The heart wrenching film In The Name of the Family by award winning film maker Shelly Sawell was premiered last week and won the festivals top prize at Toronto’s Hot Doc film festival. The film tells the story a young muslim teenager, Aqsa Parvez who was strangled by her father for allegedly going against his [...]
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 [...]
2005′s March of the Penguins proved that animal documentaries, even those with a subtle environmental message, could generate good box office. Moving off the ice flow and into the ocean, a couple of recent docs have taken up the plight of two diametrically opposed, yet sometimes confused sea creatures: dolphins and sharks. Tonight, Sound on [...]
As usual, this year’s Fantasia Film Fest was loaded with quirky, offbeat documentary content, and on this episode of Sound on Sight, Al, Simon and returning guest Derek Gladu take on three of them: Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, a portrait of an unhinged Southern clan; Playing Columbine, a look at videogame violence, [...]
The last few weeks have seen an uptick in wide-release documentary activity, so returning guest Derek Gladu joins us to help dissect three of them: Every Little Step, a look at the 1970s and 2000s Broadway productions of A Chorus Line through the eyes of its performers and auditioneers; Food, Inc., the latest in a [...]
Upon viewing Begotten for the first time, one could easily mistake it for an archaic silent film made by a seriously deranged director on crack (or whatever popular drug they used a hundred years ago). Low and behold, this is a movie from 1991 by 45-year old Edmund Elias Merhige (Suspect Zero, Shadow of the [...]
Listen now Download show in another window There’s an eclectic new slate of documentaries to be found on DVD aisles in the last few weeks, including Kurt Kuenne’s provocative “Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father,” which wowed festival audiences but has kpet a relatively low profile elsewhere. Bill Maher’s satirical travelogue [...]
Listen now Download show With the Oscars just a month away, we take a look back at two Oscar-nominated films we did not have a chance to review yet. Israel’s “Waltz With Bashir” is up for Best Foreign Film, although it might also have contended in the Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary categories, as [...]
listen now Download show Alex Gibney seems to be drawn to calamity. The documentarian’s three major features so far focus on volatile topics and controversial events. His newest, currently in theaters, is called Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, and it illustrates the troubled journalist’s path from political rabble-rouser to caricature. We’ll [...]
listen now Download show The Naked Lunch takes a long, heavy look at the world of heavy metal through the films of Sam Dunn, Canadian filmmaker and anthropologist (and metalhead). We take a look at both his original doc, Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, as well as its followup, newly available on DVD, Global Metal. To [...]
listen now! Download show Episode 66: Docs at the FNC Special guest Derek Gladu returns once more to help Simon pick apart th new documentaries that have seen release at the FNC, including the high-wire chronicle Man on Wire (one of the year’s best-reviewed films), and two Canadian docs; a very personal doc about transsexuality [...]
listen now Download show With the U.S, political landscape becoming increasingly partisan and religiously based, we thought it a good time to reflect on some recent docs that have highlighted religion’s place in society – Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s provocative Jesus Camp, Amy Berg’s Deliver Us From Evil, and Lucy Walker’s Amish teen documentary [...]
listen here Download show This week’s programming is all about controversy. On the polite side of that coin, we have Nanette Burstein’s new documentary feature American Teen, which has been assailed by many critics as being an MTV-style pseudo-documentary, complete with careful editing choices and subject coaching. Meanwhile, Canada’s own Guy Maddin continues to work [...]
Listen Now! Download show Beginning our newfound pledge to cover more documentary features, we present a full hour of docs we’ve recently taken in – two from the Fantasia festival and one just for the fun of it, and we’ve invited documentary fanatic Derek Gladu to chip in. I Think We’re Alone Now follows two [...]
Listen now Download show Tune in to our first episode focusing solely on documentaries. First we kick it off with our second entry in our Masterpiece Cinema page. Of course we are talking about our very much delayed review of Style Wars. Journey with us through a history of Hip Hop culture only to break [...]
The American: Visions of damnation
A look back at “Wings Of Desire”
Abre los ojos (Open Your Eyes)
8: The Mormon Proposition
This Movie is Broken
The Last Exorcism: A surprisingly invigorating horror film
A Look Back At Spielberg’s Masterpiece “Jaws”
Fausta: The Milk of Sorrow
MIFF2010: The Illusionist
Piranha 3d
The Switch
Afterschool
Rampage
Stonewall Uprising
Toronto After Dark 2010: Doghouse (Review #1)
The Expendables
Toronto After Dark 2010: Last Lovecraft (Review #1)
