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Egoyan’s brilliant erotic thriller ‘Exotica’ looks desperation in the eye

Atom Egoyan’s serpentine erotic thriller, Exotica, is a flawless exercise in understated urgency. Flashbacks, arresting visuals, and Mychael Danna’s score slowly reveal a web of strangers inextricably linked by one man’s suffering. It’s less a cinematic puzzle than an organic realization. When all of the mysteries are unraveled, you know a little bit more about the Human condition. Though many consider The Sweet Hereafter to be Egoyan’s masterpiece, Exotica is fearless indie filmmaking at its best.

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New Projects: Benghazi, Jesse Owens, and ‘Hail, Caesar!’

The terrorist attack on the American Embassy in Benghazi so consumed the media and Washington that it’s bound to make good fiction. There’s potential for an on-the-ground action thriller, Zero Dark Thirty style, there’s potential for a thorny, political drama surrounding the ensuing scandal, and one can even look at the conspiracy theorist angle. And …

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‘Hateship Loveship’ too loose and superfluous to make much of an impact

Hateship Loveship Written by Mark Jude Poirier Directed by Liza Johnson USA, 2013 Alice Munro is one of the finest living fiction writers, consistently able to create tight stories with hidden depths about uniquely aching and awkward characters. A few years ago, Sarah Polley adapted one of her stories from the collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, …

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Essential Viewing: The Best Documentaries of 2013 (part two)

Leviathan Directed by Lucian Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel USA, 2012 The Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab is slowly out to reshape the way you see cinema and the world. Rather than set out to document the world via a recitation of facts and experiences, they’re strapping the cameras right at the edge of life – in …

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Essential Viewing: Best Documentaries of 2013 (part one)

Documentaries have come a long way in the past 20 years, especially in the last decade. Documentary film has developed into a popular and visible form of entertainment, while having a bigger effect on society, usually addressing important issues with the goal of informing the public and pushing for social change. Ten years ago, it …

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Status at the Half: Best Movies of 2013 So Far

We are now officially half way through the year and so I’ve asked our staff to vote for their favourite films released thus far. Hollywood blockbusters may have disappointed us, but thankfully we can always rely on independent filmmakers to create some truly inspiring films. Rounding out the special mentions is Terrence Malick’s To The …

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Three Recent Films and TV Shows That Pass The Bechedel Test

While I’ve never had trouble identifying with the bulk of male roles across film and television, I cannot deny that I do delight in finding gems wherein the women get lines, and maybe even their own narrative. It’s no secret that women are grossly underrepresented in films and television, both onscreen and behind the scenes. …

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‘Stories We Tell’ more successful as an intellectual exercise than as heartfelt, familial emotion

How can a documentary ever satisfactorily tell us the truth? No matter what the topic of debate is, how can the filmmakers relay to us the supposed truth of a situation without any form of bias or creative control poking through? Hell, what is truth? Yes, such heady philosophical notions and questions are present in each moment of Sarah Polley’s newest film Stories We Tell, a documentary of sorts, in that it’s structured around real lives and real people.

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More Equal Than Others: Six Films of 2012 Done Better

For better or worse, films don’t exist in a vacuum. If literature derives from itself, and, according to Marshall McLuhan, the content in any new medium is always the same as in the old, then films don’t exactly have a wealth of opportunities to be original. You can always compare a film to one that …

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‘Take This Waltz,’ while far from perfect, shows off some nice moves

Take This Waltz Directed by Sarah Polley Written by Sarah Polley Canada, 2011 Actress, writer, producer, director, Sarah Polley can apparently do it all. Ever since her touching, memorable performance in Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, she has earned her place within the film industry on both sides of the Canadian-American borders. Her work is …

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Tribeca 2012 announces the lineups for its Spotlight, Cinemania, and Special Screenings programs

Yes, spring film festival season is almost here again. The 11th edition of the Tribeca Film Festival unveiled a whole lot of its programming this morning, and there are some items of note. Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz graces the Spotlight section, along with 33 other selections, including Julie Delpy’s 2 Days In Ney York …

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Top 5 Female Directorial Debuts

5. Sara Polley – Away From Her (2006)– The first word that comes to my mind in regards to this film is serene. Polley is so successful in her capitalization of that feeling in fueling her narrative. The void, rural landscape of Northern Ontario mimic the inner turmoil of the protagonists in this film, fusing the …

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First footage from Vincenzo Natali’s SPLICE!

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley star in the upcoming thriller Splice, set for release some time in September. Director Vincenzo Natali is best known for his movies Cube and Nothing. Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) are two young rebellious scientists who defy legal and ethical boundaries and forge ahead with a dangerous experiment: splicing together human and animal DNA …

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