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 ...
Patricia Clarkson takes the wheel
The veteran of stage and screen buckles up for a bumpy ride in Learning to Drive, a new film that puts the pedal to the metal of marriage breakdown with surprisingly comic results thanks to co-star Sir Ben Kingsley, and the gentle hand of director Isabel Coixet
By Katherine Monk
TORONTO – There’s something undeniably regal about Patricia Clarkson, even when she’s vomiting into a toilet and playing an entirely unlaced woman of letters. It’s an underlying strength that inhabits every bone in her sinewy body, and you can feel it in her relaxed presence.
She’s a woman who is comfortable in her own skin, and it shines through every freckle.
“I was fed perseverance as a child,” she says. “I have a very strong mother, and strong parents who were loving and gave me the confidence and ability to survive.”
Clarkson says she had to rely on that deep well of self-possession when she started Learning to Drive. A new film directed by ...
Art star and X-Games pro Tyler Shields makes directing debut
Tyler Shields started skating professionally at the age of 12 and made it to the top of the extreme athlete podium before he turned his talents to art photography and high-end shoots, but he says directing his debut feature was the biggest risk yet, if only because he'd promised his Robin Williams he'd make it the right way.
By Katherine Monk
LOS ANGELES – Robin Williams made him promise to be true to his creative soul, and while it hasn’t been easy, Tyler Shields has managed to resist the temptation of quick hits and lowest common denominator success to pursue a unique vision in the richly saturated shadows.
An art star in the world of fine art photography and a former professional in-line skater, Shields has certainly felt the warm glow of popular success in the past, but when he decided to follow his childhood dream of becoming a filmmaker, he knew things would be different. And they were.
Shields directed the B.C.-shot thriller Final Girl ...
How to watch a movie
Notes for a talk given by Jay Stone at Das Lokal restaurant in Ottawa on Aug. 16, 2015 on the topic of “How to watch a movie.” Alcohol was served.
By Jay Stone
People sometimes say to me, “Hey, Jay,” — or, more frequently these days, “Excuse me, Mr. Stone” — “how does a critic watch a movie? Please be brief and give examples.”
My usual reply is, “No thanks, I’ve already eaten,” which is my fallback answer when I’ve totally stopped listening — or, more frequently these days, didn’t quite catch what they were saying. However, it’s a worthy question and I do have an answers. It’s brief and there are examples.
I started thinking about this in earnest in 1994, when I was at the Toronto film festival interviewing the film director Alan Rudolph. He was in town promoting his movie Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, and we had an hour-long chat (film festival interviews used to be nice and long. They’ve now shrunk to 15 ...
Canadian Must-Sees: Mon Oncle Antoine planted a cinematic seed
Claude Jutra's seminal coming-of-age film featured young bodies in caskets, snow-covered landscapes and a loving but dysfunctional family -- essentially birthing a whole new cinematic tradition around a stone hearth
MON ONCLE ANTOINE (1971)
5/5
Directed by: Claude Jutra
Starring: Jean Duceppe, Jacques Gagnon, Lyne Champagne, Olivette Thibault, Claude Jutra, Hélène Loiselle, Lionel Villeneuve, Monique Mercure.
Running time: 104 minutes
Still referred to as one of the greatest Canadian films of all time, Mon Oncle Antoine marked the beginning of narrative feature film in Canada (right alongside Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road) and set up much of the film cinematic grammar we use in this country to this day with its use of natural light, blue-hues, lack of narrative artifice and an abundance of snow-covered landscapes.
The story focuses on Benoit (Gagnon), a kid living with his uncle Antoine and Aunt Cecile, who run the general store in ...
What I learned at TIFF’s Filmmaker Boot Camp
Making the transition from ink-stained journalist to first-time filmmaker feels like seeing the world from the other side of a two-way mirror
By Katherine Monk
TORONTO — “Did you know everything already?” asked Cameron Bailey, artistic director for the Toronto International Film Festival, looking way too good (as always) for a man who is chronically sleep deprived this time of year.
The answer was a wonderfully wishy-washy “yes, and no.” After being a career journalist for 25 years, and after covering TIFF since 1993, when it was still called the Festival of Festivals, the idea of “learning the ropes” could have felt a little remedial.
After all, I do know what a publicist does, and I know what sales agents do, and I know personal handlers have a dominant obnoxious gene that has yet to be mapped. I’ve been writing about the film industry for so long, I’ve pretty much seen it — and done it — all.
But as I learned at ...
Interview: Juliette Binoche laughs off fear of aging
The Clouds of Sils Maria features the French siren in the role of an aging actress agonizing over her latest job: playing the role of the older woman, instead of the ingenue, in a revival of the play that made her famous. Binoche says she wasn't afraid to tackle a reflection of herself, but she did push director Olivier Assayas to face what she calls a "fear of actors... particularly women."
By Katherine Monk
In an age of ubiquitous celebrity, Juliette Binoche is an old-fashioned movie star. It’s more than the Prada blouse that seems to flow over her curves with loving deference, and more than the elegantly honed features that allow her to look both pretty and strong simultaneously. The French actress who emerged in the wake of The English Patient has a presence that moves through a room like precious perfume, a tingle mingled with an essence.
Binoche brings her intoxicating powers to every role she’s ever had, from Lasse Halstrom’s Chocolat to Michael ...
The Look of Silence: Joshua Oppenheimer reflects on deflection
In The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer offered the dramatic testimony of mass murderers as they re-enacted their crimes. In the forthcoming sequel, The Look of Silence, the Oscar-nominated filmmaker brings the perpetrators face to face with the brother of the man they killed.
By Katherine Monk
Joshua Oppenheimer is a precise filmmaker, which is difficult to accomplish at the best of times, but something practically unheard of in documentary. It’s the reason why the Texas-born filmmaker was nominated for an Oscar for his first feature, The Act of Killing, a blend of research and febrile nightmare that related the story of Indonesia’s communist purge in which one million people were murdered.
The movie caused a stir in Indonesia as it showed men who are still in power boasting about their acts of killing, and Oppenheimer suspected it would probably make any repeat visits to Indonesia impossible.
Yet, this month will see the release of a sequel to The Act of Killing ...
Taking a second look at Spectre
The new James Bond movie is slated to hit theatres in November, but we can tell you more than ten things about the new 007 instalment just by looking at the pictures
By Ex-Press Skeletal Staff
Sony Pictures unveiled the latest trailer for Spectre earlier today, but the new installment in the ever-profitable 007 franchise doesn’t seem too mysterious. In fact, who needs to wait for the film to come out wide on November 6th when it’s well known that a picture speaks a thousand words, and we’ve already got eleven early production stills that we’re eager to share.
1. It stars Daniel Craig as James Bond, which means we’re getting more than a handsome package who can rock a Speedo. Craig can pull off real drama and disappear into any role (check out the bizarre thriller The Jacket), which raises the emotional ante on the regular baccarat game of stolen hearts and misappropriated weapons of mass destruction. Just look at the emotion Craig conveys in this artsy ...
Director trades quick-draws for Slow West
First-time feature director John Maclean takes on western archetype and the core ideals of the American ethos in Slow West, his Sundance-winning feature starring Michael Fassbender and Kodi Smit-McPhee
By Katherine Monk
It's a genre marked by star-shaped badges and John Wayne’s lanky swagger, an optimistic ode to masculine heroes and horses. Yet, for all the fanatical affection lathered on westerns as a fundamental part of the American identity, historically speaking, most westerns are horse manure.
It’s a point John Maclean isn’t all that eager to assert right off the top, given he’s a Scotsman and his debut feature, Slow West, takes the viewer straight back to the open prairie and the romantic vistas revealed in early John Ford movies.
“Being Scottish, and tackling such a sacred American genre certainly crossed my mind the first time I watched it with an audience in the U.S.,” says Maclean, shortly after the film’s world premiere at the Sundance film festival, ...
