It’s surprising to hear Jennifer Westfeldt say she hadn’t planned to direct. The three intimate relationship comedies she’s written are exactly the kind of small-scale auteur projects the festival circuit is built upon. In 2001, Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen wrote Kissing Jessica Stein, in which they play straight women who date each other. In 2006, […]
Film + TV
Posted inArts + Music
New Work in Progress blog from Eva Madden-Hagen
Eva Madden-Hagen is one of the Work In Progress bloggers here at The Coast.ca, and she has just put up a new post about her new experimental film POSE. Click here to read it. Madden-Hagen will give the final workshop in her AFCOOP Filmmaker in Residence series this Thursday, March 15, 7pm at The Atlantic […]
Posted inArts + Music
EXPOSED: “A Naked Screening of a Work in Progress”
As some of you who follow this blog will know, I’ve been working this winter on my latest experimental film project POSE. It’s about Dave Cullen, a local storyboard artist who has taken up nude modeling and the comparisons and contrasts lying therein. Part of the duties of the filmmaker in residency program at AFCOOP […]
Posted inArts + Music
Call for submissions: OUTeast Queer Film Festival
OUTeast, Atlantic Canada’s Queer Film Festival, is accepting film submissions for the 2012 OUTeast Film Festival, happening in Halifax in June, with programming, schedule and venue details to come soon. Here’s the deets, from the press release: “OUTeast is dedicated to presenting the very best in queer independent cinema from around the world to our […]
Posted inArts + Music
Page Eight
Pravda playwright and The Reader screenwriter David Hare returns to directing for the first time in years with this John le Carré-style British spy drama. Johnny Worricker (Bill Nighy) plays a straight-arrow MI5 man, hollow from too many hard years and a bad relationship with his ex-wives and daughter, but still with a firm grip […]
Posted inArts + Music
London River
In the days following the London bombings of July 7, 2005 (or 7/7 as it is known in the UK), Elizabeth (Brenda Blethyn) comes to the city from her Guernsey farm, searching for her daughter, while Ousmane (Sotigui Kouyaté), a West African Muslim, has come from France looking for his estranged son. Both are stunned […]
Posted inArts + Music
We Need to Talk About Kevin, you need to go see him
Director Lynne Ramsay creates a seamlessly claustrophobic account of a mother’s relationship with her disturbed son—an adaptation of Lionel Shriver’s novel so rich in colour and imagery, you wonder how this story could be told through words alone. Eva Khatchadourian (Tilda Swinton) gives up her globetrotting life to have a family with Franklin (John C. […]
Posted inArts + Music
Flawed John Carter
One can’t count a paucity of ideas among the numerous flaws in John Carter, an adaptation of an Edgar Rice Burroughs story. The action-adventure flick brims over with alien creatures, plotlines that feature space travel, romance and war and thematic nods to environmental destruction, politics and the Bible. This J.C. (get it?) is a former […]
Posted inArts + Music
Women Making Waves in Halifax
Kari Skogland is unique. She’s a Canadian, female filmmaker who would rather make Quentin Tarantino-inspired films than romantic comedies or indie dramas. Her last film, the 2008 political thriller Fifty Dead Men Walking starring Ben Kingsley, certainly shows her love for action. “I love blowing things up,” says Skogland. “I like bringing the female perspective […]
Posted inArts + Music
A Separation is brilliant
When Iranian director Asghar Farhadi spoke of his culture’s tradition of peace when accepting the 2012 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, people may not have realized his picture, A Separation, is actually quite critical of the society in which its set. The story of a middle-class couple in the process of divorcing, dealing with […]
Posted inArts + Music
Clever, watchable Friends With Kids
Jennifer Westfeldt broke out as the star and co-writer of the winning comedy Kissing Jessica Stein back in 2001, kicked around in TV before and after writing Ira & Abby in 2006, then hit casting gold with her directorial debut Friends With Kids, which features no less than four actors from Bridesmaids: Jon Hamm and […]
Posted inArts + Music
Game Jam 2012 commences!
The Halifax Game Jam is a gathering of game developers, artists, musicians, hackers, graphic designers, system admins, comic book artists and good old-fashioned creative people for a weekend-long game-development event. Game Jammers will converge at The Hub (1673 Barrington Street) on the evening of Friday March 2 where they’ll stay for 48 hours. Jammers will […]
