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Film Friday: Running Hot and Cold
The word on the street is that the hottest ticket in town is The American Astronaut, screening tonight at Innis Town Hall (2 Sussex) as part of U of T Cinema Studies Student Union’s Free Friday Film. Screening in 35mm, this black and white sci-fi western rock opera is “the best thing ever” according to Todd Brown from Twitch Film.
If you don’t think your hands are suitably insulated to hold the hottest ticket in town, more comfortably toasty are tickets for screenings at the continuing RESfest and Toronto Arab Film Festival; or for the continuing season of Cinematheque Ontario. Adam Nayman over at Eye Weekly has given their Vancouver New Wave programme an excellent summary, and they’re also screening Jan Svankmajer’s latest, Lunacy.
Rather than a hot ticket perhaps you’d prefer a hot soup… Doc Soup? On Wednesday the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor W.) is showing The Bridge as part of Hot Docs’ Doc Soup series; a documentary about the Golden Gate bridge as a suicide spot; Adam Nayman argues it’s more of a gazpacho, saying “the light this film casts upon its subjects is short of illuminating.” Never mind! this week the Bloor is also showing the documentary Fuck (given roughly the same send off by both Eye’s Kieran Grant and Now’s Barrett Hooper) and the Bukowski adaptation Factotum.
With Bukowski’s influence, of course, Factotum is more likely a hot toddy rather than a hot soup, and there’s a warm review from Eye’s Jason Anderson, praising the film’s “rangey charm.”
Sounds unfortunately like the rest of this week’s films aren’t so much hot tickets as cold fish, though, including Turistas, Unnatural and Accidental and The Nativity Story. The harshest words from John Harkness in a while have been kept for The Hamster Cage’s “curdled sitcom”, however. Now that’s cold!