Raquel Stecher

Canadian filmmaking duo Calvin Thomas and Yonah, chatted with me about their new film White Lie which recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. The film stars Kacey Rohl as a college student who lies about having cancer. It’s equal parts fascinating and horrifying (you can read my review here). A must see if you’re interested in human behaviors and love a good story.
Left: Calvin Thomas – Right: Yonah Lewis
Raquel Stecher: What was the genesis of this story?
Calvin Thomas...

The 44th annual Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) kicked off on September 5th. This ten-day festival is chock-full of international delights from gala presentations, special events, international premieres, red carpet openings, lectures, award ceremonies, and more. It’s at TIFF that many of the big Oscar nominees and winners have their world premieres.
What can you expect at TIFF? Everything from big blockbuster feature films, to international dramas and comedies, documentaries, shor...

In July of 2002, I signed up for DVD Netflix for the very first time. My friend Amit who had been a member of the service from the very beginning kept telling me how much he loved renting from them and how easy it was to return DVDs in the mail. He kept bugging me about it until I finally caved. I’m so glad I listened to him.
For the first few years, I was a member off and on, depending on whether I was studying in college (both undergrad and grad school years) and had too much on my plate. B...

THE BEDFORD INCIDENT (’65) was one of several doomsday films, including 1964’s FAIL-SAFE and DR. STRANGELOVE, that were released during the early years of the Cold War era. These films tapped into the growing fear of how power in the wrong hands, or one crucial mistake, could wield disastrous results. Based on the novel by Mark Rascovich and adapted by James Poe, THE BEDFORD INCIDENT was one of only five films directed by James B. Harris.
THE BEDFORD INCIDENT is essentially a Cold War Moby-Di...

What if you took a relatively ordinary life and spiced it up? And what if the emotional high points could turn into fanciful musical numbers? Written and directed by Peruvian filmmaker María Paz González, Lina from Lima is a portrait of a single mom caught in a state of limbo. Magaly Solier stars as Lina, an immigrant from Peru who works for a wealthy family in Chile. She’s preparing to go home to Lima, Peru for the holidays. Without a real home of her own, she spends nights at the empty summ...

Finding Zsa Zsa
The Gabors Behind the Legend
by Sam Staggs
Kensington Books
July 2019
448 pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781496719591
Amazon — Barnes and Noble — Powells
Before the Kardashians there were the Gabors. Zsa Zsa, Eva, Magda and the queen of the tribe Jolie, the Gabors were a force to be reckoned with. Between the four of them they had over 20 husbands. Their family name was synonymous with glamour, wealth, jewels and fame. When they came over from Hungary, they took America by storm.
Joli...

I had the pleasure of sitting down with director Jahmil X.T. Qubeka and the cast of Knuckle City, Bongile Mantsai, Sivuyile Ngesi, Thembikile Komani and Faniswa Yisa ahead of the international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Knuckle City is a gripping film about an aging boxer trying to get back into the ring and his difficult relationship with his family, especially his father and his brother. The film was chosen as South Africa’s entry for Academy Award consideration. Y...

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Neasa Hardiman, the writer and director of Sea Fever. This science fiction film was a hit at the recent Toronto International Film Festival. It tells the story of a marine biologist who joins a fishing trawler on an expedition and the group comes face to face with a mysterious underwater creature. I really enjoyed this film and was thrilled to be able to talk to the woman who started it all.
Raquel Stecher: Your film Sea Fever felt classic but also bran...

It’s been a long time since Marianne (Noémie Merlant) saw her own painting entitled Portrait of a Lady on Fire. When one of her art students brings out the portrait it stirs memories of its subject. Years ago, Marianne was hired by La Comtesse (Valeria Golino) to draw a portrait of her daughter Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). The painting was to be part of her dowry when she married a wealthy gentleman from Milan. But there’s a catch. Héloïse can’t know she’s being painted. La Comtesse comes up with ...

We all recognize the iconic image of Jean Seberg in Jean Luc Godard's Breathless (1960) walking the streets of Paris and wearing her New York Herald Tribune shirt. For those with a richer knowledge of film history we know her film career started with a tortured performance as Joan of Arc in Saint Joan (1957) followed by a very different performance as Cecile, the bored rich kid in Bonjour Tristesse (1958), both directed by Otto Preminger. But what may not be as closely associated with Seberg ...

At the world premiere of director Armando Iannucci’s new film The Personal History of David Copperfield, he was asked by an audience member the reasoning behind his diverse casting choices. His response: ‘Why shouldn’t I draw from 100% of the acting community?’
As I sat to watch the film I kept thinking to myself, I’m glad I lived long enough to see such a diverse cast in an adaptation of a classic novel. Naysayers step aside. This take is refreshing and modern while staying true to the spiri...

The newest film from Portuguese director Tiago Guedes, A Herdade is a sprawling family saga. João Fernandes (Albano Jeronimo) has inherited his father’s grand estate, one of the biggest in Portugal, which includes vast farm lands, a crew of workers and servants and the main house. As the patriarch he rules his family and his subordinates with a firm hand. João fares better with his right hand man Joaquim (Miguel Borges), Joaquim’s wife Rosa (Ana Vilela da Costa) and his communist mechanic Leo...

I was at the world premiere of Dolemite is My Name at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. Here are some photos of the film’s stars as they walked the red carpet.
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Norwegian filmmaker Jorunn Myklebust Syversen’s latest film Disco is a heady exploration of the danger of Christian cults and what it means to lose yourself. Teenage Mirjam (Josefine Frida Pettersen) is a champion dancer, a singer and one of the faces of her stepfather Per’s congregation Freedom. All is not right in her household. Per is controlling, her mother harbors a dark secret about the abuse Mirjam suffered years ago by her biological father and Mirjam is now collapsing during her comp...

Directed by Rupert Goold, Judy avoids the cradle-to-grave story and focuses on two of the most difficult periods in the life of Judy Garland. The story flashes back to 1939 when a teenage Judy Garland (Darci Shaw) is on the MGM lot making The Wizard of Oz (1939). It's there that she faces long working hours, an overbearing mother and a temperamental Louis B. Mayer. To maintain her weight she's restricted from eating the foods a teenager would typically indulge in and is put on a regimen of pi...