REVIEW: Blackfish
Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s brilliant controversial documentary Blackfish argues that whales have emotions and complex familial and societal organizations.
20 Feet from Stardom Review: It’s Just a Shot Away
The stories told in Morgan Neville's Twenty Feet from Stardom form a bittersweet chorus about a passion for music that endures.
Book Review: Goin’ Down The Road
New book on Goin' Down the Road proves there is always new life to be breathed into even the most well worn of subjects.
In Review: Stories We Tell
One approaches the release of Sarah Polley’s highly anticipated feature documentary about her family, Stories We Tell, with a mixture of relief and trepidation.
In Review: The Tower of Babble
In his wittily titled The Tower of Babble, the CBC's Richard Stursberg has written a breezy, insightful and unabashedly self-serving business-bookcum-memoir of his tempestuous tenure.
In Review: Shoot It!
Shoot It!: Hollywood Inc. and the Rising of Independent Film by film journalist David Spaner, ambitiously explores international indie movements from the 1940s onward.
In Review: Queer Film Classic Series
The Queer Film Classic series is the brainchild of Montreal-based editors Matthew Hays and Thomas Waugh covering films like Zero Patience and Fire.
Documemories
An anthology by Tom Waugh, Ezra Winton, and Michael Brendan Baker celebrates the NFB’s Challenge for Change documentaries.
Reel Books: One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema
What does a body have to do to get noticed around here, anyway? In a contribution to Canadian film history, One Hundred Years of Canadian Cinema, George Melnyk attempts an answer. National identity is a slippery notion in this bi- polar country of French and English influences liberally affected and challenged by immigrant voices, which lives, like a mushroom, under an American shadow. While Melnyk admits that a book like his will omit much more than it encompasses, “one should think of this text as a kind of translation of the writings of others on Canadian film into a synthesized narrative.”
Hot Docs 2005: A DOP’s POV
I didn’t get a chance to go to a large number of Hot Docs this year, but the ones I did get to see were looked at with the critical eye of a DOP. Docs with great visual content stand out from average fare. Some films, especially those shot on small camcorders, can be distractingly bad visually. I realize that small cameras fit tight budgets and are best for war zones, “diaries” and personal stories, but filmmakers should be aware of their limitations especially now that consumers are watching programs on very large widescreen TVs. The Three Rooms of Melancholia,