TIFF Report: Shane Meadows Interview
Strange to say but until this Wednesday Shane Meadows had never actually crossed my consciousness, but I was lucky enough to see the world premiere of This is England at the Toronto International Film Festival. My mind was utterly blown...
TIFF Report: Death of a President Review
[TIFF info page here.] I’ve just found out that Death of a President (previously titled D.O.A.P. before, I don’t know, they decided it wasn’t obviously controversial enough) has just won the Prize of the International Critics (the FIPRESCI Prize)...
TIFF Report: A Conversation with Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt
Last week, only a few days into the festival I was given the chance to interview Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, director and co-writer respectively of Reprise. This is an interview I jumped at the chance to perform; it...
TIFF Report: A Conversation with JT Petty
This week I got a chance to sit down with S&Man director JT Petty and chat with him for a while about his new documentary S&Man, shortly before his film made its Canadian premiere as part of the Midnight Madness...
Halo Director Announced
...And it's Neil Blomkamp. If you're as in the dark as I was when this announcement was made, you may well know his work as the director of the Alive With Technology: The New Citroen C4 TV advert, but...
Cinematheque Ontario Report: The Five Venoms REVIEW
I'm excited to review The Five Venoms for a variety of reasons: not only is it the first film in the Shaw Brothers' legendary series of films featuring the titular heroes (and villains); it's one of the most popular...
Cinematheque Ontario Report: King Boxer REVIEW
Well, I’ve been staring at this open word document for far too long now, not sure where to start when talking about the Shaw Brothers’ seminal King Boxer. I don’t know where to start because there are simply so...
Hot Docs Report: An Unreasonable Man REVIEW
The biggest misstep for the Hot Docs festival this year, at least from the punter’s point of view, must be the choice to agree to screen an advert for ‘platinum partner’ Cadillac’s new Escalade vanity SUV before every screening....
Hot Docs Report: 37 Uses for a Dead Sheep REVIEW
37 uses for a dead sheep, you say? I can only think of one, and once I’ve done that I’ll be pretty sleepy, so I wouldn’t be any good for the other 36 anyway. That’s a joke, by the...
Hot Docs Report: Black Gold REVIEW
So the first question you have to ask yourself before you decide to go and see a film about the devastating effects of the global coffee industry upon agriculture in Africa is – Do you even like coffee? Because...
Hot Docs Report: Dear Pyongyang REVIEW
Since my lambasting from a regular poster of comments in an earlier review of A State of Mind, in which apparently declared my undying allegiance to Kim Jong Il or something (hey, just because I can respect a showman...
Hot Docs Report: Darkon REVIEW
Contributor Mathew Kumar has been hard at work covering North America’s largest documentary film festival, Hot Docs, this week, and his first report is a review of the live action role-playing documentary Darkon. When I was a child (collective...
Snakes on a Plane UPDATE
An interesting titbit of news for all you Snakes-on-a-Planiacs out there – According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film has created such a buzz on the internet that movie bosses allowed five days of additional shooting to get a...
The Eternal Present REVIEW
It's really only fitting that one of the strangest films I've seen in a long while would come to me in the strangest of circumstances. One day I happened to find myself in the kitchen of the Director's Guild...
A State of Mind REVIEW
How much do you know about modern North Korea? I’m guessing that, unless you’ve just escaped from North Korea (and been pretty quick at learning to read English competently / use the internet / gain a love of obscure...
Reel Asian International Film Festival Report: Motel Review
The opening night gala film for the Reel Asian International Film Festival, Michael Kang’s debut, Motel, is an interesting choice. Separate from the festival’s national spotlight, Malaysia, by virtue of being an American production (the script workshopped at a...
Doom Review
I can’t really work out why I was so excited to see this. I could put it down to the fact that, yes, I’m a gamer, I played the original game in ’93 and it scared the 12 year...
TIFF Report: China Blue Review
Ha! This article title amuses me greatly. Back in the UK when I was a student there used to be this program on Channel 5 (a legendarily lowest common denominator type of channel) called 'European Blue Review', one of...
TIFF Report: Dear Wendy Review
Oh Dear. Dear Wendy has to be the film I've seen at the festival that I'm most embarrassed about. Not that I'm embarrassed to have seen it, having picked up on it on the basis that I haven't seen...
TIFF Report: Everything is Illuminated Review
I have never heard of Safran Froer's book before watching the film, which I went to see as a second choice, I'll be honest. I tried to rush a screening of the Duelist (far and away the most fun...
