TIFF 2011: Ides of March and Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope

The Ides of March, directed by George Clooney, and starring Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Paul Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood is a great political drama. It is based on the play Farragut North, which itself was loosely based on the campaign of Howard Dean in the 2004 Democratic primary.

Gosling stars as Stephen Myers, a brilliant young political mind who is on the campaign staff of Governor Mike Morris (Clooney) in the democratic primary race, which is all coming down to the results in Ohio. The whole film basically comes down to Stephen being forced to make several decisions about what he is willing to do to win, how much he's willing to compromise his own values, and who he is going to be able to deal with hurting to achieve his goals. Hoffman and Giamatti are great as the dueling campaign managers, both examples of the people that Stephen doesn't want to become. Marisa Tomei shines in a small role as a political reporter who dashes some of his illusions on friendship. There were a couple of moments in the movie that just grabbed at my throat, particularly where the camera panned back and soundtrack came up where we'd normally be hearing dialogue. My friend probably said it best when she said she spent most of the film on the edge of her seat.

It was a Saturday morning screening, the day after the premiere...yeah there's no way Clooney is showing up to intro or do a Q&A for the film. The movie hits theatres on October 7th and is definitely worth seeing.

My second movie of the day was the world premiere of Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope, the latest documentary from Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock follows the journey of a bunch of different folks on their way to and throughout the four day convention held every year in San Diego, interspersed with interviews with folks who have built careers helped along by the Comic-Con crowd including Kevin Smith, Seth Green, Joss Whedon, Eli Roth and many many others.

If you are a lover of pop culture at all you have to be aware of what Comic-Con is, and the fact that it seems to continue to grow in scale and importance in terms of its influence on what pop culture is going to be focused on in the year to come (Kevin Smith described it in one of his interview segments as 'Geek New Year').

The movie was really, really good and entertaining. It definitely gave you a feel for what it would be like to be in the middle of it and the people he chose to follow and their stories were for the most part very moving and satisfying. For the first time in one of his documentaries, Spurlock doesn't appear on camera at all (which, to quote him means that "people who hate my movies could perhaps like this one"). All of the filming took place at or before the 2010 event and the stories followed included two aspiring comic book artists trying to break into the industry by showing their portfolios, a collector of action figures on a mission to pick up a specific item, the owner/operator of an online comic store who has been attending the con for more than 30 years and is trying to keep his business alive, an amateur costume designer hoping to turn pro with a team entry into the masquerade and a young couple who met at Comic-Con and who could possibly be getting engaged at this one.

Almost more fun than the movie itself was the action surrounding it last night. We were greeted by costumed characters on our long ride up the escalator at the Scotiabank theatre. Spurlock brought about 50 of them to the front of the room as he introduced the film, everyone from stormtroopers to Spiderman to a bunch that I was not familiar with (I am a nerd, but apparently not enough of one to catch all the references). After the screening Spurlock again took to the stage and brought up a whole crew of people for the Q&A including some of the folks in the documentary, a bunch of members of his crew and Mr. Stan Lee himself, whose highest bit of praise for the director was that he stayed awake for the entire movie. I don't think the moderator had to say one word as Spurlock managed the Q&A, doing a great job of getting some stories told, interracting with the crowd and bringing us up to speed on what's happened to the documentary subjects in the past year. This is the first time that Comic-Con has allowed a filmmaker this kind of access to the event and I think they definitely made a good choice in Spurlock. He shows us a funny and entertaining look at the phenomenon without resorting to making fun of those who are involved, and clearly has a lot of love for the crowd.

Getting to Comic-Con has been on my 'to do' list for a long time. One of these years I'm going to do it :-)