Fantasia Has No Boundaries – August 31, 2010

“The NeverEnding Story” may have been the first film I saw in a cinema. Who remembers? The memory stamp includes moving through an aisle of seats at the old Centre twin theatre on George Street in Peterborough. Was it the first time I’d seen it, or had the Centre been re-running it for parents desperate to keep their kids occupied?…

The Old York – August 18, 2010

The Raja Cinema was one of the first buildings on Commercial Drive I laid eyes on during my search for an apartment here in town. It sits, peeling and empty, at the end of my block. Abandoned theatres bring to mind all kinds of assumptions…

The “Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter” Guide to Ottawa – July 14, 2010

The image of a lesbian vampire graced the cover of the first copy of the Xpress I ever laid eyes on. Back in 2001, I was new in town and had yet to set foot inside the Mayfair Theatre, the Bytowne Cinema, or the Library and Archives Canada auditorium – the holy trinity of independent and art cinemas in Ottawa…

Interview with Gary Burns – May 19, 2010

Ten years ago, Canada at large came to know the work of writer/director Gary Burns through “waydowntown,” a film that won the City Award for Best Canadian Feature Film at the Toronto International Film Festival and nabbed Burns a nomination in the Best Achievement in Direction category at the Genie Awards…

Bursting the Bubble: “waydowntown” Turns 10 – May 18, 2010

My first office job was at Filament Communications, a multimedia company in Ottawa where I worked for a whole six weeks before I was informed that the company was going under. I had just moved to the city after completing a diploma program in multimedia design and was exhilarated with the experience of my first steps into the adult world. I was 21 and thought I’d never have to work a McJob again…

What Mad Pursuit – April 23, 2010

It was “Ode on a Grecian Urn” that did it. In the fall of 2002, I sat in Professor Kevin Gildea’s class, listening to the man lecture on 20th century literature, delivering mash-ups of Descartes, Derrida, Freud and Keats to show exactly why so many people have always thought it necessary to tell stories…

Interview with The Good Listeners – March 25, 2010

“Every day has its song and that song shall have its day.” If Clark Stiles and Nathan Khyber of The Good Listeners live by an oath, it’s the one that kicks off “Don’t Quit Your Daydream,” the recent documentary about the making of their third album…

Why I Hate Films: A Declaration of War – March 2, 2010

Allow me to voice an opinion about the future of film criticism: It will become a war on trash waged more fiercely than ever. Reviews will need to strike like nuclear bombs, carried forward in camouflaged assaults that no studio radar will identify. It will be a war of consensus, fought by brothers and sisters in arms with the latest in high-tech word weaponry, long after the Paulettes and Sarrisites have reconciled their differences to face a common enemy…

What About Peter F**king Capaldi? – February 2, 2010

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards will be the first Oscars ceremony of my tenure as a film critic (or reviewer, or blogger, or hack). When I started reviewing films last year, I had been looking forward to editorializing my heart out on Oscar season, but I’ve come to realize that there are probably too many voices on the subject as it is (and too many opening paragraphs that call attention to that fact)…

For the Love of Criticism – January 24, 2010

There was no lineup to get in to the Canadian Film Institute’s screening of Gerald Peary’s “For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism” on Saturday night, and about eight people were in the crowd. No one cares about film critics. We aren’t that interesting. I include myself as part of that group, though a lot of professional film critics wouldn’t have me. To those critics, I’m a blogger. They’re right, too…

I Want to Be Alone – January 12, 2010

Greta Garbo turned 36 the year her final film, “Two-Faced Woman,” was produced in 1941. Apart from some screentests shot later that decade, the actress never again set foot in front of a camera and voluntarily faded out of the public eye. In 1953, she purchased a luxurious apartment at 450 East 52nd Street in New York City and lived in seclusion, refusing all additional film roles and interviews, no matter how lucrative…

Eric Bogosian’s Heart Attack – November 25, 2009 (for (Cult)ure Magazine)

With a slew of award-winning plays, novels, and solo shows under his belt, Eric Bogosian is a modern creative renaissance man. In the 1988 Oliver Stone-helmed adaptation of Bogosian’s Pulitzer Prize nominated off-Broadway play Talk Radio, the young writer/actor delivered one of the greatest performances in the history of cinema. Now, more than twenty years later, he explores the dark side of a fully-grown artist’s attitude toward success and artistic growth in his recently released novel Perforated Heart…

In the Beginning – November 23, 2009

My first film. It’s hard to narrow it down. I have to go by the year. I have to remember being in the living room of my family’s house on Humber Road. It’s the early 1980’s, but I don’t remember how early. I remember teaching myself how to use the television remote control, how to read the TV guide. I remember the way the big floor model TV set looked when I turned it off, watching the picture shrink to a line and then a dot before disappearing completely. My parents owned a Betamax machine. My sisters and I are watching “Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure” on a Beta tape…