It’s not as far from Nick and Relic to the new cinematic version of the epic poem Beowulf as you might think. Director Sturla Gunnarson was born in Iceland, where his new picture Beowulf & Grendel was shot. When he was seven he moved from the North Atlantic nation to Vancouver via ocean-going freighter and […]
Arts & Culture
Posted inArts + Music
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party/Madea’s Family Reunion
Michel Gondry’s Dave Chappelle’s Block Party forgoes the star worship and suspenseful developments of music documentaries. It brings the concert film down to earth — a feat so unassuming it’s at first difficult to identify the root of its charm. Expanding on Gondry’s innovative concepts for framing the subjects of his music videos, here, the […]
Posted inArts + Music
antenna’s up
Lucy Liu, best known for her work as an actor in films such as Charlie’s Angels and the Kill Bill volumes, will show off another side of her expression—her multimedia art. Her show antenna opens on Sunday at emotion picture gallery. There are connections between visual art and the film world for all involved: emotion […]
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Quitting Brokeback
The talk’s all wrong. Everybody’s saying that Brokeback Mountain is a brave movie—the brave gay cowboys, the chances the brave actors take by playing brave gay cowboys, the sheer nerve of the brave gay cowboy film to be showing on 1,600 screens across the continent (compared with 158 for Transamerica). The brave gay cowboy movie […]
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Head on
In a last-minute Brokeback setback, many analysts now predict the Best Picture Oscar will go to Crash. There’s also a stronger current against Crash now than when it opened. But it isn’t a case of controversy proving a movie’s worth. Disputes don’t arise over Crash’s complexity and motives; they’re about whether the film is spectacular […]
Posted inArts + Music
Date Movie
What do the makers of Date Movie think their audience wants from a film like this? What does said audience really expect? And what different circumstances would my life have to undergo for me to give this movie a positive review? These are the questions that plague my soul. Since much of what I do […]
Posted inArts + Music
Rick’s round-up
When Rick Moranis jumped back into the public consciousness late last year with the release of his Grammy nominated country/comedy disc The Agoraphobic Cowboy, it was as much of a shock to Moranis as it was the general population. The 52-year-old comedian, best known for his appearances in such films as Ghostbusters, Honey, I Shrunk […]
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Black’s anatomy
The Neptune Theatre has an “A” level. This is where the administrative offices are located, on the floor above the main foyer. There is a long, carpeted hall, its walls spotted with glossy promotional posters of past shows and interrupted by offices on both sides. At the hall’s end is the Pratt & Whitney studio, […]
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Postponement
February is a graveyard. From the perspective of a Hollywood studio head, now is the time to release all the movies that have tested poorly or in which he or she has little confidence. The studio marketing budgets for the past few months have gone towards winning the high-end product, the pictures that were released […]
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Firewall
Good actors can lend a movie credibility, charisma and merit, but they’re rarely dependable as a stamp of a quality product. Harrison Ford is a weird case. Through the ’80s and some of the ’90s, a Harrison Ford movie would imply a certain calibre of entertainment. He always made an effort to work with A-list […]
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Dance portraits
When Yvonne Ng was a young girl living in Singapore, her mother would play Chinese children’s folk songs on the piano and Ng would perform solo dances in front of a pretend audience, a small light mimicking a stage spotlight. “It sounds like we had a huge bonding thing—not really,” Ng says, laughing, “but someone […]
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That Thing he does
Daniel MacIvor likes the use of the word genesis. As co-writer and co-star of Whole New Thing, opening February 10 in Halifax, he’s well-aware of the good fortune that brought this project together. Working on the script with the movie’s director, Amnon Buchbinder, Whole New Thing was written in two weeks. In an industry where […]
