The Bounty Hunter

2010/03/19

The attempt to transform Gerard Butler into an affable screwball continues unabated with The Bounty Hunter, which is at least less an affront to the rom-com genre than the star's previous vehicle, The Ugly Truth.

Kids on TV

2010/03/17

Like ’em or not, subcultures like those seen on Jersey Shore deserve airtime too. Just because these subjects are stereotypical doesn’t mean they’re not real — or that the subcultures, no matter how mookish, should be shunned because they embarrass people. Hell, that’s practically prerequisite for any youth subculture.

Cooking With Stella

2010/03/17

Torontonian Dilip Mehta’s first feature navigates diplomacy in and out of the kitchen

The Runaways

2010/03/17

Floria Sigismondi’s biopic tribute to rock 'n' roll's original queens of noise — starring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett and Dakota Fanning as Cherie Currie — packs a bleak and beautiful exhilaration.

Joan Jett

2010/03/16

Joan Jett was the dark rock ’n’ roll heart of The Runaways, the band she formed with the help of svengali Kim Fowley when she was 16. Now 52, she’s the patron saint of riot grrrls everywhere, having kick-started a women-in-rock revolution with a single power chord. EYE WEEKLY spoke to the icon about Floria Sigismondi's new Runaways biopic, her relationship with her bandmates and teaching star Kristen Stewart how to "fuck her guitar."

Leave it to Beavers

2010/03/15

Once a month for the past year, the city’s experimental-film devotees have gathered in the Gladstone Hotel Art Bar for rare screenings of seminal works by James Benning, Joyce Wieland, Bruce Baillie, Warren Sonbert and other great artists who occupied the medium’s furthest fringes. This Tuesday (March 16), Early Monthly Segments celebrates its first anniversary with a program devoted to American ex-pat Robert Beavers, including the film that inspired the series’ title.

Green Zone

2010/03/12

“I’m here to save lives and find weapons,” announces Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller (Matt Damon) early on in Green Zone. The ostensibly sobering punch line of Paul Greengrass’ Iraq War thriller is that, despite being a principled, determined slab of All-American beef, he fails to meet either of his goals.

I want my 3-D TV?

2010/03/10

Black-and-white broadcasting enjoyed a good couple of decades back in the mid-20th century. Standard-definition colour dominated TV for another 40. Yet here we are, only a few years into the HD era, and all the techies wanna talk about is 3-D.

Rock ’n’ roll fables

2010/03/10

In my humble view, there are only two true varieties of rock hero: mouthy Liverpudlians and shaggy Welshmen. Both are represented in Canadian Music Week’s increasingly hearty film component.

The Oscars' eternal now

2010/03/08

Not since the final scenes of The Lord of the Rings trilogy has a mass audience been exposed to a self-congratulatory display of heel-dragging that compares to last night's Academy Awards ceremony. However, EYE WEEKLY film critic Jason Anderson stayed awake long enough to take note of the most memorable Oscar moments you may have missed while you were busy Twittering.

And the Tweeter is...

2010/03/08

Did you watch the Oscars last night? Well, then, apparently you were in the minority, as it appears most of the Earth's population spent more time last night looking at their laptops or smartphones than at the TV screen, Twittering every second of (in)action from the three-and-a-half hour ceremony. In case you missed it, relive the drama — or, rather, the soul-sucking tedium — through our assemblage of choice Oscar tweets.

Who watches out for the watchmen?

2010/03/03

The Bridge leads to grey areas behind the thin blue line

Alice in Wonderland

2010/03/03

Tim Burton beats the odds with his pleasingly oddball Lewis Carroll update

A Prophet's Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain and Tahar Rahim

2010/03/02

The French prison thriller A Prophet heads into Oscar contention this weekend following a series of big wins in Europe. Last TIFF, EYE WEEKLY spoke with writer-director Jacques Audiard, co-writer (and interview translator) Thomas Bidegain and actor Tahar Rahim, who plays the film’s hero Malik, a young French Arab con who’s a quick study when it comes to life in the big house and who first allies himself with the Coriscan gangsters who run the joint.

Matt Lucas

2010/03/01

Already famed for such comedic creations as Dafydd, the ever-stroppy Vicki Pollard and other grotesqueries that he and David Walliams introduced through their BBC sketch show Little Britain, Matt Lucas assumes a slightly more kid-friendly guise as Tweedledum and Tweedledee in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (out this Friday). Lucas spoke with EYE WEEKLY by phone last week from Hollywood, before resuming work on a new series with Walliams.

The red-carpet review

2010/03/01

EYE WEEKLY City Style columnist takes a journey through the past to see which Oscar outfits have stood the test of time.

Cop Out

2010/02/26

The phrase “buddy-cop comedy starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan and directed by Kevin Smith” sounds like a dubious cinematic prospect, mainly because it invokes three Hollywood clichés: oddball-partner humour; Bruce Willis as a detective; and Kevin Smith. Even the title is a compromise — originally A Couple of Dicks, it was amended to A Couple of Cops and then, fittingly, Cop Out.

Let us compare mythologies

2010/02/24

Post-millennial pop culture is regularly lambasted for lacking ideas, for “reimagining” past works rather than creating new worlds. But for every ignoble Knight Rider remake, there are exceptions to the rule — many of them featuring the mighty pen of Jane Espenson, who began as a writer-producer for idiotic-movie-turned-iconic series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the similarly lame-turned-lauded Battlestar Galactica as well as its new prequel, Caprica.

The Olyphant in the Room

2010/02/24

On the heels of his knockout performance in last year’s underrated A Perfect Getaway, one of Hollywood’s best supporting actors, Timothy Olyphant, threatens to become a leading man in the remake of George A. Romero's horror classic, The Crazies.

The Messenger

2010/02/24

The recent announcement of an original screenplay adaptation nod for The Messenger's Oren Moverman and Alessandro Camon, and a best supporting actor nomination for Woody Harrelson, was a welcome surprise and, one hopes, will elicit the interest of viewers who may have otherwise been immediately put off by the grim subject matter of a movie about Army officers who give the worst possible news to dead soldiers’ next of kin.

Art on film

2010/02/23

Launched in 2004 by the Canadian Art Foundation, the Reel Artists Film Festival has become a reliably strong survey of contemporary art docs. The latest edition begins Wednesday (Feb. 24) in the appropriately dignified environs of the Royal Conservatory’s Koerner Hall (273 Bloor W.) with the Canadian premiere of Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child.

EYE WEEKLY & The Drake Hotel make a date with Oscar

2010/02/22

Ever find yourself tuning into the Oscars and, upon realizing there's another four hours left, think, "I'm gonna need a drink to get through this, because I have to stay up till the end to see how well I do in my Oscar pool"? Problem solved: join EYE WEEKLY March 7 when we'll be teaming up with The Drake Hotel for the annual Oscars @ Drake party in the lounge, where they'll be showing the awards broadcast on the big screen and serving $5 glasses of bubbly from 6pm on.

Less is more

2010/02/19

Canada is best known for its cold and for its comedy. Yet, if the climate for the Vancouver Olympics has ruined the illusion of the former this past week, the latter notion ought to have already been destroyed by watching our nation’s sitcoms over the years. Canada may claim a disproportionate number of iconic comedians and legendary sketch troupes, but our traditional sitcoms have always floundered creatively.

Shutter Island

2010/02/19

Shutter Island may not qualify as a great Martin Scorsese film, but it is a great Dario Argento movie. The blaring, almost hilariously portentous orchestral score in the opening moments is an accurate indication that Scorsese will soon depart the film-noir mode of the early scenes and launch us into a freakout that’s as lurid as the most nutso Italian giallo thrillers of the ’70s, or even David Lynch’s most wayward moments.

The Carlton lives!

2010/02/18

Carlton Cinemas, Toronto’s cherished collision of early-’80s multiplex aesthetics and arty programming, has a new lease on life. The Edmonton-based (and awesomely named) Magic Lantern Theatres chain, which also runs Rainbow Cinemas, today announced that it has taken over the late, lamented movie-theatre complex.