Stan Lee, the creator of Marvel Comics superheroes such as Spider-Man, The Hulk and The Fantastic Four, claims he and artist Jack Kirby wanted the X-Men to be different. He says that the X-Men were intended to be allegorical, a super-heroic symbol for the civil-rights movement in the ’60s. They were mutants, born with genetic […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
The Da Vinci Code
Nothing is more vital in film reviewing than the necessity of standing up for the integrity of a good movie other critics are trashing. Early reports of critics hissing at The Da Vinci Code at the Cannes Film Festival set off alarms of highbrow distaste for American blockbusters. (The Dan Brown novel is just too […]
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Silver screen summer
June A Prairie Home Companion (directed by Robert Altman) Eighty-year-old Altman had director Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights) as an insurance-required understudy on this project about the last broadcast of a beloved country music radio show. Expect the usual exquisite ensemble cast, the overlapping dialogue and rambling narrative. Nacho Libre (Jared Hess) Hess follows his […]
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Poseidon
As kids, the first mystique of movies was that they’re something bigger than we are. It’s mandatory to believe in the thrill of giant spectacle to get anything out of Poseidon. At most basic levels of character and drama, it’s a subpar work of fiction. There’s no reason to see it on DVD or in […]
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Monster men
Thomas Harvey and Josef Beeby are guerilla filmmakers with a dream, a video camera and the support of friends and family who will go far to see them make their movies. They met at Halifax Grammar School in grade seven and bonded over their love of film, especially low-budget straight-to-video horror. “There’s a special quality […]
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Ode to bondage and joy
Bettie Page is being photographed. The photographer—a police officer by day—speaks to her kindly, and she has not seen much kindness lately. He’s clicking his shutter quickly, directing Bettie’s facial expressions. “Give me ‘scared,’” he says. Bettie opens her mouth wide, mock-screaming in terror. “Give me ‘pert,’” he says. Bettie thinks about it for a […]
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Akeelah and the Bee
Don’t be put off by the Starbucks Entertainment credit at the beginning of Akeelah and the Bee. Writer and director Doug Atchinson’s personalized genre movie evades corporate mentality. It’s the kind of assured work that should be a filmmaker’s breakthrough, but is so good-natured it’s at risk of going unrecognized. After all, where’s the edge […]
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Flight plan
On September 11, 2001, at 10:03am, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Forty-four on board died. United 93, the movie about that flight, was released last Friday, 1,670 days later. It is, of course, not too soon to release a movie about the fourth plane to crash that day. United 93 is the […]
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Brick
There’s growing attention on the teenage noir Brick. The low-budget debut (shot for only $500,000) of writer and director Rian Johnson has been anticipated as the next big thing since its 2005 Sundance premiere. It’s easy to foresee impressionable filmgoers holding it up as definitive, but Johnson doesn’t deliver much beyond the initial novelty. @body […]
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No kidding
If Ellen Page’s new movie Hard Candy was transformed into a sugary confection, it would be one of those giant sour balls that you must commit to before putting in your mouth. When Hard Candy premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last January, Ugg boots stormed out of the theatre, spreading anger across […]
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King of the Hill
Brian Howald is a busy guy. He’s in Toronto, in transit from a meeting to a screening and he only has a few minutes to speak. To make matters worse, he’s having to dodge nosy questions down the line from Halifax about this new IMAX project he’s working on. “I don’t know,” he says, hesitating. […]
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Neil Young: Heart of Gold
It takes strong vision to find new ways of shooting a concert movie, but Jonathan Demme does it in his outstanding documentary Neil Young: Heart of Gold. Filmed in a Nashville auditorium over two nights, Demme doesn’t give us any crowd shots. The usual scope and spectacle of filmed concerts is done away with for […]
