Finding new talent is a thrill, that delectable shock when you hit on something that speeds your pulse and your synapses and says, “Hey, bet you’ve never seen it done quite … Continue reading Got That Swing: Bang Bang Baby and Songs She Wrote About People She Knows
In my continuing series on the Short Cuts Canada Programmes, today we look at one of the most visually striking films in the series, Amanda Strong’s Indigo. Filmed entirely in stop-motion, … Continue reading TIFF 2014: Interview with Indigo’s Amanda Strong
Passing on the curse is a time-honoured horror tradition. Through an innocent act, the victim unwittingly brings a malevolent force down on themselves. The only chance for salvation is to … Continue reading It Follows: Heartfelt Horror Mines the Past for Something New
Sometimes a short film is its own thing. Sometimes it’s a calling card, a director’s notice that this great story could be even more as a feature. The Short Cuts … Continue reading TIFF 2014: Interview with Sleeping Giant’s Andrew Cividino
This is going to be an annual thing, right? As the Toronto International Film Festival gets up to full steam, they’ve declared that today, Friday, September 5th, is Bill Murray … Continue reading Our Man Bill: Celebrate Bill Murray Day With TIFF
Everyone loves a big canvas. Directors can hardly resist getting all that vision up there on screen, going crazy Coppola-style waxing operatic and napalming the jungle for their personal Apocalypse … Continue reading The Art of the Small: TIFF’s Shorts Cuts Canada
Well it’s here. And it’s big. Massive in fact. There’s over 300 films at the Toronto International Film Festival this year, TIFF’s 39th kick at the burgeoning cinematic can. Hollywood might … Continue reading Here Comes the Flood: TIFF 2014 Unleashes a Torrent of Cinema
A few weeks back I took a look at a great sequels program TIFF is running in Toronto: Second Coming: Cinema’s Greatest Sequels. And sure enough, like a Hollywood mogul … Continue reading Doubling Down 2: More of TIFF’s Best Sequels
Oh my. There’s so much to George Takei. Part of the original, legendary Star Trek crew, beloved as helmsman Lieutenant Sulu of the starship Enterprise. Countless TV appearances, on everything from Perry Mason to Heroes. … Continue reading The Man in the Meme: To Be Takei
With the release of a 4K digital restoration of the classic The Godfather Part II (1974), TIFF is putting on a great program as well. Second Coming: Cinema’s Greatest Sequels is exactly … Continue reading Doubling Down: TIFF’s Best Sequels
Prolific, rambunctious, and one of the true independents of cinema, Robert Altman was the kind of director Hollywood hated. From his 1970 breakthrough M*A*S*H to his final film, the elegiac A Prairie … Continue reading Death of the Expected: The Films of Robert Altman
Few directors instantly conjure an image of cool aloofness in the way that Jim Jarmusch does. The man, in his dark clothes with his shock of white hair in a … Continue reading Orphans of the Storm: Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive
