OSCAR FILM: Searching for Sugar Man about art for art’s sake

OSCAR FILM: Searching for Sugar Man about art for art’s sake

Imagine you wrote and recorded a couple albums only to find them with $1.99 tags in the delete bin at the old A&B Sound a couple weeks later. Now imagine finding out 20 years later that you were bigger than Elvis Presley in some country on the other side of the world. It’s hard to […]

FILM: Musicians under the influence of Reefer Madness

FILM: Musicians under the influence of Reefer Madness

You don’t have to be high to enjoy “Reefer Madness” ironically – but it helps. Or does it? There are a number of misconceptions about the famous 1936 anti-marijuana film, according to Edmonton musician Gene Kosowan, who has created a live “electro-acoustic” reinterpretation of the movie being presented at Wunderbar on Sunday night. “There’s something […]

Mark Meer elected Edmontonian of 2012 in landslide victory

Mark Meer elected Edmontonian of 2012 in landslide victory

We should’ve known what would happen if we put Mark Meer on the list. Of course he was voted GigCity’s Edmontonian of the Year – in a landslide, with 68% of the vote. He’s such a tireless self-promoter and wields such a formidable clout in social media that winning our little contest/social experiment was a […]

Vote now for Edmontonian of the Year!

Vote now for Edmontonian of the Year!

If Time magazine can choose a “Person of the Year” from eight billion prospects, we can certainly do it from among the mere one million citizens of Edmonton. It’s kind of like Vue magazine’s “best of Edmonton,” but there can only be one. We just don’t have the budget. The only criteria was “made waves […]

Who is the Edmonton Person of the Year?

Who is the Edmonton Person of the Year?

We’re making a list – but we’ll be checking it three times, at least. The hunt is on for Edmonton’s “Person of the Year,” for no other good reason than “why the hell not?” And you – yes, you, reader – can play a part. In the first phase of what will undoubtedly be a […]

Sexually exploited women share their stories in disturbing documentary

Sexually exploited women share their stories in disturbing documentary

The trick in making a good documentary is knowing when to stop. The story that continues after the end of Rosie Dransfeld’s disturbing new film “Who Cares?” – a stark look at street prostitution in Edmonton – is just as tragic and touching as anything in the documentary itself. One of the main subjects, Shelly, […]

FILM: Before social media made us, there was Videodrome

FILM: Before social media made us, there was Videodrome

Recognize this line? “Long live the new flesh!” Take a trip back in time to 1983 with the Bizarro Metro series this Friday at the Garneau Theatre with the David Cronenberg classic Videodrome. It was the year when electric typewriters were still more prevalent than computers and the home video phenomenon was at its height. […]

Is Alberta Avenue Edmonton’s new coolest neighbourhood? New documentary takes a look

Is Alberta Avenue Edmonton’s new coolest neighbourhood? New documentary takes a look

Attending the joyous celebration of community that is the summer Kaleido Festival on 118th Avenue, you’d never know that the area was once a cesspool of depravity, rife with drug dealers, gang members and prostitutes. Respectable citizens just didn’t go there. Now children cavort where johns once skulked. Few vestiges of the Northside neighbourhood’s dodginess […]

You don’t need gore to make a great horror film at Dedfest 2012

Who’d have thought eating an olive could be so fraught with contradictory emotions? There’s a scene in a creepy new film called “Berberian Sound Studio” where actor Toby Jones is forced to eat an olive, pit and all, and his face conveys so many different thoughts, feelings, and possibilities that it has to rank as […]

EIFF REVIEW: Hellish brunch meets Armageddon in hilarious It’s a Disaster

If the idea of a Sunday “couples brunch” makes you want to kill yourself, then It’s a Disaster is for you. Even if it doesn’t, this darkly delicious black comedy has so much going for it that you won’t want to miss the brunch almost literally blowing up. The premise is simple: shortly after a […]

Cinematic mash-up brings fresh slice of real Klondike to fake Klondike

To have someone from the Yukon come all the way to Edmonton to present a “reconstituted” 1923 silent movie about the REAL Klondike is real treat for locals who are sick of the FAKE Klondike. On the recent moronic rebranding of our formerly bogus festival Klondike Days as K-Days, Whitehorse filmmaker and musician Daniel Janke […]

EIFF REVIEW: Plimpton as Himself reveals genius beneath goofy facade

For those who know George Plimpton only as the plumy-voiced, New England accented socialite who appears in TV commercials, “Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself” will be a revelation. Screening at The Edmonton International Film Festival (EIFF) on Wednesday, Oct. 3, the film by writer/directors Tom Bean and Luke Poling takes a serious and in-depth […]