Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Tag: movie

  • An Ethereum story

    We’ve spoken about Vitalik Buterin before.

    He is the inventor of the Ethereum blockchain, and its most prominent figure. He also happens to have grown up in Toronto. He went to the University of Waterloo. So when I wrote this post back in 2021, I asked: Why the hell is nobody talking about this? Why are we not celebrating the fact that our great city helped birth one of the most important technologies of our time? You couldn’t ask for a better economic development story. Well, I guess the answer is twofold. Crypto isn’t mainstream. Even back in 2021 when things were frothy it wasn’t. And, we’re awful at promoting and driving a global brand for our city. Both of these things need to change. So if you’re interested in learning more about Vitalik and Ethereum, you should check out this new movie (trailer) called Vitalik: An Ethereum Story. To watch it, go to ethereumfilm.xyz and mint the NFT for $20. You’ll then be able to stream it. I haven’t done this yet, but I’ll be doing it very soon. All of the proceeds from the NFT sales will go toward getting a more mainstream distribution deal.

    So by watching, you’re helping.

    Update: I watched it. It’s great.

  • Telling a story through spaces

    I started watching Parasite on a flight home this past weekend (I know, I’m behind). The first couple of scenes immediately hooked me and so I ended up watching the full movie over the weekend. It’s one of the most creative movies I have seen in a long time. (To be fair, I don’t watch a lot of movies these days.) I won’t spoil it all for you here, but if you haven’t seen it yet, I would highly recommend it. One of the principal themes is social inequality. And it’s interesting to see how that gets told through the spaces within the film. The poor family lives in a “semi-basement” at the end of what appears to be a laneway. And the rich family lives, higher up, in a house designed by a famous architect. Naturally it has a big and perfectly manicured backyard. At one point in the film, you also get to see which housing type is more environmentally resilient.

    I’ll leave it there. But it’s worth checking out if you are into award-winning Korean tragicomedies.

  • Anthropocene

    Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer who is known for his images of industrial landscapes. In 2018, he released a documentary film called Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. It was the third in a trilogy of films that he directed alongside Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. In this one, the group tries to draw attention to the way in which us humans have (negatively) reengineered the planet and created a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. I think many of you will find it interesting and eye-opening. Here’s a trailer (it debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018):

  • My Piece of the City

    A friend of mine just sent out a group city builder email about My Piece of the City, which is a new documentary that is screening all weekend here in Toronto at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

    The film is a critique on the revitalization of Regent Park, told through local residents and their efforts to stage a community musical (which happened in real life).

    The Daniels Corporation, in partnership with Toronto Community Housing, is the developer and builder for the entire 69 acre community. The Daniels Foundation also funded the musical and this documentary.

    But, despite this backing, the Globe and Mail has said that it remains a “healthy critique” of this entire process. And the trailer certainly gives you that impression.

    I am sure that this documentary will be of interest to many of you, so if you would like to grab tickets for this weekend, you can do that here.

  • Neon rooftops of LA

    I am absolutely obsessed with the below video by Drew Ganyer called Neon Rooftops of LA. If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.

    [vimeo 158929583 w=640 h=360]

    The story is that Gayner was playing around with his new drone at a friend’s apartment next to “The Embassy” sign. This peaked his interest and so he went searching for more of these signs. This brought him to PublicArtInLA.com, which provides a comprehensive list of “buildings with historic neon signs” in the Los Angeles area.

    And so a movie was born.

    I’ll end with the below snippet from the opening paragraph of Public Art In LA. I don’t know about you, but I love these signs. I think they really do give rise to the magic of the night.

    “Sometimes, urban renewal can be as simple as the relighting of a neon sign on Wilshire, Hollywood or Sunset boulevard, lights that recover the past and point to an equally bright urban future. Remnants of a lost Los Angeles, city of the mind, remembered and yearned for, the neon lights of L.A.–celestial fires of another sort, green, gold, ruby red, electric blue–guide us down the Wilshire corridor, up through Hollywood and out along Sunset Boulevard west. If Paris is the City of Lights, L.A. is the City of Neon, possessed of a comparable (yet antithetical) beauty and capable as well, like all great cities, of giving rise in the magic of the night to hungers of body, mind and spirit.” (Kevin Starr, “Landscape Electric; A program that renews the city’s urban spirit by relighting Philip Marlowe’s neon L.A.” Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1999. 

  • The Millennial Dream [Documentary]

    Back in 2015, I was interviewed for a documentary called The Millennial Dream. I then completely forgot about it until somebody tweeted it at me yesterday. So the documentary is out – it was released last year – and you can rent it or buy it on iTunes.

    The documentary calls into question the [North] American Dream. This idea that you just have to work hard, save up, buy a house in the suburbs, pay off your debt, and then everything will be just fine. For many, that dream is quickly disappearing, if it hasn’t already.

    Enter the Millennial Dream. Our economy is changing. Our jobs are changing. Our cities are changing. And by 2020, the Millennial generation is expected to form 50% of the global workforce. What is this generation dreaming about? That is what this documentary is about.

    But I should probably stop here because I haven’t actually seen the film. I could be overselling it. I’ll watch it this weekend and then report back. If you can’t see the trailer embedded below, click here.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVCNXJk2fT8&w=560&h=315]

  • The Art of Design

    I don’t actually have Netflix, but they have a new original documentary series out called, Abstract: The Art of Design. It’s a look at “eight of the most creative thinkers” working in art and design. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

    Here are those 8 people:

    1. Es Devlin (stage designer)
    2. Ilse Crawford (interior designer)
    3. Ralph Gilles (Chrysler head of global design)
    4. Bjarke Ingels (architect)
    5. Platon (photographer)
    6. Christoph Niemann (New Yorker cover illustrator)
    7. Paula Scher (graphic designer)
    8. Tinker Hatfield (Nike sneaker designer)

    The trailer feels unnecessarily dramatic for a documentary, but I’d still like to watch it. The reviews also seem to suggest that it’s pretty good. Below is the trailer. If you can’t see it below, click here.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYaq2sWTWAA?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

    If you’ve already seen it, what did you think?

  • Important things

    image

    Last weekend I watched Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things. I’ve been reading the blog for awhile now (I blogged about it) and so the movie has been on my to-do list since it came out.

    Now, I am not a minimalist to the same extent as Joshua and Ryan, and some of the people featured in the film. I have not reduced all of my personal belongings to 51 things and I have not renounced any sort of permanent residency. I own some stuff.

    But I am very much attracted to the philosophy that less can be more. That less can make us happier. That quality is more important than quantity. And that we actually need far less stuff than we think we do, especially in a consumerist society like ours.

    One word that comes up a lot in the documentary is: deliberate. In other words, we should be more deliberate about the choices we make, the things we buy, and so on. Will it create value in my life?

    And that’s one of the reasons I like this notion of minimalism: It’s a challenge. You have to think. Because if you don’t, you will be told what to do and what to buy, and you will accumulate things without even knowing. It’s essentially a constant battle against excess.

    Perhaps the biggest potential for excess happens with our choice of housing, which is why small homes feature so prominently in the film. A tiny house isn’t going to be for everyone, but many people have certainly come to the realization that square footage alone does not equate to more happiness.

  • View From A Blue Moon

    image

    I don’t surf. I would like to learn, but I haven’t yet done that. I snowboard. That’s my thing. It’s what I look forward to doing every single winter. 

    But even as a non-surfer, I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed the movie View From A Blue Moon. A friend told me about it last weekend and I immediately rented it on my Apple TV. (That’s the only thing I have to watch things.)

    It’s a movie about John Florence, who is arguably the world’s best surfer right now. He’s from Hawaii. But in addition to John’s incredible surfing abilities, it’s the cinematography and soundtrack that make this movie so special. 

    As soon as the movie ended, I immediately went on Soundcloud to find all of the songs. Quentin Tarantino once said that when you pick the right song for a particular scene/movie, you can then never listen to that song ever again without thinking of the movie. That’s how I now feel about this song.

    Here’s the trailer (apparently it’s the first surf movie filmed entirely in 4K):

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTqVqk7FSmY?rel=0]

    If you’re at all interested, I highly recommend you give it a watch. There are also some great urban shots for all of the city geeks who read this blog. Let me know what you think if you end up watching it or if you’ve already seen it.

    Image: View From A Blue Moon

  • Vancouver never plays itself

    There’s something powerful about seeing/hearing cities being depicted in film, TV, and other kinds of pop culture. It creates familiarity and does a lot to drive the brand of that place.

    But how often are you just seeing one city disguised to look like another? Actually quite often.

    Here’s an interesting video that talks about how the 3rd largest film production city in North America never actually plays itself.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojm74VGsZBU?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

    I know that there are real economic benefits to being a cheap place to film movies, but I would love to see Canadian cities play themselves. There are also big benefits to that.

    Thanks to Scott Bonjukian at The Urbanist for sharing the above video this morning.