by Shannonn Kelly
05:37AM, EST, Wednesday September 16, 2009

Yesterday in TIFF Land was a rather weird day. Wrong guest list, bitchy PR managers and incredibly great weather. Better weather than we saw the whole months of June, July and August combined.

I snuck off for some admin tasks for our own festival ReelHeART International Film Festival (RHIFF), which since mid-July we’ve been planning Season 6.

While waiting for a few latecomers to meetings I wandered down Bloor street near the InterContinental to find Drew Barrymore being interviewed and Don McKellar waiting for a ride.

Further down the street, while meeting for coffee with a prospective new PR intern for ReelHeART, I spotted the O.C.s Peter Gallagher in line at the 2nd Cup. That’s why his picture is featured here today. Please excuse the quality as it was taken with my Blackberry Curve.

Here’s hoping the next film Peter stars in is my newly finished feature script The Brothers McDonagh…(in which I’ve seen him in since the script’s inception).

Back to the matter at hand. Thank you ReelHeART Blog Readers for your daily support (and 168%  increase in visitors); it’s Wednesday September 16, so here are Shannonn Kelly’s picks for TIFF Day 7:

We premiered  a film this past season at ReelHeART, by the title, Call Me Son, by Belfast writer director Louis McCullagh. Audiences and myself alike, were moved by Louis in his heart rendering Q&As and his simple and bittersweet film about a child in care.

• Being moved by so many of her performances in Sweet and Low Down, the incredible Morvern Callar, In America, opposite Paddy Considine - I suggest you see the directorial debut of UK’s Samantha Morton in The Unloved. The IndieWire quote from Kate Ogborn is simple and pragmatic:
  

  ‘I hope that the film touches people and gives them an insight into what it feels like to be a child in care. And of course I hope that it sells.”

  The Unloved screens at 6:00PM at the AMC theaters across from Dundas Square.

• Staying with family as my theme today, my next suggestion is the drama/thriller Madeo (Mother), directed by Korea’s Bong Joon-Ho, one of the few directors with an excellent track record. Madeo is the story of a mother (played by the astonishing Kim Hye-Ja) who desperately searches for the killer that framed her son for a horrific murder.  Outstanding cinematography is by Kyung-Pyo Hong and intelligent editing by Sae-kyoung Moon.  Madeo (Mother) screens at 6:00PM at the Elgin.

To read an incredible cineaste review please go to TwitchFilm.net

• A film about the lack of family brings me to my next suggestion in the form of Portuguese director, João Pedro Rodrigues and his co-production with France called, Morrer como um homem (To Die Like a Man). It stars newcomer, Alexander David as transvestite Rosário as the film’s protagonist.

TIFFs Noah Cowan does a good job describing no doubt one of his picks:

(Rosário) is a transsexual star of the Lisbon club world. She contends with a needy junkie boyfriend, competition from a new black drag sensation, her psychopathic soldier son and, worst of all, the physical and emotional ravages of age. Her body has come to reject the various surgical and hormonal transformations that made her famous, a fact brutally represented by the silicone literally seeping from an infected nipple. Her body seems to insist that her life lived as a woman must end in her dying like a man.

There is something oddly dangerous and transgressive about this idea. It questions conventional thinking about the degree of personal control we have over our own bodies and the limits of choice around sexual identity in the face of mortality. Risky thinking like this is what makes João Pedro Rodrigues Portugal’s master of the cinematic demimonde. With the same clarity and refreshing lack of political tact, his first two features, Phantom and Odete, also boldly explore the longings and secret desires of characters at society’s margins. In this regard, he is a child of Fassbinder, goading us into a laugh at the expense of a sexual fetishist or drag queen before throwing her humanity in our face for our own ashamed examination. At the same time, his writing and especially his sense of humor leavens his intensity; often very funny, his films have a sense of the absurd and delight in dialogue un-ironically ripped from the spirit of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.

Morrer como um homem (To Die Like a Man) premieres today at 5:30PM at the Scotiabank Theater.

• Since the pod cast of 89.3 KPCC: Film Week’s Larry Mantle’s interview with Werner Herzog, I have become a renewed fan. With two films screening at TIFF, (Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans starring Nicolas Cage) and even though it breaks my heart to say this as I’m the biggest ‘Cage’ fan out there; I strongly suggest you see My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done instead of the quirky, experimental ride of Bad Lieutenant.
• What’s also great about this film is that my all-time fave weatherman (if you twitter you’ll get this) David Lynch produces this surreal horror/dramatic tale and injects some his own peculiar stamps into the film such as Twin Peaks reminders of coffee and a midget named ‘Midget”, played by Verne Troyer , Wild At Heart oatmeal (which is what all school kids in wintery Missoula Montana mornings were fed), dead dark skies, pink terracotta, strange animals and more.It stars the incomparable, New Orleans native “Fuck me now Reggie” Grace Zabriskie, Willem Dafoe, starring in 4 films at TIFF;  Chloe Sevigny, Brad Dourif, my fine Latino brother from another mother Michael Peña, Academy® award nominee Michael Shannon and an actress with one of the most unusual voices, Loretta Devine.My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done screens at 9:00PM tonight at the Elgin Theater.

I like a segment of Anne Brodie’s review, where she writes

This phenomenally unconventional look at the ritual murder of a woman by her son is relentlessly disturbing and insanely fascinating, served up with a huge dollop of dread.

What else should you expect from a David Lynch – Werner Herzog collaboration…?