Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana in the 80s & 90s
How the Cover Song Conquered Movie Trailers
Thanks again for the link, y
‘Never On Tuesday’: The Real Story Of The Bizarre Nicolas Cage Cameo That Lit Up The Internet
Thanks for the link, y. Great clip but mostly I want to mention this anecdote:
I had gone to a party that he was at, maybe a year before. A friend said, “Oh, you want to go to a party that Nic Cage is having?” We went to an apartment in a famous old building called El Royale in Hollywood. Went up to whatever floor the party was on. There were very few people there. And Nic was there with Crispin Glover. I’m not even sure if it was Nic or Crispin Glover’s apartment, but there was a giant aquarium and there was a baby shark just swimming back and forth inside. He just sitting on the end of the bed, and he sat there for maybe an hour just watching the shark going up and down.
If 2019’s best picture Oscar winner could talk…
I don’t agree with Rad’s take on Roma, but the optical politics of this year’s Oscar pick will be interesting to say the least. It’s extra-interesting because of the Netflix angle. Honestly I strongly doubt Roma will win, given that two of the four listed here are serious Oscar bait. Also, surely there are some other December releases that could slip in there.
Side note: Roma is the only one of these that I have seen, and I thought it was a masterpiece.
Lost Stanley Kubrick screenplay, Burning Secret, is found 60 years on
From the 50s, during his time at MGM
Damian Lewis to Play Controversial Ex-Toronto Mayor Rob Ford in Thriller
Scalding Hot Takes: Ready Player One
Nathan Rabin:
Yes, Ready Player One spent 140 minutes jerking me off but instead of pleasure or release, all I experienced was rawness, bleeding and painful chafing.
The Toronto Public Library’s Ebook Jazz
I have been really digging the Libby app that works with OverDrive, which is the ebook system that the TPL uses (as do many libraries). It’s a well done app that works great on phone and iPad reading-wise. On the down side, the system is founded on the artificial scarcity of electronic items, meaning it replicates the “hold” system of physical books – as usual, this is so someone can monetize it. On the plus side, free books! You just have to wait a little, or a lot, depending on what you want. But really, there are always some great, obscure books to be found that have no wait at all. The app also handles audiobooks and I’ve made use of that during this pat leave, taking long walks with the baby in the frigid Canadian winter listening to the icy tales of a doomed arctic expedition. As one does.
There is also a magazine service that uses an app called RBDigital which is not good. It works though, and it means you get pretty much any magazine you want, for free. Furthermore with your TPL card you also get free streaming access to the Criterion Collection, along with many other things I haven’t tried yet – see all of them here. If you live in Toronto you should check it out.
The Best Sci-Fi Movies that Most People Haven’t Seen
Could this article be any more up my alley
Disney’s reported streaming service plans show the company is sticking with what already works
Deep learning technology is now being used to put Nic Cage in every movie
It didn’t take long to find the best use for this technology.
Behold, Steve Bannon’s Hip-Hop Shakespeare Rewrite: ‘Coriolanus’
What.
Star Wars is getting an all-new trilogy from Rian Johnson
Louis C.K. Told Us Who He Was, But That Doesn’t Make It Better
In some ways this is the greatest nightmare for a lot of women: A man who does the right things, who acts the right way, who gives every impression that he’s one of the good ones, but turns out to be one of the bad ones anyway.
Louis C.K. Crossed a Line Into Sexual Misconduct, 5 Women Say
And his movie premiere is canceled. Yeah, that movie takes on a whole new meaning.
Here’s the finished film.
•Something Ed and I have been working on
•Robots in disguise
Some faves are problematic; others are merely embarrassing. 1986’s Transformers: The Movie may be both, but leans towards the latter.
Hollywood studios join Disney to launch Movies Anywhere digital locker service
Sounds like a good service,
a good ten years too late
TIFF 2017: Final Thoughts
Well I definitely fell behind my movie reviews – I saw 15 movies, but only reviewed 6. Oh well!
The ticket selection process was better than ever for me. I haven’t done a TIFF package in a few years, so the process was quite different from the last time, and one of the improvements this year was that members were given first crack at the tickets. This seems like a no-brainer for an organization with a less-than-compelling membership pitch otherwise, but I guess it’s taken a while for them to realize it. But anyway, I wound up getting tickets to movies like mother! and The Shape of Water that I normally wouldn’t have even tried for.
My experience at the actual festival was mixed. I had a more or less pleasant experience (given the limitations, i.e. crowds, lines) at all of the venues except Scotiabank. Sadly it’s the venue with the most screens, so I was there a lot. I’m getting the impression that there is not a lot of money in the Scotiabank Theatre capital repair budget. Apparently their giant escalator, which one must take up about five floors to get into the theatre, has been broken for like six months, and was only just repaired in time for the festival. The problem dogging festival goers was that a lot of the seats are starting to fall apart. They are this sort of springy auto-reclining thing – if you lean back, the seat goes back. Unfortunately on a fair number of the seats, the springiness is starting to go, so if you are above a certain weight or size and you tilt your head the wrong way, the seat will just go for it and essentially deposit you into the lap of the person behind you. It’s all the joy of air travel, except no one’s really in control of when they recline their seat. It was like a social psychology experiment run amok – I saw fights over it, and I was on both sides of the problem repeatedly myself. It may sound fussy, and perhaps it is, but the contrast between the seats at the Lightbox – which are great, and where even the back row has a great view – and those at Scotiabank, whose appeal is even further tarnished by its general crowdedness and disorganization, was so great that next year, if I go, I will avoid Scotiabank like the god-rotting plague. (Sorry, I’m reading a 19th century sailing novel. Arr!)
Finally, here are some quick notes on other films I saw that I haven’t written up properly, and won’t:
- Manhunt, by John Woo. If you like John Woo before he got shitty, this is for you. Lots of corny bromance, dual-wielding, and slow-motion doves. And great action.
- The Happy End, by Haneke. Solid entry into the Haneke canon. Depression warning! It’s a miracle Mr. Haneke is still alive, if this is how he sees the world.
- The Shape of Water – good? Honestly this came later in the fest and I was a bit burned out and I was not blown away by it. But I wasn’t in the best shape to judge. My take is that it’s a good film, not his greatest work or anything.
- The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches – I really liked this. An intriguing parable, beautifully told, of Quebec emerging from decades of smothering church control.
- The Third Murder – my first Kore-eda film! Apparently atypical, but I really liked it. I will watch more.
- Simulation – really cool first feature from Iran, told out of sequence, with Brechtian mise-en-scene.
- Sweet Country – Australian Western from the Aboriginal point of view. It was good, if languid, although this was toward the end of my week and I may have been a little impatient with it.
- Thelma – decent. Sort of a thinking person’s Carrie. Again, slow and/or someone was pressing down on my knees the whole time.
- Let the Corpses Tan – wasn’t super amped about it. A very stylish heist-shootout movie that I found myself not giving a shit about. If I was still in my 20s I probably would have liked it ok.