By Mark Leiren-Young So I meet Elmore Leonard on one of the only junkets I’ve ever covered for the Georgia Straight. I’m with a group of just over a half-dozen journalists at a studio in LA and we’ve screened Get Shorty and when we get to the Four Seasons Hotel to do the junket interviews […]
film
Man of Steel: 9/11 with a chaser
By TJ Dawe In Man of Steel, Metropolis sure takes a pounding. Building after building after building gets a super-person thrown through it. Many collapse. Superman fought the same villain — General Zod (and cohort) — in Superman 2 (1981), including a battle in Times Square, but the worst property damage there was a smashed […]
Universal appeal, still no audience
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten When you score big financially, does anybody write you a congratulatory cheque? No? Well what’s wrong with you? Because if you’re a Canadian filmmaker and you write or direct the top-grossing Canadian film in any given year, you get a cool $20,000. Telefilm Canada says its Golden Box Office Award is intended […]
The Indiegogo fix
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten One of the biggest stories in the entertainment world in the last month has been the unstoppable support given to the long-ago cancelled television series “Veronica Mars.“ Fans have rallied behind show creator Rob Thomas, not just with enthusiasm, but with dollars to make a feature film version happen. Thomas’s Veronica Mars […]
Canadian Screen Awards: More Short -pipes, please
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten If it wasn’t for host Martin Short, the Canadian Screen Awards last night would have been a real dud. This first year of the awards, aired on CBC, was partly a grand experiment. The Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television combined the bereft-of-an-audience Genies and Geminis — separate awards for film and […]
Argo: We’ve written ourselves out of history
By Paul Mather Okay I never do this, but everybody else in the house is occupied and it’s too icy to jog (or at least that’s what I’m telling myself). So, I’ve poured a cup of coffee, and here’s a long post. I was reading today about Argo. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a […]
The Newfoundland solution
By Rachelle Stein-Wotten Any actor, writer, director, or producer will tell you the film and television industry is unstable: The feed bag is either overflowing or has just enough grains to sustain you through the lean months. But with the B.C. film industry on the verge of collapse, as Hollywood productions head to Ontario and […]
BC throws a film party — for India
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Son of “Midnight’s Children”
By Mark Leiren-Young When I walk into the downtown Toronto hotel room to meet Salman Rushdie, I can’t help scoping the halls for bodyguards. Even though he’s no longer in hiding, there’s still a three million dollar bounty on the writer’s head and he’s still the most buzzed about celebrity at the 2012 Toronto International […]
Open season on critics
By Zoe Grams Fringe, film fest and publishing season is upon us – a time when the smell of suntan lotion lingers as we push into theatres. But it’s the critics, not just the performers, who are making headlines. With 76 events in the Vancouver Fringe, more than 100 in the Toronto International Film Festival, […]
