Hot Docs 2011
When I first read the synopsis for Bob and the Monster, a documentary that chronicles rocker Bob Forrest’s meteoric rise to fame with punk band Thelonious Monster, his descent into drug addiction and subsequent recovery, I honestly rolled my eyes. Isn’t that a little over done? Hasn’t everyone seen at least three of these docs? Despite my hesitation, I slipped it into my DVD player. For the next 85 minutes, I sat riveted as the story of Bob, punk-rock, drug addiction, and recovery unfolded on the screen. What could have been a cliched story was instead both a brilliant rock...
Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney definitely works some magic with the footage that Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters shot during their LSD-fueled trip across the USA from Kesey’s farm in Oregon to New York City for the 1964 World Fair in the psychedelic bus “Further”. Unfortunately, nobody could ever get the sound to sync up on the footage Kesey & co shot, so they never ended up making the movie they intended out of it....
Stéphanie Lanthier’s film takes its title from a slang term for foreigners – “fros”. Lumberfros are immigrants who work as brush cutters in Quebec’s forests. In this all-male world, immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Africa work alone in the bush on quadrants of land that they are in charge of clearing, and live together in makeshift villages for the season....
There is a moment when everyone falls in love with the music of Ron Sexsmith. For director Douglas Arrowsmith it was 1994, when he heard a radio broadcast of Sexsmith live from the Black Sheep Inn in Wakefield, Quebec. “I had kind of been on a search for a contemporary who possessed lyric and melody and guitar the way he did. I hadn’t found it until then.” Six years later, Arrowsmith finally met Sexsmith after a show at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, UK. “Even just in talking with him there was more confirmation that this story wasn’t going to...
A journey through one man’s troubled family history, Our Persian Rug made its North American Premiere this weekend as part of the International Spectrum lineup at Hot Docs. Director Massoud Bakhshi narrates a history of events as told to him by various family members, in an attempt to sort the truth from the lies....
In the creative world, there is one sin that is reviled above all others ““ selling out. But just what is a struggling auteur filmmaker to do to get his quirky little movie made considering the mounting cost of the supposedly independent film? Well, he could give up a tiny bit of creative control and allow a little product placement into his latest oeuvre, but a real artist would never do that, now would he?...
Dolphin Boy tells the intriguing story of Morad, a teenage boy who was left in an almost vegetative state after being abducted and beaten. Two weeks before being committed to a mental institution Morad’s doctor recommends a radical treatment: Dolphin Therapy. Morad’s father sells everything and takes his son to the coast, remaining by his side during his miraculous three year recovery....
The most wonderful thing about a documentary film is that it provides viewers with a “look behind the curtain” to see things that are normally inaccessible to the public. Conan O’Brien is a normally private person. He does wonderful work that is hilarious, slightly off-colour and completely harmless at the same time, but rarely does the audience see what he’s like when the TV cameras stop rolling. Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop provides an answer to this question: he’s the same....
This Week from Grolsch Film Works
The Dark Knight Rises is without a doubt the most anticipated major release of 2012. In a little over ten years, Christopher Nolan has gone from exciting indie filmmaker (Following…
Latest Reviews
18-year-old Claire (Tatiana Maslany) is in the midst of her second attempt at Grade 13…
Winnipeg born stand-up comic, actor, and director David Steinberg continues to be one of the…
In 2010, three industrious movie lovers attempted a feat that seems like a pipe dream…
