News

This year’s Film Independent Spirit Awards stayed ahead of the Oscar curve once more, announcing their winners on Saturday, March 4 in the usual chilly, white tent on the Santa Monica beach, with Oscar voting not over until March 7.

Back in the day, when the awards were presented on the Saturday before the Oscars, they had no impact on the Oscars at all. But this year, the big winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which took home seven Spirit awards, is heading straight into the last days of Oscar voting backed by recent key wins at the DGA, PGA, and SAG Awards. Ballots close at 5Pm Pt on March 7.

Host Hasan Minhaj made a point of IFC not renewing their contract to broadcast the awards show, which was live-streamed, like the SAG Awards, on YouTube. First presenter (and former host) Aubrey Plaza congratulated the Spirits for “finally ditching all that...

Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie has died, aged 48.

The star was best known for his role as Gilbert Blythe in the CBC TV Anne of Green Gables movies.

Crombie's sister Carrie confirmed to CBC News on Saturday (April 18) that her brother had suffered a brain haemorrhage and died in New York on Wednesday (April 15).

"We've been going through lots of stories the last couple days," Carrie said. "He was funny, he was sweet, he loved acting, he loved comedy and singing and dancing. As a little kid, he just loved Broadway shows and all of that kind of stuff and would sing and dance in the living room."

Crombie reprised his role as Blythe in two sequels to the original 1984 TV movie, most recently in 2000.

"I think he was really proud of being Gilbert Blythe and was happy to answer any questions," Carrie revealed. "He really enjoyed that series and was happy,...

Canadian actor Jonathan Crombie, best known for playing the role of Gilbert Blythe in the Anne of Green Gables TV movies, has died. He was 48. His sister, Carrie Crombie, on Saturday told CBC News her brother died after a brain hemorrhage on Wednesday in New York City. "He was funny, he was sweet, he loved acting, he loved comedy and singing and dancing," she added in tribute to her late brother. Born in Toronto in 1966, Crombie was spotted as a 17 year-old by casting director Diane Polley, the mother of actress Sarah Polley, while performing in a

read more...

Cate Blanchett, Jared Leto: New York Film Critics go for movie stars in each acting category (photo: Cate Blanchett in ‘Blue Jasmine’) (See previous post: "Hot Jennifer Lawrence, Wet Robert Redford: New York Film Critics Winners.") Cate Blanchett was chosen as the New York Film Critics Circle’s Best Actress for Woody Allen’s comedy-drama Blue Jasmine. Blanchett, already touted as an Oscar 2014 favorite, plays a role with elements in common with Vivien Leigh’s Blanche DuBois in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Leigh was both the New York Film Critics’ and the Academy Awards’ Best Actress of 1951. (Full list of Nyfcc 2013 award winners.) Cate Blanchett has already won an Oscar — Best Supporting Actress for Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, in which she plays Katharine Hepburn — but this is her first Nyfcc win. Back in 2007, Blanchett, as one of several Bob Dylan characters in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There,...

Sarah Polley reveals more about herself than she may have realised in this complex documentary love-letter to her parents

This tender, painful, intimate film is the work of Canadian actor and director Sarah Polley. It is a portrait of her troubled parents, a complex labour of love – part of what is fascinating and even thrilling about this movie is that Polley may not be aware of what it reveals about her personally. This is the second time I have watched it since last year's premiere at Venice, savouring its humour, its heartbreak and its unintentional disclosures, revealing the director's vulnerability and her formidable composure.

Polley has been an object of fascination for me since I saw her charismatic, icily assured performance in Doug Liman's 1999 thriller Go!, and assured everyone that she was going to be bigger than that year's other up-and-comer Angelina Jolie; I still think I may have been right.

Sarah Polley's brilliant, award-winning documentary about her family and their complex inter-relations is our latest film on demand offering

We've given the Guardian Screening Room a bit of a break for the last couple of months as Cannes fever swept everything before it, but now it's roaring back with a fantastic new release: Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell, the complex, disturbing study of her own family.

In what must be some kind of record, our critic Peter Bradshaw has given it a five-star review – twice. Here's what he wrote when he saw it at its world premiere at the Venice film festival:

Stories We Tell is a cine-memoir of Polley's parents, the British-born actor Michael Polley and Canadian actor and casting director Diane Polley. Using Super-8 home-movie footage, faux Super-8 reconstructions, interviews with siblings and, crucially, a memoir written by Michael, Polley has created a portrait of a...

★★★★☆ "When you're in the middle of a story, it isn't a story at all". This is the line that introduces Canadian Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell (2012), a deeply personal yet shrewdly alluring examination of the art of storytelling. Thrusting her own family under the microscopic glare of her inquisitive camera, Polley's lovingly-crafted patchwork of interviews, home movies and nostalgia-tinged narration builds to an emotional crescendo that whisks you away on your own personal journey down memory lane. Stories We Tell is both a heartfelt and immensely playful study about the elusiveness of the truth that asks if facts really are that important.

Polley coaxes her father, Michael, to narrate his own interpretation of their family's intertwining paths (initially a deceptively simple profile of Sarah's late mother, the actress Diane Polley) whilst talking head segments from the rest of the clan fill in the gaps, leading to a hunt for the director's genuine biological father.

When Sarah Polley decided to make a documentary about the mother she lost as a girl of 11, she had no idea of the extraordinary family secret she would unearth. The acclaimed Canadian film-maker talks about the often painful burden of exploring the lives of loved ones – and why she thinks marriage is a 'crazy and optimistic' institution

As I fly to Canada to meet Sarah Polley, I think about the glimpses of her in Stories We Tell – her first full-length documentary feature, which bowled over critics at Sundance and the Venice film festival and has won Canada's Film of the Year award. She looks like a contemplative Madonna on screen, with long, fair hair. She listens more than she talks. She encourages her family to speak. Her film may be her story – but she gets others to tell it. Michael Polley, her British-born father – an actor who worked for an...

Stories We Tell

Directed by Sarah Polley

Written by Sarah Polley

Canada, 2012

How can a documentary ever satisfactorily tell us the truth? No matter what the topic of debate is, how can the filmmakers relay to us the supposed truth of a situation without any form of bias or creative control poking through? Hell, what is truth? Yes, such heady philosophical notions and questions are present in each moment of Sarah Polley’s newest film Stories We Tell, a documentary of sorts, in that it’s structured around real lives and real people. But the movie is not shy about showing us how certain conversations, meetings, and moments are recreated, or where the boom microphones or the cameras are located, or even the process of recording voiceover narration. As an experiment, it’s absolutely compelling. Its attempts at emotion are slightly less successful.

Ostensibly, Stories We Tell is the story of Polley’s mother,...

Michael Douglas steps into Liberace's shoes, the Man of Steel returns, and Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright complete their Britcom trilogy

★ Critic's Choice Behind the Candelabra

(dir. Steven Soderbergh)

An outrageous, florid study of one of the most over-the-top people in showbusiness history. Michael Douglas plays the preening, pompadoured piano king Liberace, and Matt Damon is Scott Thorson, his chauffeur and lover. The affair curdles and ends in a nightmarish sanity contest. A fascinating study of a dysfunctional relationship and a brilliant black comedy. 7 June

Man of Steel 3D

(dir. Zack Snyder)

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it's a journalist of pre-Leveson integrity who also has another vocation. Henry Cavill plays the Man of Steel, who escaped from planet Krypton as a child after calamity hit and now has to embrace his destiny, and his Lycra, when Earth is threatened by a marauding power. Hopes...

The first thing that director Sarah Polley asks of the subjects of her documentary debut, Stories We Tell, is for “the whole story.” She asks for it with little fanfare and with an obvious desire to allow her subjects as long as they need to tell that whole story. But, more than anything, Polley asks for that truth honestly, believing that there actually is some whole story to be revealed and that enough time and patience and questions will allow it to show itself. It’s a wild idea, really, asking for honesty and cohesion, even when it comes to documentary filmmaking, a process that, more than anything, aims to illuminate truth and real stories. And yet, it’s also an insane demand – stories are subjective, memory so fickle, experience so fractured – can we expect people to give Polley one satisfying story? On the other hand, we can’t blame Polley for asking for such truth because...

Sarah Polley has two babies.

One is the tiny, gurgling human one the Canadian actress-writer-director gave birth to almost a year ago, who she only takes quick breaks from. The other one is her debut documentary Stories We Tell, which she directed about a soul-baring family secret: that she’s the result of an affair her mother, actress Diane Polley, who passed away when she was 11, had during her marriage.

The emotional movie, filled with interviews with family members and bright, charming archival footage of her lookalike mom, premiered to brilliant reviews at film festivals last year in Venice, Telluride,...

Roadside Attractions has picked up Sarah Polley's documentary "Stories We Tell," a representative for Roadside told TheWrap on Monday. Polley directed "Stories We Tell" from her own script and also stars in the film, which premiered in Venice. The documentary interweaves home movies, interviews and narration to tell this story about a long-held family secret: Polley found out later in life that she was the product of an affair her mother, Diane Polley, had in the 1970s. A journalist threatened to reveal the secret before Polley decided to tell the story on screen. Also...

Toronto – The secret is out: actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley is the product of an affair her mother, actress Diane Polley, had in the 1970s. In a blog post on the National Film Board of Canada website, Polley on Wednesday revealed the family secret as her latest film, Stories We Tell, debuted at the Venice Film Festival. "My father's response to this staggering piece of news was extraordinary," Polley writes, who confessed the news to her dad in 2007 after a journalist threatened to expose a dark secret she had kept to herself. "He has always been a

read more...

Sarah Polley's portrait of her parents' marriage is a gripping tale, full of richness, tenderness and emotional complexity

After the disappointment of Sarah Polley's recent feature Take This Waltz – a treacly, implausible and bafflingly inert love triangle – it is a relief, and in fact a thrill, to report that her new film is a joy.

Stories We Tell is a cine-memoir of Polley's parents, the British-born actor Michael Polley and Canadian actor and casting director Diane Polley. Using Super-8 home-movie footage, faux Super-8 reconstructions, interviews with siblings and, crucially, a memoir written by Michael, Polley has created a portrait of a marriage that is full of enormous richness, tenderness and emotional complexity.

Polley tackles painful issues with candour and tact. She has a gripping tale to tell. It's a film that raises questions about the ownership of memory and ownership of narrative. On this point, and perhaps without fully realising it,...