Chasing Inspiration with a Stick
That’s right folks, I was able to cover Montreal’s Fantasia Festival this year. The 2020 Edition was entirely online and I was able to watch more than 20 movies. I also conducted two interviews and wrote about my favourites.
Continue reading “Awesome Friday: Montreal Fantasia Festival 2020 Roundup”
Yes, I finally redesigned the ol’ movie blog.
Continue reading “Awesome Friday Redesign”
The franchise rewatch continues with the next four movies: Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Diamonds Are Forever.
It can’t have been easy being the first actor to step into the role of Bond after Sean Connery decided to leave. In many ways, I think George Lazenby was probably doomed from the start. People loved Connery, and he wasn’t Connery. In order to overcome that the film would have to have been an absolute banger, and it, well, isn’t. Or at least it isn’t that kind of movie.
It’s easy, looking back, to see why people didn’t really dig On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. It’s a little melancholy, and it doesn’t have the same air of escapism as the previous entries. There is still tons of sex, but most of the film has Bond surviving on his wits rather than gadgets.
Here’s the thing though: it’s good.
In anticipation of the 25th James Bond film, No Time To Die, being released this spring I decided to re-watch the entire James Bond franchise from the start. Here is Part One!
In each of the last few years, I have re-watched a franchise. If you follow my Letterboxd you might have noticed this. One year it was Star Trek, another it was Star Wars, and another it was Mission: Impossible. This year it’s going to be James Bond.
With 24 films in the franchise proper and a 25th due in April of this year, this is no small undertaking, especially if I am going to blog about them as I go. Why haven’t I blogged these in the past? Because I had an idea of what I wanted this blog to be and I have resolved to change that here in this new decade.
So what follows will be whatever I feel it needs to be after watching each James Bond film. I am going to watch them in order, and I am most likely going to stick to the main EON produced films in the franchise. Some of them will get some deep thought, others maybe not so much. I don’t have a real plan besides watch, write about each, and then finish up with some kind of conclusion.
So if that sounds like the kind of thing you’re into then let’s get started on this journey with the first three entries in the franchise: Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger
I haven’t done this in a few years but this year I have declared my most anticipated movies of the year. I’ll revisit the list at the end of the year to see how things panned out!
Every year is a good year for movies but every year there are always those few you are really looking forward to. Here is my list of those movies.
Will these end up being my favourite movies of the year? Who knows! Probably not! The only movies that we know anything about as far away as December are the big-budget blockbusters with marketing pockets so deep we can start hearing about them now. There are hundreds of movies per year that don’t have that.
This list should probably be re-titled “most anticipated big-budget films”, really.
Link: https://awesomefriday.ca/2020/02/matts-ten-most-anticipated-films-of-2020/
Every year I come up with a list of my favourite films and 2019 was no different. As I usually do, I came up with two lists to end the year. My favourite films (and performers) of 2019 and then a follow up best of the rest post. Oh, and since I didn’t actually post one from 2018, I wrote my 2018 favourites as well.
Continue reading “Awesome Friday: Favourite Films of 2019”
For the fourth time I went to the Vancouver International Film Festival. This year I saw more than 20 films and here’s a selection of them.
Continue reading “Awesome Friday: 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival Roundup”
I was invited to attend the 2019 Just for Laughs Film Festival this year and I watched and reviewed four of them.
I’ve been flirting with blogging again. Here are a couple of recent reviews.
I kinda love the Oscars. It’s popular to write it off as a bunch of rich people given each other gold statues but it’s also a celebration of film and it’s a great night to highlight many of the people who most of us don’t think about when it comes to filmmaking: screenwriters, editors, cinematographers, sound designers, and so on.
Continue reading “Awesome Friday: 90th Academy Awards Coverage”