Rachel Derrah learned to ride a bike this summer. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” says the 24-year-old, between bouts of laughter. She grew up in Glassville, New Brunswick, about an hour north of Fredericton. “You either drive or you go play in the woods,” says Derrah, who studied community design at Dalhousie University. “You would just […]
Sean Flinn
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Rewarding Incendies
IncendiesThursday September 23rd, 7pm, Oxford Earlier on the day this film screened at the Oxford, it was named as Canada’s submission for the Oscars’ Foreign Language Film category. It already received Best Canadian Feature at TIFF this year. Following that announcement, which caused excited exclamations and applause to ripple from the floor seats to the balcony, the screening of Québécois director Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up to his last feature, Polytechnique, commenced. Based on the play by Montreal playwright Wajdi Mouawad, this film traces a Lebanese-Canadian family’s tortured history. Jeanne and Simon Marwal are twins living in Montreal, facing the immediate
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Black Mountain
The Vancouver heavyweight is back with its third album. And, like a boxer in that class, it tends to plod along, landing thundering punches. There’s “Rollercoaster” but wait for the eighth and title track, with a lead vocal sung by Amber Webber, for the real proof of the band’s size and strength. Occasional speed (“Let […]
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REM
The third full-length from Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe came out 25 years ago. Since 1985, the inversions of image and phrase (beginning with the album title’s alternate reading as Reconstruction of the Fables), the deceivingly simple melodies and beautiful pop-vocal harmonies have been ringing like bells in the dark. There’s a sense that REM […]
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Beauty & Sadness
In “Part One: Echoes,” the Toronto-based Trinidadian-Canadian reconsiders how authors such as Guy de Maupassant, Jean Cocteau and Yasunari Kawabata have shaped him as reader and writer. Alexis traces these connections through a series of short stories, creating fictional worlds that combine his and his heroes’ spirits and sensibilities. “Mylène Saint-Brieuc (Henry James/Carlos Fuentes),” an […]
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Gainsbourg goes for fantasy
Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque)Tuesday September 21st, 9:25pm, Park Lane 7 A short while and walk down Park Lane’s carpeted corridor separates the screenings of Trigger, a fictional film, and Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque), a biopic/fantasy based on the life of the in/famous French singer. But the two films connect across cinematic and geographic distances. Thematically, the Canadian and French movies both delve into duality. In Trigger Vic and Kat form the duality. They are the guitarist and singer respectively from a now-defunct indie rock band. Though Trigger broke up long ago, its existence as a creative entity, a unity of their
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A Trigger response
TriggerTuesday September 21st, 7:10pm, Park Lane 4 Built into its very name, rock ‘n’ roll is a duality. Two kinds of energy meet and intermingle. A single force forms and reforms. Point and counterpoint; counterpoint becomes point and vice versa. In that way, rock ‘n’ roll resembles life. It is life. (I can’t imagine my life so far, and to come, my life with my wife Sue, without the thought, wakefulness and beauty the music gives me daily.) The duo of Daniel MacIvor (writer) and Bruce McDonald (director) deliver a film about life, some of its interconnected and universal concerns,
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Still thinking about Rhonda’s Party
With shorts, the filmmakers deliberately size down their films. They are not necessarily being downsized by someone or something else. From the Atlantic Shorts III program, which screened on the first Monday night of the festival, one film in particular demonstrated the big impression a small film can make. Rhonda’s Party, the seven-minute movie from […]
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30 by 30
How to buy AFF tickets Tickets are available at the AFF box office, located in Park Lane Mall, and at all TicketPro outlets (422-6965), including Video Difference (24 hours a day!), or online at ticketpro.ca and atlanticfilm.com. Regular screening tickets are $12; gala and special presentations are $17. For packages and special events, check out […]
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Bylaw busting
Secondhand is not sleight of hand, or a scam, says Charlene Croft. “I’ve always bought, sold and traded stuff to supplement income,” offers the co-owner and operator of Book of Joe, a vendor at Harbourview Weekend Market (in the former Value Village location on Canal Street, Dartmouth). Book of Joe sells secondhand books, vinyl records, […]
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AFF writer spotlight: Josh MacDonald
Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage Tuesday September 21, Park Lane 8, 9:20pm The Corridor Wednesday, September 22, Park Lane 8, 7pm The inexplicable attracts Josh MacDonald. Prior to picking up the phone, he was sitting in on a post-production session with Evan Kelly and Jake Owens, respectively the director and visual effects supervisor on The […]
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Friendly Rich and the Lollipop People
On the whole, this sound—the central practice of collaging cabaret, ballroom, folk (from early 20th century North American to gypsy and klezmer), jazz, electronic effects and heavy-riffed rock and noise—has been done. Because this music is about big and bizarre gestures there’s little wiggle room. It’s already crowded by, to name just a few, Tom […]
