Torontoist » “Park Chan”

CBC Music’s First-Ever Festival Will Be a CanCon Love-In

Chris Dart — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:30:30 +0000

The CBCMusic.ca Festival will feature Sloan, Kathleen Edwards, Of Monsters and Men, and roving appearances by Jian Gomeshi and Matt Galloway.

According to CBC’s Chris Boyce, the goal of this weekend’s CBCMusic.ca Festival is twofold. First and foremost, the CBC wants to celebrate Canadian music. Second, it wants to celebrate CBC Music, the broadcaster’s online music service, which launched a little over a year ago.

The Barber of Seville is Not the Sharpest Shave

Carly Maga — Tue, 21 May 2013 15:30:32 +0000

A reworked version of Beaumarchais' play makes for an uneven production, on now at Soulpepper Theatre.

In 1996, Theatre Columbus premiered playwright Michael O’Brien’s “freely adapted” take on the famous Beaumarchais play The Barber of Seville, which was written in 1775. O’Brien’s version mixed in music from the 1816 opera of the same name by Gioachino Rossini, as well as original tunes by composer John Millard. The adaptation also propelled the story forward a couple centuries, with pop culture references galore. With Theatre Columbus co-founder Leah Cherniak at the helm, the musical ended the season with six Dora Award nominations (it won three) and plenty of critical acclaim.

Seventeen years later, Soulpepper Theatre is remounting this zany reimagination of The Barber of Seville, updated once again by O’Brien, Millard, and Cherniak. But, for some reason—the change in decade, or company, or sense of humour—whatever had made the original so magical, has faded, save for a few key performances.

Film Fridays: But Is It Better Than Deuce Bigalow?

Mathew Kumar — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 05:32:06 +0000

Happy New Year, film fans! Or, perhaps, not. For we’ve slammed like so much booze filled new year vomit upon the tarmac of the post-Christmas lull, in which basically nothing of interest is released in any format. Certainly this week fans of more high brow cinema will have to hang on like those last few drips of chunky bile saliva for Cinematheque Ontario’s winter programme, starting on January 13th, which we’ll probably talk about then, and which features yet more Mikio Naruse, but lots of other exciting stuff like a limited run of The Passenger, the ~~long lost~~ hidden by Jack Nicholson flick.
Low-brow cinema fans! Come on in!
This week’s big new release is Quentin Tarantino’s Hostel, or at least that’s what televisual advertising would have you believe. We’re sure the film’s director, Eli Roth, is probably in slightly two minds about this – on one mind, “Awesome, people will go and see my film” on the other “but they’ll think it’s by Quentin Tarantino if they’re dumb.” He may also add “but if they’re smart they’ll see all I’ve done is rip off Takashi Miike and Park Chan-Wook, adding some boobs and a very obvious subtext.”
Having already seen it at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, Torontoist can reveal the film is entertaining, certainly better than the Saw flicks, but it’s nowhere near the horrific best of the Asian masters. Certainly some of the special effects are a bit shonky.
So instead, why not submit yourself to the mind numbing, bone chilling horror of a new Happy Madison production? Grandma’s Boy, the intended vehicle to slingshot long time Adam Sandler second stringer Allen Covert to megastardom (maybe) plays an recently evicted video games tester (Sounds good, the kids are down with that) who has to go and live with his grandma (okay, hilarity might ensue, let’s keep going) played by Everybody Loves Raymond’s Doris Roberts (oh sweet Mary mother of Jesus no) and he has to fight off the advances of her horny octogenarian housemates (please place a gun in our mouth).
To be honest, it looks better than the Deuce Bigalow sequel, and we have an unusual soft spot for the dumbest of the dumb comedies, so it could be worth a shot… Couldn’t it?
Well, if you can’t bring yourself to try either of those, outside of the multiplex, Doc soup Presents A State of Mind, on Wed 11th at the Bloor Cinema, 506 Bloor West, which the blurb referrers to as “a revealing look at the lives and beliefs of the citizens of one of the world’s only remaining communist dictatorships, North Korea, A State of Mind captures the experiences of two young gymnasts, Pak Hyon Sun and Kim Song Yun, as they prepare for the 2003 Mass Games, an enormous spectacle paying homage to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.”
We all know that guy totally sucks, so hilarity is bound to ensue!

The Week in Film: Gorillas in the Midst

Mathew Kumar — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 17:30:13 +0000

We here at Torontoist thought we’d try out a new weekly feature listing the best (and worst) films to be hitting Toronto’s screens in the following week, as a city which features both multiplexes, second run theatres and blessed with several vintage single screen movie houses, there’s a lot that can be missed.
Released yesterday, Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha has received a cinema adaptation universally derided by reviewers. Golden’s novel is, much like, say, the Da Vinci Code, eminently readable, but utter pap. The film, with stilted dialogue from Chinese actresses speaking English in film set in Japan doesn’t even sound watchable. Famed silver tongued Paramount film producer Robert Evans has claimed that part of what made The Godfather a success (in comparison to legions of previous Sicilian gangster drama failures) is that it was acted, directed, and created by Italian-Americans, keeping everything as real as possible. Perhaps more people should pay attention to him, even though for the most part he’s clearly insane. This dangerous lack of sincerity studios seem to have returned to would also be damaging to the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with the intense smell of Disney utterly desperate to force it’s fingers into a pie already thoroughly diddled by both Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings, if the damage wasn’t far more likely to be done by the new, leaner and meaner Peter Jackson (seriously, have you seen him on the cover of Empire?) and his forthcoming ape-ic (epic).
Yes, this week’s metaphorical 300 pound gorilla, is, uh, a literal giant ape in the form of King Kong. Released on December 14th, Jackson’s remake of the 1933 crowd pleaser allows everyone to conveniently forget Dino De Laurentis’ 1976 disaster. Due to Jackson’s traditional care, there are no reviews from local journalists as of yet (what is he worried about? Spoilers? It’s a remake) but with Michael Ancel’s video game adaption going down a storm, it bodes well for the film, trusting that the audience go easy on the soft drinks, or just get good at holding it in, during King Kong’s crazy three hour running time. (The original’s theatrical version came in at a tight 100 minutes.)
Also released this week is Ballet Russes, showing at Canada Square (2198 Yonge) particularly enjoyed by Eye’s Jason Anderson – “Even if many young people remain wary of people in purple leotards, [Dayna Goldfine’s] film may convince them that ballet was as volatile and daring as any art form that’s developed since”.
This week’s delights out with the multiplex include:
Kung Fu Friday presents Jade Fox, 9:45 tonight, at the Revue (400 Roncevalles) – A film that shares it’s name with the villain from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in this case the Jade Fox is a male robin hood-esque character, played by Lo Leigh, a veteran of the Shaw Brothers studio and widely recognized as the actor Tarantino based the Pai Mei character on in Kill Bill. The film was also directed by a female, Go Bu Shu, and features a great deal of feminine kung fu, so feminists (And/or slightly odd perverts) check it out!
Three… Extremes, Dec 9-15 at the Royal (608 College) – a pan-Asian omnibus movie featuring the directorial skills of Fruit Chan (Public Toilet), Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) and Takashi Miike (more than I could ever name, but certainly TIFF2005’s Midnight Madness hit The Great Yokai War) this features has three separate stories, each with the respective director’s cinematic style and particular, personal nasty streak. Not a date flick.