The Dust Bowl (2012) – Ken Burns

  Ken Burns is a highly talented documentarian, and I was delighted to see a number of his films have been recently added to Netflix, so I decided to settle in this weekend and work my way through one, with the intention of making my way through every one that is currently available on the…

Tim’s Thirteen of 2013

So ends 2013, just like that! What a year! We have continued to grow and do so much here at The Mind Reels, and we’re hoping for an even bigger year next year! So I decided to throw together a list of the movies I most enjoyed this year, the ones that got to me,…

Ghost In The Shell (1995) – Mamoru Oshii

  The 101 Sci-Fi Movies brings us another anime classic, based on the manga of the same name, this one dealing with the idea of what it means to be living and how we define life. Set in the oh-so-distant year 2029, corporations and city-states have taken over the world, nations have collapsed, and the…

Toronto Screenwriting Conference 2013

The 4th annual Toronto Screenwriting Conference got underway yesterday at Ryerson and was a fantastic experience for Sue and myself. Featuring a who’s who of film and television writing, the weekend covers almost every conceivable angle of the screenwriting process, from series pitch,to punching up dialogue to sharing in the process. At the center of…

Toronto Screenwriting Conference

Sue and I have been extended an invitation to sit in on the Toronto Screenwriting Conference this weekend, and cover it for the blog. To say that we’re both excited about it is a bit of an understatement. We’re close to ecstatic about it. We are going to try and chat to some of the folks…

Iron Sky (2012) – Timo Vuorensola

I remember first hearing about this film when it was just a fun little trailer on YouTube. It just looked so terribly goofy, and yet the computer generated effects looked pretty damned good. And how does this not sound like B-movie goodness… Nazis on the moon with flying saucers?!?! It practically writes itself! This would…

Act of Valor (2012) – Micke McCoy & Scott Waugh

  Act of Valor is an interesting little experiment of a film. The very things that make it awesome are also the same things that make it a bad as well. It’s a film that feels equal parts action flick, documentary and Call of Duty: Black Ops (right down to the first person shooter view-point)….

Justified – Season 1 (2010)

Elmore Leonard is one of the most prominent American crime writers and his short story, Fire In The Hole serves as the jumping off point for the series Justified. It was developed for FX by Graham Yost. Yost has had his fingers in a number of projects I’ve enjoyed, most notably Band of Brothers and From The Earth…

The American Scream (2012) – Michael Stephenson

I’m either late for this year’s Halloween, or very early for next year’s but just wanted to talk about a highly enjoyable documentary I came across on Netflix the other night. The focus of the film is a trio of house haunters. I had no idea what these were, or that there was an entire…

Metropolis (1927)

This is a film that I had seen snippets of through my entire life. In fact I remember, as a child, sitting in Mother’s Pizza, a now defunct pizza chain, at least in the incarnation that I grew up loving, the decor was all 20s and 30s and they would show clips from Laurel &…