January 2012
39 posts
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Watched: Kes, Hooper, Kuroneko, Adolescents in the...
I’m hunting and pecking - old film prints and new Criterion disks, not a bad way to burn off the tail end of a bad month. I caught up to Hooper at last, which was satisfying after all the Buddy Joe Hooker love at ActionFest last year, but I found the film inconsequential and broad. I pushed from there to Kuroneko from the Criterion Collection, having been quite thrilled by Onibaba several...
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Review: The Grey →
The Grey is a triumph of mismarketing. It pays off the collateral of Taken and Unknown – Liam Neeson’s late-career, out-of-nowhere, more-than-welcome transformation from Serious Actor into Charles Effing Bronson – by luring Neeson’s new audience into a movie built on slyly different intentions.
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A fracas at the premiere screening of The Woman in...
It goes like this: I find out, at around 4:30 on Thursday afternoon, that I’m going to the Woman in Black screening (screening time is 7:00), Daniel Radcliffe in attendance. The screening, hosted by Alliance-Atlantis and held at the Scotiabank theatre, is besieged upon my arrival by Radcliffe fangirls, but I encounter no trouble entering the theatre, proceeding to Alliance’s ticket...
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Mamo #238: Extremely Close and Incredibly Loud →
The Boys of Mamo return on Oscar Nomination Tuesday to talk about what the hell just happened, i.e. the same thing that happens every year.
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Girl, Interrupted: David Fincher and Jeff... →
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Watched: Solaris, In the Dust of the Stars,...
ATTACK THE BLOC kicked off at the Lightbox this week, the first strike in TIFF’s roaring winter season, which Matty Price* rightly described as being programmed as if they were wondering if anyone was looking. Sasha and I scampered down to the BLB after the Haywire sneak on Thursday night to kick things off rightly with Solaris, which was a goddamned lead-lined prison of a movie for the...
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A Tale of Two Sparrows
This deserves a second look:
This was Bex’s Christmas present to me. (I got her a book or something.) She made this herself. This is a crocheted Jack Sparrow, and it takes me completely aback. I posted a photo of this a couple of days after Christmas, in the dead zone where all of social media was either asleep or drunk. Now I’m posting it again. I’ll post it again and again,...
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The Toy Report: 2011
Being the annual recap of the best toys I bought in the past year.
I was all fixed to post my blah-blah about my new favourite thing ever, when I realized that I’d omitted the customary year-end toy survey, for which the internet is certainly not crying out, but which allows a sense of order to me. And so here they are - the best of my collection, 2011:
#1: Thor - Hot Toys Movie...
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Review: Haywire →
I’ve always assumed the long-mooted, never arriving Wonder Woman feature film was a logistical impossibility for no greater reason than that I simply didn’t believe any human woman could be found who could play her; or at least, I didn’t believe it until I was watching Gina Carano ass-hand her way through Haywire.
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2-Minute Critic: Red Tails →
Video for Red Tails posted at The Substream. Or, read my written review.
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Review: Red Tails →
George Lucas is such a dimwit as a storyteller at this point that he could probably find a way to fuck up a phone call.
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Job update: Senior Learning Specialist
I’m pleased to announce that I have taken a new contract at Telus, through the end of January 2013, as a Senior Learning Specialist. I’ll still be working with Continuous Learning, but will be moving into instructional design for more complex projects, along with driving strategy for social media, social learning, and our e.training site’s development.
As previously reported,...
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Mamo #237: Who Owns What? →
What do Yol, George Lucas, and the Stop Online Piracy Act have in common? They have this episode of Mamo, for one thing.
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Review: A Dangerous Method →
As drama, A Dangerous Method is drab, unimportant, and even ham-fisted, but I believe that to judge it solely on those terms is to miss its key evocative strengths. Tapped-in, plugged-in, whatever queasily semi-sexual metaphor you want to use, A Dangerous Method feeds on an undercurrent of the collision of order and chaos that is, by dint of its precise choice of subject, haunting,...
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TIFF Bell Lightbox - Winter 2012 Preview →
Mr. Price and I return to the TIFF Bell Lightbox to preview the newly-minted programme for the winter season. Russians! Bresson! Ghibli! The madness of Nicolas Cage!
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Mamo #236: In Real Life →
With the announcement of changes to the eligibility requirements for Best Documentary Feature at the Oscars, we pause for a moment to consider the health of the genre. Has a documentary ever changed the world?
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Watched: The White Diamond, The Set Up, and a new...
My “Watched” column disappeared after December 5th; I was trying to cram together all my year-end viewing and coverage, plus I started writing reviews of new films for the Substream, and my available time for “catalog viewing” all but disappeared. Here’s a couple of things I watched, plus some notes on a new scheme:
When Black Dog Video announced their closing last...
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WatchMike names THE DEVIL INSIDE the worst film of 2012. Glad we got that out of the way early.
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Mamo #235: The Year Keeps Ending, And We Keep... →
Part 2 of our 2011 wrap-up! We look at how the industry fared for the year - not enough money, too much 3-D, and a whole lotta superheroes. Which franchises were born? Which were renewed? Which [cough Green Lantern cough] are dead, dead, dead?
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The CAST Awards Podcast 2011 →
Monday night, Matty Price and I hosted a special roundtable of voters from the CAST Awards, discussing their picks and pans for the best films of 2011. Cinemayhem ensued. Give a listen!
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Mamo #234: Caplansky's with Kuplowsky →
Happy new year! Mamo gathers on a crystal-clear January morning and looks back on the best and worst of 2011 with special guest star Peter Kuplowsky, from our favourite vantage point in the corner booth at Caplansky’s Deli. Lists abound. What was your favourite film of the year?
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The Best Films of 2011
My pick for the best film of the year is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. A sentimental choice, to be sure, but an unavoidable one. For as much as this list is about which films I think are (to whatever degree this is possible) the objective high-water marks for the craft in the year – in which regard DH2 would rank in the top few, regardless – it is also a list of which films meant...
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Review: War Horse →
War Horse is oldschool filmmaking par excellence. My eyes swept back and forth along that wide, gorgeous, cinemascope frame like a parched man drinking up water. That War Horse is a great film is, I admit, a bit of a surprise; that it is the most traditionally Spielbergian film (and yet not, at the same time) that the director has made in nearly two decades pretty much left my jaw on the ...
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Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy →
Dry, nearly dusty, and moving so slowly that it might seem at first to be moving backwards, Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of John Le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is fine and rewarding in the long run – but it is a very, very long run. Our “hero,” George Smiley, barely seems to be doing anything at all, investigating what I would consider a rather crucial lapse in security at MI6 with...
