Though it may not be quite as contradictory to my Canadian self-identification as my dislike of maple syrup, I’ve never felt particularly drawn or sympathetic to the character of Wolverine. I’ll grant he’s somewhat endearing when portrayed in films by that charming Aussie song-and-dance man – and a less mystifying object of admiration than Deadpool […]
Three years into this year-end tradition and the list just keeps getting longer. Last year’s rankings of every new release movie I saw topped out at 110 but this year I hit 140. Of course, no matter how many films I saw, I have yet to recapture the magic that was the 2012 film season and […]
It wasn’t easy, with the TV landscape getting more and more crowded. 2015 had a lot of great TV. A lot of shows had a lot of good episodes. Here are my picks for favorite shows of 2015. The shows that, looking back, I looked forward to watching week after week (or binged the fastest). […]
I am pleasantly surprised by the recent renaissance of interest in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. This summer I attended a delightful all-female production staged by Maiden Phoenix Theatre Company in a Somerville park, free for all to attend. This year Jeanette Winterson released her novel version of the play, The Gap of Time, published by […]
Spoiler Alert: Puffs, Or: Seven Increasingly Eventful Years at a Certain School of Magic and Magic is a parody of Harry Potter. If you have avoided learning the major plot details of Harry Potter, congratulations, you are like a unicorn who made it to December 25 without hearing any Christmas music! Be aware that this […]
2015 was an incredible year of reading for me. I read as many books as I could get through and was fortunate enough to meet several of my writing idols—David Mitchell (for the second time), Junot Díaz, Elizabeth Gilbert, and John Hodgman. As December’s calendar pages fly off the wall all too readily, I’d like […]
It’s unfortunate that so few magicians receive the funding or programming support to perform regularly in Toronto. Rather than a rich landscape of illusionists within which, like in any performance genre, there are some great and some not-so-great performers, all we really have on this theatrical level is David Ben. In a technical sense, that’s […]
As is the case with many who count the 2003 film Elf, as one of the best Christmas films out there and a staple of the holiday season, its musical iteration has been anticipated by many in the run-up to its recent opening at the Dominion Theatre. Such excitement has manifested itself in not just […]