The Festival du Nouveau Cinema is the oldest of its kind in Montreal, celebrating its 35th birthday this October. The festival opens tomorrow with Philippe Falardeau’s Congorama and closes Oct. 26 with a spotlight on the Spanish cinema screening of Pedro Almodovar’s Volver.
Arts & Entertainment
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FILM: Cutting-edged comedy
Dear Journal, what can I say? He drove a cool car, remarks a certain 13-year-old boy by the name of Augusten Burroughs in the new movie adaptation of the memoir Running With Scissors. Having read Burroughs’ reminiscences of a homosexual boy with a 35-year-old boyfriend growing up in western Massachusetts in the late 70s, I was readily expecting golden phrases such as the former in the film’s adaptation.
FILM: A new Versailles
Audiences have been eagerly awaiting Sofia Coppola’s new film since her last offering, the critically acclaimed Lost in Translation debuted. Unexpectedly, Coppola brings us from the neon lights of the streets of Tokyo to the glittering hallways of Versailles.
FILM: Scorsese scores (finally)
All things considered, Martin Scorsese hasn’t made a decent feature film in over a decade. Gangs of New York seemed excessively brutal and utterly pointless, Bringing out the Dead sank like a stone and The Aviator, for all the accolades draped over it, hardly served its biographical purposes adequately and was a remarkably boring film.
TELEVISION: My superpowers trump your superpowers
The newest and most highly anticipated show from NBC’s fall lineup premiered Monday night. Heroes enacts everybody’s dream fantasy – to wake up in the morning and discover an amazing superpower. Along the lines of a televised X-Men, the show follows nine characters around the globe who find themselves in just that situation.
MUSIC: Rejecting the Metric system
I wish I could make it that everyone who sees the Soft Skeleton has to drink Guinness, says Emily Haines, Metric’s cool, commanding and completely sexy front woman, as she takes another swig, “but it’s okay if you’re having, like, a vodka soda. I just don’t think you’ll totally get what we’re doing, but that’s okay!” Despite the absence of Guinness anywhere in the general vicinity, last Monday night’s show at Le National Théâtre was not lost on many.
REVIEWS
Motörhead. Kiss of Death. It’s time to dust off the cowboy boots and iron cross belt buckle and cut a rug to the 19th album by the UK’s original beer-drinkers and hell-raisers. Though markedly Motörhead, as per the abundance of ammunition adorning the cover to the plodding bass and bourbon-drenched vocals of front man Lemmy Kilmister, Kiss of Death is a pretty standard speed/thrash metal offering.
POP RHETORIC: I like it on top
Montreal is renowned for doing a lot of things very well – festivals, live music, smoked meat, poutine – but sometimes the things it does badly are overlooked. Specifically, pizza. There is no great pizza in Montreal. I know pizza isn’t a Montreal specialty, like smoked meat, but one might expect at least a few places to sneak in and corner the market.
PERSPECTIVE: Clix This
There is an excellent, clever and effective commercial invading our airwaves, and it drives me freakin’ crazy. Unilever, the maker of Axe deodorant spray, has hired ex-Newlywed Nick Lachey as their flirtatious, dimpled spokesman for its new fragrance, Clix.
POP MONTREAL: Born a ramblin’ man
What does Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, a 75-year old country folk guitarist, have to do with Pop Montreal, the city’s ecstatic embrace of the “next big thing”? Perhaps the most significant asset that Elliot’s Wednesday night set at the Ukrainian Center brought to the festival was authenticity.
