Bidding Adieu to Dave Barrett
Tribute: Dave Barrett
Funerals for public figures can often be stuffy affairs with formal speechmaking and half-hearted appeals to emotion, but the recent ceremonies for B.C.’s former premier were rife with real affection.
By Rod Mickleburgh
So, farewell then, Dave Barrett. A month after the remarkable NDP leader passed away, it was time for the public to bid adieu, formally and informally.
The official state memorial in Victoria came first, followed the next day by what was more a gathering of the clans at Vancouver’s Croatian Cultural Centre, not that far from where Dave Barrett grew up on the city’s rough-and-tumble east side. Both events were packed, befitting the immeasurable contribution he made to the province of British Columbia during his short 39 months as its first socialist premier. (Unlike today’s New Democrats, he never shied from using the term “socialist.”) Beyond his political legacy, there was an outpouring of real affection for someone who had such a ...
Andrea Bang Sounds the Drum of Korean Identity
Andrea Bang is currently in PyeongChang as part of CBC's broadcast team. She's interviewing locals about culture, so we thought we'd repost our 2016 interview with the star of Kim's Convenience.
People: Interview with Andrea Bang
The Vancouver star of Kim's Convenience says the first Canadian sitcom to feature Asian leads is about transcending ethnic stereotypes through human universals
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER – Andrea Bang thanks the Toronto Blue Jays. Not only did the team win the required games to advance, they pushed back the network premiere of her new show, Kim’s Convenience.
The new CBC comedy based on Ins Choi’s award-winning Fringe play airs tonight on the National Broadcaster, but it was originally slated to air last Tuesday – in the heat of the Blue Jays’ wildcard bid. The network wisely aired the ballgame instead, but Bang wasn’t depressed about the delay.
It gave her another week to mentally prepare while promos whetted the public appetite for a ...
Trish Dolman directs the national selfie: Canada in a Day
Interview: Trish Dolman
Vancouver filmmaker Trish Dolman captures Canadian soul in crowd-sourced documentary portrait airing tonight on CTV
By Katherine Monk
(July 1, 2017) VANCOUVER — There is something extraordinarily moving about Canada in a Day, even though one might say it’s thoroughly ordinary.
A visual scrapbook pulled together from over 16,000 video submissions from average Canucks who pointed the camera at their own lives on September 10, 2016, this selfie collage isn’t a film made by the rich and famous. It wasn’t scripted, and contains no professional actors. Yet, there is drama. There’s a palpable sense of theme. And despite the diversity of the players and their unique messages, one even feels a sense of unity. A shared heartbeat echoing empathy and human understanding. It’s lurking in every frame, because it’s part of who we are as a people.
It’s also because of Trish Dolman, the Vancouver-based producer and director who took on the challe...
Jay Baruchel on Goons, loons and Canadians’ saloon-speak
Interview: Jay Baruchel
The veteran actor and star of How to Train Your Dragon makes his directorial debut with Goon 2: Last of the Enforcers, but the closet poet says his movie is about more than small-town hockey, it's about the very heart and expletive-laden soul of the Canadian identity
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER, BC — Jay Baruchel emerges from the elegantly muted, sand coloured hallway with the urgency and focus of a grey squirrel gathering mid-winter nuts.
He’s on a mission and if it means tipping over a garbage can or two, traversing a frozen road from an overhead transmission wire or even fluffing up his tale for a confrontation with the unsuspecting public — he’s ready.
The Canadian actor known for playing Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon, as well as earning a place alongside Tom Cruise as one of the bawdy pranksters in Tropic Thunder, recently directed his first feature, Goon 2: Last of the Enforcers.
He says it was the achievement of a life-long ...
The Wide River of Gordon Pinsent’s Dreams
Movie Review: The River of My Dreams
Documentary about the Canadian actor captures much of his impish charm, but it leaves many questions unanswered about what really makes him tick
Leonard Cohen and me: A reminiscence
By Jay Stone
Even if we stated our case very clearly and all those who held as we do came to our side, all of them, we would still be very few. -- Leonard Cohen, Parasites of Heaven
When he died last week his constituency emerged, thousands, millions perhaps, smitten, devoted, some with stories of how they had gone to his house in Montreal and he had made them egg salad sandwiches. He was gracious, modest, haunting, and with the key to something we thought was ours alone. “Have you ever noticed how private a wet tree is, a curtain of razor blades?,” he wrote (in A Cross Didn’t Fall On Me), and suddenly you did notice. A poem is something that everyone knows but no one ever said before.
I found him by accident. When I was a teenager, there was a copy of his first novel, The Favourite Game, on the bookshelf in my father’s den when we lived in north Toronto. I don’t know how it got there, but my father got a lot of books from publishers because he was on the ...
Life, death and Andrew Huculiak
People: Interview with Andrew Huculiak
Getting metaphysical with the first-time director of Violent means dipping a big toe into the cold, dark waters of existentialism and cozying up with Kierkegaard
By Katherine Monk
(October 19, 2016) VANCOUVER – A gentle drizzle falls outside, and the faint smell of woolly dampness mingles with the scent of fresh pie. It’s a typical fall day in Vancouver -- wet, dark, and cool -- the perfect backdrop for an interview with Andrew Huculiak.
Huculiak is the director behind Violent, easily one of the best first features in Canadian film history, but up until now, it was also one of the most difficult to access.
Shot two years ago in Norway with a unilingual Norwegian cast, Violent was invited to Cannes, picked up top prizes at The Vancouver International Film Festival and was shortlisted as Canada’s best foreign film Oscar submission. By all accounts and measures, it should have hit theatres nationwide.
Yet, it’s only now, two ...
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau shuns royal treatment
Interview: Susanne Bier and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau get A Second Chance
He sports prosthetic golden fingers to play the role of Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones, but Nikolaj Coster-Waldau hates getting a fake hand for any performance, which is why he's grateful for the firm grip of fellow Dane Susanne Bier
By Katherine Monk
TORONTO—In the opening episode of Game of Thrones, his character pushed a young boy from a window without a hint of remorse. But put a fussy newborn in Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s arms, and the handsome Dane turns into a human pacifier.
“It didn’t matter what the babies were doing… if Nikolaj picked them up, they would almost immediately fall asleep,” says director Susanne Bier, referring to the off-camera vibe on her latest film, A Second Chance (En chance til). A relatively small Danish-language drama about a police officer who makes a life-altering decision with good intentions, A Second Chance has been making a slow pass through North American ...
Michael Joplin remembers a happy Janis
Interview: Michael Joplin
Though Janis Joplin's surviving siblings don't occupy huge amounts of screen time, Michael and Laura Joplin's presence brings a new dimension to Amy Berg's new documentary, Janis: Little Girl Blue, premiering tonight on PBS
