For the past two years, I’ve been ranking every film I see- just the new releases, from January 1st to December 31st. The rankings are subjective, based entirely on how much I enjoyed and/or connected with or appreciated the film rather than on some sort of objective artistic criteria. Basically, this is a list of […]

 

Chris Abraham knows how to assemble a cast. The Seagull- his latest production for Crow’s Theatre, currently playing at the Berkeley- sports the director’s most perfectly constructed ensemble yet with some of Canada’s greatest actors each playing their strongest notes with a key lack of background noise to distract from Chekhov’s incisive story about art and […]

 

Read Thea’s Reviews and Lorenzo’s Reviews of the NSTF. Graham Clark Reads the Phonebook I loved comedian Graham Clark’s solo show at last summer’s Fringe Festival. So did everyone else, including Fringe head honcho Lucy Eveleigh. So Lucy invited him back for the Next Stage Festival. This, in theory, makes sense (especially considering they have […]

 

For the past two years, I’ve been ranking every film I see- just the new releases, from January 1st to December 31st. The rankings are subjective, based entirely on how much I enjoyed and/or connected with or appreciated the film rather than on some sort of objective artistic criteria. Basically, this is a list of […]

 

I started this last year, keeping a list of every movie I see all year (just the new releases) in order to form a definitive set of personal rankings come the following January. My 2014 list started on February 9th when I saw That Awkward Moment starring Zac Efron, Miles Teller and Michael B Jordan […]

There are a few obvious trends in the stories that dominated (and continue to dominate as the awards roll in) the 2014 cinematic season. Sociopaths had a big year (Gone Girl, Nightcrawler), as did women who walked really far (Tracks, Wild) and people who found healing through music (Rudderless, Begin Again, Frank). There was also a […]

 

What an amazing year in TV! Well, not real TV in the classic sense (though a few network sitcoms really brought it; also, Hannibal) but certainly limited series and online bingeables and re-generating anthologies and, oddly, reality competition shows- those things had an amazing year. We’re choosing not to dwell on how many of our […]

This was a strange year at the movies, full of psychopaths and scientists, musicians and war heroes (I swear there was a week when I saw 3 WWII films in a row). The year was peppered with the bittersweet final films made by late legends but it also marked the arrival of several bold, new […]