By John H. Foote 7. L.A. Confidential And back to the counting down of the greatest films of the nineties, we are almost there. The Oscars interrupted us! At the end of 1997, while audiences were lining around city blocks to see Titanic, James Cameron’s massive love story set aboard the doomed ship making its…
By John H. Foote The casting of Nicole Kidman in a new film as television icon, the beloved Lucille Ball, known simply as Lucy, is drawing the wrath of Ball’s fans online. People are wondering why Kidman, best known for her work in intense drama, was cast as the hilarious comic, who proved to be…
By John H. Foote (**) Streaming on Amazon How well do you know yourself? I know myself well enough to state that being in space or a submarine would drive me insane – drooling, gibbering, twitching bonkers. Yep, that would be me in the corner, tied to a chair, eyes crazy, whacked out of my…
By John H. Foote For as long as I can remember, during this crazy obsession with film, at year’s end I made my own 10 best list based on the films I had seen. Understand this was a difficult feat given I lived in the country, 30 minutes from a plethora of cinema, and an…
By John H. Foote He really did become a full-blown movie star portraying one of the most repellant, terrifying movie characters to ever grace the silver screen. Dr. Hannibal Lecter was brilliant beyond any known human measurement, his IQ soaring into the stratosphere too high to be measured. He was elegant, well read, possessed with…
By John H. Foote Who knows what to expect tonight? Diversity for sure, but beyond that? The second Oscar winning female director seems a given, Chadwick Boseman a shoo-in, but the Best Actress category? Who knows? Tonight brings to an end of the longest Oscar season in memory, eight long months since TIFF, so let…
By Craig Leask By the 1970’s, the American public had survived the shocking 1963 assassination of JFK with the implausible Warren Committee conclusion of a lone gunman having committed the deed – a simpleton by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald. Add to this: the murder of Oswald (televised live) by Jack Ruby (who perished…
By John H. Foote I freely concede it took a long time for me to recognize that the films made in this country are powerful worthy works, something the rest of the planet had discovered before most Canadians. The struggle to get Canadians to watch Canadian cinema is still an ongoing battle, but things are…
By John H. Foote In 2001 I lay in a hospital broken and in great pain, the result of a terrible head on car accident. Eighteen breaks in my legs, three in my pelvis, my entire rib cage shattered, my right arm badly broken through the elbow, my heart had been crushed, I had fixators…
By John H. Foote If you think it does not help to pass away before the Oscar nominations are announced, think again. I am not trying to be either crass nor vulgar and I too mourn the loss of Chadwick Boseman, especially after seeing his astounding range in two films this year – Ma Rainey’s…