Read This
Lately it’s difficult to get through a day without crossing paths with Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight fan fiction turned New York Times best seller, whether it’s a handful of commuters boldly reading it on the streetcar or fans discussing whether Ryan Gosling or Michael Fassbender would make a better Christian Grey in the upcoming movie version. The way the book has dominated pop culture, one would think that it’s the first bit of erotic literature to make the jump from dirty little secret to book club selection to big screen. Not so. Cinema has a long and storied...
There are some things in life that I enjoy more than others, a great mystery or conspiracy, the gory madness of zombies, and the music of The Beatles being chief among them. Author and musician Alan Goldsher must have known this because his book, Paul Is Undead: The British Zombie Invasion, manages to take all of my favourite things and put them together as he explores the life — and death — of The Beatles. The book begins where the true-life story of The Beatles ends, the assassination of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman, although the outcome is entirely...
In 2003, I brought my sister and father to see Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World with me. Halfway through the film, the two of them leaned over to whisper in my ear that they were going to leave, and that they’d meet me after the movie was over. As we discussed their opinions over a drink afterward, they informed me that they were confused by both the film’s look and intentions. This is the conundrum that is Guy Maddin: he is inarguably among the strangest of contemporary filmmakers, and yet his work draws upon (even recycles) some...
3-D film is all the rage these days, not least because the Hollywood superstructure decided to invest heavily in the production and distribution of this technology. “This is it!” they say, “3-D is here to stay this time!” “You’re gonna love it!” But as Ray Zone thoroughly demonstrates in Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film 1838-1952 inventors, technologists, filmmakers, and production studios have been chasing that stereoscopic dragon for a long, long time. For over 25 years, Ray Zone has been perhaps the world’s most passionate advocate for 3-D as an art form. He’s made numerous 3-D works,...
Our new column, Read This, is a forum for us to write about something we’ve read that has something to do with movies ““ it could be a short story or a comic book, a newspaper article on 3D animation technology, or the unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise. Really, anything goes. As an avid reader, I volunteered for the inaugural column, and decided to read Marie Phillips’ novel Gods Behaving Badly because 1) the film version is currently in post-production, and 2) it’s not a dystopian teen novel ““ although I have a great affection for them, there’s just a...
