————– If you’re facing down the Toronto International Film Fest’s immense schedule and feeling a strong urge to self-harm, you’re not alone. This year’s lineup is densely packed with enough documentaries, Oscarbait, and intriguing foreign features to drive any movie fan who can make it to TO up the wall. To help whittle it down, [...]
#6 – Paranormal Activity (2009) Directed by Oren Peli The faux-documentary, “cinema verité” camera style is increasingly prevalent in horror flicks these days, mostly because it cuts down on budget-costs for genre filmmakers. Paranormal Activity is a prime example. The film is one of the most profitable movies ever made, based on return on investment. [...]
Two decades before The Blair Witch Project, the 1980 Italian exploitation film Cannibal Holocaust, directed by Ruggero Deodato, broke traditional cinematic conventions while creating major controversy following its release. Filmed in the Amazon Rainforest, the movie tells the story of four documentarians who journey deep into the jungle to film indigenous tribes. Two months later, [...]
#15 – Batman Begins Directed by Christopher Nolan The Comic: No story in the Batman world is more important than Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Originally published by DC Comics in 1986, The Dark Knight Returns (a four-issue comic book limited series written and drawn by Frank Miller) redefined the genre of comics forever. [...]
August 18, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
#20 – Hellboy Directed by Guillermo del Toro The Comic: Created by writer-artist Mike Mignola, the character of Hellboy first appeared in a number of eponymous miniseries, one-shots as well as some crossovers. The demon, whose true name is Anung Un Rama (the Beast of the Apocalypse), was brought to Earth as an infant by [...]
August 13, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
On January 25, 2007, Onion A.V. Club critic Nathan Rabin inadvertently added a phrase to the movie lexicon. One that would eventually get it’s own Wikipedia page and it’s own NPR story. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. In his review of Elizabethtown, Rabin said the following of Kirstin Dunst’s character: “Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example). The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.”
August 10, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
#25 – Tank Girl Directed by Rachel Talalay The Comic: The post-modern, pop-culture-obsessed British cult comic strip created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin became quite popular in the politicized indie counterculture zeitgeist as a cartoon mirror of the growing empowerment of women in punk rock culture. Posters and t-shirts began springing up everywhere, including [...]
August 8, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
Australia: home of outlandish stereotypes, Mrs. Mac’s Meat Pies, and an impressive film industry that makes Canadians like me fairly jealous. Shamefully, Australian films tend to have a difficult time being distributed outside Australia. Of course, nobody with a DVD player has to rely on the movie theatre – here are ten quite excellent Australian [...]
August 5, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
Last Friday, Dinner for Schmucks, directed by Austin Powers director Jay Roach and starring Steve Carrel, Paul Rudd, and Zack Galifianakis opened to an estimated $23.3 million. The comedy follows Tim (Rudd) who is able to find the perfect guest, Barry (Carrell), for his boss’s monthly event, “dinner for idiots.” What many people don’t know [...]
August 2, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
Originally I was only going to list my five favourite films of the entire fourteen year history of Fantasia. Only after last night’s screening I couldn’t help but add on Scott Pilgim vs. The World. These six films are without a doubt my FIVE FAVORITE FIRST RUN FEATURES to ever screen at the festival. Look [...]
July 28, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
Fantaisa has expanded its programming in the past five years and with that the festival has become even longer – perhaps too long. Ranging anywhere from three to four weeks, it leaves me pretty much brain-dead by the end of the month. Bloodshot eyes, Sleep deprivation and repetitive dinners at Al-Taib aren’t exactly a recipe [...]
July 26, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
The new decade showcased some of the very best of genre filmmaking and Fantasia was one step ahead of all other genre film fests in picking up some extraordinary films. Unfortunately, in 2002, the Imperial theater, which had housed the fest since its inception, was unexpectedly late on renovations and repairs. The festival had to [...]
July 25, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
Horror, fantasy, Hong Kong action, animation, strange documentaries, gored-up science-fiction, Japanese Pink films and martial arts flicks are just among the many genres Fantasia has covered in its fourteen years of programming. Famous for being the largest genre film festival in North America, Fantasia is packed with Canadian, North American and worldwide feature-length premieres as [...]
July 24, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
Summer blockbuster season is a perfect time for the movie fans to show their true colors. For some, the appeal strikes with a comic book inspired action movie, as in Iron Man 2. For others, it might be a laugh-out-loud high concept comedy, as in Get Him to the Greek. But for cult geeks like [...]
July 20, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
If ever a mother was designed to drive her offspring to crime, depravity and therapy, it was Livia Soprano. The star of David Chase’s acclaimed HBO drama was mob boss Tony (James Gandolfini) — an antihero for our times. But the early years of the show were dominated by the supremely malevolent matriarch Livia Soprano [...]
July 15, 2010 | Posted in
Best & Worst |
Read More »
