“The focus is to show great movies that haven’t been seen on the big screen for a long time — kind of in the way that they are best seen,” Richard Crouse, a film critic responsible for choosing the films screening at the festival, said. “The best way to see movies is to see them in the theatre with the picture and the sound that the director wanted you to see, and be surrounded by strangers who are laughing and crying and gasping and doing whatever it is that they do.”
The festival will bring a wide-selection of movies back into cinemas, including the entire X-Men series, Blade Runner, Alien and Aliens, Kill Bill and Pan’s Labyrinth… READ THE WHOLE THIKNG HERE!
This year, St. John’s will be participating in Cineplex’s annual Great Digital Film Festival. 2015 marks the sixth year of the festival, in which certain Cineplex theatres all over Canada screen a set of films spanning a variety of genres and years. This year’s lineup, playing from January 30 to February 5, includes selections from Alien all the way to X-Men: Days of Future Past. Behind the selections are Matt DeVuono and well-known film critic Richard Crouse, who spoke with the Muse before the festival.
Award season is a busy time for Crouse. When it comes to perhaps the most popular award show, the Oscars, Crouse believed there were certain notable snubs. In terms of the best picture nominees, he felt that The Lego Movie was overlooked. Crouse also noticed an underrepresentation of female directors… READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
Like most movie critics, Richard Crouse has strong and fairly predictable views of how to best watch films.
“The best way to see a movie is in a big dark room surrounded by strangers, watching it as big and loud as possible, they way that the director intended you to see it and hear it,” says Crouse, in an interview from Toronto. “I love sitting in a crowd of strangers, hearing them laugh or hearing them scream at something that scares them. Whatever the reaction might be, I really like being part of the community of all that.”‘
Which is a guiding principle for Cineplex’s Great Digital Film Fest, which will start on Friday at Scotiabank Theatre Chinook.
Crouse, an author and film critic who appears on CTV’s Canada AM and CP24, co-programmed the sixth annual festival with a focus on films that beg to be seen on a giant screen… READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
THUNDER BAY — Movies are meant to be seen on the big screen.
“For me the best way to see a movie is to see it on the big screen surrounded by strangers so you can listen as they laugh all at the same time or as they gasp in horror or whatever reaction they have,” said film expert Richard Crouse.
Crouse, who is Canada AM’s regular film critic, is participating in Cineplex’s sixth annual Great Digital Film Festival from Jan. 30 to Feb. 5 by interacting with fans on Twitter, answering questions and engaging in conversation on the classic and fan-favourite films chosen for this year’s lineup.
Thunder Bay’s SilverCity is one of the theatres that will be hosting the festival.
As a reviewer, Crouse has every closet and cupboard in his house filled with DVDs and Blu-rays, but he finds he doesn’t watch them that often.
“Given the choice, I’d always rather see something on the big screen,” he said, adding this festival is a way for him to see some of these films the way they were meant to be seen…” READ THE WHOLE THING HERE!
Front Row Centre Events presents the Great Digital Film Festival for one week only, January 30 – February 5, 2015. Showcasing favourites in digital on the big screen. For select screenings Richard introduces the films on the big screen (that’s Richard shooting the intros at left) and you don’t want to miss the exclusive chat with Guillermo Del Toro on “Pan’s Labyrinth.”
The Great Digital Film Festival 2015 will take place on January 30 – February 5, 2015. Learn more HERE!
Science fiction author Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are a trimmed down version of The Ten Commandments for androids. Simple, direct and to the point, Asimov declared, “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”
Asimov’s rules have inspired short stories, video games, music and cartoons. Roland Charles Wagner’s short story gave them an erotic spin in Three Laws of Robotic Sexuality, while the game Portal 2 sees all military androids sharing one copy of the laws of robotics.
And in the Mega Man series by Archie Comics, automatons are almost defeated by an anti-robotic terrorist group because they must abide by the three laws.
This weekend, Baymax, the lovable inflatable robot at the heart of Big Hero Six, abides by the laws. “Hello,” he says. “I am Baymax, your personal health-care companion.”
The roly-poly inflatable bot can almost instantly diagnose and treat a variety of diseases but even when he is transformed into a crime-fighting warrior, he still plays by the rules.
Asimov’s stories have been turned into films like I, Robot and Bicentennial Man, where the robots follow the dictums. But not all movies stay true to the rules.
In Alien, the Hyperdyne Systems 120-A/2 cyborg character Bishop (Ian Holm) says, “It is impossible for me to harm, or, by omission of action, allow to be harmed, a human being,” but later tries to kill Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) by choking her with a rolled up porno magazine.
The 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still has both good and evil robots. When alien android Klaatu’s message of friendship to earthlings is met with a bullet from a sniper, his eight-foot metal robotic assistant Gort lets loose with a disintegration death ray.
Finally, worse than Blade Runner’s killer android Roy (Rutger Hauer) or the robot gunslinger from Westworld, is Maximilian, the silent-but-deadly android from The Black Hole.
Not only does he wordlessly do the bidding of the evil Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), the blood-red bot later merges with his human creator to lord over the fire and brimstone of hell. Lawgiver Asimov surely would not approve.
Why I am left nursing a nasty Hangover after drinking in too many movie sequels?
There is a great scene in Ken Russell’s 1971 forgotten masterpiece The Devils. Oliver Reed as the whiskey priest Father Grandier has been tortured by a church sanctioned witch hunter. His legs crushed, his tongue pierced, he refuses to confess to heresy. His tormentor leans in one last time to question the priest’s commitment to his faith.
“Do you love the church?”
After a long pause the broken and battered holy man says, “Not today.”
I bring this up because I have just read that 2011, with a sum total of 27 movie sequels scheduled to hit theatres, is the biggest year yet for sequels and I feel like my cinematic church has been defiled.
This weekend alone offers up two part twos, the imaginatively titled The Hangover Part Two and Kung Fu Panda 2.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with movie sequels. Arguably The Godfather 2 outstrips the original, and The Bride of Frankenstein is unquestionably a better movie than its predecessor. So are Aliens, Toy Story 2 and Dawn of the Dead. It’s possible to make sequels that improve on the source, so why doesn’t Hollywood do it more often?
Because they don’t have to, that’s why. Audiences get the movies they deserve.
Need proof. Look no further than last week’s box office. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which I called a “monstrosity” in this space just seven days ago, soldiered on despite my scathing review to gross $90 million domestically, $260.4 million world wide.
Hollywood wouldn’t spend the time or effort to make these photocopy quality sequels if we didn’t line up to see them, so the next time you’re wondering why you haven’t had a truly great time at the movies recently, think back to the amount of movies you saw with a 2, 3 or 4 in the title and hang your head in shame.
I love going to the movies, sitting with strangers and getting wrapped up in the images flying through the air, but when I leave the theatre after watching—or should I say, enduring—PotC: On Stranger Tides and its ilk, I feel like Grandier. I love the movies, but catch me on the right day, ask me the question, and my answer would be, “Not today.”
I get paid to watch these things, what’s your excuse?
This is turning into a banner year for family friendly aliens. Recently, Reese Witherspoon and a team of misfit monsters successfully saved our planet from a gang of G-rated extraterrestrials in Monsters vs Aliens and in Race to Witch Mountain a cab driver learned that not all space invaders are “little green people with antennas.”
Later this year the cute and cuddly animated aliens of Planet 51 will be invaded by an astronaut from Earth and in this weekend’s Aliens in the Attic a group of kids protects their vacation home from creatures from outer space.
E.T.s in kids’ entertainment are nothing new. The futuristic animated utopia of the Jetsons, featuring aliens galore, originally ran on Saturday morning television in the early ’60s, but has since been spun off into comics, games, a short-lived 1980s TV series, television movies and a 1990 feature film imaginatively called Jetsons: The Movie.
Around the same time The Jetsons were on the small screen, a movie The Monster Times called “the worst science fiction flick ever, bar none” was entering theatres. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, released in 1964, is a no-budget wonder which ping-pongs from so-bad-it’s-good right back to bad again. Cinematically it may be the biggest Christmas turkey ever, but its crazy story, about Martians kidnapping Santa so their little green kids can get some presents just like human children, is a guilty pleasure.
The ’70s and ’80s were a particularly fertile time for kiddie “take me to your leader” movies. Of course there were the original three Star Wars movies, E.T. (and the shameless E.T. rip-off Mac and Me) but looking past Lucas and Spielberg reveals other, not as well-known alien movies for the rugrats.
Invaders from Mars, from Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper, sees a teenage hero (actress Karen Black’s real life son Hunter Carson) enlist the help of a school nurse (played by his mother) and the Marines to prevent aliens from assuming human form and taking over his hometown.
Finally, also worth a look is Explorers, a 1985 kid’s flick starring Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix as BFFs whose dream of intergalactic travel comes true when they build a homemade spaceship, complete with a Tilt-a-Whirl cockpit. It was the feature film debut for both Hawke and Phoenix and while it isn’t groundbreaking sci-fi, it’s a fun film for the whole family.
