With The National Ballet of Canada since 1998 and promoted to Principal in 2005, Heather Ogden is one of Toronto’s most beloved performers and among the brightest stars in Canadian Ballet (and, as a guest artist, International Ballet). With lead roles in everything from contemporary works to The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, Heather is, in […]
Here’s the thing, I like Pitch Perfect. I’ve seen it twice now and enjoyed it both times, because it’s exactly the movie I’m supposed to like. I mean, university a capella? Hilarious, and also ripe for all sorts of character fun and honest-to-god stories about competition and friendship and belonging (there are people whose job […]
Okay people, I’m tired of this. It was cute for awhile, the making musicals out of hit movies thing, but it’s gotten out of hand. If you’re going to do a Really good job (as I’m told was done with Once), fine, go ahead. If you’re trying to improve a dud/somewhat obscure movie (like Newsies […]
Before the release of Ben Affleck’s surefire hit Argo, the film garnered a ton of positive press from movie people and really pissed-off chatter from, specifically, grumpy Canadians. The film is a topical period piece in the same way that Charlie Wilson’s War used a story from the 1980s to say something current about the […]
On Dundas East, in Regent Park, there is a fantastic new Toronto theatre. The Aki Studio Theatre in the beautiful Daniels Spectrum community centre is a truly great space: a big convertible black box that feels at once expansive and intimate- the perfect place to house Keith Barker’s new play that touches on how one […]
Grey’s Anatomy‘s 9th season so far has been, um, let’s go with evocative. Like earlier seasons, the 9th has struggled with some melodrama, quite a few jokes that didn’t land, and a general lack of subtlety (this isn’t Parenthood, people, I don’t know what else you were expecting). But damn if there aren’t two things […]
Here’s the analogy I like more than I should: For a Good Time, Call… has great bones, terrible muscle, and combination skin. The bones of the movie- its premise and its characters, the things that make it stand up and exist at all- are fantastic. The idea- a pair of female roommates start a […]
In its final season, Weeds got back to basics in a lot of ways. It’s been 8 very long years with the Botwins but ultimately it’s been 8 pretty good ones. At the end of season three, when Agrestic burned to the ground, the series lost its satirical core (and many of its most engaging […]