Blackhat
(USA, 133 min.)
Dir. Michael Mann, Writ. Morgan Davis Foehl
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei, Leehom Wang, John Ortiz.
Michael Mann's 2004 crime thriller Collateral marks one of the most noteworthy artistic successes of the era in which filmmakers struggled to introduce digital technology into the world of the cinema. Collateral, marks the cusp of a time when the line between digital technology and high definition technology improved significantly, yet the film still stands as one of the most truly innovative aesthetic coups for digital filmmaking. Digital cinema, especially the digital cinema from the turn of the millennium, plain and simply looks cheap and crappy, but Collateral succeeds because Mann and his cinematographers Dion Beebe and Paul Cameron harness the low-res graininess of the inferior technology and use it as a perfect visual counterpart to the cold grittiness of the drama starring a steely Tom Cruise. Mann's films since Collateral all dabble in new tricks with digital by trying to find the same fusion point between form and content with varying degrees of success. Mann's latest film, Blackhat, offers another great example of the pros and cons of going digital. It's not exactly Collateral, but there's a fine mix of spectacularly great cinematography and some amazingly turgid digital disastrousness in this clunky techno-thriller.
1/28/2015
1/26/2015
Cinemalinks: Weekly Reads (Sundance Edition!)
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The Witch: "To the horror films of 2015, the gauntlet has been thrown down." |
Labels:
Canadian Film,
Cinemalinks,
Sundance
'Mommy', 'Tu dors Nicole' and Xavier Dolan Lead the Nominations for Quebec's Prix Jutra
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Xavier Dolan and Suzanne Clément prepare for an intense scene in Mommy. Photo: Shane Laverdière |
Labels:
1987,
Canadian Film,
jutras,
Mommy,
Tom at the Farm,
Tu Dors Nicole,
Xavier Dolan
1/25/2015
Listen to the Canadian Screen Award Nominees for Original Song
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The Valley Below. Photo by Paul Chirka |
Labels:
Canadian Film,
Canadian screen awards
1/24/2015
Everybody's A Little Bit Racist
Dear White People
(USA, 108 min.)
Written and directed by Justin Simien
Starring: Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson, Kyle
Gallner, Teyonah Parris, Brandon P. Bell, Dennis Haysbert
Once upon a time in my university days at Queen’s, my house
on Aberdeen Street threw a party. There wasn’t a theme, just good old
Halloween, and the party had a relatively chill mood with the usual mix of
ironic dress-ups, scary ghouls, and slutty dresses paired with animal ears.
Then some girl showed up painted completely black and wearing a dash of
fluorescent and white shoes. “Oh no she didn’t!” everyone muttered into their
red cups as they shifted awkwardly. It turns out that was dressed as a silhouette character from an iPod commercial. Oops.
Labels:
2015 Reviews
SAG Preview: The Actors of 'Birdman', the Family of 'Boyhood', or the Guests of 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'?
"Why don't I have any self-respect?!"
"You're an actress, honey."
-Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance
2015 marks this first year that Canadians can watch the Screen Actors Guild Awards live on television, rather than on the usual broadcast the day after. (Simultaneous substitution drives it off the American channels.) It’s a good year to be following the awards live, rather than on the Twitter, since the top prize from the actors probably won’t go to Oscar frontrunner Boyhood. If any film needs it’s Crash moment in which the largest branch of the Academy shows its support for a film driven by powerhouse performances, now’s the time to turn it.
1/23/2015
Watch the #CdnScreen15 Nominee 'Improvisation No. 1'
Woo hoo! Here's one category down on the Canadian Screen Awards ballot. Catch up on the shorts with a little help from Vimeo and watch the nominated animated short Improvisation No. 1: Cumulative Loops. This experimental film by Luigi Allemano is hypnotic, trippy, jazzy fun:
Labels:
Animation,
Canadian Film,
Canadian screen awards,
Shorts
Starring Johnny Depp and His Snot Mop
Mortdecai
(USA, 106 min.)
Dir. David Koepp, Writ. Eric Aronson
Starring: Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor, Paul
Bettany
Mortdecai brings
to the screen the Kyril Bonfiglioli’s cult novel Don’t Point That Thing at Me, the first of three books in a series
featuring the bumbling art-dealer and part time rogue Charlie Mortdecai. Charlie
Mortdecai is basically the result of a one-night stand between Jacques Clouseau
and Johnny English, but with slightly better breeding and a significantly
goofier mustache. Johnny Deep stars as the titular bon vivant, and he puts on
his best(ish) English accent and worst facial hair for a spot of fun in this globetrotting
art caper. Even silly, harmless, goofy films premised on mustaches jokes have
limited mileage, though, and Mortdecai
milks Depp’s snot mop for every laugh it can get and then some. Mortdecai misses by more than a whisker,
but it’s not that bad as far as January releases go.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Gwyneth Paltrow,
Johnny Depp,
Mortdecai
'Cake' And Eating It Too
Cake
(USA, 102 min.)
Dir. Daniel Barnz, Writ. Patrick Tobin
Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Barraza, Anna Kendrick,
Sam Worthington, Mamie Gummer, Felicity Huffman, Lucy Punch.
Last week’s Oscar nominations brought disappointing news for
Jennifer Aniston and her fans when the former “Friends” star missed one of five
Best Actress slots for which she had aggressively campaigned during the award
season grind. She still has nominations from the Golden Globes, the Critics’
Choice, and the Screen Actors Guild, so no Oscar nomination doesn’t mean that
Aniston can’t have her cake and eat it too. Going from the darkest horse of the
race to the number one snub isn’t an easy feat and Oscar/film history might be
kinder to Aniston’s turn in Cake
since she missed out with the Academy. Enjoy Aniston’s work in Cake as a strong performance in its own
right and not simply as another box to tick off on the Oscar cheat sheet. Cake showcases one heck of a performance
from Aniston and it’s a testament to her range and skill alone that her film
made it this far since debuting at the Toronto International Film Festival in
2014.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Cake,
Jennifer Aniston
1/21/2015
Cinemalinks: Weekly Reads
Oscar champ: The fake baby in American Sniper |
Labels:
American Sniper,
Cinemalinks,
Jessica Chastain,
Mommy,
Oscars,
Wild,
Xavier Dolan
1/20/2015
CFI Screens Doc '50 Italians' on Jan. 27
Next Tuesday, January 27th, is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and this year marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. To commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, The Canadian Film Institute (CFI) in collaboration
with the Embassy of Italy in Ottawa, invites Ottawans and local
cinephiles to take in a complementary screening of the Italian documentary 50 Italians and learn more about this chapter of history. 50 Italians, a 2008 doc by Flaminia
Lubin, will be presented at Library and Archives Canada (395Wellington Street) at 8:00 pm.
Labels:
CFI,
Documentary,
Ottawa Arts
Going South for Winter: Canadian Films at Sundance
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The Amina Profile |
Labels:
Aloft,
Bruce McDonald,
Canadian Film,
Chorus,
Documentary,
Guy Maddin,
Hellions,
Sundance,
The Witch,
Turbo Kid
1/19/2015
Four Grunts for 'Mr. Turner'
Mr. Turner
(UK, 150 min.)
Written and directed by Mike Leigh
Starring: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey,
Paul Jesson, Lesley Manville, Ruth Sheen.
“The sun is God,” proclaims artist JMW Turner (Timothy
Spall) with his dying breath in Mr. Turner. Mr. Turner, the biography of the
great British painter from great British filmmaker Mike Leigh (Another Year),
is an exquisitely unflattering portrait of a man who was capable of both poetic
beauty and harsh cruelty. The man’s a mass of contradictions with his evocative
ability to create capture landscapes and ships with awe-inspiring splendour
whereas his view of humans is unbearably bleak. Leigh’s Mr. Turner epitomizes
the world of warts-and-all biographies, and Leigh and Spall’s spectacularly
unattractive portrait of this artist, his world, and his work is a stroke of
greatness.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Mike Leigh,
Mr Turner,
Timothy Spall
1/17/2015
'Murrican Sniper
American Sniper
(USA, 132 min.)
Dir. Clint Eastwood, Writ. Jason Hall
Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller
Look no further than American
Sniper for an example of a competently crafted film that shoots itself in
the foot by failing to question its own politics. American Sniper, hereafter referred to as ’MURRICAN Sniper, is a disappointingly blunt and narrow project
from director Clint Eastwood. Sniper
carries all the signature prowess of an Eastwood film—it’s faultless from a
technical point of view—but it’s ironically shortsighted for a film about a
sniper. Subject Chris Kyle, played by a beefed-up Bradley Cooper, who also
receives a producing credit, is reportedly the most lethal sniper in ’Murrica’s
history with an estimated 160-odd kills to his name. Cooper is strong and
Eastwood’s direction is precise, but Sniper
backfires because it valorizes the ideology of the American War Machine in
which masculinity defines itself by guns and violence while patriotism becomes
a blanket excuse for death and destruction. There’s no denying that Kyle’s life
features acts of heroism, but is American
Sniper really the film that America needs right now? In short, no it isn’t.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
American Sniper,
Bradley Cooper,
Clint Eastwood
1/15/2015
Yay for Everyone! Oscar Nominees React
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Jean-Marc Vallee reviews a scene with Laura Dern while filming on location for Wild. |
Labels:
Birdman,
Canadian Film,
Finding Vivian Maier,
Grand Budapest Hotel,
Laura Dern,
Oscars,
Wild
Oscar Nominations: Good News/Bad News with Odd Mix
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Yay for Laura Dern! |
Labels:
American Sniper,
Boyhood,
Foxcatcher,
Grand Budapest Hotel,
Laura Dern,
Selma,
Wild
1/14/2015
'Scarehouse' is Twisted Fun
The Scarehouse
(Canada, 83 min.)
Written and directed by Gavin Michael Booth
Starring: Sarah Booth, Kimberley-Sue Murray, Katherine
Barrell, Jennifer Miller, Teagan Vincze, Dani Barker, Brad Everett.
Girls go wild in The
Scarehouse! This horror-comedy from writer/director/editor gives torture
porn a good old catfight as jilted pledges Corey (Sarah Booth, who also gets a
story credit) and Elaina (Kimberley-Sue Murray) devise an elaborate scheme of
Jigsaw-justice in a Halloween spookhouse moonlighting as a party to get even
with their former sorority sisters. Don’t let the synopsis or opening number,
which sees some sexy co-eds throw pillows and bash each other with sex toys,
fool you: The Scarehouse is fully
aware of the gender politics at its core and it has lots of fun taking them to
the extreme. The Scarehouse is sadistic
satire and it’s a bloody hoot.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Canadian Film
Contest! Win Tickets to see 'Black or White' in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver! (Contest Closed)
Contest time! Oscar winners Kevin Costner and Octavia
Spencer star in the upcoming film Black
or White from director Mike Binder. Black
or White opens in theatres January 30th from D Films, but if you
live in Toronto, Vancouver, or Montreal and you want to see the film before it
hits theatres, you are in luck! Answer the trivia below for your chance to win
tickets to a sneak peek.
Labels:
Black or White,
contests,
Kevin Costner,
Octavia Spencer
Oscar Predictions: Final Round - Let's All Go to Zubrowka!
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Ralph Fiennes in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Photo: Fox Searchlight |
Labels:
American Sniper,
Grand Budapest Hotel,
Oscars,
Selma
1/13/2015
Cinemalinks: Weekly Reads
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Director Jean-Marc Vallee filming on location for Wild. Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures |
Labels:
Babadook,
Cinemalinks,
Julianne Moore,
Meryl Streep,
Oscars,
Selma,
Shorts,
Wild
'Mommy' Leads 2015 Canadian Screen Award Nominations
1/12/2015
It's not American Pie, It's Tortière
1987
(Canada, 105 min.)
Written and directed by Ricardo Trogi
Starring: Jean-Carl Boucher, Sandrine Bisson, Carlo Colangelo, Éléonore Lamothe.
1987. It’s the year that Claude Jutra died and when the
Loonie was born. Montreal saw massive thunderstorms and dad rock flooded the airwaves.
And it’s the year that Ricardo Trogi finally got laid at the age of eighteen.
Labels:
1987,
Canadian Film,
Capsule reviews
'Monsoon' Wins People's Choice Award for Canada's Top Ten
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Monsoon. Photo courtesy of TIFF. |
Labels:
Canadian Film,
Documentary,
monsoon,
TIFF CTT
Contest: Win Tickets to see 'A Most Violent Year' Across Canada! (CONTEST CLOSED)
The Oscar nominations come out Thursday and one of the films
I’m rooting for across the board is J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. A Most Violent Year, which made Cinemablographer’s list of the Top Ten Films of 2014, opens in Canada January 23rd from Elevation Pictures, but if you
want a chance to see the film before it hits theatres, you are in luck! Answer
the trivia below for your chance to win!
Labels:
A Most Violent Year,
contests,
JC Chandor,
Jessica Chastain,
Osca Isaac
Golden Globes Recap: Third Time's a Charm for Tina and Amy
Well, Tina and Amy, it’s been swell. The third time’s the
charm for the duo of Golden Globes hosts. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler got the show
off to fun start by telling it like it is with a little sauce. A few roasts poked
fun at the self-involvement of award season with a well-aimed shot at George
Clooney gaining a lifetime achievement award over his wife Amal, who is a human
rights lawyer. “Hollywood, Hollywood!” they chimed.
1/11/2015
The Big Smoke
Inherent Vice
(USA, 148 min.)
Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro,
Katherine Waterston, Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon, Jena Malone, Eric Roberts,
Joanna Newsome
“You’re gonna wanna get good and fucked up before eating
this shit,” says a waitress to Larry “Doc” Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) and his
comrade Sauncho (Benicio Del Toro) at a seaside diner where they order weird
trendy dishes and prepare for the daily munchies. Virtually everyone in Inherent Vice, both the novel by Thomas
Pynchon and the adaptation by Paul Thomas Anderson, flows through the story on
about five kinds of drugs. They babble and ramble in paranoid, drugged-out
streams of consciousness, and everything blurs together like those feverishly
crazy intoxicated conversations that inevitably happen when a party makes its
way to the kitchen at 2 am and everyone’s high on something, even if it’s just
good vibes. Few films manage to leave one with a hangover, and the headache of
trying to remember Inherent Vice is
half the fun: Just what the heck actually happens?
1/09/2015
Golden Globes Preview/Predictions: Will Frontrunners Prevail?
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Selma |
Labels:
Birdman,
Boyhood,
Golden Globes,
Imitation Game,
Julianne Moore,
Oscars,
Selma,
Still Alice,
Theory of Everything,
Wild
Canadian Screen Awards 2015: Preview and Predictions
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Antoine-Olivier Pilon in Mommy, the Canadian Screen Awards frontrunner. |
1/08/2015
'What Happens When a Man Stands Up and Says Enough is Enough?'
Selma
(USA, 128
min.)
Dir. Ava
DuVernay, Writ. Paul Webb
Starring: David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom Wilkinson,
Common, Lorraine Toussaint, Wendell Pierce, Tessa Thompson, Tim Roth, Oprah
Winfrey.
“What happens when a man stands up and says enough is
enough?” asks Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (David Oyelowo, A Most Violent Year) as he leads the landmark voting rights march
in Selma, a powerful dramatization of
the Civil Rights trek from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965. What happens,
though, when a woman says enough is enough? Selma
itself rings with a palpable relevancy as it brings filmmaker Ava DuVernay into
the mainstream from the corners of American independent cinema in which she’s
had notable success with small films such as Middle of Nowhere. Selma
offers a resounding rallying cry of “enough is enough” from the onscreen Dr.
King and from the director Miss DuVernay. Conversations are growing and growing
about the necessity for more representation from female and minority voices
behind the camera in Hollywood, and Selma
couldn’t provide a better example for the necessity of diversity on both sides
of the frame. DuVernay dramatizes this slice-of-history with a forcefully
authentic voice.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Ava DuVernay,
David Oyelowo,
Selma
Contest! Win Tickets to See 'Cake' Across Canada! (CONTEST CLOSED)
Good news, Oscar junkies! Here’s a chance to have your cake
and eat it, too. Jennifer Aniston’s picking up steam for her performance in Cake and getting hot Oscar buzz after
earning Best Actress nominations at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild
Awards, and the Critics Choice Awards. Cake
opens in theatre on January 23rd from D Films, but if you want to
attend a sneak peek of Cake, you are
in luck! Answer the trivia below for your chance to win tickets!
Labels:
Cake,
contests,
Jennifer Aniston
1/07/2015
A Literary Kind of Love
Gemma Bovery
(France, 99
min.)
Dir. Anne
Fontaine, Writ. Anne Fontaine, Pascal Bonitzer
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Fabrice Luchini, Jason Flemyng,
Niels Schneider, Isabelle Candelier, Edith Scob, Elsa Zlyberstein.
![]() |
Gemma Arterton and Fabrice Luchini © Jérôme Prébois / Albertine Productions |
Ah, books. Isn’t nice to relish a classic work of literature
and see the delicately crafted words fuse art and life? A great book lives on
the mind of the reader, and the legacy of a masterwork couldn’t be more evident
than in Anne Fontaine’s Gemma Bovery
as bookworm baker Martin Joubert (played by In the House’s Fabrice Luchini) watches art imitate life in his quaint country
town in Normandy. Joubert, endlessly enjoying flights of the imagination to
escape the boredom of his humdrum life, finds himself in luck when some new
neighbours move in across the street and the wife (Gemma Arterton) goes by the
name of Gemma Bovery. Normandy, as Joubert explains, is where Flaubert wrote
his literary landmark Madame Bovary,
so the potential that a real life Emma Bovary lives nearby lands Joubert in the
midst of a juicy page-turner.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Adaptation,
Fabrice Luchini,
Gemma Arterton
Contest! Win Tickets to see 'Mortdecai' Across Canada! (CONTEST CLOSED)
Movember comes early as Johnny Depp busts out his best ’stache
in Mortdecai! Depp stars in this fun
caper alongside Ewan McGregor and Gwyneth Paltrow. Mortdecai opens in Canada on January 23rd from eOne Films, but if you want to
attend one of the sneak peeks happening across Canada you are in luck! Answer
the trivia below for your chance to win tickets!
Labels:
contests,
Ewan McGregor,
Gwyneth Paltrow,
Johnny Depp,
Mortdecai
Cinemalinks: Weekly Reads
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Into the Woods |
Good reads for the week:
Labels:
Cake,
Canadian Film,
Cinemalinks,
Documentary,
Into the Woods,
Jennifer Aniston,
Meryl Streep,
Mommy,
Oscars,
Razzies,
Selma
1/06/2015
Toronto Film Critics Honour 'Enemy', 'In Her Place'
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Director Denis Villeneuve on the set of Enemy. |
Labels:
An Enemy,
Canadian Film,
In Her Place
The Sins of the Father
Fall
(Canada, 83 min.)
Written and directed by Terrance Odette
Starring: Michael Murphy, Katie Boland, Wendy Crewson,
Suzanne Clément
![]() |
Michael Murphy as Father Sam, and Annabelle McGregor as Maysa, in Fall. Photo by Melissa Connors. Courtesy of Mongrel Media. |
“Do you believe in heaven, Father?” asks Reza (Cas Anvar) to
Father Sam (Michael Murphy) after the priest says a funeral for Reza’s late
mother.
“It’s worse than that,” replies Father Sam. “I believe in
the other place, too.”
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Canadian Film,
Fall,
Michael Murphy,
Suzanne Clement
Take a Risk on Something Else
The Beautiful Risk
(Canada, 90 min.)
Written and directed by Mark Penney
Starring:
Shaun Benson, Elaine Gagnon
Digital is a war that film seems to be losing. It’s not
necessarily a question of Quentin Tarantino versus Mike Leigh in which one
great filmmaker fights to preserve the warmth and texture of 70mm film stock while
the other auteur simply accepts and
embraces the latest change in the industry. It’s also not a question of digital
democracy, since the economy of digital cinema means that there are more voices
that ever in the film scene. That’s never a bad thing when the lesser cost of
shooting and distributing on digital means that films like I Put a Hit on You, The Animal Project, Cinemanovels, and
other microbudget CanCon find life for innovative filmmakers to introduce less
conventional works of art to fans seeking alternative to the mainstream. There’s
more valuable work than ever before thanks to digital cinema; however, as with
anything else in consumer culture like social media or fast food, one needs to
filter out the noise a bit more actively to find the good stuff.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Canadian Film,
turkeys
1/05/2015
'Tu Dors Nicole' Trumps 'Mommy' at Vancouver Film Critics Circle
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Marc-André Grondin and Julianne Côté star in Stéphane Lafleur's Tu Dors Nicole. Photo: Sara Mishara, Les Films Séville |
The full list of winners:
Labels:
An Enemy,
Canadian Film,
Mommy,
Tu Dors Nicole,
Violent
All's Fun in Love and War
I Put a Hit on You
(Canada, 78 min.)
Written and directed by Dane Clark & Linsey Stewart
Starring: Aaron Ashmore, Sara Canning
A person can get a lot of crazy stuff on the Internet:
couches, TVs, roommates, hookers, gigs, and more. All sorts of helpful, if
sketchy, conveniences are just a click away. In the age of online anonymity,
that’s both great and terrifying. Some folks take it to the extreme with Casual
Encounters and the like, but Craig’s List is a breeding ground for poor life
choices as scorned lover Harper (Sarah Canning) learns when a booze-fuelled
revenge session leads her to put a hit on her boyfriend Ray (Aaron Ashmore) in
exchange for the wedding ring that he declined to accept.
1/04/2015
Tim Horton's: The Movie
Corner Gas: The Movie
An article in Maclean’s Magazine perfectly brews the crux of a debate that’s been percolating in Canada’s national consciousness ever since Burger King announced its acquisition of Tim Horton’s earlier this summer. The writer, Scott Feschuk, explains how the iconic beverage of Canadian quaintness isn’t something to be proud of. Tim Horton’s, largely seen as the working class everyperson’s coffee in the face of growing Starbucks culture, often brings an emotional connection that helps define Canadians as something simple and un-American. Tim Horton’s, Feschuk writes, “is not an anti-Starbucks choice that makes you a more relatable politician or a more authentic Canadian.” It’s bad, cheap coffee.
(Canada, 87 min.)
Dir. David Storey; Writ. Brent Butt, Andrew Carr, Andrew
Wreggitt
Starring: Brent Butt, Gabrielle Miller, Fred
Ewaniuk, Eric Peterson, Janet Wright, Lorne Cardinal, Tara Spencer-Nairn, Nancy
Robertson
An article in Maclean’s Magazine perfectly brews the crux of a debate that’s been percolating in Canada’s national consciousness ever since Burger King announced its acquisition of Tim Horton’s earlier this summer. The writer, Scott Feschuk, explains how the iconic beverage of Canadian quaintness isn’t something to be proud of. Tim Horton’s, largely seen as the working class everyperson’s coffee in the face of growing Starbucks culture, often brings an emotional connection that helps define Canadians as something simple and un-American. Tim Horton’s, Feschuk writes, “is not an anti-Starbucks choice that makes you a more relatable politician or a more authentic Canadian.” It’s bad, cheap coffee.
Labels:
2015 Reviews,
Canadian Film,
Corner Gas
1/01/2015
Welcoming 2015 with the Most Anticipated Films the Year!
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Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdeen in Far from the Madding Crowd. Fox Searchlight Pictures |
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