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He was unmistakably eye catching. There on my computer screen was a gun bearing goddess in a glittering mermaid shaped dress. His hair was wildly teased to the heavens. Divine’s photograph made everything else on my tumblr dashboard completely irrelevant. Was he a character? A murderer? A style icon? He was scary and beautiful. I had to know more about this man dressed in tulle. I found that I had something in common with Divine. In fact, I would argue that a part of Divine is in all of us. Born Harris Glenn Milstead, Divine is mostly known for his...
Given the success of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained (2012), I thought it might be interesting to go back and revisit Italian filmmaker Sergio Corbucci’s original treatment from 1966, but in short order found myself drawn further back to the earlier source materials that inspired it. Like an old fashioned hall of mirrors, Django Unchained is just the most recent image in a series of reflections that bounce back and forth all the way back to the early westerns of John Ford and the pulp novels of Dashiell Hammett. The original Django, released in 1966, was the first in a run...
When I started Toronto Film Scene I had two rules: we don’t write gossip and we don’t comment on death. What I meant was we will never discuss who Ellen Page is dating and we will never join the media circus of strange retrospectives and weirdly distant condolence letters when someone in the entertainment industry dies. But then, rules are meant to be broken and if there is someone to break it for it is Roger Ebert. On Wednesday, I was waiting for an interview to start when I saw on a local news channel that Ebert had posted about...
Much has been written recently about the state of romantic comedy films, or more specifically, the downfall of the “chick flick”. There are many out there who take issue with that term because it sounds degrading to material marketed to women, but I think that anger is misdirected. It should be targeted straight at the films themselves and how the female gender as a whole is being portrayed. Back in the ‘30s, a decade when some of the best screwball comedies were produced, the women were never the butt of the joke, they were smart, savvy and yearned for life...
Look at her: she’s dangerous, sexy, probably lying to you, and lookin’ good doing it. Who is she? Well, she’s probably Sharon Stone or Demi Moore, and it’s most likely around 1994. I’ve never quite been able to figure out why, but there seems to have been a spate of big-budget Sexy Dangerous Lady movies in the ’90s. The answer is probably that Hollywood likes to maul a trend to death as soon as it garners one mega-profitable hit (see, for example, the spate of “disaster” flicks that sprouted up in the 1970s; The Poseidon Adventure (1972) is a personal favourite of mine)....
I was raised by movie-buff parents who instilled in me a love of all things Disney. The films they watched as kids were on regular rotation in our household and we were usually first in line for any of their new releases. So when Editor-in-Chief Trista DeVries and I decided to focus on children’s film for January 2013, I started thinking about how very much I loved vintage live-action Disney films and how it might be a service-y thing to let people know that not all of Disney’s live action movies suck. Initially I got really excited at the...
For those who know me well, you’ll know I hover around in a perpetual Marxist-Feminist vigilance. I’m also a hopelessly cinephilic sucker for a cool-looking, nail-biting thriller of a film. What happens when the former meets the latter? Can’t… process. Too… many… contradictions. Here’s my list of this year’s Films That Were Awesome In Every Way Except For Their Weird Politics. The Dark Knight Rises Forgive me in advance for my reluctant recourse to that overexposed and overdetermined academic spectacle, Slavoj Žižek, but the man makes some very interesting points in his essay about the labour and class politics of...
…except for Joyful Noise. I really wanted to try to build my themed list around my love for the uber-cheesy, so-terrible-it’s-wonderful musical starring Dolly Parton, Queen Latifah and zombie Kris Kristofferson, but aside from that and my other favourite movie of the year, Moonrise Kingdom, there weren’t any fiction-based films that elicited much more than a “that was was pretty good” from me as I was walking out of the theatre. Looking back, it seems as though 2012 was the year of the documentary for me because as much as I liked The Avengers or Cabin in the Woods or...
A film is usually only as strong as its villain. Can you imagine James Bond facing off against Mr. Lazy, the only villain in the world who can’t get off the couch? Of course not! To make a great hero, they need a great nemesis, but there are some villains who manage to outshine their good counterpart. This is my list of the bad guys who made me leave the theatre laughing like a lunatic while I planned my next attempt at world domination. Please be aware that there are some extreme spoilers here. If you haven’t watched any of...
I’m a sucker for trailers. I’ve recently become very fascinated by them as pieces separate from the movies they’re showing. Some might call it a cheap thrill. I call it a simple pleasure. Using things like hip music, quotes of critical acclaim, and accumulated hype from a brilliantly executed marketing campaign might all seem like gimmicks, but they do serve a purpose, and if they make you say “ooo I want to see that!” (and don’t act like that hasn’t happened to you) then they’ve done their job. There can be some terrible movies that have fantastic trailers, and there...
While I am perfectly happy being 23, I don’t always like the movies that are targeted to my demographic. In lieu of that, here are five of my favourite films released in 2012 that were meant for people a lot younger or a lot older than I am, but I loved them anyway. ParaNorman I love anything on the spooky side, and I love animated films. Put these two together and I’ll have a great time (unless of course it is the terrible Hotel Transylvania). I loved the animation, I loved the message, and I loved the characters. This...
Every job has ups and downs and in the world of online film journalism, there are very few “downs”, which is to say, I have few complaints. If there was only one major issue with my job it would be that I often have to see movies that are outside of my tastes (and sometimes downright offensive to me). Everyone has genres or film subject matter that doesn’t always sit right with them, but in my case, it’s not a good enough excuse to skip out on seeing a movie since it’s my job to do exactly that. This year,...
