Archive for March, 2008

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FREE Screening of Street Kings - Fox Searchlight

Monday, March 31st, 2008

UPDATE: TIFFReviews.com has an extra RSVP pass to give away for the Street Kings screening. First person to email us will receive the pass.

Fox Searchlight - RSVP here for a free screening of Street Kings on Thursday, April 10 7pm at Scotiabank Theatre. Promotional screenings are on a first-come, first-served basis and not guaranteed seating. No purchase necessary. Seating is limited to theater capacity.

Directed by David Ayer. Tom Ludlow is a veteran LAPD cop who finds life difficult to navigate after the death of his wife. When evidence implicates him in the execution of a fellow officer, he is forced to go up against the cop culture he’s been a part of his entire career, ultimately leading him to question the loyalties of everyone around him… [Full Story]

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The Flight of the Red Balloon - GreenCine Daily

Monday, March 31st, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”Like his 2004 film Café Lumière, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s sublime new movie The Flight of the Red Balloon finds the director in a foreign country paying homage to another filmmaker,” writes Chris Wisniewski at indieWIRE. “With Lumiere, Yasujiro Ozu was Hou’s reference point and Tokyo his canvas; here, Hou reimagines Albert Lamorisse’s classic 1956 short The Red Balloon as a Parisian family melodrama.”

“A remarkably rich, rewarding, and restful experience, Hou’s latest is a film like no other - in the simplicity of its lines, colors, and framing, and in the complexity of how those elements compound and contextualize its emotional subject matter, The Flight of the Red Balloon can, in my mind, be compared to the works of Matisse,” writes Michael Koresky in Reverse Shot. “Despite this elevation, the film, miraculously, doesn’t feel like an artist’s grand summation, but rather just another in a long line of purely wrought canvases; it never calls attention to its own technique or turns its endless flow of lovely, complicated compositions into recognizable set pieces, and instead allows its three principal characters to navigate its spaces with ease.”… [Full Story]

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Cinematheque Ontario Free Screen: Century Hotel

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Cinematheque Ontario - Date: Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Time: 7:00pm - 9:45pm
Location: Jackman Hall

David Weaver’s ambitious debut feature, the decades-spanning Century Hotel, takes place in a single hotel room and follows a disparate group of characters from different time periods: an egomaniacal drugged-out rock star (Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace), a lovelorn would-be poet (Feore) searching for his errant wife, a mail-order bride (Sandrine Holt) waiting to meet her husband, and a businessman and a prostitute (Kirshner) who agree to meet on a yearly basis. Creating a “visually and atmospherically rich world” (Toronto Sun), the film shuttles expertly from the Twenties to present day, never lessening the emotional impact of each tale. (Some, in fact, go in entirely unpredictable directions.) The setting, as much a character as any of the people in the film, signals seismic cultural shifts, from prosperity and excess to depression and wholesale uncertainty. Century Hotel functions as a secret history of the 20th century. Special thanks to TVA Films for this screening.

This screening will be preceded by a series of tributes to Jim Murphy (both live and videotaped, courtesy of friend and filmmaker Dawn Kuisma) made by Jim’s friends and colleagues… [Full Story]

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Free Screening and Q&A of Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? - Alliance Films

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

Alliance Films - Alliance has some guest list spots for a special screening of “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” Director Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me) will be there, and will give a Q&A following the film!

Monday, March 31
7:00pm
Varsity Cinemas

Please email freetickets@alliancefilms.com if you would like to attend. We will email you back if you have been successfully added to the guest list. Each guest list spot is good for 2 people.

View the trailer here.

Synopsis:
If Morgan Spurlock has learned anything from over 30 years of movie-watching, it’s that if the world needs saving, it’s best done by one lone man willing to face danger head on to take it down, action hero style.

So, with no military experience, knowledge or expertise, he sets off to do what the CIA, FBI and countless bounty hunters have failed to do: find the world’s most wanted man. Why take on such a seemingly impossible mission? Simple—he wants to make the world safe for his soon to be born child. But before he finds Osama bin Laden, he first needs to learn where he came from, what makes him tick, and most importantly, what exactly created bin Laden to begin with.

In WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN?, Oscar nominated filmmaker Morgan Spurlock takes on a franchise even more lethal than McDonald’s—Al Qaeda. And after this real life action thriller is over, the world may never be the same.

Following bin Laden’s trail through some of the most dangerous places in the world, Spurlock encounters both the rational and the radical faces of the Middle East. He interviews many people who embrace him on the streets and welcome him into their homes, often gaining impressions that sharply contrast with the conventional media images of the region. Spurlock finds they’re not that different from American families, sharing the same hopes and fears for their children that he has for his own.

In a world where we are constantly being told that we’re on the verge of the ultimate showdown between good and evil, Spurlock risks life and limb to uncover the truth about Osama bin Laden. But along the way, he discovers the lines that divide us aren’t nearly as black and white as the heroes and villains we see in the Westerns… [Full Story]

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DVD Extras… A Director’s Commentary - CINSSU

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

CINSSU - Date: Thursday, April 3, 2008
Time: 7:00pm - 9:40pm
Location: Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave

The Cinema Studies Institute presents,

Atom Egoyan, distinguished Canadian director (The Sweet Hereafter, Calendar, Ararat), will give a lecture on the topic of “director’s commentaries and bonus DVD features”.

He will also show a behind-the scenes preview of his upcoming film ‘Adoration’, starring Rachel Blanchard and Scott Speedman. Adoration focuses on one young man’s fascination with the possibility he’s the spawn of two historical figures — and how his personal obsession is both enabled, and threatened, by technology.

Free Admission! No tickets, passes or registration necessary. Bring friends or family… [Full Story]

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Up the Yangtze on CBC Newsworld - Toronto Star

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

TheStar.com - A river runs through it: Named one of the best films of 2007 by the Toronto International Film Festival Yung Chang’s Up the Yangtze documents the environmental impact the Three Gorges Dam will have on the Chinese river and the people who live and work beside it. The airs tonight (Sunday, March 30) at 10pm on CBC Newsworld… [Full Story]

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Another Red Balloon Alights in Paris - New York Times

Sunday, March 30th, 2008

New York Times - WHEN the Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien was commissioned to make a movie in Paris, his first outside Asia, he chose as his starting point Albert Lamorisse’s beloved 1956 short film, “The Red Balloon.” As it happens Mr. Hou, who knew Paris only from a few brief visits, discovered Lamorisse’s very French children’s classic through a fellow outsider. He read about it in “From Paris to the Moon,” a ruminative collection of dispatches by the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik, about expatriate family life in the French capital.

In keeping with Mr. Gopnik’s depiction, the not-quite-touristy Paris of Mr. Hou’s film, “Flight of the Red Balloon” (opening Friday), is suffused with the romance and the mystery of the everyday. The movie unfolds largely in the cafes, parks and cramped apartments of the city. Like his other films, with its patiently observed and palpably lived-in locations, it has an acute, almost tactile sense of place.

Before fleshing out the story Mr. Hou decided on the actors and determined the film’s geography, taking in the layout and the street-level ambience of the neighborhoods where he would be shooting. “There’s a kind of abstract thinking in the way I work, but I need to start with something concrete, a place or a person,” he said, speaking through a translator at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in January… [Full Story]

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You, the Living in the UK - GreenCine Daily

Friday, March 28th, 2008

GreenCine Daily - ”‘Painterly’ is an overused adjective for films, but here’s one where it makes sense,” writes Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian. “I don’t know of any filmmaker whose work gives the viewer so much incentive and indeed leisure to examine the background of a shot…. You, the Living is a very funny film - though in the darkest possible way. It is a silent comedy, but with words.”

“To call it deadpan is barely to hint at [Roy] Andersson’s style, which he mostly applies to the world of commercials (watch them on YouTube, they’re hilarious),” writes Dave Calhoun in Time Out. “But just when you think the only answer to Andersson’s view of the world – alcoholic couples; depressed psychiatrists; a girl searching for a disappeared rock star who shows her a modicum of affection – is to throw yourself under one of Stockholm’s trams, he unleashes a set-piece that has you marvelling at its choreography or wondering at the sheer ridiculousness of life.”… [Full Story]

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Free Screening of Wal*Mart Nation - MPP Cheri DiNovo

Friday, March 28th, 2008

MPP Cheri DiNovo - MPP Cheri DiNovo Presents a FREE Screening and Discussion: Wal*Mart Nation!

Come see the hour-long documentary Wal*Mart Nation, which looks at the world’s largest retailer, its low wage and price policies and the international protest movement it has spawned. Local MPP Cheri DiNovo is sponsoring a free screening Monday, April 7, 7pm at Revue Cinema, followed by a discussion and Q&A with film director Andrew Munger and others.

The film traces two years of anti-Wal-Mart activism and features union representatives, a Jesuit priest, community organizers, shareholders, Jessica Simpson and a former Miss America. Shown on CBC last November, the film reportedly earned the highest ratings for CBC Newsworlds documentary program, The Lens. It is also an official selection for the Montreal World Film Festival and the Oxford Film Festival… [Full Story]

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Win There Will be Blood on DVD - MoviesOnline

Thursday, March 27th, 2008

MoviesOnline - On April 8th, Paramount Home Entertainment will release the critically acclaimed, Academy Award nominated masterpiece THERE WILL BE BLOOD on DVD!

Directed and adapted for the screen by critical darling Paul Thomas Anderson, the film has not only been named by more than 200 critics as one of the top 10 films of 2007, but has also garnered eight Academy Award nominations (including Best Motion Picture of the Year)! Starring Academy Award, Golden Globe, and SAG Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis, THERE WILL BE BLOOD tells the brutal tale of Daniel Plainview’s struggle to become the greatest oilman of his time and his ruthless ways of getting there.

To enter this contest email us at contests@moviesonline.ca with the subject There Will Be Blood and please include your name/age/address and we will then pick some winners… [Full Story]

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