We here around Twitch are big fans of the Canadian National Treasure that is Guy Maddin. After a highly successful run on the festival circuit, his latest film, My Winnipeg, is set for a limited theatrical release next month. Perhaps his most accessible film to date, don't let the fact that it is a documentary (and a documentary on a city, and that city being Winnipeg) scare you away. My Winnipeg is delightful, vitriolic, unique and funny all at the same time (and often in the same scene) as it goes about truly mythologizing the coldest city in the world.
Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin (THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD) casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in attempt to answer that question in MY WINNPEG, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. The film is a documentary (or "docu-fantasia" as Maddin proclaims) that blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths that cover everything from the fire at the local park, which leads to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads, to pivotal, sometimes traumatic, factually heightened scenes from Maddin's own childhood.
A big thanks to the Quiet Earth boys for passing the heads up on this.
I have decided that Guy Maddin is possibly one of the funniest men on Earth, moreso in public than anywhere else. He's a true comic in the sense that he feeds off of audience reaction. I just watched this again at the SF International and must be honest that Maddin's subdued narration for the film nowhere matches his enthusiastic live delivery at last Fall's Toronto International. Folks who weren't there won't know the difference and will still find the film funny; but, man, knowing he had us by the shorthairs, Maddin was a force of nature at Toronto and that's a performance, a narration, I will never forget.