Cover Stories
Plenty of documentaries have been created to showcase some of the worlds biggest bands, but how often do we get the chance to follow their biggest fans? Director Michael Corbiere knew he had the perfect fan to follow, his friend Mark Baker. Mark is a huge fan of U2, even building a ‘shrine’ to the band in his basement. After winning a car in a contest held at the radio station 102.1 The Edge, Mark’s girlfriend bought him a personalized license plate that reads U2BROTHR. Easily one of the biggest U2 fans around, Mark received plenty of friendly teasing from...
If Hollywood’s good at anything, it’s perpetuating stereotypes. This is especially true in dealing with how the LGBT community is viewed. Over the years, we’ve seen that the fashion-loving, catty comment-wielding “gay best friend” is a mainstay of the romantic comedy and that all transgendered people can be identified because they dress in over-the-top drag or are in constant turmoil of some sort. This is problematic because the moving image has proven to be an effective carrier of ideology, especially if it hits the mainstream. These representations only reinforce irrational and outright false beliefs about the LGBT community. The one...
Hollywood has always been pretty good at stereotyping. In some cases, this kind of works for them, because grand stories with overarching universal themes sometimes need characters who are kind of “general”, so that they can be easy to like or dislike, clear-cut heroes and villains who audiences can immediately relate to. Of course, while these kinds of generalizations work well in, say, a fairy tale or fable, they fall short of being satisfying when you’re supposedly depicting real life. Still, Hollywood does tend to do it often, and there are still many stereotypical characters and plot points that mainstream...
When we go to the movies, we see complex characters carefully crafted by screenwriters, studio executives, producers, directors and actors, but what makes it to the screen, and what it says about that person and their traits can have meaning beyond what we see. This has been true of the depiction of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people throughout the history of cinema. One of the most maligned groups throughout the 20th Century, queer cinema has had a long road. Here is a brief history of the path it has taken since the birth of the medium. Sissies on screen...
In March of this year, Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Amy Pascal made headlines for a speech she gave at the LA Gay & Lesbian Center gala. She talked about how the industry needs to start scrutinizing its depiction of LGBT characters in film and television. She said, “How about next time, when any of us are reading a script and it says words like fag, or faggot – homo – dyke – take a pencil and just cross it out”. Her comments caused quite a bit of controversy with calls of “censorship!” being the chief complaint amongst her detractors. Let’s...
I am not a particularly imposing person. I’ve been told I have a warm smile and people just seem to be able to open up and talk to me. So when Shawney Cohen stepped into the Hot Docs industry lounge for our interview it was a surprise to me that he seemed to be a bit unsettled by my presence. It wasn’t actually me, of course, but the idea of talking to a journalist about his film, The Manor, which is an intimate portrait of his family who also happens to own a strip club (the titular “manor”) in Guelph,...
Film can be one of the most inspiring forms of art in the world. The mere act of watching a movie can ignite extreme passion in an individual. Think of all the actors and directors in the world. Surely it was watching films that inspired them to create their own, or to join the industry and become a part of the process. Look at the endless supply of blogs, websites, and forums, created for the sole purpose of sharing an opinion on the film world. I had originally pitched this article as a post about my girlfriend and I watching...
Shocking as it may seem, not everyone is as plum in love with documentaries as the thousands of people who flock to Hot Docs each and every year. Despite the gigantic popularity of reality TV, moviegoers can’t seem to make the leap from watching blurred reality on the small screen to actual real life on the big screen – unless, of course, they’re the sort of “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” films made by Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock. Personally, I think that most people just don’t know where to start with documentaries – there are just...
There are few genres of film that are as appealing to a wide audience as documentaries, because of course, documentaries reflect real life. Docs can be about Korean stunt action schools, the people in terrible movies, uncovering the story behind grizzly murders, comedians living with disease, crossword enthusiasts, the makers of video games, agro-funding, the irreparable damage done to the environment and so much more. Documentaries have the ability to light us up, spark interest in new things and people and present an argument that will hit its mark and potentially affect change. The documentary has been around as long...
When we think about a woman’s place in the world in the dawning of the twentieth century we don’t often think of them as having a lot of power over their own circumstances. Without the ability to vote or to further their own education, they were often defined by who they married and the home they kept (for an excellent illustration of this see TV’s Downton Abbey). As with any rule however, there’s aways an exception and in the case of women who forged their own path, there’s no better example than Mary Pickford. Born right here in Toronto in...
It’s easy to dismiss the idea of the “Canadian bombshell” because our film industry is relatively young, and perhaps we don’t have the Greta Garbos, Marilyn Monroes or Ava Gardners of Hollywood’s silver screen era. Let’s not even talk about the semi-secretly Canadians, actresses like Rachel McAdams, or Battlestar Galactica‘s sexiest Cylon, Tricia Helfer. Let’s just confine the conversation to Canucks who continue to support the homegrown industry even as their careers have blossomed and perhaps taken them south of the border. For every hot babe archetype that exists in Hollywood or in our collective imaginations, there’s a prime Canadian example. We’re...
It’s a fact. The French Canadian film industry booms, while the English Canadian film industry limps and struggles. Speak to any English Canadian filmmaker and you’ll encounter much hand-wringing, hair-pulling, and just flat out sorrow. What’s really going on here? Why do French Canadian films thrive when English Canadian films do not? Does French Canada just care more than English Canada? Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes… and no. It’s not that French Canada cares more – it’s that French Canadian films make more money. A brief history of Canadian filmmaking Canada prominently figured in some very early filmmaking. The Lumiere...
