By David Ryan. Rewriting history is a common academic enterprise, and crafting Elizabethan history – particularly Shakespearean biography – is composed recursively. Though Anonymous (2011) is neither a serious effort at literary biography nor historical drama, Roland Emmerich and John Orloff’s speculative work about Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of […]
(((1973)))
January 27, 2016
Kurt Vonnegut Hunter Thompson Norman Mailer Tom Wolfe William Burroughs Jonathan Miller William Burroughs Jr Jacob Bronowski Robert Hughes Bob Woodward Carl Bernstein Peter Maas Germaine Greer Ray Connolly Geoffrey O’Brien Pauline Kael Grover Lewis Leonard! Bernstein! “There was a point in ’73 where I knew it was all over,” […]
Traces of Postindian Survivance: Two Short Films by Jeff Barnaby
By John Garland Winn. Jeff Barnaby, a Mi’kmaq First Nations director, was four years old when the Quebec Provincial Police raided his Restigouche Reservation to restrict salmon fishing rights. The events of the raid are explored in Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary Incident at Restigouche (1984) and, as Barnaby recalls, are forever […]
The 2015 FrightFest Report
January 23, 2016
By Cleaver Patterson. Modern films can be hard to categorise: with so many increasingly open to different interpretations it is often hard to single out one core theme or trait. Fortunately though, this is not a problem often encountered by those that fall within the horror genre, and particularly for […]
The Negotiation of Morality: Radu Muntean on One Floor Below (2015)
By Amir Ganjavie. Radu Muntean’ s new, critically acclaimed Romanian film One Floor Below recently won a Special Citation by the National Society of Film Critics, USA. It is a story of family man who decides to stay quiet after seeing the prelude to a murder. It’s difficult to explain this brilliant, slow-burning thriller, which […]
Debuting with a Vengeance: Adam Stephen Kelly on Kill Kane
January 21, 2016
By Tom Ue. Adam Stephen Kelly is the author of over 700 articles, interviews, features and reviews, and he has been read by a worldwide audience in the millions. He is a regular contributor to Rolling Stone and he has conducted interviews with Sir Roger Moore, Simon Pegg, and ‘Stone Cold’ […]
A Journey Into Darkness: Bleak Street
January 21, 2016
By Elias Savada. Mexico’s grand auteur Arturo Ripstein is in fine neorealistic form with his devilishly depressing feature Bleak Street (La calle de la amargura), tripping over the world of luchadores wrestling as street walkers cozy by. With its film noir tonal quality, it is destined for the art house market, […]
Films for the People – The 2015 Ljubljana International Film Festival
January 19, 2016
By Erica Johnson Debeljak. The 26th Ljubljanski mednarodni filmski festival (LIFFE) took place from November 11 to November 22 last year. It is the fifteenth incarnation of this festival under the catchy acronym LIFFE, which doesn’t match the initials of the name in the Slovenian language, but perfectly captures the […]
Returning to the Past: Trevor Anderson on The Little Deputy
January 15, 2016
By Tom Ue. Trevor Anderson was born in Red Deer, Alberta, and is now based in Edmonton. His short films include “Rugburn” (2005); “Rock Pockets” (2007), which received the inaugural Lindalee Tracey Award at Hot Docs; “DINX” (2008); “Carpet Diem” (2008), “Punchlines” (2009), and “The Man That Got Away” (2012), […]
The 2015 Oscars and the Curious Case of the Missing Moldovans: Anatol Durbală’s What a Wonderful World
January 15, 2016
By Brandon Konecny. As we gear up for Academy Awards, it’s important to note the countries not taking part in this all-too-American enterprise. There are the usual absentees, such as Belarus, Tajikistan, Bhutan, and Armenia; but then there are the countries we were certain would submit something. In this case, […]