Reinventing the Rogue Lately it has been difficult to decipher what makes a good character in comics. This is mainly due to writers trying to make a character the polar opposite of what they are. Superman is evil, Iron Man a complete buffoon, and so on. My main problem with Marvel’s core Spider-Man title has […]
How long would you wait for your big break? And if you knew it would never come unless you took drastic measures like, say, becoming a vampire, would you? Do sex and drugs really make rock ‘n roll? According to Rob Stefaniuk’s tongue-in-cheek film, rock music is nothing without some kind of drug or in […]
Alan Jones joins us once again for a guest review, this time for Jonah Hex. Alan is president of the University of Toronto Cinema Studies Students Union (CINSSU). This review and many others can be read on the official CINSSU blog . The American Western has fallen in stature considerably since its days as a […]
Identical twins have always played a large part in film fantasies both titillating and frightening. It’s no surprise that this genetic and reproductive anomaly is fascinating, and Scooter Corkle takes advantage of this fascination in his film Chloe and Attie . Identical twin sisters Jacqueline and Joyce Robbins play the title characters. Chloe looks after […]
Short films are (almost) always amazing and inspiring. It is much more challeging to make a short film, as filmmakers have less time to develop a story and therefore must be as minimalist and economical as possible. Here is part one of my reviews of selected shorts from this year’s festival. Have you ever wondered […]
There is a moment near the end of Splice when you see the creature in all its frightening glory, this odd hybrid with just enough human to have won your empathy for the majority of the film, and it is about to exact its revenge for mistreatment, when you finally understand what Mary Shelley was […]
It seems that every twenty years or so, Hollywood decides it wants to take on the English folk hero Robin Hood. From the Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn era, to the Connery/Hepburn duo of Robin and Marian and more recently the dubious-yet-classic Kevin Costner outing, Robin Hood is no stranger to the big screen. I’m […]
Celebrities have their picture taken on an almost constant basis. Often by fans, sometimes by professionals, but only occasionally by certain photographers who have a knack for showing a side of the celebrity that is never seen on camera, often they can capture the loneliness that comes from lack of anonymity. For rock stars in […]
The Magnetic Fields are an eclectic but fairly obscure American indie rock band that has been recording for nearly twenty years. While not a household name, they have a fairly devoted following, and many musicians, such as Peter Gabriel, count leader Stephin Merritt as one of the great contemporary American songwriters. In Strange Powers: Stephin […]
New York City has seen its share of artistic revolutions, though any kind of positive revolution might have seemed impossible in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The city was crippled by massive debt with no help from the federal government, and whole neighbourhoods were urban war zones as countless buildings were left abandoned or […]
Before the days of iPods, televisions, and even radio or mass print publications, humans entertained themselves and each other by telling stories. In small groups around campfires, communities would tell each other the stories of their past and present. Fastforward to the 21st century, and Argentinean filmmaker Daniel Burmeister seems to have resurrescted this spirit. […]
How can a movie be obnoxious and charming at the same time? I don’t know. But somehow Iron Man 2 manages to be both an over the top summer blockbuster and a gleefully charismatic and funny film. With the origin story out of the way, Jon Favreau’s sequel can move into new territory. The film […]
Every filmmaker dreams of meeting their favourite director. So when aspiring filmmaker David Sieveking had the opportunity, he begins his film David Wants to Fly with a trip to the United States to hear David Lynch speak about his passion for Transcendental Meditation, a movement founded by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi—who also inspired, among others, […]
It’s appropriate that I am writing this review on May 4th, also known as Star Wars Day—May the Fourth be with you…! *groan* Before I talk about The People vs. George Lucas , let me first qualify my review with a short preamble about my relationship with Mr. Lucas. May 18th, 1999. It’s raining, it’s […]
It has been my long-held belief that everyone in North America should work at least one minimum wage job in their life, for a minimum of six months. Not just to understand how impossible it is to live on minimum wage, but also to understand how we treat people who provide us with necessary services, […]
