5th Annual Indonesian Movie Awards - winners

The 5th Annual Indonesian Movie Awards took place tonight at the Tennis Indoor Senayan, Jakarta in a ceremony hosted by Okky Lukman and Choky Sitohang. Robby Ertanto Soediskam's 7 Hati 7 Cinta 7 Wanita (7 Hearts, 7 Loves, 7 Women) and Lola Amaria's Minggu Pagi di Victoria Park (Sunday Morning in Victoria Park) won the most prizes, taking a total of four each.

7 Hati 7 Cinta 7 Wanita (7 Hearts, 7 Loves, 7 Women) had led with a record 16 nominations. Its awards were for Happy Salma and Rangga Djoned as Supporting Actress, Favourite Supporting Actress and Male Newcomer and Favourite Couple. Minggu Pagi di Victoria Park (Sunday Morning in Victoria Park) won four awards, with Best Lead Actress (Titi Sjuman), Best Female Newcomer (Fitri Bagus), Favourite Supporting Actor (Donny Alamsyah) and Favourite Female Newcomer (Fitri Bagus).

3 hati 2 Dunia 1 Cinta (3 hearts, Two Worlds, One Love) by Benni Setiawan emerged as the winner for Favourite Film. It also won Best Lead Actor (Reza Rahardian), its only other award. Alangkah Lucunya (Negeri Ini) [How Funny (This Country Is)] was also a multiple winner, taking Best Supporting Actor (Tio Pakusadewo) and Best Child Actor (Angga Putra).

The jury for selecting the 'Best' Awards was chaired by actor/lecturer Didi Petet. His fellow jurors were actress Ratna Riantiarno, producer Teddy Soeriaatmadja, entertainer Leila S. Chudori and writer/director Salman Aristo.

Opera review: Orfeo ed Euridice

Composer: Christoph Willibald Gluck
Libretto: Ranieri de’Calzabigi
Conductor: Harry Bicket
Chorus Master: Sandra Horst
Director: Robert Carsen
Set and Costume Designer: Tobias Hoheisel
Lighting Designer: Robert Carsen and Peter Van Praet

Orfeo: Lawrence Zazzo
Euridice: Isabel Bayrakdarian
Amore: Ambur Braid

The Canadian Opera Company's excellent year comes to a close with another winner. Orfeo ed Euridice by Christoph Willibald Gluck was a groundbreaking work when it was first performed 250 years ago, a reaction to the extravagance of opera seria. This is the COC's first ever production of the work and they manage to capture a freshness and excitement that makes it feel modern.

Based on the famous Greek myth, the production is performed in contemporary costumes of black luck  and dresses. The set consists of a bleak moonscape of grey stones and rubble. And the lighting is often just a single bright light from the wings casting a long shadow. This simplicity matches that of the music and the plot and is extremely effective.

Film review: POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Writer: Jeremy Chilnick, Morgan Spurlock
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Producer: Jeremy Chilnick, Abbie Hurewitz, Morgan Spurlock, Keith Calder, Jessica Wu
First-person business/media criticism documentary
1 hour, 30 minutes

Ever since Morgan Spurlock burst onto the documentary scene with his Oscar-nominated hit Super Size Me, he has continued to make his uniquely goofy-yet-serious personal examinations of modern culture. His latest takes a look at the practice known as product placement, where advertising for products is integrated directly into the story of a film or television show. The Greatest Movie Ever Sold was a hit at Sundance and has since been re-branded appropriately enough to POM Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.

He accomplishes a remarkable juggling act in the film and is able to have his cake and eat it too. He both criticizes and raises awareness of product placement while completely funding the film using that technique as his revenue source. The film shows him trying to persuade enough businesses to pay to be featured this film in exchange for prominence within the film itself.

Hot Docs Awards, pt 2 - Audience & Filmmakers Award winners

After announcing most of the award winners at a ceremony on Friday, May 6, the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival announced the remaining award winners for the Audience & Filmmakers Awards.

They tallied the top ten films as voted by the Hot Docs audience and the number one film and winner of the Sundance Channel People's Choice Award is Linda Goldstein Knowlton's Somewhere Between. Knowlton herself adopted a baby girl from China and the film is a touching examination of cross-cultural adoption and the effects of China's one-child policy.

The winner of the Filmmakers Award as selected by attending filmmakers is Michal Marczak's At the Edge of Russia.

PC Bang: The Rise of the Esports Hero from producer Erica Landrock was announced as the winner of the Shaw Media-Hot Docs Rendezvous Pitch Prize and a $5,000 cash prize.

53rd Premios Ariel (Ariel Awards) for Mexican film - winners

The Academia Mexicana de Artes y Ciencias Cinematográficas, A.C. (Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences) held their 53rd Premios Ariel (Ariel Awards) yesterday at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

The crime satire El Infierno (Hell) by Luis Estrada swept the awards with nine prizes including Best Picture, Director and Actor (Damián Alcázar). Going into the night, it led with 14 nominations.

Still, many scratched their heads that Mexico's submission to the Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film and eventual nominee Biutiful was not even nominated for Best Picture or Best Director. Of its seven nominations, its only win of the evening was for Cinematography. The other Best Picture nominations had gone to Abel and Chicogrande. While Abel managed wins for Best Newcomer (Cristopher Ruiz-Esparza) and Screenplay (Agusto Mendoza and Diego Luna), Chicogrande went home empty-handed.

The Camera d'Or winner at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival Año bisiesto (Leap Year) received the Best Actress prize for the film's star Mónica del Carmen. Its writer/director Michael Rowe received the award for Best First Work.

19th Annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival - May 7-15

This week brings us the 19th Annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival. Highlights of this year's festival include much-anticipated screenings of Chasing Madoff, The Heart of Auschwitz and Between Two Worlds.

Another highlight of the festival is The Three Lennys – a 19-part series (appropriately enough for the 19th edition of the festival) which celebrates the extraordinary lives and careers of Leonard Bernstein, Leonard Cohen and Lenny Bruce. This featured sidebar series of the festival brings special guests such as Alexander Bernstein, son of the late, legendary conductor/composer Leonard Bernstein, who will be in attendance for several of the screenings.

The Sidebar Series also includes six FREE ticketed screenings of music documentaries and performance films:  Leonard Bernstein: Reaching for the Note; Leonard Bernstein: A Total Embrace (with special guest Alexander Bernstein in conversation with writer/broadcaster Rick Phillips); Young People’s Concert – What Does Music Mean?; Trouble in Tahiti – a teleplay of Leonard Bernstein’s operetta; Leonard Bernstein’s Candide – starring Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone; and Wonderful Town – the live television broadcast of the original Broadway hit musical from 1958 starring Rosalind Russell.

2011 David di Donatello Awards for Italian film - winners

The Accademia del Cinema Italiano (Academy of Italian Cinema) held their 55th edition of the David di Donatello Awards yesterday in Rome, Italy. Noi Credevamo (We Believed) by Mario Martone had led with 13 nominations and claimed seven awards including Best Film and Best Screenplay.

Daniele Luchetti, however, won Best Director for La nostra vita (Our Life). It also picked up Best Actor (Elio Germano) and Best Sound. 20 sigarette (20 Cigarettes) also did well with four awards, and Basilicata Coast to Coast picked up three prizes.

Tom Hooper's The King's Speech won Best Film of the European Union, while Clint Eastwood's Hereafter won Best Foreign Film. The Documentary prize went to Filippo Vendemmiati's È stato morto un ragazzo (A Boy has been Dead).

A Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Ettore Scola.

Hot Docs Awards - winners include Family Portrait, Dragonslayer

Hot Docs is pleased to announce the winners of the Festival's 2011 awards. Award winners were announced at a reception on Friday, May 6, at the Windsor Arms Hotel. Nine awards and over $72,000 in cash prizes were presented to Canadian and international filmmakers, including awards for Festival films in competition and those recognizing emerging and established filmmakers. The Hot Docs Awards Presentation was hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, host of Q on CBC Radio One. The Best Canadian Feature and Best International Feature winners will have encore screenings on Sunday, May 8.

The award for Best Canadian Feature was presented to FAMILY PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE (D: Julia Ivanova; P: Boris Ivanov, Mike Jackson), which visits a ramshackle house in Ukraine where supermom Olga Nenya is raising 16 abandoned mixed-race children. Sponsored by the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation and Documentary Organization of Canada, the award includes a $15,000 prize courtesy of the Brian Linehan Charitable Foundation. Jury statement: "The award for Best Canadian Feature goes to an intimate, poetic film that bravely confronts nuance and complexity in its characters and its world." FAMILY PORTRAIT IN BLACK AND WHITE will screen again on Sunday, May 8, at 11:00 a.m. at the Isabel Bader Theatre.

16th Festival Accès Asie, May 6-29

Festival Accès Asie – 16th edition – May 6th to 29th, 2011

The 16th edition of Festival Accès Asie presents « MUSES AMUSE »

Montreal – This year, during the month of May, officially declared Asian Heritage Month since 2000, you will be vibrating to the rhythms of Festival Accès Asie’s many activities that unite artists from diverse Asian cultural communities from all over the country.

This new edition of multidisciplinary art performances will be held from May 6 to 29 and will take place in seven different locations. With the theme « MUSES AMUSE », the festival will feature 25 artists from Iran, Tibet, India, Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Canada and of course, Quebec. The theme is a nod to the muses that bring inspiration and reflection to the artists, allowing us to celebrate diversity in the expression of the arts.

2nd Annual Ελληνικής Ακαδημίας Κινηματογράφου Βραβεία (Greek Film Awards) - winners

The Ελληνικής Ακαδημίας Κινηματογράφου (Hellenic Film Academy) presented its Second Annual Ελληνικής Ακαδημίας Κινηματογράφου Βραβεία (Hellenic Film Academy Awards) on Wednesday. The black-and-white drama Μαχαιροβγάλτης (Knifer) by Γιάννης Οικονομίδης (Yannis Economides) took the most awards with seven including Best Picture and Best Director.

Χώρα Προέλευσης (Homeland) by Σύλλας Τζουμέρκας (Syllas Tzoumerkas) had led with 12 nominations but came away with five awards including Best New Director.

An honourary lifetime achievement award was given to Mihalis Kakogiannis. The ceremony was dedicated to actor Thanasis Vengos, who recently passed away at the age of 84. Vengos was last year's honorary award recipient.

The Ελληνική Ακαδημία Κινηματογράφου selected Attenberg by Αθηνάς Τσαγγάρη (Athina Rachel Tsangari) as the Greek candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards.

Festival De Musique De Chambre De Montréal, May 5 to 28

The Festival De Musique De Chambre De Montréal has begun its 16th edition and features many acclaimed performers.

The new festival season offers 18 superb concerts featuring internationally renowned artists such as the Tokyo String Quartet, violinist James Ehnes, pianist Jean-Philippe Collard and jazz star Carol Welsman. The programme includes the complete Beethoven String Quartet cycle, a marathon of Russian music, music from France, tangos, Cuban jazz and much more.

The offerings also include some free concerts and lectures.

The 16th Festival De Musique De Chambre De Montréal continues to May 28.

Hot Docs review: The Pirate Tapes [UPDATED]

Writer: Matvei Zhivov, Rock Baijnauth
Director/Producer: Matvei Zhivov, Roger Singh, Andrew Moniz, Rock Baijnauth
Political intrigue documentary
1 hour, 12 minutes

Not all documentaries are created equal. With the rising popularity of documentary filmmaking and filmgoing, there has been a concurrent increase in the number of docs with a high bullshit factor. There are well-known question marks like Exit Through the Gift Shop, Catfish and I'm Still Here. But viewers also need to be careful of business-friendly puff pieces like Cool It, a terribly misleading propaganda film that ironically accuses An Inconvenient Truth of being a misleading propaganda film. We should also be wary of hatchet jobs that pretend to start as flattering docs but change when they "discover" a dark side of their subject (e.g. Manufacturing Dissent: Uncovering Michael Moore or David Wants to Fly about David Lynch).

But The Pirate Tapes is a whole other species of bad. This film is based on the adventures of a young Somali-Canadian Mohamed Ashareh who decided to go to Somalia and film himself infiltrating a clan of Somali Pirates. He clearly didn't know what he was doing and it shows. But from the Q&A after the screening, profiles such as this one from The Toronto Star and simple deduction, it appears he was victimized by a second group of pirates here at home. When he returned to Canada, he sought help of a production company on Craigslist to make his film and found Palmira PDC. But he must have had it hijacked from him because he ends up receiving not a single production credit on his own film. Although he shot all the footage in Somalia and none of the others went there, all the credits go to Palmira's Matvei Zhivov, Roger Singh, Andrew Moniz and Rock Baijnauth.

Hot Docs review: Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop

Writer/Director: Rodman Flender
Producer: Gavin Polone, Rachel Griffin
Biographical music/comedy documentary
1 hour, 29 minutes

The title is quite true. He really can’t stop. This highly entertaining doc looks at the aftermath of the Tonight Show fiasco where Jay Leno gave up his job to Conan O’Brien only to flop on his new show and ask for his old time slot back. O’Brien would still have kept the name of The Tonight Show, but would have gone on after midnight, making it no longer "tonight" but the next day. He refused that arrangement and as part of the settlement with NBC, he was banned from appearing on television, radio or internet for six months.

Instead of taking a break, he went on a 32-city comedy and music tour dubbed the Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour. It started in Eugene, Oregon and took him across the U.S. and Canada. This film chronicles that long, grueling tour and shows how O'Brien really can't help but be "on" at all times.

Opera review: Ariadne auf Naxos

Composer: Richard Strauss
Libretto: Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Conductor: Sir Andrew Davis
Director: Neil Armfield
Set and Costume Designer: Dale Ferguson
Lighting Designer: Tim Mitchell

A Music Master: Richard Stilwell
The Composer: Alice Coote
The Tenor/Bacchus: Richard Margison
Zerbinetta: Jane Archibald
The Prima Donna/Ariadne: Amber Wagner

Although it is almost a century old, Richard Strauss' brilliant Ariadne auf Naxos still seems very fresh today. An opera-within-an-opera, it has a lot of that self-referential wit of Charlie Kaufman as well as some terrific music. After an absence of sixteen years, the Canadian Opera Company has remounted it with former Toronto Symphony conductor Sir Andrew Davis making his COC debut at the helm.

His musicianship has matured considerably in the intervening years. He was always a technically accomplished leader but could be stiff and rigid in his interpretations. Now, he can be quite the romantic and he brought out some lovely colours and textures from the smaller but highly layered orchestra. Many of the orchestral musicians had solos and all acquitted themselves with tremendous gusto.

1st Annual Canadian Cinema Editors (CCE) Awards - nominations

Yesterday, the Canadian Cinema Editors announced the nominations for their inaugural CCE Awards.

The nominees for Best Editing in Feature Length Dramatic are Michelle Conroy (Splice), Michael Doherty (George A Romero’s Survival of the Dead), Matthew Hannam & Gareth Scales (This Movie is Broken), Stephen Lawrence (Sophie) and Susan Shipton (Barney’s Version).

The Documentary nominees are James Blokland (Colour Me), Roland Schlime & Rod Deogrades (Acquainted with the Night), Nick Hector (Force of Nature), Michele Hozer (Glenn Gould: Genius Within) and Marcus Valentin (Manson).

The 1st Annual Editors Awards Night will take place on May 19th 2011 at the Capitol Event Theatre, 2492 Yonge St., Toronto. Mark Sanders will be the host and guest presenters include Katie Boland,  John Ralston, Daniel Kash, Ron White, Liz West and Richard Crouse.