This pleasant enough straight-to-DVD comedy stars Catherine Keener as an uptight lawyer who takes her kids (one is Elizabeth Olsen) to her Mom’s for the summer. Problem? Mom is a hippie of the original sort, and is played by Jane Fonda. Cue the unwinding, maaaaaan! Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Chace Crawford play the respective laidback […]
Tara Thorne
Posted inArts + Music
Silver Linings Playbook
Bradley Cooper drops a spiral pass straight into the face of his boring career with a 180 called Pat Solitano, a seriously unhinged man trying to get his life back on track in Silver Linings Playbook. We meet him as he exits the institution he’s been inhabiting since he beat his wife’s lover nearly to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Bradley Cooper’s Silver Linings challenge
Instead of relaxing into bland Hollywood stardom, Bradley Cooper tells Tara Thorne he “hit the jackpot” with the edgy Silver Linings Playbook. Bradley Cooper is about as uninteresting a movie star as one could invent. Blandly handsome, he first gained notice as rich louches in Wedding Crashers and The Hangover, which made him famous and […]
Posted inArts + Music
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
Steve Carell is now a bona fide movie star, but unless Amy Ryan is around, he is no dashing romantic lead. Get Smart paired him with Anne Hathaway, two decades apart, and the otherwise sharp Seeking a Friend for the End of the World makes the same mistake with Keira Knightley, who’s 23 years younger. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Benjamin Gibbard
Ben Gibbard is pretending his new LP does not reference his split from Zooey Deschanel, that it’s eight years’ worth of stray songs—and it does have that feel, with its mish-mash of styles ranging from a cappella to mariachi—but who else could he be singing “I just want you to understand/That love is only a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Nashville
Tami Taylor sings! After an unfortunate post-Friday Night Lights year on American Horror Story, Connie Britton settles back in with the much more appropriate Nashville, a soapy look at the contemporary country music scene. Britton is Rayna Jaymes, 20 years into a career that’s faltering under a broken system and the pop-country crossover of the […]
Posted inArts + Music
TIFF update two
Normally I have a complex about my film count, but this TIFF has been the worst blog count I have done in seven (?) years of coming to this festival. I used to blog every day. But I didn’t have the time, swear to god, like you want to hear the excuses. HIGHLIGHTS FROM TIFF […]
Posted inArts + Music
TIFF update one
Hello friends, how was all your rain? We got that here in Toronto first thing Saturday, a record-setting torrential downpour that soaked both my shoes first thing in the morning and gave me some nice blisters for the rest of the festival. Any-y-way!. Here’s what’s been happening at TIFF: MAJOR VS. MAJOR: So you know […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Bubble breakers
We’re spoiled here in this burg. Because there is little geographic reason to its layout, in terms of common sense, or language—try explaining to someone on Barrington Street how to get to the Canadian Tire on Quinpool Road, or why there’s no East Halifax—everything is close, but it feels far. A cab ride to almost […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Become who you are
I’m a goddess in your eyes and I will never die I was born of people’s needs And what they don’t wanna believe But I am a liar, that’s the truth Go home and Think it through That’s the harm in mystery All you know is what you see Juliana Hatfield, “I Got No Idols” […]
Posted inArts + Music
Thrashfest returns
If you’re planning to attend the sixth installment of “the Hell-raisingist metal Halifax has to offer,” you might want to rest up first. Keep that neck and those devil horns good and loose, nice and limber—you’ll need them double time at Gus’ as you listen to the business from Spew, Burnt Church, Inmortis and Terratomb […]
Posted inArts + Music
Props to Energy Rush
So the thing about Energy Rush—and it’s possible that because we’re old and love guitars and don’t have or really know any children that we’re just going to come off as ignorant—but the thing about Energy Rush (formerly Summer Rush) is that is has consistently brought huge people to town and doesn’t get a lot […]