Vancouver Events

While the history portion of the documentary is highly selective, there's no denying the visual impact this film has on IMAX.

Choreographed by the Birmingham’s artistic director, David Bintley, to mark the company’s 20th anniversary, this story ballet will please all ages.

Karl Markovics handles these scenes with the dead with a brutal but respectful honesty.

Celebrating his 10th year as Cathedral organist and music director, Denis Bedard will perform French and German Renaissance and Baroque works, including Bach\'s monumental Prelude and Fugue in B minor. He will also perform several of his own compositions. Performance visible on a giant screen at the front of the Cathedral.

I don't know how much it cost them or who they had to call, but the organizers of the Whistler Film Festival have managed to pull off perfect conditions for this weekend's events. Lots of fresh powder on the slopes, glorious sunshine and the perfect temperature of -1 degree in the village make for a stunning backdrop to the festival's tenth anniversary celebrations. The festival started on Wednesday Dec. 1 with the screening of Michael Goldbach's Daydream Nation and continues to Sunday Dec. 5, when the Borsos Award for Best Canadian Feature will be handed out to one of six nominated films.

I arrived too late last night to catch the day's major official event - a tribute to Bruce McDonald and Monte Hellman - but I hear it was an unbridled love-in for the prolific and iconic Canadian filmmakers. CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos and filmmaker Atom Egoyan moderated the event, which was preceded by a recognition of ten Canadian "filmmakers in the spotlight". I also missed an afternoon conversation with film and TV star Bruce Greenwood, pictured below (St. Elsewhere, Capote, Star Trek), who is also president of this year's Borsos competition jury. Reporter Graeme McRanor was on hand, and you can read his blog here.

I was, however, just in time for the evening's other big ticket - Brightlight Pictures' White Carpet Party at Araxi restaurant. It's generally seen as the moment when the festival really kicks into party mode, after two days of Whistler Summit industry networking events, workshops and pitch sessions. It's a swanky, invite-only affair awash in Araxi's signature cocktails and elegant bite-sized morsels of their world-class dishes. (Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has called Araxi his favourite restaurant in the world.)  It's only fitting that Brightlight would host such a soiree - principal Shawn WIlliamson is the President, Board of Directors for the Whistler Film Festival Society. This year the Society is campaigning for funds to refurbish Whistler's Rainbow Theatre to make it a world-class screening facility that would serve as a permanent home for the festival.

Whistler at film festival time is a busy place. I've already missed the Celebrity Ski Challenge, but there's still lots to do today. Of course, there are some great films to choose from, from Music from the Big House, Bruce McDonald's documentary about prison blues, to Michael Greenspan's Wrecked, which stars one of my favourite brooding actors, Adrian Brody. But this being Whistler, there's also a lot of shopping, lunching and people-watching opportunities competing for my time. Maybe I should just run for the hills. They're blanketed in powder and bathed in sunshine, a pair of shining divas that will be very hard to upstage.

Well, the euro might be crumbling, but the EU Film Festival keeps trundling along.

Holy Rosary Cathedral presents soprano Catherine Laub and Cathedral organist Denis Bedard in a programme featuring Jean Langlais’ masterpiece, the mystical Missa in simplicitate, as well as works by Denis Bedard and Baroque composers Pieter Cornet and Nicolas de Grigny. The organ solos will be preceded by the Gregorian Chant on which they are based, sung by Catherine Laub. Performance visible on a giant screen at the front of the Cathedral.

When film distributors have little faith in the quality of a movie, they opt not to screen it for critics before it opens. Movie reviews are almost always published on a film's opening day, and a bad review could damage that all-important first weekend at the box office. Ergo, no media access usually equals Stinker.

But what does it mean when a pop star enjoying skyrocketing popularity and album sales bans media from her live shows, as Lady Gaga and her team attempted to do Wednesday night?

It's bewildering. Ms. Gaga is not exactly a wallflower. She's everywhere, from performing on awards shows to curtseying the Queen of England to sitting in the Barbara Walters hotseat. In fact, she's so ubiquitous, she risks overexposure - and I'm not referring to her provocative fashion choices. So why did her management issue a statement at the eleventh hour that no media access for reviews, photography or video would be allowed at any of her three Vancouver shows this week?

So strict was the ban that my own personal tickets (which were not freebies, by the way, although they were sourced through a Live Nation contact) were revoked in case I used one to sneak my reviewer in the door (which is of course exactly what I would have done.) Well, I was bummed that I didn't get to see the show, but thanks to the brisk secondary market in tickets, their efforts didn't prevent us from getting a review, of course. You can read it here: http://bit.ly/53yNwa But it raises the question: Why would they want to?

Possible reason one: The show sucks and they don't want the bad publicity.

Well, this clearly isn't the case. Lady Gaga's shows are sheer spectacle and have been wowing audiences at every stop on the tour. (All the theatrics of a Britney Spears roadshow but with REAL SINGING!) It's hard to imagine that seeing a stadium-sized personality such as Gaga in a relatively intimate setting like the Queen Elizabeth Theatre would disappoint. Besides, the trio of shows is sold out, so they've got nothing to lose.

Possible reson two: They want to keep the details of the show under wraps so as to surprise the audience each night.

Ok, that's just never going to work. Every single person in there was blogging, tweeting, taking pictures and posting it all to the web. See our amazing gallery of reader-submitted photos: http://bit.ly/6l0sLx. There are no secrets in a digital world, so why hide?

And that brings me to the final and, to my mind, the most likely reason the Lady was playing hard to get with local media: Because she can.

It makes our job as journalists more difficult. It forces fans who didn't get to the show to search a little harder for reviews and photo coverage, which might come late or not at all. And it makes a Lady Gaga concert review a rarefied thing, a hot commodity worth scrambling for. As the most buzzed-about pop star of the moment, Lady Gaga is doing all she can to crank that buzz up to eleven. In other words, it's pure diva behaviour.

She's flipping the bird to media, saying to us, in effect, "You need me more than I need you."  And at this moment, it looks as though she's right.

This lovingly crafted re-creation of pre-Beatles Britain is a surprising star vehicle for Michelle Williams—although she never quite captures Monroe's particular allure.

Vancouver broadcast pioneer Dave Abbott died on Sunday (December 18).

As Gary Oldman notes in a call to the Georgia Straight from New York, we see at least one character in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy “getting knocked about a bit”.

Crystal Buble is one lucky lady. Not only is she the proud mom of a seven-month old baby girl, she is also the proud sister of global superstar Michael Buble, and now, co-owner of a new restaurant boasting one of the best patios on Vancouver's westside.

Even luckier for her, that famous brother of hers is generous and humble enough to drop by her establishment with media train in tow, to share a little bit of that dazzling Buble spotlight with her.

Michael Buble has a reputation as a nice guy. Famously friendly, the Burnaby-born singer is not the kind of celebrity that's spotted shoving photographers in airports or getting into brawls outside Hollywood nightclubs.

But is that nice-guy persona really real? I got a chance to find out for myself this week when I got an email invitation to "hang out with Michael Buble" at Crystal Buble's new restaurant and sports bar.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crystal Buble and her bro, Mike. 

On Kitsilano's west 4th avenue, in the former location of Nevermind, Displace Hashery Beach Bar features a pretty traditional pub food menu of burgers, pizzas and sandwiches, and a lots of TV monitors for watching sports.

This week, it also features superstar clientele. If you want to cheer on the Canucks with their most famous fan, drop by - Buble confirmed that yes, the Kits restaurant has indeed been his preferred playoffs hangout while he's in town for his wedding celebration, which takes place this Friday. (Speaking of wedding celebrations, legendary Vancouver DJ Red Robinson, who was also at the pub launch Monday, had a bit of fun teasing the singer about some less-than-flattering old Buble television footage Robinson plans to make use of in his role as wedding emcee. Wouldn't you love to be at that party?)

But back to those Canucks. I am a brand new hockey fan this year, won over by my hometown team's great season, and determined not to abandon them next year should they falter. Buble, however, has been waving the Canucks banner for a lot longer and is feeling optimistic about their potential to go all the way to the Stanley Cup. "I've been waiting for this for thirty-five years!" he said.

So come on, Canucks - do it for the Bube. He deserves it.

With art-house cinema—all cinema, perhaps—edging toward the endangered-species list, we’ll see more elegies to the seedy grandeur of the cinematheques of yore.

Featured storytellers: Nancy Bailey; Larry Matier; Rosemary Nowicki; Tony Rainbow; Max Tell entertain with personal stories. Side door in alley by St. Mark\'s, 1805 Larch/ 2nd Ave. Kits. Parking www.vancouverstorytellers.ca

The movie fails as clearly constructed storytelling but succeeds in its love of language and nuanced acting.