Water on the Table Nominated for a Gemini

Acclaimed doc will make its Toronto premiere at Planet in Focus

Gemini-nominated for the Donald Brittain Award for Best Social Political Documentary, Water on the Table is a character-driven, social-issue documentary by Liz Marshall that explores Canada's relationship to its fresh water, arguably its most precious natural resource. The film asks the question: is water a commercial good like running shoes or Coca-Cola, or, is it a human right like air? Following its highly anticipated Toronto theatrical premiere at Planet in Focus at the ROM on October 14th at 7:00pm, Water on the Table will screen at the Royal Cinema on October 16th & 17th.

There will be a Q&A session with director Liz Marshall and subject Maude Barlow following the October 14th screening.

Globe and Mail: No Heart Feelings

No Heart Feelings: Nothing much happens, but it's a quiet triumph

Editorial rating: *** (out of 4)

by Rick Groen

Get past the rather laboured pun in the title, and No Heart Feelings is a quiet delight. Quiet, because nothing much happens. Delightful, because nothing much happens in sharply observed and revealing ways. What emerges is a thin yet credible slice of Toronto life among the hipster crowd, twentysomethings who wear their light irony like heavy armour, only occasionally lifting the visor to peer out at the world head-on. As they do, the characters and the city fuse neatly - both relatively young, both self-conscious, alternating between energetic bursts of construction and anxious bouts of de-construction.

Appropriately, then, the film is framed in break-up scenes, once-solid relationships razed by life's wrecking ball. Mel (Rebecca Kohler) is the early victim, sitting on a front stoop and sifting through the debris. Inside, a house party rages and there, in an Altmanesque flurry of overlapping dialogue, we hear someone or other making this non-commitment to something or other: "I don't think I can't not do it." Yes, a triple negative struggling to seem positive - the lingo of the ironic class, and it rings perfectly true.

From there, on park benches and bar patios, the script follows Mel and friends through their journey into tomorrow. Of course, that's well-travelled turf in the movies. But the distinguishing mark here is the picture's acute sense of time and place. Working with a Lilliputian budget and a non- professional cast, the trio of directors (Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth) has managed to do in Toronto what Whit Stillman did in New York with Metropolitan - precisely capture particular mannerisms, turns of phrase, modes of dress, then allow all that specificity to resonate. So the threesome has made a virtue of necessity. When you're poor in money and scant of plot, get rich by deifying the details.

Wielding a surprisingly fluid camera, they've taken the same approach to the city, offering up specific but telling glimpses - of Kensington market in all its fresh avocado/rotten tomato variety, of bike paths that weave theatrically from urban exhaust to pastoral retreat. There's even a cinematic sight gag that Toronto everywhere invites: a crane shot that is literally a shot of a crane, its vast steel arm nurturing yet another embryonic condo.

As for that meagre plot, it touches on Mel's slow-to-develop feelings for Lewis (Dustin Parkes), just arrived from Vancouver to start a new job. Speaking of which, the hipsters' attitude to work is fascinating. Most toil in web-related gigs, grateful for the pay cheque yet bemused by how they earn it. But if the work has changed, the workplace has not, and a drone's complaints are classic: "I've got five bosses and, all together, they've got, like, one sense of humour."

Classic too, even among the irony-clad, is the trodden path from flirtation to sex to mild regret, sometimes leavened with rising hopes. En route, the amateur casting succeeds for the simple reason that, in this case, self-conscious acting is a perfect fit for self-conscious characters. They, and the nothing much they do, are equal parts endearing and annoying. But the mix is deliberate, maybe even wise, a quiet argument that the search to "find yourself" is a dead end at any age. In a rare moment of unfiltered candour, dear annoying Mel puts it best: "You're always going to be the person you are, except a few years later."

National Post: No Heart Feelings

originally posted at the National Post:

No Heart Feelings: Fresh, local and organic cinema

Editorial rating: *** (out of 4)

by Chris Knight

Full disclosure: This film had the potential to produce the most conflicted review of my career. It was co-directed by my boss’s wife and features a lot of National Post friends and colleagues. I couldn’t, for instance, say that I found the actor playing Michael to be completely xxx, because he’s editing the story and would just strike out the offending term. See?

But the conflict would only have come into play if the film were bad. Thankfully, it’s not. No Heart Feelings is a simple, approachable little feature about the romantic travails of a pair of thirtyish Torontonians, set against the patio get-togethers and cottage getaways of a typical summer in the city. It’s not Scott Pilgrim, though it does feature a lot of local locales, TTC vehicles and Toronto streetscapes.

It opens with Melanie (Rebecca Kohler) breaking up with her long-distance boyfriend, Joe (Jonathan Goldstein, phoning it in -- really, he’s just a voice on her cellphone). “I think that we should stop not seeing each other,” she says haltingly. “We should not stop seeing each other?” comes the confused reply.

Clearly, communication is not this couple’s strong point. And yet time and again the halting dialogue manages to capture the mood of both the movie and its cast. “Pick yourself up and get drunk,” is the seemingly contradictory advice offered to another recently broken-up character. I also liked the accurate backwardness of “…and a 20 box of Timbits.”

Melanie, not long after picking herself up and getting drunk, runs into Lewis (Dustin Parkes), recently returned to the city after a stint at university in British Columbia. They amble through Kensington Market, have coffee, buy a used bicycle and then fall into bed together. Ron Sexsmith, as the bemused garage-sale guy, likes the look of them but declares: “Cute is the new annoying.”

Co-writers and directors Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth make do with a less-is-more ethos in which Toronto’s green spaces as well as its urban environment are used to create a wide array of settings. If the production values are a touch uneven, it can be set off against the fact that some scenes were filmed during actual thunderstorms.

The are-they-or-aren’t-they couple struggles to define their feelings for each other. With Melanie on the rebound and Lewis new in town, it’s unclear whether anything other than mutual loneliness and convenience is bringing them together. Contrasting with their confusion, their circle of friends are starting to buy condos, have babies and realize that most of the Blue Jays are younger than they are.

As such, the film feels like a slice of generational pie, cooked up using local ingredients -- a 100-mile movie, if you will. It’s light, but it’s tasty. And I’m not just saying that because Steve Murray, who plays Chris, has the power to draw funny pictures of me in the paper. For the record, though, Steve, I loved your performance.

Toronto Star: No Heart Feelings

originally posted at the Toronto Star:

No Heart Feelings: Modern Love

Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)

by Jason Anderson

What with their newfangled social networks, fondness for hook-ups and reluctance to define intimate relationships in anything but the vaguest terms, today’s 20-somethings require a new kind of romantic comedy. Surely the old-school formula of boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl — and, in its Judd Apatow-favoured incarnation, girl-waits-for-boy-to-drop-the-bong-and-get-a-life — begs for an upgrade.

A Toronto-made indie feature that makes its local premiere with a run at the Royal this week, No Heart Feelings gets us closer to the mark. An almost-love-story with a summery feel, lively dialogue and plenty of perceptive observations about the mating rituals of the young and the aimless, it feels very much like a rom-com for the Facebook age.

One of a cast comprised largely of non-professional actors, Toronto comedian Rebecca Kohler makes her movie debut as Melanie, a 29-year-old who finally opts to end her long-distance relationship with her boyfriend (voiced by CBC host Jonathan Goldstein). Her friends eagerly help her sort out her next move over a brunch at Aunties & Uncles and a clandestine drinking session in Kensington Market.

The arrival of a new boy in town nudges her in a new direction. Sparks fly with Lewis (Dustin Parker) when Melanie gives him a tour of her neighbourhood, an odyssey that includes a strange encounter with a yard salesman played by Ron Sexsmith.

Yet Melanie is a little too comfortable with her own state of inertia. As she and Lewis are thrown together at patio drinking sessions and a cottage weekend, the would-be couple continue to suss each other out. Desire may exist in the lives of these characters but deciding what to do about it is a whole other matter.

The sarcastic chatter of Melanie and her friends fills the film with memorable lines that ring true to their social milieu. (Says her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend after she rebuffs his request to Skype, “We’ve had some nice video chats, I thought.”)

Largely improvised based on scenarios developed by the movie’s trio of directors — Sarah Lazarovic, Geoff Morrison and Ryan J. Noth — the scenes boast great vitality and authenticity even when the film’s exact direction is as unclear to viewers as it is to the people on screen.

No Heart Feelings also has no shortage of hometown appeal — like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and This Movie Is Broken, it’s another cinematic tribute to Toronto that captures the city in all its slacker splendor.

And given the characters’ enthusiasm for touring the town on two wheels, it’s only fitting to learn the screenings will be equally cyclist-friendly — patrons of the 9 p.m. screenings on Friday and Saturday at the Royal can enjoy bike valet parking and complimentary air and oil.

What more could the movie’s target audience of tender-hearted commitment-phobes possibly ask for?

Globe and Mail: Sweetgrass

originally posted at Globe and Mail:

Following the herd has its rewards

Editorial Rating: *** (out of 4)

by Stephen Cole

A documentary of the last-ever sheep drive through Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, Sweetgrass occasionally feels in need of a shepherd. Or maybe a drama coach. Grizzlies attack the flock at night, dining on lamb. A cowboy chases off after them with a rifle, but filmmakers stay with the herd. Elsewhere, there is a bottleneck in a pass – a noisy, 3,000 sheep pile-up. Once again, the camera remains at the back, uninterested in getting in front of “the story.”

After a while, however, we understand that husband-and-wife filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor – Harvard anthropologists – aren’t really interested in conventional drama. And that there are audience rewards for sticking with the herd and its lonesome cowboys.

For instance, a scene late in the drive, shot from atop a mountain, where we see tiny sheep wandering loose below – a white river curling around rocks – as their aggrieved shepherd, Pat Connolly, talks on a cellphone, bellyaching to his mother about how his knees hurt and he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in forever and the sheep … hell, even his dog, never listens to a thing, he says.

As Pat continues whining, the camera drifts away; we enjoy a God’s eye view of the world. Sky and stone go on forever. The complaining cowboy, the filmmakers seem to be saying, is but a single speck in a glorious universe that is almost completely indifferent to his suffering.

Sweetgrass is a study of man and animal struggling to make their way in the natural world. Cowboys sing to themselves, mumbling the words to Coming Down the Mountain when they do just that. They sing to their horses, dogs and sheep, too. And sheep call out to each other (in a subtle variety of inflections we eventually discover). After a while, we understand the voices, every one of them, repeat variations of the same phrase, “I’m alive, I’m alive.”

Sweetgrass isn’t exactly a cowboy movie, but it does have a star cowboy – John Ahern, a slow moving, chain-smoking (unfiltered rollies) drifter who is so accustomed to being alone that he answers every question with the same startled, “what?” as if he’s been pulled from a prolonged sleep.

Montana sheep ranchers have been driving herds 150-some miles through the Beartooth range for over 100 years. Barbash and Castaing-Taylor attended the last three-month round-ups, from 2001-03, amassing more than 200 hours of documentary footage. The resulting film is an anthropological marvel and an animal-drive movie that belongs beside the classics of the genre – Red River and Lonesome Dove.

Toronto Star: Sweetgrass

originally posted at Toronto Star:

Sweetgrass: A sheepish look at the modern world

Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 4)

by Jason Anderson

Rarely seen on the silver screen outside of the animated adventures of Wallace & Gromit and the occasional horror flick about killer livestock, sheep have long been denied the movie exposure accorded other members of the animal kingdom.

Is it due to some collective case of denial over the source of our favourite wool sweaters? Or is this distaste due to painful memories of childhood traumas that occurred during singalongs of “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”? Only our psychotherapists can know for sure.

Hopefully, this abominable practice of barnyard discrimination will come to an end with the arrival of Sweetgrass, an American documentary that puts these creatures front and centre for what may be the first time.

A surprise hit on the festival circuit last year that begins a Toronto run at the Royal this weekend, Sweetgrass depicts a year in the life of several flocks in the Absaroka and Beartooth mountain ranges in Montana.

A team of artists with backgrounds in visual anthropology and environmental studies, Sweetgrass directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash favour lengthy shots of sheep mostly being sheep in a variety of often stunning landscapes.

Their movie has no music, narration or much of anything else that other filmmakers typically use to add drama to nature-oriented documentaries. Instead, the viewer comes to feel like part of the herd, an experience that may send some audience members to sleep but will prove to be curiously compelling for others.

Though the film’s mood is mostly serene, it’s still punctuated by surprising moments of humour and tension. Seldom seen in the opening stretches, the animals’ human guardians are the sheepherders and cowboys who tend the sheep, collect their wool and protect them from predators. The last task proves especially difficult during the film’s final section, which depicts a long and stressful drive across snow-covered ridges and valleys.

The fact that this was to be the last instance of traditional sheepherding practices in the region lends a certain poignance to Sweetgrass. What Castaing-Taylor and Barbash document is the end of a way of life. The harsh economic reality for the people involved becomes evident when we hear a sheepherder vent his frustrations in a cellphone call — his very liberal use of profanities seems even more extreme when juxtaposed with the pastoral beauty of his location.

The presence of a hilariously laconic old cowboy adds echoes of cinema’s most famous representations of the American west. In its own subtle way, Sweetgrass compels viewers to lament the loss of the real thing, and perhaps consider the fraying bonds between humans and the animals that have long provided so much for us.

Of course, the real stars of the show remain oblivious to any of the weightier matters at hand, which is part of Sweetgrass’ charm. If there’s anything we can learn from the creatures here, it’s that any day in which you don’t get stripped of your coat or eaten by a bear is probably a good one.

Toronto Sun: Sweetgrass

originally posted at Toronto Sun:

Sweetgrass a love letter to the West

Editorial Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)

by Liz Braun

Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.

So you'd gather from a documentary called Sweetgrass, a love letter to the old West that shows all the hardships and all the beauty involved in working a herd.

In this case, the herd is sheep, and the people who raise and tend them are a dying breed of workaholics. An anthropologist's dream and a desk-job guy's worst nightmare, Sweetgrass reveals the intense labour involved -- for man and beast -- in the seemingly simple annual task of moving a flock up to high pasture to graze.

Sweetgrass takes place in and around the town of Big Timber and the Absaroka-Beartooth mountains of Montana. Almost completely without dialogue or music (except for what seems to be Highway to Hell playing in the barn during a sheep-shearing scene), the movie shows the animals moving through an extraordinary physical landscape and initially shows them eating, being shorn and having babies in lambing season.

Once the annual summer migration begins up into the mountain range, things change. First comes the amazing sight of a massive flock of sheep moving through town, and then the slow journey to pasture begins. Although the camera tends to stay out of the faces of the humans in Sweetgrass, there are scenes of setting up camp the old-fashioned way, hints of the horsefly situation (or are they bluebottles?) and shots of the awe-inspiring physical surroundings.

Those surroundings include any number of places for sheep and people to get stuck: Streams to cross, piles of deadwood, thick brush, large rocks. The sheep get stuck, they wander, they spread out too far from one another, they bleat. As the film makes clear, sheep need constant attention. The word 'ornery' comes up more than once.

And then there are the predators. Bears are sighted; wolverines are talked about. At night, all is dark and desolate, with only the remarkable dogs to sound a warning if any four-legged danger comes near. A gutted sheep is the distressing clue that something is stalking the herd. After a heart-rending scene that has one cowboy weeping over the phone to his mother about the endless frustration and physical mishaps -- he, his dog and his horse are all lame from scrabbling up and down the hills after sheep -- you begin to wonder how anyone could still live this way.

And in fact, they generally don't. The idea for Sweetgrass began with Lawrence Allested, a rancher who was the very last in the area to drive his sheep long distances into the mountains to take advantage of his family's grazing permit. The filmmakers began following the sheep drive in 2001; before Sweetgrass was even finished, the ranch and the sheep had been sold off. The movie celebrates a particular lifestyle and it's an homage to a dying tradition -- a slice of history that's fascinating to witness.

NOW Toronto: Sweetgrass

originally posted at NOW Toronto:

Sweetgrass: As Ewe Like It

Editorial Rating: NNN (out of 5)

by Susan G. Cole

Is there such a thing as an ethnography of animals? If there is, Sweetgrass qualifies. It tracks a mammoth flock of sheep as they’re herded through the mountains of Montana in 2003 – the last such trek ever undertaken – and it’s directed by two anthropologists who let the beasts take the spotlight.

The film begins with a near-one-minute shot of a sheep snacking on grass and then bleating for the camera. Except for a fascinating early sequence in which the sheep get shorn, industrial-style, and a few lambs are birthed, that opening reflects what you can expect from this doc. The sheep are, well, sheep – eating, nursing and following the sometimes not so clear trail.

One thing about a visual art like film: it can’t convey how much that flock must have reeked. Not that filmmakers Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor worry about such things. They’re only slightly interested in the experience of the herders, a fairly dim crew with apparently no personal relationships except with their dogs, which really do all the work.

Sweetgrass is a hypnotically gorgeous thing, though. The mountains are spectacular and the wide shots of the flock superb. Too bad there’s a little dip in the last half-hour even though it features the film’s only tense moment – the appearance of hungry bears.

Metro: Sweetgrass

originally posted at Metro:

Not interested in a sheep herding trek? Think again

Editorial Rating: ***** (out of 5)

by Adam Nayman

The brilliant Sweetgrass is a documentary that’s also a hymn to tradition: the annual sheep herding drive in Montana's Beartooth Mountain range.

The directors spent three years in the company of cowboys and their flock, and the film evinces that intimacy. It’s hard not to marvel at the filmmakers’ ability to provide multiple perspectives on the action even as they’re in the middle of it with a single camera.