If you're a fan of Burning Man, you'll love it. If you're a fan of documentary film, you'll like it. If you're neither of those, there's at least enough spectacle to keep you titillated for half an hour.
On March 8, the Langham Court Theatre opened its 18-night run of Rabbit Hole. This play is a piece of “kitchen sink realism” that surveys the emotional vicissitudes a middle-classed suburban couple might endure following the death of their four-year-old son.
One of the 2012 Victoria Film Festival’s seven short film programs was entitled “Beyond the Playground” and featured films that highlighted youth or children. Birth Day (directed by Juan Riedinger) was a seven-minute interlude cut from the plot-line of a larger narrative. A young boy’s father arrives late to his son’s birthday only to be dragged to what one assumes is his death by mafia thugs. The piece made an effort at high emotional impact but may have been just a bit too short to establish the necessary context. It duly stunned the audience to begin the program.
On Saturday, Feb. 4, the 2012 Victoria Film Festival screened the international premiere of the Canadian-made horror parody A Little Bit Zombie directed by Casey Walker.
DONOR (PHILIPPINES)
In this film directed by Mark Afable Meily, Filipina actress Meryll Soriano portrays a woman named Lizette who must survive the exigency of slum life in Manila. When the financial demands of her disgustingly selfish boyfriend and her job search begin to overwhelm her, she sells one of her kidneys on the black market.
The Victoria Film Festival (VFF) is upon us once again, running from Feb. 3 to 12. More than 70 feature-length films from around the world will be screened, as well as almost as many shorts. As a Canadian film aficionado, I was delighted to notice that Canadian films are at a premium this year, accounting for a whopping 25 of the feature-length productions.
Canadian author Robert Pepper-Smith’s latest book, House of Spells, is a simple, emotional and riveting read. Because of its brevity and style, you’ll probably read it in one go, but you will want to re-read it time and again in order to relive the engaging drama and revisit the landscapes Pepper-Smith paints with words.
It’s ironic that the new, updated Blu-ray version of the Star Wars sextet is being released in the same week that The People vs. George Lucas becomes available on Blu-ray as well. The latter is a documentary piece of film criticism that any serious film historian or Star Wars fan should see. The former is sure to be loved by the film historians as fodder for criticism, and hated by Star Wars fans.
The Victoria Fringe Festival, the largest annual theatrical festival in the city, which participates with a larger national program, celebrated its 25th anniversary this summer.
On Wenesday August 31st, The Victoria Fringe Festival presented Peter n’ Chris & the Mystery of the Hungry Heart Motel, written by and starring UVic Theatre grads Peter Carlone and Chris Wilson. The show is a third installment of their two-man comic series that has been successful on the Fringe touring circuit over the past few years.
The 25th anniversary of the Victoria Fringe Festival is nearly upon us and this year’s lineup looks spectacular. With a variety of pieces ranging from intrigue to sketch-comedy to interpretive movement, there is most certainly something for every taste.
Jacob Richmond’s Ride the Cyclone, which opened at the Belfry Theatre on July 5 as part of its ongoing Canadian tour, certainly hits its mark – all of them, in fact. It’s all spectacle-comedy-entertainment in a non-stop roller coaster ride of musical delights. The 90-minute production runs without an intermission but hardly needs one. It is riveting from beginning to end and is well worth the ticket price.
Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?, directed by award-winning documentarian Taggart Siegel, opens with a haunting, almost horrific image of a topless woman clothed in a blanket of bees. It is this very horror that is inverted in the mind of the viewer by the film’s conclusion.
In the past few years I have become something of a horror movie aficionado, so when someone generously donated their free Insidious passes to me, I was excited. And the flick did not disappoint.
Another Victoria Film Festival (VFF) is now behind us.
In their 17th year the festival offered some fantastic fare. No Fun City was an interesting watch. Biutiful was beautiful. The Shrine was horrifically stunning. The People vs. George Lucas was delightfully tongue-in-cheek, and it was a surprisingly relevant piece of film history criticism. Two Indians Talking addressed the questions of Indigenous land rights and cultural oppression in an interrogative way that invited all members of the audience to participate in the machinations behind two very personalized and ingenuous First Nations men grappling with the reality of their social positions and their revolutionary decisions.