Richard LeBlanc, in a sense, knows not of what he speaks. The writer, co-director and co-producer of Cubers, a doc about elite Rubik’s Cube solvers premiering at the AtlanticFilm Festival, has yet to conquer thepuzzle himself. “I’m definitely an outsider,” LeBlanc says, “and these Cubers let me into their community and into their lives. It […]
Hillary Titley
Posted inArts + Music
Trailers, part one
Hey everyone, my name is Hillary Titley – first-time Coast Fest blogger/old-hat Fest audience member. I have attended the festival both as a journalist and as a civilian, and, let me tell you, it is ten times better as a journalist. The experience can be summed up in three words: more finger-foods. Heaven! Here are […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Wackness
I recently received the humour book Stuff White People Like as a gift. The book is a numbered compendium of the cliched tropes of white, liberal folk, such as indie music, farmers’ markets and Barack Obama, and can be pretty cutting when you reach an entry that personally applies to you. I laughed and cringed […]
Posted inArts + Music
Death Race
Death Race is the kind of movie you would catch on the Spike network. It has a kind of purposeful quality that intends to apply some metaphor or meaning to its gratuitous violence and dystopian vision of American society, but fails to realize that this is, in fact, a movie about muscle car races set […]
Posted inArts + Music
The House Bunny
Anna Faris owns the role of Shelley the Playboy Bunny in The House Bunny. She has a self-aware quality that never veers into smug irony and wears silly lingerie with aplomb. It’s perfect for the role of a Playboy Bunny who magically becomes a house-mother to a sorority of geeky, shy sisters. Karen McCullah Lutz […]
Posted inArts + Music
Hamlet 2
Hamlet 2 is hilarious because its filmmakers know exactly whom the joke is on. Steve Coogan can play deluded boobs like Dana Marschz in his sleep by now but still attacks this role with gusto. Hamlet 2 has its problems. Catherine Keener as Coogan’s wife is so inessential to the plot that her usually welcome […]
Posted inArts + Music
Get Smart and The Love Guru
So, is anybody really that surprised that the consensus on Get Smart and The Love Guru is less than underwhelming? I had this feeling heading into the films and, lo-and-behold, I left the theatre with the same opinion. We all know these movies aren’t award-winners, but I was terrified at the prospect of writing 600 […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Happening
The Happening brings about the realization that Mark Wahlberg is only as good as the director given to him—maybe if Martin Scorsese or P.T. Anderson or, even, Sixth Sense M. Night Shyamalan was directing him, WahlbergÂ’s everyman science teacher pose and his foreshadowing speech about unexplained bee deaths would be more credible.
The suspense of the […]
Posted inLifestyle
Riding the Paris Metro
It was my first time in Paris—actually, at age 15, my first international sojourn—and after a week of intensive morning French classes and afternoons of negotiating huge lines of fellow tourists and letting my mother do all the talking, I finally rode the Paris Metropolitan on my own. It is a testament to how easy […]
Posted inArts + Music
Young people making the bed
According to Martin Geno and Aaron Abrams, what is missing in romantic comedies, love stories and romance movies—funny, serious or otherwise—is young people fucking. “Martin and I, we’re a big fan of films and we were talking about romantic comedies one day and about how they usually end at the first kiss—they’re sort of sexless,” […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Stone Angel
Christine Horne, like many of us in this country, had Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel assigned to her—rather than discovering the novel on her own. If you are going to play the role of Hagar Shipley, the book is a requirement: Horne read it while auditioning to play the famed Canadian heroine. “I didn’t have […]
Posted inArts + Music
Downey Jr. not down for the count
What is the first thing you think of when you hear the name Robert Downey Jr.? Drugs? Iron Man? Maybe a bit of both come to mind but, considering the body of work the man has put out during hiscareer as a whole, Downey’s acting is starting to pull ahead and overshadow his personal problems. […]