iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 01/10/2026

just got out of a 20th anniversary revival of choreographer Sasha Ivanochko‘s dance piece Heaven, at The Theatre Centre three dancers, in the nude and in silence, and i really know nothing about dance but i was mesmerized four more performances through Saturday theatrecentre.org/event/heaven...

020

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 30/09/2026

just watched Caroline Poggi and Jonathan Vinel's 2017 short After School Knife Fight, shot by La Gradiva director Marine Atlan, and this shot where light from an iPhone is very brazenly faked with proper light source kinda just knocked me right the hell out

391

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 29/09/2026

fwiw, this is what Harari says on the trans allegory specifically, but also other readings (he also supports reading it as an epidemic, but leaves that open too). it's arguable a movie so open renders itself meaningless, but movies like that also tend to age well. www.indiewire.com/features/int...

010

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 29/09/2026

Dario Amodei looks like Matthew Rhys in an especially convincing costume on The Americans

1300

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 29/09/2026

looks cool as hell when properly maintained

2161

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 28/09/2026

in fact, i know this isn't limited to Toronto, because Tony Kushner told me this about the situation in New York: www.gq.com/story/tony-k...

interview screenshot:

Corey: I have also heard family say just the most appalling things imaginable lately. I’m sure you’ve had conversations with at least some people like that.

Kushner: Well, we’ve just gone through the, um— [Kushner points to his Zohran Mamdani campaign button].

Corey: Yes. Right.

Kushner: The responses that I got wearing that pin. I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and friends of mine…. I’ve lost a few friends over Gaza, and now I think a couple of friends over Mamdani.

Corey: Over Mamdani? No way.

Kushner: Oh, yeah. Well, these are people who are otherwise completely rational, who genuinely believe that he’s going to move in and install sharia law and kill all the Jews. I mean, it’s psychotic. What they’re doing is looking at this South Asian guy and thinking, Ooh, I don’t like that. Jews should never.

0171

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 25/09/2026

"In the pursuit of a certain idea of verisimilitude, we’ve allowed cinema to become devoid of real, meaningful style." for the newsletter, i wrote about Mildred Pierce (and Obsession, and grey floors) and what it means for a film to have style www.justatad.xyz/p/weve-lost-...

3182

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 22/09/2026

🚨to all the Academy voting members who follow me🚨

Sophy Romvari tweeting: FYI Blue Heron was not eligible for the international feature category of the Oscars as they require films to be at least 50% non english, that being said, it *is* eligible for Best Picture against other small indies such as The Odyssey, etc.

1272

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 22/09/2026

“If you are staring at an example of social disorder or social inefficiency, and the left refuses to explain either why it has happened or how they will fix it, then the right gets to point at someone in the immediate area and say, ‘That’s who did it.’” crazy how much Mamdani speaks my language

5951611223

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 20/09/2026

because i have something deeply wrong with me, i’m taking time out of the last day of TIFF to see Mildred Pierce at the Bloor. never seen it!

2140

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 20/09/2026

#TIFF26 is just about done (going to the awards press conference tomorrow, and maaaaaay catch Diary of a Chambermaid or the Midnight Madness People's Choice winner, if i can get tickets to one), so i'm lying in bed and throwing on some pure joy

2111

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 18/09/2026

#TIFF26 is winding down, and i’m at the Lightbox all day for Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, Ira Sachs’s The Man I Love, and Angela Schanelec’s My Wife Cries three of my most anticipated of the year

170

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 12/09/2026

well, Anna Biller’s new movie The Face of Horror is great #TIFF26

0201

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 08/09/2026

no idea why, but i woke up thinking about a good movie

shot of Adrien Brody as Laszlo Toth in a newly designed and renovated private study from The Brutalist

1261

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 06/09/2026

am i feeling a New York, New York rewatch?

3130

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 02/09/2026

the trailer for Danny Boyle's Ink is out, and i sincerely love that Boyle is the kind of guy who goes, "What if a movie about Rupert Murdoch had some of the craziest shots you've ever seen in a movie?"

74910

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 28/08/2026

got to see Jack Auen and Kevin Walker’s film Chronovisor tonight and it’s such a marvel of craft, a movie built almost entirely out of library research scenes, with some of the most clever use of onscreen text i’ve ever seen check this movie out if it plays near you

3210

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 27/08/2026

also out this weekend is Buddy, the new film from Too Many Cooks director Casper Kelly, in which remarkably upsetting (see: hilarious) things happen in the universe of a Barney-style children's TV show

1100

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 27/08/2026

Coyote vs. Acme is out in theatres tomorrow, and after all the sturm und drang what's most gratifying is that it's really, really good

3666

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 23/08/2026

watched Mutiny last night. less action than i’d have liked, but wields typical Statham tropes with the right combo of good humour and brutality. (really curious to see what the cancelled Plane sequel, Ship, would’ve been like, but this was sold fun)

0140

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 21/08/2026

the only other Murdoch i've read is The Sea, The Sea, another of the best novels i've ever read (i'm sure she has more i'd add to the that list)

570

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 21/08/2026

after a number of distractions that paused my reading, i'm close to the end of Iris Murdoch's The Bell, truly one of the best novels i've ever read

3192

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 13/08/2026

i’ve got news for you

110

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 13/08/2026

just remembered this hilarious Eddington scene, in which the kids are 100% right in their theoretical analysis, and yet...

091

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 13/08/2026

me, watching replays from last night and then checking the standings

020

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 13/08/2026

Warner Archive is putting out Ryan’s Daughter in 4K. a much better film than its reputation imo. will be split across two discs, encoded by industry leaders FiM, featuring remastered audio plus restored original 70mm audio.

050

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 13/08/2026

just had to remind myself of this utter insanity

Screenshot of the Best Director at the 90th Oscars, with Guillermo Del Toro winning for The Shape of Water over Nolan for Dunkirk, Jordan Peele for Get Out, Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird, and Paul Thomas Anderson for Phantom Thread

2190

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 11/08/2026

thought what Vicky over on TikTok had to say about One Night Only was interesting, actually examining the allegorical implications of its premise, where it’s insightful, and where its construction falls way short pt 1:

2203

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 11/08/2026

also had interesting things to say about Nolan and The Odyssey

PS: I liked how good scenes that remind me of the film are shot far from the technical protocols adopted over the last 30 years in industrial cinema. The proud and excessive use of CGI (Wrath of the Titans remakes 1 and 2, to stay within that mythology universe) has been throwing sand in our eyes, adopting an image that has deteriorated the way the general public perceives notions of realism or "realism." This week, for example, the trailer for the new Marvel action movie came out, what an ugly thing.

The issue at this point is that it's not just industrial cinema (series, commercials, news broadcasts, social media memes) that saturates the synthetic image, initially with CGI and now with AI. In some way, image-making has become complacent, a pride in technical cleverness that – in fact – is just laziness and a desire to gain an advantage in the construction of the images we consume. Those reading this might think I'm against "artificiality" in images, far from it. The bigger issue is the aesthetic and ethical weariness, the repetition of protocols as a lack of imagination.

In fact, most of The Odyssey is built from a mise-en-scène that happens on camera. There's something I really like about seeing Odysseus and his soldiers aboard a ship at sea, or seeing that the sequence with Circe and the men has such an unusual feel today (can you imagine that with morph FX?). The location, that hut, that food, the touch of her hands, the furs and leathers. It made me think of Neil Jordan and Chris Tucker's work in The Company of Wolves (1984), another disturbing and fantastic image.

181

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 11/08/2026

Kleber Mendonça Filho liked Brand New Day

1140

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 11/08/2026

do love that they got The B-52s

1212

Corey Atad @coreyatad.com · 11/08/2026

no idea why, but i'm watching The Flintstones movie: - thing looks like it cost more than The Odyssey - unbelievable production design and props - Dean Cundey - this was my first exposure to Elizabeth Taylor - Halle Berry, stone cold fox, and Elizabeth Perkins on fire