An early casualty of the 2009 Oscar Shuffle, Joe Wright’s The Soloist was originally positioned for a fall season award campaign, but ended up being pushed back to a late spring release for reasons only the gods of AMPAS can fathom. Meticulous and meditative, what might have been little more than a showcase for two Academy-level actors at the top of their game was embellished and broadened by Wright’s ornate flourishes and Susannah Grant’s screenplay, which contends with social awareness in a surprisingly antagonistic fashion. You see, the sum total of The Soloist’s wisdom is that perhaps the best thing for the impoverished is to leave them well enough alone.

Some critics of Francois Truffaut’s 1962 film, Jules et Jim have argued that the film’s central character, Catherine (brought to life by the incomparable Jeanne Moreau), is an impulsive and unpredictable force of nature. You cannot anticipate what she will do, and perhaps that’s why she is so enchanting to her male friends. Though there is something to this idea, I think there are too many patterns in her behaviour to it off as completely random. To the audience, she is not enchanting because she is impulsive, but rather because …

Huge lot of comics fans that we are, the Playtime Staff sat down for a roundtable on Zach Snyder’s Watchmen (2009). Matt Kessen, our resident Watchmen expert was tapped to conduct the discussion, especially in regards to how the film differed from Moore’s graphic novel. The following takes place over the the week before and after the film’s release. If you are interested in continuing the discussion, feel free to jump into the fray on the forum.

Page One: Quis custodiet ipsos custodis? The Pre-Game
Page Two: Why I Am Not Seeing …

A surprisingly sturdy, mildly provocative 105 minute movie is hiding somewhere in Watchmen’s gangly two and three-quarter hours running time. Dense with shockingly unnecessary exposition, this story about the nature of heroism and identity indulges in a great deal of introspective character study between bouts of flamboyant brutality and fleeting moments where director Zack Snyder’s technical prowess and filmmaking ambition coincide. As a messy, sprawling adaptation, the product of marketing, focus-testing, and the instincts of a young would-be visionary still learning his craft, the inchoate professionalism of the production serves the film’s gargantuan ambitions and readymade stature, rather than completely defeating it. From the perspective of the film’s own history, it is a miracle that it got made at all.

While Inkheart leans heavily on the darker side running under the surface of good children’s literature, the mind-blowing dimensions of its premise are undercut by an extremely workmanlike aesthetic approach and plot holes that go unaddressed. The film itself subverts its ostensibly honest approach to common human themes like loss, breaking away from self-imposed emotional prisons, the complicated relationship between parents and children, and the nature of evil and suffering. Y’know. “Kid’s stuff.”

I say without reservation: it is a fantastic time to be a writer. From the rise of small-print publishing online and off, to the celebration of writers in some of the most influential television programs (Oprah and The Daily Show come to mind), the paths to becoming a published author have never been as varied as they are today. Whether you NaNo1 or AWP; whether you sit down with a strong cuppa in front of a keyboard on weeknights and weekends; or whether you cram pages of prose in at …