Meet the TFS Writers
It wasn’t until I started writing for Toronto Film Scene that I started seriously looking at who and what made me fall in love with film in the first place. It was then that I realised how much of an influence Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had on me as a kid. The earliest films I remember seeing that weren’t either a cartoon or less than 30 minutes long were Hook, Jaws, the original Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones, and Jurassic Park. My mom claims that when I was really young I tried to find George Lucas’ number in our...
When my dad showed me Jan Svankmajer’s Faust at the tender age of nine, I think he messed me up. Svankmajer, a legendary Czech director, makes surreal, creepy, stop-motion animated art films. Faust is the story of a man who sells his soul to Mephistopheles in order to, what, learn more? Be smarter? Immortality? Something like that. In any case, nine-year-olds probably don’t have the faculties necessary to digest the macabre existential experience that is Faust. Like most kids, I saw all the other stuff, too. Disney movies, Chevy Chase, Schwarzenegger, Mission Impossible. All the mainstream stuff everyone sees. I...
For three years now, I’ve had the privilege of working with the TFS team. It’s certainly been a uniquely fun experience for me to share my love of film and Toronto with this team of amazing individuals and with you, the readers. I consider myself a film enthusiast. With no scholastic background in the industry besides criticism and appreciation, I at least know movies. Or I know what I think, and in this day and age, conviction is everything. Writing for this website, I have discovered some rather important details about my character that it may be necessary to point...
A friend had once, over coffee, had pointed this out to me: “You’re a theatre major, who is trying to be a musician, and writes for a film publication…?” This proved that my scattered brain is much more obvious than I’d like it to be, but having extensions in multiple avenues such as these has been better for me at this stage of my life. The bonds I’ve formed in each area prove supportive in others. But I should really get to talking about film for once and save all the me stuff for that blog I also do here....
Here I am! When I was ten, my parents pressed pause and sent me to my room when Geena Davis’ character started to get raped in Thelma and Louise (1991). They, of course, didn’t know the scene was coming up, and they were just letting me hang out around the movie because I was in the room. But after that, I couldn’t quite figure out what the big secret was, and I never knew what I had missed in Thelma and Louise until I saw it again, many years later, with a much more thorough knowledge of the politics of...
It’s difficult to pinpoint the moment when my young self embraced movies with her whole heart. Always an arts and culture gal, I sang in my school choir, participated in high school theatrical productions, have always been a voracious reader, and had a more than passing interest in photography. Movies were simply my best-loved pastime, something I never thought seriously about until I began to peruse university course calendars. There, in the University of Toronto guide, was listed Cinema Studies. Wait a minute. Hold everything. You could actually study movies?! Move over, English Lit. Step aside, Philosophy. Movies are what...
To start off, can I just say that I’m super excited to be this month’s “meet the TFS writer”? I feel like Sally Field winning her Oscar (read: “you like me, right now, you like me!”). And while we are talking about the Oscars, I should probably tell you that I am obsessed with them. I know it is all Hollywood politics, but I can’t help but love the glamour and the excitement. I never complain about the length, the boring awards, or the wrong film winning. I just love it all. For the past six or so years, I’ve...
For most of my childhood, I was a casual consumer of cinema. I didn’t take it too seriously. All that changed when I was 16 years old, and my father took me to a screening at Cinematheque Ontario of Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad. As a kid, I loved goofball comedies like Police Academy (I still own the whole series on VHS) and kid-friendly fantasies like The NeverEnding Story. The other girls were in love with boy-warrior Atreyu. I had a crush on his pink pal, the Luck Dragon Falcor (seriously, he’s cute). I liked film, but I hadn’t...
This new monthly series will be an introduction to the various staff members that work at TFS. I have the pleasure of starting it off, so a proper introduction is in order. My name is Will Brownridge, and I’m a movie addict. I like to think it’s the reason that I was hired to write reviews for TFS. I don’t have any degrees, and I haven’t even taken any film courses in school, but I have a passion for film. That’s something I’ve had since I was a little kid. When I was only four years old, I started watching...
