Stan Lee, the creator of Marvel Comics superheroes such as Spider-Man, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four, claims he and artist Jack Kirby wanted the X-Men to be different. He says that the X-Men were intended to be allegorical, a super-heroic symbol for the civil-rights movement in the ’60s. They were mutants, born with genetic […]
Carsten Knox
Posted inLifestyle
Fair treatments
Juliette Gay, a regular patient at the North End Community Health Centre, doesn’t dread visiting her doctor. In fact, she enjoys it. “It’s convenient for where I’m living now, but I like going there. My doctor, Dr. Watson, I just love her,” says Gay, a north end resident who has been a patient at the […]
Posted inArts + Music
Silver screen summer
June A Prairie Home Companion (directed by Robert Altman) Eighty-year-old Altman had director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) as an insurance-required understudy on this project about the last broadcast of a beloved country music radio show. Expect the usual exquisite ensemble cast, the overlapping dialogue and rambling narrative. Nacho Libre (Jared Hess) Hess follows his […]
Posted inArts + Music
Monster men
Thomas Harvey and Josef Beeby are guerilla filmmakers with a dream, a video camera and the support of friends and family who will go far to see them make their movies. They met at Halifax Grammar School in grade seven and bonded over their love of film, especially low-budget straight-to-video horror. “There’s a special quality […]
Posted inArts + Music
INXceSsive
Once upon a time, in the misty years before the internet, integrity was the currency of rock and roll. It was something rock bands lived and breathed, to be all about the music and the fan loyalty and yet also try to make a living in a business famous for leaving the weak to die […]
Posted inArts + Music
King of the Hill
Brian Howald is a busy guy. He’s in Toronto, in transit from a meeting to a screening and he only has a few minutes to speak. To make matters worse, he’s having to dodge nosy questions down the line from Halifax about this new IMAX project he’s working on. “I don’t know,” he says, hesitating. […]
Posted inArts + Music
View found
Teresa MacInnes, British Columbia born-and-raised, has been a Nova Scotia resident for seven years. She came to filmmaking through social work, and found that by telling stories through the lens she was able to make more of a difference in people’s lives. “After a couple of years in social services you realize very quickly the […]
Posted inArts + Music
A breath of canned air
“It’s so fuckin’ great out here,” says Ben Mulroney to anyone in earshot near the corner of Argyle and Carmichael in downtown Halifax. It is fuckin’ great out here. It’s Thursday, March 30 at 10 in the morning, and spring-like weather has come early, though only a fool would suggest it will stay. I am […]
Posted inArts + Music
Written for the screen
With the ubiquity of movies in popular culture, any novel that reaches a certain visibility gets in line to be adapted for film. It’s close to impossible to find a group of published authors whose numbers don’t include someone with some experience in screenwriting or whose books have not been adapted. Have a look at […]
Posted inArts + Music
Live capture
“It wasn’t like, ‘Now’s the time to make a DVD,’ it was, ‘Now’s the time to document something.’” Joel Plaskett is discussing the philosophy behind releasing his band’s new live DVD/studio EP package Make a Little Noise on the phone from a hotel room in Philadelphia. He’s touring the States with labelmate Kathleen Edwards, though […]
Posted inArts + Music
Girls talk
The funniest scene in the Shediac, New Brunswick-shot comedy These Girls takes place between leading man David Boreanaz and one of his three female co-stars, Holly Lewis. Boreanaz plays Keith, the local weed dealer, who is being blackmailed by Lewis’ character, the cheery, teenaged Lisa. She wants him to deflower her, “deflower” being a word […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Stone carver
Under hazy winter skies, with the slate grey, blue and purple of a Dartmouth rock quarry around them, the film crew making A Stone’s Throw seems particularly relaxed in its third week of shooting. Energy on a film set trickles downward: if the executives, the producer, director and writers are happy, so is the crew. […]
