VIFF 08 | DAY THREE

By Adam Thomas

Saturday September 27, 2008

ONLY PICK: J.C.V.D


There’s a lot to see tonight, it’d be a tough call to use this space and only pick one as THE movie to make sure you go see. So we’ll use the same space and pick 3. So, first of all, Erik Nietzsche: The Early Years, directed by Jacob Thuesen and written by Lars Von Trier is a pseudo-autobiographical comedy about the foibles of Lars Von Trier’s film school experience, sort of. If you’re taking a film class we totlly suggest you see this one.The second option is the Southern Indian epic Paruthiveeran; a sprawling tragi-comedy romance chalk full of song, love and violence. Not bad.
Having gotten this far into writing about those other movies we’re about to totally make the first part of this whole piece irrelevant, (except for the fact that now you know about those two other movies), and go ahead and say that actually, THE one movie we’re gonna see tonight is J.C.V.D with “The Muscles from Brussels” playing…well…himself as an aging action star – which he is – who doesn’t even get cast for the movie they are making about him. He then does get the part to play himself and as they are making the movie about hm, his life kind of takes a real-life movie turn and he gets mixed with loan sharks and drug dealers. So yeah, totally smart and funny self aware aging Jean Claude Van Damme movie trumps great Indian movie and Lars Von Trier’s “even film school students get the blues”. You heard it here first. We bet it’ll be cute. AOT
But speaking of washed up action stars check this out.


_{ONLY suggests…}


10:00 am – GR7 – The Song of Sparrows or p.124
10:30 am – GR2 – Blindness
11:00 am – GR4 – Helen or p.142
01:00 pm – GR7 – Erik Nietzsche:The Early Years or p.118
01:30 pm – PCT – Tropical Manila or p.81
02:30 pm – GR3 – Ballast
03:30 pm – GR7 – The Good the Bad and The Weird or p.58
04:30 pm – GR2 – Charly
06:20 pm – GR4 – Achilles and the Tortoise or p.68
07:00 pm – GR2 – Linewatch or p. 145
07:30 pm – GR1 – The English Surgeon or p.171
09:00 pm – GR4 – C’est Pas Moi, Je Le Jure or p.96
09:30 pm – GR6 – Chelsea on the Rocks or p.187
09:30 pm – GR7 – JCVD or p.33
09:30 pm – RID – Paruthiveeran or p.123


_{Location Guide: GR1,2,3,4,5,6,7=Granville 7 | VCT=Vancity Theatre | PCT=Pacific Cinematheque | RID=Ridge}

FINE