In any community it’s nice to know that somebody’s got your back. For women in the screen industry, it’s Women in Film and Television (WIFT). Formed in 1973 in Los Angeles, WIFT was a response to the glass ceiling that women in Hollywood’s film and TV industry were trying to break through. Female producers, writers […]
Empire 8 Park Lane
Posted inArts + Music
Ugliness looks beautiful in Biutiful
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu foregoes the multiple-plotline approach he employed in previous films like Babel and 21 Grams, but that doesn’t mean Biutiful is any less complex. There’s still plenty of plot, and although it’s essentially a character study, the character—a dying street hustler (Javier Bardem) and father of two who can communicate with the dead—is […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Centre for Art Tapes harvests bright ideas
For 22 years the Centre for Art Tapes has been helping the creative and curious bring their brainstorms to life and experiment in a new medium. At this year’s screening, Alison Creba and eight other scholarship recipients will share their hard work in the form of documentary, animation, experimental video and online interactive art. Creba […]
Posted inBest of Halifax
Best Movie Theatre
Seventy-four years old and still the favourite cinema in town, so kudos to Empire Theatres for giving the place a facelift this summer, with fresh paint perking up the facade. Known primarily as an art house, it’s the perfect room to watch a new Woody Allen picture (Midnight in Paris did gangbusters there this summer) […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Empire Theatre Ticket Prices Go Up and Down
With Iron Man 2 opening wide last week, the summer blockbuster season has begun in local cinemas and across North America. In the next few weeks we can expect a deluge of marketing to prep us all for that new take on Robin Hood, a second Sex & The City movie and more Shrek than […]
Posted inArts + Music
Don’t resist Norweigan war film, Max Manus
With an unoriginal tone that reflects the usual austerity of WWII dramas, Norwegian film Max Manus nonetheless has a good story and tells it well. Portraying the true story of resistance fighter Max Manus (Aksel Hennie), famous for his death-defying escape from Gestapo clutches and his work as a saboteur of several Nazi war ships, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Egoyan in the city
We’re used to seeing Toronto disguised as another city. In Chloe, Atom Egoyan’s new film, Toronto is almost a character unto itself. It’s shot in a way to accentuate the city’s modern lines, not hide them. “I’m really aware of it as a filmmaker, how much Toronto will actually act like a prostitute,” says Egoyan […]
Posted inArts + Music
Let the Right One In
The writer Douglas Winter once said that horror is not a genre, it is an emotion. It’s a fitting sentiment to apply to the beautiful Swedish film Let the Right One In, which takes a played-out horror trademark—the vampire love story—and infuses it with great tenderness and depth. On paper, the plot is deceptively simple. […]