craig was worried about the delays in the film's production as he feels that, at the age of 43, he is already getting too old for the challenging physical demands of the stunts. Well, not only should he not have anything to worry about, but I thought he's, by far, the best Bond ever. I've not seen any other actor in as excellent a shape as he's in. Apart from wearing his Tom Ford suits well, Craig's six-month pre-film preparation and the daily two-hour workout put him in absolute top form!

Among all the actors in the movie, talented Ralph Fiennes and the two Bond girls are disappointments. The former has considerably aged and his character really doesn't need the skills of such a gifted actor. The latter two continue to play sex objects to men - what's most disturbing is that in this day and age, shouldn't they find a Bond girl who is both attractive and intelligent? Perhaps CIA Director David Petraeus's mistress Paula Broadwell (minus her jealousy) could be considered for a future role?

What's most impressive about Skyfall is that Bond is portrayed realistically as an aging and vulnerable spy in the 50-year-old film franchise instead of being the ultra-invincible and indefatigable MI6 star agent. Relevant to our times, Bond is now sensitive, vulnerable and even tormented from his childhood pains! But because of this evolution of his character, we, the audience who grew up with him, tend to relate to him even more! The flick is definitely worth an ecore for me at the IMAX theatre before it retires from the big screen.

Joaquin Phoenix Will Win 2013 Oscar

I'm making a bold prediction after watching Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master featuring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman - Phoenix will win the Best Actor Award at the Oscars next February. For a seasoned actor like Hoffman to say at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that Phoenix was "scarily intense" to work with sums it all up. After a four-year hiatus from his film career, Phoenix is back in outstanding form portraying a twisted sailor from World War II Freddie Quell.

I've always been a huge fan - from Gladiator to Walk The Line to We Own The Night to Two Lovers. For a while, I thought we're going to lose this talent forever. In 2008, he announced that he had retired from acting to pursue a rapping career. In early 2009, who could forget his eccentric and incoherent interview on the Late Show with David Letterman? Although he later claimed that his 'retirement' and strange behaviour were for a mockumentary I'm Still Here (which very few people watched), the damage was already done.

But it's worth the wait to see him in The Master. In fact, even though both Philip Seymour Hoffman and Phoenix co-won the Best Actors Award in the Venice Film Festival this year, 60 percent of the film focuses on Phoenix rather than Hoffman. Phoenix plays the tormented sailor Freddie Quell with such fierce intensity - whether he's screwing around with his women; going through a psychiatric session with his Master and mentor; or acting out his pain via his violent bouts - we, the audience, are totally mesmerized by his emotions or the lack thereof in his eyes, his lack of coherence and his physical contortions.

By now, everybody must know that this is a movie about The Cause (possibly Scientology) and its charismatic founder Lancaster Dodd. The omnipresent and always convincing Amy Adams plays Dodd's wife Peggy who has a huge influence on the Master. But about an hour into the movie, I was looking at my watch. The movie is only two hours long, but it felt like three. I'm not sure what is the key message Anderson wants to convey to his audience - that all religious cults are based on some fake idolization of manipulative individuals? Or you can choose to believe in whatever suits you, even though it's a perpetual lie?

I have to admit that I've never been a fan of Anderson's. Except for Boogie Nights, I did not like Magnolia and There Will Be Blood. Nevertheless, the writer/director has been compared to Francois Truffaut and Martin Scorsese. The Master was beautifully shot on 70mm film (if you're willing to pay two dollars more to see this version) which produced a masterpiece on a resolution so high that digital can only dream of getting there in about 10 years or so, as I was told by tech geeks.

What strikes me most is the musical score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. It's both haunting and beautiful. No wonder The Rolling Stone calls the film's music "haunting and hypnotic." Other musical contributions from Ella Fitzgerald, Jo Stafford and Patti Page are all music that boomers grew up with. Greenwood's talents obviously go far beyond just being the guitarist for Radiohead.

Thirty-seven-year-old Joaquin Phoenix has never won an Oscar even though he was nominated many times - including his roles in Gladiator and Walk the Line. I really hope the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will do him justice next February!

Marie Antoinette From A Different Perspective

Fans of period drama would love the new French movie Farewell My Queen which was featured at both the Berlin and San Francisco Film Festivals this year. The film was adapted from the novel by Chantal Thomas and director Benoit Jacquot was also responsible for the screenplay.

Many big-screen and TV movies have been made about Marie Antoinette, but this film took a very different perspective. It focuses on the final months of the decadent queen's life before she was beheaded. It also dwells on her lesbian affairs instead of her numerous other relationships with men. The entire film was made from the perspective and the eyes of the queen's reader Sidonie Laborde played by Lea Seydoux (Gabrielle in Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris). Not sure why the 27-year-old Seydoux is the darling of the French movie world at the moment - her performance in the film is quite flat in my opinion!

Diane Kruger gives a wonderful performance in her portrayal of the tormented and bored queen. At 36, Kruger is more or less the same age when Marie Antoinette was beheaded. The face that launched a thousand ships (Kruger also played Helen of Troy in Troy) is equally magnificent in Farewell My Queen. With her German descent, Kruger is convincing as the young queen from Austria. But the most winning performance comes from Virginie Ledoyen who plays the queen's lesbian love interest Gabrielle de Polignac. With her Spanish blood, Ledoyen is both dangerously beautiful and heartlessly cruel in the movie.

This film ultimately succeeds because it takes a different path in depicting the last days of a decadent empire. Even though we've caught glimpses of the splendour of Versailles every now and then, most of the film takes place in dark corridors and the quarters of the ladies-in-waiting. We get a sense via all the whispers, gossips, scandals and back-stabbing that the French Revolution is lurking close by to clean up the act of the aristocracy. The other key message from the movie is that like all other relationships, lesbian love can often be unrequited and heartbreaking.

Plummer's Words Are Intoxicating

Canada has many national treasures, but Oscar-award winner Christopher Plummer must be one of the most gifted ones! Fresh from his Oscar laurels as Best Supporting Actor in the movie Beginners in February, Plummer gave a bewitching performance in a one-man show A Word Or Two at this season's Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

At 85 and still dapper, Plummer gave a performance of his lifetime this past weekend when I was there at the Avon Theatre. I like it even better than his other successful one-man show Barrymore because this one is almost an autobiography delivered by the master himself on stage. Against a very simple but stunning and symbolic staircase of hardcover books, Plummer walked, danced, recited poetry, referenced Shakespeare and other literary greats, sat in the elegant Director's chair, read behind a podium and laughed and cried (teary-eyed) with the audience in English and French.

Spanning a career of over 60 years, Plummer celebrates the beauty of language via this 90-minute performance. In the fast-moving tech world of the internet, smartphones and social media, he's showing us the impact of the written word while he's growing up in Montreal. We, the audience, strolled with him through his most favourite literature - from the Bible to Shaw and Wilde to Coleridge and Marlowe; from Shakespeare and Byron to Nash and Leacock.

As a result, I found myself savouring every word he said and, like enjoying a bottle of vintage red wine, became totally intoxicated at the end of the show. My friend and I both concluded as we exited from the theatre that the performance inspired us to go back home and read more poetry!

Plummer wrote in the introduction to the program guide that he wants to show what impact the written word can have on impressionable youth. Unfortunately, like other Stratford Shakespeare Festival performances, there was hardly any youth in sight among the audience yesterday. It's depressing to see a sea of seniors as the primary audience. Perhaps it's Plummer's age which mainly attracts an older audience, but to preserve and cherish our other national treasure, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival itself, the Festival's marketing department ought to do more to attract more multicultural and younger audiences. According to The Globe and Mail, the audience at Stratford has been declining in the last 10 years. This is certainly not a good sign - we don't want Plummer to pass and move on, but as he said, this will come one day. The Festival itself should be a different story - It's time that they start filling the seats with younger bums!