Film & Music

What is Kiarostami trying to tell me? That’s the question I keep asking myself as I’ve been introduced to his films over the past few weeks at his TIFF Retrospective. I’m told there’s a magic moment that comes to those going through Kiarostami’s work for the first time. For me, it was during his documentary, […]

“On the surface, The Hateful Eight operates as a kind of homage to John Carpenter’s The Thing” was all the praise I needed to pre-purchase my ticket for Quentin Tarantino’s new movie. The fact that it was going to be shown in 70mm film, accompanied by an overture and intermission, only added to the allure

Since Mad Men’s ending last year, I’ve been on the hunt for a new period piece to give my soul and procrastination time to. Vinyl, HBO’s new Martin Scorsese-Mick Jagger-Rich Cohen-Terrence Winter collaboration, seemed like a good candidate to fill said hole in my television-watching habits. However, the show falls a little flat and manages

Son of Saul, directed by László Nemes, tells a story of one man’s search for meaning in a world deprived of humanity. The film, set in the Auschwitz concentration camp, follows one prisoner’s quest for meaning after seeing the death of a boy he takes to be his long-lost son. The film follows two days

Artists in the 21st century are expected to create and produce successful work with little turnaround time. Once fame is achieved, there’s only so much time before you’re left behind for someone keener, bolder, and maybe even younger. Frank Ocean and Rihanna have been prey to online communities begging for new albums after years of

5. Short Circuit 2 Whereas the original 1986 Short Circuit—also filmed in Toronto—was surprisingly successful, and had a compelling plot in a U.S. military robot that gains intelligence and escapes after “short-circuiting”, Short Circuit 2 catches up with the same robot several years later. He is embroiled in a gangster storyline as he struggles to

I meet the five members of Good Kid at The Starving Artist on College Street. Michael, who plays bass, tells me as we wait for our table that he bought some balloons earlier since their single hit 100,000 plays on Spotify. “We’re using them for a video on our Facebook page later today.” Good Kid

Boy bands are dependent on staying the same. Part of their appeal is remaining static throughout their career, and this can lead to personality-free products. One Direction is perhaps the strongest contemporary example of this phenomenon. (As we monitor the band’s rumoured disintegration over the next few months, it’s going to be interesting to see

Many Golden Globe viewers were surprised when favourite-to-win Jeffrey Tambor was unseated in the Best Actor in a Comedy Series category by Gael García Bernal for Mozart in the Jungle. Amazon’s comedy series centres on a transitional period for the New York Symphony Orchestra, when new conductor Rodrigo De Souza (García Bernal) replaces the old

With choices such as Andrew Cividino’s Sleeping Giant and Stephen Dunn’s Closet Monster, several of the films at this year’s Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival took audiences on a tour of the Canadian suburbs, highlighting the struggles of the children and adolescents growing up in them. Philippe Lesage’s Les démons was among this selection of