Scientists detected gravitational waves earlier this week, a landmark discovery that will teach us all sort of things about space-time and the nature of the universe. By “us”, of course, I mean “people who actually study these things”. I made a Star Trek joke on Twitter and then went back to watching Neko Case’s puppy videos.
Anyway, my point is that we should let the scientists do their work, and the rest of us should bundle up and go to the movies.
Maybe you’d like to check out the Toronto Black Film Festival’s annual gala on Saturday (February 13) This year, the festival honours Alfre Woodard with its 2016 TBFF Career Achievement Award at a ceremony at Jackman Hall, featuring a tribute to Woodard and a screening of her new drama Knucklehead, in which she plays the monstrous mother of young hero Gbenga Akinnagbe. Woodard, Akinnagbe and director Ben Bowman will all be present for a post-screening Q&A. Tickets are still available!
If you’re looking for something romantic and swoony on Valentine’s Day proper (Sunday February 14), the Revue Cinema has a few options lined up, screening Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl at 4 pm, Todd Haynes’s Carol at 6:45 pm and Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango In Paris at 9:30 pm.
Yes, Last Tango is a little more on the doomed side than the others in fact, the theatre is billing it as “erotic downer cinema”. But it’s preceded by a live performance by The Canadian Romantic, which should leaven the mood a little.
Downtown at the Market Square Cinema, the feel is a little snappier, with the Rainbow Rewind program screening the Cary Grant-Rosalind Russell screwball classic His Girl Friday at 11 am and 11 pm. Bring a date! Admission is two-for-one on all tickets, and free chocolates will be distributed, so everybody wins.
Monday (February 15) is Family Day, which means kid’s stuff rules the land. The Market Square Cinema is screening Don Bluth’s dino classic The Land Before Time at 11 am in their very first Rainbow Rascals Kid Classics event – but if you can’t make it to the St. Lawrence area, it’s also playing at the Lightbox at 11:15 am. (Other TIFF’s Family Day options: the delightful Ernest & Celestine at 11:30 am and 2 pm, and Nicolas Roeg’s darker-than-you-remember The Witches at 1:15 pm.
I mean, this assumes we’re all still alive by Monday, rather than frozen in the new polar vortex or swallowed by an angry black hole. Let’s hope for the best.
