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 ...
Pop Culture Decoder: Top 10 Excuses to See Magic Mike XXL
Misty Harris finds socially acceptable reasons to see summer’s bulging tentpole By Misty Harris
With the Magic Mike XXL debut just around the corner, haters are dialling up the discontent to a full Nancy Grace. Their main critique is that while the Soderbergh-directed original was dark and provocative, the sequel appears to be little more than a big-budget manspoitation film. Incidentally, this is the precise reason I’ve already purchased tickets. The tentpole is real, people, and it looks spectacular. On that note, today’s Decoder lays bare the Top 10 socially acceptable excuses to #ComeAgain for Magic Mike. Haters, consider yourselves warned. 1. Supporting the arts: This time around, the dance portion of the movie looks to be as enhanced as Joe ‘Big Dick Richie’ Manganiello (if you haven’t seen the trailer, it’s as if Step Up and Flashdance had a baby and named it Ab Flex). Getting your culture on has never looked ...
Movie Review: Seymour – An Introduction
Ethan Hawke steps behind the camera to direct a lovely, purposefully small movie that gently dusts the edges of existential angst as it animates the life of pianist Seymour Bernstein
Sonja Bennett's big trip to Preggoland
Interview: The Vancouver-based actress says she turned to writing to kickstart her acting career, but found a whole new passion for putting words on the page when she started to explore society's 'bizarre' worship of breeding
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER – “I was turning into the actress cliché,” says BC actor Sonja Bennett, offering up a full confession of her life before Preggoland, the new movie from Jacob Tierney that she not only wrote, but also stars in alongside James Caan and Danny Trejo. “I could feel myself becoming very ungrounded. I was spinning and was feeling all these things that I never felt before – like jealousy towards my peers, and I thought: Oh god. I can’t be that person. Yet I am turning into that person.” Before she was overwhelmed by self-loathing, Bennett did something drastic: She stopped. Putting a halt to the career she’d spent the last decade building since her breakout performance in 2002’s Punch, written and directed by her ...
Sonja Bennett’s big trip to Preggoland
Interview: The Vancouver-based actress says she turned to writing to kickstart her acting career, but found a whole new passion for putting words on the page when she started to explore society's 'bizarre' worship of breeding
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER – “I was turning into the actress cliché,” says BC actor Sonja Bennett, offering up a full confession of her life before Preggoland, the new movie from Jacob Tierney that she not only wrote, but also stars in alongside James Caan and Danny Trejo. “I could feel myself becoming very ungrounded. I was spinning and was feeling all these things that I never felt before – like jealousy towards my peers, and I thought: Oh god. I can’t be that person. Yet I am turning into that person.” Before she was overwhelmed by self-loathing, Bennett did something drastic: She stopped. Putting a halt to the career she’d spent the last decade building since her breakout performance in 2002’s Punch, written and directed ...
PROFILE: Gary Burns
GARY BURNS Born 1960, Calgary, Alberta A former construction worker who turned to filmmaking at the age of 30, Burns remains something of a lone wolf on the Alberta landscape howling at the moon. A guy who generally works alone and steers clear of the “film scene,” Burns makes movies that appeal to his own personal brand of darkly comic wackiness. ``I don't really know what's going on in Alberta from a film standpoint. I'm not a part of it. I'm not really part of anything. I don't crew. I don't work in the industry. My friends have nothing to do with the film business. I don't even go to see movies. I'm guess I'm just another alienated Canadian filmmaker,'' says the man who used to sandblast oil-rig equipment. A graduate of the University of Calgary’s drama program, Burns decided to enroll in the film program at Concordia University in Montreal in the hopes of turning his passion for storytelling into a career. After graduating from Concordia in 1992, he ...
True Story proves believably boring
Movie review: True Story
Self-absorbed characters desperate for ego redemption keep audience at arm's length from new Jonah Hill-James Franco mystery, writes Katherine Monk
Michael Douglas talks Beyond the Reach
Veteran actor and producer Michael Douglas teams up with rising British star Jeremy Irvine in what feels like a live-action version of Road Runner, Beyond the Reach
By Katherine Monk
TORONTO – It manifested instantly, a dust devil rising from the feet of Michael Douglas’s Italian loafers and swirling through Jeremy Irvine’s feathery mop of sandy blond hair: A howling acknowledgement of Hollywood’s discriminatory practices when it comes to weight and overall body image. “A lot of actors are told they need to lose weight, or change their body. I was talking to Channing Tatum just recently and asked him why he was just drinking water, and he said it was because he had to go to the gym in two hours,” says Irvine, the young British actor who hit the radar in Steven Spielberg’s War Horse and now stars opposite Douglas in the new film, Beyond the Reach, currently playing in select theatres and available on-demand. A cat-and-mouse thriller ...
@Home releases for April 14
The Babadook raises goosebumps, Big Eyes surprises and Escobar blows eye candy but Woman In Black 2 proves dimmest DVD/VOD release of the week.
The Babadook (2014)
Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Tim Purcell. Directed by: Jennifer Kent. Running time: 93 minutes. Four stars out of five One of the sharper arrows in the new quiver of shiver directors, Jennifer Kent makes an impressive debut with this perfectly phrased piece of psychological horror that pits a mother and son against a supernatural force. It begins with young Samuel (Noah Wiseman) suffering from night terrors. The kid is convinced there’s a monster under his bed, but every time his exhausted mother takes a peek under the mattress in the hopes of comforting him, she sees nothing. Yet, Samuel’s visions only grow worse, leaving poor Amelia (Essie Davis) emotionally frayed and completely sleep-deprived. Kent forces us to feel her exhaustion in every queasy close-up and every ...
