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12 Years a Slave |
2/28/2014
Oscar Predictions: Final Round - Might as Well Pick From a Hat!
2/27/2014
Another 'Walmart Indie'
Third Contact
(UK, 85 min.)
Written and directed by Simon Horrocks
Starring: Tim Scott Walker, Jannica Olin, Oliver Browne, Cristina
Dell’Anna.
A provocative article in Salon recently dubbed American
independent cinema as “the next Walmart” of the film industry. Beanie Barnes
notes in the article, “Many in the industry still refuse to acknowledge that
film is subject to the economic laws of supply and demand.” Film however, is
not Field of Dreams. If you build it,
the masses won’t necessarily come.
Labels:
2014 Reviews
2/26/2014
DiverCiné Wishes Ottawa "Bon Cinéma!"
C’était un matin excitant dans le capital, car
que je suis allé chez le « launch » du 12 e festival de
DiverCiné. Si tu n’es pas en train de voir, mon français n’est pas le meilleur.
Donc, comme c’était un drôle épisode comique comme celui de Carol (Margo
Martindale) dans le segment « 14e Arrondissement » par
Alexandre Payne dans Paris
je t’aime, j’ai regardé les célébrations
avec un mélange de compréhension. Pas les meilleurs en parlants le français,
Carol et moi, mais nous sommes en bonnes esprits pour le festival de DiverCiné!
Labels:
Best Foreign Lang Film,
CFI,
Divercine,
Ottawa Arts
2/25/2014
Oscar's Live Action Shorts
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Helium |
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Oscars,
Shorts
2/24/2014
Oscars: Best Picture and the Rule of Three
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The Godfather: Oscar's iconic Best Picture winner with a low tally of 3 prizes. |
Cineplex Confirms 10-screen Multiplex at Lansdowne
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The projected Lansdowne redevelopment |
Labels:
Ottawa Arts
2/23/2014
Win Tickets to see Chris Tucker in Toronto!
Question for Toronto readers: Do you want to attend an event celebra bold, black risk takers? In celebration of Black History Month, the
Canadian Film Centre, Clement Virgo Productions and TD are pleased to present a
special evening honouring acclaimed actor/comedian Chris Tucker (Silver Linings Playbook, Rush Hour 1, 2 & 3, Jackie Brown, Fifth Element). If you want tickets to the event, answer the
trivia below for your chance to win!
Labels:
CFC,
Chris Tucker,
contests
Bellissimo!
The Great Beauty (La
grande bellezza)
(Italy/France, 142 min.)
Dir. Paolo Sorrentino, Writ. Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto
Contarello.
Starring: Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo
Buccirosso,
Bellissimo! If
Federico Fellini were to come back from the dead today and film a roaring
party, it might look a lot like The Great
Beauty. The Great Beauty could be
the best Fellini film that Fellini never made. The legacy of the cinema Italiano is alive in full force
in this sumptuous satire from director Paolo Sorrentino (Il divo). The Great Beauty,
Italy’s official submission and nominee for Best Foreign Language Film at this
year’s Academy Awards, is an intoxicatingly Fellini-esque portrait of the ruins
of Rome seen through the eyes of an aging writer named Jep Gambardella (played
by an outstanding Toni Servillo). Jep, a fun-loving celebrity/culture
journalist, gazes upon Rome with increasingly world-weary eyes. What Jep sees looks
fun and glamorous at first before Sorrentino perverts the old man’s worldview
to make everything seem hollow by the film’s end. Sorrentino delivers with The Great Beauty an entrancing satire on
the empty excess of the sweet life.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Best Foreign Lang Film,
Great Beauty
2/21/2014
'The Animal Project' Trailer
Mongrel Media released a trailer for Ingrid Veninger's latest film The Animal Project. I caught The Animal Project at TIFF last fall, loved it (review here), and included it in my list of Top 10 Canadian films of 2013 (here), but if those endorsements aren't enough, check out 1:05!
Labels:
Animal Project,
Canadian Film,
Ingrid Veninger,
TIFF
Where to See the Oscar Nominees in Ottawa
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Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle. |
Labels:
Oscars
2/20/2014
Oscar Bridesmaids: The 2013 Wedding Party
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A mosiac of Oscar bridesmaid Leonardo DiCaprio made out of Oscar winners. (Source) |
The wedding party of Oscars 2013 boasts a familiar pack of
Oscar bridesmaids. At least three nominees should wear seafoam to the awards,
since they were on this list last year and they will likely be listed again
given their chances in this year’s race. (Those nominees are Roger Deakins,
Thomas Newman, and Wylie Stateman.) Few of this year’s Oscar bridesmaids
actually stand much chance at winning, so cross your fingers and wish them many
happy returns!
In Praise of Older Women
Gloria
(Chile/Spain, 110 min.)
Dir. Sebastián Lelio, Writ. Sebastián Lelio, Gonzalo Maza
Starring: Paulina García, Sergio Hernández
The journey from cougar to cat lady is a fickle one. Gloria
(Paulina García) might not be on the prowl for cubs as she frequents the dance
floors of Santiago, but there is a youthful lust for life that runs through her
58-year-old body. This feisty divorcée approaches life with the spunk and verve
of a college kid. Gloria develops a
sweetly euphoric coming-of-middle-age pic as its title character embraces the
freedom of adulthood.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Best Foreign Lang Film
2/19/2014
Catching Up on Canadian Screen Award Nominees with 'Amsterdam', 'Vanishing Point', and 'The Mortal Instruments'
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Amsterdam |
2/18/2014
Tatiana Maslany & Viggo Mortensen Among Canadian Screen Awards Presenters
![]() |
"Orphan Black" star Tatiana Maslany will present at the Canadian Screen Awards |
2/14/2014
Win Tickets to see 'No Clue' in Calgary and Vancouver! (Contest Closed)
All right, “Corner Gas” fans! Brent Butt is back and he
wants *you* to see his new movie, No Clue! No Clue opens in theatres March 7 from eOne Films, but audiences in
Calgary and Vancouver can win tickets to a sneak peek. Get a clue and answer
the trivia below to win!
Labels:
Brent Butt,
Canadian Film,
contests,
No Clue
2/13/2014
BNFF Review: 'The Last Sentence'
The Last Sentence (Dom
over död man)
(Sweden/Norway,
Dir. Jan Troell, Writ. Jan Troell, Klaus Rifbjerg
Starring: Jesper Christensen, Pernilla August, Ulla Skoog,
Björn Granath.
“I wish you were the way you write,” says Puste Segerstedt (Ulla
Skoog) to her husband, Torgny (Jesper Christensen) in one of the most poignant
moments of Jan Troell’s The Last Sentence.
The Last Sentence, which screened in Ottawa
last night as both the Swedish offering and the closing night film of the
Canadian Film Institute’s Bright Nights: Baltic Nordic Film Festival, is an
exquisitely shot and artfully neutral biopic about influential Swedish
newspaper editor Torgny Segerstedt. Torgny is a man of conviction and passion
when he wields a pen and commands a typewriter, but he’s a cold and distant man
when it comes to close personal relationships. The Last Sentence interrogates how a man can have such a gap
between his public and personal personas, and ultimately challenges the
audience to ponder the words of the famed writer. Does powerful rhetoric hold
sway when the speaker himself is not a man of action?
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Bright Nights,
CFI
Creative Genius
The Lego Movie
(USA/Australia/Denmark, 100 min.)
Written and directed by: Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Starring: Will Arnett, Elizabeth Banks, Morgan Freeman, Will
Ferrell, Liam Neeson.
Tie-in merchandise is usually just one building block of the
Hollywood machine, but the fantastically entertaining The Lego Movie shows that an entire feature-length film can be
built upon glorified product placement. The
Lego Movie builds a case brick by brick that the product that shares its
name and trademark is indeed the best darn toy ever made. Every piece of the
film is a Lego block that creates an entire world of fanciful escapism. Kids
will marvel at the all wonders they can build with Lego, while the parents
accompanying them will note how Lego is one toy that will never grow old. If The Lego Movie is just a 100-minute ad
for the iconic Danish toy, then it’s the most brilliant marketing ploy since 99
cents.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Animation,
Lego Movie
2/12/2014
"It's 'RoboCop'."
RoboCop
(USA, 118
min.)
Dir. José
Padilha, Writ. Joshua Zetumer
Starring: Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton, Abbie
Cornish, Jackie Earle Haley, Jennifer Ehle, Jay Baruchel, Samuel L. Jackson.
An early film class I took at Queen’s featured one of the
most memorable lectures of my studies. It was one of the first weeks of a
second-year course on film theory and criticism, and the class was particularly
excited because the lecture for the week focused on an unexpected title: RoboCop. More fun than watching Paul
Verhoeven’s 1987 sci-fi actioner, though, was sitting in the lecture in which a
popcorn movie was explained as art. The professor earnestly zeroed in on the
opening credits, freeze-framing a seemingly inconsequential second of
screentime in which the word “RoboCop” appears in kitschy ’80s graphics. The
“o” (the middle one) happens to sit atop a building that figured in the centre
of the frame. Hence, the penetrative power of RoboCop (or something of that
variety) foreshadows the intelligent critique of masculinity that courses
throughout the film. To which a blunt and baffled student replied, “It’s RoboCop…”
Labels:
2014 Reviews
2/11/2014
Win Tickets to see '3 Days to Kill' in Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver, and Winnipeg! (Contest Closed)
Is Kevin Costner the super spy of 2014? Shortly after
appearing in January’s Jack Ryan: Shadow
Recruit, Costner headlines the international spy thriller 3 Days to Kill. 3 Days to Kill opens in theatres February 21 from eOne Films, but
if an advance screening is in your sights, audiences in select cities can win
tickets to a sneak peek!
Labels:
3 Days to Kill,
contests,
Kevin Costner
Oscar Update: Memo to the Academy
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The Broken Circle Breakdown |
2/10/2014
CFC Sends 'Jean of the Jonses' Filmmaking Team to Tribeca All Access Program
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Stella Meghie and Amo Adetuyi will participate in the Tribeca All Access program |
Labels:
Canadian Film,
CFC,
Jean of the Jonses
Shorts of Every Colour: TIFF Announces Short Cuts International
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The short film Homecoming, which screeed at TIFF 2013 in To Repel Ghosts: Urban Tales from the African Continent |
2/09/2014
Catching Up on Oscar Nominees with 'Cutie and the Boxer' and 'Jackass: Bad Grandpa'
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Ushio and Noriko Shinohara in their Brooklyn, NY home. Photo credit: Patrick Burns. Courtesy of Mongrel Media. |
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Capsule reviews,
Documentary,
Oscars,
turkeys
2/08/2014
BNFF Review: 'Mother, I Love You'
Mother, I Love You (Mammu,
es tevi mīlu)
(Latvia, 79 min.)
Written and directed by Jānis Nords
Starring: Kristofers Konovalovs, Vita Varpina
Family dynamics change over the years, but nothing changes
the old adage that says that boys will be boys. Kids only grow through
experience, yet the lessons of life for this generation might not be the same
as our parents’ generation. Take, for instance, the coming-of-age tale faced by
twelve-year-old Raimonds (Kristofers Konovalovs) in Mother, I Love You. Raimonds, on the cusp of adolescence, lives
alone with his workaholic mother in their small apartment in Riga, Latvia. With
his mother at work at all hours of the day and night (and keeping up her social
life under the guise of a hectic work schedule), Raimonds is forced to grow up
on his own. He learns through trial and error when playtime stops being a game.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Best Foreign Lang Film,
Bright Nights
2/07/2014
BNFF Review: 'Moonrider'
Moonrider
(Denmark, 82 min.)
Dir. Daniel Dencik
What makes Danish films so appealing to North
American audiences? The question arose during a conversation with some peers at
the launch for the Canadian Film Institute’s Bright Nights Baltic-Nordic Film
Festival, since Denmark was riding a high on a trio of nominated films—The Act of Killing, The Hunt, and the short Helium—at
this year’s Academy Awards. Add to these three the European Union Film Festival
sell-out Superclásico and it seems as
if the Danes might have a monopoly on the Baltic-Nordic contingent of local
cinephilia. (Although the Swedish films have also been doing rather well.)
There is no easy answer to explain why the Danish filmmakers turn out more hits
than many of their other European contemporaries do, but Moonrider, the Danish
offering at this year’s Bright Nights Baltic-Nordic Film Festival, is bound to
reignite the question following the screening.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Bright Nights,
CFI,
Documentary
Two Takes on Vampire Academy: Reviews from Me and My Inner Thirteen-Year-Old Girl
I caught a sneak peek of Vampire
Academy last night, but as folks at the screening were kindly handing out
nail polish to all the young girls in line, I realized that I was probably not
a member of the film’s target audience. Therefore, in an effort to understand
the YA lunacy of Vampire Academy, I
decided to embrace my inner thirteen-year-old girl and let us both review the
film.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
terrible vampire movies,
turkeys
2/06/2014
Win Tickets to 'Pompeii' in Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Vancouver, Victoria, and Winnipeg!
Let the games begin! Olympic fever is underway, so now’s the
time to go back to Pompeii! Pompeii
takes audiences back to the time of swords and sandals for a rousing tale that
should have viewers cheering like Olympians. Pompeii opens in theatres February 21 from eOne Films, but
audiences in select cities have a chance to catch a sneak peek of the film
before it hits theatres.
Finger Painting
The Monuments Men
(USA/Germany, 118 min.)
Dir. George Clooney, Writ. George Clooney, Grant Heslov
Starring: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John
Goodman, Bob Balaban, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, and Cate Blanchett.
![]() |
Stokes (George Clooney) presents his case to President Roosevelt in Columbia Pictures' The Monuments Men. Photo by: Claudette Barius |
There is, sadly, nothing monumental about George Clooney’s
latest picture. The Monuments Men,
Clooney’s fifth film as a director, is about as far off the mark of its
potential as it can get. There’s enough grandeur in the material and enough
talent in the cast and crew that The
Monuments Men has the makings to be one of the best films of his career as
a director. Instead, it’s his worst film.
2/05/2014
Documentary can be a Dirty Business
Dirty Wars
(USA, 87 min.)
Dir. Rick Rowley, Writ. David Riker, Jeremy Scahill
Feat. Jeremy Scahill
War is a dirty, dirty business. It takes a hero to hunker
down in the dirt and get the job done. A soldier can get even dirtier and assume
greater risks by getting the job done properly and ethically. Equally prone to
getting dirty are those digging up dirt and holding people in power accountable
for ensuring that war is less a dirty affair and more a clean fight. War makes
people sensitive (as it should), but intrepid reporters could easily get mud in
their eyes when they speak the truth.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Documentary
Resolution 2014 Screens Thursday
Just a head’s up for local film fans that Ottawa’s SAW Video will be holding Resolution 2014
screening tomorrow at the ByTowne.
Resolution is an annual showcase of new members’ work. Resolution 2014 offers a
mix of drama and documentary, narrative and experimental cinema, and both live
action and animated films. Tickets are just $5 and the event includes
a post-screening reception and Q&A at Shopify (126 York St.). I'm already booked for (covers mouth) Vampire Academy, but please head on over
to The ByTowne for 6:45pm at support local film!
The screening list includes:
Labels:
Ottawa Arts
2/04/2014
BNFF Review: 'My Stuff'
My Stuff (Tavarataivas)
(Finland, 82 min.)
Written and directed by Petri Luukkainen
“Things won’t make a home. It has to come from somewhere
else,” says Petri’s grandma more than once during their visits that appear
throughout Petri Luukkainen’s documentary My
Stuff. My Stuff, which screens in
Ottawa Wednesday night at the Canadian Film Institute’s Bright Nights
Baltic-Nordic Film Festival, sees the young filmmaker go on a Morgan Spurlock-y
quest of self-examination. Petri visits his grandmother frequently to seek her
age-old wisdom and non-judgemental candor while undergoing an odd system of
soul-searching that forms the study of My
Stuff. Petri has decided to purge himself of all his material possessions
and reclaim one item from storage per day for all three hundred and sixty five
days of the year. It’s as extreme and interesting a challenge as it sounds.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Bright Nights,
CFI,
Documentary
2/03/2014
Grief and Nightmares
William’s Lullaby
(Canada, 111 min.)
Written and directed by Nicholas Arnold
Starring: Richard Roy Sutton, Toby Bisson, Robert Lawton, Ila Lawton.
“Find Closure: That’s the way to stop the dreams,” says
Peter (the late Robert Lawton).
“What if they don’t stop?” asks Thomas (Richard Roy Sutton).
“What if they’re real?”
“They’re not.”
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Canadian Film
2/02/2014
BNFF Review: 'Into the Dark'
Into the Dark
(Norway, 85 min.)
Written and directed by Thomas Wangsmo
Starring: Thorbjørn Harr, Fridtjov Såheim, Ellen Dorrit Petersen,
Laila Goody, Fredrik Grøndahl, Fredrik Frafjord.
Into the Dark, the
Norwegian offering at this year’s Bright Nights Baltic-Nordic Film Festival, is
a stark and potent domestic drama about grief and guilt. This film by
writer/director Thomas Wangsmo, a graduate of Montreal’s Concordia University making
his feature film debut, begins almost imperceptibly as a slow burn thriller. A
car accident in a snowy suburb outside Oslo sees Jan (Thorbjørn Harr) collide
with Nicolai (Fredrik Frafjord), the son of his neighbours Svein (Fridtjov
Såheim) and Sigrun (Laila Goody), as the boy passes through an intersection Jan
approaches while driving home that night. As Nicolai lies on the ground with
his crumpled bicycle and his parents anxiously await the oncoming ambulance,
Jan’s wife, Anita (Ellen Dorrit Petersen), pulls him as side and murmurs, “Don’t
tell them about the …” She trails off just as the authorities arrive on the
scene.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Bright Nights
Juliette Binoche 2014
Camille Claudel 1915
(France, 95 min.)
Written and directed by Bruno Dumont
Starring: Juliette Binoche
Watching drama unfold at a slow, almost static pace can be
mentally exhausting. To live such an experience, however, must be excruciating.
The unrelentingly slow and oddly titled Camille
Claudel 1915 offers a ninety-five minute glimpse into the life of French
sculptor Camille Claudel during a year in her stay at an asylum in Montdevergues.
One senses the hell of living in such a place as Camille Claudel observes the mentally anguished Camille, played by
Juliette Binoche, approach a kind of psychological annihilation through ennui.
When the final title card of the film states that Camille lived in the asylum
for another twenty-nine years (against her own wishes and against the advice of
her doctors, no less), the languorously paced Camille Claudel hits with an impact one didn’t see coming.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Juliette Binoche
2/01/2014
BNFF Review: 'Blood Type'
Blood Type (Veregrupp)
(Estonia, 67 min.)
Dir. Leeni Linna
“The all-devouring passion of a soldier is the battle, the
thrill of challenging fate, the triumph of becoming one's own destiny,” reads a
quote from German writer/philosopher Ernst Jünger that
serves as an epigraph for Leeni Linna’s documentary Blood Type (Veregrupp). Blood Type explores with remarkable
objectivity the facets of a soldier’s psychology that Jünger notes. Blood Type, which opens the Canadian Film Institute’s fourth
annual Bright Nights Baltic-Nordic Film Festival on Saturday, offers a portrait
that Ottawa viewers might not expect from this corner of Europe during the
Winterlude-set festival.
Labels:
2014 Reviews,
Bright Nights,
CFI
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