“So you want to be a director?” These words were magic to the ears of aspiring filmmaker Angie Lawrence, especially coming from Aaron Sorkin, the Oscar-winning writer/producer famous for The West Wing, The Social Network and A Few Good Men. Sorkin and crew were on location in November 2016 at the Lawrence home on Pine […]
I confess. I’m hooked on true crime mysteries like Making a Murderer, The Jinx, The Menendez Murders, The People v. O.J. Simpson (spoiler alert… he did it) and now Alias Grace, the CBC/Netflix mini-series adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1996 historical fiction novel. This has been Atwood’s year. The Handmaid’s Tale won eight Emmys, including Outstanding […]
November is a month to remember the courage and sacrifice of our war veterans. Many soldiers did not return home. Others survived, but never fully recovered from the horrors of war. This is the story of one unsung hero, Phil Marchildon, a baseball pitching star, Royal Canadian Air Force officer and prisoner of war who […]
“Out of the blending of human and animal stories comes the theme that I hope is inherent in all my books: that man is an inescapable part of all nature, that its welfare is his welfare, that to survive, he cannot continue acting and regarding himself as a spectator looking on from somewhere else.” – […]
Some strange things landed in Toronto last year: creepy clowns, zombies, lizard creatures from beneath the sea. Don’t worry, it’s all fantasy from the dark imaginations of writers like Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro. Movies and television shows with supernatural themes have become very popular these days and Toronto is front and centre in […]
Beachers love a parade. What a parade it was on August 22, 1885 when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show wound its way from the city out to the Woodbine racetrack near the marshes of Ashbridge’s Bay. According to the Toronto Globe, “vast crowds lined the streets” and a great audience attended the three days of […]
Have you ever felt like an outsider? At some point in our lives many of us just don’t seem to “fit in”. Outrageous (1977) is a Toronto indie film with a small budget and a big heart. It tells the story of two outsiders who come together to try and make their way in a […]
Imagine you arrive at your child’s daycare one morning and find armed guards outside the doors. A scary thought, but this really happened last September at the Church of St. Aidan’s on Silver Birch Avenue at Queen Street. Thank heaven the guns were merely props and the soldiers were only actors filming a timely adaptation […]
Rolling Stone recently called Scorsese’s The Last Waltz (1978) “the single greatest concert movie of all time” that “changed the way live music felt on screen”. Celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Band’s farewell, lead guitarist and songwriter Robbie Robertson has released his vivid memoir, Testimony, which tells the story of his musical journey from […]
What do Jodie Foster, Kevin Costner, Robert De Niro and Aaron Sorkin have in common – besides two little gold men on their mantles? They all came north to Toronto in recent months and it wasn’t for the weather or to escape “alternative facts”. It was for “work, work, work, work” (as Rihanna would say […]
