Indie films are all about innovative financing

The pleasant woman who is almost always sitting on the sidewalk asking for money outside the Cumberland movie theatres should get herself a guitar. Or at least something that looks like a guitar case to collect donations. She could make a fortune pretenting to be a busker.

With the nice little music movie Once playing to good crowds inside, exiting patrons can't help but be in the mood to feel sorry for people who depend on the generosity of passersby.

The movie is about a guitar-playing troubador of the cobblestones of Dublin who gets together a bunch of other street musicans and a strolling seller of roses to make a demo CD.

Toronto panhandlers might want to take a note from the buskers in quirky independent film Once.

Even if she fashioned a guitar out of cardboard or found an old tennis racquet, the Cumberland lady would cash in big-time.

Speaking of the Cumberland ... where are quirky non-Hollywood flicks like Once going to play when the old-style multiplex is replaced by a condo tower, as seems inevitable? The rumbling of the subway audible in the lower-floor auditoriums is a constant reminder of the location's proximity to the action.

-Deputy Entertainment Editor Joe Fox

Not cleared for takeoff

The DVD discount bin at one of the retailers in the departures level at Pearson's Terminal Three isn't exactly overflowing with options. 

There are maybe 50 different titles, and we can see why they're on sale.  There are few Academy Award winners amongst the lot.

Some titles seem to be particularly slow sellers,  judging by the number of copies available. A closer inspection reveals why. 

They're the kinds of movies that could give air travellers the creeps, especially if they're looking for something to watch in-flight on their laptops:

·       Donnie Darko Excellent film, but an early scene involving a jet engine hurtling from the sky and striking a private home doesn't inspire confidence in aircraft design.  There's a disturbing parallel with 9/11, so much so that the film's original 2001 release was drastically reduced.

·       Airplane! Not just the 1980 original of the Airport parody, but also the 1982 follow-up Airplane II: The Sequel.  Several copies of each are available for sale, but travellers may be having trouble with gags about a jet in danger of crashing and a space shuttle hurtling towards the sun.

Airplane! is not necessarily recommended for in-flight viewing, writes Peter Howell.

·       Planes, Trains and Automobiles. The Steve Martin and John Candy laugher suggests that all forms of travel are simply hell on wheels.

The people who stock this DVD bin either have a weird sense of humour, or they don't understand the fears of air travellers.

-Peter Howell

Think global, screen local

Was anyone listening to Meryl Streep's acceptance speech at the Golden Globes this year?  Her delightful diatribe urged moviegoers to demand more from their local theatres than the top-grossing films that dominate screens everywhere.

Seen Spider-Man 3 yet?  You'd be hard pressed to find a theatre that's not playing the blockbuster -- many even have it on multiple screens.  That includes Rainbow Cinemas' Market Square, which has it playing on two of its six screens.  Every time I pass the outdoor marquee with the current listings, I wonder why Sarah Polley's highly acclaimed directorial debut Away from Her is not on it.

The movie stars Gordon Pinsent, someone who lives close by and is a common sight shopping at the market on Saturdays.  I've seen Sarah Polley shopping there as well.  Aside from the fact that this movie has been lauded by critics near and far, it is a local movie, involving Toronto residents who deserve better than this.

If we really need a typically Canadian reason to distribute this movie more widely, there's always the fact that the New York Times raved about it.  Isn't that usually what it takes to convince us of our worth?

Rise up, folks, rise up.  Cinema managers are accessible by telephone.  Make the call.

-Barbara Turnbull

Moms and marketing

Film buffs know better than to take movie ads seriously, but publicity for the new pie-baking-themed chick flick Waitress goes beyond laughably inane to seriously misleading and even crosses the line into ruining the movie.

Besides the array of predictable quotes from the usual sources ("Two thumbs up. . ."), weekend ads contain critics' blurbs about the joys of motherhood. These comments only relate to the last few scenes, which are deliberately and completely at odds with the rest of the movie. Even worse, the photo of the waitress in question (played by Keri Russell) lovingly holding a baby in the air resolves the tension that hangs over the rest of the plot until the ending.

The ads were obviously aimed to attract a Mother's Day crowd ("Make your Mother's Day as easy as pie!"), so maybe they will change this week. But for many, this confection has been over-baked beyond redemption.

-Joe Fox

Invisible, Inc.

The use of a definite article in naming The Invisible may be the only smart thing about this teen horror flick, which opens Friday without benefit of a advance screening for critics. Without the "The," The Invisible might vanish in a sea of no-see-ums. The Internet Movie Database lists an astounding eight movies in the past 18 months with the title Invisible, if you include one called Cover that is a.k.a. Invisible. Most of these films have been as hard to see as the title implies. Several are shorts, which means they'll be viewed by almost no one. Others appear to be either in-production or headed straight to DVD.

The Invisible is the leader of the pack, since it is actually getting a wide release. Yet it is doing its best to be, er, invisible to critics, despite the presence of Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden and Canadian trouper Callum Keith Rennie in the cast.

That's not all. There was also an Invisible! (note the clever exclamation mark) released in 2004 and a Home from Home (a.k.a. Invisible) released in 2003. There were also films titled Invisible in 2001 and 2005.

Had enough yet? Another Invisible is planned for 2009. Maybe that one will add a question mark to make it distinctive. Who says there's no imagination in Hollywood anymore?

-Peter Howell

Movie manners

The other night I went to see Hot Fuzz at The Beaches. Well, I tried to, but fate was not being kind to me.

I had a young woman next to me, on a date, who talked non-stop on her cellphone from the minute she entered the theatre to the end of the ads. At that point, her date asked her to stop talking on the phone. She sighed, and switched to texting all during the coming attractions, giggling frequently. When the film finally started, her date ordered her to put the phone away.

She grumpily complied, but the end result wasn't much better. She didn't "get" the movie and kept asking her date to explain pieces of British slang, sight gags, or plot points that everyone else in the theatre seemed to comprehend.

By now, I was pretty steamed, but I couldn't catch her eye. I did, however, swap glances of mutual commiseration with her date.

After about an hour, there came one scene where Simon Pegg came up to his police locker to discover that someone had written T-W-A-T under his hat brim. The entire theatre broke into laugher, except for Miss Clueless next to me.

"What's a twat?" she asked her date. We looked at each other and just shook our heads. Some lines are too easy.

-Richard Ouzounian