Alternative Film Guide

Numb (2008)
Direction and Screenplay: Harris Goldberg. Cast: Matthew Perry, Lynn Collins, Kevin Pollak, Bob Gunton, Helen Shaver, William B. Davis, Mary Steenburgen, Barry W. Levy, Ben Ayres
 
The first thing to mention is that I hardly ever walk out of movies. I hardly ever stop films, period. Even if I am not enjoying them, for some [...]

World Cinema Clips: The film clip below, posted by agogika on youtube, is from the excellent Canadian comedy-drama C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005), a major box-office hit in Quebec, and the winner of 11 Genies and 13 Jutra awards in 2005.
The tale of a young man (superbly played by Marc-André Grondin) who discovers both rock and roll and [...]

Careful (1992)
Direction: Guy Maddin. Screenplay: Guy Maddin and George Toles; from a story by Toles. Cast: Kyle McCulloch, Gosia Dobrowolska, Sarah Neville, Paul Cox, Brent Neale
 

In 1992, Winnipeg’s Guy Maddin and crew assembled for their third feature film — Careful, co-written by George Toles (and Maddin) and starring Kyle McCulloch, Gosia Dobrowolska, Sarah Neville, Paul [...]

2007 Prix Jutra
2007 Jutra Award nominations: February 6, 2008
2007 Jutra Award winners: March 9, 2008
(”*” denotes the winner in each category)
 

Writer-director Stéphane Lafleur’s feature-film debut, the offbeat comedy Continental, a Film Without Guns, was the big winner at the 2008 Prix Jutra ceremony. Continental, which won Jutras for best film, best director, best screenplay, and [...]

The Genie Awards 2008 ceremony, held last night in Toronto, was dominated by Sarah Polley’s remarkably accomplished directorial debut, Away from Her, which won a total of 7 awards.
The story of a man coming to terms with the fact that his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife has fallen in love with another patient at her mental hospital [...]

2007 Genie Awards
2007 Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television’s Genie Award nominations: January 28, 2008
2007 Genie Award winners: Metro Toronto Convention Centre on March 3, 2008
2007 Genie Award Winners - Article
2007 Genie Award Nominations - Article
("*" denotes the winner in each category)
 

 
BEST FILM / MEILLEUR FILM
L’Âge des ténèbres / Days of Darkness - Denise [...]

2007 Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards
Vancouver Film Critics Circle award nominations: February 1, 2008.
Vancouver Film Critics Circle award winners: The Railway Club, February 11, 2008.
 

 
The Vancouver Film Critics Circle nominated both Viggo Mortensen and Naomi Watts (above) for their performances in the violent drama Eastern Promises, in addition to nominations for director David Cronenberg [...]

The two top nominees for the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television’s 28th Genie Awards are heavy dramas: David Cronenberg’s Russian mafia thriller Eastern Promises and Roger Spottiswoode’s Rwanda genocide tale Shake Hands With the Devil, each with 12 nominations. They were followed by Away from Her with seven nods; The Tracey Fragments with six; [...]

The Canadian-based Neoclassics Films has acquired worldwide distribution rights (excluding Canada) in all media for writer-directors Sascha Drews, Ezra Krybus and Matthew Miller’s outdoor action thriller Crooked Lake (aka Portage), which has been recently screened at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The price tag was reportedly in the six figures.
Crooked Lake is [...]

Variety’s Justin Chang on The Great Buck Howard:
"A smoothly turned-out entertainment centered around an Amazing Kreskin-style mentalist comes down with an unfortunate case of the warm-and-fuzzies in The Great Buck Howard. Behind-the-curtains comedy reps an amusing showcase for John Malkovich’s diva-like theatrics in the title role, but writer-director Sean McGinly’s decision to frame the story [...]

Cinesation 2007 Reviews: Part I
Some of the Cinesation 2007 reviews below may contain spoilers. Proceed at your own risk!
 
Saturday
Carry on, Sergeant! (1928) In the more recent Cinesation editions, we’ve been treated to several fascinating little-seen gems from Canadian film archives. With so much of our film consciousness centered on the American and European industries, [...]

26th Vancouver International Film Festival Awards - 2007
The 26th Vancouver International Film Festival ran from Sept. 27-Oct. 12, 2007.
 

People’s Choice Award for Most Popular International Film
PERSEPOLIS, directed by Marjane Satrapi of Iran and Vincent Paronnaud of France

People’s Choice Award for Most Popular Canadian Film
SHE’S A BOY I KNEW, directed by Gwen Haworth of [...]

Cynthia Scott’s Flamenco at 5:15 (right) and Emile Ardolino’s He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin’ will be screened on Monday, October 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Linwood Dunn Theater as the next installment of "Oscar’s Docs, Part Three: Academy Award-Winning Documentaries 1977–1988."
The 1983 Documentary Short Subject [...]

Jennifer van Evra on the Vancouver International Film Festival at the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"While many Vancouverites were giving thanks and tucking into turkey dinners with their loved ones on Sunday [Thanksgiving in Canada takes place on the second Monday in October], Tracy D. Smith’s family — including her ‘very traditional’ parents who drove [...]

Terre Nash’s If You Love This Planet and John Zaritsky’s Just Another Missing Kid are the two 1982 Oscar-winning documentaries screening on Monday, October 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Linwood Dunn Theater as the next installment of "Oscar’s Docs, Part Three: Academy Award-Winning Documentaries 1977–1988."
Documentary [...]

In the Toronto Globe and Mail, Marsha Lederman discusses Nick Wilson’s documentary The Prince of Pot: The US vs. Marc Emery.
Wilson’s documentary focuses on the U.S. government’s never-ending multibillion-dollar War on Drugs (the older sister of the equally ineffectual and wasteful War on Terror) and one of its targets, Canadian citizen Marc Emery, head of [...]

When most people think of animation, the words "Disney" and "Pixar" are the first that pop up in their heads.
Since I’m not most people, when I think of animation what pops up in my head is the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).
So, I’m happy to report that the NFB and the Academy of Motion [...]

Rodrigo Plá’s socio-psychological drama La Zona, was voted best film by the International Film Critics (FIPRESCI) jury at the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival, which came to a close today.
Written by Plá and Laura Santullo, and starring Daniel Giménez Cacho, Maribel Verdú, and Daniel Tovar, La Zona focuses on the consequences of a violent crime [...]

Toronto International Film Festival Awards - 2007
The 32nd Toronto International Film Festival was held between Sept. 6-15, 2007.
The winners at the 32nd Toronto International Film Festival were announced at the Fairmont Royal York on Sept. 15, 2007.
2007 Toronto Film Festival Winners - Article
 

PRIZE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRITICS (FIPRESCI PRIZE)
LA ZONA by Rodrigo Plá

CADILLAC PEOPLE’S [...]

 
David Cronenberg‘ London-set thriller Eastern Promises will open this year’s Times BFI 51st London Film Festival on Wednesday, October 17.
Written by Steven Knight (Oscar nominated for Dirty Pretty Things), Eastern Promises reunites the director with his History of Violence leading man, Viggo Mortensen, who plays a ruthless member of one of London’s Russian mafia families. [...]

Alan Riding in “A Role About Winter for Julie Christie, a Star in Eternal Spring” in the New York Times:
“For moviegoers who fell for Julie Christie in the 1960s (and they were legion), she will always be the tousle-haired blonde with the dazzling smile who lit up the screen in Darling, Doctor Zhivago and Far [...]

Tomorrow, April 18, the Toronto International Film Festival for Children will screen Don McBrearty’s Canadian drama Luna: Spirit of the Whale.
Written by Elizabeth Stewart — whose screenplay was “inspired by real events” — Luna: Spirit of the Whale shows “how the plight of an orphaned orca impacts the lives of a man and a boy [...]

Note: This article was written about ten days ago. Due to a computer glitch — as in the computer inside my brain — it’s only being posted now.
Quebec’s 2007 Jutra Awards, presented on Sunday, Feb. 18, offered a whole array of surprises.
Even though the bilingual box-office smash Bon Cop, Bad Cop and the drama [...]

Last night, the Canadian Academy’s Genie Awards ceremony proved itself no more and no less prone to inane outcomes than those of other film academies the world over. Nine Genies went to the Québécois hockey biopic Maurice Richard / The Rocket, including awards for best director (Charles Binamé), best actor (Roy Dupuis), best actress [...]

With 12 nods each, the top nominees for Quebec’s Oscars, the Prix Jutra, are Érik Canuel’s Bon Cop, Bad Cop (right), an odd couple comedy that became the top-grossing homegrown film ever in Canada (with about Can$13 million, most of it generated in Quebec itself), and Robert Favreau’s Un dimanche à Kigali / A Sunday [...]