Andersonesque

Yes, there must be gajillions of these being uploaded onto the web as I type these words. But I do honestly believe my review (also here at the CBC’s arts site) has the two best opening paragraphs I’ve written lately. So all you other Twi-heads types can suck it! Jason out.

All of [READ MORE]

George Clooney tries to kill a goat using only his mind in The Men Who Stare at Goats

I recently talked with British journalist and filmmaker Jon Ronson about the film that they made from his book The Men Who Stare at Goats, which is full of crazy stories about research into psychic phenomena that the military did in the ’70s. I wanted to share the rest of it with you since I used but a mere fraction in my story for Eye Weekly on the film, which kinda falls apart in the last reel but is still more fun than a kick in the face…

Have any of the people you interviewed for the book seen the film yet?

Continue reading Talking with Jon Ronson about The Men Who Stare at Goats

No, I’m not in the “masterpiece!” camp. More of the “noble failure” cabal, come to think of it. The unexpurgated version of my Eye Weekly review is after the pics. Feel the childlike wonder, or not.

No, not these Wild Things

I mean these Wild Things

After six years of painstaking work and a much-publicized tussle with Warner Brothers over the original (and reportedly much darker) cut, Spike Jonze has finally reached the end of his own journey into both the world of Maurice Sendak and the shark pit of studio filmmaking. That the fruit of his labours is so visually splendiferous and defiantly idiosyncratic marks some kind of triumph no matter how you slice it. But seeing as Jonze’s adaptation of Sendak’s 1963 kid-lit classic Where the Wild Things Are may be the most depressing and distressing children’s movie since the rabbit apocalypse that was Watership Down, one has to wonder whether the director’s objectives were as sound as his ability to carry them off.

To be fair, Jonze states that his new film is not a children’s movie – instead, he has said, “I set out to make a movie about childhood,” a loaded phrase that should alert hipster parents to the film’s possibly deleterious effects on their progeny.

Continue reading A review of Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are

So it all ended a few days and I’ve nearly caught up on my sleep. By way of wrap up, I wanted to list my favourites. The trouble is, I’ve come to experience TIFF in three stages that are quite distinct. First, there are the movies that I see at Cannes and spend the [READ MORE]

Here’s most of my TIFF reviews for 2009, which can also be read in some form or another at the Eye Weekly site. I didn’t have time to put the times on everything either so you’d best have a look at the official TIFF site for those.

And here, for no reason, is a [READ MORE]

Here’s my piece on the TIFF 09 Short Cuts Canada program from the Toronto Star today (Sept 7). I will have the whole batch of capsule reviews of features (Canadian and otherwise) up here later this week. 43 or so. I’m tired.

Short on running time, long on drama: Short Cuts Canada 09 [READ MORE]

A whackload of my TIFF coverage hit the stands today in Eye. I’m still slogging through the rest of it and feel the usual degree of anguish and anticipation as Sept 10 draws nearer. I’ll put up all of my reviews at some point here for easy reading but for starters, here’s the link [READ MORE]