Darren Aronofsky Ought to Make an Oil Sands Documentary

Cenovus’ Christina Lake oil sands operation

Darren Aronofsky’s been making the rounds on the internet recently more for a piece of environmental writing published on The Daily Beast than for one of his films, so it seems to me the only logical next step would be to combine the two. Did anyone else notice that an incredible story readily discloses itself in Aronofsky’s diary? It reads almost like an environmentalist version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, with environmental violations taking the place of slavery, the oil-profiteering Suncor dutifully filling in for the tyrannical slave-dealing Company, and things looking bleaker and grimmer for the human race as Aronofsky and his team travel upriver.

The Calls are Coming from Inside the House: Adam Wingard’s “The Guest”

After establishing himself amongst horror lovers as a quirky, smart and genre-literate director with You’re Next, Adam Wingard resists the easy request to imitate himself and instead makes an action thriller that blasts open the horror film highlights of the 70s and 80s to extract a post-modern glimmer of what made those films so cool.

Film Recommendation: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Catherine Deneuve at the train station, begging her lover to stay, promising she would wait for him, knowing it couldn’t possibly be true: Jacques Demy’s fantastically grand musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg broke my heart. An ambitious musical on a limited budget, Cherbourg covers a half-decade span of time in the lives of two young lovers separated by time. Entirely sung, with lyrics that range from the inessential to the unforgettable, Cherbourg is an intimately scaled epic.

Here’s an English version of the song, covered innumerable times by numerous artists, sung here by the gorgeous Connie Francis (Futurama fans might already be familiar with this song from a rather appropriate appropriation). But don’t forget it was Michel Legrand who created its original French incarnation, a devastating duet between a teary-eyed Deneuve and a stoic Nino Castelnuovo in Cherbourg‘s most emotionally climactic scene. Deneuve was never more lovely or more beautiful.