ROUGE
Putting the pink and champagne energy drink into local TV and film industry folks

Director Anne Wheeler [Edge of Madness; Better Than Chocolate] beats the heat, which we suspect she brought with her upon returning from a four-month shoot in Africa.

After eight years doing Toronto duty, prolific writer Mark Leiren-Young and his wife recently returned to live in Vancouver. Guess T.O. didn't appreciate the shirt.

Who says three's a crowd? Looking ripe to audition for Canada's Charlie's Angels are (from l-r): Ingrid Nilson ["Falling Angels" and "Renagadepress.com"]; Sera-Lys McArthur ["The Englishman's Boy"] and Elyse Levesque ["Family in Hiding"].

Waleed Elabed told moviesforbreakfast.com he just launched his acting career. Bonus points: he's living in Vancouver and can do one heck of an American accent.

July 4, 2006
Pssssst!
The next Sunday morning flick at Cambie Street's Park Theatre will be on July 23 at 10:00 am when the Festival Cinemas Film Series presents Woody Allen's Scoop.

As he did with Match Point, Allen-the-writer/director sets his contemporary love story/mystery in London, England and casts raspy-voiced Scarlett Johansson in the lead, this time as a journalism student on the trail of a serial killer. The male object of desire is long drink of water Hugh Jackman. The Aussie plays an aristocrat who may or may not be the infamous Tarot Card Killer that Johansson's character is tracking--and finding her knees buckling for. Those of us who never recovered after witnessing Kenneth Branagh channel His Konigsberg in 1998's Celebrity can take heart: Allen himself is in the film! On a side note, isn't it curious how relatively tame the personal entanglements of Mia Farrow's 'ex' and Soon Yi's 'current' have seemed since the Michael Jackson trial?

The Early Bird Got the Bagel...and
Leonard Cohen!

June 25, 2006
The bagels had to be replenished when an unexpectedly high number of famished moviegoers showed up to a recent advance screening of Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man at the Park Theatre. Judging from the crowd's spontaneous smatters of applause and hoots of laughter throughout, Lian Lunson's lovely, good-natured collection of intimate, musical moments about Canada's songwriter-poet is destined to be a hit. I've already popped it on my top 10 list for 2006.

Leonard Cohen, director Lian Lunson, and Paul Hewson, aka Bono.

The well-paced documentary was built around a Cohen tribute concert presented at Australia's Sydney Opera House in 2005. In the film, numerous covers of Cohen songs are hauntingly performed by Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Rufus and Martha Wainwright (Kate's son and daughter), Beth Orton, Nick Cave, Antony, and U2. The beautiful duet by Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen is worth the price of admission, as they say. These earnest performances are punctuated with the musicians' equally earnest plaudits for, and at times rib-tickling anecdotes about, the man who influenced their careers and personas. But it's when Cohen himself appears onscreen to share intimate details of his life that the euphoria infuses us and we become determined to immediately rush out and buy all his albums, which we'll play night and day until we've completely absorbed his independent, lyrical spirit and become better people.

Oh sure, we could have used even two more songs sung by Cohen himself. And I would have welcomed some tasteful probing of the titular star's love life. So much of the songwriter's soul and venom has spilled onto and smeared the page as a result of women, women, women. Where are they?

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man evoked one surprise emotional response. After laughing out loud at Rufus Wainwright's recollection of his first meeting with a skivvy-clad Cohen in the legend's kitchen, I was suddenly blubbering. Hey, most of us have known since childhood that we'd never attain Cohen's heights. We never cared. And who the heck would even try? It's always been enough as a proud Canadian to appreciate a countryman's success. No, the pain came in realizing, upon listening to Wainwright's story, that most of us could never, ever hope to be as tender as this man Wainwright first encountered, gingerly feeding bits of sausage from a toothpick to a bird that had tumbled from her nest. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man is a gem. It opens in Vancouver on Friday, June 30.

June 4, 2006
If it's Sunday and there are bagels, it must be Festival Cinemas' Sunday morning Film Series.

On June 4, www.moviesforbreakfast.com slathered on the cream cheese and director Robert Altman loaded on the all-star cast during an advance screening of writer/broadcaster Garrison Keillor 's A Prairie Home Companion, which will open in Vancouver on June 9. Judging from the one-hole-punchouts in my series pass, A Prairie Home Companion is #7 of a total of 10 new films that will preview at 10:00 on a Sunday morning at Leonard Schein's lovingly restored, single-screen Park Theatre at 3440 Cambie Street.

Altman's quirky, song-heavy film takes place during the final broadcast of a fictitious live radio show. A Prairie Home Companion features Meryl Streep, Lindsay Lohan, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, and John C. Reilly (yes, you know him—he was the nice cop in Magnolia and the creepy rental agent in Dark Water ) belting it out as radio performers. Co-stars Virginia Madsen, Kevin Kline, and Tommy Lee Jones remain pleasingly nonmusical.

After the credits rolled, author/broadcaster Bill Richardson, who more than a decade ago did research for Keillor's real life radio program of the same name when it swung through town, summed up Altman's contrapuntal film.

“What Garrison Keillor has tapped into is that deep kind of hankering for nostalgia that goes beyond the sticky and the sweet,” said Richardson, before evading the post-screening crush in the lobby by ducking out the back entrance in service of his purported shyness.

Even if you pull a Richardson and don't stick around afterwards, the Festival Film Series is worth getting out of bed for on a Sunday a.m. The Park fairly hums with jovial moviegoers clutching their coffee and muffins.The series has found its feet from the early days, when tepid Red Rose tea and a Grand Central Station-type hullabaloo in the cramped concession area prior to a screening of Capote tested the patience of hungry, impatient moviegoers. And the proceedings have calmed down significantly since the morning that found Schein protesting weakly from his aisle seat when, prior to a screening of Syriana, an indignant theatergoer berated guest speaker and MP Stephen Owen over the Liberals' policy on oil. Other, non-heckled guest speakers to date have included writer Crawford Kilian, and the Vancouver Sun 's Katherine Monk and Jonathan Manthorpe.

When you emerge from your cinema discussion, blinking in the sunlight, it's still only noon. Still hungry? You've got plenty of time to grab an Americano at the neighbouring Starbucks, pick up some organic veggies at Choices, or nip into the Tomato Café for Sunday brunch.

You can check out upcoming screenings at www.festivalcinemas.ca.

Cinema Salon

Zounds! On Monday, May 8, the inaugural Cinema Salon at the Vancouver International Film Centre announced itself with a line-up that snaked down Seymour Street past the Centre and towards Davie. If she were unsure going into her newest venture, Melanie Friesen certainly gleaned long before the Vancity Theatre's brilliant orange curtains parted that she had a monster hit on her hands.

“We had no idea there'd be this kind of a crowd, so three cheers to us!” a chuffed Friesen told the audience. The overflow crowd, she explained, had been accommodated in the bar for a simulcast.

The Cinema Salon has been established as a monthly event. As host/producer, Friesen, the recently retired producer of the Vancouver International Film Festival's Trade Forum, will invite a distinguished guest to present his/her favourite film. The guest speaker will explain why he chose that particular film, we enjoy the show, and then everyone gets to chat about the film over food and drinks. Yes, that includes alcohol.

On this warm spring evening, the guest was Vancouverite and architect Arthur Erickson. Introducing us to director Jean Renoir 's The River (1951), Erickson said the film reminded him of the extraordinary time he'd had when he served in India with the British Army as part of the Canadian Intelligence Corps.

“The whole film was a kind of duplicate of my experience,” he said, “full of wonderful associations and memories…and the tremendous luxury of the Indian experience.”

So there we were, Arthur Erickson and us, watching an actor with a really big head playing a soldier with a wooden leg and fractured spirit for whose attention three teenage girls of varying degrees of comeliness and chutzpah vie during an eventful summer in India. The film was exquisitely artistic, romantic, graceful—and troubling in that way films are when a little boy becomes obsessed with cobras.

The words ‘Cinema Salon', unlike the words ‘movie lobby', conjure up images of cocktail dresses, updos, and tuxes. But this is Vancouver, so The River attracted as many youths in brown blazers and ball caps as it did middle-aged women in multi-coloured ethnic skirts and natty octogenarians in three-piece suits. And I've never seen so many bespectacled people in one place at one time. Judging from the smiles and buzz afterwards, all had a very satisfying evening.

Coming next month: At Cinema Salon 3 on Monday, July 3, poet Susan Musgrave will introduce Zhang Yimou's 1991 film Raise the Red Lantern.

Bulging Briefs and Busting Bras
Vancouver Queer Film Festival

There's Nothin' Like a Dame
On this particular enchanted evening, Vancouver's temperature was hotter than that of the South Pacific, so why not channel a little Ray Walston from the 1958 musical, hmmm?

Upcoming Cinema Salon

What: Akira Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August
When: Monday, August 7 @ 7:30 pm
Where: Vancity Theatre, Vancouver International Film Centre [1181 Seymour Street]
Why: Author, playwright, and filmmaker Douglas Coupland, the evening's guest presenter, will tell us why on the night
How: Tix and information: www.vifc.org

Carmen lured Cinema Salon producer Melanie Friesen and guest presenter Jim Green to the Vancity Theatre for a little popcorn and flamenco

Seeing Green at Cinema Salon 2

Jim Green revealed his romantic streak on Monday, June 5. That's when the former Vancouver city councilor presented Carmen to a packed house attending the Vancouver International Film Centre's Cinema Salon 2— the second event in the six-part series.

Cinema Salon producer Melanie Friesen introduced Green by fondly recalling the times he brought in a grand piano, candelabra, and singers to stage operas at dusk inside the Four Corners Bank at Hastings and Main Streets, and threw the doors open for one and all.

Taking the podium, the anthropologist and opera aficionado touched on the political ramifications of Carlos Saura's minimalist 1983 Spanish production. Green noted that most of the people involved in the production were Communist Party members who used art to fight against fascism. Of star Laura del Sol, Green waxed poetic: “If I hadn't seen the film before, I'd concentrate on her eyes.”

In an interview with Sean Rossiter in Shared Vision (November 2005), Green said he fell in love with opera in the ‘70s after two shipyard coworkers started ‘bothering' him about opera and playing opera records. The music triggered something in Green, who started listening to it on CBC on Saturday afternoons. “The next thing I knew,” he told Rossiter, “I was an Opera Guy. It's kind of like you don't realize you're getting old. You don't realize you've turned into an Opera Guy.”

Green said he loves the dramatic work because it encompasses every art form. He then described wife Roberta McCann, also present, as the greatest opera critic of them all. Green asked her, he said, about the role of women in opera. Her answer? “Aria. Aria. Thud.” Carmen didn't disappoint.

Got an urge to see live flamenco dancing? Green suggests you check out Kino Café and Flamenco Bar at 3456 Cambie Street.

2006 LEO Awards

Sandra Gets Dumped is a 12-minute short film that was created in 8 days as part of the 2005 Crazy8s Film Festival. In the film, Carly Pope stars as the titular character who, upon getting a Dear Jane letter, must deal with the seven stages of grief that accompany being dumped: shock, denial, bargaining, anger, depression, and acceptance. Did I mention it's a comedy?

Krista Kelloway and Tracy Smith

By the time I joined the Sandra filmmakers' table at the LEO Awards Gala Celebration on Saturday, May 13, the flick had already earned the Best Screenwriting trophy for writer-director Tracy Smith at Friday night's Celebration Awards.

A buoyant Smith was at the table on Saturday, along with Sandra producer Sophie McGarry. McGarry noted that it's usually men who write and direct, and women who produce, and suggested that we need to change that. Without vilifying men, she stressed. As we contemplated the future of women in film with seatmates Krista Kelloway of Brightlight Pictures, who served as first assistant director on Dumped, and Aisla Webster, also of Brightlight, Sandra star Carly Pope was declared winner of the award for Best Actress in a Short Film. As Pope was absent, Smith claimed it for her, meaning we got to spend the rest of the evening with the weighty statue inches from our wine glasses. The batteries of my digital camera conked out before I could take a shamefully staged picture of the filmmakers smiling with the trophy, so the one here of Smith and Kelloway flanking Pope's award will have to do.

Fans of Sandra Gets Dumped will be pleased that there are sequels aplenty: Sandra Goes to Whistler aka Sandra Gets Laid was produced for the 2005 Whistler Film Festival “Whistler Stories” Competition. And next up are Sandra Goes Camping —“she heard that you can find your vagina in the bush,” explained Smith—and Sandra Gets Married .

Check out the films' synopses and trailers at: http://www.sandragetsdumped.com/synopsis_dumped.php