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<strong>NXNE</strong> festivAl guide<br />
Film Fest<br />
highlights<br />
THIS MOVIE IS BROKEN (Bruce McDonald,<br />
canada). 88 minutes. tonight (thursday,<br />
June 17), 7 pm, Royal. Rating: NNN<br />
Written by Don McKellar and directed<br />
by Bruce McDonald, the agreeably<br />
loose This Movie Is Broken charts the<br />
relationship of two old friends (Georgina<br />
Reilly, who co-starred in McDonald’s<br />
Pontypool, and Greg Calderone)<br />
thrown together in toronto on the<br />
day of last year’s free Broken Social<br />
Scene show at harbourfront.<br />
84 june 17-23 2010 <strong>NOW</strong><br />
It’s not entirely a concert movie nor<br />
entirely a conventional feature, but<br />
the way the two modes weave in and<br />
out of one another is awfully endearing<br />
– and when they mesh up at a<br />
crucial point, the moment is as exhilarating<br />
as one of the band’s famous<br />
crescendos.<br />
some clumsy storytelling in the<br />
last reel spoils the pleasant buzz, but<br />
when it’s really cooking, this Movie Is<br />
Broken feels like it’s just a breath<br />
away from some new cinematic form.<br />
NORMAN WILNER<br />
online extra Read the Brendan Canning<br />
interview at nowtoronto.com/nxne<br />
Thursday, June 17<br />
CIRCA 1977: THE DIODES (aldo Erdic,<br />
ñcanada). 28 minutes. 3 pm, NFB<br />
Mediatheque. Rating: NNNN<br />
In just under half an hour, Circa 1977:<br />
The Diodes creates a vivid picture of the<br />
toronto punk scene of 33 years past,<br />
when a local punk band opened a club<br />
called the crash ’n’ Burn and changed<br />
the musical landscape.<br />
Using the Diodes’s <strong>NXNE</strong> 2008 reunion<br />
as a jumping-off point, director<br />
Aldo Erdic follows John Catto, Paul Robinson,<br />
John Hamilton and Ian Mackay<br />
on a walking tour of their old stomping<br />
grounds, casually capturing how much<br />
downtown Toronto has changed from<br />
the glory days when you could run a<br />
basement punk venue on Pearl Street.<br />
The footage of the old A&A Records<br />
and Sam the Record Man flagships<br />
speaks to a more musically fertile culture<br />
on Yonge Street as well. NW<br />
yEAR OF THE CARNIVORE (sook-yin lee,<br />
canada). 88 minutes. 7 pm, aMc yonge-<br />
Dundas. Rating: NN<br />
See review, page 92. And see related Q&A<br />
at nowtoronto.com/movies.<br />
WHEN yOU’RE STRANgE (tom Dicillo, U.s.).<br />
100 minutes. 8 pm, hyatt Regency.<br />
Rating: NNN<br />
See review at nowtoronto.com/movies.<br />
<strong>NXNE</strong> FILM FESTIVAL to saturday (June<br />
19) at various locations. $10, free with<br />
<strong>NXNE</strong> wristband/pass. For pass info, see<br />
<strong>NXNE</strong> Essentials, page 55. For complete<br />
film schedule, see Indie & Rep Film,<br />
page 102 and the <strong>NXNE</strong> ad on page 64.<br />
Friday, June 18<br />
SUCK (Rob stefaniuk, canada). 90<br />
ñminutes. 9:45 pm, Bloor.<br />
Rating: NNNN<br />
Writer-director-star Rob Stefaniuk’s<br />
Suck is a comedy about a struggling<br />
band that sees its fortunes take a turn<br />
for the brighter when the bassist<br />
(Jessica Paré) becomes a vampire.<br />
sure, it’s a one-joke movie, but the<br />
joke is really funny, played out in every<br />
permutation imaginable by the deadpan<br />
Paré and her slack-jawed bandmates.<br />
(stefaniuk’s disappointed<br />
befuddlement every time she eats<br />
some one is a own running gag.) NW<br />
Saturday, June 19<br />
SEARCH AND DESTROy: Iggy POP<br />
ñAND THE S<strong>TO</strong>OgES’ RAW POWER<br />
(Morgan Neville, U.s.). 45 minutes. 5 pm,<br />
toronto Underground cinema. Rating:<br />
NNNN<br />
Putting Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the<br />
same room seems to defy common<br />
sense, but when the result is an album as<br />
galvanizing as 1973’s Raw Power, com-<br />
mon sense just needs to shut the hell up.<br />
Search And Destroy reassembles the<br />
band four decades later and go over<br />
the creation of that landmark album.<br />
(Bowie, whose interest in the band led<br />
to his producing Raw Power, is regrettably<br />
absent.)<br />
Stooges fans will enjoy the tales of<br />
manic, disorganized recording sessions,<br />
and musico lo gists will come<br />
away convinced they’ve just discovered<br />
the missing link between glam<br />
rock and punk. And they’ll be right. NW<br />
S<strong>TO</strong>NES IN EXILE (stephen kijak,<br />
ñUk). 61 minutes. 9 pm, toronto<br />
Underground cinema. Rating: NNNN<br />
Stephen Kijak’s entertaining documentary<br />
explores the circumstances<br />
that led to the 1972 recording of the<br />
Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main street.<br />
Using photos and home movie footage<br />
to illustrate contemporary audio<br />
interviews with the band and other<br />
witnesses, kijak recreates the mix of<br />
homesickness and stroppy defiance<br />
that led the stones to record an american<br />
blues mashup in the basement of<br />
a mansion in the south of France –<br />
when they weren’t indulging in<br />
bacchanalian pleasures.<br />
Essential viewing for stones completists<br />
and for pretty much anyone<br />
else who was on the fence about<br />
Exile’s status as the band’s masterwork.<br />
Four decades on, they haven’t<br />
even come close to surpassing it. NW 3<br />
Ñ = Critic’s Pick NNNNN = Best of the fest NNNN = Excellent NNN = Entertaining NN = Snore N = Who programs this crap?
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