Weeping in Toronto
From Steven Rea's "On Movies"
Not sure how folks stick it out for the whole 10-day run of the Toronto International Film Festival. After just four days of nonstop movies - about war, heartbreak, the ugly things people do to one another, about love, about movies themselves - I'm beginning to feel a little psychic bruising. Not to mention physical bruising - jostling crowds, long lines, feet stepped on by folks whispering apologetically as they make for the restroom . . .
But then you see something like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and none of those petty complaints matter. An adaptation, in French, from the Brooklyn-born artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel, of the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, this film is revelatory, crushingly sad and a testament to the will and infinite possibility of the human mind. Bauby, the gadabout editor of the fashion mag Elle, suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed head to toe - the only thing he could move was one eye, one eyelid. With the help of physical and speech therapists, Bauby learned how to "speak" through that eye, blinking when someone called out the letter he needed to spell a word. . . . If this sounds unendurably hard to watch, it's not: visually it's dazzling, playful, full of sublime collages of images, color and light. And some of it is very funny. Dark funny, but funny. The sound of weeping was audible in the theater as Diving Bell moved along . . .
Morning walk with Gary Graffman
From Peter Dobrin's "ArtsWatch"
http://go.philly.com/artswatch
Chanced upon Gary Graffman in Rittenhouse Square this morning. I never did think Graffman was putting aside the director's chair at the Curtis Institute of Music for a quiet retirement, but even I was surprised (and exhausted) as we practically ran down Walnut Street and Graffman recounted his summer: Moscow, Bolzano, Ischia (the volcanic island in the Gulf of Naples where William Walton had an estate). Graffman still teaches at Curtis; he has four students this semester (all Chinese-born, he says). He's been hearing Yuja Wang play a lot lately, and he had dinner with Lang Lang, who is to be the subject - at the age of 25 - of a biography. Actually, it's his second. A previous biography was published in China some years ago, even before his career took off. If Graffman is this busy at 78, another Curtis professor has him beat in a way. Legendary Curtis piano pedagogue Eleanor Sokoloff has two students this semester. She's 93. Must be something about that Curtis air.
Mark my words
From Carrie Rickey's "Flickgrrl"
http://go.philly.com/flickgrrl
The more I watch The Departed (in heavy rotation on cable this month), the more I admire the performance of Mark Wahlberg. His simmering indignation as Dignam, a cop, is the fulcrum of the film that seesaws between Matt Damon's clammy cool as the mob mole in the Boston police and Leonardo DiCaprio's agitated heat as the police mole in the Boston mob. The film wouldn't work without Wahlberg, an unassuming utility player who is great in every position, whether as star (Invincible), member of the ensemble (the improbably enjoyable Four Brothers) or supporting role, as in his Oscar-nominated Departed performance.
Though his feverish turn as porn star Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights (1997) is widely considered the breakout role for the Boston-born rapper, Wahlberg's bedrock believability as a dumb-cluck recruit in Renaissance Man (1994) and as the Desert Storm soldier in Three Kings (1999) are equally effective. His low-key acting, more rooted in body language than in dialogue, recalls that of Gene Hackman.
It's rare for a pop star to establish him or herself as a screen presence. For every Frank Sinatra and Doris Day who succeeds, there are dozens of Mick Jaggers and Madonnas and Princes who have a signature movie but never quite make it as a screen star. (Elvis was a screen success in that peculiar genre, the Elvis movie.)
Wahlberg's back in Philadelphia (having made Invincible and Shooter here) shooting The Happening for M. Night Shyamalan (whose breakout pic, The Sixth Sense, featured elder brother Donnie Wahlberg in a crucial role). As you pass 30th Street Station or Rittenhouse Square, where the production is shooting, which Mark Wahlberg movie gets your shout-out? Me, I'm going with The Departed and Invincible.