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Hot Docs 2013: Alias Chokes at the Mic

By: Addison Wylie Alias made me frustrated.  Watching Michelle Latimer’s documentary provoked me in a way that pushed me to talk back to the screen – something I rarely do. Alias focuses on a small handful of Toronto rappers trying to be heard and to please an audience with their music and lyrics.  According to the synopsis, Latimer’s doc “digs deeper than the usual portrait of the rap world as glamour, guns and swagger.”  I…

Reviews

The Resurrection of Tony Gitone

By: Addison Wylie The Resurrection of Tony Gitone is a drama abut traditions, family, and friends – that is, if you can make it out over the yelling and excessive upstaging. Ultimately, that’s what makes Jerry Ciccoritti’s film a particularly annoying watch. Riding high off of a new gig as a leading male in a popular director’s upcoming movie and clutching an attractive big name actress, Nino (played by Fab Filippo) and his date Vanessa Luna…

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Lloyd the Conqueror

By: Addison Wylie Why is it that movies try so hard to find humour in LARPing? Lloyd the Conqueror, a comedy that was featured in this year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival and will now be featured in a special theatrical run along with a VOD release, is the latest culprit of this confusion. LARPing, for those readers who may be unaware, is an acronym for Live Action Role Playing. It’s the hobby of building…

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Keyhole

By: Addison Wylie I remember starring in a high school play, a play that shall remain nameless, where I didn’t know what was going on. Not in a way that I was passed out and my body was strung up resembling a Weekend at Bernie’s scenario;  I legitimately did not know what the play was about, my character’s motivation, or what it all meant in the grand scheme of things. Being that the play was…

Reviews

Moon Point

By: Addison Wylie Road movies have been done so many times, that they’ve now evolved into their own genre. They follow a similar formula, a straightforward plot, and feature a lot of robust side characters but grounded leads. With any frequent genre, it’s not so much how common those notes are but how the musician plays them. With Moon Point, an independently made Canadian feature, Director Sean Cisterna takes a heartfelt script that has an…