Hot Docs 2015

Hot Docs is officially underway. The largest documentary film festival in North America, Hot Docs has been a growing success since its launch in 1992. It's a busy ten days for documentary aficionados.


Around the World in 50 Concerts

This lovely film about Amsterdam's Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra features simply gorgeous music, interviews with members of the orchestra and a look at the logistics, including thermal packaging, of transporting all those instruments.

What makes the movie so special - besides that gorgeous music - are the stories of audience members with a passion for music. There's the Argentinian taxi driver who can't wait to get behind the wheel where he can listen to classical music in peace. The music of Mahler brings back memories and a tear to the eye of a melancholic Russian, who survived both Hitler and Stalin. Music is the sole redeeming feature in the hard life of two poor South African girls, who play in an exuberant marimba band.

Try to see this movie!

Pleasure at Her Majesty's

This film follows the preparations, and some glimpses of the final performance in a 1976 Amnesty International benefit concert organized by John Cleese. The first part of the film showing the preparations was muddled and the sound quality made it hard to understand multiple voices speaking at once. There was some payoff in the second part with routines from the final performance, including the famous dead parrot skit. But the content of this film was not enough to make up for low video resolution and poor sound quality.

Give this one a miss.

Rolling Papers

It's 2014 and Colorado has just legalized marijuana for recreational use. The Denver Post, like all newspapers in the 21st century, is struggling to stay alive. Maybe a marijuana web site can make the newspaper relevant.

I learned quite a few interesting facts about marijuana legalization, both in Colorado and Uruguay, about the need for regulation, and how marijuana reviewers can sound like wine reviewers in their rapturous descriptions of varieties of weed. And I enjoyed the wonderful pictures of different species in dazzling close-ups. But the movie didn't have a single driving theme that pulled it all together and left me pretty lukewarm, despite the delightful pun in its title. I'm sure there will be better movies than this for your schedule.


Dear Araucaria (double feature with Rolling Papers)

Some people get an obituary in a newspaper. The Guardian made this short film as a eulogy to its long-time crossword puzzle setter. When John Graham, known as Araucaria, developed terminal esophageal cancer, he broke the cardinal rule - no diseases as answers - and included words about his disease and palliative care in the answers.  Soon informed, dedicated puzzle solvers flooded him with good wishes. This is a nice short film.

End of Life Thoughts

Our modern healthcare system fails people two ways:

• Senior residences and nursing homes focus on physical welfare, rather than striving for optimum quality of life. 
• As patients near end of life, physicians subject them to extreme but futile medical treatments.  

These ideas come together in Gawande's latest book Being Mortal. He lambastes nursing homes' focus on measuring the purely medical needs of their patients, like getting medications on schedule, but failing to care for their quality of life. Many activities that would provide stimulation for people's lives, could add risk to their health. Many residents in these homes would prefer to take these risks in return for a better life (by their own definition), but they are not given the choice.

Gawande also takes on the medical profession's obsession with intervention in late stages of life, interventions that can make the end of life agonizing for the patient. Yet studies have shown that, on average, these brutal measures don't extend life expectancy beyond that for people who choose palliative care.

Gawande advocates rethinking our entire system's approach to late-life end-of-life care, including a fleeting reference to assisted suicide.

This book brings together so many things I've been thinking about recently. Some time ago I wrote a review of How to Die in Oregon, a documentary about assisted suicide, one of the best documentaries I've seen at Hot Docs. It reinforced my support for assisted suicide options. And Canada's Supreme Court recently ruled that adult Canadians in grievous, unending pain have a right to end their own life with a doctor's help(details here). I've also written a glowing review of The Checklist Manifesto and of Atul Gawande's TED talk, which first made me a Gawande fan.

He's hit the ball out of the park again with this book. A must-read.
Links to past book reviews, with some of my favourites at the top:
Non Fiction:
The Innovator's Dilemma
The Wave: In Search of the Rogues, Freaks and Giants of the Ocean (my most viewed book review)
Curiosity (my second most viewed book review)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 
The Checklist Manifesto
Uncharted
The Lean Start-up
The Upside of Irrationality
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Steve Jobs
Global Warring
Nudge

Fiction:
Americanah
Life After Life
A Possible Life (I love anything by Sebastien Faulks)
Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Rules of Civility
The Taliban Cricket Club
The Vault
Before I Go To Sleep
A Son of the Circus
Still Alice
Faithful Place
Defending Jacob
The Strangler
The Help
The Housekeeper and the Professor


Some series I've liked:
Donna Leon's series about the Venetian detective Guido Brunelli: A Question of Belief
Canadian Peter Robinson's series about British detective Alan Banks: Before the Poison, Bad Boy
James Church books about a North Korean detective: A Corpse in the Koryo, Hidden Moon, Bamboo and Blood, The Man with the Baltic Stare
Gianrico Carofiglio's series about an Italian policeman: Involuntary Witness
Jo Nesbo's series about Norwegian detective Harry Hole: The Redeemer, The Redbreast, Nemesis
Alexander McCall Smith's series about the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
Andrea Cammillieri's books about Sicilian Inspector Montalbano: The Shape of Water
Martin Walker's series about French local policeman Bruno, Chief of Police
Louise Penny's detective series set in the Eastern Townships of Quebec: Still Life
Jussi Adler-Olsen's series about Danish detective Carl Morck: The Keeper of Lost Causes
Ruth Rendell's books about Chief Inspector Reg Wexford
Arnald Indridsadon's books about Finnish detective Erlendur: Arctic Chill, Hypothermia and Outrage

Other books I've also liked:
The Spoiler
The Secret Race
The Blondes
San Miguel
The Better Angels of our Nature
Radioactive
The Believing Brain
Hellstrom's Hive
22 Britannia Road
The Imposter Bride
Murder as a Fine Art
Adapt
The Invisible Bridge
This Body of Death
Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air
Berlin Crossing
Gold
The Marriage Plot
The Paris Wife
The Forgotten Affairs of Youth
Turn of Mind
The Secret Speech
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
The Makioka Sisters
Russka
Suite Francaise
The Man from Beijing
Innocent
At Bertram's Hotel
Red April
You Are Not a Gadget
Five Smooth Stones
River of Gods
Nasty, Brutish and Short: The Quirks and Quarks guide to Animal Sex and Other Weird Behaviour
The Ghost
The Council of Dads
The Elements
Tribes
The Elephant, The Tiger and the Cellphone
McMafia
The Janissary Tree


Some books I didn't like very much:
A Perfect Heaven
Potsdam Station
The End of the Wasp Season
The Dark Room
Dead or Alive
A Vintage Affair
The Finkler Question
When the Devil Holds the Candle

Death with Dignity

As the Canadian Supreme Court hears the case for assisted suicide, it would be a good time to watch How To Die in Oregon. It would be particularly meaningful for Canadians, so many of whom are thinking deeply about these issues at the moment.

I saw this movie, which documents how assisted suicide works in Oregon, three years ago at Hot Docs (reviewed it here) and it remains one of the most powerful movies I've ever seen at Hot Docs. There are several ways to get this movie online.

Being Elmo

I found this post that I wrote ages ago, but I seem to have neglected to publish it.  It's a review of another movie from the Bloor Cinema's opening week as Hot Docs theatre  in Toronto.


Kevin Clash is a man who has lived his dream.   As a young boy growing up in a poorish neighbourhood in Baltimore, he fell in love with puppets.  His first romance was with Captain Kangaroo, but Sesame Street brought his passion to full flower.  Sesame Street looked like a place he could live, and oh, those puppets were absolutely wonderful.

So Kevin started making puppets himself.  An early visit with Kermit Love broke open some of the secrets of a great puppeteer, like how did you make a puppet where the seams didn't show.  Through Kermit's mentorship, he found his way to Sesame Street, his dream home.


Clash just fell into being Elmo. Another puppeteer on the show just didn't relate to the puppet and threw it to Clash with the words 'you try to do something with it'.  Clash turned the puppet into a symbol of love.  But more than that, he just became Elmo.  His warm, all-encompassing smile and voice brings Elmo to life.  He is now Executive Producer of Sesame Street, and is greeted all over the world with delighted recognition - and yes love - from Elmo's many fans.

Racing Dreams

I'm a bit behind in reporting on movies I saw during the opening week of the Bloor Cinema.  Let me catch up.

Racing Dreams follows three young people above (ranging in age from 11 to 13) as they chase the title in the World Karting Association National Series. Incessant practice and long drives to tracks for competitions is the consuming centre of their lives during this.  They feel it's worth it, as many NASCAR drivers have arisen from the Karting circuit, and each of these kids dreams of making it to NASCAR.

It's not that I'm totally enamoured of kart racing; I outgrew that after I dislocated my elbow when I rolled a go-kart many years ago at a go-kart track.  But this documentary movies is not just about racing.  It's about watching seeing three kids in mid-development, making choices about their future.  The challenge of the race exposes their formative characters. 

Josh is grooming himself for the big time, and not only on the track.  He's already a good public speaker, smoothly attracting sponsors and giving them what they want in a clean-cut driver with a winning attitude, a winning smile and winning record.  He steps up to meet a NASCAR driver to make sure he knows Josh's name for the future. 

For Brandon, from a troubled family, being brought up by a wonderful supportive grandfather, it's probably his last year in racing, because the family lacks the resources to take the next step.  He already battles a quick temper and a tendency to challenge the rules with aggressive driving, a trait that has already seen him disqualified in one race.  We leave with a fervent hope he will not follow his father's treacherous path to jail. 

Meanwhile, Annabeth is starting to feel the tug of boys and dating, and the likelihood she will exit racing and the grueling practices and weekends on the road in favour of the life of a more normal teenager.  And yet, . . .  When her father puts her in the newly purchased stock car, the engine revs and her blood surges.  Which path will she choose?

It's a fascinating movie, and was a good choice for the first week at the Bloor.