Results tagged “feature”

If there’s one thing Torontoist likes to do, it’s moan about stuff, but on the face of it, that Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days receiving a theatrical release here is something that should be received without complaint. After all, journalists have praised the film, including Norm Wilner at Metro, who calls the film "marvellous filmmaking." But really, it just gives us a chance to moan about the lack of a theatrical release for Reprise (also distributed by Mongrel Media) again. Nice to see they have faith in a Romainian flick about abortion that won an award in France, but not, you know, just about the best film ever that won an award right here in Toronto.

Canstage's heavily-hyped season-ending production of The Rocky Horror Show has finally opened at the Bluma. Last season, they finished things off with "revolutionary" 60s musical Hair, and this year they have opted for one of the 70s' key "revolutionary" musicals. Fortunately for the audiences, Rocky is an infinitely superior show to Hair in almost every way: the songs are catchier, the characters more memorable, the plot more engaging and Canstage's production, helmed by Ted Dyskstra (co-creator of 2 Pianos, 4 Hands and Toronto's Hedwig), is significantly more finessed.

Without a doubt, this week we’d be letting cheapskate cinephiles down by failing to mention the CNISSU’s Free Friday Film of the week, which isn’t just one but three, starting at 6:30 p.m. tonight at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex) with the remarkably hard-to-see The Monster Squad, followed by Toronto classic The Brood, and finished off with the excellent blaxploitation nonsense The Human Tornado, starring, of course, Dolemite (Rudy Ray Moore). Check out the trailer, which is pretty much NSFW –- he uses an earthquake to make his milkshake!

Noël Mitrani is the director of Sur La Trace D’Igor Rizzi, which premiered in Canada at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, winning the CityTV Award for Best Canadian First Feature. The film, in which Jean-Marc Thomas (Laurent Lucas), a former European soccer player, wanders the streets Montreal before falling into petty crime while grieving his dead lover, was reviewed positively by Torontoist before the festival, and now plays as part of Canada’s Top Ten tomorrow night, Wednesday, January 31, at 8:45pm, and Mitrani will be taking part in the panel, New Quebec Cinema, on Thursday, February 1, 2007 at 6:30pm.

In what we would consider a bit of a surprise, Stephen Frears' The Queen has swept the Toronto Film Critics Association awards, winning Best Picture, and picking up three other awards (and even sharing another). Helen Mirren won as Best Actress for playing Queen Elizabeth II; Michael Sheen won Best Supporting Actor for Tony Blair (who he looks basically exactly like and has played before, so that’s a bit of a cheat); Peter Morgan won the Best Screenplay Award for writing The Queen; and Stephen Frears shared the Best Director prize with brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne for their drama L’Enfant.

all of the films that have won awards) but we do at least agree with a couple of them. Better than nothing!

The Art of Slam, a spoken word performance art in which poets spit their pieces in the hope of getting a good score from the audience, was probably best-documented in the 1998 feature film Slam. In the movie, a young Saul Williams becomes a rapper/poet/writer in response to the harsh police-as-predators community in which he lives. This music could accurately be described as intensely verbose, though never as misunderstood as its way more popular cousin. (If there are lines to be drawn between any rap/crime issues of the day and slam poetry, it's up to you to draw them.)

Karina Griffith, Film Producer

Today brings us yet another installment in the Dov Charney Media Feature Lovefest. This time from the Times, by way of Gawker. Even before the US outlets caught on to the charisma of American Apparel's Canadian Porn Star in Chief, Dov was hyped in an amazingly lengthy and nuanced piece by Mireille Silcoff. And now, every gal with a pen and a pulse knows she can go to LA (or NY) to meet with Dov and generate the same hot hot print heat. Read in sucession, Dov's exploits (not labour exploiting) are a bit numbing. And though it's hard not to appreciate a guy who, according to the NYT, describes himself as "born in the brisket" of Montreal Jewry, at the end of the day, an overpriced t is but that. Maybe all the journos can get together and write the guy a play.