Take This Waltz, written and directed by Sarah Polley (Away From Her), is a peek at what it’s like to be a confused 28-year-old. Margot (Michelle Williams), married to Lou (Seth Rogen), falls in love with her neighbour, Daniel (Luke Kirby), shortly before her fifth wedding anniversary. Margot is a complex and endearing character, who […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
Ted
For his first feature, Seth MacFarlane doesn’t stray far from his wheelhouse with the tiresome Ted. A play on what happens when those magical tales of childhood wish fulfillment end, Ted finds slacker man-child Mark Wahlberg still palling around with the living teddy bear he wished for as a kid. Ted (voiced by MacFarlane) and […]
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People Like Us
Summer is the traditional time for superheroes and blockbusters, so it’s fitting that this middling melodrama would come from the writing team behind the Transformers franchise. Co-writers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman (who also directs in his feature debut) explore the bonds of family in the sweet but largely ineffectual People Like Us. When struggling […]
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Magic Mike
Magic Mike is an insider look at the lives of male strippers in Florida. (Apparently Magic Mike is loosely based on Tatum’s own early career—so clearly his talents lie elsewhere than acting.) For a movie about buff men de-robing and gyrating, it’s exceedingly boring with minimal plot development. Mike takes a 19-year-old stripper-in-training, Adam the […]
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Daytime Emmy win for local developer
Not satisfied with merely scaring the sweet bejeezus out of everybody, Halifax based interactive director Jason Nickel of Nickel Digital Experiences and director Jason Zada scored a sweet Daytime Emmy last weekend at the 39th Annual Daytime Entertainment Emmy Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in LA for their Facebook creepfest application Take This Lollipop, […]
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alFresco filmFesto’s #SummerofJohnny keeps rolling
alFresco filmFesto brought together an impressive selection of local musicians (Rich Aucoin, Cory Bowles, Margot Durling, Jenn Grant, Daniel Ledwell, John Mullane, In-Flight Safety, Mo Kenney, Natasha Peach, Gabrielle Papillon, Stewart Legere, Gordon Campbell, Luckas Cardona) on a sunny day in the park to record an ode to their 2012 alFresco filmFesto star, Johnny Depp. […]
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Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
A heartfelt road trip where everyone dies, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World offers a poignant take on armageddon. Plans to stop an asteroid have failed, leaving humanity with three weeks to embrace its worst impulses before impact. His friends shoot heroin at drunken orgies, but Dodge (a sullen Steve Carrell) prefers […]
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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
With a title like Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, one might expect a tongue-in-cheek movie, obsessed with its own one-joke irony. Refreshingly, and confusingly, director Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) treats the absurd premise with intense seriousness. Not that that makes it a good movie or anything. Based on the same-titled novel by screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith, AL:VK follows […]
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Brave
Red-headed Merida (Kelly Macdonald), the protagonist of the latest Pixar animated feature, is a refreshing take on a princess—a girl who’d rather shoot arrows than surrender to her fate and marry the spawn of a fellow Scottish clan to retain peace both in the kingdom and with her mother, Elinor (Emma Thompson). Merida starts trouble […]
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alFresco FilmFesto’s Deppinitely going off the Depp end
This is totally OLD internet news because everyone’s been tweeting about this for three minutes at least, but here it is anyway. The 12th annual alFresco FilmFesto has announced their summer series and heeeere’s Johnny!/they’re Depptomaniacs!/my favourite album is Minor Threat’s classic Out of Depp!/etc. (please feel free to add your best Johnny Depp puns […]
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Get in OUTeast
Pink champagne, popcorn and queer films take over the Neptune Studio Theatre for the OUTeast Queer Film Festival. by Veronica Simmonds “There are a lot of bad gay films out there,” Krista Davis says over drinks at Tom’s Little Havana. “And people will watch them because they are gay.” Jenna Dufton, sitting across from her, […]
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Rock of Ages
On one hand, Rock of Ages presents painfully lifeless covers of Journey. On the other hand, Tom Cruise sings into a woman’s butt. Little more than a feature-length Glee, this hair metal musical finds a small town girl, who was living in a lonely world, moving to LA to become a singer. Naturally, she falls […]
