Megalyn E Online

And finally, on the festival

By Glen Schaefer Thu, Oct 1 2009 COMMENTS(0) The Reel Man

Filed under: Vancouver International Film Festival

The alphabet tails off with this group of films. Check back for more reviews during the fest.

We Live in Public

The wacky, lucrative fringes of the late-1990s Internet boom come to life in American director Ondi Timoner’s documentary on the career and flame-out of one-time dot-mogul Josh Harris. Mixing technical smarts with equal parts Warhol and P.T. Barnum, the New York-based Harris’ ideas included an Internet TV network that was too much for pre-millennial bandwidths. Another experiment put 100 volunteers in a bunker for 30 days, filmed 24/7. Their willingness to give up their privacy for Harris’ all-seeing eye presages today’s Facebook culture. After making a small fortune, Harris lost it all with his increasingly radical ideas. His last one involved him and his girlfriend living under 24-hour surveillance and broadcasting their own lives on the web. That muffled sound you hear is George Orwell laughing from the grave.

Wah Do Dem

Slacker Brooklynite Max (Sean Bones) makes the mistake of buuying tickets on a cruise to Jamaica as a way of kick-starting his faltering relationship with lovely Willow (Nora Jones, in a few brief scenes). She dumps him, and he drowns his sorrows solo amid his golden-ager fellow passengers. Things really get going for Max and the movie once ashore in Jamaica, where he loses passport, shoes, money and shirt — and starts to have a real vacation on a stop-and-start cross country trek to Kingston. The lead actor’s loose-limbed charms contrast nicely with the more funky Jamaican back-country colour. A night in a ramshackle pub, watching Obama’s election-night win on a grainy TV with the locals, is a joyous highlight. All caribbean vacations should be like this.

Who Do You Love

The Chess Records story gets another dramatic treatment onscreen after last year’s Cadillac Records. This second movie, by director Jerry Zaks (Marvin’s Room), focuses on the viewpoint of the two Jewish brothers (Jon Abrahams and Alessandro Nivola) who managed a roster of mostly black blues artists in the 1950s and 1960s. Not a great movie, but more fun than the previous feature treatment. The movie portrays the giants of the blues as real people not icons. Cast standouts include Nivola as the driven Leonard Chess, Chi McBride as a laid-back Willie Dixon, and Megalyn Echikunwoke as a singer called Ivy Mills (clearly, the makers were unable to talk the still-living Etta James into letting them use her name).

Will Not Stop There

Director Vinko Bresan’s Croatian black-comic drama hinges on the fall-out and resentments of the war with Serbia. A former Croat army sniper turned private detective tracks down the pretty young widow of an enemy commander he once targetted, the widow now drinking heavily and working in fairy tale themed porn flicks. The movie is narrated by a Gypsy family man, who co-stars in those flicks on the sly to feed his family, we are told, thanks to what he refers to as his “anomaly.” The ex-sniper buys out the porn star’s contract and takes her home to live platonically with him. Complicating things is a crime racket being run by his former comrades in arms. Not so complicated that the movie can’t climax with a big folk dance sequence, though. A charmer that lightly wears its deeper messages about vengeance versus reconciliation.

Written By

Lavishly poduced Hong Kong drama-fantasy about a well-to-do family devastated by a car crash. The daughter is blinded, the father is killed, the mother never gets over her grief. Ten years later the daughter starts writing a novel that imagines the father left blind as the only survivor of the crash, with the ghost of his family still around him. In that novel, the father starts writing another novel imagining a different outcome. Art has the power to heal, the movie posits, as these multiple stories overlap and fictional characters created within the story come to live and breathe among their creators.


original link:
http://communities.canada.com/theprovince/...e-festival.aspx

Oooh that would be so cool if She was @ the festival for her film... :rolleyes:

Thx for the news Rene

Thanks Eden :D And I agree with Walya. It would be so cool if Megalyn was at that festival. So cool B)

I think the reason Etta James didn't let this film use her name was because she felt so burned and angry at the people who made Cadillac Records, because they didn't ask her to be in the film, and sing her song. At least that is the rumor I heard. She even made cracks like "who the hell does Beyonce think she is at one of her concerts" It went all around the internet and Etta later said she was just joking. So I'm guessing, that is probably why the character based on Etta James was re named Ivy Mills????

This post has been edited by Kreeah on Oct 1 2009, 09:14 PM

Thanks Kree glad you are using my various banners :)

A review from the Vancouver Sun of the Film

Who Do You Love: Once upon a time, 2008 to be exact, two films about the great blues record label Chess Records were made. One, Cadillac Records, had stars like Beyonce and got a distributor. The other, Who Do You Love, has no big names and so far plays the festival circuit. But don't sell it short. Though at times having the look of a TV movie, the film nevertheless gets solid performances from Alessandro Nivola as the self-made label boss Leonard Chess and David Oyelowo as energetic blues musician Muddy Waters, and is blessed with outstanding music, particularly Megalyn Echikunwoke's torchy version of At Last. Echikunwoke plays a doomed, heroin-addicted African-American singer who has a fling with her white boss; a thinly veiled reference to the living blues great Etta James' affair with Chess.

Showing Saturday, 10 p.m., Granville 7, and Monday, 2:30 p.m., Granville 4.

Thank you Eden, your banners are so artistic and gorgeous. I use to go to other sites for banners. But now with you, Honey and Chels I see I no longer have to do that. You are all so talented. So thanks so much :)

Thanks for the interview. Megalyn is getting such good reviews and that is great. She's so talented and such a good singer, she deserves all the praise she is getting. I just can't wait to see this movie. Even if it's on DVD. It's a shame both "Who do you Love" and "Cadillac Records" came out at the same time. I really think "Who do you Love" might have been in theatres, if "Cadillac Records" hadn't come out and with bigger names, like Beyonce. :(