Culture

Bruce LaBruce

Why should vampires get to have all the sex? Zombies are enjoying an extraordinary renaissance in pop culture right now. Fast zombies, funny zombies, pet zombies. We’ve seen practically every variation on George A. Romero’s modern zombie spawned by his cult debut Night of the Living Dead in 1968. But Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce is finally taking zombies to the next level – gay porn.

Cooper's Camera

All too often with Canadian comedies you’re forced to say a movie is funny with the qualifier “for a low budget Canadian production.” Odd for a country that has a long track record of turning out some of Hollywood’s funniest and most successful comedians. This is not the case with Cooper’s Camera. True, it’s a low budget Canadian production, but it’s brilliant and funny, no qualifiers necessary.

Harmony Korine's Mister Loneley

When you were 18 the only direction your life was heading was to the liquor store parking lot to try and convince prospective patrons to buy you some coolers. When Harmony Korine was 18 he already penned one of the most controversial American films ever made, Larry Clark’s, Kids. His directorial debut came shortly after in 1997 with the equally eyebrow raising Gummo. He followed that up in 1999 with the extremely arty Julien Donkey-Boy.

Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi experienced more by the time she was an early teen than most do in their whole lives. Born into a progressive middle-class family in Iran, when Marjane was nine the Islamic Revolution happened. Then a few years after that, war broke out between Iran and Iraq. Because she was an imaginative and outspoken child, at a time when being imaginative and outspoken could get you thrown in jail, her parents sent her to Vienna (exiled, as she refers to it) to complete her schooling.

Asia and Dario Argento

I’ll just come right out and admit that I’m a huge fanboy of Dario Argento. This man has given us so many demented, violent and beautiful films, that I put him up there with David Cronenberg. So when I was sifting through the descriptions for the 349 films screening at the Toronto International Film festival this year, it was his latest, The Mother of Tears that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. When I got an interview confirmation with him, I started taking deep breaths into a paper bag to avoid hyper-ventilating.

Nicholas Gurewitch

A weird thing happens when you read a Perry Bible Fellowship comic. Panel after brilliant panel leads the mind to a mildly obsessive state where one strip isn’t enough. The reader must have more, a perverse reaction to the succinct manner in which it’s created. Similarly, the same occurs when speaking to its creator, Nicholas Gurewitch. Sometimes his soft voice is like talking to a lucid Crispin Glover, but with a far saner head on his shoulders, and it should come as no surprise that Gurewitch is actually quite funny.

Guide to Cult Musicals

Musicals are completely fucked up and awesome. We’ve all witnessed it firsthand. You’re at a party, someone puts on the “Grease Mega Mix” and people (mainly girls) start singing along. No other genre of film is capable of elevating the spirit like a musical.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

History lesson time. In 1970, The Beatles are broken up and John Lennon is living in New York with Yoko Ono. Lennon is screening his experimental art films at a theatre called the Elgin in the Chelsea district. Naturally, the New York hipster elite show up to see these movies. Not necessarily for the films, but you can smoke pot in the Elgin. One night in December 1970, Lennon screens someone else’s movie at midnight after his are done. It was a Mexican film called El Topo made by a Chilean born director named Alejandro Jodorowsky.

Guide To Grindhouse Cinema

Us youngsters will never understand the sleazy pleasures of the early cinematic pervert. In the glorious 70s, there was no VHS or Betamax. No DVDs, YouTubes, on-demand podcasts, or home theatres. If you wanted grime, you had to go downtown and find it—at a scummy, dangerous grindhouse.

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