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Soulmining at TIFF '09, Day Two - The Informant! and Enter The Void
3rd Oct 09
 Still buzzing from my close encounter with Megan Fox the night before, I’m up early on Friday so that I can hit the Industry Box Office at 8am before the screenings start. Having witnessed the pandemonium at Midnight Madness last night I feel its wise to pre-book a public ticket for George A. Romero’s Survival Of The Dead the following day as that’s one film I definitely want to make sure that I see with a rabid audience.
Choices, choices. What do I see first? After much deliberation I opt for Soderbergh’s The Informant! over the Coen’s A Serious Man and so I make my way to the Cumberland where I notice a crowd of delegates are assembling for a long-since cancelled Daybreakers screening, despite Bruce and I informing the P&I office that their screening boards had not been updated. Oh well folks, we tried…
The Informant!
Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre in The Informant!, a story about the highest-ranking corporate whistleblower in American history. Whitacre exposes his company’s multi-national price fixing conspiracy to the FBI and is happy to wear a wire in order to gather evidence for his handlers (led by Scott Bakula), naively picturing himself as a spy who’ll get a promotion at the end of it all. So far, so straightforward. However it’s in the second half of the film that things really gain momentum and spiral crazily out of control as the FBI come to realise that Whitacre has secrets of his own that could compromise their little operation.
Damon is in fine form here, bulked up and donning a bushy ‘tache and glasses for the role. Dominating every scene – he’s rarely off screen – The Informant! is a showcase for his talent and he duly gives one of his career best performances. Soderbergh, who tends to alternate between directing mainstream and lower-budget indie films is caught somewhere in the middle ground with this one – what appears at first as a multiplex crowd-pleaser is actually a little more refined and offbeat than you’d expect. Intelligent, and with a keen sense of comic timing, the combination seems effortless and the result is a rewarding and enjoyable experience.
Jason Reitman, Diablo Cody, Adam Brody, Megan Fox, Johnny Simmons, Amanda Seyfried and Karyn Kusama
I always try and attend one or two press conferences at TIFF, so the lure of one with the Jennifer’s Body talent chaired by Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes is a sure thing for me. Meeting up with fellow Brightonian and freelance journo James Evans we settle down for what turns out to be a rather lacklustre affair. After an awkward start in which Jason Reitman rudely chastises our host there’s a short discussion about the film before it’s thrown open to the assembled press to ask any questions. Diablo Cody and Karyn Kasuma prove the most vocal with the actors seeming quite withdrawn, especially the shy Amanda Seyfried and Johnny Simmons who I don’t think says one word throughout the whole thing. Nevertheless your intrepid reporter takes it upon himself to direct a question to Seyfried and Megan Fox:
Phil: Your characters have this very close relationship in the film, was it difficult to convey that level of intimacy so convincingly or did that just come naturally to you both?
Amanda Seyfried: Well, it was a bit uncomfortable obviously because you’re making a movie and being intimate in front of I don’t know how many people it’s horrid, but at the same time it’s good that it was convincing to you. I think it was needed to show that side of her in the relationship.
Megan Fox: I think we got better at it, being friends on screen and the longer we worked together. I think the first scene we filmed we were both really unhappy with it and it was really awkward and we didn’t feel like it played as though we had known each other our whole lives. You know, the characters would have been friends since they were little kids and we wanted that to be believable and just the more you get to know someone clearly the better the illusion will translate on screen, so I think by the end we were much much more believable.
Oh yeah, that’s insightful stuff right there.
Enter The Void
Time for another film so making good use of my transit pass (free public transport all festival!) I head down to the AMC at Yonge/Dundas – a new location for some of the P&I screenings this year – meet up with Bruce and get ready to Enter The Void. Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) is eking out a living in Tokyo as a small time drug dealer. He saves enough to reconnect with his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) who flies out to join him, but Oscar continues to trade and Linda soon finds herself stripping in a nightclub. When Oscar is shot dead by police the story really begins as we relive moments of his life, and then as his soul leaves his body, we see what happens to the characters he’s left behind. Copious drug-taking and hardcore sex is on the menu and there’s a couple of jolting moments that will have you leaping from your seat. At 155mins it’s half an hour too long as scenes begin to repeat themselves as if Gaspar Noé wasn’t sure when to call time on the film, but that really is the sole criticism of this epic voyage into the mind.
Regardless of what you think of the subject matter of Noé’s previous feature Irreversible, there’s no denying the man is an arresting filmmaker, using swirling camera movements and distressing sound design to dizzying effect. In this tale of life, death and the afterlife he really lets fly. At first it’s all first-person like an extended version of Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” video mixed with trippy fractals, before it switches to a third person viewpoint where the camera follows Oscar’s every moment. Then in the final section the camera is let loose swooping around the locations at will like the free spirit that it’s meant to represent. Frankly it’s an amazing piece of work, and again coupled with its rather grubby subject matter and that ever-present unsettling throbbing (courtesy of Daft Punk) it’s clearly destined for cult status. One of the highlights of TIFF 09 for me, no question.
With Danny Boyle
There’s a familiar looking fella sat in the row in front of us at Enter The Void and I’m pretty sure it’s Danny Boyle. One of my favourite directors, I was gutted that I missed him at the public screenings of Slumdog Millionaire last year which of course won the Cadillac People’s Choice Award and then went on to conquer the rest of the world. I’m not going to pass up this opportunity to say hello so I catch up with him outside and we take a stroll down Yonge Street together. He’s in town for a couple of days as he’s been invited to take part in TIFF’s Talent Lab programme before he flies onto New York for meetings about his top secret new project. We also talk Sunshine, British sci-fi, and he reveals just how much he liked Duncan Jones’ Moon. Gracious and totally down-to-earth we part ways a couple of blocks later and then I immediately run into Brian Cox (in town for The Good Heart) coming out of Starbucks!
Twitch party
Food etc. taken care of it’s time for a party or two. Twitch – the international film website – are celebrating their fifth birthday with a ‘Freaks & Felines’ gathering at the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, so I grab myself a cab and head over there to hook up with Todd and the gang. Paul and Ian are already getting stuck in along with director Jonathan King (Under The Mountain) by the time I arrive, and we’re soon joined by Bruce, James and Stephanie Trepanier (Evokative Films). A few drinks later, host The Great Orbax is busy sticking sharp objects up his nose and Ian is getting squeamish so it’s time to split.
With Ian Rattray and James Evans
I’ve already secured a ticket for the second public screening of Daybreakers so I’m not worried about skipping tonight’s Midnight Madness screening, even if it does mean missing Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill who are set to attend. Instead Ian, James and I find ourselves another party to go to being held at the Duke Of Gloucester pub, just round the corner from where we’re staying. This bash is being thrown by Jeffrey Coghlan and Ambrose Roche, producers of Pontypool, and we have free beer tokens! Suffice to say it’s a late one with Ian and myself finally stumbling back home around 3am. I’m sure I’ll be regretting that in the morning when I have to be up bright and early for another 9am start!
More Information
For further information on TIFF 09 visit the festival website: www.tiff.net/.
The Informant! and Enter The Void will screen at the BFI 53rd London Film Festival in October.
The Informant! is released in UK cinemas on 20th November 2009.
Posted by
Soulmining
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