Director Tim Burton’s previous voyages to the land of odd (such as Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish, and Ed Wood), have led audiences to expect his films to be completely off-kilter. However, while Corpse Bride obviously skews towards the ghoulish, that is all that really separates it from your average animated romance. There are splashy musical…
Author: alving4
The Pleasures of Cinema: Toronto International Film Festival 2005
Over the last few years, the Toronto International Film Festival has become a glamourous celebrity-filled event as Hollywood comes to our fair city to promote its latest films. I’ve only been attending for a couple of years, but for me it’s still more about seeing some interesting movies that might not make it to the…
TV Roundup: Sept. 17, 2005
Supernatural may be the show that finally fills the X-Files’s old spot as the show that I watch with the lights out. It’s definitely scary and the first episode had a shocker of an ending. Now that the background has been established, I suspect these creep-hunting brothers will start meeting their monsters-of-the-week. Threshold was the…
TV Roundup: Sept. 11, 2005
This was the first week of the new fall season, but not too many shows debuted. I had already given up on Prison Break and Rome after watching a couple episodes of each. New this week, Reunion, the drama that follows six friends for 20 years after their high school graduation, each episode covering a…
Some People Call’em Space Cowboys
An introduction to Firefly/Serenity Set in a future where humanity has left behind the “Earth-that-was” and spread out across the galaxy, the short-lived show called Firefly focused on the rag-tag crew of the Firefly-class spaceship called “Serenity”. Preferring to avoid the law, they travel among the numerous desert moons where people live a “wild west”…
Fall TV 2005: Everything New is Blah Again
Kids go back to school, leaves start to change colour, and the networks roll out their new shows—fall is an exciting time for TV geeks (or at least it should be). After last year’s success of several hot new shows, this year seems less promising. They still walk (or float or swim) among us You…
Alvin Gets His Geek On: SFX Convention 2005
When I arrived at the Metro Convention Centre on Friday afternoon for my first-ever science fiction convention, it was a bit overwhelming. There were tons of people (many in costume) and lines everywhere. I wondered to myself, “Am I as much of a sci-fi fan as these Wookie-fur-wearing, Klingon-speaking folks?” As I overheard conversations in…
Fifteen Flicks for Fall
Summer’s coming to a close. Blockbuster season (such as it was) is over. As we gear up for the battle of the Oscar contenders, there are still plenty of awesome offerings that aren’t necessarily all about going for the statuette. Here are my most anticipated films for the rest of the year. By the way,…
Capsule Movie Review: Mean Creek (2004)
“When a small town kid gets beat up by a school bully, his brother and his friends decide to teach the bully a lesson.” It sounds like the plot to an afterschool special. When the prank goes tragically awry, it starts to sounds like a coming-of-age melodrama. I think this film actually comes somewhere in…
