Laura Dekker wants to sail around the world. Alone. She’s 14. (When I was 14 I had a ridiculously early curfew – RIDICULOUSLY(!) – and wasn’t allowed to do a lot of after school activities, and we were living on a 23 square mile island!) 519 Days, 27,000 nautical miles. Alone. No support crew, no follow…
Category: Did You See That?!? (Tv & Film)
Hot Docs: Fatal Assistance – Raoul Peck
Fatal Assistance is a complex film discussing the nature of foreign aid in disaster situations and its actual practice, Peck gives the viewer a glaring indictment of the actions of international aid organizations and their impact on Haiti after the horrific earthquake of 2010. He shows us a broken system. Instead of funneling the aid…
Hot Docs: Good Ol’ Freda – Ryan White
I became a Beatles fan in 1988, my junior year at Mt. St. Agnes academy, and I voraciously hunted down the albums on vinyl, I read books, and watched Help! and A Hard Day’s Night repeatedly. I had the music books for everything they recorded, but even then I knew I wasn’t the biggest fan,…
Defiance S01E03 – The Devil In The Dark
Tonight on Showcase the town of Defiance has a new problem to deal with… Hell Bugs. I love this episode’s intro, as the first victim changes from his everyday shoes, to a pair of ADIDAS that he’s traded for and has kept in near mint condition, you know he cleans them after every run……
Hot Docs: Dragon Girls – Inigo Westmeier
Even a late start and sound issues couldn’t ruin this doc that screened last night at the Royal. The entire audience was swept up in the opening shot, which features a massive parade ground and a huge rush of hundreds, no thousands (35,000 – to be a little more exact) kung fu students running in…
Hot Docs: Our Nixon – Penny Lane
Oh Mr. Nixon. Last night the Royal screened Our Mr. Nixon by Penny Lane, and it proved to be an entertaining, occasionally angering, and often humorous look at one of the most infamous of all American presidents. After the Watergate scandal the federal government seized over 500 reels of super8 film and kept it locked away for…
Hot Docs: The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear – Tinatin Gurchiani
The best documentaries can amaze and move you, and some leave you in stunned silence at the beauty of what you have just seen. Tinatin Gurchiani’s The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear does all of these things. Halfway through this feature I realized exactly what it was. It’s your grandmother’s patchwork quilt, some pieces…
Doctor Who S07E10 – Hide
I realize I’m a week behind on this one, but hey, I was on vacation and covering a film festival! But what an ep! The cloister bell rings, there’s a knock 4 times, there’s ghosts and monsters, some fun banter, and a little more investigation into the mysterious companion. Neil Cross penned this episode,…
Hot Docs: William and the Windmill – Ben Nabors
Hot Docs screened this engaging film last night at the Scotiabank theater. William Kamkwamba is a young, pensive, and protective man. He made waves on the world stage when he appeared on TED Talks, and we all learned how this young man was forced to drop out of high school in his Malawian village…
Hot Docs: Expedition To The End of the World – Daniel Dencik
My first Hot Docs film of 2013 was a beautiful Danish/English piece about a group of artists and scientists who get to explore an area of north-eastern Greenland, a location usually inaccessible due to ice and glaciers, but with global warming, they have a window of time that will allow them to see sights rarely seen by man. I…
