Olivia Collette has been deconstructing movies since she realized some of her friends were willing to humor her. She has a thing for Laxmi Chhaya dance routines, a crush on Fellini, and a non-negotiable fear of zombie flicks. Based in Montreal, Olivia has written for various print and online publications, including the Montreal Gazette, World Film Locations: San Francisco, Sparksheet, Indiewire’s Press Play blog and the Spectator Arts Blog. She discusses pop culture at Livvy Jams and dissects our inconsistent obsession with body image on The Scrawn. If you see Olivia at Ebertfest, make sure to have your song ready, because she’s totally dragging you to Karaoke.
Some people hate "Dune" because it's nothing like the novel, but venerate "The Shining" for the same reason. You can't please everyone when you adapt a book to film, so you're better off hoping you'll please anyone. Even if it's…
I realize I'm a minority on this one, but I actually liked Bane for much of "The Dark Knight Rises." Even with most of his beautiful face covered up, Tom Hardy has a talent for effective physical acting. Each time…
There's a Someecards meme floating around that reads, "If I don't have sex with you, I'm a prude. If I use the pill, I'm a slut. If I get pregnant, I'm an idiot. And if I choose abortion, I'm Satan."…
Memories don't really have a beginning, a middle and an end. They're more like vignetted sensations, impressions and paraphrases, where the most prominent detail might be sticky fingers from handling a bunch of wheat. If you could only live with…
If there's anything that characterizes Quebec cinema, it's chutzpah despite limited means. The government grants that fund Quebec filmmakers' projects add up to small salaries, but that doesn't restrict their artistic vision. Plus, Quebec's homegrown movies have a better chance…
How do things work in a perfect world? The book of Genesis tells us this much: every living thing lives in harmony, food is plentiful, there is no such thing as pain, and nobody knows the difference between good and…
The Internet is a nit-picky place, so I'm going to put it out there right away: I'm no linguist. But I've been bilingual since birth, and I also learned Italian, German and Spanish along the way. That's why it's always…
No wonder so many people thought Jesus was a heretic! All this talk of a kind and forgiving God? I mean, did he skip the bit where God asks Abraham to kill his favourite son? Wasn't flooding the entire world…
I don't know if people actually deal with grief in five stages, but I've always done it in two: depression and acceptance. I really commit to the sadness, too. I lock myself up for a good week, let the woe…
If there's one thing that's consistently omitted from most Disney fairy tale adaptations, it's abject horror. They certainly make up for it by giving us terrific villains (Maleficent still haunts me), but a lot of the foul and gory details…
Great Movies
