It’s the second annual Yaletown outdoor movie night. Where you get to watch a movie and hang out with friends.

When:  Sunday,  Jul 19th
Where: David Lam Park

It’s being done in conjunction with a community picnic. So the picnic starts from Noon – 4pm and then the movie starts at dusk.  They play the movie on a giant 40′x20′ screen and it’s usually a “secret” classic 80’s movie that they’ll play.

Given the clue they provide “who ya gonna call?”, we can safely guess it’ll be Ghostbusters playing. They suggest bringing along a blanket and flash light.  If it rains it’ll be postponed to the 26th.

Saturday December 6th, there’s a lot going on at The Rio Theatre (Broadway and Commercial), all of it part of Cthulhupalooza (kuh-too-loo-pah-loo-zah) – I’ll see if I can break it down for you.

For starters, there’s a Rock Band contest, sponsored by the game creators, Harmonix – if you’ve got some pals, and think you can rock it out, the contest is open to all attendees. Finalists get to rock it out on stage, and the winners, besides winning sweet prizes, can perform with The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. The Thickets have a track on Rock Band, so that’s the connection.

Then later there will be a screening of the HP Lovecraft Historical Society’s Call of Cthulhu (which is done as an old-school, silent movie) along with other visual fun.

And then the evening is capped by a performance by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets! Lead singer and chief instigator Toren was recently a guest-host on CITR’s We All Fall Down, helping to get the word out and drive some funds for CITR’s on-going funding donations (listen here.)

Besides being a barrel of monkeys, the event is helping to raise money for Child’s Play, which helps provide hospitals around the world (including BC’s Children’s Hospital) with video game systems, toys, and other fun things that make time spent in a hospital that much less sucky.

There’s a website for the event, which has information on where to pick up tickets (RX comics, Elfsar comics, Scratch, Red Cat, Zulu, and Neptoon records, etc. plus online sales via PayPal), how to enter the Rock Band contest, and more as the day of the event gets nearer!

Please spread the word, as the event benefits from having as many people as possible in attendance!

Full disclosure – I am helping to organize this event. It’s a charity event, so I’m not sure if you give full disclosure on that sort of thing. But let’s just say I a lot of my heart invested in this event, and I wish it to go well. Hope to see you there.

With X-Files creator Chris Carter honoured in Vancouver last night [cbc], and the impending launch of a new film that was filmed in Vancouver, the world is just about ready for the return of agents Scully and Mulder.

Or is it?  We’ve moved on since The X-Files, people now watch shows like CSI and Boneswhich focus more on scientific forensics than the supernatural.  In Vancouver the show is mostly remembered for being one of the first really good American television shows filmed here.  Nearly every long time Vancouverite can drive past a location of the X-Files and point it out even if they’ve never watched a show, it’s just in the DNA.

But does the rest of the world remember the show, apart from a few fans who’ve survived through Mulder and Scully slash fiction, or is even here in the city that acted as the moody backdrop to the show’s best seasons beyond caring?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

Fifth Ave Cinemas on Burrard.
Go see it, even if you think you don’t like super hero movies. (Like I don’t.)

Remember the days when 21 Jump Street was filmed here? Well Johnny Depp will apparently be re-familiarizing himself with our city as he, Jude Law and Colin Farrell will be coming to town to replace Heath Ledger’s character in the upcoming Terry Gilliam flick.

Let’s hope this situation along with the vote that ended the writer’s strike will mean a quick recovery and resurgence of jobs for our local and vital film industry.

juno-poster2-big

Originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

Movies filmed in Vancouver tend to range from the sort of indie fare that nobdy ever sees, to the big budget science fiction comic book movies that nobody ever cares about. Sure I love the X-Men films, but that’s because I’m a big comics nerd, but let’s face it they’re not exactly great art. It’s very rare that one of the year’s best movies comes out of Vancouver, in fact the last one that comes to mind is The Sweet Hereafter which was filmed aroud Merritt. The difference is that The Sweet Hereafter was a Canadian movie that caught Hollywood’s attention, as opposed to a Hollywood movie just using Vancouver to film.

Juno though is that American movie filmed in Vancouver that really manages to be an incredible picture. Though billed as a teen comedy, which puts it in a catagory with the American Pie movies, but it’s really a film about teenagers. Ellen Page, who before this was probably most recognized as Kitty Pryde in the last X-Man movie, gives a performance that is worthy of an Oscar and has already earned a Golden Globe nomination.

I don’t want to get into too much detail about the film, because I think that the more you can be surprised by it the more you will appreciate it. It’s one of last year’s best movies, and since it’s still in Vancouver theatres I feel a responsibility to make you understand that you need to see this movie. Seriously go see it. It’s a great film, one of the best that Vancouver has ever produced.

Students in Langara College’s Film Arts program have been creating a series of web episodes based on a fictional government agency The Department of Solutions. According to their submitted suggest a story post the shorts follow “the adventures of Quincy, an idealistic young public servant who dreams of changing the world through paperwork.” Having watched the first three today I have to say they’re well worth clicking on this link [tds] to visit their site which has all the episodes.

New episodes get added on Mondays and Thursdays, so click early and click often.

Persepolis: Faithful to the comic book both in script and look, delightfully black and white, see it before Disney buys it and f*cks it up. Also, does anyone dip their boobs into cold water for ten minutes a day? Does it work? And where in Vancouver can you buy fresh jasmine blossoms for your bra?

Dead Time (aka Kala): We loved it! Until the last five minutes! Oh, it was wonderful until then: super creepy, decrepit Jakarta exteriors with fantastic interiors, crawling ghosts in loincloths, film noir lighting, burned corpses and a Ring-like curse! Enough of the exclamation marks. A narcoleptic reporter finds himself divorced, jobless, a murder suspect, and a mob kidnappee, all in two days. Then he finds out he’s privy to a secret, which, if shared with others, will kill all but one of those who know the secret. We’ve decided that should we ever buy the DVD, we’ll show it to our friends until the end of the second kidnapping scene. A perfect ending right there – why’d they have to go and ruin it?

Iska’s Journey: Can we get any more depressing? The day after seeing this, I was standing in another VIFF line discussing it with a stranger. “She wasn’t even good-looking, what did those pimps want with her?” The moral turns out to be, it don’t matter whether you’re good-looking or not, human traffickers just see a piece of meat to sell. Two scenes in particular were beautiful: the orphan kids “swimming” and the raindrops on Iska’s face.

Island Etude: Ah, the scenery – Taiwan never lived up to its Formosa name as much as in this movie. When I lived there, we joked that Taiwan’s east coast was the place to down bottles of tequila and eat the worm as the sun rises. Turns out, according to a character in the movie, that on the north part of Taiwan, you can see the sunrise and the sunset. For anyone who cares, the male lead was hot. Oh, and I kinda hoped the graffiti guy was cute behind his mask, too.

La France: The only movie I saw with the director in attendance, the song pieces caught me off-guard. It also had an attempted rape scene, brining this year’s film festival rape count to five. What I got from the movie – I was battling a cold at the time and couldn’t really appreciate the film – is that if you eat mystery mushrooms you pick in the woods and then you collapse, put pond scum on the back of your hand and you’ll get better. What the hell was that?

Out of Time: Admittedly not for everyone, but hey, the loud-talking girls three seats in front of me can lick the corn kernels out of their asses. One day, you’ll be old, you dumb bags, and you’ll see that you’ll need the Clapper too. I liked Out of Time. On the surface, the often-depressing story of four long-established shops dying slowly in Vienna’s consumerism shows five very dedicated small business owners struggling as they try to keep their butcher shop, button shop, apothecary and leather repair shop afloat. It’s cringe-worthy to watch these poor people looking out at passersby wishing them to come into their stores; it’s even worse when the loveable drugstore owner looks through the shelves of Spanish leather and wonders if he should stop ordering that, or when he wonders why his clients aren’t picking up their orders (the customers are older than him). Ultimately optimistic (and a good lesson for those of squandering our youth on foolish decisions), the film’s message can’t help but strike a chord with environmentalism. Repairing coats and luggage for added years of use; using a basin of water to shave instead of letting the faucet run; the message only falters with the butcher’s admonishment to a young mother to feed her baby sausages as soon as possible so the kid wouldn’t end up a vegetarian.

But hey, muffin recipes!

superbad

Originally uploaded by Left over usa.

If you haven’t heard that the new comedy Superbad is based on the high school lives of screenwriters Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg and that those high school lives took place in Vancouver, then obviously you’ve not been reading The Province [vp]. Don’t worry I forgive you, neither have I.

Too bad it didn’t get filmed in Vancouver, but instead was shot in Glendale California and LA. That’s a nice ironic twist where Vancouver stands in for pretty much every city in the union. Having said that I should point out that while the movie is based on Vancouver lives I don’t think it’s actually set in Vancouver, but rather sort of anywhere.

Superbad opens today.