MIFF Sunday August 8th

Fare thee well MIFF 2010, it's been a ball though perhaps overall 2009 did provide me with some better pics, but I won't hold that against you, we all have off days - or in your case, years. I did love or quite enjoy in no particular order; Catfish, Please Give, Bill Cunningham New York, Summer Coda, I Killed My Mother, The Killer Inside Me, The Kids Are All Right, The Trotsky, Red Hill, Waking Sleeping Beauty, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World and The Illusionist... so I guess after listing all those you weren't as bad as I thought you were, yay you!

I didn't go for anything too left field, no Trash Humpers or Rubber pour moi I'm afraid, so I guess my safe picks gave me better odds. But let us not speak of HaHaHa ever again, for the mere mention of that film causes me to drift off.

The last day of the festival is bittersweet, sad to see it go but happy to get back to regular life, I can only imagine how those who saw in excess of 50 films are feeling today. I managed 24 films in 17 days, with full time work I'm quite happy with this and even better - I didn't get sick!

With our film festival over we can now concentrate on being insanely jealous of the amazing line up for the Toronto film festival and sink back into the comfort of proper cinema seats until 2011 brings up face to face again with the Greater-Union-lower-back-nightmare-chiropractor's-dream-poor-excuse-for-seats.

I'll close with these words - Long Live Team Choctop!


Waking Sleeping Beauty
2009
Dir: Don Hahn


Hi, My name is Jess and I'm a Disney tragic. Hence why I have to explain to people why at 26 years of age I still get excited about Disney (though in full disclosure more so Pixar these days) and anything Disney related. I literally had heart palpitations when I read ACMI were having a Disney exhibition once the Tim Burton retrospective closes up shop. The point to all of this jibber is that this was a must see film in my MIFF line up.

Perhaps because of my penchant for all things Disney my opinion on this documentary may be slightly skewed. I can see it has flaws, it may heighten the deaths of two Disney team members to create some dramatic tension, although the dramatic tension is already high thanks to the head butting between executives, and perhaps the opinions voiced are from a narrow stream of many possible people they could have spoken to. But at the end of this film I was smiling, it was an involving and above all darn right interesting documentary, flaws and all.

Waking Sleeping Beauty tells of the turbulent period at Disney studios, between 1984 and 1994, when animation would be changed forever; a period that would return Disney to its rightful place and see such classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King being produced, and would see the birth of Pixar following the use of computer technology in making the Disney flop The Rescuers Down Under.

Behind all great stories is an even greater story just waiting to be told, and whilst the success of the mentioned films and the stories about their production, troubled or otherwise, is interesting enough, what really gives this documentary its strength is the story of the power struggle between Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Eisner and Roy Disney. The doco draws on an extensive archive of footage and sound recordings capturing the moods and thoughts of those involved at the height of the chaos. It makes for truly compelling viewing, Disney fan or otherwise, and is a great stepping stone and merely the tip of the iceberg to discovering the many troubles behind everybody's favourite mouse.

Still to come - the final film of MIFF - Scott Pilgrim vs The World...