Film Friday: My Bloody Defiance

So where were you last night when the power cut hit? We can tell you where we were—sitting in the Bloor Cinema watching some old-school trailers and waiting for the Rue Morgue screening of the original My Bloody Valentine to start. While initially confusing—the lights going off in a cinema is, after all, expected, and the power had the grace to cut off directly as a trailer ended—it was unfortunate that after that point there was nothing left to do but go home without being able to ingest a classic Canadian slasher flick.

Of course, the reason we were there was because My Bloody Valentine is hitting screens again as a remake, My Bloody Valentine 3D, and we'd thought we'd check out the original, never having seen it. In the case of previous horror films that have been "3D-ified"—for example Night of the Living Dead 3D—the results have been so awful that it's been disorientating, so we're probably just going to attempt to see the original again (on DVD, most likely; doesn't look like Rue Morgue is going to try another screening of it, sadly). [Update: According to this comment, Rue Morgue may be trying to re-schedule another screening in April.]

Still, we remain positive that the film we're off to see this evening won't suffer the same fate—Chandni Chowk to China. The first Warner Brothers India production to reach screens here, Jason Anderson writing for The Star claims that all director Nikhil Advani has done is "restage all the best scenes in Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle...and dub them into Hindi"—notably not saying so in a negative tone. Because to us that sounds brilliant.

So what else is on? A surprising amount for late January: there's the Emma Thompson/Dustin Hoffman vehicle Last Chance Harvey, in which the entire plot of the film is explained in the trailer, so there's absolutely no point in seeing the whole thing; Paul Blart: Mall Cop, the latest film from Happy Madison that features a lovable loser bumbling his way through an adventure before finally sorting himself out, defeating his enemies, and getting the girl; Notorious, a reputedly almost completely fictional Biggie Smalls biopic; The Class; Rumba; and the undoubtedly challenging and intellectually stimulating Hotel for Dogs. It's a hotel… but for dogs! My mind is blown.

Oh, and there's also Defiance, starring a fairly classy trio of actors—Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell (of which only one—Daniel Craig—is really being shown as the star) as a group of brothers defying (ah!) Nazi occupation to save lives by hiding out in a hidden forest village. According to The Globe and Mail's Liam Lacey, it's an "extraordinary tale" with an "ordinary telling."