Monthly Archives: September, 2011

Life as a filmmaker might have became a hell of a lot easier for Denis Côté especially when the French-Canadian auteur broke into a more "user-friendly" cinema with his Locarno winning Curling (Best Director). With more "flexibility", his 6th film titled Vic et Flo ont vu un ours (English translation Vic and Flo Saw a Bear) is set to go into production for next summer (means we shouldn't be seeing the final product until 2013) and he'll get to employ some bigger name talent.

"Indeed, musicals incorporate a narrative skeleton to window-dress their songs & dance; here, there is no such thing. It's a complete distillation of the genre - packing in the euphoria, abandoning the obligatory connective tissue. In that sense, Pina is cinema bliss. If only it didn't feel like Bausch's work could been replaced by Master Choreographer X, this might have been a winner."

Star Crossed Lovers and Alien Squatters

So you think you can dance in three dimensions?

Breaking out around the time where NYFF is on its last legs, Montreal's Festival du nouveau cinéma (October 12 to 23) kicks in with about four times the size in volume, and obviously more of an eclectic range. This year is the festival's big 40 - and for the occasion they've commissioned some of the names who've been a part of the festival to each contribute a short film in the context of what is being called the "Cartes Blanches" series. Denis Côté, Deco Dawson, Sophie Deraspe, Rodrigue Jean, Zacharias Kunuk, Marie Losier, Catherine Martin, Bruce McDonald, Théodore Ushev and Denis Villeneuve will each submit a four minute short.