The 2010 Golden Globes took place last night. And between Ricky Gervais camouflaging a mean bender as hosting duties and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s insistence on rewarding supervillain-esque megalomania over quality, there’s a lot to talk about.
So, that’s our subject on tonight’s Sound on Sight round table, during our Big Fan/The Headless Woman hour. [...]
Three weeks. That’s all it took for director James Cameron’s 3D spectacle Avatar to become the second-highest grossing film in worldwide box-office history.
And we didn’t really like it all that much. Clearly, we’re in the minority.
But regardless of our reticence to embrace a Pocahontas video game, what does this mean for Hollywood? Is this the [...]
Whip It
2009, USA
Directed by Drew Barrymore
Written by Shauna Cross (also novel)
Starring Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig
Whip It is not for me. And I mean that literally: it wasn’t made for me. The producers of the film probably couldn’t care less what a 20-something male thinks of their attempt to market roller [...]
Tonight, Canadian viewers will have a chance to watch a two-minute, ‘cliffhanger’ scene from director Roland Emmerich’s upcoming disaster epic 2012. The scene will be broadcast between 22:50 and 23:00 on pretty much every channel we get up here, and its five-minute conclusion will be posted online.
I’m actually kind of curious about the film, which [...]
Take Out
2004, USA
Directed by Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou
Written by Sean Baker, Shih-Ching Tsou
Starring Charles Jang, Jeng-Hua Yu, Wang-Thye Lee, Justin Wan
English/Mandarin
In the context of film reviews, ‘hypnotic’ often means the critic fell asleep, but got the DVD for free and is trying to be nice. This is why Jean Rollin films keep getting positive notices, [...]
Surrogates
2009, USA
Directed by Jonathan Mostow
Written by Michael Ferris, John D. Brancato, Robert Venditti (graphic novel), Brett Weldele (graphic novel)
Starring Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, Ving Rhames
The idea of creating an imaginary persona as a replacement for reality is nothing new, at least for those of us who try to pick up 16-year-old girls on [...]
Post Grad
2009, USA
Directed by Vicky Jensen
Written by Kelly Fremon
Starring Alexis Bledel, Zach Gilford, Michael Keaton, Jane Lynch
89 minutes, English
When it comes to a critic’s personal biases and preferences, transparency is crucial. So, I’ll admit that I have a hard time with films about pretty people years younger than me who spout preciously overwritten dialogue while [...]
District 9
2009, South Africa/New Zealand
Directed by Neill Blomkamp
Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Thatchell
Starring Sharlto Copley, Vanessa Haywood, William Allen Young, Andre Odendaal
112 minutes
Generally speaking, I don’t like to be lectured. It brings back painful memories of my childhood, when my father would continually admonish me for being untidy, killing the family pets, and digging [...]
The Warlords
2007, Hong Kong/China
Directed by Peter Chan
Written by Xu Lan, Chun Tin-Nam, Aubery Lam, Huang Jian Xin, Jojo Hui, He Jiping, Guo Jun Li, James Yuen
Starring Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Xu Jinglei
127 minutes, English
35 mm
Generally speaking, when an action star attempts a role that requires delivering dialogue rather than grunting while kicking an [...]
Sound on Sight co-host Al Kratina is covering Fantasia for the Montreal Gazette’s Cine Files blog. Read an excerpt below.
Black
Directed by Pierre Laffargue
It must be difficult to do anything original with the urban crime drama, since most of the more familiar tropes have migrated from gritty 1970s cult films to G Unit videos and [...]
For a man whose films make me want to shower for three days and then kill myself, Buddy Giovinazzo is a remarkably pleasant fellow. His 1986 debut, Combat Shock, took all the desolation, desperation, and devastation of Taxi Driver, gave it gangrene, and left it to die in an alley with its story of a [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 13:
Dear Internet,
I’m sorry that we don’t like the same movies. I’ve let you down. After all that you’ve given me, from the questionably legal pornography, to the gory photos of car crash victims and dead celebrities, to the endless hours spent trolling creationist message boards and acupuncture websites, I’ve done nothing but [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 12
It’s tough to be straight-edge. By virtue of being drug- and alcohol-free, the whole world thinks you’re some Christian hardcore kid from Boston who only speaks in Minor Threat lyrics. But on the other hand, you do get to picture the whole world as some sort of decadent, liverish imbecile, lounging about [...]
Cult Cinema:- Article #11
Cult of the Week: Volume 11
Art imitates life. Until art gets so thoroughly processed by focus groups and marketing departments that it wins an MTV Movie Award. Then, art turns into product, which is imitated by the single-brain-celled form of life that spends a small fortune of its parents’ money texting in [...]
Cult Cinema: Volume 10
Horror fans are a mysterious, cultish bunch. Or at least, they like to think they are, imagining themselves the vanguard of the underground; Morlocks feeding off pampered, mainstream Eloi dandies with D&G sunglasses and designer perfume. But go to any horror film screening, and see if you’re not surrounded by Blackberry-toting shitheads [...]
