The Toronto Star du lieu suivant : Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 54

I. THE TORONTO STAR Monday, September 17, 2001 Tonight In T.O. Jau singer Michel BAniM plays the Top of the Senator (249 Victoria) tonight at 8. Hell be singing some contemporary songs and lots of jazz standards, accompanied by George Holier and BemieSenensky. Tickets are $10; call 416-920-9410 to reserve: 1 am very excited to be singing at The Senator.

I like going there anyway. I want to check out the Leopard tange (130 Dundas Ive heard ifs really good. My favourite food is Indian, but I also enjoy going to Spring Rolls (687 Yonge) when there isn't a lineup. I live near the Uptown Theatre (764 Yonge) and I love seeing movies there. I saw Last Wedding at the film festival, it was quite good.

I've been readings lot on the Dalai lama recently; I enjoy books of a spiritual nature. i i Club Life The Mocambo (464 Spadina) has been running a de facto Japanese cultural exchange program since talent booker Dan Burke took the reins three years ago, exposing Toronto audiences to nifty rock 'n' roll outfits from the other side of the world, like the Zoobombs and Jitterin Jinn. Tonight, the El Mo brings in out-there all-gal trio EMM, whose flighty mix of herkyjerky New Wave pop tones, cabaret chorales and general postmodern weirdness usually gets draped in the performance-art theatricality it deserves when the group plays live. Cool stuff. Garagepop bashers Sticky Rice and Fast Freddie open.

$8 advance. Doors open at 9. Also tonight, German minimal-techno trio To Rococo Rot drifts into an unlikely location, the Horseshoe Tavern (370 Queen whilst touring the continent in support of its recent collaboration with TSound, Music Is A Hungry Ghost. Blips, crackles, cyclical rhythms and eerily beautiful ambience will be in generous supply. Maramarl supports.

$10 advance. Doors open at 9. Pop music critic Ben Rayner TOOL Dig rook show lands at the Air Catula Centre tomorrow night. Video lcks Tool shakes off jitters Saving Grace is a quiet little British comedy that offers up some sorely needed laughs. Brenda Blethyn (Secrets And Lies) plays Grace Tre vethen, a wonderful gardener and recent widow.

Her husband has left her with a tremendous debt, but her groundsman and friend Matthew The Drew Carey Show's Craig Ferguson) inadvertently comes to the rescue. After she revives his sick plants, which just happen to be marijuana, they hatch an idea to make some money from ft. Does Grace become a drug lord? Rent the movie and see what happens. Editorial assistant Susan Shaw deed among the most transporting of its day. Visually and vis-cerally gripping, the bands dosing set at Edgefest in Barries Molson Park this past July, which owed as much to F.

W. Mumau and H.R. Giger as it did to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd, placed it in the same rarefied league as Radiohead when it comes to stunning large-venue shows, despite frigid temperatures (I had two nine-volt batteries in my pocket and I had them together, which I dont recommend everyone doing, but they heat up, recalls Jones) and an unfortunate curfew that curtailed the music rather abruptly at 1 1 pm. From the beginning, though. Tool has been less a simple band than a multi-media endeavour, shunning interviews and gratuitous photo ops to construct an identity thats become based primarily on complex album packaging, heavily AV-abetted performances and Jones' nightmarish animated videos.

Likewise, while frontman Keenans searing voice is one of the most identifiable in contemporary rock, he remains virtually anonymous beneath a bottomless supply of body paint, wigs and bizarre costumes. Basically, what we've tried to do 0s) make you forget youre at a show, says Jones. If you go see a movie and you forget for 10 minutes youre at a movie thea tre, Fm sure thats what any director would want And at our shows, the same thing goes. Revealingly, Tool staged a mutually fannish mini-tour with 70s prog-rock luminaries King Crimson earlier this summer. So while its remarkable in an age of videogenic Britneys and Back-streets that an album like Later-alia a sinister, shape-shifting and defiantly demanding art-metal odyssey that unfolds more like one continuous piece of music than a collection of songs could debut at the top of Billboards album chart, selling' more than 500,000 copies in a single week, the cross-generational link-up was a nod to a time when such ambition (and, to some minds, pretension) regularly met with public acceptance.

When you go see a Tod show, its very visual A lot of the ego is taken off the band and more addressed to the music and whats going on with the music, opines Jones. "Thats what I pew up with. I didn't know what Pink Floyd looked like. I didn't know what Yes looked like. Most of the bands I liked didn't advertise that all over the way they do today.

It was more about music and thinking and feeling. You took home a big, vinyl artwork and you sat on the edge of your bed and put the album on and you just sat there and looked at this art, stared at it A little of that goes a long way today. While the planet struggles to shake off a bad case of the jitters, Tool, which, musically and conceptually, has always espoused the release found in confronting and interrogating psychological darkness and human failings, is carrying on with a tour in support of its recent Lateralus album (the bands third and first in five years), including tomorrows stop at the Air Canada Centre. It seems an odd time, perhaps, to be shuttling around the continent with a big rock show, concedes Jones, but bunkering down in our homes in puzzlement and fear isn't much of an alternative. "It's a good time to be doing it, too, he says.

As Maynard (James Keenan, Tods vocalist) said, art heals. I went and saw a movie the night that this thing happened, just trying to get my mind off it, you know, and chilling out a little bit. So I definitely think its good for people. Groups are good therapy Even all our leaders are saying go back and do what you do. Try to live a normal life and don't let the terrorists win.

If you dont go on with your life, they win. Im really looking forward to playing the show. Its what I love to do and I couldnt do it for a couple of days because of this, so now I feel Im kind of coming back and contributing something. The Tod live experience is in Rock band gives rare interview to The Star By Ben Rayner POP MUSIC CRITIC The time will come when everything happening on this continent isn't haunted by last weeks gut-wrenching terrorist spectacle, but for the moment it hasn't even begun to move to the back of peoples minds. ForTool guitarist Adam Jones, however, in Chicago with his bandmates when news of last Tuesdays attacks first paralyzed the U.S., the date of Sept.

1 1 has taken on a particularly perverse kind of infamy. It was double hard because it was my wifes and my anniversary the same day, and from now on when we celebrate that date were going to be reminded of that, says Jones from the California bands temporary base camp in Grand Rapids, Mich. Its a really horrible thing. Fm sure well bounce back and become stronger. Its Just scary times.

Nobody wants to go to war, but what do you do? 1 didnt personally know anybody, but I know quite a few people who knew people who got killed. I dont know. You just get so numb. Theres so much stuff you have to deal with. I Movies win role in a traumatized world Ik Talk What with all the news lately, maybe what most people need is comedy.

Too bad these two excellent pieces were scheduled for tonight. They're hardly escapist fare, especially The Unquiet Peace, on History at 9. Award-winning photqjoumalist Nick Danziger, who covered the mess in Kosovo in 1999, returns to track what happened to four Kosovan Albanians in the Stankovic Refugee Camp, including Dibran, a 2-year-old boy who survived the massacre of his entire family. The theme here is how hate breeds more hate, a lesson worth repeating right now. Then at 10 on PBS, The Press Secretary, an unprecedented back-stage pass to the real West Wing with Joe Lockhart, longtime CJ.

to former President Bill Clinton. Shot last foil, in the end days of the Clinton administration, this Barry Levinson-Torn Fontana production was embargoed until now. Television critic Antonia Zerbisias Tonight on TV The best rule about the TV schedule this week is to expect the unexpected. Most network premieres are off, Including tonights new Ellen series. Also, NFL Football has been cancelled this week.

The networks say they're gradually going back to normal including bringing back talk shows. But what happens if theres an American military strike In Afghanistan? DELAYS: TMN has put off the premieres of Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Mind Of A Married Man for one week. Theyll now premiere at 10 p.m,. and 10:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept 24.

CH plans to go with sitcom repeats of King Of Queens and Yes, Dear rather than season premieres and substitute the movie The Jerk at 9 Instead of NFL football. CIV will have repeats of Weakest Link and Third Watch Instead of season premieres. FLICKS: It's best to stick with non-network movies you know wont be preempted. Like the magnificent Biblical saga, Beirilur(1959), which won 10 Oscars, has a great chariot race and stars Chariton Heston. And It only runs 212 minutes (Family at 9).

Or Sunshine (1999), the Canadian cof reduction phtoniding a Hungarian Jew- family over three genera-kurslwith Ralph Fiennes (TONS at Like Take Out To The Bal Game (1949), with Gene Kelly and FfarilSinatra, if you crave something totally insubstantial (Biavd At 1 a.m.). TALK: The U.S. networks have posted guests for the fate night talk wars, but ft could ad change. TVOs Studio 2 at(b Jane Monheft. Comedy's Open Mike at 8 and on CIV Dean Cain, Frank Alana Logie.

Comedys Stewhrt at 11: Sugar Jones. Leno on NBC and VR at Alba, Emeril, Alien Ant Farm. Lettaman on CfiS and CFMT at 11:35: Regis Philbin. Conan on NBC and Tom Brokaw, Marc Maren. KlUtorn on CBS arid Global at 12:35: Patricia Heaton, Ron Livingston.

Po-Rtkailf Incorrect on ABC and CH at 1: Joan Rivers, Doml-jiicChianese, Jerry Newcombe. Television columnist Jim Bawden Toronto film festival ended with hope for better future i i i 1 i i i i I i i i The People's Choice Award, the most prestigious prize at the fat, went to Jean-Pierre Jeunets popular Parisian comedy, Le Fabuleux destin dAmilie Poulain Amilie). The runners-up were Digvjjay Singh's coming-of-age drama, Maya, and Mira Nairs family folly, Monsoon Wedding. Canitys Inertia took the prize for best Canadian first feature, but an- other Canuck debut took the bigger Toronto-City prize (worth $25,000) for best Canadian feature overall: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), by Inuit director Zadiarias Kunuk, who won the first-feature award at Cannes last May for his depiction of a northern legend brought to life. It was a good year for Winnipeg I atthefcst.

The NFB-John Spotton Award for best Canadian short, worth $10,000 On cash and services), went to Winnipegger Deco Dawson for his absurdist pop biography FHM(dzama). The Discovery Award for best first film overall went to Chicken Rice War, by Singapore filmmaker CheeK. Hie Fipresi Award, an international press prize, went to Inch Allah Dimanche, by Frances YAmina Benguigui. There were, special mentions for Be My Star, by Germanys Valeska Grisebachs and Khaled, by Canadas Asghar Mas-sombagL because his flight home had been cancelled. I think that one of fee things that cinema does, that all art does, is really take the unintelligible chaos of reality and puts it in an order or a shape or a structure that helps people to make sense of whats going on around them, Garrity said.

Maybe at times litre these, even more so than other times. Handling predicted that Hollywood studios will face some tough choices in the months ahead, and be forced to delay or shelve action films that have a terrorist theme. But as a critic of censorship, he was loath to comment on whether such films deserve to bear tire brunt of an audience backlash. I think there will obviously be a major change in the tone and content over some of fee films that are coming out from Hollywood over fee next year. There has to tre.

I mean, there are obviously certain images and stories feat an audience just doesnt want to see. It would be not only inappropriate but commercially disastrous for them to release those kinds of films. Whether they should or not, I dont want to comment on feat Despite the gloom, yesterdays event still managed to salute the achievements tit certain ferns at fee 26th festival, even if few filmmakers were on hand to receive their kudos. was feeling America's pain, and struggling to understand it. "As the incomprehensible events of Sept.

1 1, 2001 unfolded, we came together globally to grieve for and comfort our neighbours, friends, colleagues and their families in America and around the world who were touched by the devastation, Handling and festival managing director Michele Maheux said in a prepared statement, speaking fee thoughts of many. We found solace in each other, occasionally losing ourselves in film. Together, we have continued to hope and yet grieve with the rest of fire world. The decision to cany on wife the film screenings was a difficult one, requiring much consultation between filmmakers, distributors and festival staff, Handling said. At one point, it was thought that the show might not go on.

But in the end, organizers judged it more important to continue in a respectful and quiet manner, to show that art can play a role in the healing process. The decision was endorsed by many filmmakers from home and abroad, including Winnipegs Sean Garrity, 34, who took the $15,000 City-tv prize yesterday for best first Canadian feature, for his off-kilter comedy. Inertia. He was one of the few award winners at yesterdays ceremony, and said he only made it By Peter Howell MOVIE CRITIC The tragedy-struck Toronto International Film Festival ended yesterday not with a bang or a whim-per, but with expressions of sympathy and hope that art can help make a better future. More than any time in the 26-year histoiy of this festival, we've really been made aware of what the word international means to this event, director Piers Handling told a subdued audience yesterday, at a low-key awards ceremony that saw the French comedy Amilie emerge as the festival favourite.

Handling said last Tuesdays terrorist attack on America "cast a pall over fee second half of the 16-day festival, which had been near-perfect until that point. After a one-day interruption, the films continued until the end, but parties, red-carpet events, press conferences and all other signs of hoopla and glamour were cancelled or curtailed. It made for a sad finale to what is usually a celebration. But there was strength to be found in the knowledge that everyone the world over Compiled by Susan Shaw 1 ii.