Toronto After Dark Shorts Program

  On a Saturday afternoon, there’s nothing better than curling up and enjoying some cinematic entertainment, and this afternoon, I let those festival programmers at Toronto After Dark pick my entertainment, with 9 specially selected from over 450 entries and there were some strong choices. The collection started with an odd little two-minute computer generated…

Toronto After Dark: Eega (2012) – S.S. Rajamouli

  Bug Night at Toronto After Dark continued with this brilliantly colorful, melodramatic Indian revenge flick, with that wonderful Tollywood flavor, with Eega. Nani (Nani) and Bindhu (Samantha Prabhu) have been flirting and chasing one another for two years, as the two finally connect, Sudeep (Kiccha Sudeepa) comes into the picture, a bit of a bad…

Toronto After Dark: Big Ass Spider (2013) – Mike Mendez

  The second night of Toronto After Dark got its Bug Night under way in a huge way last night with the arachnophobe’s nightmare Big Ass Spider starring Greg Grunberg. Grunberg is Alex Mathis, an exterminator called in on his day off and into a delightful homage to the atomic creature features of the 1950s,…

Toronto After Dark 2013: We Are What We Are – Jim Mickle

  TAD’s opening night gala film had all the makings of a crowd-pleaser – a director with a fresh new voice (Mickle also directed Stakeland, which I saw and loved at TIFF a few years ago), a tension-filled plot, and cannibals.  I am very happy to say that this one did not disappoint in the…

Toronto After Dark – Bounty Killer (2013) – Henry Saine

  Following in the footsteps of the beautifully American gothic We Are What We Are, the opening night gala presentation for the 8th annual Toronto After Dark Film festival would be difficult for any film. So the programmers went in a completely different direction for the second feature of the night. Using the Kickstarter campaign…

Toronto After Dark 2013 – Sue’s Most Anticipated Films

  I love October! I love the leaves turning colours, I love how clean the air smells (and the fact that there is actually air in the city again), I love love love Halloween! And added to all that is a film festival for me to love – Toronto After Dark, showcasing the year’s best…

Toronto After Dark 2013

  Tonight, one of my favorite film festivals gets underway, Toronto After Dark, a heady combination of horror, sci-fi and cult filmss. People I’ve spoken to want to know what movies I’m most eager to see at this year’s festival, so I thought I would share them with you. It struck me as interesting last year,…

Hot Docs: High Five: A Suburban Adoption Saga – Julia Ivanova

When Cathy and Martin Ward, a suburban Canadian couple living in Surrey, BC, decide to adopt a child from an orphanage in the Ukraine, they have their sights and hearts set on a single infant or toddler.  While waiting for the child they want, however, they agree to host a 4-year-old girl, Alyona, for the…

ReelWorld Film Fest: Cairo 678 – Mohamed Diab

Every so often, I deliberately choose to do something that I know is going to frighten, upset or otherwise unsettle me, but I usually do it anyway.  Call it challenge, call it growth…call it stupid, if you want.  But I do it.  Most often, this pushing of myself comes in the form of a book…

Reel World Film Festival 2013

  As luck and extreme good fortune would have it, I will be covering the Reel World Film Festival for the first time this year!  Since Tim will be in freaking Bermuda (that’s my new name for it) covering their festival and passing out drunk on a beach somewhere, I’ll be taking on this one…