Posts Tagged ‘Frances McDormand’

Cineplex’s Great Digital Film Festival gives films a second chance on the big screen

feat-bladerunnerBy Eric Volmers – Calgary Herald

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!

Great Digital Film Festival brings fan-favourite flicks back to the big screen

367174_71562029-mBy Jodi Lundmark, tbnewswatch.com

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!

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY: 2 ½ STARS

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day has a lot going for it. An appealing cast headed by Oscar winner Frances McDormand and nominee Amy Adams. Beautiful sets, costumes and an unerring eye for the beauty of prewar WWII England. Unfortunately those virtues are wasted on a story that can’t make up its mind whether it is a farce, a romance or a poignant study of the effects of age in difficult times. As a result it is all those things, but is less than the sum of its parts.

Calling itself a “fairy tale for adults” we join Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day just as the titular character, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew (Frances McDormand), is being fired from yet another job as nanny. She’s a difficult employee who isn’t good with kids, but babysitting is the only job she can get in pre-war London. If only she could hang on to the job long enough to collect a paycheck she’d be in better shape. Destitute, she wrangles her way into the job of “social secretary” for an air headed starlet named Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). Delysia isn’t above using her feminine charms to further her career, and when a quick thinking Miss Pettigrew sorts out an inconvenient bottleneck of suitors at Delysia’s door she takes the dowdy nanny on a wild twenty four hour ride in which relationships will form and fall apart, war will start and an era comes to an end.

It’s a fanciful story, well acted—although the leading men are simply bland white knight types and little more—and steadily directed but its unwillingness to settle on a style, whether it is manic comedy or poignant character study. In the end it is neither.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day does have its charms. McDormand has corner on these kind of sad sack frumpy characters and she manages to pull the best out of Miss Pettigrew. Adams, the new Hollywood “it” girl, is all wide eyed effervescence in a performance that, thankfully, deepens as the film enters it final moments.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is an almost instantly forgettable confection—fun for a fleeting moment—but ultimately is a film whose ambitions exceeded its reach.