It’s finally nice outside, isn’t it? And here I am trying to convince you to sit in a dark room for two hours or more. Sorry, that’s the gig – and there are plenty of worthy distractions, cinematically speaking, over the next few days.
For example, the guys at the Toronto Underground Cinema have roped me into presiding over their Defending The Indefensible programming this weekend, which revolves around the tragically misunderstood Seth Rogen mall cop movie Observe And Report.
At 7 pm tonight (Friday), I’ll be introducing and moderating defenders Will Sloan (from The Varsity and Exclaim!) and Andrew Parker (who reviews films for Criticize This and has programmed the Indefensible series) as they take on Metro’s Adam Nayman.
You’ll notice I didn’t call Observe And Report a comedy, because it isn’t, really – it has its share of laughs, but it’s a lot darker and uglier than the rest of Rogen’s work. Try as I did to put that in context, audiences weren’t ready to understand that two years ago hopefully, they’ve had the chance to catch up to it on disc and receive it as the ingenious Taxi Driver update that it is.
I’ll be making that point explicitly on Sunday night, when the Underground pairs the two films Taxi Driver will screen at 7 pm, with Observe And Report following at 9:15 pm. Those who catch Observe And Report tonight will get a free ticket to Sunday’s Taxi Driver screening. And the whole thing’s for charity – this time, the proceeds will benefit the Organization For Bipolar Affective Disorder.
Elsewhere in the city, the fourth Toronto Romanian Film Festival gets underway tonight at Innis Town Hall, having moved into the spring from its previous February slot on the festival calendar. This is a good thing a marathon of bleak Romanian cinema can leave one depressed in the best of circumstances, but doing it in the dead of winter constitutes a health hazard. Check the festival’s website for films and showtimes.
Of course, if you’d rather spend the weekend sitting in a park somewhere, watching episodes of Community on your iPad, I can’t say I’d try to talk you out of it. Who knows how long we have before the rain comes back?
