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Matthew Hays

The Bujold Files

Genevieve Bujold on her remarkable career and her latest turn in Still Mine

by Matthew Hays
12.05.2013

Genevieve Bujold is elegantly poised in a posh Old Montreal hotel room as we sit down to chat about her latest role, in a new film called Still Mine. In it, Bujold plays a woman grappling with advancing Alzheimer’s disease. As she begins to fade, her husband (James Cromwell) decides to build a new house for them to live in, a residence that will be safer for her as her dementia gets worse.

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FILM

Ray Harryhausen, RIP

An interview with the big-screen special-effects trailblazer

by Matthew Hays
08.05.2013

Along with Willis O’Brien (who made the original King Kong in 1933), Ray Harryhausen is regarded as the granddaddy of contemporary cinematic special effects. He died this past week in his London home. Though much of the stop-motion animation he did for films like The Valley of Gwangi (1969), Mighty Joe Young (1949) or the Sinbad movies may now seem quaint and dated, those special effects laid the groundwork for what we now take for granted on the big screen.

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BOOKS

Having a Wine Time

Author Shawna Gnutel collects the musings of the famous and infamous on the intoxicant and its virtues in Winebliss

by Matthew Hays
28.04.2013

While wine can certainly be classy, I tended not to think of it as an intellectual pursuit. That was until I got a copy of Winebliss, a funny, sharp anthology of quotes by various public figures on the topic of the alcoholic beverage.

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FILM

Hard Time

Eugene Jarecki’s latest documentary, The House I Live In, is difficult but essential viewing. Cinéma du Parc, opening March 29

by Matthew Hays
29.03.2013

From early in the screening of The House I Live In, I got the powerful sensation of familiarity. I was entering into a documentary by filmmaker Eugene Jarecki. And that’s a very good thing; Jarecki is quite simply a genius at analyzing complex issues, at showing us how the personal and political are intricately interwoven.

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FILM

Documenting an Epidemic

David France's How to Survive a Plague is a moving look back at the early years in the AIDS crisis. Cinema du Parc, Mar 10

by Matthew Hays
09.03.2013

There was a time not so long ago when you could watch movies and never know a disease called AIDS ever existed. And I’m not exaggerating. For years I was a film section editor and watched over 400 movies a year. And after a few initial films about AIDS — Longtime Companion, Zero Patience, Philadelphia — the disease seemed to simply disappear.

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FILM

The Klein Files

A visionary Montreal filmmaker emerges from the annual festival of home-grown cinema, Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois

by Matthew Hays
21.02.2013

Jesse Klein seems such a nice fellow in person. Upbeat, endowed with a sharp wit and always ready with a tangential anecdote, he doesn’t seem too glum in casual conversation. But like many in the Canadian film milieu, when Klein sits down to write, things enter into a harsher dimension. Since 2011, when he made his first feature, a confident debut film called Shadowboxing, Klein showed a clear ability to lay the human condition bare.

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FILM

Deconstructing Hollywood

In The Pervert's Guide to Ideology, star philosopher Slavoj Zizek examines film history through his own psychoanalytic lens

by Matthew Hays
19.02.2013

Slavoj Zizek says one thing was perfectly clear as he was appearing in his latest film, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. “I’m no actor,” he concedes, laughing. “Director Sophie [Fiennes] would ask me to do something, and then ask me to do it again for another take. That was traumatic for me. I would invent things as we were shooting, then half forget what I said.”

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FILM

Porn Again

With her feature Inside Lara Roxx, filmmaker Mia Donovan explores the life of a young porn actress who contracted HIV

by Matthew Hays
23.01.2013

A strange rush of emotions are guaranteed to run through you as you watch Inside Lara Roxx, the documentary feature by Montreal filmmaker Mia Donovan. It is equal parts revealing, sad, confounding, hopeful, infuriating and sensational. Roxx made headlines in 2004 when the then-22-year-old was trying to make it big in the Los Angeles porn [...]

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BOOKS

Living out Loud

Pat Loud on the new book about her late son Lance Loud and his legacy

by Matthew Hays
21.11.2012

Pat Loud says she had one big wish as she was putting together her new book, Lance Out Loud, a tribute to her late son Lance Loud. “I wanted the book to be about how proud I am of Lance, about all the aspects of his life, not some sort of obituary. There’s enough sadness in the world.”

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FILM

Because Hope is a Choice

Velcrow Ripper explores activism around the world in his latest documentary, Occupy Love

by Matthew Hays
07.11.2012

With films like Bones of the Forest (1996) and Scared Sacred (2004), B.C.-based filmmaker Velcrow Ripper has become one of the most prominent activist documentary filmmakers to tackle issues surrounding the environment. With his latest, Occupy Love, which has its Quebec premiere at the RIDM this weekend, Ripper travels the world, following the exploits of various citizens as they rise up against government and corporate indifference and greed.

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FILM

Eat the Rich

The Queen of Versailles is an astonishing documentary about mammon and the great recession

by Matthew Hays
02.09.2012

The Queen of Versailles is one of those strange documentaries where inadvertent timing is everything. There are a number of films with similar strange histories. The Maysles Brothers thought they were making a film about a Rolling Stones concert with Gimme Shelter (1970) when all hell broke loose and a member of the Hell’s Angels stabbed and killed someone in the audience.

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BOOKS

Classic Roadster

Geoff Pevere on his new monograph on the Canadian classic film, Goin’ Down the Road

by Matthew Hays
06.08.2012

For many aficionados of Canadian cinema, when asked what the quintessential English-Canadian feature film is, there can be only one answer: Goin’ Down the Road, Donald Shebib’s stunning, almost poetic, verité-style 1970 feature.

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BOOKS

Gaga for Gore

Gore Vidal, 1925 - July 31, 2012

by Matthew Hays
02.08.2012

Gore Vidal leaves behind a body of work that can only be described as staggering. He was highly prolific, writing 25 novels, scores of essays, plays, screenplays and TV dramas. He contributed to the screenplay of Ben Hur, and would later analyze the homoerotic subtext he developed in the documentary The Celluloid Closet.

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BOOKS

Back to the Beach

Toronto-based author Mark Dillon discusses his delightful and intriguing book, Fifty Sides of the Beach Boys

by Matthew Hays
14.06.2012

Though there’s no end to the fawning over the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, the other long-standing band associated with the 60s, the Beach Boys, often get short shrift. Their tunes are too often reduced to little more than bubble gum. Which is really sad, given that the Beach Boys—celebrating their 50th anniversary this year—have composed [...]

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NEIGHBOURHOOD

Sunshine Blues

The little cinema space that could closes its doors

by Matthew Hays
18.05.2012

As much as I’d like to declare it the end of an era, to do so would be a bit of a stretch. After all, the Blue Sunshine Cinema will only be two years old when it closes its doors for the final time tonight. Not long enough to be an era, even by the [...]

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