Camera: a mix of Canada’s best filmmakers and top critics at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards

Camera: a mix of Canada’s best filmmakers and top critics at the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards

Camera: T.O. Film Critics Bash

January 10, The Carlu. The annual Toronto Film Critics Association Awards mixes Canada’s best filmmakers and critics—which can be a great opportunity for a little payback. David Cronenberg, whose latest film, A Dangerous Method, is nominated for 11 Genies, took advantage of his turn at the presenter’s mic to characterize critics as a “scruffy lot”; TFCA president and Maclean’s film critic Brian Johnson volleyed back: “Without us, how would filmmakers know why their films stink?” Cronenberg didn’t win Best Canadian Film (that honour went to Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar), but he easily won best anecdote of the night—and proved his chops in the art of self-criticism. He described one of his early directing efforts, 1975’s Shivers, which included a soft-core scene featuring sex on a swing. In his eagerness to impress, he admitted, he may have captured the action from “a few too many angles.”

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