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The Viscera Film Festival comes to the Projection Booth tonight and some of the shorts being screened include Nursery Crimes, a twisted take on the nursery rhymes we all know directed by Laura Whyte, and Together, a mind-bending tale of a man annoyed by his upstairs neighbour directed by Gigi Romero. Ranging from hilarious to stomach churning, every avenue of the horror genre is covered. From abduction to zombies, these female filmmakers show that women can be just as frightening and bloody as men. It’s hard to pick just a few short films to focus on when each one is...
Last week we clued you in to the Canadian Film Centre’s Short Dramatic Film Program and the fact that every year, they churn out a whole new crop of promising filmmakers and more importantly, great short films that very often make the film festival rounds, introducing some of the country’s best filmmakers to the worldwide landscape. With over 150 CFC shorts to choose from, it’s hard to know exactly where to start delving in. Here are some of the best of the bunch: 1. Evelyn The Cutest Evil Dead Girl (2002) One of the more famous of the CFC shorts, this...
Now that we’ve gotten past the formality of those “other awards” it’s time to get down to business on some meaningful trophies.
Canada has never cranked out as many films at such a high level as it has over the past few years, and the ability of the most successful of those titles – films like Incendies, Polyetechnique and Away from Her – to permeate into the National popular consciousness shows that the public is starting to get how great our National Cinema has become....
On a blustery Monday afternoon, a sizable crowd converged on a sound stage nestled in the heart of Pinewood Toronto Studios for a Stereoscopic 3D Production Seminar hosted by the Screen Industries Research and Training Centre (SIRT). The event made big promises about addressing all aspects of 3D production, from covering the details of production and equipment, to presenting a market overview, to addressing the creative possibilities of using 3D—and then delivered on each of those promises....
Four days of cosplay, gaming, autograph signings, Q&As, workshops and shopping have come to a close. Fan Expo 2011 occupied two levels of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre with an added day and much improved logistics from the fiasco that was last year’s event. First, a couple of notes about the expo before any of the geeky details. It was moved back to the MTCC’s south building, which offers a significantly larger show floor as well as easily accessible conference rooms. Occupancy was based on entry to the building, not the individual levels, which means goers did not have to...
Running throughout the month of August at TIFF Bell Lightbox will be a retrospective on some of the best of Italian Neorealist filmmaking. Most of the attention this summer has been on the Fellini retrospective but these masterworks of Italian Neorealism laid the foundation for the New Wave of European filmmakers of the late 1950′s and 1960′s. Italian Neorealism doesn’t have the fan base that Italian and French New Wave filmmaking has and many of the films being shown have rarely been seen by many cinephiles, so this is a great opportunity to see these unique films....
Last Wednesday, I again had the privilege of chatting with Gordon Smith, a special effects pioneer and subject of the Bodies of Work retrospective playing at the Revue Cinema. In the previous installment of my three part series, Smith regaled me with the tale of his beginnings in the industry and his early years followed by a viewing of Oliver Stone’s JFK. This time, we discussed his career as one of the best in the business....
On Wednesday, March 16, I met one of film’s true creative geniuses, Gordon Smith. The Revue Cinema is showing Bodies of Work, a retrospective of three films in which Smith provided the special effects: JFK, X-Men and Jacob’s Ladder. Each film is accompanied by a display of creations built by Smith for the movies. He was good enough to sit with me before each film to recall his outstanding career. On our first of three talks, I was excited to meet this legend and wanted to know how Smith’s career started and how that led to his company FXSmith....
When Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. was first released in 1927, it received mixed reviews and was not a success at the box office. Of course, time has a way of changing perceptions and the film is now regarded as one of the great silent film classics. Steamboat Bill Jr. was featured this week at the Revue Cinema as part of its monthly “Silent Sundays” series. As with all screenings in this series, the audience received a taste of programmer and local film historian Eric Veillette’s unique films from his personal archives to start the afternoon. On this Sunday, he...
Good news, everybody! Martin Scorsese’s back and he didn’t bring Leonardo DiCaprio along with him this time! The Scorsese-produced HBO series Boardwalk Empire premiered last night, and while it’s probably not reasonable to judge the entire series by its $50-million pilot, the only episode of the series directed by the Marty himself laid the foundation for what could end up being yet another triumph for a network that has made a name for bringing cinematic-quality programming to the small screen....
Last time, Michael discussed the merits of having a summer movie season. Now, there are some counter arguments to all the points enumerated thus far that deserve mentioning. For one, I am presupposing in all this that the summer of 2010 is distinctive in as much as that it is not, which is to say, that every other summer before it has been memorable for its cinematic output, regardless of the quality, and conversely that this summer will be remembered for its lack thereof. It may be stated, therefore, that there never were good summers but those which, in our...
Last time, Michael discussed the seeming inverse relationship between the weather and the quality of summer movies. Then there was the ultimate failure to launch, called the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The subtitle alone seemed to imply further adventures in the future that would require distinction from this, but now that path seems most unlikely. Jerry Bruckheimer had rolled the dice and entered into that most dangerous of terrains — the video game movie — in the pursuit of a second great swash-buckling franchise. Unfortunately for him, lightning did not strike twice. He apparently failed to understand...
