Toronto Public Space Committee activist and cinephile Jonathan Goldsbie has asked me to publicize tonight’s “Torontopocalypse double bill” at the Bloor cinema — Cronenberg’s “The Brood” and Don McKellar’s “Last Night.”
Goldsbie writes:
There are often events celebrating Toronto in music, literature, art, etc., but it’s so rare that there’s an evening devoted to how the city is portrayed in film.
For all the movies shot in Toronto, not that many actually take place here. And of those that do, even fewer are about the city itself. Edgar Wright (director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) is currently in town shooting Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which he hopes will be the best Toronto-set Hollywood movie ever. In a larger sense, though, it’s going to be a time capsule of a particular moment in Toronto. So just as he’s been showing films that have influenced his ideas for Scott Pilgrim’s look, style, and genre (musicals, kung fu films, etc.), Wright is showing his two favourite screen depictions of the setting: David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1979) and Don McKellar’s Last Night (1998) — the pinnacles of Torontopocalypse cinema.
Wright will be joined onstage by Don McKellar and hopefully other special guests.