We talk to writer/director Jeremy LaLonde and actors Kate Hewlett, Amanda Brugel, and Zoie Palmer about their work on the ensemble independent Canadian comedy Sex After Kids about finding the right people for the roles, assembling a film out of a lot of different parts in a small amount of time, letting go of your ego to play something realistically for laughs, not being able to keep straight faces, and why Jeremy jokingly made his low budget independent film sound even lower budget than it really was.
We catch up with one of the most beloved directorial duos working today, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, to talk about their work on The Lego Movie, why they have no interest in selling toys, the hardest part of animating a toy made out of building blocks, creating catchy earworms, and how their very terrible idea of a double decker couch was a very real thing.
Playing catch up from last week (still), here are looks at two great Canadian films (Rhymes for Young Ghouls and Three Night Stand), a great documentary (12 O'Clock Boys), and a pair of middling romantic dramadeys (At Middleton and Brightest Star).
Enter for a chance to win a pair of passes to an advance screening of Need for Speed in Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, or Vancouver on Wednesday, February 19th with a special pre-movie live-stream cast Q&A, courtesy of Dork Shelf and DreamWorks Pictures!
Since mainstream new releases seem to have us singing the blues, here are a few neat classical and nostalgic options, with Cineplex continuing their annual Great Digital Film Festival and the TIFF Bell Lightbox showcasing the works of Paul Verhoeven and the unsung, pioneering African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux.
This week at The Bloor Cinema, films and stories about children featuring Nina Davenport's First Comes Love and film scholar Mark Cousins' more literally titled A Story of Children and Film
While the latest collaboration between master experimental filmmaker Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass showcases some of the bast work of Glass' career, it's sadly the sloppiest, most meandering, and obvious film Reggio has produced.
The Great Beauty might be nominated for a Best Foreign Film Oscar this year, but it's rampant arrogance and toxic tone negate any of its "beauty," making it one of the worst films to ever be nominated for an Academy Award in any category.
Although the bromantic comedy That Awkward Moment takes its name from a popular internet catchphrase, one can’t fault the filmmakers for choosing an inappropriate title. It’s certainly awkward, and it does have its moments.
A major misstep for the usually reliable Jason Reitman, the flat out bizarre romantic drama Labor Day can never settle on a tone or feel remotely believable for a single second. It wastes a perfectly capable cast by giving them roles that could never been seen as functional human beings, and it’s so latently sexist and just all around uneasy that it fails at whatever it’s trying to attempt.
We talk to Being Human actor and filmmaker Pat Kiely about his second feature film as a director (the proudly un-romantic comedy Three Night Stand), the time between making his first feature and getting around to this one, the advantages of working with great friends and collaborators, the downside to shooting in the dead of winter, and why he’s tired of audiences being fed the same old rom-com clichés over and over again.
We talk with 12 O'Clock Boys director Lotfy Nathan about being an outsider chronicling inner city dirt bike riding culture in Baltimore, interacting with his subjects, and what it’s like to get a police summons for filming illegal behaviour.
We talk to Rhymes for Young Ghouls director Jeff Barnaby his film’s recent successes, the mundane nature of small town life that can lead some to less than exemplary behaviour, treating even his villains as humans, the mixed reaction the film has received within the native film community, and why it was a no brainer to use a female protagonist to tell a deeply personal story that stays true to his own experiences.
Enter for a chance to win a pair of passes to an advance screening of Need for Speed in Toronto on Monday, February 3rd, courtesy of Dork Shelf and DreamWorks Pictures!
I, Frankenstein is far better than it really has any right to be on a surface level. It’s gleefully attuned to how silly its premise is and not aiming to do anything else than be supremely entertaining.
