Journal Article

Retrovision at Fantasia 2022

Jordan, Randolph

2023

Overview

Instead of occupying a seat at Concordia’s Hall Theatre to see John Woo accepting a Career Achievement Award, ahead of a 35mm screening of his 1992 epic Hard Boiled, I’m at the Bell Centre waiting for Roger Waters to take the stage for our local stop on his This is Not a Drill tour. The Bell Centre just smacks of the 21st corporate takeover of the fabled rock palaces of the past, venues across North America being rebranded every couple years by everything from big tech companies to oil change franchises, and I’m not one for hanging on to shreds of past glory filtered through new sanitized formations in service of the profit-motive. [...]with $150 on the line, it was the sunken cost that got me. Waters’ bitterness over Gilmour’s contribution to the band is so tedious by now, and here he is, at age 78, continuing to infuse this bitterness into the very fabric of his shows. While it might seem a bit odd to go to a cinema to see a film that you can buy on disc at the vending tables right outside the cinema, Fantasia audiences know that experiencing the film in the context of a festival screening provides the gold standard to theatrical experience, something you just can’t get at home.

• Publisher: Donald Totaro
• Subject: Bands / Festivals / Motion pictures / Theater / Waters, Roger