Blog Posts by Will Perkins

"Monsieur Lazhar"The 32nd annual Genie Awards announced their list of nominees earlier this week, and unsurprisingly, Quebecois films dominated the majority of the categories. Jean-Marc Vallée's "Café de Flore" and Philippe Falardeau's "Monsieur Lazhar" lead the pack in the Best Picture category, picking up a number of other major nominations across the board. Falardeau's "Monsieur Lazhar" is Canada's entry in the Best Foreign Language film category at the Oscars, making it a strong favourite at the Genies.
 
The Genies are basically Canada’s version of the Oscars, only not as cool. As a result, like much of the Canadian film industry, the awards are something that most English-speaking Canadians tend to write off. It’s not that good English-language films aren’t being produced in Canada (they are), it’s that generally speaking, homegrown audiences simply aren’t going out of their way to see this homegrown fare. Why then should viewers care about an award show that gives out prizes to movies they haven't