The summer’s usual reboots (The Mummy, Spider-Man), second sequels (Despicable Me, Cars) and franchise-continuing (Planet of the Apes, Transformers) remain in full effect, but you can still piece together a worthy alternative moviegoing experience in amongst the tentpoles. As always, Halifax dates can vary. June 15-18 OUTeast Queer Film Fest Now in its sixth year, […]
Movies
Posted inNews + Opinion
Snow storm cleanup dicking over Valentine’s Day plans
Getting dumped on Valentine’s Day sucks, but getting dumped on by the blizzard that shut down Atlantic Canada this week is making it difficult for couples that do want to celebrate their love. Brian George and his fiance had booked Halifax Transit’s Access-A-Bus for their dinner reservations tonight at enVie in the north end. But […]
Posted inArts + Music
Video Difference’s iconic flicks get a second curtain
The Video Difference era ended months ago, as the Quinpool Road destination rented its last DVD on August 15. With the Halifax landmark closing, there was worry its impressive vaults of indie, Canadian and old-school movie offerings would be lost (or, at least, scattered amongst private collections). Coast writer Tara Thorne chronicled the store’s credits […]
Posted inArts + Music
Jason Eisener will battle some New York City Outlaws
Five years after Hobo With A Shotgun blew us away, Dartmouth’s Jason Eisener is gearing up to deliver the New York City Outlaws to the big screen. Entertainment Weekly reports that Eisener will be directing the feature-length adaptation of the little-known ’80s comic book by Robert Hussar and Ken Landgraf. The five-issue series follows a […]
Posted inLifestyle
The feminist guide to summer screens
Streaming now (CRAVE) Casual This sleeper dramatic comedy, now in its second season, stars the great Michaela Watkins as Valerie, an older divorced woman trying to navigate a drastically different dating world, and Tara Lynne Barr as her sex-positive teenage daughter. Airing now (Lifetime) UnREAL The eternally underappreciated Constance Zimmer teams up with Shiri Appleby […]
Posted inLifestyle
Thelma & Louise—still settling, 25 summers on
Thelma & Louise was released on May 24, 1991, a modestly budgeted buddy-road movie from the director of Blade Runner and first-time screenwriter Callie Khouri, who wrote the script in longhand. It was a simple story: Thelma (Geena Davis) and Louise (Susan Sarandon), headed for a weekend away from their disappointing lives, stop at a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Top 10 movies from 2015
Amy If you had any wistful feelings about Amy Winehouse’s talent falling from the earth, they likely turned to white-hot rage after viewing Asif Kapadia’s exploration of the life leading up to her overdose. A puppet of her father and her husband, Winehouse’s onscreen personality turns from healthy spitfire to skeletal mess in a slow […]
Posted inArts + Music
Speed racer
“It feels like a kid just dumped its toys into a sandbox,” says Jason Eisener of this summer’s most enduring hit, Mad Max: Fury Road. “And Turbo Kid felt like someone dumped their toys into a sandbox—and there were toys from Masters of the Universe, GI Joe and Jem and the Holograms.” Eisener, away from […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Calling all heroes
Video Difference is holding a too-good-to-be-true sort of contest that you’d be foolish to not do. How’s that for a sell? It goes like this. Open your Hotmail, AOL, whichever your chosen platform for email is and send videodiff@eastlink.ca your name, address, organization name—which can be your office, glee club, auxiliary guild, ultimate frisbee team, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Terry Gilliam Top Clips
Three questions from Monty Python and The Holy Grail, with Terry Gilliam as The Bridge Keeper. From Brazil, The Ministry of Information, a wonderfully comic yet accurate vision of bureaucracy in inaction. From The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, with two Canadian actors on board, John Neville in the title role and a very young Sarah […]
Posted inArts + Music
Precious a hard and worthy effort
This year’s steam-gathering Oscar contender has the grit and guts Slumdog Millionaire lacked—there are no free-falls into shitholes, because you’re already in one. Precious Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is a functionally illiterate Harlem teen pregnant with her father’s second child. Her mother (Mo’Nique) is an emotionally and physically abusive terror collecting welfare on Precious and her […]
Posted inArts + Music
Impressive and familiar Love & Savagery
Love & Savagery takes place in 1969 Ballyvaughan, in Ireland. Newfoundlander, poet and geologist Michael (Allan Hawco) is there to look at rocks, though swiftly becomes interested in local barmaid Cathleen (Sarah Greene). But Cathleen’s bound for the nunnery and the village’s highly protective men-folk don’t take kindly to some outsider distracting fair Cathleen so […]