Is it possible to fall deeply in love with your talking operating system? Spike Jonze makes us believe so. In Jonze’s most recent film Her, broken-hearted writer Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) lives an introverted life balancing between work, video games, and occasional dates since his wife Catherine (Rooney Mara) left[Read More…]
Film and TV
TV spectrum
Homeland As fun and compelling as Homeland was at first, the show’s inherently limited premise left viewers wondering where the series could possibly go in future seasons. However, the central concept of a possible undercover terrorist on the loose in the United States was so compelling that it seemed worthwhile[Read More…]
Con-artist comedy is no fraud
Let’s go back to the late ‘70s with American Hustle, where the costumes are glamorous, the hair fake, and the cleavage exposed. Director David O. Russell comes back after last year’s hit Silver Linings Playbook with a comedy that employs the same sharp humour. Punctuated by flashbacks and voice-overs, we[Read More…]
Remakes vs. originals
For every cover like Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watch Tower” that gives a classic song a fresh and worthy interpretation, there are efforts like HIlary Duff’s take on The Who’s “My Generation” that should be banned from the airwaves. Here’s how some of 2013’s prominent[Read More…]
Heroes of Hebrew humour
Although Jewish people represent only 0.2 per cent of the world’s population—according to a Hebrew University of Jerusalem study—they hold a much larger portion of social attention when it comes to comedy. Director Alan Zweig made the documentary When Jews Were Funny to investigate why Jewish people have been so[Read More…]
Blue is the Warmest Colour: more than just a blue film
Blue is the Warmest Colour has attracted a lot of critical attention. This could stem from its accolades at Cannes this summer for its seven-minute long sex scene. What I found interesting were the comments that arose from the portrayal of the women in the film. Manohla Dargis, writing in[Read More…]
NTS graduate Colm Feore graces local stage once again
It’s no secret that there is a healthy amount of tension between Anglophone and Francophone cultures in Montreal, but one place the two co-exist beautifully is at NTS, a school that fosters the acting, writing, and directing talents of young people of both languages. Canadian actor Colm Feore graduated from[Read More…]
Adam Devine’s prime time
If you’re into raucous laughter and slacking off when you should be doing something productive, you’re probably familiar with a little show called Workaholics. The crew of lazy, hilarious telemarketers (played by Blake Anderson, Anders Holm, and last—but definitely not least—Adam Devine) have been making waves with their uniquely ridiculous[Read More…]
Gerontophilia: an unconventional love story
Gerontophilia, the first ‘mainstream’ venture of provocative Toronto based director, writer, artist, and photographer Bruce LaBruce, is the beautifully shot story of Lake (Pier-Gabriel Lajoie), an 18-year-old gerontophile (one who is sexually attracted to the elderly) and his love affair with 82 year old Melvin (Walter Borden). In the film,[Read More…]
The Italian surveillance job
Gianfranco Rosi’s panoramic portrait of the working communities connected by Rome’s Grande Raccordo Anulare (GRA) highway hews closely to broad-brush expectations of what one might find in the region: a man chews a cigar in the golden bathtub of a palatial home, a fisherman trawls for eels at dawn, and[Read More…]
