Day: August 27, 2013

REVIEW: Getaway [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“Smash into everything you can” The Oscar for Best Actor goes to Jon Voight‘s jowls. Supporting? That would be the high-definition salt and pepper stubble poking through the screen as he gulps martinis with olive chasers. But if you really want award-winning, give something to editor Ryan Dufrene because I have to believe he spliced together the most ever cuts in a feature length film despite Getaway only lasting 94 minutes. He would be the man responsible for that, right? I mean if director Courtney Solomon storyboarded this thing like…

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TIFF13 REVIEW: 2013 Short Cuts Canada Programmes

Jared Mobarak

Programme 1 A far cry from the documentary short Joda—a visual letter to Jafar Panahi—that was included in the TIFF Short Cuts Canada Programme last year, graphic designer turned filmmaker Theodore Ushev’s Gloria Victoria is all about the visceral and aural capabilities of film without something as unnecessary as words. Full of sumptuous textured layers formed by sketch drawings, Russian Constructivist elements, what I believe were faces from Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, and more, the rising crescendo of Shostakovich’s “Invasion” from Symphony No. 7 helps spur on an emotive war in…

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REVIEW: American Milkshake [2013]

Jared Mobarak

“I wish I was one of them” As someone who graduated with the Class of 2000, the idea of high school comedy American Milkshake taking place in the 90s definitely piqued my interest. I often joke I’m a child of the 80s despite knowing the descriptor doesn’t fit someone who was only eight at decade’s end, so seeing a film try to do to my teen years what The Breakfast Club did to the previous generation’s seemed exciting. After watching writers/directors David Andalman and Mariko Munro’s creation, however, I’m beginning…

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