“He had three rules going into it,” says director David Koepp of his Ghost Town star Ricky Gervais. “The first rule was ‘I won’t kiss anybody, nobody wants to see that.’ Second rule was ‘I won’t talk to myself alone in a room no matter how much it helps the plot. And I will ruin […]
Tara Thorne
Posted inArts + Music
Ann Verrall’s angel
In the spectrum of the teen genre, you’ve got your John Hughes and magic pants and stoners and schmoes and pies, and with many of those—save the pants, really—you’ve got more than a few erections. But none of them has ever belonged to an angel before. “I was just kinda playing that around in my […]
Posted inArts + Music
Holding out for a hero
Every year there’s some sort of scandal-driven doc at any festival. Think Party Monster, think Deep Throat, think Trumbo—something with sex usually helps, but censorship pulls in at a close second. TIFF’s entry this year is American Swing, which is about Larry Levenson, who opened a swingers club in New York when it was still […]
Posted inArts + Music
Eva Madden’s Game play
The air in Theatre Nova Scotia’s Agricola Street space is stuffy, which is what happens when people are staging faux swordfights between its modest walls for hours. Eva Madden, the director of Atlantic Fringe Festival entry The Confidence Game, instructs actors Joe McKibbon and Terry Coolen as Tobin and Roger. “The struggle that’s going on […]
Posted inArts + Music
Heartbreakers, super-spellers
“When I told my mother I was doingthis, she howled,” says Evan Solomon, the familiar CBC face and host of Canada’s Super Speller, a new Halifax-produced series. “Then she dug up a spelling test I did so badly on I hid it behind a picture. Three out of 10. Boat: b-o-w-t.” So the dude can’t […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
itune, I am
Two years ago, I was stealing internet from a neighbour, which allowed me access to her iTunes. The library itself was empty, but her Limewire list was full of the most lowest-common-denominator music ever, all Top 40 club jams—Usher’s “Yeah!,” Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body,” “Lady Marmalade” from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. On one hand, […]
Posted inArts + Music
American Teen’s no Breakfast Club
In 2006, Nanette Burstein aimed to find a place with a single high school and film its senior year. She found herself in Warsaw, Indiana, a generic North American town distinctive as Midwestern US only by its occasionally flat accents; otherwise it’s white, upper-middle-class and Republican. “Red state all the way,” the opening narration says. […]
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Official Neil Young announcement made
The concerts will feature Neil Young with the same band that so ably backed him in Europe – Ben Keith, Rick Rosas, Chad Cromwell, Anthony Crawford and Pegi Young. Song sets are expected to be eclectic, featuring both newer material and classic Neil Young hits. Sure Wilco is great and all, but they were already […]
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Meaghan Smith’s Shooting Star
It’s early evening on the first day of August, but it feels more like late September—blustery wind capped by threateningly grey skies. Meaghan Smith walks into a north end cafe, sits with her back to the room and waffles between the soup and the pizza before deciding on the latter. She’s small and unassuming, not […]
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Ira and Abby
Ira and Abby Directed by: Directed by Robert Cary (Magnolia) It’s a bitch that Jennifer Westfeldt has to write her own leads—after her turn as writer and co-star of the 2001 bisexual rom-com Kissing Jessica Stein, her neo-Annie Hall charm should’ve lifted her out of the art house. Instead she was doomed to guest spots, […]
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Paranoid Park
Paranoid Park Directed by: Gus Van Sant (Paramount)Gus Van Sant’s experimental films about sad, pretty, wandering boys have officially hit a wall. The director’s sad-boy streak started with the interminable Gerry (2002) and carried into 2003’s Elephant (its final third makes the first 40 minutes of kids walking around worth it) and the occasionally thrilling […]
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Just Buried treasure
Originally, Just Buried, Halifax filmmaker Chaz Thorne’s directorial debut, was “about this herbal supplement company—and the reason nobody was dying was because everyone was under 45 and insanely healthy,” Thorne said last August, before the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. “It was much broader and satirical. Where it ended up was a […]