Can TIFF ride to box-office rescue?
With 2015 shaping up to be one of the worst box-office years on record, film industry types are desperately hoping this year's Toronto International Film Festival manifests a movie messiah. The Ex-Press takes a look at the top contenders.
By Katherine Monk
September 10, 2015 TORONTO — The truth fades quickly in the pop and hiss of paparazzi flashes, but it sits here nonetheless, a little lump lying under the red carpet: 2015 could turn out to be the worst year at the box-office in adjusted dollar-history.
Sure, J.J. Abrams will awaken the force, James Bond will rise with Spectre and the ever-hungry Katniss Everdeen will no doubt slaughter as the calendar year draws to a close, but as the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off today with the gala world premiere of Jean-Marc Vallée’s eerily titled Demolition, the big question is: Can TIFF ride to the rescue and resuscitate the public’s interest in “cinema” — movies that don’t have ...
Escape the Labour Day pains with a movie
The trials and tribulations of organized labour powered more than one Hollywood epic before the idolatry of corporatism took hold in the wake of Wall Street, but even in the age of a Donald Trump presidential bid and Wal-Mart wages, the union cause still looks heroic though a high-end lens
By Rod Mickleburgh
My mother hated Labour Day. For her, a high school English teacher, it was not only a day to pay tribute to workers and unions, but a signal that the lazy, hazy days of summer were over, and it was time to go back to work. Every year, the prospect of facing classroom after classroom of demanding new students caused a thick knot of apprehension in her stomach. And my mother was an excellent teacher. Long after she retired, she continued to feel those same old familiar twinges of Labour Day dread.
Last year. B.C. teachers were on the picket line. Classrooms sat empty. This year, one hopes some of them reflect back on the original purpose of Labour Day, a ...
Mistress America a shaggy comedy
Movie review: Mistress America
Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig have concocted a screwball story of friendship between two women that finds a beacon of hope in one of life's lovable losers
Why I’m addicted to The Knick
Clive Owen and Steven Soderbergh create a volatile dramatic mix in The Knick, the HBO-Cinemax series about turn-of-the-century surgeons that broke viewing records last year
The Knick: Season One
4/5
Starring: Clive Owen, Juliet Rylance, André Holland, Eve Hewson, Michael Angarano, Eric Johnson
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Cinemax/ HBO Home Entertainment
Available now on VOD, DVD, Digital HD, Blu-ray
By Katherine Monk
September 3, 2015 -- It’s as addictive as the cocaine our lead character injects between his toes, and for that, we can thank the unsheathed thespian potency of Clive Owen. The 50-year-old English actor who emerged as a force in the wake of Croupier takes the gloves off for his portrayal of John Thackery, a turn-of-the-century surgeon trying to save lives at the Knickerbocker Hospital.
If he sounds like your standard soap opera doctor, you’re partly right. Dr. Thackery engages in all kinds of heroics, as well as sexual escapa...
Cameron Labine climbs mountain of manhood
Interview: Cameron Labine
The director and writer behind the new movie Mountain Men explores the nature of masculinity as he sets two brothers into the Canadian wilderness to cope with simmering sibling issues, and a medical emergency
By Katherine Monk
September 3, 2015, VANCOUVER – Like some of mankind’s most classic adventures, it all started with a great fall. Filmmaker Cam Labine was at a full moon party far up the Squamish River on B.C.’s South Coast. He wasn’t “in his right mind,” started wandering, and took a bad tumble in the dark.
“That was sort of a wake up call for me,” says Labine, sitting in a warm and decidedly cozy café in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood. “Growing up in BC, in Maple Ridge, you sort of spend a lot of time outdoors. At least, I spent a lot of time camping and snowboarding and hiking… and you end up feeling comfortable in the mountains, like I belong to them. But with the fall came an epiphany: That I am an urban kid ...
Peachy! It’s jam without all the sugar
Preserves can be tedious, frustrating and totally fattening, but if you're able to consume your compotes quickly, you can feast on fast late-summer peach jam and cream biscuits
By Louise Crosby
There’s one way of making jam that involves sterilizing jars, adding pectin, cooking the daylights out of the fruit and possibly sealing the jars with wax. Thankfully for those of us who aren’t up for all that rigamarole but still like the occasional spread of home-made jam on a biscuit hot from the oven, there’s another, much easier way. Granted, you have to eat it up quick or store it in the freezer, but somehow it tastes fresher, less sweet, more like the fruit itself.
Thanks goes to Mark Bittman for this easy recipe for peach or nectarine jam, as published in the New York Times. He adds just the right amount of ginger to not overpower the fruit, and honey instead of sugar. Since 1 1/2 pounds of peaches equals only four good-sized peaches, and you probably bought ...
Wes Craven was horrified by horror crown
Wes Craven faced his lapsed Baptist fears and exorcised personal demons through his work, but the man with the graduate degree from Johns Hopkins said his biggest victory was overcoming his anxiety around "The Master of Horror" label
By Katherine Monk
Wes Craven is dead, but his characters will haunt us forever. The master of cinematic Screams and A Nightmare on Elm Street passed away of brain cancer August 30 at the age of 76, but he leaves more than a scar on our collective subconscious thanks to the razor-fingered Freddy Krueger. Like many horror auteurs, Craven’s work forced us to experience the world differently: To feel fear, and in turn, to feel more alive.
“My films are about waking up... and no matter what you do, don’t fall asleep. The idea is to be here now; to live in the moment, and to understand what’s happening between yourself and the other,” Craven once told me in an interview.
It was over the phone, done when George W. Bush ...
Buvette meatballs reinvent the reliable orb
Forget all the references to Bill Murray and summer camp because thanks to Jody Williams' Buvette in NYC, meatballs are going upscale as part of the thoughtful food movement
By Louise Crosby
I was thinking the other day how much I love meatballs. Swedish meatballs in gravy served over egg noodles with lingonberry preserves. Middle Eastern meatballs of lamb, cumin and coriander, stuffed into a pita pocket with yogurt and cucumbers. Greek meatballs with feta, mint and lemon. Or regular Italian meatballs in tomato sauce, served over pasta with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. You can take meatballs in so many directions.
Then along came Buvette, a beautiful first cookbook by Jody Williams, who owns and operates a gastrotheque by the same name in New York City’s West Village, a place she describes as a neighbourhood bar “with thoughtful food.” Her recipe for Italian meatballs in tomato sauce came from the grandmother of an unnamed “talented actor from the Soprano...
We Are Your Friends samples cliché
Zac Efron plays a young man from the San Fernando Valley looking to make it as a top-tier DJ in this half-empty can of cinematic Red Bull that has lots of energy but lacks substance, soul and any semblance of intelligence
