INTERVIEW: John Ridley, writer/director of Jimi: All Is By My Side

After all the talk from last year’s TIFF centered around the eventually Oscar-winning Best Picture 12 Years a Slave, you can’t blame yourself for forgetting its Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley brought another film he both wrote and directed. Jimi: All Is By My Side flew under the radar and was mired by a media blitz intent on focusing around the fact it didn’t acquire the rights to any of its titular subject Jimi Hendrix‘s music. What it did have, however, was a uniquely arresting visual and aural style that looked…

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REVIEW: The Book of Eli [2010]

“Stay on the path; it’s not your concern” Sometimes promotional material lets on to the truth. By watching the trailers for The Book of Eli, I became excited to see the film due to its stripped color palette, post-apocalyptic environment, and Denzel Washington’s insane fighting skills. For some reason, though, all those posters saying “Deliver Us” and the fact of it all centering on a book that’s more important than anything else left on earth—a weapon even—eluded me in realizing just how large religion would loom over everything. The Hughes…

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