Results tagged “scarlettjohansson”

Hello! Although you probably didn’t notice, this Torontoist writer was away for a week, and as a result we failed to do something very important. Specifically, to congratulate Norm Wilner on becoming NOW’s senior film critic. We're not doing this just because we know Wilner keeps an eye on Torontoist to see if he gets a mention, but because we like his work so much that we can’t think of anyone better to step into John Harkness’s (non-literal) shoes.

We’ve mentioned the Bicycle Film Festival a few times before, but we’re going to give special mention to it again today because tonight at 7 p.m. is the screening of the festival’s first shorts programme, featuring Warriors: The Bike Race.

A quick update to an old story before we get onto all the new releases that are going to make us as depressed as ever – Remember You, Me and Dupree? We hypothesised that movie-execs came up with the title “while explaining what was going to happen during some sick, cocaine fuelled orgy”. Turns out we were right, as long as during the sick, cocaine fuelled orgy was to the tune of Steely Dan’s Cousin Dupree! Steely Dan have written an incredibly amusing letter to Luke Wilson to tell him to sort his little/bigger brother out. It reads like exactly the kind of rambling nonsense old rocker burnouts would write when annoyed/amused about possibly being ripped off, and is almost completely unquotable, so you should just read it all.

So, we’ve been busy enough with Hot Docs to almost forget that they, you know, are releasing films which aren’t documentaries this week (madness!) Indeed, craziness of craziness, they’re even holding other festivals this week! So we’d feel terrible if we forgot to mention the Toronto Jewish Film Festival, opening tomorrow night with a showing of Jesus is Magic, Sarah Silverman’s concert film which, to our memory, did rather well as a Midnight Madness showing at TIFF 2005. An unusual choice for the fest, however! All thoughts of her ethnicity aside, do we (that’s Torontoist) actually like Sarah Silverman? We can’t tell. She was in Mr. Show, okay, so she gets a million points for that. But her solo shtick (“I’m sexy and say horrible things!”) is a bit… I mean, yawn, right? I guess if you found The Aristocrats funny this might float your boat.

Let’s open with an image. By far our favourite image of film in the past...Ooh, ages, Date Movie’s unique take on Napoleon Dynamite. I can almost hear the two (count ‘em) writers from Scary Movie in the pitching office.

The big film this week is Terence Malik’s The New World, and by big, of course, we mean big (and by that we mean epic). Though, the full theatrical release does shed 15 minutes from it’s previous limited release for Oscar consideration. The majority of the publicity centres on 15 year old Q’Orianka Kilcher, who plays Pocahontas in the feature, because Terence Malik is a legendary recluse, and neither of the male stars (Colin Farrell nor Christian Bale) are quite as interesting to the media as a young, female film star on the wrong side of the age of consent. Now’s Josh Harkness comments “this is as beautiful as anything you’ll see in theatres this year, and if you appreciate cinematography, the big screen is the way to go” but is less convinced of the film’s overall quality. Hometown boy Christopher Plummer stars as Captain Christopher Newport.