TIFF15 REVIEW: Bacon & God’s Wrath [2015]

“I prefer non-believer. Maybe infidel.” I apologize to both my grandmothers because Razie Brownstone is my new hero. Kosher for 90 years of life, it was a journey through “the Google” by way of “the internet” that shook her faith. All the questions she never thought could be answered suddenly became available with a few keystrokes—sometimes Google even anticipated exactly what she wanted to ask. We’ve all fallen down rabbit holes of information overload and alternative opinions infiltrating our brains to cement themselves as core belief, but it’s something else…

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TIFF14 REVIEW: Day 40 [2014]

“God is one crazy bitch” Who doesn’t like a little revisionist history? Especially when it concerns the sanctity of the Bible—I think that’s my favorite kind. Because why did that book become this whole end-all/be-all document of our existence, morality, sin, and promise? Who the hell were Peter, Paul, and Mary besides 1960s folk singers with some kick-ass songs? Why can’t director Sol Friedman and writer Evan Morgan‘s voices be just as important when it comes to describing how we humans came to be? The answer is: they can. And…

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TIFF13 REVIEW: 2013 Short Cuts Canada Programmes

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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