Carsten Knox

It’s not as far from Nick and Relic to the new cinematic version of the epic poem Beowulf as you might think. Director Sturla Gunnarson was born in Iceland, where his new picture Beowulf & Grendel was shot. When he was seven he moved from the North Atlantic nation to Vancouver via ocean-going freighter and […]

February is a graveyard. From the perspective of a Hollywood studio head, now is the time to release all the movies that have tested poorly or in which he or she has little confidence. The studio marketing budgets for the past few months have gone towards winning the high-end product, the pictures that were released […]

“I’m lookin’ at your face and I just wanna smash it,” says Barry. “I just wanna fuckin’ smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You’re so pretty.” “I want to chew your face,” says Lena. “And I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck […]

The dark, cold months of January and February are traditionally slow ones for the Canadian movie business. There may be the odd series that shoots right through to March, but it’s rare that an American production will shoot anywhere in Canada right now. Filmmakers would rather not come up here when it’s cold, especially if […]

After years of couch surfing, Michael Mabbott is giving up his apartment in Vancouver and moving to Toronto. The Alberta-born writer-director put the move off, but he needs to be there for his career, especially as his first feature film is being released in theatres across Canada—the country-rock mockumentary The Life and Hard Times of […]

“Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.” So says Golda Meir, the former prime minister of Israel, in Munich, Steven Spielberg’s new film about men who hunt down those responsible for the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. The quote, and the movie, have upset some […]

Eli Roth doesn’t like the cold. On the phone from Toronto he bitches about weather he finds a great deal less comfortable than the mild California breezes to which he’s grown accustomed. “I grew up in Boston,” he says, “but it’s clear how much of a pussy I’ve turned into.” Roth isn’t one to couch […]

Production boom “I did various commercials,” says Shauna Hatt, a film production coordinator who works on a contract basis in film. “And I did two CBS TV movies back to back.” She’s referring to the Tom Selleck movies, sequels to the popular movie of the week Stone Cold, based on the Robert B. Parker novels. […]

Jay Dahl doesn’t have many compliments when he talks about his home province. “I always wanted to make films,” he says. “I’m from northern Alberta, so that possibility just did not exist. There’s no such thing there as the arts, I guess.” Dahl isn’t someone who’d let that keep him from getting what he wants. […]

Bruce McDonald is Canadian cinema’s enfant terrible. The Kingston, Ontario-born director emerged from the outlaw auteur movement created when Telefilm came into being in the mid-’80s , along with Patricia Rozema and Atom Egoyan. They shared the new face of Canadian cinema; movies for us, about us and made by creative people here who needn’t […]