Starting last night at the TIFF Bell Lightbox is one of TIFF’s biggest offshoot festivals, the youth-programmed and driven TIFF Next Wave festival. The festival itself is steered by the TIFF Next Wave Committee, a voluntary advisory team made up of 12 youth dedicated to bringing quality film programming and film-related events to young cinephiles across the city. The festival aims to empower and inspire youth to make films and come together to watch movies on the big screen. This year’s lineup features Canadian and international films that explore a variety of cultures and topics that are universal for anybody (not only teens), no matter who they are or where they come from. Read the rest of this page »
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Contest!!! Win a copy of Commitment on Bluray from Well Go USA
Well its contest time again here at the Fix and this time we have a K-Pop Superstar in the sizzling Korean spy thriller Commitment! The Korean spy/actioner hits store shelves this Tuesday, March 11th, and thanks to the amazing folks at Well Go USA we have 3 Blu-ray copies to give away!
Korean Rap/Pop Superstar CHOI Seung-hyun (aka T.O.P of the K-pop boy band Big Bang) plays the son of a North Korean spy who decides to follow in his father’s footsteps in order to protect his little sister in the action-packed spy thriller COMMITMENT, debuting on Blu-ray™, DVD and Digital March 18th from Well Go USA Entertainment. While attending high school in South Korea, he rescues a girl (KIM Yoo-jeong) when she is attacked. South Korean Intelligence soon discovers the plot and begins closing in on him, while his own government sends a vicious assassin to eliminate him. Directed by PARK Hong-soo, the cast also includes HAN Ye-ri (Dear Dolphin, South Bound), JEONG Ho-bin (Shadowless Sword), and JO Sung Ha (Pluto, The Yellow Sea). Bonus materials include a behind-the-scenes “Making-of” featurette. Read the rest of this page »
CONTEST!! Win a copy of FISTS OF LEGEND from Well Go USA
Well its contest time again here at the Fix and this time we have a MMA extravaganza up for grabs! Korean actioner Fists Of Legend hit store shelves this past Tuesday, February 18th, and thanks to the amazing folks at Well Go USA we have 3 Blu-ray copies to give away!
FISTS OF LEGEND is a mixed martial arts reality TV show that recruits forgotten street fighting legends to a bloody battle against each other. Deok-kyu, Sang-hoon and Jae-suk were blockheaded high school friends who mainly used their fists to get what they wanted. An unfortunate incident tears their friendship apart and causes them to go their separate ways. Their lives collide once again after 25 years when the producers of FISTS OF LEGEND invite them to the biggest fight of their lifetime and a chance to win a $200,000 prize. The gruesome fighting competition unexpectedly forces the three men to reconcile their broken friendship from the past and encounter true victory. Be prepared to journey through the action-packed and unforgettable story of friendship in FISTS OF LEGEND. The film has a running time of 155 minutes with more than 40 minutes of bonus materials that include a “making of” featurette, footage of the world premiere, behind-the-scenes at the poster photo shoot and more.
‘Parkland’ misses the mark on DVD
Dallas. November 22, 1963. 12:38pm. Wounded President John F. Kennedy is rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where a frantic trauma team struggles in vain to save him. Precisely forty-eight hours later, the same personnel would attend to the President’s mortally wounded assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Adapting Vincent Bugliosi’s acclaimed non-fiction book Four Days in November, first-time writer-director Peter Landesman gathers a star-studded cast (including Zac Efron, Paul Giamatti, and Academy Award-winners Billy Bob Thornton and Marcia Gay Harden) to deliver an ensemble based procedural drawn from the accounts of the medical staff, investigators, and the ordinary citizens who witnessed the world-changing events first-hand.
Now in stores on DVD, audiences will not find anything new or integral to the JFK Assassination in Parkland, this is not that film. Instead it remains content to merely play out and display the actions of the bystanders of that act. Parkland does manage to present better on the home screen though as the benefits of home viewing, being able to step away easily and pause when required, greatly helps the watchability of a film that felt dull and overlong in theaters. Not everything works though as the film features a story thread involving the secret service agent who originally interview Oswald months before that either needs to be more fleshed out or excised all together as it remains very underdeveloped and awkward. This is a straight procedural in every sense of the word, there is little character history or backstory that is explored, just the events of the 4 days are displayed.
Paul Verhoeven spills ‘Flesh + Blood’ at the Lightbox
Starting this past Friday, January 24th 2014, and running until April 4th, the TIFF Bell Lightbox is launching another major retrospective series, this time chronicling the career of prolific Dutch directorPaul Verhoeven, entitled Flesh + Blood: The Films of Paul Verhoeven. After making a string of brilliant and bloody films in the Netherlands that had him proclaimed a national hero, Verhoeven was slammed back down to earth with the critical backlash that erupted from his motocross epic Spetters, which ended up with him packing his bags for Hollywood. Verhoeven would soon become the master of action packed excess with such films as Robocop, Total Recall, and the sexually charged thrillerBasic Instinct. But soon the critical backlash would rear its head in Hollywood as well, sending Verhoeven back to his homeland. Read the rest of this page »
‘Don Jon’ is a offer you can’t refuse on DVD
Jon Martello Jr. (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a New Jersey bartender and womanizer. Yet, in spite of his ability to land sexual partners, Jon has a dirty secret: he’s hopelessly hooked on internet porn. For him, no real life bedmate, no matter how gorgeous or skilled, can compare to the endless parade of images he finds on the web. Even after what would seem an exhausting session in the sack, Jon still feels the call of his laptop. Jon’s routine seems fixed for life until he meets Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson). She’s a sassy Jersey girl who proves a rare challenge to his powers of seduction. But can he reveal to her his awkward addiction?
For his feature length directorial debut, ‘Don Jon’, Gordon-Levitt assembled an enviable cast, donned a wife beater and accent, and completely immersed himself in the character of Jon Martello Jr. The character is a drastic step away from anything else Gordon-Levitt has played, and he does a good job too, but the real shinning start here is Johansson. Playing a shallow bombshell that sees Jon as a ‘tool’ to manipulate, Johansson’s demanding Barbara is a departure from many of Johansson’s previous roles, a self-aware sexpot that uses every inch of her body to gain her advantage. Johansson delivers whenever she is onscreen, and unsurprisingly she helped a lot with Gordon-Levitt’s development of the Barbara Sugerman character. Upon a second viewing at home, Julianne Moore’s roles grows in impact and influence as it’s a real and assured performance that anchors the last third of the film.
‘The Story of Children and Film’ at the Bloor Cinema
A Story of Children and Film is a documentary by Mark Cousins which explores the history of cinema and the roles that child actors have had in it. The film uses an interesting approach that utilizes a magnitude of different movies dating back to the earliest era and cinema and reaching all the way across different parts of the world. Cousins also intercut footage he took of niece and nephew and contrasts it to the films he’s talking about creating the actual narrative of the documentary. Aside from the footage that he took, and a few brief shots at the end of the piece, a majority of the film is footage from other movies with Cousins narration.
The topic that the A Story of Children and Film explores is not a commonly covered one, so Cousins does a good job at breaking new ground and exploring the various aspects of it. However, the films biggest downfall is its narration which is done by the director himself. Some filmmakers can pull off narrating their own films, however Cousins done so in the most monotone way imaginable. It can only be assumed that this is done intentionally with an attempt to speak in a somewhat poetic way; however it can often feel dry and boring at times. The footage really is the essential attention grabber in the documentary, and it becomes really interesting to see how the earliest pieces of cinema have had an ever growing influence on the most modern films released. Cousins goes on to point out that cinema is one of the newest art forms and that it is almost a child itself, something not often thought about considering how young of an art form film really is. Instead of simply narrating the entire piece, real life footage of family members was used to flow from topic to topic, thus removing the choppiness that a documentary like this could have easily fallen victim to.
Godard Forever starts at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Godard Forever Part One
Starting January 23rd and running til February 13th at the TIFF Bell Lightbox is the first part of a widely encompassing retrospective into the films of one of the French Wave pioneers and most beloved filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard entitled Godard Forever. The series will conclude with its second part in the fall program, but this first part covers the works of Godard from 1954-1967. The retrospective is highlighted by the rare, archival, and newly minted prints that fill the lineup.
The series starts with Godard’s iconic debut Breathless starring Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Belmondo curls and slithers across the screen like a viper ready to pounce where Seberg may be film’s first incarnation of the now popular ‘manic pixie dreamgirl’ character with her short cropped hair and infectious charisma and sex appeal, wrapped up in an unassuming package. Read the rest of this page »
‘Big Bad Wolves’ barely manages to blow the house down
The Israeli film that caused a stir last year, and had Quentin Tarantino proclaiming it the best film of the year, “Big Bad Wolves” finally sees a release in theaters and on VOD. The film revolves around a series of brutal child murders that puts the lives of three men on a collision course. The father of the latest victim now out for revenge, a vigilante police detective operating outside the boundaries of law, and the main suspect in the killings – a religious studies teacher arrested and released due to a police blunder. After kidnapping the man believed to have murdered his daughter, the father goes searching for answers by any means necessary in the basement of his ultra-secluded home.
As you may devise from the brief description above, Big Bad Wolves is a bleak and at times unnerving thriller that takes it time to unfold. The brutality shown towards the main suspect Dror by both of the other parties is often made the main attraction and show in full detail, Read the rest of this page »
‘Linsanity’ prepares to take over the Bloor Cinema
The underdog sports story is one of the oldest tales in film. This is the one where the athlete that nobody believed in eventually proves everyone wrong to roaring applause. Such is the true life story of professional basketball player and overnight sensation, Jeremy Lin. Lin grew up living a normal life, idolizing his favourite basketball players on TV, and mimicking their moves on the courts with his brothers. He would time and time again prove he was an exceptional player but was often passed over because he didn’t look like a traditional basketball star.
Evan Leong’s Linsanity focuses on the meteoric rise of Jeremy Lin and chronicles his early childhood memories while paralleling it with Lin’s current NBA stardom. The documentary does a great job of capturing the real Jeremy Lin, and getting a first-hand account from the star himself, which reveals the very personal and spiritual journey that the basketball sensation has been on since his youth. The strongest aspect of the film is that it doesn’t just gear itself towards basketball fans; it instead opts for a broader approach making it accessible and fun to watch for everyone. Even someone who has never sat and watched an entire basketball game will stay engaged in the film throughout. .
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