Everybody’s Talkin’ 7 – 26 (Chatter from Other Bloggers)

My online interactions yesterday provided me with an amusing paradox.

Early in the day, a friend who lives in a smaller town asked what she should see at the movies that night. Her options at her small local theatre were R.I.PD. or TURBO. I responded to her query with a query of my own: “What’s on Netflix?”. Of course, I have heard nothing good about either film, but because both play so broad, it’s all her local theatre has to offer.

By comparison, later in the day, I saw a Tweet in my feed that said “I can’t think of a single point in my history where there’s been less that I wanted to see in theaters than in 2013”. At first, I thought that this summed up my other friend’s situation perfectly…but something didn’t seem right. Then it dawned on me:

The person tweeting lived in Toronto.

As that occurred to me, I called “bullshit”. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again – this city is an embarrassment of riches where cinema is concerned. We get so many wonderful films playing in theatres that most of the world only gets to see on dvd on on-demand. One could easily spend entire weekends at the theatres in this town and come away with true cinematic nourishment. What’s more, when the next weekend rolls around, there’s usually a whole new slate of options!

So sure, I can’t blame one for saying that 2013 has been thin on content if they’re judging based on LONE RANGER, GROWN UPS 2, TURBO, R.I.P.D, AFTER EARTH, and the like. But to that, I say look harder. Spend your time and money seeing BEFORE MIDNIGHT, BLANCANIEVES, MUD, BLACK FISH or TWENTY FEET FROM STARDOM.

If not, perhaps you should arrange a house-swap with my friend in small-town USA. I’m sure she’d appreciate the variety of content…

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For your listening and reading fulfilment, I give you…

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The women of Across the Universe have given themselves an off-week, which we can all agree is well deserved in these summer months. It’s certainly deserved after they’ve got their show off to such a great start. While they all get some much-needed R&R, go back a week or so and give a listen to their sixth episode which is dedicated to apocalyptic movies.

With BLUE JASMINE on the horizon, the gang at Movie Mezzanine have compiled an amazingly thorough compendium of Woody Allen films. Make sure you have a few minutes and then read part one and part two.

Yesterday, Steve Flores mocked me a bit (unbeknownst to him). You see for a long while now, there’s been a film seemingly cemented on my to-see list called LOVE ME IF YOU DARE (or in France JEUX D’ENFANTS). I’ve been meaning to see it for ages, but always manage to forget as opportunity presents itself. So yesterday, when I dropped by The Void – guess which film he’d happened to review!

As you might have heard, we lost character actor Dennis Farina this past week (in my eyes, he’ll always be “Avi from SNATCH”). Alex Withrow has given the gifted actor a fitting benediction.

I remain indecisive on what movie I’m going to see tonight. Perhaps I’ll take Fandango’s advice and see THE WOLVERINE.

…or perhaps I’ll take Andrew Crump’s advice and see FRUITVALE STATION.

Over at Junebug, Aleena has compiled a list of The Sixteen Deadly Sins of moviegoing. I must admit, I’m guilty of one of these.

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Then there’s the Tweet of The Week, which I can only preface by saying “Guilty, Your Honour”:

I planned on working tonight but Ryan put on THREE AMIGOS. I can’t get anything done with that much awesome happening in my apartment.

— Lindsay Ragone (@LindsayRagone) July 25, 2013

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Enjoy!