» events 10 Movies to See Before You Die

May 01 2009

events, opinion

Last Survivor of the Nostromo

Last night at the Bloor it was amazing. Alien and Aliens on the big screen for the first time (for me) was absolutely incredible. Alien, of course, being released to theatres the year of my birth and Aliens coming out when I was six, neither of these were particularly good theatre-going opportunities. What I love most about repertory theatres like the Bloor is seeing older movies that I’ve seen dozens of times, but this time on the big screen. Sometimes, it leaves me feeling like I’ve never seen them at all…

I was very surprised at how well Alien held up over the years, given that the movie is 30 this year. This was the Director’s Cut, but to be honest it’s been so long since I’ve actually sat down and watched Alien all in one go that I’m not totally sure where the extra footage went. What I was sure of was how much I enjoyed this movie again. It held my attention perfectly and it scared me silly. Alien, you see, is an almost perfect ghost story – no one has seen it, no one knows what it does, it picks them off one by one and fractures the crew. Add to that some drooly, acid bleeding monsters and you have a brilliant movie. Not to mention, some fantastic additional attention with a cat. Cats make the best McGuffins, non?

Aliens was a whole different story. Watching it last night it struck me just how similar it is to Terminator. I realize that they’re from the same director (and writer), but they are really, really similar. Aliens, unlike its predecessor, is an almost perfect monster movie. They’re everywhere, you know exactly what you’re dealing with and you get to see new aspects of the monster’s character. Mix in some tension adding devices, like time, location, lack of working ship, an android and a child and – boom – it’s a brilliant, gripping movie. If I may say, every other time I’ve seen this movie I’ve flat out hated Newt. When I was about 13 and saw it for the first time, I really just wanted the Aliens to eat her. She was annoying, got in the way and seemed pretty stupid. For some reason, seeing her on the big screen (and all at once) made a huge difference. Not only did I feel exactly the opposite about her, I also kinda felt a little twinge of affection for her. She’s sweet and she’s smart and I love that Ripley loves her which, in the beginning anyway, is the only good reason to love her.

What I liked the most about these two movies together was the evolution of Ripley’s character, something you can see when watch them back to back like this. In alien, Ripley is a crew member and a rule follower. She’s not a rebel or a lone-wolf, she just does her job according to ‘the law’ and she only wants the best for the crew. She’s not a superwoman. She’s not even really a leader, she just the person with the next highest rank. But Ripley is smart. She understands her dangers and can keep a cool head despite ridiculous and new experiences and, because of this, gets away alive (with the cat). In Aliens, she’s really no different, except that now she’s a little bit mad. She doesn’t let her fear paralyze her, even though it could and she finds in a crazy situation something to anchor and focus her – Newt. After the act 3 turn (which I had trouble determining, since there were a few deciding factors) Ripley’s character completely changes. Now she’s angry. Now she’s a lone-wolf. Now she’s a soldier. You can visibly see the change in her. She’s still scared, but now in defiant way and the truly incredible thing about this change is that even though she’s on her way to becoming extremely tough, she’s doing it because she’s acting on her base mothering instinct – to save a child. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Played so perfectly by Sigourney Weaver, who somehow manages to remain soft, gentle and sexy while still kicking some serious ass, it’s no accident that Ripley has captured all our imaginations. Even if you can’t get to in on ‘the big scree’, I strongly recommend sitting down and watching these two movies back to back – and soon!

Tagged events

Apr 14 2009

The Wright Stuff: Videos from Movie Moxie

Shannon has posted these now and graciously emailed me so that I can sheepishly link to it. My apologies again for my technology, but here they are. Thank you *so* much Shannon!

http://moviemoxie.blogspot.com/2009/04/brood-wright-stuff-screening-with-edgar.html

Tagged events, wright stuff

Apr 13 2009

The Wright Stuff: The Brood and Last Night

Edgar Wright pulled out all the stops last night at the final evening of The Wright Stuff, with two brilliant movies and two special guests. Unfortunately, my camera epic failed on me by telling me it had more than sufficient battery life to get through both Q&As, then flaking out on me at the last minute. More after the jump.

The Brood
The Brood is a brilliant Canadian movie about how mental illness effects a family. Well, sort of. When we meet the main character, Frank Carveth (played by the wonderful Art Hindle, who was there last night), he is picking up his daughter, Candi, from a psychiatric facility where his wife is being treated. Soon after picking her up from her weekly visit with her mother, Frank discovers that Candi has wounds and bruises all over her back. When Frank attempts to address this with his wife’s psychiatrist, Dr. Raglan (played by the always excellent Oliver Reed), denies that any harm has come to the child. Frank sets out to prove that something is wrong at Raglan’s facility, but when people start dying, murdered by strange, inhuman child-like creatures, Frank begins to fear for the safety of himself and his child.

This was the first time I’d seen this movie and seeing it on a big screen was amazing. It’s creepy, it’s weird and it’s scary. Cronenberg did an excellent job of making his dialogue less strange and awkward than usual, something he’s well known for. As mentioned Art Hindle was on hand for a post-show Q&A, of which I don’t have footage. Shannon the Movie Moxie was there last night and did have her camera with her, so I believe that she got some. When she posts it I’ll make sure to link to it. In a nutshell, however, Hindle discussed that making this movie was just as creepy and depressing as it looks. Right after the screening Edgar declared, ‘Happy Easter!’ and then proceeded to say that he wanted to get on a plane right then and go home, because Toronto is ‘…fucking scary!’ Hindle was extremely jovial and joked his way through the Q&A, telling wonderful stories about the making of the movie, making of other movies and some choice stories about Oliver Reed. With respect to working with the children and such extremely violent, scary subject matter, he said that they made it into a game on the set, ensuring that the children knew that nothing was real. Of the girl who played Candice, his daughter in the movie, he said she is …’fully recovered’. He also made note that when this movie first came out it was considered to be ‘B’ horror and had trouble being distributed, something that explains why it’s so scare and difficult to get a copy, which is a shame. All in all, this is excellent horror, which you should see for sure. Watch out for children in creepy lemon yellow and powder blue jumpers.

Last Night
Now this, for me, was an experience. I first saw this movie when I was in high school at a rep theatre in London, which has long since been turned into a night club. I saw it with some ‘cool’ kids, one of whom I was trying to impress (a boy, of course). It was the first independent movie I ever saw and it completely blew my mind. The level of simplistic complexity and deep emotion that Don McKellar injected into this script, film and performance quickly became one of the reasons why I love the movies so much. You know the feeling. If you love movies, you have one. That one movie where you realize that you are in love with the feeling that film gives you and you just want to seek more. For me, this is that movie. So when Don McKellar came to the screening yesterday to do a Q&A, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

Last Night is a movie about the end of the world, plain and simple. It follows a few select characters through what is the last 6 hours of the planet. Telling you more than that, in my opinion, would ruin it. It is beautiful, haunting and will make you feel such a myriad of emotions that you’ll come out feeling both uplifted and refreshed and completely spent at the same time. Starring Don Mckellar himself (as writer and director as well), Sandra Oh, Genevieve Bujold, Callum Keith Rennie and David Cronenberg, it’s choice Canadian cinema and a movie that is not to be missed.

In the Q&A McKellar explained that this movie was part of a series of 10 movies about the end of the world in preparation for ‘Y2K’. He noted that originally this was to have been an hour long movie for TV, but he decided it needed to be a feature length movie to tell the story he wanted to tell. He said some of his influences were Romero movies, Omega Man and Soylent Green, although those movies are admittedly very different. He didn’t want to date it with Y2K and he didn’t want to have to explain why the world was ending, only that it was. He shot this movie over approximately 23 days in Parkdale and Queen West, but largely on Weston Road because he specifically wanted the movie to have no ‘green’ in it (for a plot point that is very subtle and I don’t want to reveal), and as a result he used an ‘economy of visuals’. When an audience member asked why he waited to direct until he did this movie, he noted that he had simply been waiting for the right script and he felt that this one was the right one. Of all projects this one, he feels, is important and it’s important to him because it is so personal. Watching it now he feels that it was small and cramped, but that he is still very satisfied with the ending. He also noted that he was very proud of this project and very proud to have been included in The Wright Stuff. It was definitely the perfect way to end this screening series.

If you’ve got footage of this Q&A and would be willing to let me post or link to it, please do let me know. Don McKellar is one of Canada’s most valuable artists, with an extremely large body of excellent work, and this Q&A is not to be missed. As soon as I find somewhere to link, I’ll update. Please accept my apologies on behalf of the stupid camera.

A HUGE thank you goes out to Edgar Wright who put together this brilliant series of movies and who is kind, ingratiating to his fans and a big fan himself. It was an honour to have the opportunity to attend this series.

Tagged events, wright stuff

Mar 30 2009

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appearances, events, news

The Other Luke Duke: John Schneider

I’m going to ask for a very little latitude here. I know that John Schneider is primarily known for television, being both Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard and Jonathan Kent from Smallville, but he *has* done movies (everyone remembers Lake Placid 2, right?) and there are *both* Dukes and Superman movies, he’s just not in them. So it’s a stretch, but I’m pretty sure that you’ll forgive me once you keep reading….

So John Schneider came out to do a signing on Saturday at the Motion Car Show (for those of you in Toronto it was at the Direct Energy Centre). My husband got all jumpy as soon as he heard and set about making something for him to sign. S.O.P.* So off we went on Saturday morning. We got there a little after 11 and he was already signing. I’m rarely star struck. Very rarely. But when I rounded the corner and caught my first glimpse of all six feet of the muscle, tan and charming smile that is Superman’s dad, I nearly lost my sh*t.

From a distance you could tell that he was really nice. He stopped and took a few moments for each of the people and, even though you were paying for the picture with him, he still took some time, set up the shot and smiled big. Basically, he looked genuinely pleased to be there. Trust me when I say that’s rare.

So we finally get up to his people and we ask, very politely, if he’s signing non-Dukes stuff. At first they were confused, but when we explained that it was Superman stuff, they beamed and said they thought he’d be pleased. And he was.

So we walk over, say hello and plunk down my Reeves accurate Superman crest (which my husband had whipped up for me a day before, impressing almost everyone in the theatre at the time). Do you know what he said to me? He said:

Thank you so much! No one’s ever asked me to sign a cape before!

THANK YOU SO MUCH! A dude that *I* was paying for his signature and that *I* shlepped halfway across God’s paved acre to see thanked ME for wanting HIS signature on something. I almost fell over. I popped Pa Kent’s cape cherry. Me.

Awesome.

Then he was equally as impressed with my husband’s section of ‘car door’ from the General. You can see him smiling in both pictures while he’s signing. It was incredible. A few minutes after that was the Daisy Duke look alike contest which was a little lame, to be honest, but you know what? John was a great sport and had a wonderful time just chillin’ with the Dukes fans and the Canadian Dukes. Pics attached of us with him, him signing and the sigs themselves. This one will totally go down as one of the better celebrity signings I’ve ever had… if not the single best. Dood. I met Superman’s dad. What a perfect day.

*Standard Operating Procedure.

Tagged events

Mar 27 2009

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events, news

3D is the New Black

Before getting to see one of the best concert movies ever made last night, James Stewart, a 3D director, did a presentation for the crowd. First, I’d like to make note that I was misleading when I posted about U23D yesterday. I indicated that ‘James Stewart, the director’ would be at the screening. I meant simply to make note that he *was* a director, not that he directed U23D. My bad. It doesn’t mean he’s not brimming with information about 3D technology and it doesn’t mean that his presentation didn’t totally kick ass.

Yesterday I was musing about how 3D is just a new gimmick to get people into the theatre and was being used by Hollywood to whitewash the fact that they couldn’t seem to be bothered to produce good product. “Stick 3D on it. People will watch anything.” Apparently I was wrong.

Mr. Stewart did an excellent job of explaining the evolution in 3D technology and why it’s not just a gimmick, but an important advancement in film.

First he started by indicating that there were essentially two big advancements in film: Sound and Colour. Since then both of these technologies have been improved upon (digital picture, sound advancements, etc) but nothing new has been innovated. That is, of course, until 3D.

In the 50s 3D had a very brief hey-day with a number of movies being produced over about a three year period. These movies included Kiss Me Kate, Dial M for Murder and Creature from the Black Lagoon. (I bet you didn’t know that. I know I didn’t.) 3D had a brief, but generally laughable, renaissance in the 80s, generally with genre movies like Jaws 3D and then retired itself to theme park attractions.

With advancements in digital technology, something that allows filmmakers to choose the specific way in which they use the 3D, this is the time for Hollywood to go big with 3D. There is a very long list of movies that are coming out this year and next that will be entirely 3D, or have whole sections shot in it.

In a nutshell, that’s the history. There’s more and it will be important to some people, but as a viewer I’m largely concerned with this: will 3D be used as a band-aid to cover up bad content? Well, the answer is yes and no. When used correctly it is immersive, when used incorrectly it’s distracting and gimmicky. Essentially, 3D is used to build intimacy. It’s intended to draw the viewer into the film and give them a ‘being there’ experience of the film. So, like I said, when used correctly it really is what he says, the next big technological leap in film. Since there are so many movies coming out this year using 3D I think that, really, the proof can only be in the pudding and we will see how much of a band-aid gimmick this becomes.

If the majority of filmmakers use this the way that the directors of U23D did, it’ll be nothing short of revolutionary. Now what do we think the chances of that are?