Hawksley WorkmanLos Manlicious(Universal) Before now, a concert promoter would have to be high to book Hawksley Workman on a bill with ’80s stalwarts Loverboy, Honeymoon Suite or even The Police. Now, it makes perverse sense. His first balls-out rock album since Lover/Fighter, Workman brings all the guitars and catchy choruses of that 2003 release, with […]
Carsten Knox
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Last Day
I was just in at the Park Lane, preparing to line-up for rush tickets to the nameless shorts presentation that included Chasing Wild Horses and The Book Lady, but the lineup was long and I felt my chances of getting in very slim… leaving me right up front if there at all. It’s my own […]
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Friday Possibility
Hello, loyal blog readers. I received a message from Kazik Radwanski, a fresh-out-of-film-school filmmaker from away, bringing his first short to our illustrious festival, who wanted to tell everyone they should check out his film: Princess Margaret Blvd., a docudrama about a woman struggling with Alzheimer’s. It played at TIFF, and now it’s in Canadian […]
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So many miles
A splitting headache took me out of the afternoon screening of Patti Smith: Dream of Life early, but what I saw I enjoyed. I know my fellow bloggers were there in the darkness, so I’ll let them take this one, as they got to see more of it than I did. I’ll say that the […]
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Hey shorty, it’s your birthday
Waltz With Bashir is not for someone expecting an animated picture to provide gentle escapism. The film actually deals in how the mind enforces a certain escape when the memories are too difficult to metabolize. Here it’s the guilt that a number of Israeli men, all of whom participated in the invasion of Lebanon in […]
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Capers
So, Rossif Sutherland is Donald-tall, not Kiefer-tall. Wouldn’t have known from Poor Boy’s Game, but he towered in the Park Lane hallway this afternoon when he strolled out of a juried screening. Apparently he’s one of those smug bastards who’s been delaying screenings for the rest of us. (Just kidding Rossif… I’ve seen you fight, […]
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Con men and singers and soldiers, oh my
The delay earlier in the day in *dum dum* PARK LANE 3 carried over into the afternoon, so my fellow blogger Hillary Titley and Coast film reviewer (and director in his own right) Mark Palermo and I went for a coffee in advance of Of All The Things. It was good to catch up and […]
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Crabby Monday morning
OK, so, three (count ’em) industry screenings I’ve missed due to some fuck-up down at the Park Lane. The first was Blindness on Wednesday, which, fine, was due to the print not arriving on time. Not much to be done about that. But then Down to The Dirt on Thursday didn’t start on time because […]
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Dig the dirt
A few brief things I took with me from the review embargoed Down To The Dirt. 1) The writer of the novel (Joel Thomas Hynes) plays his lead character in the film. And he does it well. It makes you kinda sick, that kind of switch-hitting talent. 2) We got some filmmaking grit goin’ on […]
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Obsessively anal, and movies about dogs, etc.
Sunday morning found me at CKDU, doing the AFF special edition of my show. (Shameless plug here: CKDU 88.1 FM, every Sunday morning at 11. I talk about the mooveez.) The city seems so quiet today, and the greyness is a blanket… perfect for spending more hours in the dark. Grabbed a screening copy of […]
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Laughing with Orwell
Every once in awhile at festivals you see a film that would never get a theatrical release, like evah, something that might show up on DVD, a single copy at your local emporium that vanishes quickly because it’s just too weird for a mainstream audience. Sometimes, though, a small but fanatic cult can grab a […]
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Friday afternoon
So, Ariel Nasr’s Outside Afghanistan aka Good Morning Kandahar is a thoughtful, solemn look into the relationship Afghan Canadians have with their home country. The filmmaker did visit and shoot some interviews there, but the 50 minute doc spends much more time here in Canada. The part I found most interesting was a visit with […]