Folking things up made for summer’s bright spot
Music: The Vancouver Folk Festival 2018
We celebrate the summer that was with a fond look back at what proved to be the highlight of Vancouver's smokiest season ever: A fully reinvented Folk Music Festival featuring acts that rocked, rattled and rolled young and old alike.
By Rod Mickleburgh
The line-up was skimpier than past years. Sunday clashed with the final of a riveting, month-long World Cup and the sun was hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum, but once again, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival cast its magic over me and thousands of other attendees with its annual mix of good vibes, a setting to die for and outstanding music. Even at my increasingly creaky and cranky advanced age, I found myself dancing, most notably at a wonderful, spirited workshop jam session involving Little Miss Higgins, Les Poules à Collin and Petunia & the Vipers. Thankfully, there were no cameras in sight, and the young people politely refrained from giggling.
There were other highlights:
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Kin can’t make good from a wonderfully bad Franco
Movie review: Kin
The Baker boys' debut feature may not be fabulous, but somewhere in this wannabe young adult franchise lies a message about the power of guns, and how it transforms one’s place in the American social order.
Juliet, Naked strips romance down to nagging self-doubt
Movie review: Juliet, Naked
Director Jesse Peretz brings alt-rock authenticity to Nick Hornby’s story of a singer-songwriter who fell off the map, only to be rediscovered by the long-suffering partner of an obsessive fan. Ethan Hawke and Chris O’Dowd offer pure performance, but it’s Rose Byrne’s quiet navigation of personal desire that redeems the ego-fest.
Alpha to um, mega
Movie review: Alpha
Albert Hughes’s magical, 3D vision of post-Ice Age Europe forms the backdrop for a fictionalized account of how one generation of early humans domesticated the wolf.
Mile 22: 22 miles a minute and going nowhere
Movie Review: Mile 22
Mark Wahlberg plays a black ops specialist who meets his match in Iko Uwais’s cop-turned-double agent in Mile 22, a thriller that stalks, but never closes for the kill.
BlacKkKlansman gets under the all-white hood
Movie Review: BlacKkKlansman
Spike Lee's movie, based on the true story of a black policeman who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, focuses on America’s enduring cultural history of racism.
Puzzle puzzles but finds an odd fit
Movie review: Puzzle
Marc Turtletaub’s English remake of an Argentine art-house favourite is a pretty box of carefully crafted small moments that form a big picture of a still life.
Leave No Trace Gets Lost on Purpose
Movie Review: Leave No Trace
Ben Foster and Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie take on the weight of a father and daughter looking for a place to call home in world that wavers between ambivalence and hostility.
