Twilight fans stake out Surrey film set

I know where Bella Swan’s house is.
The Twilight movie set, built for the second and third installments of the popular teen vampire series, lies on an unassuming residential street somewhere in a rural Surrey neighbourhood.
Film crews, and possibly the film’s biggest, gorgeous stars, Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, were there last week.
Not that any fans [...]

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What happened to WTVS-Detroit?

Something terrible happened to channel 43 this summer.
Sometime, when I wasn’t paying attention, my tied-for-favourite PBS channel, WTVS-Detroit, vanished from my Shaw Cable lineup. And in its place was some cruddy kiddy TV station showing idiotic baby-oriented cartoons with primary colours, shrieking voices, and loud, clunky soundtracks.
It took me a few weeks to realize what [...]

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Hollywood North…West?

If you’re old enough, maybe you remember 1982’s The Thing, an icy little nightmare directed by horror master John Carpenter and starring Kurt Russell, a shaggy-haired, blue-eyed ’70s everyman who battles a terrifying threat from beyond. Set in a remote, Antarctic outpost, it mines a fear of emptiness and the dread of the unknown – all while riffing on the predictable plot lines of an “and-then-there-were-none” type thriller. It may have been set at the South Pole, but look closer: that’s really the wintry wilds of northwest B.C.!

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Bargain City: the Michael Jackson edition

The vinyl record is dead, you say?
Not exactly.
Consider the price currently offered at Whistler’s amazing second-hand store for the recently deceased Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Someone has already bid $100 for a copy of the late King of Pop’s multi Platinum-selling (28x) 1982 album at the Re-Use It Centre.
That bid bested the original – and only other [...]

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Movie magic to light up White Rock this summer

Set your DeLorean to Nov. 5, 1955, and power up your flux capacitor with 1.21 gigawatts because White Rock is heading Back to the Future!
The 1985 comic blockbuster, starring Burnaby’s own Michael J. Fox as time traveling, electric guitar-wielding skateboard enthusiast Marty McFly, is one of four family-friendly films lighting up a giant movie screen [...]

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The awful truth about mostly male movie lists

Guys who write for movie blogs can be such humourless pricks (sorry guys!) – at least when it comes to recognizing funny female performers. The latest outrage?

Just three (!) comic roles featuring women were deemed memorable enough to make the grade in The Screengrab’s recent list of the 35 funniest movie characters of all time: Alyson Hannigan in American Pie, Chloris Leachman in Young Frankenstein and Parker Posey in Dazed and Confused.

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The envelope, please…

A D.I.Y. Oscar party mix of music from the films of 2008
Queen Bitch – David Bowie, Milk (originally on the 1971 Album Hunky Dory)
Jai Ho – A.R. Rahman, Slumdog Millionaire
Down To Earth – Peter Gabriel, WALL-E
Everyday People – Sly & the Family Stone, Milk (Originally on Stand! 1969)
You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) – Sylvester, [...]

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Golden Globes 2009 – gone to the dogs?

In honour of last night’s 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards, presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a few awards of my own:
Worst use of screentime: When Miley Cyrus STUCK HER TONGUE out at the camera as it panned the otherwise glamorous celebrity-filled ballroom of the Beverly Hilton during the show’s opening moments. I know [...]

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The PM’s handcuff fetish (Things I hated in 2008)

Does Stephen Harper even have a sense of humour? Consider this awkward moment from September 2008, when comedienne Geri Hall of CBC’s long-running fake news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes caught the PM and his staff off-guard at a press conference in Halifax.
Hall, standing in a sizable crowd of reporters, tried to ask Harper [...]

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Essential viewing: PMS – The Movie

“Somewhere between Christmas and being buried alive is PMS”
Behold SCTV’s deadliest satiric weapon: the devastating comic stylings of towering talents Catherine O’Hara and Andrea Martin.
They star in a groundbreaking (well, it sure is compared to the crap that masquerades as comedy at SNL these days) and kinda hilarious film short send-up from, oh, like 25 [...]

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