I'm a freelance videographer and entertainment journalist (Absolute Underground Magazine, Two Hungry Blokes, and Otaku no Culture) with a wide range of interests. From archaeology to popular culture to paranormal studies, there's no stone unturned. Digging for the past and embracing "The Future" is my mantra.
The Victoria Foodie Film Festival has renamed to become Feast, Food & Film. Now into its third year, this rebranding is most likely needed to give this event its own unique name and help identify if in the arts and entertainment world of Victoria, BC. VFFF can be known as F^3 in short, and in what isn’t is the lineup of films and tastes to be found May 28 to 31st, 2015.
This year has eight films lined up to play in conjunction with hors-d’oeuvres (mostly) that snackers can take into the theatre. Unlike the previous year where most of the events took place at the Oak Bay Beach Hotel, this one places more emphasis at the Victoria Film Festival’s home digs at The Vic Theatre.
As the countdown for the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron begins, IMAX is certainly going to celebrate with the release of a keepsake poster to reward fans going to the April 30th screening. This company announced on Twitter last month that there are four images that they have commissioned, and the fans will get to vote on which one will get printed and distributed to theatre. No word has been mentioned on their blog page as to which one received the most responses. That might be coming on Thurs, April 23rd in order to build interest.
Not everyone can appreciate High School Musical and if someone is daring enough to turn the concept upside down and make it politically incorrect, only a local up-and-coming writer / director Joel McCarthy can. He nicely crafts this teaser of a concept within another story. He’s a graduate of the Motion Picture Arts program at Capilano University, and he presents a mockumentary about how tough it is to find success after film school in a grassroots style movie, High School: Shooting the Musical.
The real plot is in what kind of measure some folks use to forge ahead. Is this industry so bad where what happens means, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth? The movie is more of a character study about how far Adam Baxter (Bruce Novakowski), a ne’er-do-well movie-making wannabe, will go just to climb ahead. When he decides to steal the posthumous work of his flatmate, a fellow filmmaker Maximus Park (Lee Shorten) who found his fame all too quickly, no one else knows.
The official Star Wars news is that there’s going to be a movie where the plot involves the Death Star. This prequel, simply titled Rogue One, will bring together a band of other resistance fighters to fight against the Empire, and to keep in line with the events that happened a long time ago, not in a galaxy far, far away but in what’s considered canon, the plan is to snag the blueprints of this behemoth. However, as most fans already know, many a spy will have given up their lives to thwart the evil Empire’s plans to conquer the galaxy, and they will get to see how that story unfolds.
This information arrived on the final day of the Star Wars Celebration. The teaser does not reveal much other than the possibility that part of the story will take place on a heavily forested planet. Other than the voice over by Sir Alec Guinness saying, “For over a thousand generations the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times, before the Empire…,” not much is known about their final fate by the galaxy at large.
There may be one more story involving the last of the Jedi making one last attempt before the Empire makes its fist to affirm that they are the ‘new law.’ But sadly, they are extinct in what director Gareth Edwards revealed to the Guardian.
In the world of Rogue One, Edwards said the “absence of Jedi is omnipresent.”
Is Superman a false god or a prophet? Just who is he and what is his purpose on Earth? These are the questions raised in Zack Snyder’s reimagining of the DC Universe. In fact, this comics company has this “New 52” in place for sometime. and this director has been following along a similar line of themes for DC’s theatrical presentation and reimagining of some iconic heroes. In Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, not everyone approves of this new mighty man of steel poised to look like Atlas holding the weight of the world upon his shoulders. In the voice-over, one individual asks if the biggest demon might be someone who fell from the sky — is this an allusion to Lucifer, the Morningstar? We’re not talking about the devil here, but that’s the feeling some folks might get. Literary analysts might wonder if this person is playing on the idiom, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.”
Given another frame where there are soldiers bowing to Superman, some may wonder just what kind of hold he has upon the fair people of Metropolis. The city has recovered from the events of Man of Steel, but not everyone approves. And is it a vault that he’s entering into?
By the time Bruce Wayne aka Batman emerges, this version of the caped crusader is going to be nothing like former iterations seen on-screen. He’s staring at an old costume and is perhaps wondering if its time to put it on again. The dialogue is sharp as a new narrator speaks about how dark feelings can turn a good man to bad. There’s this fever and rage that festers, and that’s essentially Batman as visioned by Frank Miller. Viewers of this trailer get to see this version don some mechanical threads that gives him a wicked glowing eye look. Wayne is going to need it if he’s going to fight Superman.
Perhaps the biggest question here is just how far gone has Batman become? Is he there to do what’s right for the people of Earth? Does he even know about Superman’s weakness to Kryptonite? When this film’s subtitle is known as Dawn of Justice, that means other types of superheroes could potentitally emerge to side with either the caped crusader or man of steel in hopes to find freedom from being ostracized. The villain is not so clearly defined yet. As any follower of DC’s films will know, Lex Luthor is waiting in the wings.
The second trailer to Star Wars: The Force Awakens is certainly signalling the passing of the lightsaber. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) narrates this second piece by saying, “The Force is strong in my family. My father has it, I have it, my sister has it (whereupon Luke gives his original lightsaber away to who may be Leia) … you have that power too.” Just who is it? There’s no direct image to indicate exactly who, but it may well be with the Poe (Oscar Isaac), the X-wing pilot or Rey (Daisy Ridley), the lady running in the foreground. Usually, when constructing a trailer, it’s best to have the images flow with the text. When the trailer is meant to tease, it should not reveal exactly what’s going on, but instead suggest one of a few possibilities to have watchers guessing.
If the editors and J.J. Abrams are clever, it’ll be neither of the above, and just who is in the family bloodline has not been revealed yet. In the Expanded Universe created by Dark Horse Comics and various authors, Han and Leia are married, and they have children: Jaina, Jacen and Anakin. When the Walt Disney company acquired the franchise, they declared all of that as “Legends,” or rather an alternate universe that’s no longer considered canon. To be fair, to work the new film based on what’s created with no consortium would have led to a less than stellar screenplay, and to wonder what’s new, or if Poe or Rey are related to the Skywalker family is more exciting.
As the countdown for the release of 
Special Screening: Tuesday, April 21st,
Is 
