Dick: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - As this generation only seems to know Richard Nixon as the bad guy from Futurama, they may be surprised to learn that he was a real person. He really was the president of the United States, he really was a bit unsavory, and he really was a part of a huge scandal involving breaking into the office of the Democratic National Convention at the Watergate Hotel, where Forrest Gump called the police on his CIA operatives. Or wait, was it a couple of bumbling teen girls?

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Star Trek: Into Darkness: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - At some point in the 2000s, it had seemed that the Star Trek franchise, which had been a strong and memorable presence in both film and television for many years, was starting to jump the shark. Voyager has come to an end, the Next Generation crew hadn't had a genuinely good outing since 1996's First Contact, and the prequel show Enterprise was not well received by fans and was even cancelled early. I personally thought the show wasn't as bad as people thought, but I could see why they were frustrated with it. With viewers dwindling and popular opinion of the franchise being at its lowest, Paramount knew that they had to breathe life back into Star Trek. So, they brought in J.J. Abrams, the man who brought back Mission: Impossible back from the tomb where John Woo buried it.

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Picture Day: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - A couple of weeks ago I got a chance to see Picture Day, a Canadian film at the Vancity Theatre here in Vancouver. It's a theatre that specializes in festival cinema rather than mainstream films. What drew me to this film was that the lead actress is Tatiana Maslany, who I knew quite a few years ago through improv theatre circles, though admittedly not too well, however, we had some good conversations together. I knew her younger brother better. Geez, I guess that was almost ten years ago now. Well, it's been really fun seeing some of my old acting peers' careers grow, and Tatiana's has been quite noteworthy as she even had a secondary role in the hit Valentine's Day movie, The Vow.

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The Big Wedding: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - Justin Zackham must have spent ages getting this movie together, and was probably thrilled as a puppy when he finally got to make it with such a reputable cast. Besides directing it, he produced it and wrote the screenplay, and one might be half-tempted to give him writing credits as well. Except that the movie is adapted from some French movie that came out in 2006. Well, apparently the original wasn’t amazing so film purists out there can calm down a bit.

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Lloyd the Conquerer: A film review

 - Vancouver, British Columbia - This year at Vancouver's Fan Expo, one of the final events was a screening of the movie Lloyd the Conqueror, a film shot in Calgary about LARPing... and if you don't know what LARPing is, you might not understand this movie or the appeal behind it. I had heard of it before and was even given a cinematic example of it in the 2008 comedy Role Models. That film was pretty good and it turns out LARPing has a natural cinematic quality because it's somewhat comedic in nature and is visually interesting. And for those of you out there who do it and think I'm making fun of you, come on, have a little fun and just look at it. LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing, which takes the concepts of Dungeons and Dragons and makes them more real by dressing up as their characters and physically battling one another to some sort of end. You get fake stabbed, you fake die and so on. It's for those who just love it so much that sitting around a table and using your imagination isn't good enough. Personally, I think I would rather LARP than play DnD... though I don't think I have the desire or even the time for either.

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