Co-authored by Jamie Ryan and Brett Pardy The Mighty Ducks and D2: The Mighty Ducks are arguably two of the most recognizable hockey stories in popular culture, largely due to Disney’s marketing push for their brief foray into men’s professional sports in the 1990s. The new television show, The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers, had big…
Most sports films and novels focus on men’s sports and are intended for an assumed male reader, so much so that if one wants to find a story about women athletes or teams they have to specify “women’s sports films” or “women’s sports literature.” Women’s sports stories, on the page or screen, are comparatively rare…
In a world where Tilda Swinton was cast to play a Tibetan in Doctor Strange, and Scarlett Johanssen was cast for a Japanese character in Ghost in the Shell, it is an understatement to say that there is a lack of Asian visibility in Canadian and American popular culture. Despite the fact that Asian Americans make up…
This year at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), amidst the star-laden Hollywood premieres and films from 74 countries, two (unsurprisingly Canadian) films debuted that use hockey as a lens to examine larger social issues. Indian Horse (directed by Stephen Campanelli): The powerful story from wonderful novel (reviewed by Mark Norman here) reaches the screen largely…
On Saturday and Sunday, the 5th annual Canadian Sport Film Festival (CSFF) is taking place in Toronto at the TIFF Lightbox. As usual, the festival will feature a variety of sport-related documentaries that cover a range of topics. Notably, this year’s program includes two films that focus on hockey: Lace Bite and The Uluit: Champions…
In 2006, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired a 10-part series entitled Hockey: A People’s History (HAPH). Adopting the approach used in its popular 2000 miniseries Canada: A People’s History, the CBC focused in this series on the experience of Canadians with the sport of hockey for over a century. Beginning with early ball and…
Theo Fleury: Playing With Fire is a 2012 documentary that paints an intimate portrait of former NHL player Theoren Fleury. The film, which shares its title with Fleury’s 2009 autobiography Playing With Fire, was screened in Toronto at the Hot Docs film festival, where I watched it on Saturday. Fleury’s story is complex, tragic and…
By Matt Ventresca and Marty Clark I had the pleasure of writing this review with my friend and colleague at Queen’s University, Marty Clark. Marty is an emerging scholar in the field of Hockey Studies and a hell of a nice guy in his own right. His research focuses primarily on conceptions of whiteness within…
Goon, the new hockey film about a bouncer-turned-enforcer, was released last week. Courtney Szto has already written about the film on this blog, criticizing it for “poor timing and taste” in light of last summer’s deaths of hockey fighters Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak. I agree with her that the timing and marketing…
On February 24, 2012, actor Sean William Scott (you may know him from silver screen classics such as American Pie and The Dukes of Hazard) will be staring in a hockey movie titled, Goon. The IMDB synopsis reads: Labelled an outcast by his brainy family, a bouncer overcomes long odds to lead a team of…
Hockey in Society / Hockey dans la société 