News

Making movies can be hard, unpredictable work, so it makes sense that, prior to beginning principal photography, many directors try to assemble a team of familiar faces and proven talents. John Ford frequently collaborated with producer Merian C. Cooper; screenwriters like Nunnally Johnson, Dudley Nichols, and Frank S. Nugent; and a whole stock company of actors that included Victor McLaglen, Jack Pennick, Harry Carey Jr., and, of course, John Wayne. On a smaller scale, you've got Joe Dante, who cast character actor Dick Miller in almost all of his movies, and Ron Howard, who's been finding small parts for his brother Clint Howard since making his feature directing debut with 1977's "Grand Theft Auto."

This cohesion gives film productions a sense of built-in camaraderie and purpose; it also conveys an air of confidence in that everyone working on the movie trusts this group of craftspeople knows how to deliver a high-quality picture.

New York's Museum of Modern Arts (MoMA), in association with Telefilm Canada, will organize the seventh annual Canadian Front. This event will be held from March 17 to March 24, 2010. Moreover, New Yorkers will have the chance to see nine Canadian films.

Obviously, this event should help Canadian films to find a U.S. distributor and allow New Yorkers to see Canadian films that were completed over the last 18 months. As a matter of fact, it was the Canadian Front event that allowed Bruce McDonald's brilliant zombie film Pontypool to be distributed in the USA by IFC Films for instance.

This year, the Canadian Front has in store two comedies, two dramas, two coming-of-age stories, two documentaries and an old classic. Speaking about that classic, the film in question was directed by Allan King, a Canadian director who left us in June 2009 and whose work was the subject of a MoMA retrospective in 2007. So,...