By John H. Foote In a move I applaud and have challenged for years the Academy has renamed their Best Foreign Language Film, altered the criteria slightly to include English language films from English speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland and wherever English might be spoken. The Foreign Language Oscar has been…
By Nick Maylor Having already become the second highest-grossing film of all time, Avengers: Endgame (2019) is a film that one could easily argue is loaded with “awesome”. After months of anticipation, I presented the 10 things I wanted to see the most in the massive, ensemble superhero blockbuster. I left the theatre having not…
By Nick Maylor I began playing the guitar at age 14. Although pop punk bands like Blink-182 and Green Day were the primary motivators for me to pick up the instrument, I quickly became enamoured with the blues. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, Jimi Hendrix and B.B. King soon worked their way into…
By Alan Hurst Doris Day – one of biggest movies stars and top vocalists of the last century – passed away today at her home in Carmel-by-the Sea, California. She had turned 97 last month. Day has always occupied a special place in my movie obsessed mind. I remember vividly watching her movies on Saturday…
By Craig Leask For Mother’s Day I have chosen Mrs. Miniver, as the film that not only acknowledges the strength, endurance and fierce protectiveness found in most mothers, but the film also masterfully celebrates them. Mrs. Miniver was the right film at the right time. Based upon the 1940 Jan Struther novel of the same…
By John H. Foote Our lives begin with knowing our mother, yet in the beginning we know nothing. It is only through the years, and if we are paying attention, we even begin to understand the staggering strength, the self-sacrifice, compassion, empathy, and love of our mother. My mother faced cancer at 27 in the…
By John H. Foote I love it when this happens. Remember Norma Rae (1979)? Sally Field has been a cute, perky TV star, proving her gifts with her performance in Sybil (1977) as a woman struggling with multiple personality disorder. That performance led director Martin Ritt to cast her as southern labour organizer Norma Rae,…
By John H. Foote The first African American to ever be nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director has died. Fifty one year old filmmaker John Singleton died today after being removed from life support. Singleton slipped into a coma after suffering a massive stroke last week. Initially there was hope, but his condition…
By John H. Foote The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has rescinded the membership of controversial director Roman Polanski, citing his crime of statutory rape from which he fled sentencing in the seventies. Here is my quandary. In 2002, that same Academy awarded Polanski the Academy Award for Best Director for The Pianist…
By Clarisse Tenreiro This year, Alfonso Cuarón brought the monochrome screen back on the stage of the Academy Awards with his drama Roma (2018), proving once more that the absence of colour can be as strong as the millions of shades and hues that today’s technology offers to paint a picture with. By winning the…