MtlQc.com | film, arts & culture, life in Montréal

The Hat Goes Wild

by neil boyce on Apr 27, 2012

Editor’s Note: Infinithéâtre Artistic Director & actor Guy Sprung has made a film, his first film, and it’s called The Hat Goes Wild. The following are musings of the writer/director about the project and process… When my eldest daughter turned 18, she took a gaggle of her school chums to a cabin...

Theatre

Dubbing for life

by neil boyce on Apr 2, 2012

d’bi.young continues her exploration of family, generations, and lineage in benu at the Festival Voix d’Amériques She’s a dub poet, author, actor, playwright, teacher, and social activist. But d’bi.young anitafrika insists, “It’s all storytelling”. For the Jamaican-Canadian artist, there’s enough cooking on every burner – and enough hats piled...

Film

500 Pound Planet

by neil boyce on Apr 1, 2012

It’s Montreal’s first (ever) underground animation feature. Animators Jesse Brown and Josh Dolgin are set to release their highly-anticipated independent film 500 Pound Planet. The team plan to debut the cartoon in a series of unlikely venues, with screenings throughout December spanning the island of Montreal. December 12 to 15th...

Film

Cordell Barker’s The Cat Came Back

by neil boyce on Mar 31, 2012

“Da-do-do-do, dee-dee-dee-dooo…” – Loved that title tune from Cordell Barker’s cartoon The Cat Came Back. Along with fellow NFB animator Richard Condie, Barker has that fine comedic sense of how to draw barely controlled frenzy and then take it over the top: things start already a little twisted–and soon...

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Film

Ghosts on film

by neil boyce on Apr 2, 2012

Ghosts of Griffintown, directed by Richard Burman It is perhaps Montreal’s favorite ghost story, as local filmmaker Richard Burman tells it: “Mary Gallagher, a prostitute, was brutally murdered on June 26, 1879 at 242 William Street in Montreal. Soon after, the residence was besieged by neighbours in this Irish community of Griffintown, curious as to what...

Theatre

Get Bent

by neil boyce on Apr 2, 2012

Andréane Leclerc twists Fringer’s perceptions with ESTe: pulsion morte ou accouchement libéré It was a great Fringe-For-All moment: a bunch of acts had already swarmed the stage at Café Campus for their two-minute previews of the festival ahead. It was looking to be a long night. Suddenly, the stage goes dark and a spotlight shines...

Film

Standing up for the little guy

by neil boyce on Apr 2, 2012

Montreal World Film Festival, 26th Edition “We are Montreal. Period. I will not talk about Toronto, Berlin, New York, etcetera…” You can forgive Serge Losique, director of the Montreal World Film Festival, for being a little touchy when asked where Montreal stands compared to those “other” film fests. After all, he never stops hearing...

Film

Tribal warfare, east-end style

by neil boyce on Mar 31, 2012

Editor’s note: With the shooting of Le Journal de Montréal Crime reporter Michel Auger – a frequent and vocal critic of the biker gangs and organized crime in general – Jette’s take on the gangs is especially prescient. Quebec Public Security Minister Serge Menard, meanwhile, has called for new anti-gang laws to be drafted, saying...

Film

More, More, More! (how do you like it?)

by neil boyce on Mar 29, 2012

Fantasia Film Festival “Other film festivals get a grant, you go to see them and wonder where the money went. They say: ‘Didn’t you see? We painted the cinema.’ In our festival, all the money is up there on the screen.” Thus spake a grinning Mitch Davis, the black-clad demi-goth who heads international...

Theatre

Midlife crisis, the musical

by neil boyce on Mar 3, 2011

The life of an ageing god is laid bare in Mainline’s The Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus Mismatched furniture, lamps even your crazy auntie would toss out, fake food props, scores of empty Jameson bottles in the office: Mainline theatre has always had the air of a dude’s den – the junk a teenager might...

Film

By the Wall

by neil boyce on Mar 3, 2007

The Lives of Others (La vie des autres) directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has capped a great year in German cinema with his 2006 production The Lives of Others, an oddly vivid film about a particularly grey period of recent history. It is the Cold War under the German...

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