12 years and hundreds of millions of dollars later, James Cameron returns to reclaim his status as the world’s biggest deal. Avatar, his new sci-fi epic, hit theatres this weekend, and it’s an event so huge that the whole SoS crew – Ricky, Al, Mariko, and Simon – are here to impart their judgment. The [...]
With this release of 1991’s Slacker, director Richard Linklater helped usher in the modern day independent film movement, which essentially involves making films out of a neat conversation you had at Burning Man. Since that film, Linklater’s output has run the gamut from studio pictures like the remake of The Bad News Bears to the [...]
Jim Sheridan has made a career out of making the sweeping seem intimate. His trilogy of films starring Daniel Day-Lewis – My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father and The Boxer, helped to sculpt the actor into the award machine he is today. The latter two of that bunch of them took on [...]
A few weeks ago, we took you on a tour of director Todd Solondz’s depraved filmography. If that director has a polar opposite among his contemporaries, it’s probably Wes Anderson, whose films tend to celebrate rather than condemn their characters’ quirks. This week sees the release of Anderson’s latest, the Roal Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. [...]
Simon and Rick take on three more TIFF highlights that didn’t quite slot in anywhere else – John Hillcoat’s long-delayed adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, starring Viggo Mortenson; Miguel Arteta’s Youth In Revolt, featuring a sneering, mustachioed, French Michael Cera; and Jason Retiman’s follow-up to Juno, the George Clooney sorta-comedy Up In the Air. [...]
Some have hailed him as the world’s greatest filmmaker – so why, newcomers might ask, does his name grace the director’s slot on what appears to be a direct-to-video cop thriller from 1995? Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans graced our screens this past weekend, so Simon, Mariko and returning guest Derek [...]
Like many classic horror archetypes, the werewolf can represent a wide variety of themes, from uncontrollable lust, to humanity’s bestial nature, to how First Nations men are apparently savage wife beaters too primitive to wear clothes. Guess which one applies to New Moon, the latest film adaptation of Stephenie Meyers’ Twilight series. Tonight, Sound on [...]
Part two of this week’s SOS housecleaning is another motley bunch – a quiet French arthouse flick (Claire Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum), a Canadian auteur’s latest (Atom Egoyan’s Adoration), both new to DVD, as well as Jared Hess’ (Napoleon Dynamite) new comedy Gentlemen Broncos. Music provided by stalwart Claire Denis collaborators Tindersticks.
listen now
Download the [...]
Part one of this week’s major housecleaning here at SOS concerns two retro throwbacks, and something decidedly different. Of the first sort, we have Ti West’s celebrated horror flick The House of the Devil, as well as Scott Sanders’ blaxploitation spoof / homage Black Dynamite. The odd one out is Australian director Adam Elliott’s five-years-in-the-making [...]
With Halloween looming, Ricky, Al and Simon take the opportunity to catch up on two recent supernaturally-inclined movies, as well as one ’80s chestnut that recently got the neutered, PG-13 remake treatment. New in theaters: the word-of-mouth phenom Paranormal Activity, made on eleven grand and beating out Saw VI at the box office, and book [...]
If Jesus gets to show up two months early for Christmas, with his goddamned Jingle Cats CDs and Jim Carrey movies, then I decree that we here at Sound on Sight can make Halloween last just a little bit longer. So, even though it’s almost mid-November, who’s to say we can’t still have a little [...]
Writer-director Richard Kelly hasn’t been around too long, but his three features have all been the subject of intense debate: Is Donnie Darko the great sci-fi fable of the 2000s or a teen angst pretension pit? Is Southland Tales, as the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman contends, a a “visionary” film, or creative control gone horribly [...]
With Halloween looming, Ricky, Al and Simon take the opportunity to catch up on two recent supernaturally-inclined movies, as well as one ’80s chestnut that recently got the neutered, PG-13 remake treatment. New in theaters: the word-of-mouth phenom Paranormal Activity, made on eleven grand and beating out Saw VI at the box office, and book [...]
Now that it’s finally hit DVD, Sound on Sight takes a long-delayed look at a documentary that some are lauding as one of the year’s best: Anvil: The Story of Anvil, which chronicles its titular Toronto metal band as they attempt to stage an ambitious European comeback tour after years of complete obscurity. To tie [...]
No two childhoods are exactly alike. For every youth full of Little League and orange floats, another is spent living in a shack, poking dead animals with sticks, and making hobo weapons out of scrap metal and bed springs. Tonight, Sound on Sight takes a look at a wide spectrum of cinematic childhoods, as we [...]
