March 2012
4 posts
CBC, Rabbi
So, if you are in Canada or live within broadcast range, and if you haven’t had a chance to catch my short film SORRY, RABBI at its various festival screenings, or heck, if you wanna see it again, now’s your chance! SORRY, RABBI will be playing on the CBC’s “Northern Reflections” program across the nation this Sunday, March 25 at midnight, timed to coincide with our...
WatchAnother intimate look behind the scenes of The Fruit Hunters.
WatchI spent some time this week on the set of The Fruit Hunters, a documentary by my friend Yung Chang, based on a screenplay that we wrote, adapting the book of the same name by my friend Adam Gollner. Here is a brief, important look at filmmaking “process” I shot while I was there.
February 2012
2 posts
“It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now.”
Sorry, Rabbi at the 30th Rendez-vous du cinéma... →
If you live in Montreal and haven’t seen it yet and want to see it, now’s your chance! February 23rd at 9:45pm at the Cinémathèque québécoise.
January 2012
3 posts
Bingham Ray (1954-2012)
Bingham Ray died this weekend after suffering a stroke at the Sundance Film Festival. He might not have been a household name, but Bingham was, at least to me, one of the most important and committed forces for good in the world of independent film. He founded October Pictures, effectively introduced Mike Leigh to America, was responsible for getting films by everyone from David Lynch to Pedro...
“Hartley Coleridge began life with limitless promise—’all my child might be’—and ended it universally viewed as a failure. He is remembered not for his poems or his essays, though he wrote some fine ones, but for two things and two things only: he was the son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and he was a disappointment. He has been called a misfit, a dreamer, a sinner, a castaway, a...
December 2011
3 posts
“I was perhaps twenty-three when I first ate almost enough caviar—not to mention any caviar at all that I can now remember. It was one of the best, brightest days of my whole life with my parents, and lunching in the quiet back room at the Café de la Paix was only one part of the luminous whole. My mother ate fresh foie gras, sternly forbidden to her liver, but she loved the cathedral at...
“In the beginning was the Word; so it states on the first page of one of the most important books known to us. What is meant in that book is that the Word of God is the source of all creation. But surely the same could be said, figuratively speaking, of every human action? And indeed, words can be said to be the very source of our being, and in fact the very substance of the cosmic life-form...
The best things of 2011
I used to make a list of the best and worst movies of the year every December for my old employer, and as the season gets chilly and Phil Spector plays on my stereo, and as I contemplate a year spent not being a full-time journalist/critic, I feel that old urge again. Let us then, discuss, my favourite things and experiences of 2011, and let’s not limit them to movies. This is, after all,...
October 2011
3 posts
The Falk-O-Lantern
My friend Dan Buller and I have this tradition where every year we create a Halloween pumpkin on a favourite theme. Okay, to be completely honest, Dan does most of the creating; I usually “produce” the thing. He’s an incredibly talented artist (and the star of my self-portrait) who makes the most impressive creative achievements look easy—just ask Snoop, who featured him and his...
Sic semper...
Reading about Ghadaffi today, I couldn’t help but think of Suetonius’ Nero chapter in The 12 Caesars.
XLVIII. But this furious impulse subsiding, he wished for some place of privacy, where he might collect his thoughts; and his freedman Phaon offering him his country-house, between the Salarian [626] and Nomentan [627] roads, about four miles from the city, he mounted a horse,...
September 2011
3 posts
Movies I have liked so far in 2011
Since I no longer work for a Montreal weekly, I have the luxury to list films that haven’t opened here yet; this is just a list of new films I have seen this year, either here or atfestivals elsewhere, and liked. In alphabetical order:
Attack the Block - Joe Cornish Beyond the Black Rainbow - Panos Cosmatos Book chon bang hyang (The Day He Arrives) - Hong Sang-soo (I used the Korean title...
August 2011
3 posts
World premiere
So, it’s offish: Sorry, Rabbi will be making its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. I will also be doing some other stuff there. Excited!
Bringing back the motherlode: BEYOND THE BLACK...
After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring, Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond the Black Rainbow is making the “genre” festival rounds—Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, others— where it’s been met with either adulation or confusion. The latter because, I think, Black Rainbow doesn’t fit comfortably in the genre mould, despite the fact that it’s indisputably informed by decades of sci-fi cinema—most...
July 2011
1 post
June 2011
8 posts
Last week I shot a short film I’d been working on for some years now (if you count writing), called Sorry, Rabbi. It was kind of a big deal for me. Here’s some pictures from the shoot.
(Standing, l-r: Adam Waito, Sean Michaels, Noah Markowicz, Etan Muskat, Douglas Hollingworth, Dan Beirne. Seated, l-r: Jacob Tierney, Howard Bilerman.) Photo by Dan Haber.
Co-star Jessica Paré and...
Here is a nice article, about me. →
“Some years ago — it might have been in 1984 — I told a friend of my growing delight in Jules Verne, and how I’d so much like to own one of his books in its original format. Verne’s novels were first published in the middle of the century before the one before this one. The series was called Voyages Extraordinaires. The publisher and editor was Verne’s dear friend Pierre-Jules Hetzel. The...
lerevue asked: I just saw the trailer for Peppers...I live in Chicago...must see this, how can I?
Hey, so… Peepers, the Montreal-set comedy about the lives of Peeping Toms I co-wrote and co-produced and acted in and spent five years of my life on and etc etc, “leads the 12th annual Canadian Comedy Awards with five nominations!”
One of the awards we’re nommed for, Best Film, is voted on by the public. So if you feel like it, you can register to vote here! I’d be...
May 2011
5 posts
eBooks should never be more expensive than paper...
My brother gave me a Kindle as a gift last year. I love it; I’m a big reader and it’s especially useful when I travel (I used to pack pounds of books whenever I went away for over a week). And theoretically, I like the idea of buying a book online and having it in my hands instantly. That’s a pleasant convenience. But I’m not willing to pay a premium for it, and...
I think Tumblr’s reply/reblog/ask/etc features would work a lot better if I could ever figure out who said what and who was replying to whom. Entries from other blogs that appear on my Dashboard that read “so-and-so replied to your post:” (really, my post?) make no sense at all.
“The striking aphorism requires a stricken aphorist.”
– Alfred Polgar
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
5 posts
Facebook photos are never private
I don’t really write about tech stuff here, but this is such a glaringly obvious privacy hole in Facebook and it’s been around for months, if not years, without being addressed—or even really noticed.
Basically, any photo on Facebook, seemingly regardless of privacy settings, can be direct-linked to and viewed by anyone, Facebook account or not, as long as somebody with access to the...
“In 1993, members of the International Masculine Dude Brotherhood began collating...”
Travels in Siberia
I really enjoyed Ian Frazier’s series of articles on traveling through Siberia he wrote in the last couple of years for The New Yorker (only the abstracts seem to be online, but they’re worth looking for). I had hoped that the scope of the project meant there was a book in the works, and I was really happy to see that hope fulfilled when I noticed it on the racks at City Lights...
One of the best things I heard this year, or indeed, in a long time, was Marc Maron’s interview with comedian Mike DeStefano, who has apparently just died of a heart attack. I don’t really have anything personally to add except to say that the interview, which you can listen to here, was deeply moving, deeply human, concerned life and death and now feels very, very poignant. You should...
January 2011
7 posts
Hello, I must be going
In August of last year, for reasons that were not obvious to me at the time, I wrote two essays about writing for a living and posted them to this blog. The first, “Writing about restaurants,” was about food writing and the second, “Writing about movies,” a couple weeks later, was about my life as a film critic. After this week, I won’t be doing either of those things...
I changed the name of this here blog. Sign of some other big changes to come—life changes and stuff. More soon.
Never said about restaurant websites. Bitterly,... →
“Some of the signs and portents were too painful to acknowledge. One night at...”
– Patti Smith, Just Kids
December 2010
13 posts
My top 10 and bottom 5 movies of the year, as well... →