In a small village where nothing has changed in the last few decades, a film crew arrives to shoot a historical drama. So, along with actors, producers, makeup artists and all the rest from the crew, a lot of hustle and bustle rushes into the sleepy village. It turns into a historical battle field itself. Everybody gets involved in the action - the young and the old alike get dressed into period costumes and armed with fake swords, suffer deadly wounds. The script also features an episode of ritualistic sacrifice and the offering is to be the village farmers' pride, a bull called Julius Caesar. The armies of defenders and enemies of the ritualistic animal clash at such an epic scale that it does feel like a massacre took place. As they say, blind Saturday is upon us and people do lose their minds...
When the world lost Chadwick Boseman on August 28, 2020, we all saw the impact of representation in film. Boseman was not only a Black superhero leading a Black cast in one of the most successful films in history; but his successes paved the way for more, long-overdue diversity in Hollywood.
'Midnight at the Paradise' premieres tomorrow at Toronto's Paradise Theatre! I had the pleasure to sit down with Vanessa Matsui to discuss the making of this film.
Shortly after season two of Fleabag dropped on Amazon Prime in 2019, Barack Obama put it on his list as one of his favorite television series of the year.
Netflix’s new comedy drama, Don’t Say Good Luck, is a heartwarming tearjerker as well as a love letter to the transformative power of being a theater kid. Directed by Julia Hart, Don’t Say Good Luck follows Sophie (Sunny Sandler), a theater kid who finally gets the lead role in her school’s production of Waitress - just as she finds out her mom Elizabeth (Melanie Lynskey) is dying of cancer. While the singing is by no means spectacular and Sandler’s acting is stiff, the film is grounded in the moving performance of Lynskey as a mother who wants nothing more than for her daughter to achieve her dreams, even if she can’t be there to see them.
SPOILERS AHEAD. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song distinguished itself from Hollywood films of its time by introducing New Wave cinema storytelling methods into Black cinema.
As one of the women said in the film, friendship in your teens is “as important as any lover” and it’s clear they lived that philosophy throughout their early adult lives as well.
