Author: Admin

Cop Out lives up to its title

Kevin Smith’s supposed comedy, Cop Out, aims to be a big-budget action movie but falls flat with a potentially talented but ultimately disappointing cast. Combine Smith’s lackluster directing efforts with a poor script written by Mark and Robb Cullen and mediocre performances by both Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, and you have a two-hour long movie that feels more like four, with only a handful of scenes that are laugh-out-loud-worthy.

Far from home and close to danger in the Gaza Strip

Rachel, a new documentary from French-Israeli director Simone Bitton, tells the story of Rachel Corrine, an American activist who was killed while attempting to prevent the bulldozing of a Palestinian home in 2003. To this day Israel denies responsibility for her death, claiming the bulldozer operator’s line of sight was obstructed by the mound of dirt that crushed her.

Valentine’s Day sucks

On Friday, I lost a bet with an A&E editor. Two days later, I was by myself, waiting in a long line of moon-eyed couples at the AMC Forum, ready to review Garry Marshall’s newest film, Love, Actually II. Wait, no, that was the working title. I mean Valentine’s Day, starring everyone you would expect.

THIRD MAN IN: The NBA Cares?

There are a number of words and phrases that we can use to describe the embarrassment that was the NBA Dunk Contest on Saturday night: worst of all time; forgettable; pathetic; mind-bogglingly bad. With a lineup featuring zero legitimate stars, and two players averaging less than 22 minutes per game, the event that many suspected was on wobbly legs finally came crashing down.

Horror flop The Wolfman begs for a silver bullet

In cinema, there’s always a fine line between the supernatural and the ridiculous, and the best horror films flirt with this boundary without crossing it. Unfortunately, director Joe Johnston’s The Wolfman was less than tactful in his approach to the werewolf genre, and the film ends up resembling more of a farce than a truly scary movie.

Audiophile

No more than two dozen patrons have filed into the upstairs concert hall of Montreal’s La Sala Rosa for an evening of live jazz. Among the dedicated few sits Mark Crawford, a beer in his right hand and a focussed yet unassuming countenance on his face. Positioned front and centre, Mark is preparing a medium-sized microphone stand that is wired through a pre-amplifier, digital to analog converter, and power supply into his digital recorder.

Revamping spoken word

It’s hard to imagine how rewriting the lyrics to a Fat Boys song into his own beat-box symphony at the age of nine could lead C.R. Avery to where he is today. Currently on his Dead of Winter cross-Canada tour, backed by The Legal Tender String Quartet, you could say that Avery is in his element – his storytelling/harmonica-playing/beat-boxing element.

EDITORIAL: Buying Haven Books was a costly, irresponsible mistake

Haven Books was doomed from the start. In March 2007, the Students’ Society paid approximately $40,000 for a consignment bookstore in a poor location, with an unmemorable name and a bad business model. They did so despite a Memorandum of Agreement with McGill that prevented SSMU from advertising the bookstore on campus, and a report from their auditing firm that showed Haven had lost about $95,000 in the previous year.

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