FEATURES The Angel’s Share Opening Gala, Thursday, Sept 13, 6:30pm at Oxford, 7pm at Park Lane 8 and 7 The AFF kicks off this year with the spirited whiskey-tasting feature The Angel’s Share. Palme d’Or winning director Ken Loach (The Wind That Shakes the Barley) aptly directs this quiet, sinewy study of a thug and […]
Carsten Knox
Posted inArts + Music
Jerusalem: Chronicles From The Holy City
Quebecker Delisle reports from far-flung locales in an inimitable black-and-white style. A classic outsider, he simply and gracefully illustrates the world around him. As he did in his previous books, Pyongyang and The Burma Chronicles, he documents his exploration of the politically and socially alien landscape of a new city, in this case East Jerusalem—his […]
Posted inArts + Music
A beautiful discovery
“Six Newfies on the floor of my one-bedroom apartment on Charles Street.” That’s how Jason Burns remembers it. “This is where it all began, in a weird way,” he recalls. “My fucking apartment looked like a can of weird sardines. There were bodies everywhere.” That’s how Hey Rosetta! started its career, building a small empire […]
Posted inLifestyle
A summer place
The Abyss The perfect antidote to the oppressive heat and humidity of a summer’s day is the oppressive cold and dark, deep down in the ocean where Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are with a crew in an undersea oil rig under siege by a hurricane, navy SEALS gone loco and aliens. This is […]
Posted inArts + Music
Chevy to the Levy
Eugene Levy looks uncomfortable. Which is fine—this is what he does. He’s a pro at looking slightly awkward and getting laughs. Even when in a dapper black suit, his Order of Canada pin on the lapel, shaking hands and posing for photos. Even on a day he’s flown into town to receive an honourary Doctorate […]
Posted inArts + Music
Trapped in the Sea
A portrait of a woman trapped—by her feelings, her choices and her times—The Deep Blue Sea is by turns claustrophobic, overly mannered and moving, overcoming its shortcomings with a typically powerful performance from Rachel Weisz. The wife of a judge (Simon Russell Beale) in post-war London, her Hester Collyer walks away from a passionless marriage, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Brainy, stylish Footnote
This 2011 film from Israeli auteur Joseph Cedar was in contention for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars this year and won an award at Cannes for its screenplay. A story of father and son academics, Eliezer (Shlomo Bar Aba) and Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi), both authorities on Talmudic studies at the Hebrew University […]
Posted inArts + Music
Ch-ch-ch-changes at Haliwood Insider
I am leaving The Coast this week. I’ve had a great time keeping tabs on the local film and media business on this blog. Though I’m moving on to a new editorial position elsewhere in Halifax, you may see my name show up again at The Coast in the future, likely writing about film as […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Housewerks opens in Plan B
Daun Windover has opened Housewerks, a new furniture outlet, at Plan B (2180 Gottingen Street, 802-0731). An admitted fan of kitsch, she sells and buys mid-century furniture and housewares. Here’s how she describes the store’s contents (from her Facebook page): “Fabulous teak, California ceramics, barkcloth fabrics and anything else that you’ve see in any episode […]
Posted inArts + Music
Sleeping Beauty
“Jane Campion Presents” gives writer/director Leigh’s first feature an instant whiff of artistic credibility, as does the deliberate, Kubrick-esque chilliness in the tale of a student, Lucy (Emily Browning), who moonlights as a prostitute and gets mixed up with a organization providing unconscious, drugged women to an exclusive clientele. It’s hard to tell what Leigh […]
Posted inArts + Music
Fun in pages, Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope
Perhaps documentarian Morgan Spurlock’s greatest gift to his new film is that he resists appearing in it. And in getting out of the way of his subject matter, he produces the best work of his career. It’s a story that will be familiar to any artist trying to make a living doing what they love: […]
Posted inLifestyle
A transformed trio: reno #3
Jennifer Stewart describes the home she and her husband purchased in Herring Cove as fairly unremarkable, but as they say on HGTV—it had potential. What Stewart didn’t see before buying it were some of the problems with the place. “It turned out to be older and less well-constructed than we thought,” she says. They thought […]
