Yes, we’re doing it again! We’re taking a holiday that has nothing to do with Halloween but giving it a creepy spin. Why? Because we can. And funny enough, in this case it really works. Maybe not on every holiday but Valentine’s Day just seems to blend nicely with terror. I mean, it is already covered in red…
So welcome to Valloween, the latest in our ongoing series of me talking about how you can take beloved holidays and turn them into another reason to get scary.
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There’s always been one thing that marks the summer season for me, and thankfully for everyone who is a heat-hater and a (crazy) winter-lover, it’s a sure-fire way to beat the heat. If you can’t get yourself to the beach or a pool, what better way to keep the summer sweat off than heading to the movies? Before you start raising your brows at me, if you’re struggling with the endless string of humidity and… more humidity, sitting yourself down in a dark and way too air-conditioned room for approximately two hours and change does sound nice, no? Plus, there are snacks, and who can’t be convinced by the siren call of snacks?
That’s not the only reason summer brings the theatre to mind, though. With summer comes blockbuster movie season! Sometimes you might get a whole three months of flops, or you could get a marathon of slam dunks like 2024’s release schedule of Deadpool & Wolverine and Alien: Romulus. With the new Fantastic 4 (which if anything, I will solely be seeing for Pedro Pascal) and Superman already hitting the big screen, and movies like Weapons, Freakier Friday, and Nobody 2 soon to release, I have a feeling we might be in for another summer blockbuster season that will ensure no one gives you funny looks for avoiding the sun. But until then, I thought we could look at the blockbusters of years past, so if you’re keen on setting up your haven from the great outdoors, hang onto your popcorn buckets! I’ve polled our staff at VPL for their favorite blockbusters of all time to bring them to you in a head-to-head bracket battle in a search for the Ultimate Summer Blockbuster (subjectively, as I will be sole judge and jury, and box office numbers don’t count). If you’ve got your snacks, let’s dive right in!
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Toronto is perched atop a deep seam of film lore. As you probably know, it’s a city that stands in for other cities. The historic streets coupled with bright, piercing skyscrapers provide a versatile backdrop for all sorts of productions — period and modern alike. Talking with my fellow HOTS Blog team member Royce the other day helped me come up with the idea for this blog post. So, Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls. Wait. One sec. Let me try that again. Let’s explore Toronto’s history of film production, taking a tour of the spots that are now famous for their inclusion in film and TV. Starting with Serendipity. I have warm, fuzzy memories and the softest of spots for this 2001 rom-com starring Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack (who coincidentally has a distinctly mullet-like hairdo in this movie). When it premiered, 9/11 had just happened, so it was one of the films that ended up using CGI to remove the Twin Towers after its initial release. The film’s commercial success was affected as well, as people avoided crowded, public places in the aftermath of the attack. It developed a following in the years after, though. Now, it seems to regularly make the cable rounds on weekend evenings, enticing viewers with the promise of well-intentioned twee. And, I mean, Eugene Levy is in it. According to Good Housekeeping, the elevator scene where the pair test whether they are fated to be a couple was actually filmed at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel downtown, not the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Toronto is always pretending to be New York. The latter is like an older cousin who lets you borrow their ID to get into a bar. The reviews for this movie are not great, with a 58% on the Tomatometer. Sometimes you wonder if critics are affected by their moods when they review a film. I understand this kind of thing is not for everyone, but even Ebert wasn’t won over by the combined charisma of two Hollywood stalwarts. I don’t get it. It’s an incredibly light story about two people that have a compulsion toward self-sabotage. (Don’t worry about fate. Ever. Especially when it comes to romance. Life decisions should never be made by an amorphous, hypothetical concept. They should be made by people. Okay, I’m off my soap box now.) To be honest, the most winning element of this movie might be the way it romanticizes New York — an almost otherworldly metropolis with a sheen of fictionality to it. They did film in Toronto, but there’s plenty of shots of the city that never sleeps.
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