Row Three is a collaborative film website that aims to foster discussion and community for those who like their cinema a bit Hollywood, a bit indie and a bit foreign. Formed and run by a collective of writers who try to stray from summer blockbusters and the so-called “popcorn” flicks in favor of a bit more upscale fare. We are not always successful in this endeavor; nonetheless we all love to talk movies and we hope to build a place for everyone to join in on the conversation. Everything you ever wanted to know about the contributors from the third row is listed below.
Our Contributors
John Allison
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I’ve had a love of movies since watching Star Wars at the Drive In. I would like to think that my tastes have expanded a fair amount since then. I am devoted fan of Asian Cinema and I love film that strives to be something more than the generic blockbuster. My time is currently split between working on the site with the much appreciated help of Andrew, Jandy and Mike, waiting for the next Johnnie To film and attempting to start up a genre film festival in Saskatoon.
Andrew James
(site Admin.)
- See all posts by Andrew
- Google: Buzz and Profile
- Twitter: @Andrew_James
Spotify: Profile - Get Glue: Profile
- iTunes: Ping
- YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/drewbacca35
- The Auteurs: Mubi Profile
- Addicting Games: AG
The obsession essentially began at age 4. Ever since that seemingly endless Star Destroyer streaked over his head it was all over. Premium cable channels and two video rental stores practically within ear shot didn’t help matters either. Since the advent of email and interwebs Andrew has pushed his love (and occasional hate) for the movies on pretty much everyone he knows that’s willing to listen (and often even if they’re not). RowThree gives this Minneapolis native a voice to reach out even further. The love for Hollywood over the past couple of years has slowly dwindled into a greater appreciation for foreign and more independent fare. Though a trip to the multiplex can be quite entertaining from time to time. Favorites include Kubrick, Polanski, The Coens and Steven Soderbergh among many others.
Marina Antunes
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- Twitter: @themarina
Often said to have eclectic tastes, Marina enjoys a wide variety of films from the obscure to the mainstream. A Vancouver based writer, she enjoys the art of socializing about film almost as much as the films themselves. As a supporter of peace, she’s more likely to sit back and read through the fights than participate but she’s also not afraid to step up to the plate when necessary. She’s on an endless quest to discover great Canadian film and watch as many vampire films as she can.
Marina is also a “Twilight” fan and will defend the cultural phenomenon even though deep within,< she knows it’s not good.
Jonathan B.
- See all posts by Jonathan
- Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/profile/jonathanjames
- Website: http://www.jonathanwriting.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/theburdick
Jonathan, who hails from western Pennsylvania in the snow belt of the United States, is in constant pursuit of his fortune and glory. In the meantime, he graciously volunteers his genius to the internet, providing his insight on cinema and showering lessons of life to all of those who cross his path. Some view him as a modern-day Nietzsche. While you’ll often find his nose in a book, he loves fine beer and finer women – and his heart will always belong to the movies, which captured his imagination at an early age, opening his mind to the worlds of dashing adventurers, morally ambiguous gunfighters, shady gangsters, and well-meaning space smugglers. Like every other schmuck out there, he claims to be a writer, and hopes to be a published author before he’s so old that using it to pick up women becomes irrelevant.
Kurt Halfyard
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- Twitter: @triflic
- Twitch: http://twitchfilm.net/site/authors/Kurt/
- You-Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/triflic
- (now defunct) KBT Screener Series: http://kurtscomment.blogspot.com/
Blessed with parents who had no issue with their six-year old sitting through a VHS copy of Jaws, I was fortunate enough to inhale a wide range of popular cinema when I was both impressionable and easily traumatized. From The Wrath of Kahn to Out of Africa, at the cinema anything was fair game during family outings in the early 1980s. Assess the mental scar tissue caused from Quint’s chewed off lower body, mind altering ear-slugs (or for that matter, a bare chested Ricardo Montalban) and an endless Sydney Pollack epic on the therapist couch if you will, but the bottom line is: The video age corresponded with coming-of-age. For better or worse, everything I learned about life was rented on VHS or Beta for $1.99.
More recently, time is spent kicking around local film festivals (of which there are many), writing whenever possible, and traumatizing my own children with classic Kaiju films and off-beat animation.
Mike Rot
- See all posts by Mike
- Twitter: @Mike_Rot
- My Blog: Clever Beast
Mike Rot is a Toronto-based writer who though monkish in his devotion to aesthetic contemplation, will rarely turn down a good scrap in the comment section. He eats film geeks for breakfast, and bemoans the culture that chooses to archive cinema rather than experience it. Though an agile master of war, he is but a kind warrior, who cries at a good movie and considers each film according to what it aspires to be. In search of the beatnik spontaneous prose and calibrated sperit, he populates the worlds of Akira Kurosawa and Terrence Malick. He had a thought a couple years ago, and one day hopes to write a screenplay.
Jandy (Stone) Hardesty
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- Google+
- Letterboxd
- Personal site: The Frame
Jandy is a twenty-something film buff, music fan, internet addict, television nut, and gamer girl. That’s the overview, anyway. She’s drawn to classic, off-beat, and foreign film, but loves a good blockbuster action sequence, too. Hailing from the midwest originally, she now resides in Los Angeles. You know, for the great cost of living to be had there. Or not. At least there’s a great music scene and a lot of repertory cinemas. At one point, academia seemed in the cards, but now she’s left that world. Maybe for good, but who really knows? In any case, two years of an M.A. in literature have left their mark, for good or ill.
Bob Turnbull
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- Personal site: Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind
Bob is older than the rest of you. That’s OK though, since he’s pretty comfortable in his old wrinkled skin these days. He came to Toronto (from Montreal – fresh out of McGill University) for the IT Architect job, but stayed for the diverse culture and plethora of choices in the arts. Oh, and I guess the amazing woman I married and the too-good-to-be-true child I had were also reasons enough to stay. I’ve always loved film, but it became a bit more of the obsessive type of love over the last decade or so. I’m a generalist by nature, so I like to dabble across genres and time periods, but if pressed I would express a strong fondness for Horror, 30s & 40s comedies, 40s & 50s Film Noir, 50s & 60s French films (Melville, Clouzot, Demy, Tati, Becker – though not so much Godard), the cinema of Japan (all decades and styles), and the directors that came up at the end of the 90s (P.T. Anderson, Soderbergh, Jonze, etc.). For me, watching movies leads to the need to watch more movies – and I’m OK with that.
David Brook
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- Personal site: Dave’s Film & DVD Reviews
- Other site: Blueprint: Review
Row Three‘s UK resident, David has been into films from an early age when he would rent videos weekly from a local ‘video van’. He got into film criticism in his teens writing film reviews for his high school and college newsletters as well as starting a hideous but dedicated Geocities website, which eventually died after discovering other pleasures at university. After studying Media Production he ended up working as a cameraman and editor for a production company making short films and running community workshops. In recent years his love of criticism redeveloped and he hit the web again with a film review blog, which led to his contributions here at Row Three.
Film wise he’s open to anything, but in his early 20′s he was heavily into Asian cinema and still enjoys the guilty pleasures of martial arts films. In fact he’s a secret lover of exploitation films in general and can be found at many genre festivals. He had a slight aversion to European cinema in his youth, but is frantically trying to rectify this after realising he was just being a dick.
Marc Saint-Cyr
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- Personal site: Subtitle Literate
- Photo Blog: Toronto Shots
Marc’s perception of film and filmmaking were first shaken in Grade 11 after watching Apocalypse Now for the first time. Since then, he has been charting a helter-skelter course through the vast and rewarding oceans of world cinema. So far, he has emerged with a love for Kurosawa, Kubrick, Park, Leone, Tati and all three of the magnificent Andersons (Lindsay, Paul Thomas, Wes), to name just a few; a frequently overwhelming passion for all things French New Wave; a childlike reverence for Mastroianni and Belmondo; an unwavering devotion to successful experimental narrative films like The Tracey Fragments; a sweet writing gig for the Toronto J-Film Pow-Wow and one degree in Cinema Studies from the University of Toronto.
Tom Clift
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Born, raised and currently living in Melbourne, Australia, Tom has trouble pin-pointing exactly when his love affair with cinema began, although it was certainly made official by his first viewing of Christopher Nolan’s Memento at the age of 14. His favourite filmmakers include Nolan, as well as Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Danny Boyle, Joel & Ethan Coen and the entire team over at Pixar Animation Studios.
- See all posts by Tom
- Twitter: @tom_clift
- Other site: Movie Reviews by Tom
His venturing into the world of film criticism began when he started writing for a student run high-school news letter; although the ill-fated publication only lasted two issues, Tom was hooked, leading to the birth of his Film Review Blog as well as his work here at Row Three. Tom is also currently studying at the University of Melbourne, where he plans to complete a double major in Cinema & Cultural Studies and Media & Communications
Steve Bland
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About me: I wore out a handful of tapes watching Ghostbusters as a kid, loved the Ninja Turtles, but my passion for cinema didn’t come until I saw Fellowship of the Ring in the theater on a cold February in 2002. Some of my favorite talkies include Goodfellas, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, L.A. Confidential, The Shawshank Redemption, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and many more. My quest for the holy grail is the quest to see the next great movie. Fortunately, no killer rabbits have attacked me along the way. Though I was turned into a newt…. I got better.
- See all posts by Steve
- Twitter: @RowThreeSteve
Ross Miller
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- Facebook: Profile
- Twitter: @rosstmiller
- Blog Critics: Profile
- Own website: Thoughts On Film
- Other sites: Twitch
Scottish born Ross Miller has had a huge passion for movies ever since he can remember and over the years has expanded his cinematic horizons beyond the latest action fodder or broad comedy. In the last few years in particular he has developed a real love for foreign language film, particularly South Korean and Japanese, but likes to take in any and all types he can: blockbusters, indie, foreign – you name it. Favourites include The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, Oldboy, Rear Window and 12 Angry Men.
He has taken his passion into education and is currently studying for an honours in Media & Communication, focusing on film studies therein. He loves to write about film anywhere he can and currently writes for a number of sites including BlogCritics.org, TwitchFilm.net and his own wite ThoughtsOnFilm.co.uk. He is simply another film lover expressing his opinion.
Domenic Lanza
- See all posts by Domenic
- Twitter: @DomenicLanza
Domenic has been an avid cinemaphile for… well, forever. In fact, one of his most vivid childhood memories was convincing his parents to let him watch The Thing and Alien with his older cousins at the ripe old age of 5, then spending the remainder of the night wishing that his night light was just a bit brighter. Those persuasion skills used on that night also set Domenic on his course into the world of Law – he’s been hailed as a future lawyer by friends and family alike since middle school, and he will be completing his Juris Doctor in December ’12 (end of the world aside).
When not buried underneath a veritable library of legal documents, Domenic enjoys films of all genres and eras (though Herzog remains his favorite director), non-fiction histories on his Kindle, and playing and watching baseball. He’s not nearly as skeptical as his love for Camus would suggest, but his talent for bitter snark is nigh unmatched in most circles.
Vince Cheney
This bitchin’ rockstar from Mars’ name is Vince Cheney. I’ve lived in numerous places within the United States, but consider Long Island my one true home as that’s where I have spent most of my twenty years. My current residence is in Greenville,South Carolina. Movies have been a major component of my life as far back as I can remember. When I was a very young boy I would be bribed with trips to the theater if I would go to Soccer practice. There was nothing more exciting then those Fridays sitting in school,and hearing the announcement I was to be dismissed early so my dad could take me to movies, under the guise of dentist appointments. It was when I got the DVD to Once upon a Time in Mexico in sixth grade that I really became conscious of what movies meant to me. It wasn’t as much the movie, although I still like it and really liked it then, but the supplementary features! I couldn’t completely elaborate on it to you now, but I found something so inspiring in how Rodriguez talked about movies,and the process in making them. That was where this obsession first really began to take its form,and since become my backbone. I have ambitions as a filmmaker myself and greatly appreciate this opportunity from Row Three to share my cinematic outlook to you dear readers. Hope you dig my stuff.
Laura Desiree
- See all posts by Laura
- Facebook: Profile
- Personal site: Reel Peel (coming soon)
- Other sites: 30 Ninjas
Born a minute before her twin sister, Laura was brought into the exciting world of Toronto’s Radio and Pop-Culture by busy parents deep in the media mix. With a father to help lay down the classics of cinema, and an older brother to expose his kid sister to the cult underworld of Italian Gore and Exploitation flicks, a balanced education fueled a life passion to leave no stone unturned in the restless world of movie watching. Currently living between New York City and Toronto, with no real sense of ‘home’ beyond a theater seat on the aisle (to stow a suitcase, of course), it will ultimately be a collective scrap-pile of bus tickets, plane tickets and movie stubs that make up the paper-trail of her legacy. See you at the Festivals!
