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Movies, music and popular culture reports from Ex-Press staff

The Ex-Press Oscar Predictions 2016

Movies: Oscars 2016 Our expert guide -- and some good guesses -- about who will win the little man with the gold complexion come curtain time By Katherine Monk Chris Rock is in a hard place. Hosting this year’s Oscars isn’t a task for amateurs who get by on dimples, he’ll need to do an entirely different song and dance and address, and hopefully undress, the diversity issue that continues to ripple through every corner of the industry, putting legendary stars in embarrassing situations. Poor Meryl Streep. You know she’s going to get some zinger about about how “we all come from Africa.” And poor Sylvester Stallone, having to represent Creed as the white guy, and poor Bryan Cranston and Michael Fassbender who handed in spectacular performances as two different brands of genius in Trumbo and Steve Jobs but will not take home the big prize. It was a year of great performances in so-so movies, or at least movies that never fully connected with audiences in the ...
3.5Score

Movie review: Where to Invade Next

Movie review: Where to Invade Next Michael Moore plays chatty tour guide as he treks through Europe to discover healthy school lunches, free college tuition and - gasp! - women in power!
3Score

Triple 9 shoots in the dark

Movie review: Triple 9 Australian director John Hillcoat gets lost in the shadows of a dirty cop drama that has too many characters and not enough Woody or Winslet
2Score

Gods of Egypt in need of burial

Movie review: Gods of Egypt Director Alex Proyas brings a shallow and distracted superhero style to a story about ancient Egyptian gods in a sibling power struggle -30-

Pop This! Would like to thank…

Pop This! Episode 16 - The Oscars What fresh hell is this? Given the number of awards shows in your face and in your daily feed, are the Oscars even relevant? The Pop This! team tells the man where he can put his gold statuette... Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. And Dorothy Woodend. Produced by Andrea Gin. A sampling of what you might hear in Episode 16: The Oscars... Back from Vegas... Mariah Carey was everything I could have asked for and more… There was an awkward moment where two people came up from the audience to talk with her, Bev and Andy... Email us and tell us how much you paid for that. I left $18 at the Paris. There are more and more awards broadcast...  you didn’t have access to the same repetition. It's just a popularity contest... even at the Vancouver Critics Circle... You have to think like Bob Hope. Do the old Academy members need to die? Your time is done Woody Allen. You can go off and play shuffleboard. A ...
3.5Score

Movie review: The Witch is a dark fable

It's being promoted as a horror movie, but this spare and chilling folktale about a pioneer family in 17th Century New England is an existential thriller about family and faith

Luke Kirby takes another waltz with romance

People: Luke Kirby He played a problematic brand of Prince Charming in Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz and now Canadian-born Luke Kirby is walking a tightrope of sanity as a bipolar Romeo in Paul Dalio's Touched With Fire   By Katherine Monk He played a pedicab-driving Romeo opposite Michelle Williams in Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, and now he plays a bipolar brand of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Paul Dalio’s Touched With Fire, but if you think Luke Kirby has a thing for playing the problematic prince charming, it’s just optics. The Guelph-raised Kirby is also a regular on the Sundance Channel crime drama Rectify, did several seasons of the Astronaut Wives Club and recently appeared in The Good Wife. And for those who weren’t paying attention to Canadian cinema at the turn of the present century, Kirby starred as the gay son of traditional Italian parents in Emile Gaudrealt’s Mambo Italiano. “Right now, I’d like to work on my tan if I could find the ...
3.5Score

Race runs a familiar circuit

Movie review: Race Complete with slow-motion shots of spent athletes crossing the finish line and sepia-tinted digital recreations of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Stephen Hopkins's Race lives up to sports-movie expectation as it tells the Jesse Owens story without upsetting white people  

Pop This! Las Vegas!

Podcast: Pop This! Packed with miniaturized monoliths and Disneyfied recreations of the Old World, Las Vegas sits at the intersection of generic sin and stand alone silliness, making for a perfect expression of popular culture Featuring Lisa Christiansen and Andrea Warner. Produced by Andrea Gin. A sampling of what you might hear in Episode 15: Visiting Las Vegas I was at a birthday where they had exotic animals. One had teeth that looked like they were made out of clarinet reeds. Las Vegas... has a lot of ladies and dudes on the prowl. And Mariah Carey. I'm worried that I don't like magic shows or Cirque du Soleil. But I do like food. Then you have to go to the Cosmo. [The Cosmopolitan] hotel has the best restaurants, and they have nice drinks at the gambling machines. Gambling machines...? Go to the Spanish restaurant run by José Andrés. They have cool old records as wallpaper. That's what I want. I want the secret Vegas. Go to the Thomas Keller ...

Ryan Reynolds: swimming in Deadpool success

People: Ryan Reynolds Interview Ryan Reynolds wears his love of Vancouver on his fleshy sleeve with a tattoo of the Nine O'Clock Gun, but thanks to the skyrocketing success of Deadpool, the sexiest dad alive is making a big noise of his own. By Katherine Monk VANCOUVER, BC – He’s officially the hottest star in Hollywood now that Deadpool has racked up a quarter-billion $US in its first week of release and launched an on-line fan frenzy demanding he host SNL, get his own statue in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, and get on with spawning a series of Deadpool sequels. Vancouver’s Ryan Reynolds has come a long way since his so-called “breakout year” back in ’02-’03, when he made the leap from recurring roles on TV shows such as Fifteen, The Odyssey and The Outer Limits to being the star of features films. He played a party hound Van Wilder, and a master thief in Foolproof, Canada’s first full-size experiment with the action genre. The whole movie was geared ...