Wilnervision!

February is going out like a frozen lion here — the temperature this morning was -16, with a “feels like” factor of -26 — but I’m still braving the cold to trudge out to the Bloor Cinema for that Edgar Wright double-bill of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” I’ve been pimping all week.

And why not? Sure, I’ve got the HD DVDs of both films sitting downstairs, wondering why I never take them out to play, but how often do you get to see two of your favorite movies with an audience that loves them as much as you do?

I talked to Wright yesterday about the screening, and about his related Wright Stuff program, which will be running at the Bloor Sundays through April 12th; turns out he does this for the exact same reason.

Wait, that came out wrong. He doesn’t program screenings of his own films so he can see how much people love his movies — he programs screenings of other people’s cult films so he can experience them with an audience, rather than just watching them on HD DVD in his basement. Or, you know, whatever medium is to hand. (Hell, I still have “The Wanderers” on laserdisc.)

Anyway. See you at the Bloor. Brave the cold, it’ll be worth it.

This is one of those weeks where, despite a great deal of running around and watching of movies, I have almost nothing to show for it. It seems like everything I’ve done is for something down the line — screening films that won’t open for weeks, writing stories for upcoming issues of things, and so forth. And so it is that I am covering not a single title in this week’s crop of releases.

However, films are opening, and these are they:

“C’est Pas Moi, Je Le Jure!”: Rad’s been talking up Philippe Falardeau’s latest film for months now, and he gets to sing its praises all over again in this week’s paper. He’s not the only one, either; Jason likes it, too.

“Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience”: THEY ARE TEH AWESOME THEY SING AND DANCE AND THEY’RE RIGHT IN YOUR LAP AND I WANT TO MARRY ALL OF THEM THIS IS THE BEST MOVIE EVER OMG OMG OMG … yes, it’s the film that launched a million Twitter posts.

“Lost Song”: Rodrigue Jean’s prize-winning TIFF entry — awarded a spot on Canada’s Top Ten back in December, along with “C’est Pas Moi” — makes up the other half of Rad’s look at Canadian’s films in this week’s paper; here’s his review, and his interview with Jean.

“Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li”: It’s been fifteen years since Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia squared off in Steven E. DeSouza’s “Street Fighter” movie … long enough for a reboot, in Hollywood terms. This one was directed by former cinematographer Andrzej Bartkowiak and stars the extremely photographable Kristin Kreuk and “Mortal Kombat” regular Robin Shou, which means that I am kind of looking forward to the Blu-ray disc.

More to do today. Sorry. It’ll all come together next week, I promise.

I’m staring down an unexpected mess of deadlinery today, and I don’t have much in the new issue of NOW, so this will be a very short post.

Stuff I did write: A look at the World of Comedy Film Festival, which runs tomorrow through Sunday and did not exactly dazzle me this year, and a heads-up for a double-bill of my beloved “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz” Saturday night at the Bloor Cinema, hosted by their director, Edgar Wright.

I hope to have more to say about Wright tomorrow. That, in fact, is one of my deadlines.

Hang in there …

My latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column is up, taking a look at three direct-to-video monster movies because, well, that’s just the kind of week this is.

If anyone is keeping score, I’ve now seen all three films in the “Feast” series. That’s an awful lot of creature genitalia.

An awful lot.

I have to go lie down now.

Over at the Chicago Sun-Times’ Scanners blog, Jim Emerson asks the key question of the “Watchmen” movie: Is it a good idea to re-read the graphic novel before seeing Zack Snyder’s adaptation?

My standard operating procedure over many years as a movie critic has been to keep the movie experience as separate from the source material as possible — at least on first viewing. Otherwise it can be hard to tell what the movie is doing and what you’re bringing to it from earlier impressions.

If I’ve already encountered a pre-existing version of the “property,” then so be it. I can’t go back and un-experience it. Either way, I can’t judge the adaptation But I usually like to see the movie fresh, and do any research I feel compelled to do afterwards. Then, perhaps, I’ll re-visit the movie, Knowing What I Know Now.

That’s essentially the same way I approach adaptations. If I hear a specific book is being made into a movie, I won’t read that book, no matter how much I may want to. There are no restrictions on catching up to a given book after I see the movie, of course — sometimes it’s essential to writing the review — but for the most part, I want to see how the movie works, or doesn’t work, as a movie.

Now, in this case, Emerson is already familiar with “Watchmen” — though he says he read it so long ago that he “(doesn’t) even remember there was a blue naked guy in it” — so this would be a re-encountering of the text, rather than a new reading. But it’s a good question to pose to those of us who know the book backwards and forwards.

I haven’t read it in several years, myself, but I know it pretty damn well — and I’m still debating whether that was a plus or a minus for the experience of seeing the movie. (For instance: Is it a valid complaint to point out that the movie changes one word in my favorite line of dialogue, when the purpose of the line remains intact?)

Read Emerson’s piece, and think on it. Then tell me what you’d do …

Sometimes things just work out, you know?

Complete liveblog here.

The ceremony approaches, and everyone wants me to make predictions: I was on CTV Newsnet Friday morning, and went straight from the studio to the NOW offices to record a podcast with Susan and Glenn, and I’ll be live-blogging the action somewhere at NOW Daily tonight.

Will “Slumdog Millionaire” take the big prize? Will “The Reader” snatch it away at the last minute? Are any of the other three films — “Frost/Nixon”, “Milk” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” — still in contention?

Well, I don’t know. But it’ll be fun to find out, right?

It’s all Oscar, all the time this weekend — I’ll be liveblogging Sunday night’s ceremony, along with seemingly everyone else in the media — but over at Sympatico/MSN, we’ve carved out a little space to do something a little different.

With “The Necessities of Life” opening on Toronto screens this weekend (scheduled to capitalize on an Oscar nomination that never happened), we figured we could offer a little love to Canadian movies. So here’s a gallery of eight distinctly Canadian films, for your consideration and your love … and no, “Goin’ Down the Road” did not make the cut. We need to get past that, as a society.

You know I’m right, eh?

This is how fatigued I was when I wrote yesterday’s post about talking to Steven Soderbergh: I didn’t realize I’d written virtually the same exact post a few days earlier, in the service of saluting “The Limey”. Sorry for the redundancy; I hope there was enough new material (like, um, the actual interview) to justify your reading it again.

In other news, it’s Friday and there are movies opening. Shall we?

“Cadillac Records“: Darnell Martin compresses perhaps the most contentious period  in the history of American popular music into a Chess Records greatest-hits album, and when Jeffrey Wright’s Muddy Waters and Mos Def’s Chuck Berry are on the screen, it totally swings. (Mixed metaphor, I know. But appropriate to the characters, I think.) The trouble is, when they’re not on-screen, this is one awfully simplistic movie.

“Che“: I won’t lie to you: It’s a massive undertaking, and it doesn’t fully work. But it doesn’t not work, either, and it’s a fascinating film to unpack after you’ve had time to digest the experience. Does this mean you should run out and sit through the four-and-a-half-hour roadshow version as soon as possible? Well, no. Unless you want to. In that case, maybe it’s worth it. (Frustrating, isn’t it?)

“Fired Up”: A comedy about guys who join a cheerleader camp to meet hot girls. How could this plan possibly go wrong? And is it bad that I kind of like the trailer, and am curious to see it just because it reunites Eric Christian Olsen and Philip Baker Hall from the short-lived but fondly remembered Fox sitcom “The Loop”? Yeah, probably. Stuart takes it down.

“The Necessities of Life”: Set in 1954, Benoit Pilon’s quiet, powerful drama follows the cultural journey of a tubercular Inuit man (”Atanarjuat” star Natar Ungalaaq) brought to a Quebec City hospital for a cure he can’t even begin to understand. It’s really quite something. Try not to let anyone spoil it for you.

“Stone of Destiny“: Yeah, this just sucked. I want to dissect it at length, but it doesn’t merit the effort; sure, the determined Scottish nationalist students who plotted to steal a big rock from Westminster Abbey pulled off something impressive, but the movie that supposedly pays tribute to their venture is predictable, sloppy and utterly inert. So that’s a problem.

Oh, and the World’s Best Commercials program returns to the Bloor Cinema today to delight anyone yearning for several dozen quick hits of high-energy storytelling (and, yes, salesmanship) for an Oscar-weekend distraction. Admit it: A great big movie-theater screen beats click-and-stutter YouTube viewings any day of the week.

Okay, so sometimes the online presentation is a little better than YouTube. But still. Big screen! Happy audience! Go on, you know you want to.

My latest Sympatico/MSN DVD column went up yesterday, but I was away from the interwebs for most of the day — I know, I’m still shaking a bit — so I wasn’t able to post the link. But if you’re at all curious about the failings of “Body of Lies” and “Flash of Genius”, click away.

Also online now, and possibly of interest, is my interview with Steven Soderbergh, whose epic “Che” finally opens in Toronto tomorrow. I’ve interviewed Soderbergh a few times now, and he’s one of my favorite directors to talk to — he’s generous with his time and enthusiastic about his interests, and he’s as much of a gearhead as I am. Well, more so, really, since he actually gets to muck with the stuff I only passively consume.

Anyway, the text version is barely a sliver of the content of our 45-minute conversation — which touched on everything from the high-def format war to the “trojan horse” qualities of his “Ocean’s” trilogy to watching “Chinatown” on HDNet — so I advise you to play the audio clips at the bottom of the page for extra goodness.

And no, Universal has no immediate plans to release catch-up BD editions of “Out of Sight”, “Erin Brockovich” or “Traffic”, so cherish your HD DVDs if you’ve got ‘em.