Love, Actually vs. The Holiday
Podcast: Pop This!
Two pop culture experts play amateur marriage counsellors as they dissect the reasons why kindness is so hard to come by, then move straight into a knock-down, drag-out discussion about the merits of Love, Actually and The Holiday.
Featuring Andrea Warner and Lisa Christiansen, Produced by Andrea Gin
Don't say we didn't warn you. This week, the ladies are extra feisty as they weigh the merits of Kate Winslet's response to a question about equal pay, and expand into a larger discussion about the feminist tag -- and how willing, or unwilling, the rich and famous are to wear it. Warner offers surprise thanks to Sarah Palin, then the real battle begins...
It's a smackdown between two favoured Christmas rom-coms: Love, Actually and The Holiday. Lisa refers to Love, Actually as 'Hate, Actually' while Warner calls The Holiday "a cold Journey to Hell."
The gloves are off -- just so they can warm their fingers by the burning yule log. It's another episode of ...
Carol a modern masterpiece
Movie review: Carol
Todd Haynes creates a modern masterpiece that speaks directly to the female experience without words thanks to the silent chemistry between stars Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara
Every Thing Will Be Fine, not great
Movie Review: Every Thing Will Be Fine
German filmmaker Wim Wenders turns the Canadian landscape into a snow globe with 3D technology, and a cast that includes Rachel McAdams, Marie-Josée Croze and the near-omnipresent James Franco
Digging two Pitts By the Sea
Movie Review: By the Sea
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt look to the black and white classic starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in this flat, contrived and utterly self-conscious piece of cinema that isn't afraid of Virginia Woolf, or dark satire
Searching for the legacy of Al Purdy
When film critic Brian D. Johnson retired, he became a filmmaker himself. His first project: a documentary about the difficult, brilliant (and strangely forgotten) Canadian poet
By Jay Stone
TORONTO — “You can argue whether he was our greatest poet, but certainly he was our most Canadian poet. No one wrote about the land the way that he did. If the Group of Seven was a bar band, they might sound like Al Purdy.”
It’s a warm September afternoon and Brian D. Johnson is sitting at an outdoor table at a coffee place he likes near the Toronto International Film Festival. He’s in the sun, hatless, and there is sweat on his forehead. Furthermore, people keep stopping to interrupt us because Johnson is a pretty popular guy in the film festival district, and also because, at this year’s festival, he’s a bit of a celebrity.
He was the film critic for Maclean’s magazine for 28 years. Now, at 66, he has retired (“I’ve had a career. I’m looking for the sweeter ...
Youth ages the viewer via affectation
Movie review: Youth
Paolo Sorrentino's follow-up to The Great Beauty feels like opera sung in English: Pretentious, puffy and frequently plain stupid
Pop Culture meets its match: Pop This!
Two pop aficionados bring a feminist tilt and hit of flip to the ball-bearing world of podcasting
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER – It’s a bit like playing pop culture pinball with two feminist flippers: thoughts, rants and gleaming balls of insight are batted back and forth, pushing hot button topics and ricocheting through current events with bright flashes of insight and spontaneous bursts of badass bell-ringing.
It’s just what happens when broadcaster Lisa Christiansen and bestselling author Andrea Warner get together. One minute, they’re talking about the validity of Katharine Hepburn as feminist icon. The next, they’re talking about real tears shed over Real Housewives.
These two women have the kind of conversations that make you want to hang out at the kitchen table for a weekly roundup of cheeky chatter, and now, through the magic of digital technology, you can do just that by tapping into Pop This! – a brand new podcast featuring the dynamic divas dissec...
Hitchcock and Truffaut offer film 101
Movie Review:
Documentary about a groundbreaking book shows how the legendary film director thought about movies, audiences — and Jimmy Stewart's erection in Vertigo
Hip Hip, Murray!
Home Entertainment
We're making a list, and checking it twice: Celebrating Bill’s many gifts to mark A Very Murray Christmas, airing Dec. 4 on Netflix.
By Chris Lackner
All I really need to know I learned from Bill Murray.
With his Netflix holiday special bowing Dec. 4, I’m reminded of the many gifts the craggy-faced, curmudgeonly comedian has given me.
As a child of the ’80s, most of my friends looked up to action heroes – from Arnie to Sly, Van Damme to Seagal. Not me. I emulated a smartass with a delightfully deadpan delivery. To wish you all A Very Murray Christmas, I’d like to celebrate the many things the actor has taught us:
Sarcasm is mightier than the sword: Male pop icons, from Luke Skywalker to Rocky, were largely men of action. My ultimate boyhood hero was Murray’s Peter Venkman from 1984’s Ghostbusters. The classic Murray character wielded dry sarcasm like a weapon, firing off effortless barbs to overcome adversity, motivate his team – or ...
