Tag: Comedy

[Victoria Fringe Festival ’15] The Lexicon of the Brothers Grimm is Fully Explored in The Untold Tales, A Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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VENUE: Metro Studio Theatre
1411 Quadra St. Victoria, BC

PERFORMANCE DATES:
August 27th | 7:45 pm
August 29th | 6:30 pm
August 30th | 3:45 pm
September 3rd | 6:30 pm
September 4th | 10:30 pm
September 5th | 2:00 pm

LENGTH: 75 minutes

Audiences going to see The Untold Tales of the Brothers Grimm will be treated to lesser known tales from the trio and to quick summarizes of their better known tales. But wait, not everyone will know that the family consisted of nine siblings. Jacob (Josh Sundmann) and Wilhelm (Nich Gulycz) are the duo who achieved wider recognition. Some members passed away before their prime and others were not as involved in these two’s endeavours. What makes this show fascinating is a look into how one of the members of the family really wanted to be part of Jacob and Wilhelm’s life. The mousey Ludwig Grimm (Brooke Baliam) adds an element to the show that helps provide a plot. On the historical front, and perhaps overlooked for this play, is his contribution to the Grimm legacy by providing an illustrative front-piece to a later edition of their book, Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

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[Victoria Fringe Festival 2015] A Look at the Many Faces of Tim Motley, Dirk Darrow & Beyond

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Location:
Victoria Event Centre
1415 Broad Street

Showtimes:
Aug 27, 2015 – 8:15 PM
Aug 29, 2015 – 8:15 PM
Sept 2, 2015 – 6:15 PM
Sept 4, 2015 – 10:00 PM
Sept 5, 2015 – 4:45 PM
Sept 6, 2015 – 6:30 PM

Stage Magician and Comedian Tim Motley has more than just one character hiding up his sleeve. He can simply be himself, or appear as a character from long ago. In the past, he’s played the role of Arizona Jones, a character that’s a cousin of the famous archaeologist, Indiana, but these days, he’s Dirk Darrow, a sleuth with an eye on enchanting audiences with his slight-of-hand and wit. He appeared two years ago at Victoria’s Fringe Festival back as a Not Completely Serious Supernatural Investigator in Dirk Darrow: NCSSI, and this year he returns with 2 Ruby Knockers, 1 Jaded Dick. If there’s a sexual joke in there, theatre-goers will have to attend the show to find out. At other Fringe shows, this show has been reported as sold out.

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[Victoria, BC] How to do the Nerdy Fringe 2015 Edition

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Various Venues
August 27 to Sept 6
Victoria, BC

Requires Fringe Button ($6)
Tickets range from $9 to 11
Available through Ticket Rocket or at the door

I’m fairly certain that there’s more than a few staff members at the Victoria Fringe Festival who are nerds too. I’ve met one person who worked there who is an avid LEGO enthusiast and I’m sure that buried in the closet are a few NERF guns. When nobody is looking, it’ll be time to bust a move.

People not acquainted with what the Fringe is about will quickly discover that the shows are experimental in nature, and the stages used are small to accommodate an intimate performance. Anything can happen, and the idea of a festival is to give new up-and-coming talent a chance to earn their cred. There’s a few groups that have moved on to bigger shows. The Reduced Shakespeare Company got their start at Fringe and Tom Stoppard‘s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was performed first at the Edinburgh Fringe. In a tiny way, Evil Dead: The Musical owes its debt somewhat to this method of putting on shows. It opened in a club before making it big. Musicals are just one part of what can be experienced at Fringe Festivals, and that’s what I tend to gravitate to when the Victoria Fringe Festival caps off the Summer.

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Deconstructing Pixels Bit by Bit, A Movie Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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When considering Pixels was originally an animated short by Patrick Jean and the movie of the same name was re-conceived by Tim Herlihy and Timothy Dowling, the only person to blame for this travesty on the big screen is simply in the fact that Adam Sandler‘s production company is involved, he’s one of the many producers calling the shots, and he is starring in it. Couldn’t someone else star as the hero?

Sandler’s trademark lowbrow sense of humour is not popular anymore. When you tune him out, and mentally filter out his scenes, there’s a germ of a good idea that director Chris Columbus (Harry Potter, Home Alone) is trying to bring forth. That’s not necessarily with conjuring forth feelings of nostalgia for the 80’s, the decade when arcade games was popular.

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Prepare yourself for LEGO Star Wars Droid Tales, A Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

LSW-DT_SWC-600x834Some fans of a peculiar galaxy far, far away love LEGO, and it’s about time a new animation is made. The Yoda Chronicles was short lived and The New Yoda Chronicles (retitled due to rights ownership) just did not have the same quality that the previous season had. LEGO Star Wars: Droid Tales is suffering from a similar fate. Ever since Disney acquired the rights, the consistency of this spinoff world has not been perfect.

When the directors and executive producers have changed between products, perhaps that’s the cause. The only person involved in all these shorts is Lucasfilm writer Michael Price. His plotting is quite good. Somehow, as more products have been made, the execution has not matched what was presented in The Padawan Menace. The way young Anakin is characterized in the premiere is familiar. He’s a touch annoying in the films but the fact he almost becomes Darth Vader is toyed with much like how Lloyd Garmadon in Ninjago wants to be evil.

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One Little, Two Brave or Three ‘Stewart’ Minions, A Review

The world of Earth is still without heroes in Minions.

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

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The world of Earth is still without heroes in Minions. Just where they are to defeat the bad guys does not need to be asked, and nor are they required when these funny yellow critters (all of them voiced by Pierre Coffin) finally get their own movie. After tiny appearances of their hijinks in the Despicable Me movies, the producers from Illumination Entertainment thankfully took five years to get a product out to feature them as bumbling heroes whereas DreamWork’s The Penguins of Madagascar, their rivals, took ten.

These cute little yellow, capsule shaped, creatures are on a quest to serve the most vile villain they can find. The only problem they have is their ineptitude to help them rise to power. Just what happens to these ruthless tyrants under their Igor like care is hilarious and the voice-over narrative Geoffrey Rush provides is touching. Sadly, the best moments are given away in the trailers.

In the history lesson that’s provided, it’s merely a sampling of the rulers they met over the millennia. To see how these Minions served other past dictators like Caligula, Genghis Kahn, Blackbeard or Stalin would have added more flavour instead of reiterating what the teasers have shown. At least one ruler is missed: in the Middle Ages, perhaps King Edward I of England got the brutal end of a blade and that was not included in the film. This exclusive moment in the trailer suggests a longer cut was animated but in what’s pared down for the film, nothing new is added.

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