I, Don Giovanni

From the TIFF website:
The world of Mozart is beautifully re-imagined in this elegant and at times rollicking retelling of the story behind the creation of one of his operatic masterpieces, Don Giovanni. Although there are songs and theatrics in the film, this is not a simple restaging of the opera. Instead, director Carlos Saura dares to probe into the creative origins of Mozart’s work, and emerges with a backstage tale that is full of both drama and the excesses of opera itself. There is love and certainly jealousy, in addition to scheming divas, court composers, faithful wives and ethereal young things. Central to the story is not the great composer but his overlooked librettist, who used all this raw material as artistic inspiration. The fascinating and great Lorenzo Da Ponte penned Mozart’s finest operas, including Cosi fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro and their final collaboration, one of the jewels of the repertoire, Don Giovanni.

As the blurb says, this movie really isn’t about Mozart, but more about the early life of librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. He led an interesting life, this movie chronicles the early parts of it. He was a protege of Casanova, and parts of the opera, Don Giovanni are based on events from Casanova’s life. Many parts of the opera are from his own life.

A librettist is a writer of the words (lyrics) used in long musical works like operas and ballets. As opposed to the writer of the music.

The movie is mostly in Italian, with some German. It has a lot of good music. It’s very enjoyable.

____________

Lebanon

From the TIFF website:
It’s June of 1982, and four young Israeli soldiers are assigned to operate a single tank. Their first mission is to enter a civilian Lebanese village to clear it of possible PLO terrorists. Something goes horribly wrong, however, and the ensuing panic leads to miscommunication, death, destruction and hostages. All hell breaks loose around these young men as they face the perennial question: kill or be killed?

This is based on a true story. The director / writer was one of the soldiers in the tank.
This is one of several cathartic movie efforts by directors from Israel. Many war veterans in Israel are struggling with their roles in Israel’s wars, particularly the ones in the 1980s, and have produced several films in the last few years that deal with this subject. This is one of the better ones.

The entire movie takes place in a tank. Scenes on the outside are from the viewpoint of the tank crew, as seen through a scope. It works well, you can really feel the emotion and imagine the smell of sweat, fear, urine and fumes in that tank.

Made me think of a more claustrophobic Das Boot.

This movie won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival just two days ago.

One of the best efforts to come out of this Israeli school of war films was last year’s Waltz with Bashir (highly recommended)

____________

Bitch Slap

From the TIFF website:
When three busty babes arrive at a desert hideaway to steal over $200 million from a ruthless underworld kingpin, things quickly spiral out of control. Hel (Erin Cummings), the caper’s mastermind, is a corporate bombshell with a taste for vengeance. Trixie (Julia Voth) is the bait, a gorgeous stripper with a heart of gold and a dress to match, irresistible to men and women alike. Camero (Ameríca Olivo) is the drug-running, man-hating psycho killer who trusts nobody but herself. Allegiances are switched, truths are revealed, criminals are unmasked (and undressed) and nothing is quite what it seems as the fate of the world is precariously balanced among this trio of smouldering, sexy femmes fatales.

If you like Tarantino’s Deathproof, this is the movie for you. It doesn’t have the snappy dialogue that Tarantino films have, but the action sequences are great. Zoe Bell (the New Zealander stuntwoman who starred in Deathproof) was stunt coordinator on this.

The three women in the movie do stuff that I’d imagine the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad from Kill Bill doing. Theres even a Bill-like character.

This movie is a tribute to the sexploitation films of the 1970s, as well as Tarantino’s work. It has muscle cars, strippers, midgets, lots of cleavage, hot women making out with each other, wet tshirts, hot women standing around, samurai swords, hot women fighting each other… it has a lot of stuff that guys will find entertaining.

This is not a movie for just guys though. I once watched Deathproof at a friend’s house, with several women. They enjoyed it more than I did, the female empowerment and girls kicking ass appealed to them. If approached with that frame of mind, and a sense of humour, I think women will enjoy this movie too.

Watching movies like this with the right crowd is important. This movie was part of TIFF’s midnight madness series. They show a weird / unusual / messed up movie at midnight every night and its great. The crowd cheers when theres a particularly interesting kill, that kind of stuff, they really get into it. I see this movie being played in dorm rooms across North America for years to come.