Thomas Pashko
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The Boxtrolls
For animation junkies like myself, it’s encouraging any time a stop motion film makes its way to multiplexes. When it’s the new film from Laika, the animation studio behind the excellent Coraline and Paranorman, it’s grounds for genuine excitement. While the company’s newest feature, The Boxtrolls, isn’t anywhere near the fun labyrinth that Coraline was, it’s still a fun and gorgeous stop frame animated movie that never feels rote or derivative.
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Get a job!
Navigating your way past endless booths, tables and sharply dressed HR personnel in a room lit by buzzing fluorescent lights can be an exhausting task - but if it lands you a job it’s all worth it, right?
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The Guest
The Guest is the new feature from director Adam Wingard, whose horror deconstruction You’re Next was a critical hit last year. At first glance, The Guest seems like a very dumb movie. It isn’t. It’s incredibly smart. One of the smartest things it does is tricking you into thinking it’s dumb.
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A Walk Among the Tombstones
A Walk Among the Tombstones is the new film from writer-director Scott Frank. Despite a 25-year career as a screenwriter for such blockbusters as Get Shorty and Minority Report, he only has one previous directing credit, the excellent 2007 crime thriller The Lookout (lensed in Winnipeg).
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Corporate sponsorship at the University of Winnipeg
The morning of Wednesday, Sept. 10 marked a sudden change of scenery at the University of Winnipeg. Students were met with a giant decal advertising local top 40 radio station Energy 106 on the staircase leading up to CKUW, the University’s not-for-profit, volunteer driven campus radio station.
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Ghost vvorld
2014 has been a big year for Alvvays. The Toronto-by-way-of-Cape-Breton band’s self-titled debut, released in July, has been praised by such media outlets as Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork.
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Playtime
Have you ever watched a classic movie, one of those universally-beloved films considered part of the pantheon of cinema, and thought to yourself, “Am I missing something?”
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The Drop
Perhaps the most talked-about attribute of The Drop is that it marks the final screen appearance of actor James Gandolfini, who passed away last year. The movie is a fitting send-off, but it’s much more than that. This modest little crime drama from Belgian director Michaël R. Roskam is maybe the first great film of the fall movie season.
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Life Itself
Roger Ebert made me want to become a film critic. His work had an impact on my life that I can’t hope to articulate in under 300 words. The explosion of creativity on his blog in ‘08 and ’09 - shortly after losing his speaking voice - showed me that great film writing wasn’t in a separate category from great writing, and that an essay about Synecdoche, New York could be as profound as a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
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Obvious Child
It’s a great time to be a Jenny Slate fan. Those of us who know Saturday Night Live made a mistake when they fired the comedian after one season for dropping an F bomb (despite keeping on mediocre talents like Nasim Pedrad and Vanessa Bayer) have been feeling somewhat vindicated. Her hilarious guest spots on Kroll Show and Girls have shown that she’s a diverse comedic talent, as have her wildly popular Marcel the Shell with Shoes On videos. Obvious Child has confirmed, without a doubt, Slate is a major player on the rise.
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Let’s talk about design
Urban planning and design are an essential part of how a city defines itself. They’re also issues that have arguably been given short shrift in Winnipeg.
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Art beyond the perimeter
The metropolitan nature of the art establishment has always made it difficult for artists outside major cities to showcase their work.
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This Is Why We Fight
I always find it satisfying when a story can successfully create a world from whole cloth. As a kid, the worlds of Harry Potter and Star Wars were fun labyrinths I loved losing myself in.
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The Trip to Italy
At one point during The Trip to Italy, Rob Brydon (playing himself) impersonates Gore Vidal for his friend, Steve Coogan (also playing himself).
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Magic In the Moonlight
The familiar opening credits of a Woody Allen film, the simple black-and-white text backed by Dixieland jazz, always gives me a warm feeling.
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The Zero Theorem
Director Terry Gilliam (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) has always been hit or miss, and I mean that as a compliment.
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For No Good Reason
The creative partnership between gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson and illustrator Ralph Steadman was a rare kind of success; a matching so perfect that you almost don’t notice it, because the image so gracefully complements the text.
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Witness: The 20th Annual $100 Film Festival Commission Project
Witness falls somewhere between a shorts program and an anthology film. Commissioned for Calgary’s 20th annual $100 Film Festival and curated by the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers, it’s a collection of six short films by six different directors. Although all six films are independent of one another, they revolve around one central theme: the celebration of celluloid.
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The Storytelling Portraits of Kevin Nikkel
I’m starting to think that Winnipeg might have a culture problem. In my 10 or so years as a conscious consumer of culture in this city, I’ve seen music venues, movie theatres, stores, restaurants, and other institutions that provide Winnipeg’s life blood fall by the wayside.
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Teenage
Is everyone else sick of teenage romanticism, or is it just me? For decades, the parlance of teen films has been a deadly serious tone suggesting that everything that is happening to us right now is very important.