As Playtime guest contributor Adam W. workshopped his article “A Clash of History and Fiction in Titanic” in the Playtime contributor forums, his early draft touched off a heady exchange concerning the role of historical accuracy in James Cameron’s Titanic in particular and in fiction in general.
The Titanic and Historical Accuracy
Daniel Swensen: It seems a trifle odd to me to pick on Cameron for “capitalizing on a disaster still easy to recall for its survivors” when movies like The Longest Day were reliving the battles …

I went to India over the summer, and when I came back from the trip I almost had forgotten about the numerous pictures I had taken. But a friend of mine said, why don’t we go through them and see if we can’t edit them. So me and Jessica Valle (who already has a fantastic gallery on Playtime) combed through them and selected images we both dug. We flowed together perfectly and pulled photos out that I had just taken for my own amusement and made them work. …

Though something of a nostalgia trip, Adventureland never falls into the traps of over romanticizing or sentimentalizing a bygone era. Inspired by the events of his own post-adolescence in the 1980s, Greg Mottola writes and directs this surprisingly tender film about confused and loveless young adults. Though beginning on a similar note as many films of its type — a party where the protagonist, James, is introduced as a virgin — the film takes an unusual path from there. He returns home to find out his summer plans are dashed …

"ONE lover, ah ah ah…"
From its somnambulistic opening, a slow-mo Joaquin Phoenix shedding his dry cleaning delivery along a pier and calmly plunging into Sheepshead Bay, his mind’s eye imagining a woman forlornly leaving a home, Two Lovers establishes its pervasive tone as that of fatalistic, romantic depression.  Phoenix is Leonard Kraditor, a young Brighton Beach man with emotional problems whose previous suicide attempt forced him to live in his parents’ apartment and to work for their dry cleaning business.  In quick succession, two love interests enter his life: Sandra …

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 …

Decay, dereliction, decline. All words with a negative association that conjure up images of rusty pipes and abandoned buildings. We never appreciate that even there, beauty can be found, until someone opens our eyes and shows us.

One of the beauties of the internet is that it allows you to meet all kinds of people. One of these people, whom I would have otherwise never encountered, is Sudbury resident Mark S. Gagne. I first met him on the Icine forums as Marv, a poster with a penchant for naughty humour, a deep fondness of movies and an artistic streak that became increasingly apparent as I got to know him better. Playtime Magazine sought him out and we sat down for an exclusive interview with this promising artist.