“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!
Giant labyrinthine puzzles are almost as old as mankind: Prehistoric mazes were built as traps for malevolent spirits, while in medieval times the labyrinth represented a path to God. But recently, the idea of people struggling through a complicated network of paths has made for some striking visuals in movies.
This weekend, The Maze Runner sets much of its action inside a gigantic maze where frightening mechanical monsters called Grievers wander, tormenting Thomas (Dylan O’Brien) as he navigates the maze to pick up clues that help him piece together memories of his past. The sci-fi story is just the latest to feature a maze as a major plot point, but just as Labyrinth’s Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) is warned, “nothing is as it seems” in these movie puzzles.
Remember Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Like Thomas in The Maze Runner, the boy wizard has to make it through a maze (in this instance to find the Triwizard Cup), but instead of fighting magical creatures, this hedge maze is magical; shape shifting to make the journey extra difficult. The 1972 horror film Tales from the Crypt contained an even more sinister maze.
Made up of five stories, the film culminated with the tale of a labyrinth told with razor-sharp wit. Set in a home for the blind, the patients get even with the institute’s cruel director by placing him in the centre of a maze of narrow corridors lined with razor blades. It’s a cutting edge story, that, according to besthorrormovies.com “rivals the ‘death traps’ of Saw and ‘tortures’ of Hostel while only showing a single small cut of the flesh.”
In The Shining, the axe-wielding father Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) chases his son Danny (Danny Lloyd) through the Overlook Hotel’s hedge maze. The quick-thinking boy escapes by retracing his steps, confusing his maniacal dad. The documentary Room 237 offers up a number of interpretations of what the maze and Danny’s escape represents. One theory suggests it reflects Greek hero Theseus’ slaying of the Minotaur and escape from the labyrinth, while another speculates it’s a metaphor for conquering repression. Whatever the subtext, it remains one of director Stanley Kubrick’s most tense scenes.
And finally, Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Dracula sees Lucy (Sadie Frost) sleepwalking through a garden maze, chased by Dracula (Gary Oldman) in wolfman form while Pan’s Labyrinth features a maze as a place of safety for Ofelia (Ivana Baquero) to evade her attacker.
Have a curious and curiouser Christmas with a copy of “Cabinet of Curiosities,” a new book from director Guillermo Del Toro.
From amazon.ca: Over the last two decades, writer-director Guillermo del Toro has mapped out a territory in the popular imagination that is uniquely his own, astonishing audiences with Cronos,Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, and a host of other films and creative endeavors. Now, for the first time, del Toro reveals the inspirations behind his signature artistic motifs, sharing the contents of his personal notebooks, collections, and other obsessions. The result is a startling, intimate glimpse into the life and mind of one of the world’s most creative visionaries. Complete with running commentary, interview text, and annotations that contextualize the ample visual material, this deluxe compendium is every bit as inspired as del Toro is himself.
Contains a foreword by James Cameron, an afterword by Tom Cruise, and contributions from other luminaries, including Neil Gaiman and John Landis, among others.
We generally think of fairy tales as the domain of young people—sweet fables to send the kids off to sleep, or feed their imaginations during their waking hours. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, however, has a more old school approach. His most recent film harkens back to the pre-politically correct days when Grimm’s fairy tales emphasized the “grim” part. In Pan’s Labyrinth he skilfully weaves a dark adult fairy tale set against the backdrop of the Second World War, creating a fairy tale that will likely keep the kids up at night, terrified rather than soothed.
Del Toro uses parallel worlds to tell the tale. In the mortal world it is 1944 Spain just after Franco’s fascists have taken over the country. In this cold, cruel and violent place a young girl, the soon-to-be-stepdaughter of a sadistic fascist general, escapes into a fantastic world populated by a pasty white creature known as The Pale Man and a half-man, half-goat Pan. The horned creature tells her she is a lost princess, and the only way to return to her underground kingdom is by completing three difficult tasks. Her harsh fantasy becomes a harsh reality when she is forced to endure the dire truths of her dual worlds.
The word masterpiece is thrown around rather casually these days, but in this case I think it applies. Pan’s Labyrinth is a beautifully realized film that vividly paints both worlds using broad strokes of beauty and dread. Del Toro’s vision of fascist Spain is uncompromising. Violence lurks around every corner and death can come in cruel and unexpected ways. When young Ofelia disappears down the rabbit hole she doesn’t find a world of comfort, but a place fraught with danger, almost as perilous as the “real” world she is running from. Del Toro effortlessly intertwines these realities, creating one whole that is emotionally complex and as satisfying as the age-old fairy tales that inspired it.
The fantastic new two disc DVD release includes a prologue and commentary track from del Toro, featurettes about the making of the film, storyboards, and interviews with the cast and crew.
When I ask Guillermo Del Toro why his films often feature kids as main characters his answer is upfront, open and a little surprising.
“I had a horrible childhood, emotionally,” says the director of The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. “I was not a child who was beaten or locked in a closet, but I really have a very intense relationship with the horror of Catholic guilt and the dogma. My grandmother was like Piper Laurie in Carrie. I was like a chubby version of Carrie. It was very difficult for me to get over that.
“I jokingly say I spent 40 years trying to recuperate from the first eight, but to a degree it is true. I really suffered intensely in the first 10 years of my life. I would cry at the concept of burning in hell, or the concept of purgatory and original sin.
Mexican Catholicism is very, very brutal and very, very gory. That all affected me.”
Mama, his latest producorial effort, is a spooky tale of two abandoned girls raised by a supernatural nanny. Del Toro came to the story after seeing a three-minute short film by director Andrés Muschietti.
“The short is brilliant,” he says. “Atmospheric and creepy. You can see a storytelling will. You can see a voice. There is a filmmaker in that short.
“Very often you see shorts that are glossy but have very little to say. Or they’re really intense and interesting but they are badly done. But this short had the perfect balance of form, function and story.”
Muschietti is just the latest director to be discovered and mentored by Del Toro, who himself was given a helping hand by people like James Cameron.
“I’ve been very, very blessed by finding good people who believed in me at the right time. Obviously I try and pay it forward. Right now I’m 48-years-old and have been doing this for 30-something years, 20 directing. I’ve been able to produce close to 20 movies between Mexico and America and Spain and I would say in 99 per cent of the cases it has been really, really beautiful. A couple of cases it has been hard or the movie has been disappointing but Mama is one of the good ones I am really proud of.”
