All the news that is news
Good news, everyone! The Fantasia Film Festival is back for another year. One of Canada’s premier film festivals, and one of the biggest genre film festivals on the continent. This year’s lineup looks great, but here are five films I’m looking forward to.
Continue reading “Fantasia 2025 Starts This Week!”
Extinct.
It shouldn’t be this hard to make these movies good.
Let’s cut to the chase: this is not a good film. The most frustrating thing is that in the seventh Jurassic film’s few flashes of originality and humour, when Gareth Edwards gets a tiny chance to do something that hasn’t been rigorously organised on a flashcard board for six months by a committee of test audience clipboard-holding film execs, it’s *very* good. But there’s no metaphorical amber here to defy the laws of narrative physics to preserve it, and suddenly it’s gone, red-lit smoke in the darkness, disappearing back into the forest.
And onto the next flash card.
Continue reading “Review: Jurassic World Rebirth”
Tuning Red.
Many will point out the influence of Into the Spidey-Verse on KPop Demon Hunters, Netflix’s new film about a group of girls carrying a generational weapon of demon-slaying vocal chords. They’d be right, of course; not only because this is from the same animation studio, but also because it has much of the style and swagger of a film that has repeatedly proven to be one of the most influential titles in recent years.
However, it’s impossible to watch KPop Demon Hunters without thinking constantly about how much it loves 2022’s Turning Red, and also how much more it could have taken from it.
Continue reading “Film Review: KPop Demon Hunters”
Flow in game movement really is the secret sauce. From linking tricks in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, to chaining specials in SSW Tricky, to slo-mo diving over boxes in Stranglehold, getting movement just right can elevate a mediocre game into something special (hello, Wanted: Dead).
It can also turn a great game into an all-timer (hello, Suit For Hire).
Continue reading “Game Review: Suit For Hire”
Big ideas shackled by gremlins galore
Lenovo’s big swing into the growing handheld PC space is exactly that: a huge, chunky multi-tool with a gorgeous screen that’s one keyboard away from being a workable laptop. The Switch-like (Switch-esque? Switch-ish?) controllers detach from the sides and reveal themselves to be a collection of programmable buttons and integrated scroll wheels. And one becomes an ergonomic mouse? You have to admire the absolute lunatic who pitched this to the top brass at Lenovo, wide-eyed in a manic haze, muttering promises of what what going to be stuffed into this handheld. 8.8 inch screen! 1600p resolution! At 144Hz?! With a full-fat Windows 11 install, 16GB RAM, and a Z1 Extreme processor that can rock up to 5GHz??!
Well, it turns out all this is true, and it’s a remarkable feat of engineering. Inside the rather functional design is an absolute beast of a system. Technically. The problems arise, though, when you actually try to use it, and the shortcomings reveal themselves all too readily.
Continue reading “AFTech Review: Lenovo Legion Go”
Join us for our annual liveblog of all the hi-jinx at the Oscars! Newest updates are at the top!
Continue reading “Oscars 2024 Liveblog”
You will never guess.
Continue reading “Simon’s Favourite Games of 2023”
Good news, everyone! The 2023 Sundance Film Festival is officially underway, and we will be covering it for the first time! This year’s festival runs until January 29th, and we will be covering it remotely.
Follow along with our coverage using the Sundance 2022 tag here on the site, and get a look at the full program on the festival website.
If you like this sort of coverage, please consider throwing some support our way!
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Good news, everyone! Hot Docs, the preeminent documentary film festival in Canada, started today and runs through Sunday, May 8th. Better yet, we will be covering it for the first time this year!
There are a ton of excellent selections this year, and you can see the whole lineup on the Hot Docs Festival website. You can follow our coverage here on the site with the HotDocs22 tag!
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Good news everyone! The Canadian Film Festival starts today and runs through April 2nd. This year the entire festival is presented by Super Channel, and available to stream with a subscription to Super Channel Fuse. Yes, this means another subscription, but it also means you can access the lineup across the country, and from the comfort of your home.
There are ten feature films and 28 short films in this year’s program and features a fascinating cross-section of Canadian filmmaking. This year we’ll have reviews and interviews
You can check out the entire lineup at the Film Festival’s website, and follow along with our coverage using the CFF2022 tag here on the site.
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As I mentioned last week, I am a voting member of the Pandora International Critics this year, and this week we have been voting on the best films of 2021. Now voting is over, and here are all the winners!
Continue reading “‘Titane’, ‘The Power of the Dog’, and ‘Mass’ big winners of Pandora International Film Critics Awards!”
Last year I was privileged to join the Pandora International Film Critics group, and I am excited to be participating in the 2020 PIFC Awards, honouring excellence in film for the year 2021! The list of nominees is diverse and exciting, and I can’t wait to see how things shake out.
Here is the complete list of nominees, let by Dune and Spencer with 11 nominations each, followed closely by The Power of the Dog with nine, and Mass and The Green Knight with seven each.
Continue reading “Pandora International Film Critics Awards Nominations Announced!”
Good news, everyone: the 2021 Whistler Film Festival is about to start! One of the last festivals on the Canadian circuit returns for its 21st year with a five day run (December 1st through 5th, 2021) in cinemas starting in Whistler BC and a month-long run online (December 1st through 31st). The films online are available Canada-wide, and the festival has a ton of Canadian films for you to enjoy.
You can follow along with my coverage using the WFF-2021 tag right here on AwesomeFriday.ca.
You can see –and purchase tickets for– the full lineup of 30+ feature films and 35 shorts on the festival website.
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Good news UK friends! Raindance Film Festival is on now! This year we will be doing some limited coverage of the festival so look for some reviews on the site using the Raindance 2021 tag!
The full list of features playing at the festival is available on the Raindance website. This festival is geo-locked to the UK so whenever possible we will include Canadian distribution information.
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Good news, everyone! The 2021 Blood in the Snow Festival is happening once again. This Canadian festival of horror and genre films is taking place in two ways this year.
First up, from today (October 29th) to Sunday (October 31st), you can watch films on SuperChannel in Canada. Then, from November 18th to 23rd, there will be screenings in person at Toronto’s Royal Theatre.
You can follow along with all of our coverage using the BitS 2021 tag here on the site. In addition, we’ve already seen a few of the films at past festivals, so reviews are already there for you to read!
For full details on the line-up or to purchase tickets to the in-person screenings, check out the Blood in the Snow Website.
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