Thursday, December 5, 2013

Snow bound

And the hits keep coming - this time for the other Jake/Denis collaboration.

Pack the parka, bring the black puffy jacket (and a toque while you're at it) Jake you're heading to the Great White North.


An Enemy was named as one of the ten feature and short films for this year's Canada's Top Ten Film Festival.

"Now in its 13th year, the CTTFF shines a focused light on English- and French-language Canadian cinema, an industry the film festival feels is deserving of a spot on the world stage."

Jake and Denis will be the first talk of the Festival and are scheduled to discuss "inspiration, working methods and the distance between Hollywood and Toronto" as well as the movie itself.




The Toronto based festival begins on Jan. 3, 2014 and wraps up on Jan. 12, 2014, billing itself as "10 days, 10 shorts, 10 features, 1 proud nation."

Jake and Denis' talk will be  Sunday Jan 5th at 3:30pm.

13 comments:

  1. I don't know but Toronto seems to be the only one to love Enemy. Explain that one to me. I read one TIFF reviewer's comment on Twitter that a lot of people weren't wild about it at the festival and then the movie never could crack a distributor except for a dish network 'exclusive' release. How do you reach a lot of viewers by showing on dish?

    There's so many Top Tens and Best Of's and oodles of award categories in The Hollywood movie business, isn't there? I'm beginning to think it's all a conspiracy to keep the food catering businesses and tuxedo shops in the black. ; )

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  2. Agreed with Marketing Jake yesterday. The mere fact that Jake agrees to do Ellen's show after so many years is no coincidence. We'll see just how deeply he's become a member of the HW Family by how the show goes.

    I'm afraid I haven't had much respect for Ellen D anymore ever since I realized how much she enabled and played along with the bearding games.

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  3. Oh and good to see the boys "rejoining" back at Ground Zero. Nicely carried out, men.

    Re-sync the watches now.

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  4. I don't know but Toronto seems to be the only one to love Enemy. Explain that one to me. I read one TIFF reviewer's comment on Twitter that a lot of people weren't wild about it at the festival

    How many reviews in total do you think you read about Enemy? Just about every review I read seemed to find it fascinating and well done.

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  5. Enemy better be good and Jake better be good in it. A lot is riding on it. This is his show.

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  6. God that top pic has to be by far the worst pic I have ever seen of Jake. He looks like a deranged homeless person :-)

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  7. When it comes to marketing Jake has made some big mistakes. Why he gave up what he had after Brokeback is beyond comprehension. That was his chance to become a huge star. He threw that away and I have no clue why. His obsession with getting rid of the Gay was such a blunder. He made some bad choices and got some very bad a advice. He was so cute and so cool. The darn girls and woman would have gotten their mates to the movies in droves.

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  8. Men do not go to the movies by themselves too much. They go with their wives and girlfriends.

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  9. Haunting, inconclusive, frustrating

    Interestingly enough, if someone looks at the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for Enemy, all are strikingly positive. Or should I write, bizarrely positive because, if you're paying attention, and are willing to drill down deeper, you can't help but scratch your head at the disparity between the 100% tomatometer rating and the actual text of the reviews.

    Sort of like when someone gets 100% on an exam, but there on red marks splashed all over the page, which completely contrasts with the superior rating. The bottom line is that Hollywood has corrupted conventional and social media, the awards process, as well as critic reviews with a variety of quid pro quo deals and promises of other kinds of "rewards" and paybacks.

    Simply put, it boggles the mind that a reviewer could give a thumbs up to Enemy, when they also write the following observations about the film:

    • Overall it feels like an experimental outing whose disturbing artiness might find a home with cult and midnight audiences.
    • As hauntingly strange as it is inconclusive and frustrating, Enemy, directed by Denis Villeneuve (Incendies), is one of the more head-scratching additions to the doppelganger genre.
    • The main task for audiences will be making sense of it all and integrating the mysterious sex show, along with Adam’s monstrous nightmares, into the story of doubles.
    • Enemy, on the other hand, shot just before Prisoners, is a much more difficult film to market because Javier Gullon’s enigmatic screenplay plays with ungraspable themes of duality and identity, the unconscious and the ego.

    Like so many things associated with Jake these days, there is a whole lot of manipulation and marketing going on. So-called experts trying to tells the audience what to think and see. Even more disturbing is that Jake would even be attracted to a project like this.

    Of course, one of the characters does have a dominating mother. And, obviously there are a lot of themes related to repressed sexuality, off kilter approaches to intimacy, with a large dose of self hatred thrown in as well. In the final analysis, need I really say more? Thought so.

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  11. If you remember, when Prisoners was first being previewed and premiered, all the reviews were positive. But after the film opened, a bunch of less favorable reviews posted. Does not mean that the overall score did not remain positive, but it was obvious that pressure had been applied to get the best possible box office showing at its opening. $$$$ rules.

    It looks like Prisoners is going to be on Direct TV pay per view very soon. Just got an ad for it saying Playing Now, though I am not sure of that. It was not there last time I looked a few days ago. I will watch it once it shows up there.

    Any time a film is having trouble getting distribution, you know its iffy. Who knows, it may develop a cult following later. But Toronto is clearly favoring the director.

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  12. Anonymous said...

    It's an arthouse film. There is no hope of it being widely distributed and this was apparent before filming began, from the first read of the script. Jake barely got a paycheck.

    Jake is criticized here for making big movies, criticized for making small movies. Don't get it.

    December 6, 2013 at 7:27 PM

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  13. just one of ticket buying publicDecember 6, 2013 at 9:41 PM

    Jake is criticized for making pretentious, mediocre films that are promoted as outstanding examples of cinema when, in fact, they are average, sub par or actually crappy productions. Brokeback Mountain was an arthouse film too, but it had heart, a well-written script, an outstanding director that you could actually understand what he was trying to achieve. Career making performances. Social relevance. To try and promote Enemy, which even reviewers indicate they can't understand, is ridiculous. Sounds like a lot of muddled navel gazing, self indulgent dribble and gratuitous attempts to push heterosexual Jake. I mean Jake's doing "the deed" with two women, after all. He must be straight!

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