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Molly Parker & Tracy Wright in Trigger |
Yesterday, the folks at TIFF released their
Top Ten Lists for the best that Canada had to offer in both feature and short length film. I'm very pleased that
Trigger, my favourite Canadian film so far this year, made the list. Other notable entries include
Barney's Version, Incendies, Splice, and
Last Train Home. A bit of a surprise entry is Xavier Dolan's second feature
Les amours imaginaires. Dolan's film offers
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Les amours imaginaires |
some richly composed set pieces, but it's off-puttingly self-indulgent - more so than
I Killed My Mother. Films by 'new directors' that are more worthy of praise, in my opinion, are Sook-yin Lee's
Year of the Carnivore (though they may have considered that 2009) or Terry Miles's
A Night for Dying Tigers. As far as snubs go, though, the only troublesome omission is Larysa Kondracki's spectacular debut
The Whistleblower. The film premiered at TIFF this year, and the festival date is usually that by which TIFF tends to go.
The Whistleblower is not scheduled to be released until August, however, so hopefully, like me, they're counting it as a 2011 release - if not, they have some explaining to do!!!.
There was one other sin of omission though:
How to Rid Your Lover of a Negative Emotion Caused by You! didn't make the cut as one of the top shorts. Shame!
Full list after the cut:
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Splice |
Les amours imaginaires (Dir: Xavier Dolan)
Barney's Version (Dir: Richard J. Lewis)
Curling (Dir: Denis Côté)
The High Cost of Living (Dir: Deborah Chow)
Incendies (Dir: Denis Villeneuve)
Last Train Home (Dir: Lixin Fan)
MODRA (Dir: Ingrid Veninger)
Splice (Dir: Vincenzo Natalie)
Trigger (Dir: Bruce McDonald)
Trois temps d'apres la mort d'Anna (Dir: Catherine Martin)