Search results for: Dan Rush

Faux Rushmore: Promising Feature Debut from Brit Richard Ayoade Plays it Safe with Coming-of-age Quirkiness

Usually a month where we tend to avoid the multiplex, the positive buzz on Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class and J.J. Abrams' Super 8 and the inclusion of Blacklist 2008 favorite Bad Teacher means we might be shifting between smaller and larger venues this June.

Both by design and by accident, The Misfits is a remarkably prescient farewell to an era. Huston’s intent was to chronicle the death rattles of the American cowboy tradition; the demise of rugged individualism in a modern world that rewarded conformity and commerce. The adventurous riders of the western plains were being corralled by the material pressures of consumerism; their free spirits permanently altered by the crushing need to draw steady paychecks in a new, commodity based, reality.

Anthony Bruno, an American prolific crime novelist (the Bad books, the Loretta Kovacks ones with espresso and fudge names, amongst others), recreates Richard Kuklinsi's life, with the investigation in parallel. The book The Iceman has been optioned by director-producer Ariel Vromen, with the producing and financing team Millenium/Nu Image and Bleiberg Entertainment. Here's my interview with Bruno - we discuss his encounter with Kuklinski, the book, and the film version that should start lensing in the fall this year.

Torontonians love their film festivals. In September, they love star-gazing, and voting on the movies that are most likely to - and usually do - go on to win Oscar gold. They love waiting in line in the sun all day for tickets, and standing in rush lines, and charting their 5-films-a-day schedules on carefully calculated spreadsheets. And in May, they love watching documentaries: docs that you've never heard of and will never hear from again; docs that played and won awards in Sundance and South by Southwest; docs about obscure Canadian things like curling, Alan Zweig, and longboarding on the highway. The city arguably gets more up-in-arms about Hot Docs than they do about TIFF, opting for the more quaint venues that aren't bombarded by outsiders and celebrities.