The Weather Man finds director Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean) in Alexander Payne (Sideways) mode. Verbinski’s lack of distinct style makes such excursions possible, and this one mostly works. He’s better at being Payne than Steven Spielberg. Pitched between empathy and fatalism, the title character is minor Chicago celebrity David Spritz (Nicolas Cage), who’s […]
Arts & Culture
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Campbell’s soup
If you are a B-movie fanatic, chances are you’ve run into Bruce Campbell at least once in your movie-renting career. The 47-year-old actor, who is best known as Ashley J. “Ash” Williams from the Evil Dead trilogy, has appeared in over 50 films, including such classics as Maniac Cop, Lunatics: A Love Story and the […]
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Disaster Drama
It began with a bump. A big bump. On Thursday, October 23, 1958 at 8:06pm, a series of shock waves thundered through the Number 2 Colliery of the Springhill Coal Mine, creating an intense, localized earthquake that was felt 23 kilometres away. One hundred seventy-four miners were trapped or crushed as floors smashed into ceilings […]
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Dreamer, Doom
Only occasionally does Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story stretch credibility. Its problems aren’t its claims to truth so much as its letdowns of genre. The sentiment in a story of friendship between a girl and a horse is so expected it needs ways to hook the audience. Writer-director John Gatins is left keeping his […]
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Niro and far
Shelley Niro sounds wiped. Calling from her home on the Mohawk reservation Six Nations, near Brantford, Ontario, it’s not surprising; she just attended the busy four-day imagineNATIVE media arts and film festival in Toronto. There she screened her new 57-minute film of connected shorts, Suite: Indian. Niro, a member of the Turtle Clan, only had […]
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The River wild
It was on the second day of shooting the thriller The River King that the camera operator and an assistant went through the ice. The crew, set up near Meander River, had been assured the intense winter cold of 2004 had made the river safe to stand on. The director, Nick Willing, an Englishman, had […]
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The Big Hit
If there is such a thing as a higher being, she is probably smiling down at the North Street Church right now. Not because of an enlightened sermon or confession of juicy sins, but because of the loud movements and joyful sounds that are echoing off its peeling walls. For the past two months, the […]
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Elizabethtown
Cameron Crowe leaves no doubt that Elizabethtown is a personal film. The protagonist, like his leads in Say Anything… and Almost Famous, is a stand-in for the director — utterly without vice. His name is Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom). He’s a shoe designer who loses his job shortly before learning his father has died. On […]
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Funny boy
Shaun Majumder’s a funny guy. Which is lucky, because his singing career won’t be taking off anytime soon. After missing his first few interview calls, Majumder answers his cell phone singing “I’m a loser, I’m a big fat loser.” The sentiment is endearing, the tunefulness debatable. But with a full slate of acting, stand-up and […]
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Talk of the town
Kirsten Dunst is pissed. As Dunst, in line behind writer-director Cameron Crowe and in front of actor Orlando Bloom, enters a stuffy room in Toronto’s InterContinental Hotel to take her appointed seat, she is bombarded by the flashes and weapon-sized lenses of dozens of wire photographers. “Chris-ten! Chris-ten!” they scream, looking for a photo that […]
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Domino
Tony Scott’s Domino takes the high contrast visuals, flashy edits, mobile subtitles and seasick camera work of his Man on Fire to the next extreme. It’s a mainstream movie stylized to the point where it’s no longer mainstream. That’s part of its non-conformist kick. The sort of true story of bounty hunter Domino Harvey (Keira […]
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Thumbsucker blues
Mike Mills is 39 years old. At 18 he moved cross-county, from Santa Barbara, California to New York City, New York, where he attended The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He was a bad student, but he could draw. Art school led to an internship with influential design company M & […]
