Soldier of Cinema

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

DREDD 3D Robert A. Mitchell Interviews Karl Urban & Olivia Thirlby

The 2012 Toronto International Film Festival would mark my fifth year as a blogger for the Midnight Madness programme. Here are the first of my red carpet interviews.

Monday, August 20, 2012

In Memoriam Tony Scott

Upon learning of the tragic passing of Tony Scott I decided as a way of tribute to collect all of the trailers for the feature films he directed.

Tony Scott

1944 - 2012

Sunday, August 19, 2012

I am pleased to announce that I will be returning to the Midnight Madness program of The Toronto International. I'll be back on the red carpet talking to many creative and talented folks who worked hard to bring their films to life. This will be my eleventh year attending the festival and sixth year as a Midnight Madness blogger and I felt it would be cool to put together some of my favorite moments over the years at TIFF.

One of my favorite red carpets was in 2010 for the World Premiere of John Carpenter's The Ward. The great director was unable to attend but in talking to the cast the resulting video became a tribute to one of the great genre film makers.

One of my all time cherished memories of Midnight Madness was in 2009 writing an inscription for an award presented to George A. Romero celebrating his recent Canadian citizenship and subsequently meeting him after the ceremony.

The inscription on the C.N. Tower being clutched by a zombie hand reads as such, "In recognition of the Canadian citzenship of George A. Romero, his status as a Torontonian and his efforts to bridge the understanding between the living and undead through the cinematic arts September 12, 2009." It still amazes me that words I wrote reside in the home of Mr. Romero.

Here is the video we shot of the ceremony in Yonge and Dundas square in downtown Toronto.

One of the things that make the Midnight Madness programme so special is watching the emergence of amazing talent emerge upon the world stage. There have been many, the amazing screening of Ong-Bak in 2003 immediatley comes to mind. As I have said before not many can lay claim to seeing the first screen appereance of Bruce Lee but myself and my fellow film goers sitting in the long gone but not forgotten UpTown cinema at Yonge and Bloor saw the emergence of Tony Jaa. Last year Midnight Madness attendees witnessed the makers of one of the best action films in a decade arrive on the scene of world cinema. Not many knew the names of Gareth Evans, Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim but I am sure many people will know who these very talented folks are ten years from now. Here is my video from the 2011 World Premiere of The Raid.

The 2012 edition of the Midnight Madness program at The Toronto International Film Festival is about to heat up. Here is a link to the ten films that will be rocking the Ryerson theater in September. LINK. There will be many more stories, great memories and cinematic thrills.

Here is a link to the home of the old Midnight Blog with my posts. LINK.

Here is the link to the current Midnight Madness at TIFF Blog which will be heating up for the 2012 program. LINK

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Long Live the New Flesh. .

I am extremely happy to announce that an interview I conducted with David Cronenberg a couple of years ago at The Festival of Fear in Toronto will be on the special features of the Koch Media reissue of Cronenberg's seminal masterpiece Videodrome. Here is a link to a website to order the DVD/Blu-ray. Link. One of many cool things about this German reissue is the fact that they will be releasing the director's cut with four more minutes of footage as well as the original theatrical version. Plus there are a slew of special features with the film.

Here I am with David Cronenberg August 29th, 2010.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Goodbye Cumberland Cinema

Last night the Cumberland Cinema located in Yorkville in Toronto went dark. One of the first memories that comes mind was standing in line there during the Toronto International Film Festival and buying a copy of the documentary Loose Change of some dude -- which I think is the perfect way to buy a conspiracy documentary, off of some guy hocking blank DVDs with the title Loose Change written on the silver disc with a sharpie -- and than buying Sushi off the cart the Cumberland would wheel outside during TIFF. There was also that great walk down the alleyway from Bloor street and the movie posters hanging above as you walked towards the theater. Here are some photos I took of the theater in the Summer of 2008.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Double Exposure (1983) A Classic Portrait In Terror!

I love trashy cinema. Films that played at some run down second run theater for a night or maybe a week, a movie whose last stop on the circuit was a drive-in in Indiana. Movies that you cannot find a poster for while searching through images, a cast that may not have any imdb credits. Films with titles that are often preceded by aka.

We live in a world where all information is readily available everywhere and anywhere, we are always connected or so we believe. Recently I drove through the Great Smoky Mountains in East Tennessee and was thrilled to look at my cellular phone and see no signal. It is rare I find myself not connected to the web and that rare feeling of not being connected extends to these "trashy", "drive-in" or the now post Tarantino, Rodriguez everything that was low budget, cheesy, or any kind of genre movie now becomes a "grindhouse" film. Movies that no respectable connoisseur of cinema would ever embrace, the kind of movies that drift through bargain bin to bargain bin, one small film company to another distribution company, movies that wind up in a pawn shop or a thrift store with several price tags on the box. Which brings me to Lexington, Kentucky.

I was recently in a Half-Priced books in Lexington and came across the Mill Creek Entertainment 32 Drive-In Cult Classic Movie Collection for a price that would average around fifty cents per film. A small price to pay for cinematic lost treasure. As I watched the first film according to the back of the DVD box was entitled Blue Monday (1972) -- which once I put the DVD in -- I learned that the film was actually called Blue Money about a pornographer who is just trying to get by in a cruel business, it struck me that I should write a few things about these films. Why not? I'm not adverse to write about movies. It's just in this Internet information overload age who really gives a fuck what I write about films.

So here it begins, a few thoughts about a film called Double Exposure (1983) -- at least according to the good folks at Mill Creek Entertainment. Also according to those magical all seeing and all knowing gurus at imdb this film fuses together not one, not two but four genres. Comedy, Crime, Drama and Horror. I dimmed the lights and poured a glass of O.J. and prepared for the journey that lie ahead. It begins with a credit sequence that is so outstandingly annoying, so much so that I thought that perhaps the orange juice I was drinking was spiked with some hallucinogenic drug and that the trails I were seeing were not in fact the movie but were my own vision. For a film about a photographer and images I thought this was brilliant. Fuck up the audience early and keep those fuckers unbalanced.

When the Director of Photography credit came across the screen with a shot by the camera operator unable to keep up with an overhead shot of a sports car I knew this film had already endeared itself to me. The film centers around a photographer Adrian Wilde played by Michael Callan who has problems. So much so that when we meet Adrian he is on the couch in his shrink's office. "Every time I'm turned on and the chicks aren't and when they're turned on, I freeze. Every time I think I'm getting better I slide back." and that's just artistically, what about the dreams? "What dreams? The bizarre, crazy dreams."

Adrian may indeed have problems but picking up chicks ain't one of them. He is one smooth-talker... the title may be Double Exposure but the dialogue is pure double-entendre. Watching this film I thought to myself that watching a person go absolutely bat-shit crazy to the point that they may indeed be a serial killer is by a far a great cinematic device. Which makes me pose the query, "What makes good cinema?" Well according to Bill Yates an associate professor at Saint Joseph's college in Maine good cinema can be thought of as such, "If you can engage a person ... then it's great film." Which brings me back to Adrian our hapless photographer suffering from dreams that may or not be real and this movie Double Exposure, which is a compelling, engaging narrative and for my money becomes pure cinema.

As the film unfolds and the ominous music swells our photographer's grasp on sanity and reality begins to slip. What follows is a pretty decent thriller. I really enjoy films that play with the reality of the movie and folds into itself like an accordion. Director William Byron Hillman and Editor Lawrence Bridges do an admirable job playing with the dream and reality of the narrative.

Ultimately Double Exposure is a low rent Hitchockian, Depalma thriller that falls way short of the mark, but of course it falls short of the mark. Hell that's why I watched it in the first place. But where Exposure fails it also succeeds is a film with just enough sleaze, violence and nudity to ensure that in the early eighties it would be seen in a theater, than later the burgeoning home video market and eventually wind up on late night television. If the user ratings on all unknowing one-eyed seer of imdb garner any insight into the matter, you will either love this movie or hate it.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

ActionFest 2012 A Collection Still Photographs

I have recently returned from Asheville, NC and the third annual ActionFest. Here are some of my still shots culled from my footage of various panels and Q&As.