Kurt Halfyard
Toronto, Canada

Scientist by day, cinema aficionado by night. Film festival addict and family man. Kurt has been writing for Twitch since pretty much the inception of the site and can often be found in rep-houses around Toronto taking his kids to films that are rather inappropriate for their age.

Review: KILLER JOE, Crazy on Display
[With the film opening theatrically in New York today and expanding wider next week, we revisit our review from the last edition of the Toronto International Film Festival.] When the name William Friedkin comes up in conversation, you cannot help... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: BLACK POND
In the running with Quentin Dupieux's Wrong as the funniest entry in the Fantasia and possibly of this year so far, I am going to give Black Pond the edge because of its Errol Morris "Life is pretty damn strange,... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: RESOLUTION
David Mamet once wrote that the end of a great film should be both surprising and inevitable.  Resolution is a horror movie of ideas; a twisted semiotic pretzel which is an ode to our collective addiction to scary movies, and how we glean meaning... More »
  

Review: AI WEIWEI: NEVER SORRY Throws Stones, Gracefully
[With the film opening in limited theatrical release in Canada and the U.S. tomorrow, we revisit our review from this year's HotDocs.] A common phrase on the internet, particularly in social media circles is "Pictures, or it didn't happen."... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT
[With the new film from Alex de la Iglesia playing Fantasia, and Joshua Chaplinski's review echoing my sentiments almost to the T, we present his review of the film from earlier this year]Iberian rapscallion Alex de la Iglesia returns with AS... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: JACKPOT
Oscar Svendson is in deep trouble.  Picked up by the police at a strip-bar with a dead fat woman laying on top of him, one of a dozen corpses littering the place, and a still-warm shot-gun in his hands, he... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: AMOK
Cities have a boiling point.  Like the 'Summer of Sam' in New York, or the Rodney King incident and fallout in Los Angeles, the individual people, each a tiny molecule of activity, can bump into one another slowly, raising the temperature, the... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: WRONG
Quentin Dupieux's genre deconstruction effort, Rubber, from a couple years ago, left some folks scratching their head, and others critical of its 'extended comedy sketch' nature; likley then, Wrong is probably not the right film for them.  With a bigger thematic... More »
  

Fantasia 2012: If You've Heard it All Before, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet! PONTYPOOL CHANGES
We do not post One-Sheets, or Promo Key art as separate posts very often around here, only on those special occasions.  However, Being in the thick of a quite poster-heavy Fantasia Film Festival - an art show; 2 panels; and... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: FUNERAL KINGS
Even though school is in session during Funeral Kings, it feels like one of those 'endless summer' movies where boys that are too young to work, and too old to hang out with their parents, find interesting and elaborate ways... More »
  

From Boys to Men: A Conversation with FUNERAL KINGS writer/director twins The McManus Brothers
After Funeral Kings screened to a full house in J.A. De Seve Theatre at Fantasia, the brothers McManus, Matt and Kevin, as well as their co-producer Michael McGarry bumped into me first at one of the usual end of the... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: MONDOMANILA
Gutter poetry at its finest, Khavn De La Cruz's parade of humanity at its strangest in Filipino caper-doc-musical Mondomanila is not to be missed.  The slums outside of Manila are hell on earth; an unsolvable problem of poverty and the ass... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: CHILDREN WHO CHASE LOST VOICES FROM DEEP BELOW
[With the very Ghibli-esque Hoshi O Ou Kodomo playing at Fantasia, we revisit Niels Matthis' review which I am inclined to almost completely agree with.]Whenever Makoto Shinkai (5 Centimeters Per Second, Hoshi no Koe) releases a new film it always feels like... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: THE AMBASSADOR
Either Mads Brügger has balls the size of grapefruits or there is mondo chicanery going on in The Ambassador.  Well, it's a given that there is trickery happening, so the thing to figure out is who the trick is on: The Central... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: FOR LOVE'S SAKE
The latest razzle dazzle genre mash, For Love's Sake, from the maddeningly prolific Takashi Miike tackles the high melodrama of unrequited love with a gaggle of high school seniors as they collectively pave the road to hell with good intentions... More »
  

Fantasia 2012 Review: HEADSHOT
[With Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Headshot playing Fantasia, we return to Kathie Smith's review from earlier this year]Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Headshot is an antithetical thriller that easily morphs into a subdued, slate-grey crime noir. With a striking sense of ease and control, Ratanaruang steers his eighth... More »
  

Review: ALPS Fuses High and Low Culture
[After a run on the festival circuit, ALPS opens for a theatrical run in New York and Florida on Friday, July 13, so we're republishing our review from the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. Check the "Related Links" section for... More »
  

Full Fantasia Schedule Is Now Online (And It is Loaded!)
As anyone who has attended Montreal's Fantasia Film Festival can attest, the festival is MASSIVE; and it has been growing at an alarming rate year over year.   With its new production marketplace and a plethora of new spotlights, tributes and... More »
  

Trailer for Teller & Robbins' PLAY DEAD
With its world premiere at this years edition of The Fantasia Film Festival Play Dead is the filmed version of the off-Broadway magic and stage show dedicated to the tradition of Grand Guignol, that is to say, putting a lot... More »
  

Trailer for Spike Lee's RED HOOK SUMMER
Spike Lee's Red Hook Summer got a few minutes trimmed off its run time after its Sundance debut, and is coming along in August of this year.  A more neighborhood driven effort for Lee, who seems to be going for... More »
  
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FEAR & LOATHING AT CANNES, PART 3: EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL AND I'M TRIPPING BALLS

CHAPTER 6: THERE'S NOTHING MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN A PURPLE BEACH SMOTHERED IN MELTING TROMMETTES DURING A CRIMSON TINGED SUNSET ON THE FRENCH RIVERIA, HOLY SHIT I'M TRIPPING MY FUCKING FACE OFF.It's night. When the fuck did it become night? I'm naked. Where the fuck did my clothes go? I'm on... More »

Destroy All Monsters: I Think We've Been This Way Before, Mr. Spock

They can remember it for you wholesale, and they do. At some point, we licensed our pop cultural nostalgia to a handful of multinational conglomerates (well, to be fair, they always owned the licenses) and now they're selling them back to us - though, I guess, not at wholesale, but... More »

Interview: Twitch Talks to HANGOVER III's Ken Jeong

Ken Jeong may often play a lunatic on both big and small screen, but in person it's quite disarming to see just how calm and considerate he comes across. While he got his big screen start in Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, Jeong's real breakthrough was taking a small-on-paper role... More »

Hollywood Beat: Notes On Cutting The Cord And NBC's Genre Programs

I cut the cable cord last year, but I'm not always happy about it. I had to wait a year before seeing Season 2 of Game of Thrones, for example, and will have to wait to see Season 3 until next year. I only have to wait to see Mad... More »

Twitchvision: Talking STAR TREK: INTO DARKNESS, MUD and THE ICEMAN

Another Twitchvision chat with Scott Laurie, this time me gushing about J.J.'s latest Star Trek film, which I unabashedly loved.Also talked about he fabbo Mud, and the less fabbo The Iceman, both with Michael Shannon doing his thing.Video embedded below.Update: Was asked to come in today and pick a few... More »
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