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Greetings programs! Dan Mirvish is an award-winning filmmaker known for films like Omaha: The Musical! and Bernard & Huey, as well as co-founding the Slamdance Film Festival. His latest film is a genre mashup, part thriller and part dark comedy, set in the 1970s and adjacent to the watergate scandal 18 1/2 tells the story of a young transcriptionist…
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Greetings programs! Canadian actor Mark O’Brien has been working steadily since the mid-2000s with roles in CBC’s The Republic of Doyle and AMC’s Halt & Catch Fire, and movie appearances in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Ready or Not, and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. This week sees his feature film writing and directorial debut, The Righteous, arrive in cinemas…
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Greetings programs! Writer and director Emerson Moore’s first feature, Escape the Field, a story about six strangers stranded in an endless cornfield, is on-demand now. I had the chance to sit down with him via zoom to talk about the film, his experiences making it, and more! Interview Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/05/interview-director-emerson-moore-on-his-film-escape-the-field/
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The third Wednesday of every year is National Canadian Film Day, a nationwide event that celebrates the best in Canadian cinema. This year is no different, and tomorrow’s event promises to be one of the best yet, with screening events in every province and territory and around the world. This morning I sat down…
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Greetings programs! Welcome to another Awesome Friday interview! Joining me this time is Jonas Chernick, who produced, co-wrote, and stars in the film Ashgrove. Ashgrove is the story of a scientist played by Amanda Brugel, who may be the key to solving a worldwide pandemic and is forced to take a few days for…
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Salutations applications, and welcome to an Awesome Friday Interview with actor Shawn Doyle! A native of Newfoundland, Shawn has been working steadily in film and television since the early 1990s, and in just the last few years has racked up an impressive filmography that includes recurring appearances in The Expanse, Hannibal, Cardinal (for which…
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Greetings programs! Katie Boland is a Canadian actor, writer, director, and producer. She is probably best known for her television appearances and the web series she created, Long Story Short. However, this year, Katie made her feature film directorial debut with We’re All In This Together, a story about a dysfunctional family brought together by absurd…
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Greetings programs! Welcome to a special episode of the Awesome Friday Podcast in which I sit down with director Seth A Smith to talk about his film Tin Can. Tin Can played at both Fantasia Festival last year and the Vancouver International Film Festival, which is where I originally saw it. It is now getting a wide…
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This week we’re joined by Avalon Fast, director of Honeycomb, a new indie feature playing as part of the Slamdance Film Festival. We talk with her at length about her film and the experience of making it, as well as a quick recap of some more favourites of the festival. Episode Homepage: https://awesomefriday.ca/2022/02/podcast-slamdance-recap-interview-w-director-avalon-fast/
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Lauren Grant is a prolific producer of Canadian film and television, having worked on the series Killjoys as well as the films Riot Girls, Sugar Daddy and The Retreat just in the last two years. This year she also makes her debut as a director with her original short film Things We Feel But Do Not Say, which premiered as part of the…
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Matthew: How was the production process? I understand you had Taika Waititi on board as an executive producer and a number of Canadian talents as well. How did that all come together? Danis Goulet: It was amazing. The cast is so incredible to work with. We were a Canada-New Zealand co-production, so we had…
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Matthew: The whole film feels like it must have been planned to the second; given that, how were you able to keep the actor’s performances feeling so spontaneous and unplanned? Junta Yamaguchi: A big part would be that we are a group of theatre performers who always work together. Theatre actors usually do a two-hour…
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Black Conflux, the first feature film from director Nicole Dorsey, had its premiere at TIFF 2019, and then with the outbreak of COVID-19, the film has had a long journey to theatres and finally vide on-demand this summer. It’s a confident and engaging film (read my review here) and an affecting one. I had…
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2021 is turning out to be a big year for Sera-Lys McArthur. The alum of series such as Arctic Air and Burden of Truth is starring in two films at Fantasia Fest this year, a short (which she also produced) called Kwêskosîw (She Whistles) and the feature film Don’t Say Its Name, a horror film which had its…
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Earlier this week I was able to watch and review a number of short films, including Kwêskosîw (She Whistles), a story with a supernatural twist from Indigenous filmmaker Thirza Cuthand. I was able to speak with Thirza about the film as well, and here is the conversation I had with them. I Full Interview at…