09-13-2017, 10:21 PM
"We're forced to bed, but we're free to dream"
Dana
Man Machine Poem - Documentary
09-13-2017, 10:43 PM
I was at the screening tonight. The whole band was there minus Gord (which makes me wonder how he's doing). They also sat front row balcony and waved during the end credits, but did no Q&A or anything which is pretty unusual for a tiff film premiere, and was a tad disappointing. I wonder if they didn't want to have to answer where Gord was.
The film itself I enjoyed quite a bit. Got teary-eyed a couple times. I can't really say I LOVED it though. Not entirely sure why. Perhaps unfairly, but it didn't capture how I felt going to the Toronto and Kingston shows. I guess the behind the scenes footage wasn't as "juicy" as I expected in a way. It took me back, sure, but I found myself wanting more. But that's always the way it is I guess. I might like it better the second time when my expectations aren't quite as high.
All that being said, it was light years better than the Bobcaygeon doc. Night and day.
The film itself I enjoyed quite a bit. Got teary-eyed a couple times. I can't really say I LOVED it though. Not entirely sure why. Perhaps unfairly, but it didn't capture how I felt going to the Toronto and Kingston shows. I guess the behind the scenes footage wasn't as "juicy" as I expected in a way. It took me back, sure, but I found myself wanting more. But that's always the way it is I guess. I might like it better the second time when my expectations aren't quite as high.
All that being said, it was light years better than the Bobcaygeon doc. Night and day.
09-13-2017, 10:52 PM
Review: Do not read below if you want to wait until you see it.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/review-long-time-running">http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/re ... me-running</a><!-- m -->
Long Time Running has major expectations to fulfill given that the final performance of the Tragically Hip in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario in August 2016 provided a defining moment in contemporary Canadian culture. The CBC’s nation-wide live broadcast of this farewell concert endures as a rare moment in which Canadians in all corners of the land gathered to watch something other than hockey. Even Hip fans without TVs could sit out in the backyards with their cat and a beer and listen to the Hip echoing from houses and parks in the warm summer night. The film more than fills the big shoes left by the concert and the legacy the Hip leaves behind.
Directors Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier impeccably cover the swan song to the Hip on its cross-Canada tour during the summer of 2016 after news broke that lead vocalist Gord Downie has incurable brain cancer. The directors capture the passion and tribulations of the band that put an unabashedly Canadian voice on the airwaves as the members ready for this grand finale. As the Hip takes stock of its successes and virtues, the film invites a larger commentary on the value of Canadian artists who reflect experiences of this nation to the people who live here. Long Time Running is an emotional roller coaster and a bittersweet tribute to the Hip.
The film offers intimate access to the Hip as the band rehearses for this farewell tour. Band members Paul Langlois, Gord Sinclair, Rob Baker, Johnny Fay, and Downie offer candid interviews as they decide to go out on their own terms with the Man Machine Poem tour, which proves to be their most daunting undertaking yet. In a fashion similar to director Pete McCormack’s equally poignant Spirit Unforgettable about Spirit of the West frontman Jon Mann’s preparations for a farewell concert following a diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, Long Time Running sees Downey wrestle with the music and lyrics he’s created. The extensive surgery on Downie’s brain left major gaps in memory for the singer and the film shows his bandmates re-teaching him the songs individually as he sings along to playback. It’s hard not to become emotional as Downie grabs a microphone and does karaoke with his own music.
Baichwal and de Pencier find the right spirit for the film by focusing on the positive aspects of Downie overcoming adversity and finding his voice again. The celebratory spirit is appropriate given that the band went out on a high note after 30 years of making music together. This sentiment might best be expressed by guitarist Rob Baker towards the end of the film when he likens the Hip’s run to a hot air balloon ride and says that most rock bands, like balloons, experience crash landings, so it’s a rare treat to touch the ground perfectly after sailing high for 30 years. While it’s difficult to watch Downie fail to recognize his own songs, it’s far more touching and inspiring to see him pick up a microphone and reclaim the electrifying showmanship with which one’s seen him perform in the past. Long Time Running is a fine Hip concert by a group that was noted everywhere for their professionalism.
Long Time Running extends the interviews and behind the scenes footage to include the perspectives of doctors, managers, wranglers, security guards and other players who rallied to let the band reach its audience one last time. In one notable sequence designer Izzi Camilleri who fashioned Downie’s flashy metallic suits for the Man Machine Poem tour, is interviewed. As she displays the conception of shiny threads in which Downie would take to the stage in blinding silvers, blues, and purples, she situates the band within the greater legacy of rock and roll, but also adds to the sentiment of creating a positive and comforting appearance through Downie’s peculiar costuming.
Similarly, one of the most poignant moments of Long Time Running comes from Karyn Ruiz, the Toronto designer who made Downie’s hats for the tour. She shows the camera the unique combinations of feathers and colours used to symbolize Downie’s support for the rights of Indigenous Canadians, and she adds a personal note about selecting two Hip lyrics to silkscreen onto the interior of the hat. Ruiz tears up while noting that the inclusion of the lyrics is just a personal way to thank Downie and the Hip for giving so much meaning to her life through their music. This sentiment bridges Long Time Running to its touching finale as the band performs their last concerts as the film shows many Canadians whose lives the Tragically Hip has touched. There’s just a power and spirit to the Hip that speaks to one’s experience as a Canadian with all the specificities to the band’s lyrics that one can’t find in imported music.
Baichwal and de Pencier don’t opt for a conventional stage show with the grand finale, which is smart since many Canadians have seen it before. Instead, Long Time Running culminates with the Kingston concert but weaves footage from venues around the nation during the live broadcast. The editing by Ronald Schlimme stiches a collective portrait of Canadians united through song as the audience in Halifax sings along to one lyric while the Hip fans in Whitehorse chime in with the next. All music lovers in Canada owe it to themselves to see Long Time Running. This patriotic music doc gives Canada’s band its due and the Tragically Hip’s final tour offers a stirring snapshot of collective Canadian pride.
"We're forced to bed, but we're free to dream"
Dana
09-13-2017, 10:59 PM
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://nowtoronto.com/movies/reviews/long-time-running-tragically-hip-concert-doc/">https://nowtoronto.com/movies/reviews/l ... ncert-doc/</a><!-- m -->
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LongTimeRunning.jpg
LONG TIME RUNNING directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. An Elevation Pictures release. 97 minutes. Opens Friday (September 15). For venues and times, see listing. Rating: NNNNN
For longer than I’d like to admit, I thought the lyric in Ahead By A Century was “and that’s when the heartache stabbed me.” As any Tragically Hip fan knows – well, anyone but me, I guess – Gord Downie’s really singing “and that’s when the hornet stung me.” I blame a fuzzy speaker.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that since Gord Downie went public with his diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. If you’re a Hip fan, that’s when the heartache stabbed you, too.
Long Time Running, the new documentary by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, has that feeling – the shock of a loss that hasn’t happened yet, and the weight of grief to come – running through it. It follows the Hip on last year’s cross-Canada tour, which was both to promote their new album, Man Machine Poem, and to say goodbye to the country that’s loved them for three decades.
It is deeply sad and positively triumphant. It’s everything we need it to be.
Baichwal and de Pencier are friends of the band, and they’ve worked with them a few times in the past, but their doc work – Act Of God, Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark – tends toward the cerebral and metaphysical. They’ve never made a concert movie, let alone one with virtually no lead time. Their friends asked them to do it and they said yes, because how could they not?
Long Time Running opens at one of the final concerts, de Pencier’s camera sweeping across a crowd of people wearing shirts from a dozen different tours. In every shot, at least one person is crying. This is their last Hip concert, and they know it.
The band knows it, too, and despite the terrible strain on their frontman – a strain shared over the course of the tour by Paul Langlois, Johnny Fay, Gord Sinclair and Rob Baker, who knew better than anyone how frail Downie really was – they go out and play. And they are magnificent.
I don’t know whether another filmmaking team might have been able to get some of the footage that Baichwal and de Pencier have included. We see the band’s first rehearsal session with a still-weak Downie, after two surgeries and rounds of radiation and chemo left him reaching for words and struggling with an erratic memory. We see Downie’s doctors at Sunnybrook choking back their own tears as they talk about his prognosis, and how the tour could simply be too much for him.
We see the band discuss contingency plans with the tour staff: a half-dozen teleprompters in case Downie blanks on lyrics, a special medical unit in case of an onstage collapse, and so on. Some of these people have been with the Hip since the late 80s. This is breaking them, but they go through it over and over again.
And then we see Downie take the stage in Victoria, in one of the ridiculous metallic suits he commissioned for the tour, and the band strikes up and within maybe 30 seconds the life is shining out of him so goddamn brightly. At that point I was sobbing openly in the screening room, and I wasn’t the only one.
Baichwal, de Pencier and editor Roland Schlimme have constructed Long Time Running as a celebration of the Hip, and as a farewell for Gord Downie. He knows it – there’s no way they wouldn’t have discussed it – and in his interview segments he offers up a couple of wonderful stories that would not be out of place at a wake.
But a wake isn’t all downbeat, and as we experienced after the deaths of David Bowie and Prince last year, it’s impossible to listen to the Hip and stay sad. Their songs can get dark but they have a hell of a beat, and the half-dozen numbers that Baichwal and de Pencier include in their entirety will raise your spirits even as you blubber through them.
When the Toronto crowd sings back a key verse of Bobcaygeon, I’m pretty sure my heart broke; when Downie screams “here, now” over and over again in the Kingston performance of Grace Too, it feels like an incantation as much as a refrain. It’s been a year since I watched that concert, along with a third of the country, and I thought time would give me some distance. Long Time Running brings it all back like a hammer.
Some documentaries are acts of journalism, others acts of worship. Long Time Running is an act of love, made by people who are emotionally invested in their subject and are just as broken by this tragic turn of events as the rest of us.
I cannot imagine what it was like for Baichwal and de Pencier to make this movie, but I am so, so grateful that they did. It’s a chance to see the band at their best, and a way to say goodbye. The heartache still stabs, but now there’s a place to put the pain.
Expand
LongTimeRunning.jpg
LONG TIME RUNNING directed by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. An Elevation Pictures release. 97 minutes. Opens Friday (September 15). For venues and times, see listing. Rating: NNNNN
For longer than I’d like to admit, I thought the lyric in Ahead By A Century was “and that’s when the heartache stabbed me.” As any Tragically Hip fan knows – well, anyone but me, I guess – Gord Downie’s really singing “and that’s when the hornet stung me.” I blame a fuzzy speaker.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that since Gord Downie went public with his diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. If you’re a Hip fan, that’s when the heartache stabbed you, too.
Long Time Running, the new documentary by Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier, has that feeling – the shock of a loss that hasn’t happened yet, and the weight of grief to come – running through it. It follows the Hip on last year’s cross-Canada tour, which was both to promote their new album, Man Machine Poem, and to say goodbye to the country that’s loved them for three decades.
It is deeply sad and positively triumphant. It’s everything we need it to be.
Baichwal and de Pencier are friends of the band, and they’ve worked with them a few times in the past, but their doc work – Act Of God, Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark – tends toward the cerebral and metaphysical. They’ve never made a concert movie, let alone one with virtually no lead time. Their friends asked them to do it and they said yes, because how could they not?
Long Time Running opens at one of the final concerts, de Pencier’s camera sweeping across a crowd of people wearing shirts from a dozen different tours. In every shot, at least one person is crying. This is their last Hip concert, and they know it.
The band knows it, too, and despite the terrible strain on their frontman – a strain shared over the course of the tour by Paul Langlois, Johnny Fay, Gord Sinclair and Rob Baker, who knew better than anyone how frail Downie really was – they go out and play. And they are magnificent.
I don’t know whether another filmmaking team might have been able to get some of the footage that Baichwal and de Pencier have included. We see the band’s first rehearsal session with a still-weak Downie, after two surgeries and rounds of radiation and chemo left him reaching for words and struggling with an erratic memory. We see Downie’s doctors at Sunnybrook choking back their own tears as they talk about his prognosis, and how the tour could simply be too much for him.
We see the band discuss contingency plans with the tour staff: a half-dozen teleprompters in case Downie blanks on lyrics, a special medical unit in case of an onstage collapse, and so on. Some of these people have been with the Hip since the late 80s. This is breaking them, but they go through it over and over again.
And then we see Downie take the stage in Victoria, in one of the ridiculous metallic suits he commissioned for the tour, and the band strikes up and within maybe 30 seconds the life is shining out of him so goddamn brightly. At that point I was sobbing openly in the screening room, and I wasn’t the only one.
Baichwal, de Pencier and editor Roland Schlimme have constructed Long Time Running as a celebration of the Hip, and as a farewell for Gord Downie. He knows it – there’s no way they wouldn’t have discussed it – and in his interview segments he offers up a couple of wonderful stories that would not be out of place at a wake.
But a wake isn’t all downbeat, and as we experienced after the deaths of David Bowie and Prince last year, it’s impossible to listen to the Hip and stay sad. Their songs can get dark but they have a hell of a beat, and the half-dozen numbers that Baichwal and de Pencier include in their entirety will raise your spirits even as you blubber through them.
When the Toronto crowd sings back a key verse of Bobcaygeon, I’m pretty sure my heart broke; when Downie screams “here, now” over and over again in the Kingston performance of Grace Too, it feels like an incantation as much as a refrain. It’s been a year since I watched that concert, along with a third of the country, and I thought time would give me some distance. Long Time Running brings it all back like a hammer.
Some documentaries are acts of journalism, others acts of worship. Long Time Running is an act of love, made by people who are emotionally invested in their subject and are just as broken by this tragic turn of events as the rest of us.
I cannot imagine what it was like for Baichwal and de Pencier to make this movie, but I am so, so grateful that they did. It’s a chance to see the band at their best, and a way to say goodbye. The heartache still stabs, but now there’s a place to put the pain.
"We're forced to bed, but we're free to dream"
Dana
09-13-2017, 11:25 PM
Some pics from the red carpet tonight at tiff.
The film will make you both laugh and cry. I thought the filmmakers pulled it off beautifully.
The film will make you both laugh and cry. I thought the filmmakers pulled it off beautifully.
09-14-2017, 06:11 AM
I had resigned myself to missing LTR on the big screen because of business trips. Conference in Banff this weekend and then Spain next week. This morning on a hunch, because of the famed Banff film festival, I thought to check the local cinema(s) "The Lux" and BINGO! Extra bonus: last minute decision last week to travel with my better half. Faith restored 
"we've only got three hundred feet to go ..."
09-14-2017, 06:32 AM
Tomacco Wrote:I was at the screening tonight. The whole band was there minus Gord (which makes me wonder how he's doing). They also sat front row balcony and waved during the end credits, but did no Q&A or anything which is pretty unusual for a tiff film premiere, and was a tad disappointing. I wonder if they didn't want to have to answer where Gord was.
i thought i read that he was never scheduled to be there. i am probably wrong, though...
Quote:The film itself I enjoyed quite a bit. Got teary-eyed a couple times. I can't really say I LOVED it though. Not entirely sure why. Perhaps unfairly, but it didn't capture how I felt going to the Toronto and Kingston shows. I guess the behind the scenes footage wasn't as "juicy" as I expected in a way. It took me back, sure, but I found myself wanting more. But that's always the way it is I guess. I might like it better the second time when my expectations aren't quite as high.
All that being said, it was light years better than the Bobcaygeon doc. Night and day.
yeah, it is unfair to expect a movie to recreate the personal feelings/emotions you had when attending those shows. if you go into the movie with the expectation that you will relive those moments in their entirety, you'll be disappointed.
09-14-2017, 06:54 AM
mark Wrote:Tomacco Wrote:I was at the screening tonight. The whole band was there minus Gord (which makes me wonder how he's doing). They also sat front row balcony and waved during the end credits, but did no Q&A or anything which is pretty unusual for a tiff film premiere, and was a tad disappointing. I wonder if they didn't want to have to answer where Gord was.
i thought i read that he was never scheduled to be there. i am probably wrong, though...
You are correct. I read that a few weeks ago as well. Would have been a nice to see the whole band together again in public.
09-14-2017, 07:24 AM
I thought it was a beautiful story. But it also maybe had too many stories in one (dealing with cancer, a farewell tour, national story on Aug 20) and fell a bit short on all of them because it was a lot to tell. That being said, I certainly didn't leave disappointed. It showed the incredible love and brotherhood for each other (though I felt some of Rob's comments were a bit tense at times).
I liked how the story focused on everyone (the band, the crew, the fans) dealing with this. We all are losing some sense of identity. It is really amazing how so many people are affected by this story.
Side note: I couldn't believe how young Gord's Kingston neurosurgeon is! I thought it was just a random clip of a fan! Wow.
I liked how the story focused on everyone (the band, the crew, the fans) dealing with this. We all are losing some sense of identity. It is really amazing how so many people are affected by this story.
Side note: I couldn't believe how young Gord's Kingston neurosurgeon is! I thought it was just a random clip of a fan! Wow.
Sarah
I was there
09-14-2017, 07:33 AM
If you go into this doc having the expectations of a massive Hip fan, as so many of us will, you're likely to leave disappointed. There wasn't enough light shed on how this tour impacted the band members themselves. Restricting the interviews largely to after the tour didn't provide the intimacy I was hoping for. As mentioned, there was a lot to touch on and sometimes it felt like the filmmakers were only skimming the surface. You'd get a hint of great insight and then the film would quickly move on to something else.
But as noted at the premiere last night, the filmmakers got the call just five days before the first show in Victoria, so what they were able to put together is commendable.
But as noted at the premiere last night, the filmmakers got the call just five days before the first show in Victoria, so what they were able to put together is commendable.
Escape Is At Hand-Tales of a Boy and a Band due June 2013 from Eternal Cavalier Press
http://eternalcavalierpress.com
http://www.twitter.com/eternalcavpress
09-14-2017, 07:47 AM
The Heron Outside Wrote:If you go into this doc having the expectations of a massive Hip fan, as so many of us will, you're likely to leave disappointed. There wasn't enough light shed on how this tour impacted the band members themselves. Restricting the interviews largely to after the tour didn't provide the intimacy I was hoping for. As mentioned, there was a lot to touch on and sometimes it felt like the filmmakers were only skimming the surface. You'd get a hint of great insight and then the film would quickly move on to something else.
But as noted at the premiere last night, the filmmakers got the call just five days before the first show in Victoria, so what they were able to put together is commendable.
Yup, I agree with all this.
One thing I'm really happy they delved into (which I hadn't seen any band member discuss in other interviews) was the setlists throughout the tour and how Gord wanted to play every album.
There's also a great little moment post-show where they're talking about how their performances of the WATS songs went that night (so this was from Edmonton). They didn't seem too enthused, which may be why they only played that album the one time. But I like those inside looks where we see the band dealing with specific performances.
09-14-2017, 11:45 AM
The Heron Outside Wrote:As mentioned, there was a lot to touch on and sometimes it felt like the filmmakers were only skimming the surface. You'd get a hint of great insight and then the film would quickly move on to something else.
Don't forget, there's an official band biography coming out soon as well. I'm sure all the stuff that was only touched on or skimmed in the documentary will be covered more thoroughly in the book. I have a feeling that will be the project that will finally wrap everything up and answer most of our burning questions.
09-14-2017, 12:52 PM
direwolf74 Wrote:The Heron Outside Wrote:As mentioned, there was a lot to touch on and sometimes it felt like the filmmakers were only skimming the surface. You'd get a hint of great insight and then the film would quickly move on to something else.
Don't forget, there's an official band biography coming out soon as well. I'm sure all the stuff that was only touched on or skimmed in the documentary will be covered more thoroughly in the book. I have a feeling that will be the project that will finally wrap everything up and answer most of our burning questions.
Yea I'm actually not sure the book is an "official" bio. It relies heavily on their peers and friends and sources and not the band itself, as far as I know. So not sure if that will exactly answer the questions left unanswered in the film, but it could.
Also, if anyone's interested, my report on the premiere at Toronto's NOW Magazine: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://nowtoronto.com/movies/tiff2017/five-things-you-missed-at-the-tragically-hip-s-lon/">https://nowtoronto.com/movies/tiff2017/ ... hip-s-lon/</a><!-- m -->
Escape Is At Hand-Tales of a Boy and a Band due June 2013 from Eternal Cavalier Press
http://eternalcavalierpress.com
http://www.twitter.com/eternalcavpress
09-14-2017, 04:40 PM
The Heron Outside Wrote:Also, if anyone's interested, my report on the premiere at Toronto's NOW Magazine: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://nowtoronto.com/movies/tiff2017/five-things-you-missed-at-the-tragically-hip-s-lon/">https://nowtoronto.com/movies/tiff2017/ ... hip-s-lon/</a><!-- m -->Nice work. Also enjoyed your AthleticTO piece this morning :thumb:
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