A festival detour between screenings

By T.T. Stern-Enzi
Welcome to this special dispatch from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. I’m on a mission to capture experiences – frames of reference, if you will – from my extended journey in Toronto. TIFF is about the movies, the premieres and the galas, the red carpet photo opportunities and the first looks at the prestige films that will dominate the conversation for the next few months or more.
But I want jump off the beaten path, to seek out other moments, the ones in between the squats in darkened theaters, the ones where I find other funhouse reflections. Like Friday night (Sept. 7), when I happily skipped out of a screening of “The Sapphires,” an uplifting little gem of a story about an aboriginal girl group back in the 1960s who started out singing country music tunes, but switched to R&B and ended up touring Vietnam, playing for the troops. It’s loosely based on true events and feels goody-goody without completely going all “Good Morning, Vietnam” meets “Dreamgirls.”
I wasn’t quite skipping, but I had a little of that good soul backbeat in the blood in my ears, so I dropped into Chapters, the Barnes & Noble-style bookstore on the corner from the main festival theater, to check messages and unwind before my next dark encounter. There were signs announcing upcoming readings and events, to which I failed to pay close attention.
Escalator to escalator to the top floor and right there, standing in front of a screened backdrop was none other than Saul Williams, poet slamma jamma, holding court before a small but devoted crowd. The house lights were too bright and there wasn’t a true stage to frame his presence, but he made the space intimate and somehow found a way to dim the bright whites. I laugh thinking about it now because despite having seen him onscreen and determining that he’s not a huge physical presence, I still expect him to be larger than life. I want him to be big and broad, a giant of a man – the lovechild of Robeson and Welles maybe with some of that mythic John Wayne dimension thrown in for good measure.
Instead, he is thin, a thin black hole drawing us in, while also projecting a universe of words and ideas in each sentence. This may seem like I’m attempting to mimic him, his style, but no, I’m only struggling to fill in a few details of this overwhelming picture.
He didn’t recite verse, at least not by the time I arrived. He led us on a journey through his creative process, brief history of everything. It had nothing to do with film and yet, everything. His background is in theater and every movement and word contains energy and a sense of anticipation, even one-on-one.
I went up to speak with him afterward, picking up a book I had no notion I wanted just a few minutes before, back when I was walking in, headed for the restroom across the way. We talked about using the arts – poetry and hip hop in his case, music video and film in mine, to tap kids into the world; how these old school approaches might foster new social networks. And we acknowledged how good it was to see another face of color on the road, spreading presence and the word. In that new book of his, Chorus: A Literary Mixtape, he wrote, “May these words bring worlds.”
That is what I expect from film, from those projected frames. I seek worlds, familiar and foreign. I want the stories up there to take me off the reservation.
And at TIFF, you are your own camera, able to document whatever story captures your fancy.
Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

Has Joss Whedon Put Avengers Together for Our times?

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

Back in 1963, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby probably didn’t have as much trouble creating Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as Hollywood has had in bringing these super duper dudes (and one dark and mysterious dudette) to the screen. There have been two very different Hulks (Eric Bana raged out in Ang Lee’s angsty version, while Edward Norton went green in Louis Leterrier’s smash-mouthed follow-up), a couple of Iron Man films with a pair of Rhodeys (the War Machine armor didn’t fit Terrence Howard, so dapper Don Cheadle stepped in), a thunderous alien prince with god-like abilities and Shakespearean aspirations, and a fittingly scrawny weakling who grew into an American captain of note. It is the same misunderstood bunch, but the behind-the-scenes drama eclipsed the narrative tension inherent in assembling such a collection of super-sized egos.

The super teams of Marvel Comics always had interpersonal issues. The Fantastic Four juggled their, well, fantastic powers within the dynamic of a loving family of disparate individuals constantly at odds with one another. The Uncanny X-Men took matters even further, channeling the urgent civil unrest of the 1960s with the conflict between homo sapiens and homo superiors, the mutant super-race borne from accelerated genetic evolution. It was broad and gutsy to go in such a politicized direction with comic book characters, but it made even more sense when, in the hands of director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil), the outsider metaphor of the X-Men, was updated to include the more contemporary angle of the acceptance of gay, lesbian and the transgender community.

But the Avengers were always (and continue to be) a unique outfit in the world of superheroes. One of their rallying cries – Avengers Assemble – speaks to the very essence of what makes them so distinct, and what may make future film installments such a challenge. The team is an ad hoc committee. In a universe of rock stars, the Avengers are a supergroup with players constantly rotating and trading instruments in the studio. In fact, it has taken them so long to get together, they feel a bit like The Traveling Wilburys, despite having a stellar cast of fairly young faces and hard bodies poured into typically silly spandex tights.

So the real question is, are these Avengers the right ones for our current American society, the socially networked, reality freak show watchers that we are? I believe they most certainly are. Marvel always had a leg up on the DC comic world, in that Marvel never attempted to create a fictional alternative with generic names for their urban landscapes. So the Avengers Mansion takes up residence in Manhattan, meaning that at some key point down the road, the Hulk (played by a thirty-something Josh Hutcherson) and the crew, which might include a sexy red She-Hulk, a black hero or two, and a few alien beings, could pop over to the Jersey shore for a wild night that could, of course, somehow get captured on video and posted on the new intergalactic version of YouTube where Thor (having finally gotten over his daddy issues and claimed the throne) and the Asgardians could sit back and laugh at how pathetic we humans remain, but we wouldn’t care because everyone knows those old heads across the bridge are just  bunch of snobs.

We can thank cool comic book nerd Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) for popping up these kernels of cultural dissonance into a patriotic reflection of our not-so-deep desires. You know, red-state vs. blue state, rich vs. poor, when faced with a common foe, America, despite all internal opposition, can assemble its best and brightest to give a heavy smack down.

It’s too bad the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America can’t smash a depressed economy or the debate over civil unions. Who do we need to get together to handle that stuff?

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com.