I'm a published writer, illustrator, and film critic. Cinema has been a passion of mine since my first viewing of Milius' Conan the Barbarian and my film tastes go from experimental to modern blockbuster.
How excited was I to get to preview the first slate announced for the Toronto International Film Festival? Most likely as excited as you are for the festival itself! Piers Handling, CEO and Director of TIFF, and Cameron Bailey, Artistic Director of the TIFF announced sixty films on the roster so far, with many more to be announced in the near future…
Romantic comedies keep being made and there’s nothing to suggest that they will ever fade into history. Few veer off the beaten path to exhibit something different or experiment with the genre. Those willing to take an eccentric look at the rom-com often find themselves lumped into the offbeat comedy area, a place where critical …
The zombie as a metaphor for dysfunctional and alienating systems in our society is a popular since the Night of Living Dead. The concept of living flesh, as in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is a manifestation of feeling alien in your own skin and in your environment.
As part of the Queer Outlaw exhibit, TIFF Bell Lightbox are giving filmgoer’s a treat with a Bruce LaBruce film retrospective. LaBruce’s films encompass a rebellious element that tests cinematic techniques and distorts its pornographic and experimental foundations. In Raspberry Reich, LaBruce infuses his unique methods with …
Non-fiction work such as documentaries, are investigatory and revelatory forces in cinema. The subject of focus is given various treatments or views via interviews, footage, and various settings of the subjects past and present. Sometimes the subject is hero or an moral cause.
Pina Bausch was a choreography innovator and a moving force to the dance theatre establishment. Her work stirred audiences in emotional, psychological, and artistic ways. She became a catalyst for an aesthetic revolution and a redefinition of dance that provokes choreographers around the world to this day…
After the success of their 1983 breakthrough album, Metal Health, things exploded for Quiet Rock and thereby opening the doors for hair metal bands such as Twisted Sister, RATT, Poison, and Bon Jovi. Quiet Riot went against the grain and never gave into the changes that brought about disco, new wave, and grunge. The rock documentary …
Argentinian author and director Mariano Pensotti’s work focuses on the development of intimate drama and the way that plays with actors. He intersects theatre, literature, and visual arts in most of his work. For example, in his play The Past Is A Grotesque Animal, Pensotti had four actors enclosed on a rotating stage and through them attempted to tell the stories of…
Toronto is the place to be during World Pride. With a parade that generates thousands of visitors and endless events during one week in the year, it’s refreshing to see attention being paid to great impact queer cinema has had on the cinema.
The Cremaster Cycle is a collection of five films of various lengths. It takes its name from the cremaster muscle found fully developed in males (and found in a different form in females), that raises and lowers the testes in its response to temperature. Honestly, the title alone is but a tiny allusion to the overall framework of these works….