Samuel L. Jackson, Canadian movie star
By Mark Leiren-Young It takes years to make a movie. It takes less than 48 hours to determine its fate. If the box office numbers from Friday and Saturday night aren’t impressive, a movie won’t be in theatres the following week. Samuel L. Jackson’s latest, The Samaritan, opens tonight and if you’re looking for a [...]
Revisited: Billy Elliot’s big city jive
The musical Billy Elliot opened in Toronto the other night, with its composer, Sir Elton, in attendance. The Globe loved it. The Post didn’t. But great or whatever, it’s liable to hang around Toronto for as long as it has London and New York, because this is the ultimate big-city musical. In the following 2009 [...]
James Cameron to visit the oilsands: FUBAR!
By Nicole Walyshyn Forget Nancy Pelosi. The news that James Cameron is coming to visit the oilsands, combined with the premiere of Fubar 2 at the Toronto Film Festival last night, creates a perfect PR storm for Alberta. Cameron (who is, of course, the successfully grandiose director of Titanic and Avatar), advised Premier Ed Stelmach [...]
Any ideas to declare?
By Frank Moher We’ve now seen, for the second time in recent memory, a journalist being harassed by Canadian border guards while trying to enter the country. Three years ago, American talk-radio host and filmmaker Alex Jones was detained for four hours, in the middle of the night, by Citizenship and Immigration Canada agents in [...]
Go wild
By Rachel Krueger An interview with my Current-Self re: Where the Wild Things Are (the film), conducted by my Previous-Self (who had not yet seen it). Previous-Self: I am nervous about this movie. I carry my generation’s obligatory love of the book, and the trailer looks terrible. Speak to my nervousness! Current-Self: Calm yourself. The [...]
Billy Elliot’s big-city jive
By Frank Moher Best Tony Awards telecast in years last night. (You did watch, didn’t you? I’m not the only Canadian who watches the Tony Awards, am I? I am? Thought so.) That said, allow me to gripe about Billy Elliot, which danced away with 10 awards, including Best Musical. Actually, my gripe is with [...]
Twilight’s neurotic teens
Can we take a second to talk about the newest lit-to-film fad corrupting our children? Enough with the darling wizards in plaid robes; we’re talking about vampires now. Sexy, sexy vampires. If you haven’t heard about Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga by now, you obviously have no daughters/wives/friends. The story of Bella Swan, a rather underwhelming [...]
A grown-up Egoyan goes to Cannes
By Frank Moher It’s some measure of the maturity of Atom Egoyan’s career, if not of Canadian film generally, that news that his new movie Adoration will be premiering at Cannes this year prompts mostly a shrug. Don’t they all? By my count, he’s been there six times with six films (Speaking Parts, The Adjuster, [...]
Morgan Freeman saves the Canadian film industry
By Frank Moher If Morgan Freeman wasn’t the coolest guy in Hollywood already, he certainly is now. This weekend, Freeman’s production company, Revelations Entertainment, joins with computer chip manufacturer Intel to make his latest movie, 10 Items or Less, available online for download. That’s the same 10 Items or Less that premiered in movie theatres [...]
The Duke of Vancouver
By Frank Moher Daryl Duke, the Vancouver-born TV director and producer who died last Saturday, was the real deal. In an industry full off hypesters, especially in B.C., where there are 20 would-be producers for every dollar of financing available, Duke had sufficient credits that he didn’t need to tell you all about them: you [...]
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