Alrighty then!

How’s everyone enjoying the “90s, Baby!” series? I’ve been looking forward to this summer-long event for years after the VIFF Centre presented the seasonal retrospectives of the American movies from the 70s and 80s. I haven’t had this much fun since the Summer of Brian De Palma a decade ago. Tonight I am incredibly honoured to be presenting “The Truman Show” (1998).

Its director, Peter Weir, is a brilliant filmmaker. Lyrical, bold, soul-searching, and a romantic. Weir is most passionate about adventurers and the mysterious forces that conspire against them. The moving image, his acute sensitivity to its poetry is matched by his love of the soundtrack – he always carries a boombox on set and is all the ready with stories and ideas to inspire the crew. When he received his an Honorary Oscar Award for Lifetime Achievement, Weir said that he considers the actors usually separated as “the cast” to very much a part of “the crew”.

In awe of the original script by Andrew Niccol whose own directorial debut “Gattaca” (1997) is just as wonderful, it was Peter Weir’s cinematic vision to mask the dark and disturbing horrors of “The Truman Show” with the stifling calm and instant smile sunniness of inoffensive “don’t change the channel” programming. The ambition and world-building in this film is astonishing. You can speculate for hours about Truman’s world and what’s happening in the background as well as what’s happening off-screen.

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On the evening of August 30th, I volunteered to introduce the VIFF Centre’s screening of Charlie Kaufman’s film “Synecdoche, New York” (2008). This is my speech in its entirety.

Good evening, everyone.

I am very grateful that I get to introduce Charlie Kaufman’s film “Synecdoche, New York” (2008) tonight. Out of all the inspired films that were selected as part of the 21st Century Classics at the VIFF Centre, I agree that this extraordinary directorial debut by one of the most important voices working in cinema today is the one to close out the series.

This century is twenty-five years old and it’s begun to produce less collagen and lose its metabolism. I believe within the next seventy-five years that Charlie Kaufman will be regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the 21st century. Having Kaufman’s films playing on the world cinema stage is just as novel as when Sigmond Freud and Carl Jung set foot in America and inevitably transformed the psyche of an entire nation. People will be thinking and talking about “Synecdoche, New York,” God willing, well after we’re dead.

It is quite extraordinary that a movie this profound and strange and challenging and raw and ambitious exists at all. There’s so much ingenuity and invention. Every ten minutes fulfills the promise, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!” A movie that doesn’t just circle around the abyss, but plunges wilfully into the abyss, damn the consequences. A movie so human that it really smarts. A movie so generous and overflowing with such charged and illuminating ideas. As the makeup artist played by Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Adaptation” (2002) would say, “It’s like a brain factory in here.”

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On the evening of September 17th, I volunteered to introduce the Vancity Theatre’s screening of Park Chan-wook’s cult classic “Oldboy” (2003). This is what I had to say about it.

Good evening. My name is Christopher Beaubien and I am honoured to be here.

Very soon your heart will be pounding in your chest. Your stomach will sink into its knees. And we’ll all be grinning ear-to-ear watching “Oldboy” in all of its 4K glory.

How many of you are seeing this movie for the first time?

Back in 2005, a horror movie buff loaned me a VHS copy of “Basket Case” and then he challenged me to show him a really scary movie. I hate to disappoint and I knew just the movie to show him. Once I had the movie set up to show my new friend as well as 30 other people (Don’t ask), he asked me — he was so excited:

“Chris, is this movie really scary?”

I assured him it was.

Then the air turned to chill and his face betrayed apprehension.

He asked me again, “Chris, is this movie really scary?”

I told him it was.

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I just came across the 52 Films by Women challenge today. Since I keep close track of my movie viewing, let’s see how I did in 2017 having no initiative that these were going to be counted.

The Edge of Seventeen (dir. Kelly Fremon Craig)
Sleepwalk (dir. Sara Driver)
Standing Tall (dir. Emmanuelle Bercot)
Certain Women (dir. Kelly Reichardt) (Watched it twice)
Always Shine (dir. Sophia Takal)
Évolution (dir. Lucile Hadžihalilović)
Meshes of the Afternoon (dir. Maya Deren and Alexandr Hackenschmied)
All This Panic (dir. Jenny Gage)
Viktoria (dir. Maya Vitkova)
Karl Marx City (dir. Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker)
Cameraperson (dir. Kirsten Johnson)
Mansfield Park (dir. Jane Austen)
Toni Erdmann (dir. Maren Ade) (2nd time)
David Lynch: The Art Life (dir. Jon Nguyen, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, and Rick Barnes)
Raw (dir. Julia Ducournau) (Watched it twice)
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