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MOVIES
Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Woody Allen's Gaudi adventure
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.16.08 at 7:25am.
After a brief filmmaking exile in England, Woody Allen's European tour continues with a side-trip to Spain. The result is the slight but occasionally delightful comedy Vicki Cristina Barcelona.
Powered by two delicious performances by Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz - who lift the rest of the ...
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Too weird to live, and too rare to die
Submitted by The Dartmouth Soundsystem on 08.15.08 at 7:35am.
After yesterday's barbecue, I scurried back to my apartment to watch which a movie called the Tenant that Andrew had been raving about lately. What started as a seemingly docile film that might have strayed a little into the paranormal turned into one of the weirdest films I've seen in my life.
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Well Done, Mr. Rogen.
Submitted by I'm Just Sayin' on 08.8.08 at 9:56am.
I just saw Pineapple Express last night and it was hilarious. I loved every minute of it. There wasn’t much hype surrounding the movie, and after seeing it, I’m kind of stoked that there wasn’t. This movie didn’t need hype, for anything Seth Rogen touches turns into some sort of comedic gold (…I ...
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You guys wanna see a dead body?
Submitted by The Dartmouth Soundsystem on 08.7.08 at 7:20am.
The things you do for film, man. Last weekend it was huddling under a water-logged blanket while fog from the harbour rolled in. The alFresco Film Festival always reminds me of what the movie experience should be like. There's an excitement and other-worldliness to camping out near the boardwalk,...
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Brideshead Revisited: Once More With Feeling
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.5.08 at 12:12pm.
A remake of Evelyn Waugh’s famous novel Brideshead Revisited would seem to rather unnecessary. After all, that landmark 1980s British TV series made a star out of Jeremy Irons and provoked copycat fashion mini-revivals of 1930s Oxford scarves and sweaters in the trend-happy United Kingdom just be...
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What It Is and How It Is Done
Submitted by laurenoostveen on 07.31.08 at 7:18am.
Being only human, I cannot form the words that accurately describe how amazing last night was. For the past week I've been answering questions of "Who?" and "Why?" when the real question, it seems, was: What Is It?
Last night's performance started late. After Tuesday's canceled performance, th...
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New Oliver Stone Trailer for "W" Bush Movie
Submitted by Keith Torrie Today on 07.30.08 at 11:55am.
This is going to be released three weeks before the election. I look forward to it.
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Dark Knight: "It’s great from start to finish"
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.24.08 at 6:06pm.
Rarely has a film lived up to its advance hype as has The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s remarkable revival of a once dead cinematic comic book franchise.
There were so many people at the Tuesday night 8 pm screening I witnessed the audience spilling onto the ver...
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We're All In This Together: Blackballed
Submitted by Hello City on 07.24.08 at 10:06am.
When one looks back at their lives what do they see? The heartbreaks, the near misses, the unexpected joys and those all too fleeting moments of glory. But how much of our lives do these moments compose? I'd hazard about ten percent.
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Guitarra
Submitted by AAmusing on 07.21.08 at 8:49am.
Esposo and I watched a lot of movies while I was in Mexico, including Wim Wenders’ 1994 Lisbon Story. And where one says Lisbon, one says fado.
Here’s a full version of the haunting Guitarra (mp3, 3:48, 8.7 MB). I just finished playing it in loops over and over. Incredible!
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My Spoiler-Free Mini-Review of The Dark Knight
Submitted by Living Between Wednesdays on 07.21.08 at 8:00am.
I saw a sneak preview of The Dark Knight in Imax on Wednesday. It has taken this long for me to come down from that high.
I am not going to drop any spoilers (although, seriously...if you haven't seen it by now then we don't have as much in common as I'd hoped), but I will say this:
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Trash is cash
Submitted by Daimnation on 07.19.08 at 12:57pm.
Robert Fulford thinks Pauline Kael might be rolling over in her grave:
Happy as a clam, rich as a minor Rockefeller, Will Smith turned up recently on a 60 Minutes update of an item from last December. He was there to promote his current movie, Hancock, but his main theme was his huge success and...
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Hellboy II: Guillermo del Toro's Masterpiece
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.15.08 at 6:46pm.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army seems to have picked up only a grudging nod from the critics over its opening weekend. Perhaps the double trouble of being a sequel of a comic book franchise had something to do with it. Or it might be that many opinionmeisters just didn’t bother to actually sit throug...
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The Sony HDR-SR11
Submitted by FinalDog on 07.14.08 at 7:34am.
In the interests of providing a new avenue for creative endeavors (as well as for more typical family use), we invested in a new video camera this weekend. After much thinking and researching I settled on the Sony HDR-SR11. After messing around with it for the weekend, I’m prepared to say this is...
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Stanton T. Friedman is Real - trailer
Submitted by Above and Beyond on 07.14.08 at 6:41am.
We have a distribution deal in place with an American distributor now for my 2002 documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real, so expect to see it on DVD later this year.
Stay tuned for updates here, and at the Redstar Films blog.
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Two Movies for Kids: In Which I Again Discuss Subjects Everyone Else Was Talking About Last Year
Submitted by Crooked House on 07.11.08 at 7:06am.
The movies Stardust and Nancy Drew both showed up on our OnDemand this week. As I was a huge Nancy Drew fan as a kid, I checked that one out first. I loved the retro look of the thing -- the costumes and sets were almost perfect -- and Emma Roberts was terrific as the competent and charming Nancy...
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Kimball Preps 'Eternal Kiss'
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.9.08 at 6:52pm.
Halifax filmmaker Paul Kimball is gearing up to shoot his first feature script, Eternal Kiss.
A contemporary Vampire flick to be lensed in the Shelburne Studio Complex in September, it’s a story that deftly balances humour and romance. Montreal’s Joe Gallaccio is slated to star as David Manner...
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A break from your regularly scheduled program
Submitted by The Dartmouth Soundsystem on 07.9.08 at 8:00am.
In a week my wonderful boyfriend will be back from his world travels. He's in Maastricht today, Bruges tomorrow, and spending the rest of his time in Amsterdam.
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Wall-E Production Focus
Submitted by Final Dog on 07.7.08 at 1:28pm.
The folks at CGSociety have put up a good article about Wall-E and it’s production. Give it the once over here.
Pixar’s latest industrious undertaking has hit the screens in the US, a story of a lonely robot meant for greater things. Spending his years on Earth cleaning up humanities garbage, th...
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Review: Drillbit Taylor.
Submitted by Behind The Scenes on 07.6.08 at 8:04am.
*Disclaimer*-May contain spoilers. Also, I am not a professional critic, I just like to rant on about things that get me going.
Internet Movie Database (IMDB) says the plot for Drillbit Taylor is as follows: “Three kids hire a low-budget bodyguard to protect them from the playground bully.”. Th...
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Wall-E
Submitted by Final Dog on 07.2.08 at 11:44am.
The first line of A.O. Scott’s review of Wall-E for the NY Times;
The first 40 minutes or so of “Wall-E” — in which barely any dialogue is spoken, and almost no human figures appear on screen — is a cinematic poem of such wit and beauty that its darker implications may take a while to sink in.
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The Panopticon.
Submitted by Capillaries on 06.30.08 at 6:54am.
The doc Eastern State Penitentiary is about the famed prison in Philadelphia. A little slow, but very interesting and accurate. Especially good viewing for those of us who have read Discipline & Punish by my buddy Foucault.
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WALL-E: Robot Movie Becomes Robotic
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.27.08 at 3:30pm.
Some critics have gone gonzo over the new Disney/Pixar animated flick WALL-E.
That only proves that if you throw in a few references to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece 2001, film snobs eyes tend to glaze over.
The reality is that WALL-E does indeed have some lovely moments, particularly ...
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The Happening: A Brisk and Economical Chiller
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.14.08 at 4:36pm.
Sixth Sense director M. Night Shyamalan’s latest flick is an environmental thriller that would make a brilliant B-Movie if we still had those kinds of categories.
Instead, The Happening is getting a pummelling from critics fed up with the Indian-American’s trademark ‘gotcha’ style of slick chi...
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The Strangers: It's nothing terribly original but surprisingly effective
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 06.3.08 at 3:49pm.
Texas cinematographer Bryan Bertino has knocked one out the park with The Strangers, his first directoral effort. Tense, creepy and minimal, it’s the definitive contemporary scary couple attacked by weirdos in a remote cheepie house.
Keeping the cast small, the locations few and the atmosphere...
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Not Jones-ing for another fix.
Submitted by La Belle Ecrivaine on 05.28.08 at 6:22am.
Over the weekend, I was forcibly dragged taken out to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I was never a huge fan of the original Indy flicks, but since it's one of the boyfriend's favourite series and he is abandoning me going to spend the whole summer working for Ship's Compa...
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Indiana Jones: Marvelous Filmmaking and Massively Entertaining
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.25.08 at 8:23am.
The long-awaited fourth Indiana Jones flick has arrived, and it offers further proof of the franchise’s enduring potency.
Indiana Jones And the Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull is edge- of- your- seat filmmaking from Hollywood’s leading producer and directing team, George Lucas and Stephen Spielbe...
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The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian has more battles, less magic
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.19.08 at 12:44pm.
The second installment in the big screen adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series is actually a little bit better than the lead-off movie, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Prince Caspian is darker and grander, and director Adam Adamson has a surer grip on how to handle British author C.S. L...
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Iron Man Flies High
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 05.2.08 at 5:38pm.
The first of 2008’s big budget summer blockbusters, Iron Man is shockingly good.
Powered by a tight, economical script - by two of the team who wrote the riveting sci-fi flick Children Of Men - that cleverly doubles back on itself, delivering a doppleganger-style climactic battle that is a she...
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Snow Angels: Breaking up is hard to do
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.25.08 at 5:50pm.
David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels is a powerful and haunting drama about contemporary families falling apart.
Filmed in Halifax a few years ago, it represents a shift for the young indie filmmaker from his previous three films, all shot in his native American South.
Green, whose influence on...
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Forgetting Sarah Marshall: a sprightly sex comedy that sings
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.19.08 at 3:33pm.
The Judd Apatow movie machine just keeps rolling on. Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a sprightly sex comedy that is - surprise, surprise - both funny and tender. The Hollywood Megaproducer (40 Year Old Virgin, Drillbit Taylor) seems to release a new film these days about every four months.
Driven...
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Smart People: A cinematic misfire
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 04.13.08 at 12:22pm.
Fans of Halifax actress Ellen Page who are expecting the sparkle of Juno in her follow-up film Smart People will probably be disappointed.
In a rather typecast role as a cranky Republican Youth high schooler - and the daughter of an even crankier and supremely unconvincing Dennis Quaid as a Vi...
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The Bank Job: A fine piece of Olde World cinema
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.22.08 at 8:24am.
Kiwi director Roger Donaldson's heist flick The Bank Job is a slick and entertaining robbery film that revisits a notorious Baker Street bank safety deposit break-in from 1971.
Building in concentric circles of intrigue and suspense, the movie follows a bunch of amateur working-class thieves w...
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Stop Loss: A Powerful, Haunting Film
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.30.08 at 2:59pm.
Kimberley Peirce’s long-awaited follow-up to Boys Don’t Cry, Stop Loss, is getting the same short shrift that almost all Iraq war fictional flicks have received from the antsy American movie going public.
That means that like Home Of the Brave, Redacted, In the Valley of Elah and several other...
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In Bruges: A collision of irony, violence and wit
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 03.8.08 at 1:47pm.
The opening night film of this year's Sundance Festival, In Bruges is the feature debut by London-based Irish playwright Martin McDonagh (The Pillowman, The Lonesome West).
Utilizing his trademark collision of irony, violence and wit, McDonagh - who won an Oscar for his 2005 short Six Shooter ...
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Juno: Page Is Great; Juno Is Just Good
Submitted by filmguy on 12.22.07 at 9:32am.
The long-awaited arrival of Halifax actress Ellen Page's starmaker-film Juno can’t help but be a bit of a letdown.
Page is brilliant in the film. Without her, neither Jason Reitman’s paint-by-numbers direction nor Diablo Cody’s pre-fab indie movie script would add up to anything out of the ord...
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Atonement: Another Book To Screen Mismash
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.20.07 at 9:32am.
There are any number of reasons why the big-screen cinematic adaptation of the popular post-modernist novel by Ian McEwan, Atonement, doesn’t really work.
One could be that old saw that great literature rarely makes good movies. The many post-modern effects from the book - the revolving points...
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I Am Legend: Good But Not Quite Great
Submitted by filmguy on 12.15.07 at 8:51pm.
Director Francis Lawrence almost gets the third screen version of Richard Matheson’s enduring sci-fi story I Am Legend to home base.
After all, the film sports a fine performance from Will Smith in an eerily deserted New York City for the first two-thirds of the movie. Just the suggestion of d...
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Golden Compass: Not So Golden
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.9.07 at 1:44pm.
American Pie producer and director of About A Boy, Chris Weitz, has made a mess of British author Philip Pullman’s new fantasy movie franchise The Golden Compass, adapted from Pullman’s novel Northern Lights, part of his popular His Dark Materials series.
The movie is a rampant traffic jam of ...
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Control: One Man’s Isolation
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 12.9.07 at 1:55pm.
Control, beautifully and skillfully shot in stark black and white by well-known music director Anton Corbijn in his first full-length, is a film about the band Joy Division. Fans of the group will consider Control the definitive Joy Division story ever put to celluloid. Fans of British music will...
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Before The Devil Knows You're Dead: Veteran director Sidney Lumet at the top of his game
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 12.2.07 at 3:56pm.
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is a low-key but potent triumph for longtime director Sidney Lumet. It’s a late-in-career revival for a man who’s already committed a clutch of classics to the American Cinema Cannon, including masterworks like 12 Angry Men, Network and Murder On the Orient Expr...
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No Country For Old Men: Larded with black humour
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.18.07 at 7:45am.
The Coen Brothers have returned to the glories of their greatest films, Fargo, and Miller’s Crossing, with their latest work, a screen adaptation of novelist Cormac McCarthy’s book, No Country For Old Men.
Dark, taciturn and yet larded with black humour, No Country For Old Men features some bu...
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Beowulf - Pride, Lust, and 3D
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 11.30.07 at 11:08am.
Much ado has been made in regards to Beowulf, the adventure-fantasy that was shot to be seen in 3D IMAX. While 3D is something that adds to the movie going experience, the visual gimmickry can just as easily take away from the storyline. In the case of director Robert Zemeckis’ take on the Norse ...
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The Mist - A study in mist-ifying circumstances
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 11.26.07 at 7:20pm.
Whatever form it takes, be it zombies, a super virus, or a massive meteor, the apocalyptic disaster movie hinges on one question that almost all of us who have seen one of these flicks have asked ourselves: what would you do in the same situation?
Now, I’d be a geek if I told you exactly what...
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August Rush: A hyperventilating musical with eye-candy aplenty
Submitted by filmguy on 11.21.07 at 9:50am.
August Rush is one of those films that seems so unbelievable you can’t imagine how it actually got made. A rhapsodic melodrama with a plot that could only fit into a lumbering 19th century opera, it takes the term ‘musical’ into a hyperventilating place that makes greeting card emotions seem soph...
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Norman Mailer, Author, Director 1923-2007
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.12.07 at 1:04pm.
The various tributes and obituaries of the great American writer and gadfly Norman Mailer have failed, for the most part, to mention two aspects of his extraordinary contribution to the world of discourse and culture.
Along with his more obvious literary work, Mailer co-founded and co-financed...
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The Tracey Fragments: A Triumph For Ellen Page
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.11.07 at 6:06am.
Advance praise and Festival Prizes hardly prepare viewers for the breathtaking quicksilver brilliance of Toronto director Bruce McDonald’s latest film, The Tracey Fragments.
Powered by a remarkably precise central performance by Halifax’s Ellen Page in the title role, The Tracey Fragments unfo...
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Martian Child: Lost in Space
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 11.1.07 at 9:45am.
John Cusack is a wonderful actor. His charm can often lift a mediocre film into a higher zone altogether. Alas, even his abundant gifts falter faced with Martian Child, a drippy, sentimental and manipulative modern-day adoption story set on the West Coast.
Adapted from David Gerrold’s award-wi...
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American Gangster: Something Fresh On The Take
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 11.8.07 at 8:30pm.
It’s hard not to believe we’ve seen it all in today’s climate of film re-makes, re-vamps, and general redundancy. But every so often, comes a film that takes an existing genre and turns it on its head.
In the case of Ridley Scott’s American Gangster, it transforms the mob film and makes it so...
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Poor Boy's Game: A Knockout
Submitted by filmguy on 11.8.07 at 2:49pm.
Poor Boy’s Game is finally getting its nation-wide commercial release after performing spectacularly on this fall’s Film Festival circuit.
The best film ever made about Halifax, and certainly one of the top Canadian films of this or any year, Poor Boy’s Game balances raw drama with a refined c...
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Dan In Real Life: Date movie of the year?
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 11.4.07 at 3:42pm.
The family gathering is a favourite subject in film. Every household has its dysfunctions, its secrets, its share of awkward moments that make for great drama and comedy. It’s no surprise that Dan in Real Life uses this setting to tackle its subject matter. What is a surprise is how effective the...
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Saw IV: A twisted, illogical sense of life
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 10.30.07 at 3:56pm.
$32 million. That's how much Saw IV took in at the U.S. box office this past weekend. The fourth in this strangely popular horror series earned top honours from movie goers, which means it's a great flick, right? If you're into the unnecessarily grotesque, uncompromising torture, and a twisted, i...
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The Assassination of Jesse James: Long and Slow, but Engrossing
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.25.07 at 3:02pm.
I sincerely hope Warner Brothers isn’t willing to let The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford fizzle out on the exhibition scene across North America in the run up before Christmas.
The epic-length flick - 160 minutes long - debuted well in through the Fall Festival Circuit ...
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Film Fest Attendance Up 18 %
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.18.07 at 11:19am.
The Atlantic Film Festival broke its own box office record in 2007 with an 18% increase in attendance, according to spokesperson Pam Todd.
The annual celebration of cinema - of which this humble correspondent is a senior programmer - brought a total of 33,500 punters to screenings, workshops, ...
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Elizabeth: The Golden Age - Spectacle fit for a Queen
Submitted by Johnston Farrow on 10.16.07 at 4:57pm.
Like its 1998 predecessor, Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the kind of movie that wins statues during awards season. The sequel to the simply titled Elizabeth, starring the dynamic and captivating Cate Blanchett in the title role as the first named Elizabeth to the throne, ups the ante in set and co...
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Chris Marker's Two Masterpieces
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.15.07 at 12:16pm.
Chris Marker’s two most important films have been collected together on DVD by Criterion.
The 28-minute still-picture drama La Jetee from 1962 - the inspiration for Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys - and the feature-length 1982 documentary meditation on memory, Sans Soleil (Sunless) make one powerf...
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AFCOOP Exhumes Arthur Lipsett For Rare Treat
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.8.07 at 6:10pm.
The Atlantic Filmmaker’s Co-Op is offering a rare treat for East Coast experimental film buffs. The entry-level training organization is presenting the works of Montreal ‘found footage’ artist Arthur Lipsett over three nights this week, curated by former Halifax Film Studies teacher and filmmaker...
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Austen Book Club: A Guilty Pleasure
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.5.07 at 9:23am.
The Jane Austen Book Club is a glib bonbon of a movie, a glossy chick-flick that seems more like a niche marking exercise than a real film. It’s fun and diverting for the most part, but ultimately light as a feather.
Taking six characters who read six Jane Austen novels and talk about them - i...
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Jarmusch Films At Dal Art Gallery
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.3.07 at 1:49pm.
Jim Jarmusch shock of premature white hair only ads to his mystique as one of America’s most unique and consistent cinema artists.
Mainstream movie fans may have just caught up with the laconic New Yorker with his breakthrough Bill Murray vehicle Broken Flowers from 2005. They will get a chanc...
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Vincent Price Back From The Grave
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 10.2.07 at 1:27pm.
Vincent Price has finally received the box DVD treatment from MGM home video. On four double-sided discs you get some of the iconic actor’s most important onscreen work: seven features and three new documentaries.
The legendary actor - who arose from studio contract playing through the 1940s a...
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Teshigahara's Incredible Triple Header
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.29.07 at 7:39pm.
The Criterion Collection has knocked another one out of the park with their new collection Three Films of Hiroshi Teshigahara.
Best known as the Japanese director of the enduring and still intriguing 1964 international art-house hit Woman Of the Dunes, this new package adds 20 minutes to that ...
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Shake Hands With the Devil: Gripping Cinema
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.28.07 at 9:46am.
Shake Hands With the Devil is a courageous and radically unconventional film that reveals much about its producer, the Academy Award-winning producer Michael Donovan, as much as it does tell the autobiographical narrative of General Romeo Dallaire and his doomed mission to Rwanda during that coun...
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Eastern Promises: Stunning Setpieces But No Knockout
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.23.07 at 7:38am.
David Cronenberg’s new film Eastern Promises is strong, but it’s no knockout.
Following in the footsteps of a genuine masterpiece in A History Of Violence, the Toronto-based director again uses Viggo Mortensen as his central figure. This time, however, the duo move to the dank milieu of London...
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Chas Thorne, Roy Dupuis among 07 Film Festival Winners
Submitted by Ron Foley MacDonald on 09.22.07 at 7:55am.
The 2007 Winners at the Atlantic Film Festival have been announced.
There are two juries at the Fest, one that considers local (Atlantic) work and another that looks at Canadian films from outside the region.
The Canadian Winners include Ellen Page and Bruce MacDonald, for Best Actress and ...
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Local Shoots Pick Up
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.21.07 at 9:44am.
Local writer and director Anne Verrall will shoot a low-budget feature this fall in Halifax entitled Nonsense Revolution. The movie will be produced by Halifax - based filmmaker Thom Fitzgerald through his production company Emotion Pictures.
And the Trailer Park Boys team is back in action. Wri...
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The Censor Board Board Must Go
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.21.07 at 9:35am.
The Censor Board popped up in the news again last week after NDP MLA Howard Epstein sent back a list of appointees to the committee that oversees the board because he found them ‘not diverse enough’ - seven of the 14-member board are older than 60, and many are retired civil servants.
Nova Sco...
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Rodney Announces Larger Film Tax Credit
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.13.07 at 7:17pm.
At the launch of the 2007 Atlantic Film Festival on Thursday night Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald announced exactly what many film industry reps in the audience wanted to hear: an increase in the NS Film Tax Credit.
And what a rise! From 35 per cent to 50 per cent, with a 5 per cent freq...
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Friday Night Lights Are Bright
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.12.07 at 7:58pm.
Friday Night Lights was the most acclaimed TV series of last year’s season. Recently released on DVD in the last week of August - nearly 16 hours worth - you can catch up with the critics to by checking out the entire season in one shiny three-disc package.
I managed to catch only a few of the...
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3:10 To Yuma: A Solid Remake Of A Classic
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.9.07 at 6:54pm.
James Mangold’s remake of the classic western 3:10 To Yuma has become the surprise hit prestige picture of the late summer. And no wonder. With a terrific cast and a superb script based on the original Elmore Leonard story, it’s a film that broadens and deepens - but doesn’t quite surpass - the D...
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Common: The state of here and now
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.7.07 at 7:43pm.
One of the most powerful - but neatly restrained - indie flicks I’ve seen for the 2007 AFF is Kansas director Jeremy Fiest’s Common. A road movie that deconstructs the friendships of three twentysomething men on the cusp of adult careers, Common is a playfully formal, mesmerizingly shot and beaut...
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Scouts Are Cancelled: An examination of the soul of Nova Scotia
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.6.07 at 6:52pm.
One of the cinematic marvels I watched in the programming run up to AFF ‘07 is ex-Haligonian director John D. Scott’s feature-length literary biography enigmatically titled Scouts Are Cancelled.
It’s a 72-minute portrait of the former Toronto performance poet John Stiles, a longtime friend of ...
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Over The GW: Rehab revealed
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 09.4.07 at 4:17pm.
Amidst the hidden gems of this year’s Atlantic Film Festival is the gripping New York City rehab drama Over The GW. Written and directed by Nick Gaglia and based on a true story, it’s a powerful disturbing story set amidst the unregulated and rather dodgy sector of practical behaviour modificatio...
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Hairspray: Song and dance a second time around
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.24.07 at 7:26pm.
The movie version of the hit musical Hairspray is a puzzling cinematic experience. Based on John Water’s 1988 trash classic of the same name but drained of its corrosive nature and brilliant garbage can aesthetic, the new flick is a relentlessly happy, song-and-dance simulacrum of the original.
...
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Superbad: Supergood
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.18.07 at 2:57pm.
Superbad is the best youth comedy about guys since Dazed And Confused. Relentlessly funny, surprisingly sweet, and powered by a ribald teen longing that is deliciously politically incorrect, it delivers on the comedic promise suggested by this summer’s earlier popular and acclaimed comedy, Knocke...
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Becoming Jane: ‘Girl Power’ circa 1800
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.10.07 at 7:15pm.
Becoming Jane represents Hollywood scraping the bottom of the barrel. Since there are no Jane Austen novels left to film - a few have been already done several times, witness Pride And Prejudice - producers have scampered over the great writer’s scanty biography to concoct a new bio-pic aimed at ...
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The Vaults Open To More Film Noir
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.10.07 at 11:45am.
The Fourth Volume of Film Noir: Classic Collection DVD set (just released at the end of July, 2007) richens and deepens the Warners Brothers-driven stream of American Studio productions from the 1940s to the late ‘50s.
This batch includes 10 films on five discs, with commentaries and featurett...
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Singer, Songwriter, and Producer, Lee Hazlewood Dies at 78
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 08.6.07 at 10:23am.
The Iconic American producer, songwriter and performer Lee Hazlewood died on Sunday, August 4th at his home in Henderson, Nevada, from cancer.
First coming to prominence as a rockabilly writer and producer in 1956 with the hit The Fool, Hazlewood moved on to write and produce the instrumental...
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Reflections On Michaelangelo Antonioni
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.31.07 at 1:44pm.
The passing of the great Italian Film Director Michaelangelo Antonioni comes as less of a shock than that of Ingmar Bergman's death yesterday. Bergman was 89 and had made a film just two years ago; Antonioni suffered a stroke more than a decade ago and could barely speak. He was 94.
Still, Ant...
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Ingmar Bergman Dies At 89
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.30.07 at 4:26am.
One of the greatest of all modern cinema directors, Ingmar Bergman, has passed away at the age of 89 at his home on the island of Faro off the coast of Sweden.
Bergman rose to international prominence in the 1950s with a string of black-and-white ensemble dramas that explored themes put forth ...
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Sunshine: Pretty Hot
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.27.07 at 9:14pm.
Danny Boyle’s space opera Sunshine has finally arrived in town, trailing a raft of rotten reviews and uninspired media interest.
It might be that Joe Critic is tired of Boyle’s genre-hopping career. Sure, he wowed’em with youth cult classics like Trainspotting and the zombie landmark 28 Days L...
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Talk To Me: Top of My List
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.25.07 at 6:34pm.
Kasi Lemmons’ third feature, Talk To Me, is clearly her most immediate and accessible film. A fast-paced bio-pic of the Washington DJ and Television personality Petey Greene, it resembles the great recent cinematic portrait of Ray Charles in its sweeping approach to an African American man’s life...
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Introducing The Dwights: A Delight Despite the Title
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.20.07 at 7:22pm.
The unfortunately-titled Australian film, Introducing The Dwights, is one of the hidden gems of this rather flat cinematic summer.
A contemporary domestic dramady built around the British actress Brenda Blethyn - a favourite of the ultra-realist director Mike Leigh - it’s a flick that summons ...
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'Just Buried' selected for Toronto Film Fest
Submitted by Ron Foley Macdonald on 07.18.07 at 8:15pm.
Halifax writer and director Chas Thorne's first directed feature, Just Buried, has been invited to this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). The film, shot under the title Pushing Up Daisies but forced to change its moniker | 
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