Toronto Screenwriting Conference 2016 Day 2

  The creativity and writing began early as day 2 of the Toronto Screenwriting Conference got underway this morning with showrunner Stephen Falk (Orange is the New Black, Weeds, and You’re the Worst) took to the stage to talks about how to break a season, or specifically how he and his writer’s room, break a…

Fringe Toronto: Caws and Effect

Being presented at the Factory Theatre is this singularly stunning piece combining music, masks, puppetry and layered projections. Chloe Ziner and Jessica Gabriel, known collectively as Mind of a Snail Puppet Company, from Vancouver, provided one of the most unique and beautiful shows on offer at this year’s festival. Assuming the personalities of two crows,…

Tomorrowland (2015) – Brad Bird

  Hope. It’s something in short supply in today’s films, television and books. We as a culture of become cynically and intellectually lazy (not all of us mind, but that can-do spirit seems to have been diminished, flickering like a guttering candle), gone are the heady days of Mercury and Apollo when creativity, dreams and…

Park City (2015) – Hannah Rosner

  Available now on iTunes is this delightful, and frequently hilarious film, shot in the mockumentary style about a group of young artists who have just finished their latest indie feature, Hearts and Cash, and are beyond delighted to learn that their film has been selected to screen at Sundance. But being young, and struggling…

Hot Docs 2015: Raiders! – Jeremy Coon & Tim Skousen

  Screening today at the Hart House theatre at 9:30 is a documentary that completely encapsulated my youth and filled me with awe, and a fire to create. Back in 1981, a film came along that changed many a young viewer, myself included, Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. It affected a number of…