by allan tong for FILMbutton

“There’s something in that mud,” says Bono about the Fame recording studios in this swampy hamlet in Alabama. Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, The Allman Brothers, The Rolling Stones and many others have recorded some of the best songs of the past 50 years here. Contemporary interviews and archival photos bring those recording sessions to life, but the real soul of this film is Rick Hall, the man who founded the Muscle Shoals studio, whose tragic childhood and hard life drove him to be the best producer in the music world. A stunning film.

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker, co-directing Leone Stars, a documentary about child victims of the Sierra Leonean civil war.

by allan tong for FILMbutton

It’s a surprise no one has made a major film about funk music until noted historian Nelson George with this one. He scores key interviews with bassist Bootsy Collins, George Clinton and the late, great James Brown, but the jewel in the crown is the reclusive and eccentric Sly Stone who looks unrecognizable. The film relies entirely on these interviews and throws factoids called Funk Chunks at the bottom of the screen which creates an unfortunate MTV feel. Sorely lacking is archival footage to show these musicians in their prime. However, funk and music fans won’t be sorry to hear these interviews and learn the history of funk.

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker, co-directing Leone Stars, a documentary about child victims of the Sierra Leonean civil war.

by allan tong for FILMbutton

In 2010 at the Seaworld amusement park in Orlando, Florida, trainer Dawn Brancheau was mauled and drowned by Tilikum, a 12,000-pound orca whale. That horrific moment was no mere accident, claims this terrifying film. In fact, Tilikum was long suspected to be a dangerous whale and likely killed another trainer in British Columbia many years earlier. So, why was he allowed to perform all those years? That damning question is the center of this fine documentary which makes a powerful case against keeping animals in captivity to be used for human entertainment.

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker, co-directing Leone Stars, a documentary about child victims of the Sierra Leonean civil war.

by allan tong for FILMbutton

Downloaded could be called The Rise and Fall of Napster. In 1998, some teenage kid from Boston named Shawn Fanning created a software to share his favourite tunes easily over the internet. Fanning partnered with buddy Shaun Parker (who would later join the Facebook team) to create the Napster website. Essentially, these two unleashed a Genie that forever altered the way the world listens to music. This fascinating doc sympathizes with Napster, but gives equal time to its foes, the record companies who eventually brought Napster to its knees in the courts. History classes in the future will show Downloaded to teach kids.

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker, co-directing Leone Stars, a documentary about child victims of the Sierra Leonean civil war.

by Allan Tong for FILMbutton

Freda Kelly had a job in the sixties that millions of girls around the world would have killed for: she ran The Beatles’ fan club.

A fan, but not a fanatic, Kelly was just 17 when she landed the coveted job right before The Fab Four launched into super stardom in late-1963. Chock full of Kelly’s memories of Beatlemania from the inner circle, particular the early Liverpool days, Good Ol’ Freda will thrill Beatles and rock fans, but Kelly’s humility and loyalty will also touch the hearts of movie fans.

Kelly is one of the last from that inner circle to tell her story. When she retired the Fan Club in 1972, she never asked The Beatles for a dime, and today remains a common secretary hiding her famous past. Amazingly, she didn’t tell her own children about her Fab days including her son who passed away. That regret, and the birth of her grandchildren, has broken her silence.

Allan is a Toronto filmmaker, co-directing Leone Stars, a documentary about child victims of the Sierra Leonean civil war.

by John Davidson for FILMbutton

Bottom Line: An age defying romp through some great musical standards, as seen through the eyes of those who have really seen it all.

Set against the skyline of a very opulent, modern and polluted Shanghai, a group of octogenarians and lifelong friends make beautiful music together, all the while reminiscing about the bad old days of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Despite their difficult lives, including living through World War Two and the Communist Revolution, this group of musical survivors have carved out a populist reputation at home and an overseas following of Standard lovers, or as the band calls them ‘foreign folk songs’.

The band members themselves are remarkably spry, and clearly enjoy joking around in one another’s presence. Still, they are no fools, and put their much younger manger in his place as soon as he steps one foot out of line. They know their music, who they are, and exactly what kind of show they want to present.

The film focuses on the professional lives of the band members, and only briefly touches on the subjects of family or politics. When it does, they all seem to agree that where China has evolved to is a much better place than where it was before, even if the evolution was painful in many different ways.

One element of the film that was interesting is the insistence that the American Navy presence in Shanghai after World War Two was very important in the cultural development of the city, and that the influence survived even after Communism took over in 1953. Certainly from the look of the streets as we are taken across town, the influence of the west seems to be everywhere, signalling in pictures if not words (perhaps on purpose) how little the people pay any attention to communist doctrine.

Overall, the film is an enjoyable peek into the lives of some affectionate granddads as they prepare for and travel to a concert in Rotterdam, and watch as they marvel at both the size of the concert hall and the windmills, as well as at the more liberal aspects of Dutch life.

Hot Docs Screening Times:

Wed, May 1 – 4:15 PM
Bloor Hot Docs Cinema

Thu, May 2 – 9:30 PM
The Royal Cinema

John Davidson is a huge music & film fan who has produced an independent film and now runs sonaBlast! Records Canada.

by Lisa Santonato for FILMbutton

15 Reasons to Live is the most recent film by Toronto-based documentary filmmaker Alan Zweig, best known for his Genie-award winning documentary, A Hard Name. Based on Ray Robertson’s book entitled, Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live, the film is a collection of personal stories inspired by Robertson’s reasons including Love, Death, Humour, Work, and Duty. The film follows Zweig’s unique style of personal storytelling in a new format: a collection of short stories of everyday people struggling to find meaning in their lives. It’s wonderful, unique, and poignant. Not to be missed.

Lisa Santonato is a Toronto-based writer, producer and video editor.

Hot Docs Screening Times:

Sat, Apr 27 6:30 PM
TIFF Bell Lightbox 1

Mon, Apr 29 1:30 PM
Isabel Bader Theatre

Sun, May 5 1:30 PM
TIFF Bell Lightbox 3

Those Who Can

by Tobi Gordon for FILMbutton

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the new film documentary, Waiting for Superman lays most of the blame for the current crisis in education at the feet of teachers and their horrible unions. According to filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (whose own offspring, he confides, are safely ensconced in private institutions) they are sucking all the money out of the system for living wages and harboring tenured reprobates in their bosoms. Without them, we could just get on with the joy of infusing the young with intelligence, proficiency and skills for success in life, just like we used to before they took over. (Who ‘we’ are is never really disclosed).

It’s an easy shot. Who, among us, hasn’t had at least one (or ten) teachers we didn’t like, who made us suffer, picked on us just because we didn’t do our homework, made us throw away our gum, took away that note passed across the desks from the friend across the room, or, worst of all, gave us a detention for speaking out of turn? Depending on our own ability to adapt to the classroom, we might easily look back and recall a few names we’d like to see scratched out of the Book of the Living.

And yet, here many of us are, relatively well-educated, competent, at least, in what is referred to as ‘Basic Skills’, ‘Literacy’, ‘Numeracy’ and acceptable table manners, able to earn a living, manage a mortgage and raise a family and even survive the little challenges of life, like divorce and taxes, without too much calamity.

Casting his eyes around for another controversial subject suitable for the successor to the highly popular sensation, An Inconvenient Truth, Guggenheim tells us he was struck by the sad state of the local public school he passed by daily when carpooling his kids to a much better private school. The fact that the American middle class (and increasingly the vanishing middle class up here, in Canada) has, over the years, withdrawn its support for, participation in and commitment to public education, like he has, himself, is a logical point he never acknowledges. There is an uncomfortable condescension to the ‘disadvantaged’ in the thesis of this film, which the nobody in the media seems to be noticing or commenting on as they hop on the bandwagon of praise for its shallow analysis.

Checking all this out is a big job…..say, it’s a job for….wait for it…..Superman. Leave it to Mr. Simpleton, make that Guggenheim, to choose, as a name for his movie, a popular iconic metaphor, where kids are rescued by a ‘deus ex-machina’, instead of plain hard work. Everything about this documentary screams shallow cliché, from its throwing around of random statistics projected on the screen (in case you want to jot them down for future reference0, tacky graphics, and the corny, time-worn doc convention of following a selection of sad-eyed child-contestants as they vie for some prize or other. In this case, unlike the excellent film “Spellbound”, which unfolded in a charming narrative structure accompanied by clever visual design and delightful music, where the parents and kids actually exhausted themselves working for their reward, or the outstanding documentary of several years ago, WarDance, which unfolded dramatically in the most gorgeous footage ever shot, the child/victims and their hapless parents in Waiting for Superman suffer under poor lighting, sitting passively by, waiting for their fates to be randomly decided in heartless lotteries while the cameramen hover like vultures, picking at the corpses.

You have to ask yourself why, in the course of this movie, no one asks the obvious questions….who thought this ridiculous system up? Why hasn’t anyone rebelled? You might also ask why there is no honest examination of the majority of those Charter schools which fail to measure up even adequately, or which narrow their curricula solely to readin’ and math and teach only to the test or hire (and fire, as needs be) uncertified, underpaid ‘teacher-facilitators’?

With all this emphasis on testing, what happens when a school does really well, year after year, scoring so high there is no dramatic ‘improvement’? I’ll tell you. First of all, the school administration cannot draw favorable notices from on high, since their scores are static. They get less support, which, in education, means money and staffing. Resources are thrown down the bottomless pits while the tall poppies, as they are called, get lopped off. I taught at such a public school and the pride we felt for the success of our students was quickly shifted over to the parents and the community. After all, how could we teachers take any credit, when they gave us such excellently raised and motivated kids to work with? (But never seek to blame a community for poorly prepared pupils, on pain of PC death!)

There is no question that all is not well in the American educational system. In Waiting for Superman, most of the people with all the answers, have never really taught school at all, or if they have, it was brief step on the way up to academic bureaucracy, well above the ‘fray’. Some authorities are, themselves, the products of private education with ingrained prejudices about public schools. The irony is that a few, who pulled themselves up with hard work, now believe they must work outside the system. For profit, by the way. (There is no mention that the private sector must generate a profit or else it goes out of business!) This film would like you to forget about the many dedicated and sincere public school educators trying their best, every day, to make things better for their students.

Putting the blame for society’s educational ills mainly at the feet of the teachers’ unions and mocking due process for grievances is disingenuous, to say the least, especially when you can’t resist editing in some archival footage you’ve dug up showing ‘olden days’ schools and tell the audience that unions were first a ‘good thing’ since most of the staff were mere women who were being terribly exploited. (Hey, Mr. Guggenheim, that’s what usually, happens when workers have no contracts or agreements and can be terminated at will. Brush up on your Woody Guthrie songs). A highly respected, award-winning Science teacher I know was terminated at a prestigious private school because they could hire two starter teachers for the salary they were paying her! Nothing is perfect, but to suggest that employees have a nerve to expect to be paid a living wage, have some job security and work in safe and decent circumstances is very 19th Century, if you ask me. Especially when you are entrusting, to them, the care and education of your most precious possessions.

The ‘inconvenient truth’ here is that when you insist on using a business model, refer to students as clients and treat staff as expendable if they don’t generate a ‘profit’, (ie. high test scores) no matter how poor the raw materials might be, you are setting yourself up for failure with a capital ‘F’.

Tobi Gordon is a former Media Studies teacher in Toronto and avid film fan.

by Tobi Gordon for FILMbutton

For many in the Diaspora, especially at this time of year. “Next year, in Jerusalem” is the prayer which has called a wandering, exiled people back home for centuries.

In Eran Riklis’s new film, best known for The Syrian Bride & Lemon Tree, there’s another saying, however, that seems to inform the Israeli bread company executive who is trying to turn around a public relations calamity by throwing a lot of money at the problem of what to do with the remains of an employee, a recent emigree, who has died in a suicide bombing incident.

“There’s no place like home”, is what she has in mind, when she sends her beleaguered HR Manager to deliver the casket to the woman’s family back in Russia. A road movie with a new twist, the trip becomes an emotional journey for all involved, until the unfortunate victim is finally laid to rest.

The theme is bleak. So is the look of the film. But the starkness of the images and theme is balanced by the richness of the characters we meet along the way. They add interest, emotion and even some humor to the story and to the life of the HR Manager, himself, who is both burdened and privileged with the task of finding a suitable resting place for the body.

Tobi Gordon is a former Media Studies teacher in Toronto and avid film fan.

by Tobi Gordon for FILMbutton

Pomp and Circumstances – The King’s Speech

Who, among us, has not agonized over having to deliver an oral composition in school? Standing up there, in front of the whole class, praying your voice doesn’t betray your nervousness, sweating the sweat of flops, we struggle to get it over with without embarrassing ourselves. Imagine, then, the misery of the child who cannot utter a word without stammering, who agonizes over each syllable. Imagine that child grown into a man who must find a way to do this ‘performance’ with the confidence and majesty of a king.

The ‘true story’ of King George VI, or as some have called him “The Man who wouldn’t be King if he could possibly help it”, is such a tale of woe. The film, excellently directed by Tom Hooper, is a remarkable balance of pomp and circumstances. Like last year’s “Young Victoria” the audience is taken right into the British palaces and abbeys for a glimpse of the ritual of royal life. While some, like the Duke of Windsor, wallow in spoiled self-indulgence, our hero, played by Colin Firth in a breathtaking portrayal (and I am not referring only to his halting attempts to speak) is basically a family man who likes nothing more than to tell bedtime stories to his little girls while rolling around on the floor in his tuxedo. With his lovely and stalwart wife, Elizabeth, (Helena Bonham Carter) by his side, we know he will prevail.

His speech impediment is well-concealed while he lives the cozy life of the ‘second son’, but when his dashing brother David (Edward VII-a brilliant turn by Guy Pearce) inappropriately pre-occupied with the detested Mrs. Simpson, abdicates, the stammering ‘Bertie’ is thrown into the spotlight as the new King.

In the 1930’s, that spotlight happens to also shine on the latest in communication technology, the radio. His early attempts to overcome his panic at even the thought of speaking into a microphone takes him back to the unorthodox therapist, Lionel Logue, played exquisitely by Geoffrey Rush, who, after much effort on both their parts, breaks through the new King’s veneer of royal repression.

It’s a great story. Great stories are few and far between in movies these days. The story has romance, suspense, joy and sorrow and a credible and exciting plot. It also has terrific characters that great actors can sink their chops into, to the delight of the audience. And there are many great actors in this film. The ‘A’ team of British theatre and film litter the fore and background. Michael Gambon, Jennifer Ehle, Derek Jacobi, have their glorious turns. We are in good hands, thespially-speaking. Any ‘special effects’ are beside the point and serve only to set the scenes historically and enhance the drama, not detract from it. The tension rises out of the anxiety felt both by the King and the audience as he stutters through his valiant efforts to ‘find his voice’.

It is a tribute to the script, the actors and the director that at no time is this struggle tedious or ridiculous, but rather just touchingly illustrative of the human struggle to communicate.

Tobi Gordon is a former Media Studies teacher in Toronto and avid film fan.