The Georgia Straight - Best Movies of 2018 - Dec 27, 2018

DECEMBER 27 / 2018 JANUARY 10 / 2019 | FREE Volume 52 | Number 2659

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2 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019

J O H N F LU E VO G S H O E S G R A N V I L L E S T · · | WAT E R S T · · F L U E V O G C O M

DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 3

CONTENTS

The Vancouver Flea Market Sunday, Jan. 6th

December 27 / 2018 - January 10 / 2019

23 COVER

ANTIQUE SHOW

It’s the time of year when film critics rank the best movies of the past 12 months for their Top 10 lists.

By Ken Eisner, Janet Smith, and Adrian Mack Cover illustration by Matt Mignanelli

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NEWS

NPA councillor Rebecca Bligh and COPE’s Jean Swanson reveal what issues they want to address.

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14 CANNABIS

Loose lips sink trips: an expert tells you how to handle questions about pot when crossing the U.S. border. By Piper Courtenay

17 ARTS

It took two years to find a home for The Full Light of Day, the Electric Company Theatre’s newest production.

By Janet Smith

27 MUSIC

We give you the best, the worst, and the just plain weird of the music world for the past 12 months—including why all our musicians might someday move to Regina.

By Mike Usinger, Kate Wilson, and John Lucas

e Start Here 16 11 16 15 18 26 11 31 13

THE BOTTLE CONFESSIONS FOOD HOROSCOPES I SAW YOU MOVIE REVIEWS REAL ESTATE SAVAGE LOVE TECHNOLOGY

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18 ARTS 28 MUSIC

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29 CLASSIFIEDS

Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly Volume 52 | Number 2659 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9 T: 604.730.7000 F: 604.730.7010 E: gs.info@straight.com straight.com

2907 w broadway, vancouver, bc 1.877/604.736.3482 www.bed-online.com

CARNEY’S CORNER Best wishes to all clients, neighbours, family & friends cli ie for the holiday season and health, happiness and prosperity h for 2019

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Ch The stockings hung, the tree trimmed and the roast beast wafting from the gourmet kitchen while friends enjoy mulled wine and egg nog in the spacious living area under soaring vaulted ceilings and skylights! Best to Fred and Yvonne in their new home! While we share good cheer and good friends may we look forward with hopes for peace as the clock ticks down to a new year.

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4 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019

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Here’s what people are reading this week on Straight.com.

1 2 3 4 5

Large majority votes against proportional representation.

Hundy: New burger concept set to open in Kitsilano.

Patti Bacchus: The trouble with relying on charity.

New MacBook Air is the gold standard for productivity laptops.

Google reveals exactly what Canadians searched for in 2018.

GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight

The Georgia Straight is published every Thursday by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. Copies are distributed free every week throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver, New Westminster, and Richmond. International Standard Serial Number ISSN 0709-8995. Subscription rates in Canada $182.00/52 issues (includes GST), $92.00/26 issues (includes GST); United States $379.00/52 issues, $205.00/26 issues; foreign $715.00/52 issues, $365.00/26 issues. Contact 604-730-7087 if you wish to distribute free copies of the Georgia Straight at your place of business. Entire contents copyright © 2018 Vancouver Free Press, Best Of Vancouver, Bov And Golden Plates Are Trade-Marks Of Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. SUBMISSIONS The Straight accepts no responsibility for, and will not necessarily respond to, any submitted materials. All submissions should be addressed to contact@straight.com.

Canadian Publications Mail Agreement #40009178, return undeliverable Canadian addresses to The Georgia Straight, 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C, V6J 1W9

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2019 CHRISTMAS TREE RECYCLING Lions Club Chipping Events

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Saturday, January 5 and Sunday, January 6 10 am to 4 pm EVENT LOCATIONS • Kerrisdale Community Ice Rink parking lot • Kitsilano Beach parking lot • Sunset Beach upper parking lot • Trout Lake Community Centre parking lot Please remove all decorations and tinsel!

Donations of cash and non-perishable food will be accepted and distributed to local charities.

DROP-OFF TO DEPOT CURBSIDE RESIDENTIAL PICK UP Christmas trees will be collected the weekend of January 12-13.

Set out your tree before 7 am on January 12 for pick up. Trees should be set out on their own and laid on their sides. Do not place your tree inside your Green Bin or bag or bundle it.

Trees can be dropped off at no charge to the Vancouver South Transfer Station or Vancouver Landfill in Delta until January 31.

For more information: vancouver.ca/christmastree

NEWS

Councillors seek action on opioids and housing

A

by Travis Lupick

s local politicians prepared for their Christmas break, NPA councillor Rebecca Bligh told the Georgia Straight that there would be one piece of business on her mind over the break: the overdose crisis.

“We’ve just spent the morning looking at and considering the report by the Mayor’s Emergency Opioid Task Force,” Bligh explained in a telephone interview on December 21. “So we’ll be following up to see how we, as a council, can make some headway here.”

Bligh, who worked in communications and leadership development before joining council, said she wants Vancouver Coastal Health and its partners to take seriously the idea that cannabis may, for some people, work as a substitute that can help them transition from and stay off harder drugs that come with risks of fatal overdoses.

“It’s perhaps a little bit controversial, but there is [an epidemiologist] at UBC [Michael John Milloy] who has been awarded a professorship to study it,” Bligh said.

There are 10 seats on council, and eight of them are filled by politicians serving their first terms. Bligh said these couple of months have been a bit of a learning experience, where new councillors have had to grapple with demands for the city to respond to problems that are traditionally responsibilities of the provincial and federal governments. The opioid epidemic is one such example, she noted.

From the other end of the political spectrum, Jean Swanson, a first-term councillor with COPE, said the same.

“At all these briefings, I’m learning that so much of what the city has to deal with is caused by bad provincial policies,” the long-time activist told

The NPA’s Rebecca Bligh sees potential in cannabis as a substitute for opioids.

the Straight. “Homelessness, for example….Housing, social-welfare programs—these are very much provincial and federally funded mandates.”

Swanson emphasized that she will continue to work on these issues once council reconvenes in 2019.

“What we really need is vacancy control, but the province has really caved to the developers and the landlords on that one,” Swanson said.

The term “vacancy control” describes regulations for how a landlord can increase a unit’s rent between tenants, usually placing a maximum on that amount. On December 12, the provincial Rental Housing Task Force issued recommendations. To some people’s chagrin and others’ relief, a vacancy control was not on the list.

“As long as we don’t have that, there’s a profit incentive to evict tenants,” Swanson said. “It’s really bad for affordable housing stock, because all of these apartment buildings are sold at a really high price on the assumption that we don’t have vacancy control.

“It’s a really bad situation,” she continued. “The province has to step up, and if it doesn’t, we need to mobilize tenants to get the city to.”

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8 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019

OPINION

David Eby was 2018’s big newsmaker

O

by Charlie Smith

rdinarily in provincial politics, the premier attracts the most media attention and exercises the greatest power. But in 2018, John Horgan cannot be considered B.C.’s newsmaker of the year.

That goes to Attorney General David Eby. That’s because he was at the centre of many of the biggest stories of the year. On the legislative front, he introduced a whopping 18 bills in the house. Some were housekeeping measures making changes to the enforcement of family-maintenance payments and laws around class proceedings, civil-resolution tribunals, and the registration of lobbyists.

Other bills had much more profound ramifications, such as restoring the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, setting the rules for B.C.’s recent referendum on electoral reform, and clearing the way for the province to recover health-care costs from manufacturers or wholesalers for actions that “contributed to an opioidrelated wrong”.

Unlike some American states, however, Eby hasn’t included distribution companies, such as trucking firms, in his list of legislated targets.

But these aren’t the only reasons why the lanky attorney general is B.C.’s newsmaker of the year. His continued crusade against moneylaundering kept him in the headlines all year, most notably when he released the Dirty Money report in June. Written by lawyer and former RCMP deputy commissioner Peter German, the document claimed that more than $10 million per year in illicit cash was washed through B.C. casinos—about the cost of two Shaughnessy mansions. And it was released with a splash: lots of videos featuring gamblers showing up

Attorney General David Eby was at the centre of some of 2018’s major stories.

at these establishments with hockey bags full of money.

From there, Eby conflated the casino money-laundering with the fentanyl crisis and the sky-high price of housing in Vancouver. But just as media coverage was reaching a crescendo, the bottom started falling out of the residential realestate market. The November statistics from the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver indicated that the average sale price of detached homes in Eby’s constituency of Point Grey was down 17.9 percent from the same month in 2017.

Homeowners blamed Eby, an eager cheerleader of Finance Minister Carole James’s surtax on homes valued at more than $3 million. That led to protests in two West Side parks by placard-carrying homeowners.

Eby also applauded the NDP government’s decision in February

to increase the foreign-buyers tax from 15 to 20 percent and extend it to other areas of the province. Now there’s talk of a recall campaign against the attorney general, who nevertheless remains popular with many tenants, NDP–voting Point Grey residents, and younger voters because they feel he’s played a major role in driving down the cost of homeownership.

All of this is aside from his role as the minister for ICBC, which made headlines in January when he said there was a “financial Dumpster fire” at the Crown-owned insurer. That was when it was headed toward a $1.3-billion loss by the end of the fiscal year on March 31, 2018.

ICBC introduced several reforms—including capping awards for pain and suffering for minor injuries and charging higher rates for newcomers to the province. Eby’s legislation also established an independent tribunal, which enraged many trial lawyers. But even after that, ICBC still lost $582 million in the first six months of the current fiscal year.

Earlier this month, ICBC applied to the B.C. Utilities Commission for a 6.3-percent average hike in basic insurance rates for motor vehicles.

It’s expected that collision and comprehensive insurance rates will increase by a larger percentage.

Expect Eby to remain in the news in 2019 as more legislative measures come forward to focus on moneylaundering. And if federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh is replaced after next year’s election campaign, don’t be surprised if some New Democrats start urging Eby to run as his replacement.

That just might be enough to make him next year’s newsmaker of the year as well.

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HOUSING

Cost of new housing stabilized in 2018

A

The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.

by Charlie Smith

designed Vancouver House, a 59-storey luxury condo building that has transformed the skyline. The developer, Westbank, recently secured London Drugs and Fresh St. Market as groundfloor tenants in the 600,000-squarefoot complex in what’s being called the Beach District. When it opens next year, it will be augmented by artist Rodney Graham’s Torqued Chandelier, a five-metre light that will be FOUR NDP TAX CHANGES suspended below the Granville Street In February, Finance Minister Carole Bridge.

James announced four major changes to fiscal policy: a surtax on $3-million- WHERE ARE NONRESIDENT plus homes, a new speculation tax OWNERS? (which is actually a vacancy tax), an Social media is full of complaints about increase in the foreign-buyers tax from foreign buyers, but data released this 15 percent to 20 percent, and a hike in month by Statistics Canada suggested the property-purchase tax. They were that the vast majority of residentialsupposed to generate almost $1.3 bil- property owners are domestic. Only lion over three years, according to five percent are nonresident owners. budget documents. However, that may The rate of nonindividual ownership not materialize, given the slowdown in in Vancouver—i.e., companies or organizations—was just 5.6 percent, acsales and declining prices. cording to Statistics Canada.

fter almost a decade of rising home prices, the residential real-estate market underwent a fairly radical transformation in 2018. What was once a boom became a property bust, wiping out big chunks of equity, particularly on the West Side of Vancouver.

Here are some significant local stories in this sector in 2018.

SLUMPING SALES

November was the bleakest month since the 2008 global meltdown, as far as local real-estate agents were concerned. The Greater Vancouver Real Estate Board reported that sales were down 42.5 percent from the same month in 2017. With just 1,608 transactions, it demonstrated that buyers were taking a break in the wake of tighter mortgage-qualification rules and previous interestrate increases. The benchmark price for all residential properties was still more than $1 million, but this was down 1.4 percent from November 2017. It’s too early to call it a crash, but it’s certainly a correction.

VANCOUVER HOUSE RISES

It’s hard to miss the twisting tower rising above the north end of the Granville Bridge. Architect Bjarke Ingels

MONEY-LAUNDERING

In November, Global B.C. reported that it had obtained a secret police report, which purported that more than $1 billion had been laundered through Vancouver real estate in 2016. No names were released. But the study of 1,200 luxury purchases claimed that more than 10 percent were linked to people with criminal records.

AGENT PAYS FOR REFERRALS

Last month the Straight’s Carlito Pablo revealed that a Richmond realtor was paying immigrant-settlement companies for referrals. In three cases, Di (Tony) Xu used this information to close deals. The Real Estate Council of B.C. determined that he committed professional misconduct by not revealing this to his managing broker. He also didn’t think that these referrals needed to be disclosed to his clients. Xu ended up with a 30-day suspension and a $1,500 fine.

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P arty OF THE WEEK THE HOLIDAYS can be a tough time to stay sober. Society virtually shoves booze down your throat through the entire month of December.

That can lead to bad decisions for people who struggle with an addiction. And, with an overdose epidemic killing more than 1,400 people a year across B.C., for those with an addiction to opioids, bad decisions are turning deadly.

Recovery Day B.C. has an answer for the very trickiest of nights to avoid alcohol and other drugs. This December 31, it’s

hosting a “clean and sober” New Year’s Eve party.

The New Westminster nonprofit will ring in 2019 with the popular cover band the Timebenders plus DJ Lejos and DJ Dave Ally. Tickets cost $125 for dinner and dancing or $25 without the meal. It’s all going down at the Anvil Centre (777 Columbia Street, New Westminster).

Proceeds support the group’s annual Recovery Day celebration, which is held in downtown New Westminster each September. Additional details are at recoverydaybc.com/.

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Roger Ross

Scan to confess OK, what’s the etiquette On eating a meal on public transit? I’m not talking about a bag of chips or a granola bar. I’m talking about a full meal, burger, fries, the whole deal. I told the guy sitting beside me on Skytrain it was rude. From my perspective it was also plenty gross having to smell his greasy burger on my commute so I moved. I pick up fish n’ chips regularly at a place in between my Skytrain and bus and I would never think of diving into it amongst my fellow passengers. Is this just me?

Yup Tornado near Seattle? White Rock pier destroyed by severe wind storm? Climate change is here. It’s so obvious and the news doesn’t mention any link to climate change.

I am not my stroller I’m a new mom and I’m amazed daily by the number of other moms out and about in the neighbourhood! I always try to at least exchange a friendly “Hey, you got this! Wanna be friends?” smile when we pass on the sidewalk or the trail. I have a terribly inexpensive, hand-me-down stroller and on more than one occasion, a fellow mom has seen me approaching, looked at my rickety, no name stroller and looked away, all while I’m smiling my “wanna be friends?” smile! Get over it, stroller snobs!

Your morning Starbucks routine Several mornings a week I watch you gather with your pals and head for Starbucks for your 9am wake up call. Take out cups, all four of you, every damn time! You know you’re going for java with your gals, would it be so hard to have a traveller mug at work and give the planet a break?

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HIGH TECH Calgary aims to attract local talent

T

by Kate Wilson

hose with a job in Vancouver’s tech sector can expect a more comfortable life than most.

Since 2001, the number of Vancouver technology employees has rocketed by 49 percent. The average wage paid to tech workers is more than 84 percent higher than the provincial average of $46,000, and those salaries are growing at more than double the rate of typical B.C. job incomes. Office culture, too, has been praised, with local companies offering dogs in the workplace, PingPong tables, and flexible workspaces.

Despite that, there are a number of areas where the local industry could improve. For startups looking to secure their headquarters, downtown real estate is scarce and pricey. For potential employees, the cost of housing in Vancouver—particularly for those looking to start a family—can be prohibitive even on a tech-sector salary, and commutes can be frustratingly long.

An Alberta nonprofit corporation, however, believes it has a solution to those issues.

Since mid-December, the Yaletown neighbourhood has been hosting a big installation advertising the benefits of relocating to Calgary. The campaign— named “the grass is greener” and taking over the ground floor of the building at 1149 Hamilton Street—features multiple panels of Astroturf with the message that life is better on the other side of the Rockies. The display, organized by Calgary Economic Development, aims to show Vancouver that it has competition in the tech market. “[Vancouver is] a city where there is very little room for scaling, in terms of talent and real estate,” Robyn Bews, vice president of business development at Calgary Economic Development, tells the Georgia Straight on the line from her office in that city.

A new installation in Yaletown advertises the benefits of relocating to the city.

“Meanwhile, on this side of the mountains, Calgary has undergone some significant structural changes in the past few years. We’ve seen the emancipation of some tremendous STEM talent in our city. We’re sitting with some of the highest levels of employment in the country, tremendous amounts of prime downtown real estate—all the things that people in the tech sector say that they desire, we have in Calgary.”

The installation is not the city’s first attempt to woo Vancouver talent. Its appearance comes after Calgary Economic Development launched two events in October— a digital-transformation showcase and a tech-talent job fair—backed by appearances from the city’s mayor, Naheed Nenshi. The dates were part of a larger business-development strategy that includes the launch of a $100-million investment fund created to foster growth in targeted sectors of Calgary’s economy, to court professionals thinking of leaving Vancouver, and to attract businesses looking to expand.

Calgary Economic Development believes that its tech industry would

increase in size much more quickly if more people were aware of its merits.

“Young people, and people with growing families, are finding Vancouver and Seattle particularly prohibitive,” Bews says. “We know that when people become familiar with Calgary, they will actually tell you that the grass is greener on this side of the mountains. I’d say we have a bit of an awareness problem, not a retention problem.”

Much of Calgary Economic Development’s message focuses on the city’s low effective tax rate, its large number of head offices, the affordability of commercial real estate, and the innovation of companies already present in the region.

After the organization’s last campaign, the city has already begun to sign up talent from Vancouver, and has seen local stalwarts like software business Clio open satellite offices in the area.

“We’ve actually had a couple of companies say that they’ve made a number of job offers to people from the West Coast,” Bews says. “So it’s worked.”

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Lawyer Heather Segal advises cannabis workers to be aware of their legal rights.

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here is a lot of buzz around Canadians being banned for life from the United States simply for admitting to smoking weed—a substance legal on their home turf. Although some minor border penalties are avoidable with a white (nonetheless illegal) lie, cannabis-industry professionals are at a higher risk of complications due to their proximity to the plant.

Recently, Canadian lawyer Heather Segal presented on the issue during Vancouver’s first O’Cannabiz Conference (at the Parq Convention Centre from December 9 to 11). The immigration expert outlined tips and legal rights for travellers navigating tricky conversations with border agents.

“There are a lot of people getting in [to the U.S.], and they’re getting in for cannabis-related work. They’re getting in because there is money,” she said.

Segal said the first step is creating a quick, honest narrative that emphasizes economic contributions.

“You can’t go into the U.S. to engage in illegal activity…but if you create a narrative that resonates with ‘buy American, hire American,’ you’re far more likely to be granted entry,” she said. “Cannabis companies investing millions of dollars in the U.S. and hiring 10,000 employees…they’re going to let you in to oversee that investment.”

Segal says a strong narrative is all about psychology: “You have to be deferent. You have to be obsequious.…If you do that politely, you have a high chance of getting in.”

She advised travellers to keep explanations concise, true, and focused on the legal nature of their business activities.

As well, protect your private information.

“You’re pretty vulnerable at the border,” she said. “They have the right to take your phone and laptop.

By virtue of asking for the privilege of entering another country you’re relinquishing the right to privacy.”

Segal suggested travelling with a clean phone and laptop or storing cannabis-related documents in cloudbased software, which authorities aren’t allowed to search. If a border crosser refuses to unlock their phone, it can be confiscated and decrypted, and the information can be disseminated to any part of the U.S. government.

Although the information on a phone may not constitute illegal activities in Canada, she said, it can be enough to have an application denied.

If a quick narrative and spotless phone don’t work and things look bleak, Segal said travellers can enact their rights at any point during the conversation.

“If you’re going to make an admission, understand the essential elements of committing that offence,” she said, noting travellers often selfincriminate by signing forms—charges—they haven’t read.

“Don’t sign anything unless you agree with it.”

Travellers also have the right to silence—an applicant is not bound to answer questions and can retract an application to the U.S. at any time.

“Absolutely, you’ll have a problem… the next time you attempt to cross the border. But federal cannabis legalization will come to the States eventually.

You don’t want to have a bar on you entering by the time it does,” she said.

“Exercise your right to silence in the meantime.…It’s a matter of being careful for a while, and then it’ll pass.”

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HOROSCOPE

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by Rose Marcus

n no time at all, the holidays will feel long gone. Thursday can be a full-to-the-brim day. Friday through Sunday, the last-quarter Libra moon keeps us moving along an even keel.

The Scorpio moon on New Year’s Eve sets the tone for quality time with your lover, your favourite folk, or on your own. Just a few hours before the stroke of midnight, Mars leaves Pisces for Aries. It’s good for a fresh energy boost or a passion play.

The new year won’t be wasting any time getting up and running, and neither should you. Mars in Aries continues through the middle of February. Expect political matters to stay fired up.

Uranus ends retrograde but continues in Aries through the start of March, which continues to keep the guesswork and volatility factor on ready trigger regarding politics, speculative markets, and the weather.

Both Mars and Uranus are excellent for implementing new initiatives, out-of-the-box thinking, experimentation, finding unique solutions, and creative opportunities. At any moment, anything could happen.

January brings two eclipses, a new-moon solar eclipse in Capricorn on January 5 and a supermoon total lunar eclipse on January 20 in Leo. The solar eclipse lays the foundation from which a new reality will build. Regarding the world at large or your personal life journey, something of significance ends and something of significance begins.

Eclipses tend to hold an element of the sudden and unexpected. The days leading up to or following the lunar eclipse on January 20 could be quite eventful regarding social, political, financial, and relationship matters.

May you find greater courage in 2019! Happy New Year!

E

DECEMBER 27 TO JANUARY 2

LEO

July 22–August 22

Spontaneity is your best play on New Year’s Eve. Mars in Aries and two eclipses in January kick off the new year. While Jupiter/Neptune will keep the financial or relationship uncertainty going, they also hold ample promise and creative potential. The solar eclipse on January 5 is an auspicious one for starting a new job, project, study program, or health regimen.

F

VIRGO

August 22–September 22

No time to waste? Ready to put the holidays and this past year to rest? Mars in Aries, starting on New Year’s Eve, puts a fresh tiger in your tank. Making it real in some substantial way, the real solar eclipse on January 5 is great for accomplishment, recognition, professional development or accreditation, setting a new goal, and gaining better control.

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LIBRA

September 22–October 23

Overall, it’s a smooth finish-up for the end of the month.

Quiet and intimate are good picks for ringing in the New Year.

Something spontaneous, quick, or last-minute is also up for grabs.

Launching 2019 with Mars in Aries and with a new-moon solar eclipse on January 5, it is off with the old, on with the next, pronto-quick.

H

SCORPIO

October 23–November 21

You are still standing! Despite it all, you’ve made it through a heavy-lifting year. The Scorpio moon on New Year’s Eve takes you on an emotional deep dive. Look to Mars in Aries to put you to work through the middle of February with no extra time to spare. The new-moon eclipse on January 5 sets an important foundation into place.

A

I

B

J

C

K

ARIES

March 20–April 19

Thursday/Friday can set you on a productive roll. Use these days to get caught up or plugged back in. Saturday to Monday, carry on as usual. Keep plans open New Year’s Eve and watch for Mars entering Aries to spark something spontaneous or last-minute. Thanks to Mars, Uranus, and two eclipses, (January 5 and 20), January is a hitthe-ground-running month!

TAURUS

April 20–May 20

A major growth and opportunity year lies ahead. It can be a matter of significant giving up to get. It is also a matter of having faith and trust that future prospects will bring you better reward. Whether produced by choice or happenstance, the solar eclipse on January 5 is auspicious for setting a new and long-term reality into play.

GEMINI

May 21–June 21

Mars in Aries can fire up a late fresh wind on New Year’s Eve. Mars and Uranus in Aries will keep you chasing it down and going strong through the middle of February. The January eclipses, especially the total lunar eclipse on January 20, are catalysts too. For 2019, career, social life, and key relationships are in transition or on a major growth spurt.

D

CANCER

June 21–July 22

Uranus, continuing in Aries to the beginning of March, has been keeping the roller coaster going strong for quite some time.

Its alignment with the karmic axis has kept you aware that you are standing at a momentous crossroad but uncertain of which way to turn. Watch for Mars in Aries, starting New Year’s Eve, and January’s eclipses to thrust you into fast-forward.

SAGITTARIUS

November 21–December 21

In the mode to hide out, cozy up, or write it off New Year’s Eve? You could gain a late-in-theday perk-me-up thanks to Mars fresh at it in Aries. Jupiter in Sagittarius keeps you inspired, creative, and on a major growth spurt for most of the year ahead. Jupiter/ Neptune keeps potential alive. Stay hopeful; stay the course.

CAPRICORN

December 21–January 19

Something last-minute could make your New Year’s Eve. January begins with plenty of action, starting with a fresh infusion of go-get-’em warrior energy from Mars in Aries.

The past is over; the future is now.

Accompanied by Mercury in Capricorn, the destiny-in-the-making solar eclipse on January 5 sets a new reality into play.

AQUARIUS

January 20–February 18

On New Year’s Eve, Mars treks into Aries. Unlike Uranus in Aries, which has been keeping the stress and edgy feel going strong, Mars provides you with an energy boost, fresh creative inspiration, and something new to shoot for. Watch for the total lunar eclipse on January 20 to spark something exceptional or out-of-the-blue.

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PISCES

February 18–March 20

Through Monday, you’ll have no trouble soaking up the last of smooth-sail Mars in Pisces.

Mars in Aries, launching just a few hours before the New Year begins, provides you with a fresh boost of can-do resourcefulness through mid-February. The solar eclipse on January 5 introduces you to a new goal, lifestyle, or reality.

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Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s free monthly newsletter at rosemarcus.com/.

315 W E S T C O R D O V A S T R E E T VA N C O U V E R , B R I T I S H C O L U M B I A V 6 B 1E 5 CANADA W W W. D U R A N T S E S S I O N S .C O M DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 15

FOOD

Affordable bubbles to ring in 2019

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by Kurtis Kolt

he clock is ticking closer to midnight on December 31, and we’re going to need some sparkling wine, stat!

The knee-jerk reaction for many may be Champagne, but most of us are way more likely to try to keep things under the $25 mark.

There are plenty of bottles of bubble available at this price, and there are certainly some gems, but I’m afraid there are also a lot of duds.

We don’t have time to chase exclusive bottles all around town, so I’ve combed the selections widely available at B.C. Liquor Stores to come up with a roundup of my top 10 bang-for-your-buck, $25-or-less sparklers. A small handful have been highlighted here over the course of the year, but the majority are new to these pages. Fortunately, there’s extra value offered, with many of them discounted through December 29, so best to jump on those selections.

JAUME SERRA CRISTALINO BRUT CAVA NV (Penedès, Spain; $13.99)

A ridiculously good, year-round bargain. This Cava bursts with lemon, lime, and Granny Smith apples and is so fresh and lively that keeping your stamina up past midnight will be a breeze.

SEGURA VIUDAS BRUT RESERVA CAVA NV (Penedès, Spain; $16.99, $15.49 until December 29)

Segura Viudas has been a perennial favourite in our market, delivering top-tier quality at lower-shelf prices.

In this mix of indigenous Macabeo, Parellada, and Xarel-lo varieties, those fresh-out-of-the-oven sourdough aromas greet orchard fruit like Gala

composed of Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Noir. I’m not going to say that some may be fooled into thinking it’s Champagne—but I’m not not going to say that, either.

CHANDON CALIFORNIA BRUT NV (Napa Valley, California; $29.49, $24.49 until December 29)

Speaking of Champagne, the California outpost of this renowned French producer delivers a juicy, toasty culmination of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier with enough intensity to handle B.C. Liquor Stores offers some tasty bargains for lovers of sparkling wines. bold-flavoured dishes—or even apples, Bosc pears, and Red Haven varieties—Xarel-lo, Parellada, and those with spice—with ease.

Macabeo—but they’re rounded peaches on the plate. out with a nice juicy splash of Char- LOUIS BOUILLOT “PERLE VEUVE DU VERNAY BRUT ROSÉ NV donnay. A mix of citrus fruit with D’AURORE” CRÉMANT DE (France; $15.99) a handful of apples is finished off BOURGOGNE ROSÉ BRUT NV The folks behind this French fizz with a burst of pineapple and a small (Burgundy, France; $25.99, $23.99 keep their cards close to their pinch of tarragon. until December 29) Pinot Noir from the Côte d’Or and chests; it’s tough to pin down exact varietal or regional components. No DR. LOOSEN SPARKLING RIESLING Côte Chalonnaise joins Gamay from the Mâconnais, then spends matter. At 16 bucks, I’m loving this NV 15 months on the lees, resulting in dry pink wine for its zippy red berry (Mosel, Germany; $17.99) fruit, solid lashing of white pepper, If spicy snacks or dishes are on the a creamy strawberry, cream soda, roster, then head to Germany’s and fresh cranberry. and quite dry finish.

Mosel region for this lively RiesCONO SUR SPARKLING ROSÉ NV ling from one of the country’s most BAILLY LAPIERRE CRÉMANT DE (Bio Bio Valley, Chile; $18.99, $16.99 notable producers. Honey-drenched BOURGOGNE RÉSERVE BRUT NV until December 29) pears, quince, lemon, and hazelnut (Burgundy, France; $24.99) I profiled this wine earlier this year carry a little bit of residual sugar at A varietal profile of Burgundy: Piand can’t stop thinking about it. the end, perfect for enveloping any not Noir, Chardonnay, Gamay, and It’s 100 percent Pinot Noir from the heat your dishes may carry.

Aligoté are harmonious in what they cool-climate Bio Bio region in the all bring to the plate. Fresh lime, guasouth of Chile, and we get lovely STELLER’S JAY MÉTHODE va, red currants, and lemongrass are varietal elements of plum, cherry, CLASSIQUE BRUT 2015 woven together gracefully; a lovely, and blackberry, with lively acidity (Okanagan Valley, B.C.; $22.99, lovely ode to the region. $20.99 until December 29) and plenty of charisma.

Definitely one of the best-value wines No matter what’s in your glass VILLA CONCHI CAVA BRUT coming out of British Columbia, the as we bring in the new year, I raise SELECCIÓN NV Steller’s Jay sparkling made in the my glass to you and look forward classic second-fermentation-in-the- to sharing another year’s worth of (Penedès, Spain; $16.99) This Spanish Cava incorporates the bottle Champagne method is a bri- experiences and deliciousness in wine style’s common indigenous och-y, citrusy charmer of a wine, 2019.

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rink D OF THE WEEK FESTIVE CELEBRATIONS call for sparkling cocktails. You can’t go wrong with a French 75, perhaps the most elegant of them all. (Gin has largely replaced cognac, the spirit in the original recipe, which dates back to the 1920s or so, but the drink still has grace.) The mixologists at Notch8 Restaurant and Bar in the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver put a holiday spin on the classic by adding a splash of pomegranate juice for a pretty pop of colour and burst of flavour. With a balance of sweet and sour, the Festive 75 incorporates aromatic rosemary to evoke the outdoors and crisp Steller’s Jay Mountain Jay Brut from the Okanagan Valley for B.C. flair.

NOTCH8 FESTIVE 75 1 ½ oz Bombay gin ¾ oz freshly squeezed lemon juice ½ oz simple syrup 1 oz pomegranate juice Steller’s Jay Mountain Jay Brut Combine gin, lemon juice, simple syrup, and pomegranate juice in a flute.

Finish with sparkling wine.

Garnish with a sprig of rosemary wrapped in lemon rind.

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by Gail Johnson

Five ways to feast on New Year’s Eve

I

by Tammy Kwan

n the blink of an eye, we’re almost at the end of the year—again.

Whether you have plans to party it up or keep it low-key on December 31, you can’t do it without satisfying your appetite first. Luckily, Vancouverites are spoiled with choice when it comes to festive dinner menus around town. From multicourse meals to à la carte options to gourmet buffets, why not indulge a little for your last supper of the year? Here are five places to find New Year’s Eve menus around Metro Vancouver before you begin counting down to 2019.

MAK N MING (1629 Yew Street)

Tucked away in the heart of Kitsilano, this intimate restaurant is raising its glasses to the New Year with a multicourse dinner that kicks off with Champagne and canapés. Guests will be served everything from scallops and caviar to pâté de foie gras with daikon, and from crab motoyaki to chocolate crêpes. Not a bad way to finish off 2018. Prepaid reservations can be made by calling 604-737-1155.

When: Canapés start at 6:30 p.m., and dinner begins promptly at 7 p.m.

Price: $148 per person, plus taxes and 18 percent gratuity.

CARDERO’S RESTAURANT (1583 Coal Harbour Quay)

Soak up the harbour views while you enjoy your last meal of the year at this seaside restaurant. Cardero’s featured New Year’s Eve menu includes options like lobster bisque, seafood trio, and a steak-and-lobster dish. Finish off with desserts like tiramisu espresso and chocolate molten-lava cake. Head there early with the entire brood for some good food, or go for the later seating that includes a midnight countdown, DJ, dancing, party favours, and a balloon drop. Reservations can be made by calling 604-669-7666. When: Late

Wildebeest’s four-course prix fixe menu includes Foraged Mushroom Tarte Tatin.

(Photo by Jonathan Norton); Yuwa plans to have fresh sushi flown in from Japan.

seating begins at 8 p.m. Price: $10 to fresh burrata cheese and heirloom carrots, Dungeness crab, bison flatiron, $59 per dish.

Peace Country lamb, and chocolateGLOBE@YVR and-fig cake. Optional wine pairings (3111 Grant McConachie Way, are also available for an additional Richmond) charge. Reservations and tickets are Catching flights shouldn’t be the only required and can be purchased online reason to head to Vancouver Inter- at www.wildebeest.ca/. When: Seatings national Airport. The Fairmont Van- begin at 5 p.m. Price: $89 per person, couver Airport’s in-house restaurant plus taxes and gratuity. will be serving a New Year’s Eve buffet dinner that will showcase a seafood bar, YUWA JAPANESE CUISINE carvery station, cheese and charcuterie, (2775 West 16th Avenue) and dessert bar; a midnight toast is also We don’t know about you, but having included. Fill your plates with items premium Japanese food for the last like smoked salmon, freshly shucked meal of the year sounds excellent. oysters, slow-roasted sablefish, Fraser Yuwa’s multicourse New Year’s Eve Valley suckling pig, double-fudge cast- dinner comes with a glass of spariron brownie, orange-and-chocolate kling wine or sake and dishes such cheesecake, and much more. Prepaid as steamed abalone with uni (sea reservations can be made by calling urchin) sauce, fresh sushi rolls, and 604-248-3281. When: Buffet dinner soba-noodle soup, among other tasty available from 7 p.m. Price: $135 per items. The premium menu option adds hand-picked cuts of fresh sashiadult, plus taxes and gratuity. mi and sushi flown in from Japan to WILDEBEEST your plate. Optional wine and sake (120 West Hastings Street) pairings are available for an addiCelebrate the end of 2018 at this res- tional cost. Reservations are highly taurant known for its comforting recommended and can be made ondishes made with locally sourced in- line at www.yuwa.ca/events/. When: gredients. Its New Year’s Eve dinner Seatings begin at 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 service features a four-course prix p.m. Price: $118 to $168 per person, fixe menu, with creations that include plus taxes and gratuity.

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arts

Modern tragedy drawn into Light of Day Electric Company Theatre’s bold new work reopens the Playhouse to ambitious drama

by Janet Smith

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Electric Company artistic producer Clayton Baraniuk and director Kim Collier (left and centre) needed the space of the Playhouse for the technical challenges of The Full Light of Day (right). Photos by Don Lee

he Full Light of Day will rank as one of the most epic-scale plays staged in Vancouver in 2019. Featuring 14 livestreaming cameras and projections, the new Electric Company Theatre production features an all-star cast led by Gabrielle Rose, an array of technologies, and a series of short, virtualreality films that screen in the lobby.

In 2016, Electric Company director Kim Collier scored a $280,000 New Chapter grant—a one-time project fund from the Canada Council to mark the 150th anniversary of Confederation—to stage Daniel Brooks’s play. But she had one big problem.

There was nowhere with the space and the theatrical fly system needed to fully stage it—except the Playhouse, which had stopped regularly hosting productions of this scope when its namesake company folded in 2012.

“We had all this capital and art, and where were we going to do it in this city? We had this show under way!” the veteran theatre artist tells the Straight over the phone. “One of the things about building an incredible team is you need to be able to hold their schedules and that needs to be concrete. And it was very, very surprising that you couldn’t gather for a few weeks at the Playhouse.”

The good news is that the search for a solution has not only brought Collier’s ambitious project to fruition, it’s led to a revival of the Playhouse as a regular theatre venue.

Electric Company’s new artistic producer, Clayton Baraniuk, says The Full Light of Day required a more extended stay than a normal rental would, especially due to its extended installation period and technical elements.

“They needed to carve out a longer residence inside of that venue in order to use it for what it was pur-

pose-built for,” he explains of the civic-owned theatre.

There was no availability two years out. However, a cancellation allowed the show to happen, and the production is finally preparing to take the stage in early January. “It’s a big leap for our company,” Baraniuk says, pointing out that past Electric Company shows have been produced by the likes of the Arts Club.

In this case, the troupe is presenting alone—and it’s hoping to use the space at least once a year now that it’s entered the cycle of booking requests, paving the way for other groups to use it as well.

“We’re a creation company. There’s no desire for us to become the next Playhouse Theatre Company, but now we’ll be able to leverage that infrastructure for other theatre companies,” explains Baraniuk. “It is our hope that we can leverage the opportunities we have been granted with this show to build our capacity and ignite Vancouver audiences’ passion for large-scale new theatre works, propelling our vision for annual premieres at the Playhouse forward and reviving theatre practice in the downtown core once again.”

Electric Company Theatre is currently steering a Playhouse Revival fundraising campaign to make that dream a reality. At the same time that it breaks new ground with The Full Light of Day, the show continues the company’s more than 20-year tradition of building innovative, often multimedia spectacles.

“We’ve always worked with scale,” says Collier, “whether it’s myself with Electric Company or others— shows like Tear the Curtain!, No Exit, or Betroffenheit—the major works have been on large stages.”

theatre and film. In the story, a woman who is terminally ill confronts her family’s position of privilege, and how it ties into the property they’ve acquired.

“The play looks hard at a society obsessed with land ownership—what we’ll hand down collectively to the

It’s a very complex piece. But it has been a growing strength for me to man a big ship.

– Kim Collier

next generation, and the scarcity of affordable homes,” Collier reflects. “It feels like we are quite confused right now and are awakening to this reality.

For me, it feels like a real tipping point.

“Daniel has written a piece that challenges us to awaken to those things,” she adds, “and he has a central character that is seeking redemption in a way—she has a personal revolt and takes a great risk to challenge all of that.”

With Rose playing the woman on a quest to reconcile her husband’s corrupt legacy before she dies, the cast features Shaw Festival vet Jim Mezon, Bard on the Beach standout Dean Paul Gibson, and Betroffenheit’s JonaBARANIUK AND COLLIER describe thon Young, as well as Jillian Fargey, The Full Light of Day as a hybrid of John Ng, and Jenny Young.

Collier seeks to use technology, somewhat paradoxically, as a way to create an intimate connection between those actors’ characters and the audience. The multiple cameras and projections often zoom in on their inner lives.

“I really wanted to make a livebased technology and use technology to fill in the gaps,” she explains.

“With the camera, you can get closer to the character and you can see the things that the script demands.

I want everything to be live for the audience and not mediated.

“All of this technology is also an expression of who we are now,” she adds. “I think it’s an honest response to today. It’s this epic, huge modern tragedy and you don’t want to reduce it to a certain location.”

Of course, overseeing all these moving parts in the Playhouse space will take Collier to new heights of multitasking—but the theatre artist, who’s helmed everything from Vancouver Opera’s Sweeney Todd to Bard on the Beach’s Titus Andronicus and Electric Company’s own cinematic and wide-touring No Exit, embraces the challenge.

“It’s a very complex piece. But it has been a growing strength for me to man a big ship,” she says, then adds that the full effect of all the elements coming together in The Full Light of Day might not reveal itself until opening night at the Playhouse: “I’m a visually based director; I play things out in my mind and on paper, but you can never quite know how to predict that. You can never know till you feel the rhythms, and see how they hit the body and mind.”

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Electric Company Theatre presents The Full Light of Day at the Vancouver Playhouse from January 7 to 12.

Arts

TIP SHEET c 2018 YEAR IN REVIEW (To

December 31 at the Improv Centre) Laugh away the old year with Vancouver TheatreSports League as it rips into some of your favourite and not-so-favourite memories from 2018. We’re thinking legalized cannabis is going to pop up, and the housing crisis can’t be too far behind.

c VANCOUVER CABARET

THEATRE’S NEW YEAR’S EVE VARIETY SHOW (December 31 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre) Here’s a cool, new family-friendly New Year’s event. A massive balloon drop? Check. Circus acrobats? Check. How about a magic show? This production has that, too. And it’s all under one roof, in case 2019 starts the way almost every other new year in Vancouver does: with a little rain.

c SALUTE TO VIENNA (January

1 at the Orpheum) We can’t think of a more elegant way to usher in the new year than to hit this glittering concert of waltzes and operetta songs. Now in its 23rd year, the program goes far beyond “The Blue Danube”, with the Strauss Symphony of Canada joining the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, along with ballroom and ballet dancers. Balázs Bálfi conducts.

DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 17

ARTS LISTINGS

ONGOING

Great for a

HOLIDAY

GIF T!

> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < TOYS R US GAME SECTION

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TATTOOED SEXY GARBAGE MAN

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SANTACON SNOWMAN KIM AT THE PINT

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 19, 2018 WHERE: Toys R Us Broadway, Vancouver

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 18, 2018 WHERE: Granville street downtown

I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 15, 2018 WHERE: Pint - downstairs near the bar

Toys R Us Game Section. You helped me decide between Hungry Hippos or Monkey Flip for my 3 year old nephew.

Thanks for your advice and humor. You were buying for your 5 year old son, but I didn’t see a wedding band. I liked your smile and was happy to see it again when we bumped into each other on the street. I was rushing to an appointment or I would have liked to chat more...maybe we can still do that sometime?

I saw you downtown in your garbage truck as you stepped out to get a garbage can on Granville street, you were short and wore camo pants had a beard and tattoos on your arm, you smiled and waved and asked how I was doing and I wish I had the nerve to strike up more of a conversation. I hope I see you again my mysterious little trash man, good to know that you're okay with getting a little dirty ;)

209 LYNN VALLEY

CUTE OWNER OF ONE EYED BROWN DOG

Asked for a picture with a handsome snowman and you told me you were named Kim. We were both downstairs at the Pint at Santacon. I got a bit shy after introductions and meeting your friend I just said Merry Christmas and went back to my group of friends. You have a dark beard and black hair and a fantastic smile and laugh. Not sure if you are single or at all interested, but if you remember me pop me a line and tell me what I was wearing (hint: I wasn’t a Santa). I saw you on the street later and called out “Hi Kim” and you yelled out hi back but your group was going the opposite way of my group to The Met. Maybe we could meet for a warmer drink and melt the ice getting to know each other.

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 18, 2018 WHERE: #206 bus, Lynn Valley You gave me pretty fierce eye contact and smile a few times, it was killer. You, brunette sitting in back, me bearded blond guy in the middle. Hope to see you again.

SOLO SKATER

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 19, 2018 WHERE: Balsam street near W 6th You were boarding down balsam and I was headed up. It felt like it was going to rain any minute but neither of us cared.

I smiled at you and you smirked back. Let’s go for a skate sometime!

OUR EYES MET

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 19, 2018 WHERE: Waterfront Canada line station I was coming off the train at the Waterfront Canada line station. You looked up at me and we met eyes as I walked away. I had to get to work but I wanted to stop and talk to you.

You had darker short hair. I am fair skinned with very long blonde hair.

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: NOVEMBER 14, 2018 WHERE: 12th ave between Ash & Cambie You were walking your one eyed brown dog and he was stopped and not moving while my grey Mazda was also not moving on the South side of the street. I looked at the dog and up at you and you shrugged and smiled. I smiled and laughed but yhe light changed and I had to drive away. You had brown hair, black glasses, and a fantastic smile. The date of this might be wrong but definitely in November and before the 19th.

I am a brunette with dimples and freckles. Remember me?

Wanna go for a coffee or a walk with your cute dog?

CHRISTMAS MARKET DOUBLE TAKE

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 15, 2018 WHERE: Downtown Christmas Market You were working in one of the artisan booths at the market, wearing a white toque with a big white pompom. We met eyes and smiled, and then met eyes and smiled again as I walked by. I had on a green coat. Coffee sometime?

EAST VAN PANTO: WIZARD OF OZ When a pipeline bursts, Dorothy and Toto are flung to the magical Land of Oz, a.k.a. Nanaimo and Hastings. To Jan 6, 7 pm, York Theatre. Tix $10-$69.

BLIND DATE The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Rebecca Northan’s fly-by-theseat-of-your-pants fusion of clown, improv, theatre, and social experiment. To Dec 30, Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre.

Tix from $29.

A CHARLIE BROWN HOLIDAY DOUBLEBILL Carousel Theatre for Young People presents “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown”. To Jan 6, Waterfront Theatre. Tix $35/$29/$18.

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE Reimagining of C.S. Lewis’s classic tale of hope, change, and sacrifice. To Dec 29, Pacific Theatre. Tix $20-$36.50.

DISNEY’S BEAUTY AND THE BEAST The Arts Club Theatre Company presents the beloved fairy-tale musical. To Jan 6, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage. Tix from $39.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE New musical adaptation of the holiday classic by Peter Jorgensen, based on the Frank Capra film. To Dec 31, Gateway Theatre. Tix from $29.

MISS BENNET: CHRISTMAS AT PEMBERLEY The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon’s holiday confection filled with classic Jane Austen charm. To Dec 30, Granville Island Stage. Tix from $29.

TITANIC: THE ARTIFACT EXHIBITION Exhibition focuses on the legendary RMS Titanic’s compelling human stories through more than 120 authentic artifacts and extensive room re-creations. To Jan 11, 2019, Lipont Place.

KING ARTHUR’S COURT Family holiday musical pantomime. To Jan 5, Metro Theatre.

Tix from $28.

SANTA IN SPACE Seasonal pantomime. To Jan 5, Deep Cove Shaw Theatre. Tix $16.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND’S VORTEX Douglas Coupland’s radical art installation takes an imaginative journey to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, immersing viewers in the ocean-plastic pollution crisis. To April 30, 2019, Vancouver Aquarium. $22/39.

STAND-UP AND DELIVER! COMEDY OPEN MIC Professionals, amateurs, and new comedians are welcome at a comedy open mike. Wed., 8-11:30 pm, Charqui’s Grill. Free admission.

NUTCRACKER SUITES Karen Flamenco Dance Company performs Tchaikovsky’s work. To Dec 29, 5-6 pm, The Improv Centre.

Tix $10/$15.

FOX HOLE COMEDY Vancouver’s only weekly comedy room where women, nonbinary folks, people of colour, and queers are the majority of performers. Dec 26, 8-10:45 pm, Projection Room at Fox Cabaret.

Tix $5.

THE SMOKE SHOW Modern dance cabaret under the direction of Jen Oleksiuk. Dec 27, 8-11:30 pm, XY. Tix $20.

COMEDY BASEMENT Weekly standup comedy by professionals and up-and-comers.

Dec 29, 9-10:30 pm, Goldies Pizza. Tix $5/7/10.

TOQUE FLAMENCO Dec 23, 30, 7-10 pm, Chai. $3 added to your bill.

MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC IN A DIFFERENT LIGHT: REFLECTING ON NORTHWEST COAST ART to spring 2019 MARKING THE INFINITE: CONTEMPORARY WOMEN ARTISTS FROM ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIA to Mar 31 SHAKEUP: PRESERVING WHAT WE VALUE to Sep 1

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BILL REID GALLERY OF NORTHWEST COAST ART BODY LANGUAGE: REAWAKENING CULTURAL TATTOOING OF THE NORTHWEST to Jan 13 INTERFACE: THE WOVEN ARTWORK OF JAAD KUUJUS to Jan 9

Arts

HOT TICKET

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TECK GALLERY

aEYE EYE to Apr 27 a

MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER WILD THINGS: THE POWER OF NATURE IN OUR LIVES to Sep 30 HAIDA NOW: A VISUAL FEAST OF INNOVATION AND TRADITION to Dec 1, 2019 IN/FLUX: ART OF KOREAN DIASPORA to Jan 6

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ITALIAN CULTURAL CENTRE WOMEN’S WORK: REFLECTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF WOMEN IN TEXTILE to Dec 30, 10 am–6 pm

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VANCOUVER ART GALLERY A CURATOR’S VIEW: IAN THOM SELECTS to Mar 17 GUO PEI: COUTURE BEYOND to Jan 20, 2019, 10 am–5 pm DANA CLAXTON: FRINGING THE CUBE to Feb 3 THE METAMORPHOSIS to Mar 7

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CONTEMPORARY ART GALLERY DOVE ALLOUCHE: NEGATIVE CAPABILITY to Dec 30, 12-6 pm KAMEELAH JANAN RASHEED to Mar 17

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LIBBY LESHGOLD GALLERY CROSS: STALACTITE to Jan 6

aDOROTHY a

IZZARD FINE ARTS GALLERY EXHIBIT BY DANIEL IZZÁRD AND LYLE SOPEL to Dec 30

a

POLYGON GALLERY LOOKING AT PERSEPOLIS: THE CAMERA IN IRAN 18501930 to Jan 13 HANNAH RICKARDS: ONE CAN MAKE OUT THE SURFACE ONLY BY PLACING ANY DARK-COLOURED OBJECT ON THE GROUND to Jan 13 BATIA SUTER: PARALLEL ENCYCLOPEDIA EXTENDED to Jan 13 KEVIN SCHMIDT: RECKLESS to Mar 10, 4-11 pm

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VANCOUVER ART GALLERY’S OFFSITE POLIT-SHEER-FORM OFFICE to Mar 31

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PHOTOCLUB VANCOUVER MEMBERS EXHIBITION Black-and white-photographs in many genres. To Jan 11, Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery. Free.

SENIORS DAY AT MOV Jan 1, 2019, 9 am–5 pm; Feb 5, 2019, 9 am–5 pm; Mar 5, 2019, 9 am–5 pm; Apr 2, 2019, 9 am–5 pm; May 7, 2019, 9 am–5 pm; Jun 4, 2019, 9 am–5 pm, Museum of Vancouver. $5.

THE BOMB SHELTER STAND-UP COMEDY OPEN MIC Standup comedy open mike Jan 3, 10, 17, 24, 31; Feb 7, 14, 21, 28, 7-10 pm, Goldies Pizza. Free.

FATALE FRIDAYS—ALL LADYISH STANDUP COMEDY All-femme and nonbinary standup comedy. Dec 21; Jan 4, 11, 18; Feb 1, 8, 7-8:45 pm, Goldies Pizza. TIx $5/7/10.

THE BOMB SHELTER FRIDAY LATE MIC Standup comedy open mike. Dec 21; Jan 4, 11, 18; Feb 1, 8, 9:30-11:55 pm, Goldies Pizza. $5 (free for performers).

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22 NUTCRACKER SUITE Live flamenco dance and theatre. Dec 22-29, 3-4 pm, 5-6 pm, The Improv Centre. $10/$15.

JFL NORTHWEST, Vancouver’s Just For Laughs Festival, has just announced two more big names for its February 2019 lineup. MADtv alumnus Bryan Callen (pictured) performs his standup show February 21 at the Vogue Theatre. And An Evening With Antoni Porowski is set to take place on February 20 at the same venue. The Canadian-born reality-TV star, actor, chef, and model is best known as the food and wine expert in the Netflix series Queer Eye. JFL NorthWest has already announced headliners like Gabriel Iglesias and Howie Mandel; see the full lineup so far at www.jflnorthwest.com/.

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WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26 2018 YEAR IN REVIEW Vancouver TheatreSports presents in-the-moment reinterpretations of the news. Dec 26-31, The Improv Centre. From $15.75.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27 PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN NIGHTS AT MUSEUM OF VANCOUVER Experience the Museum of Vancouver’s intriguing exhibitions, with admission by donation. Dec 27-29, 5-9 pm, Museum of Vancouver.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28 JAMES BALL Two nights of short-form standup comedy by funnyman James Ball. Dec 28, 8 pm; Dec 29, 9:30 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club. Tix $20.

SO I WAS AT A THREESOME LAST WEEK Comedy by Alex Sparling and Dion Arnold.

Dec 28, 10:30 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club.

Tix $15.

see page 20

GRANDVIEW HONEY

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 13, 2018 WHERE: Grandview Park I saw you flying sign at Grandview Park. A Captain Jack Sparrow type in a Nausea hat with black jeans held together with dental floss. I was the Princess Oogle type talking about my Seeking Arrangement account. What’s up? Want to come over, shower, wash yr clothes and see what happens from there?

CANDIAN TRIVIA IN A SQUAMISH KITCHEN

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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: DECEMBER 12, 2018 WHERE: Squamish Hey Bronwyn, you were up visiting my roommate last week. We played this circa 1980’s Canadian trivia game in the kitchen until you had to go back to the city. The game was fun but as we played I found that the only trivia I cared about seemed to be during your turn. Coffee?

Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ 18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019

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COMING UP AT THE VANCOUVER SYMPHONY JAN 1

SALUTE TO VIENNA NEW YEAR’S CONCERT

STRAUSS SYMPHONY OF CANADA FEATURING THE VANCOUVER SYMPHONY Usher in the New Year with Vancouver’s beloved 23 year tradition of waltzes, polkas and operetta hits with European singers, ballroom dancers and ballet.

JAN 9/10

NMF 2019 VANCOU VE R SYM P HONY ORCHESTRA NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

JAN 11/12

THE VSO AT 100

SURREY NIGHTS / TEA & TRUMPETS Celebrate the VSO’s 100th Anniversary with the very first piece ever performed by the VSO – Schubert’s Rosamunde Overture – and celebrated works important in the VSO’s history.

WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN’: FROM SWING TO ROCK

VSO POPS Trace the musical path from the golden age of swing through the early days of rock ‘n’ roll, including chart-topping hits by Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. You’ll be In the Mood to Sing Sing Sing!

JAN 13 THE HOCKEY SWEATER

KIDS’ KONCERTS One of the most famous of Canadian stories, author Roch Carrier’s short story The Hockey Sweater, set to music by Abigail Richardson.

JAN 16 17 18 19

MEDIA SPONSOR

THE VSO’S SURREY NIGHTS SERIES HAS BEEN ENDOWED BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM WERNER AND HELGA HÖING.

TEA & TRUMPETS SERIES SPONSOR

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THE TEA & TRUMPETS SERIES IS PROVIDED BY A GENEROUS GIFT FROM THE MCGRANE-PEARSON ENDOWMENT FUND.

NEW MUSIC FOR OLD INSTRUMENTS STANDING WAVE – DEEP GROOVE VSO PLAYS NICOLE LIZÉE & VIVIER: LONELY CHILD VSO PLAYS JOHN LUTHER ADAMS: BECOME OCEAN From the “the loveliest apocalypse in musical history” to a meditation on birdsong, the VSO’s 6th Annual New Music Festival explores the state of our world today during four days of musical discovery.

VSO POPS SERIES SPONSOR

VSO POPS RADIO SPONSOR

KIDS' KONCERTS SERIES SPONSOR

PREMIER EDUCATION PARTNER

CAG FAMILY DAY | PAPER MARBLING CAG invites all ages to drop in for short exhibition tours and free art-making activities that respond to its current exhibitions. Dec 29, 12:30-3 pm, Contemporary Art Gallery.

Free.

THE COMIC STRIP Standup comedy by Aaron Charles Read, Robert Peng, and headliner Ivan Decker. Dec 29, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $18.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 3 SUNEE DHALIWAL Canadian comedian performs three nights of standup. Jan 3, 8 pm; Jan 4, 8 pm; Jan 5, 7 pm; Jan 5, 9:30 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club. Tix $10/$20.

THE WRITING STUDIO’S READING SERIES Local and touring authors read poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Jan 3, 8-9:30 pm, Hood 29.

Free.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 30

FRIDAY, JANUARY 4

CAG SUNDAY AFTERNOON TOURS Join CAG visitor coordinator Jocelyn Statia for a Sunday afternoon tour of the current exhibitions. Dec 30, 3-4 pm, Contemporary Art Gallery. Free.

TEEN ANGST NIGHT Comedic reading series hosted by Sara Bynoe. Jan 4, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $10/$15.

JOKES N TOKES COMEDY Comedian Andrew Packer hosts a night of laughs. Dec 30; Jan 6, 8 pm, Cannabis Culture Headquarters. $10.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 31 COUNTDOWN OF CURIOSITIES—DINNER & CABARET SHOW—NYE 2019 New Year’s Eve dinner and cabaret show with 10 variety acts. Dec 31, 7:30 pm, Second Floor Eatery & Bar. $75/$40.

FAMILY-FRIENDLY NEW YEAR’S EVE VARIETY SHOW Vancouver Cabaret Arts presents a variety show that includes circus acrobatics, magic, comedy, and music. Dec 31, 8-10 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tix $20-$89.

NEW YEAR’S AT LITTLE MOUNTAIN Nathan Hare and Graeme Achurch host a comedy-based variety show. Dec 31, 9 pm, Little Mountain Gallery. $10.

BYRON BERTRAM Canadian comedian performs a New Year’s Eve standup show. Dec 31, 10 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club. $49.95.

2018 YEAR IN REVIEW Laugh in the new year with Vancouver TheatreSports’ late show. Dec 31, 11:15 pm, The Improv Centre.

From $26.75.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 1 SALUTE TO VIENNA NEW YEAR’S CONCERT New program of Strauss waltzes and melodies from beloved operettas performed

by European singers, ballroom and ballet dancers, and the Strauss Symphony of Canada, featuring the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Jan 1, 2:30-5 pm, Orpheum Theatre.

From $57.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2 BLIND DATE The Arts Club on Tour presents playwright Rebecca Northan’s work. Jan 2-5,

SATURDAY, JANUARY 5 DESCRIBED TOUR OF A CURATOR’S VIEW: IAN THOM SELECTS Described Tour for blind and partially sighted visitors. Jan 5, 11 am–12 pm, Vancouver Art Gallery. Tix $6.50-$24.

COMEDYPANTS Standup comedy. Jan 5, 8:30 pm, The Avant Garden. $10.

MONDAY, JANUARY 7 THE FULL LIGHT OF DAY Provocative hybrid of theatre and film features the talents of Jim Mezon, Gabrielle Rose, and Jillian Fargey. Jan 7-12, Vancouver Playhouse. $19.99.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 13 MUSICIRCUS AT THE POLYGON GALLERY The Polygon Gallery has collaborated with the Blueridge Chamber Music Festival to create “Musicircus”, bringing together numerous musicians and performers in one afternoon. Listeners also participate by moving throughout the venue and experimenting with instruments. The event will feature compositions by legendary composer John Cage. Jan 13, 1-4 pm, The Polygon Gallery. By donation.

ARTS EVENTS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. We can’t guarantee inclusion, and we give priority to events taking place within one week of publication. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight.com/ AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

SALT. PHOTO: RICHARD DAVENPORT

SALUTE TO VIENNA PRESENTED BY

VSO NEW MUSIC FESTIVAL

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29

7:30 pm; Jan 5, 3 pm, Kay Meek Arts Centre. $19-48.

T H E AT R E • D A N C E • M U LT I M E D I A MUSIC • FILM

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movies The pictures that moved us the most

From sweetly loving crime families to arty chainsaw massacres, here’s what we adored in 2018

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Hirokazu Kor-eda’s touching and subversive dramedy Shoplifters (left) had two of our crtics in a swoon this year, as did the historical histrionics of Yorgos Lanthimos’s extravagant The Favourite (right).

ast year it was Okja.

This year Roma is the upstart movie that’s topping every film critic’s year-end favourites list and consolidating Netflix as a major force in the reconfiguring cinematic landscape.

Notably, the streaming giant caved to demand this time and opened Alfonso Cuarón’s picture in a limited number of theatres, but the very definition of movie is up for grabs these days, especially with so much content being produced on multiple platforms. All we have left is a limited amount of hours to catch what we can, with our own unfailing good taste as a guide. In that spirit, here’s what our critics loved in 2018.

KEN EISNER

d THIS YEAR’S selection of besties includes a number of tales about writers, forced or chosen families, and several movies with question marks in the title. That probably doesn’t mean a thing, but somehow underlines the uncertainty of our increasingly weird times.

SHOPLIFTERS The latest from Japan’s

Hirokazu Kore-eda somehow captures the stranger aspects of family in a tale of misfits and left-behinds who cling together on the bottom rung of Tokyo society. And it’s mostly a comedy.

THE FAVOURITE Who could have guessed that austere Greek weirdo Yorgos Lanthimos would be a perfect match with an international cast and crew to tell a deeply funny, faux-antique story about power, money, and gender roles? The acting triumvirate of Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman presents a challenge at awards time.

ROMA Alfonso Cuarón’s dreamlike, black-and-white evocation of a pivotal year in his Mexico City childhood is a critic’s darling, and something of a target for folks who want their politics kept clear and tidy. The relationship between the filmmaker’s family and its two Indigenous maids remains murky, just as it was in real life.

CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? After starring in increasingly dire broad comedies, Melissa McCarthy pulls a blinder, in a semistraight role, as a real-life nonfiction writer who decides to get creative in all the wrong ways. Richard E. Grant is sure to nab top supporting awards as the hapless hustler who helps enable her rise and fall.

COLETTE Keira Knightley deftly nails the transition from provincial dilettante to world-class writer in a cracking, if overlooked, historical tale that oddly parallels The Favourite and Forgive Me?, regarding elements of fraud, selfconfidence, and the general uselessness of men.

EIGHTH GRADE The overly familiar

ROMA Alfonso Cuarón’s ode to the two women who raised him is so lovingly rendered, it makes your heart hurt. It’s an empathetic look back at a child’s complicated relationship with his live-in nanny, and the forces that bond her to his aloof mother. But the strengths go far beyond the meditations on class, family, and a Mexico in painful flux. Every transcendently beautiful black-and-white scene is a marvel, whether there’s a guy randomly exploding out of a cannon in the background, or a long, unedited birth scene that leaves you wrecked.

coming-of-age formula is upended in Bo Burnham’s sweet-and-sour tale, with newcomer Elsie Fisher outstanding as a shy grade-eighter whose self-image is at serious odds with the brazenly confident face she THE FAVOURITE Yorgos Lanthimos wears for YouTube videos no one turns an 18th-century royal court into a bawdy carnival of the absurd, with else watches. fish-eye distortions and bewigged BURNING Ex-Canadian Steven Yeun fops populating a palace spinning out plays an ethereally elusive rich kid in of control. Rachel Weisz and Emma this spectacularly clever South Ko- Stone are the bitter rivals at the centre rean film, which centres on Yoo Ah- of this excess, but it’s Olivia Colman’s in as a poor would-be writer who is gout-ridden, mood-swinging Queen haunted by the idea of being left out Anne who reigns, complete with a of upper-class privilege. He’s right to bedchamber full of rabbits. be pissed, but that way madness lies!

FREE SOLO Possibly the best outdoorTRANSIT German provocateur sports film ever made, not only for its Christian Petzold updates a Nazi-era vertigo-inducing cinematography at masterpiece on the terror of waiting El Capitan and other giant walls of during wartime—for trouble or sal- rock. Alex Honnold, an extreme and vation—by moving the (in)action to not always likable athlete who obsestoday, with no preamble or explana- sively climbs the world’s tallest cliffs tion. Still, the story speaks for itself, without ropes, makes an arresting and to the inability of people to rec- subject, living out of a van, hanging ognize when and how history repeats. from tiny ledges by his thumbs, and trying to form a relationship when WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? The he’d rather go through life free solo. very notion of citizenship, as represented by being neighbourly to those THE SISTERS BROTHERS French you know and those you don’t, is em- director Jacques Audiard’s wild and bodied by the late Fred Rogers, whose wandering revisionist western featelevised mission to engage with tures some of the year’s most colourchildren as moral agents is beauti- ful character work. John C. Reilly fully captured in this heart-lifting leads an A-list pack as sensitive, awkdocumentary. Rogers’s basic ethos ward Eli Sisters, a hired gun who can has been buried in an avalanche of suddenly gush with childlike awe “social media” garbage, but it should when he sees a flush toilet for the first be revived, not least by a Tom Hanks time. Audiard imbues all the goldrush locations with a surreal tinge; feature now in production. think flaming horses stampeding out MARIA BY CALLAS Lovers of the of a burning barn at night. arts, opera, and biography in general should seek out this cleverly crafted YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE study of the original diva, boasting full Lynne Ramsay crafts this bleak performances and stunningly colour- portrait with what can only be ful imagery, all bolstered by Callas’s described as lyrical brutality. Joaown words, operatic in their own right. quin Phoenix finds new reserves of torment, and the delirious visuals build to match his Gulf War vet’s JANET SMITH loosening grip on reality.

DIRECTORS CONTINUED to mess with genre this year, upending BLINDSPOTTING The laughs come westerns, historical dramas, and so fast and smart in this comedy, you might underestimate the volatility horror movies with abandon.

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of the American issues that writerperformers Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal take on here. Riding on their crackling chemistry, they dig into racial misunderstanding, misguided masculinity, and inner-city gentrification more successfully than most serious dramatic films this year.

HEREDITARY First-time director Ari

Aster owes a debt to masterworks like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, but he heightens everything with his own terrifying touches—a red-glowing treehouse, or the simple but bloodcurdling sound of a clucking tongue.

Toni Collette grounds the supernatural in an emotional portrait of a mother reaching peak panic.

MINDING THE GAP Ten years in the

making, Bing Liu’s beautifully unaffected documentary about a group of rust-belt skateboarders is a Hoop Dreams for Middle America—but that doesn’t go halfway to reflecting how personally, and heartbreakingly, invested the filmmaker is.

These aren’t guys you usually see onscreen—dudes who skate to escape domestic violence and nowhere jobs, in failed industrial towns.

FIRST REFORMED Paul Schrader reasserts himself as a master with a film as austere as a Calvinist church service, until the rapturous final act.

Ethan Hawke, as the morally conflicted minister at its centre, gives the performance of his life.

A QUIET PLACE

John Krasinski’s nerve-racking monster movie with brains finds the sweet spot between B-movie thrills and art-house meditation. The film is really about parents raising children in a chaotic world.

And thanks to the central gimmick (one small sound and you’re toast), the script is about as taut as they come.

this film’s Rev. Toller (Ethan Hawke, magnificent) is harrowed, radicalized, and made either crazy or whole by an existential threat that none of us can dismiss. We’ve moved a long way from Travis Bickle’s incoherent rage.

MANDY If you still haven’t been bitten by Mandy-mania, here’s the pitch: unable to suppress his divine spark in our fallen realm of heartless icons and shit pop culture, Panos Cosmatos takes a lifetime of tube-fed junk and transmutes it all into the most passionate, affecting, aesthetically uncompromising supernatural chainsaw-massacre showdown ever witnessed in this world or the next.

SHOPLIFTERS A multigenerational collective in busy, busy Tokyo scavenges its way to happiness. Like the Zimmerman said: to live outside the law, you must be honest. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film quivers with the slightest tensions, and prompts tears of melancholy joy throughout. Let’s add that the late, great Kirin Kiki’s last on-screen lines, spoken here, endow the film with the kind of rare grace observed only when the spirits of film align completely in one’s favour.

HEREDITARY Yes, in form and content this is the most sensational horror debut we’ve seen in years (including the overrated Get Out). But put aside the dead kids, self-inflicted beheadings, and discomfiting accuracy about Goetic ritual, and what do we have?

A film about family, stuck with and yelling at each other and driven to nightmare tragedy because someone desires power. The obverse of Shoplifters, then. Double-bill these films!

MORE (DAHA) Syrian refugees are bought, sold, and occasionally raped, while a boy’s innocence is systematically dismantled in this devastating Turkish drama, which mutates into ADRIAN MACK art-house horror without trivializing THIS YEAR WE’VE witnessed a its painful basis in reality. cultural purge hitting a grand awakening colliding with a collapsing/ TRANSIT Christian Petzold transreconstituting entertainment indus- ports a Nazi-era novel of occupation try. Here are 10 things that came out and exile to a liminal south of France that looks a lot like now. The resulting the other end. mix of subtle absurdity and oppresFIRST REFORMED Paul Schrader sive fear reminded me of Lars von should have been finished after 2013’s Trier’s Europa, although this feels far rock-bottom The Canyons. Instead, more distressingly urgent.

First Reformed synthesizes almost 50 years of Schraderian passions and YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE torments—a mad conflict between Lynne Ramsay’s incredible, elliptical cinema, faith, and personal oblivion— Taxi Driver riff gave Joaquin Phoenix see next page into his greatest achievement. Do note:

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DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 23

i f fe s t . c a iffest.ca Italian Film Fest Vancouver PRESENTED BY

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Dylan Robert and Kenza Fortas star as the troubled young lovers of Sheherazade.

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yet another opportunity to flex his protean gifts as America’s greatest living screen actor. With his fractured soundtrack, Jonny Greenwood completes the film’s trio of towering savants.

SHÉHÉRAZADE The angels with dirty faces are real in this gritty Jean Vigo Award winner about a 17-year-old prostitute and the would-be tough guy who goes from pimp to protector, endearingly brought to life by nonactors Kenza Fortas and Dylan Robert.

THE DEATH OF STALIN It’s impossible to say who’s best here, although Mandy’s Andrea Riseborough and an inspired Rupert Friend fully match the tested comic chops of Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, and Michael Palin as deceased Uncle Joe’s cabinet of paranoid curiosities.

24 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019

Perhaps top honour goes to Simon Russell Beale’s Machiavelli-meetsthe-Penguin reinvention of Soviet secret police chief Lavrenti Beria.

His brutally cold demise crashes the entire film, but, my god: the fucker had it coming.

MANGOSHAKE

The most delightful surprise to come from this year’s VIFF is ostensibly about two rival food stands in dead-zone suburban Montreal. But really, this film is just an orgy of ever more demented injokes (and wild stabs of pathos) sold with such unselfconscious gusto by an epic cast of nonactor friends that you dream of seeing the rumoured extended director’s cut. I hope it’s 12 hours long. Speaking of: bonkers 25-year-old genius Terry Chiu didn’t bother showing up at his Director’s Guild induction earlier this year because this shit is not of our world.

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MOVIES

From Italy to Hastings Street, with love A young documentarian brings his warm take on the DTES to the Italian Film Festival

S

by Adrian Mack

tretching all the way back to Larry Kent’s 1962 short “Hastings Street” and including, notably, the NFB’s Oscar-nominated “Whistling Smith” from 1975, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside has been remarkably welldocumented on film. In the last two years alone we’ve seen Wayne Wapeemukwa’s award-winning Luk’Luk’I and Josh Laner’s portrait of at-risk artist Ken Foster—both presenting the district as an emblem of the city’s grotesque wealth inequality.

Even then, V6A stands apart.

Italian expat Ruggero Romano invests the 65-minute doc with the freshness of discovery, producing in turn a bracingly positive depiction of Canada’s poorest postal code.

“Coming from Italy, I know that it’s something particular to step into someone else’s city in another country and make a film like this, right?” offers the ebullient 22-yearold, reached by the Straight at his home in Chinatown. “But I actually feel sometimes that you need a stranger to come into your own space and tell you, ‘Maybe things can be arranged differently.’ I was so tired of the fake appearances in Vancouver, I just said, ‘Know what?

I’m gonna go for the truth. I just want the substance.’ ” With a Vancouver Film School graduation under his belt, Romano thus embedded himself in 2016 at the Carnegie Community Centre, where he volunteered, collected notes and biographies, and finally turned his camera on a community he found himself “falling in love with”. The finished film brims with the passionate, articulate testimonies of V6A’s residents, most of them musicians and artists who view creativity and basic human decency as the powerful revolutionary tools they are. Think post-Olympics Vancouver has no soul? Romano’s film is bursting with it.

“I used to say the same thing.

‘Vancouver has no soul.’ The only place where I found that soul, and that energy, and that drive for community was in the Downtown Eastside,” he says, adding that his primary brief in making V6A was to remove himself from the project.

“I had tons of footage, and the majority of it was not about getting the shot,” he says. “It was always about listening to the person. The camera was just an excuse for that person to be heard, and that person got heard just because they had the chance to speak and someone was listening to them. Those moments

Director Ruggero Romano’s V6A—a bracingly positive depiction of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—screens at the Vancity Theatre as part of the Italian Film Festival.

were priceless. There’s no way to describe it, for me.”

Crucially, the film isn’t patronizing or starry-eyed. Its general backdrop is the 2017 eviction of over 150 tenants from the Balmoral Hotel. Certain slumlords and backsliding former mayors receive conspicuous cameos by graffiti.

Addiction and trauma issues are unblinkingly discussed. A denizen of a tent city calls the opioid crisis what it is: “a cull”. Another participant strips down to reveal sickening purple bruises received courtesy of the VPD. The ambient political culture of the DTES is captured again and again in V6A, perhaps most movingly by Rainbow John, a font of natural poetry who asks: “Resources are everywhere, nobody can afford them— what kind of insanity is that?”

With warmth and heart, V6A captures the DTES as Vancouver’s growing front in a global class war.

When it premieres with Romano in attendance at the Vancity Theatre’s Italian Film Festival on January 6 (screening again January 13), it will agitate alongside Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist classic Umberto D. and new titles including Tutti a Casa— Power to the People? (about Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement) and the politically themed comedies A Cat on a Highway and I’m Back (in which a resurrected Il Duce sets out to retake Italy).

“It’s something bigger than any one human being can achieve,” concludes Romano of V6A. “Somehow movies are a mirror of who we are and whatever happens within us. We manage to project it onto the screen as the movie f lows, frame by frame. I’m thankful because this is the result of many people coming together, speaking their minds truthfully. It’s always about truth, you know? We have to respect the power of truth.”

GOLDEN GLOBE® NOMINATION BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

“THE WORK OF A MASTER IN FULL COMMAND OF HIS ART.

A work of such emotional delicacy, you’re barely prepared when it knocks you sideways.”

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“A FILM THAT STEALS IN AND SNATCHES YOUR HEART.” ROBBIE COLLIN

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The Italian Film Festival runs at the Vancity Theatre from January 4 to January 12.

Movies TIP SHEET THE LOVINGLY CURATED Italian Film Festival mingles towering classics with the best of the new.

Here are some recommended titles:

c THE MAN WHO BOUGHT THE

MOON To the chagrin of the government, a Sardinian man does exactly what the title says in this spirited comedy, opening the festival in gala style (with live music, food, and wine!) next Friday (January 4).

c ONCE UPON A TIME IN

AMERICA (EXTENDED DIRECTOR’S CUT) For the first time ever, the IFF brings the full, glorious 250 minutes of Sergio Leone’s last masterpiece to big-screen Vancouver, next Saturday and Tuesday (January 5 and 8).

c THE CONFORMIST The

late Bernardo Bertolucci

receives a two-film tribute with this masterpiece from 1970, screening next Sunday (January 6), followed by his somewhat rarer 1960 debut, La Commare Secca (The Grim Reaper), on January 9.

c CINECITTA BABILONIA Marco Spagnoli’s documentary chronicles the wild history of the fabled studio, a symbol and relic of Mussolini’s fascism that became an unrivalled dream (and nightmare) factory. Screens next Monday (January 7).

c THE GUEST Poor Guido

has to lean on friends and family when his relationship suddenly falls apart. But everyone is grappling with commitment issues in Duccio Chiarini’s charming comedy, which screens next Tuesday (January 8).

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MOVIES

Vice winks darkly at Cheney’s horrors REVIEWS VICE

Starring Christian Bale. Rated 14A

d IF WE’RE TOLD anything by the recent state funeral for George H.W. Bush—an ex–CIA chief whose own father was convicted of laundering money for Hitler at the height of World War II—it’s that politicians are expected to at least pretend to care about the public at large. That’s why everyone in the room was giving stink eyes to the transgressor-in-chief sitting awkwardly in the first pew. Dick and Lynne Cheney were ensconced, as usual, in the second row of political life.

Vice captures with a sardonic wink; the man wore an unchanging mask of bland servitude in order to fatally destabilize the 21st century at its very start, and got away with it.

The new movie benefits from Christian Bale’s convincing transformation into Cheney’s soul-dead body, seen simulating various human behaviours over the length of his regrettably long career. In the scattershot chronology provided by writerdirector Adam McKay (Anchorman, The Big Short), Dick is seen beginning Christian Bale and Amy Adams as Dick and Lynne Cheney in Adam McKay’s Vice. as a Wyoming good ol’ boy, much in the hard-partying mould of BushAre Trump’s racial slurs, treason- Of course not. It’s just that this idiot family black sheep George W., playous actions, and financial misdeeds does everything out in the open! fully embodied by Sam Rockwell. anathema to the former vice president? Quite the opposite for Cheney, as In a more heavily bouffanted riff on her role in The Master, Amy Adams plays Lynne Cheney as Dick’s Lady Macbeth. Once our junior Bush had been pushed forward as the genial face of Republican tax cuts for the über-rich, Mr. Macbeth knew exactly how to snatch the wheel from this dim newbie, and angle the ship of state directly toward an iceberg called Iraq. He was also CEO of Halliburton, which stood to make millions from a trumped-up war, with the help of old Nixon compadre Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell, in a parlour-trick role).

Here, Cheney’s long road toward total moral dissolution is mostly treated as a dark joke, based on wounds still too recent to laugh at. Ironically, McKay’s kaleidoscopic approach has the effect of shoving Cheney’s horrors safely into the past. They are not dead, let alone buried, and refusing to face them is America’s funeral.

by Ken Eisner

IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK Starring Regina King. Rated PG

d “IF BEALE STREET could talk/

Married men would have to take their beds and walk/Except one or two who never drink booze/And the blind man on the corner who sings the ‘Beale Street Blues’.” That’s from W.C. Handy’s “Beale Street Blues”, and the 1917 song’s self-referencing lines obviously inspired transcendent writer James Baldwin to name his 1974 novel after them.

The main drag of Memphis’s entertainment district was once synonymous with African-American aspirations and creativity, weighed down by institutionalized violence and crime. Baldwin wrote that all black folks in the New World were

26 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019

born on a Beale Street of some kind.

And while Moonlight writer-director Barry Jenkins certainly gets the aspirational part of Baldwin’s story, his languid new movie somehow misses the rhythm of the street.

Vivacious newcomer KiKi Layne and talented Canadian Stephan James (Race, Selma) play 19-year-old Tish Rivers and slightly older Fonny Hunt, star-crossed lovers in ’70s Harlem. Fonny left his old haunts for a crummy walkup in Greenwich Village (as Baldwin did before him), to work as a sculptor. But his plans are thwarted by a racist cop (a cartoonish Ed Skrein), who frames him for raping a Puerto Rican woman in a faraway part of town.

That doesn’t leave much room for a love story, so Jenkins chops up the tale into time-jumping pieces so we can spend more minutes with the young lovers and their families. That strategy leads to many repetitive and sluggishly staged scenes in which the participants whisper non-Baldwinian words of devotion, only to have their resolve tested at every turn.

The book is narrated by the newly pregnant Tish, who sometimes assumes a more omniscient voice to describe cruel social machinations beyond her personal experience.

Here, the narrator is multitracked and drenched in reverb, turning Tish into a kind of Greek chorus murmuring wise (if hard-to-follow) thoughts from a safe distance—an apt analogy for the meticulously artdirected movie, which aestheticizes suffering without exploring it.

Beale Street’s theatrically placid two hours are padded with needless cameos, including Dave Franco as a friendly Jewish landlord and Narcos star Pedro Pascal, who shows up during a side trip to Puerto Rico that works only as a vehicle to display Regina King’s considerable mettle as Tish’s tough-talking mother. There are Coltrane and Nina Simone ballads to underline the elegance of our kind protagonists, but the dirgelike soundtrack largely suggests nostalgia and resignation. The most shocking thing about Baldwin’s original story is that it could have been updated to the noisy present without changing a single element. For some reason, however, Jenkins freezes everything in amber, and the blind man never sings.

by Ken Eisner

see page 28

music The best, worst, and weirdest of 2018 Our favourite musical headlines of the year, from the year in Bieber to jamming with Archie

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by John Lucas, Mike Usinger, and Kate Wilson

t was the best of times, it was the blurst of times. If you survived 2018 and all of its bitterly divisive politics with your sanity intact, consider yourself lucky. There were some things even the most beautiful song couldn’t set right, but for the most part, music made it all better.

Here are our picks for the best, worst, and weirdest stories to come out of the music world in the last 12 months.

THE YEAR IN BIEBER This was the year we all freaked out over Justin Bieber’s supposed inability to consume food like an ordinary human being. A photo of a Bieber look-alike sitting on a park bench and tucking into a burrito sideways went viral in October and managed to convince a sadly large number of observers that the Canadian pop star finds eating to be an insurmountable challenge.

That was a hoax, but what’s true is that Bieber married Hailey Baldwin in September. Hailey is the daughter of actor Stephen Baldwin, a supposed born-again Christian who once founded a for-profit ministry dedicated to lining his own pockets. Not to be outdone, Bieber has been notably more outspoken about his own religious convictions in recent months.

He even credited his lord and saviour with providing a template for married life, writing on Instagram in November: “Relationships are hard and love isn’t always easy but thank you Jesus for showing me how!” Who wants to break it to the guy that Jesus was a lifelong bachelor?

GOODBYE, LOTUSLAND

Ten years ago, Vancouver had a healthy supply of rambling old rental houses—many occupied by underground artists and musicians. Today, most of those houses have been ripped down for duplexes with a laneway house. That, and a sky-high cost of living, partly explains why Vancouver acts—Tough Age, Kevin Halpin, Sally Jørgensen— continue to pull up stakes and move to more affordable cities like, um, Toronto, Berlin, and New York. This year’s South by Southwest festival offered evidence for the theory that local musicians are increasingly giving up. Toronto and Montreal were each represented by 11 acts at one of the most fabled small-club festivals in the world. Vancouver sent three. In the months that followed, the Cobalt shut down, leaving a major hole in a city already lacking venues friendly to smaller bands. The Zolas put a poignant exclamation point on a bleak situation in August with “Bombs Away”, a fuzz-pop breakup letter that singer Zach Gray described as follows: “This track goes out to everyone seeing their favourite spots and favourite people get priced out of the city and wondering if they might be next.” Sad as all this is, the good news is Regina awaits your perma broke ass with open arms.

VANCOUVER’S VERY OWN

For those looking for a little bit of culture from the Six, 2018 delivered. Drake’s much coveted October’s Very Own (OVO) clothing line opened its first store in Vancouver this year, located on the very bougie 1000 block of Robson Street. Turns out that high-street prices didn’t deter locals from turning out in force for the sought-after streetwear, as the lineup to get into the building at one point stretched the length of a city block. With all the cool kids now rocking Drizzy’s designs, expect to see a flurry of gold owls in the new year.

TIME’S UP FOR HEDLEY One of rock

’n’ roll’s dirty secrets is that stars big and small get away with shit that

the singer, and that Bublé would not be hanging up his microphone.

Proving that he is every bit the class act, the singer says that he asked the friends who reached out to him not to share the article, but rather to send him pictures of their kids, because “he’d much rather know about that.”

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE This summer was the fourth time that Vancouver played host to one of Canadian music’s highest honours, the Juno Awards. The city had a particularly strong showing among winners, with local-born Grimes taking the crown for video of the year, North Vancouver–raised Renee Rosnes scoring a win for jazz album of the year, and city dweller Bria Skonberg chalking up a victory in the vocal-jazz-albumof-the-year category. The fact that all three champions are female mirrors a wider trend that defined the week.

The #MeToo movement had a strong bearing on the Juno events, with the organizational committee partnering with Good Night Out Vancouver—a group that implements strategies to end sexual harassment and assault in venues—and organizing a high-profile panel dedicated to helping women in music advance their careers. Here’s to the emergence of more kick-ass female artists.

Drake’s October’s Very Own clothing line became available this year on Robson Street; A U.K. tabloid got it wrong when it claimed that Michael Bublé had retired. (Photo by Evaan Kheraj); Vancouver’s Grimes won her third Juno. Photo by Rankin

wouldn’t begin to fly in the average bedroom, motel room, or hair-farmer hot tub. Thank Christ, then, for the #MeToo movement, which saw women around the world come out swinging against men who’ve used positions of power to do inexcusable things, often sexual. While Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey dominated international news, the Vancouver music scene had its own headline maker. In February an Ottawa woman accused Hedley singer Jacob Hoggard of rape after the two hooked up via Tinder, and another woman from Toronto stepped forward in March with more allegations. Although arguing that both encounters were consensual, Hoggard was charged in July with one count of sexual interference and two counts of sexual assault causing bodily harm involving a woman and a girl under 16. This has hopefully sent a message that, if a small-potatoes Cancon rock star can end up in the cross hairs of #MeToo, legitimate music-biz stars better take notice.

BLOWING UP THE TUBE

What makes a song a hit in this day and age? Is it radio play? Is it downloads?

Or is it having a huge number of

people hear your song and love it? If it’s the last of those, then “Cuz You’re My Girl” certainly counts as a hit.

The song, by Vancouver indie-rock musician Jordan Heaney, was uploaded by YouTuber Alona Chemerys in the summer of 2017. By the end of 2018, the video had racked up more than 3.5 million views. Interviewed by the Straight in May, Heaney—who puts his music out under the name Yung Heazy—said, “I have no idea how she found the song. I just put it up on SoundCloud, and it had, like, 100 plays or something. She somehow found the song through the depths of the Internet and decided to put it on her channel. And it just happened organically. People started sharing and listening to it. I didn’t even know it was up there for, like, a good two weeks. No one contacted me about it. It’s a weird story. I didn’t have any control over it.”

CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT Carrottopped, steel-abbed KJ Apa caused quite the stir in Vancouver this year while filming Riverdale, a Netflix adaptation of the Archie comics. Although he was spotted in local nightclubs, on the Whitecaps’ soccer pitch, and hugging Brock Boeser at Rogers

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It sounds like the title of the best screamo song never written: “Hard Time in a Yokohama Jail”. Except that, for Vancouver metal-punk veteran Daniel Burton Whitmore, it’s a reality. Famous among pregentrification Cobalt regulars for fronting both the re-formed Death Sentence and the greasepainted Iron Maiden tribute band Powerclown, Whitmore was arrested at Narita International Airport in late 2017. He was making the trek to Japan from Vancouver, and he was caught trying to smuggle $7 million worth of stimulant drugs into the country using his guitar case. In a Facebook post this fall, his brother reported that Whitmore— also know as Dan Scumm—has been totally down in the dumps after being incarcerated in a Yokohama jail.

He also suggested that the singer might be able to forget the endless Japanese-prison marching drills, cross-legged sitting sessions, and barked orders in a foreign language if old friends and fans would be kind enough to write to him. Or write a screamo song called “Hard Time in a Yokohama Jail”, and then ask Whitmore if he’ll provide the vocals when he’s released in 2022.

STILL GOING After the Daily Mail printed a headline stating that local boy Michael Bublé had officially retired from music, his fans were locked into is-he-isn’t-he limbo. No longer, the article implied, would his velvety vocals be on hand to impart deep wisdom about love; no more would listeners be regaled by his luxurious croon. His publicist, however, was quick to respond, telling the world that the British paper had misquoted

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THE DUDES

HARD TIME ABROAD

Arena, nowhere was the star more frequently seen than on-stage with touring bands. Turns out he’s quite good. After connecting last year with U.S. jazz-blues artist Ron Artis II to shred his axe at the Railway Stage and Beer Café, Apa went one better in 2018, joining Norwegian superstar DJ Kygo in a performance of his single “It Ain’t Me” at Surrey’s FVDED in the Park. Proving he’s not in it for the exposure, however, Apa capped off the year with a half-hour jam with Saskatoon group the Steadies at Gastown’s Guilt & Co.—a session that’s led to the small band blowing up around the world. The star will be filming in Vancouver until April 19, leaving local groups four months to lobby for a guest appearance.

16 THE TOASTERS

W/ GUESTS LOS FURIOS, CAWAMA

17 2018 WHAMMYS AWARDS CELEBRATION

23 DEAD MEADOW

FEB

26 ROYAL TRUX

W/ GUESTS

W/ GUESTS

Additional show listings, ticket sale info, videos and more: WWW.RICKSHAWTHEATRE.COM DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 27

from page 26

LOOK UP

Starring Giacomo Ferrara. In Italian, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable

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d A BAKER’S apprentice takes an

early-morning smoke break atop his boss’s building and never makes it back to work. That’s because Teco (Italian TV star Giacomo Ferrara) gets distracted by a huge seagull crash-landing on a nearby roof and then gets sucked into a bizarre kind of overworld he (and we) never knew existed.

Look Up is a highly imaginative first feature for young writer-director Fulvio Risuleo, who here combines his obvious love of classic cinema with a taste for the cryptically surreal. Cinephiles will find hints of fantastic Fellini, deadpan Jim Jarmusch, and humanistic Wim Wenders floating throughout this journey, which manages to be wildly picaresque, even though easygoing Teco—sporting a Kaurismäki pompadour that remains unruffled throughout—never strays more than a few hundred yards away from home base.

The film was cowritten with Andrea Sorini, who made the recent Baikonur, Earth, another provocative study of the contrast between heavenly pursuits and earthier realities. Recalling Baikonur’s grounded Soviet cosmonaut program, seagulls turn out to be man-made drones; in fact, they contain mummified artifacts left over, perhaps, from earlier human endeavours. This is explained to Teco by an androgynous little girl (Alida Baldari Calabria) who carries her pet chicken everywhere and leads him to a gang of rooftop bambini building a secret rocket to the moon.

Wearing elaborately coloured paper-bag masks, the kids are locked in mortal combat with local nuns who are also after the seagull messengers—and all the wine they can drink, as we learn when Teco stumbles into a hidden cabaret. There, strange music

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28 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT DECEMBER 27 / 2018 – JANUARY 10 / 2019

by Ken Eisner

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS

Starring Saoirse Ronan. Rated 14A

d FEMINIST RETELLINGS of the

stories of historical figures—it’s a thing this holiday-movie season. But the latest entries that reimagine queens’ courts could not be more different.

Yes, both The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots depict worlds where political men try to manoeuvre formidable female royalty.

And both take liberties with history, showing the monarchs’ sexual sides and letting them stand up to misogynistic male powerhouses.

But The Favourite ratchets up the tensions between ladies Sarah and Abigail, and shows the entire palace as a surreal wonderland of excess.

In Mary Queen of Scots, director Josie Rourke recasts her titular ruler and Elizabeth I not so much as the enemies the history books have depicted, but as long-distance BFFs. She also plays things much more conventionally than Yorgos Lanthimos does in his brash The Favourite, skewing more to an earnest period piece bathed in broody Edinburgh greys.

To be fair, screenwriter Beau Willimon has a more complicated story to lay out. When the film begins, Mary Stuart is already a widow, returning to Scotland from France to claim what she believes to be her right to the throne—of England, as well as of her rugged homeland. Her bloodlines overlap with her cousin Elizabeth’s, but religion plays a complicated role in the struggle (Mary is Catholic; Elizabeth is Protestant), as does the threat of renewed war on the island.

What’s most central to the film is that Mary’s body is not her own. She’s born to breed, and men want to bed and wed her for power, by force or by seduction. And when rumours start circulating about her purity as queen, it spells disastrous consequences for a woman who dares to wield power.

It’s an exciting idea, but the plot gets complex and doesn’t always jell the way it should; a confusing crowd of courtiers abounds, and there’s at least one anticlimactic battle scene where you’re hard-pressed to figure out who’s fighting whom.

Still, by far the best thing about Mary Queen of Scots is its character studies. In some ways, Mary and Elizabeth look like mirror images of each other, with their heart-shaped red wigs—though, here, Mary prefers to let her real hair down for horse rides. But Saoirse Ronan paints Mary as smart, fluently French-speaking, and feisty; Margot Robbie’s Elizabeth is ravaged by smallpox, powdered up to hide the marks, and paranoid about how this beautiful young queen may threaten her. Mary is also the only person in the world who can truly understand what she’s going through, the Virgin Queen sacrificing her life to her reign.

A few side characters hold their own with the leads, notably Jack Lowden as Mary’s boozing, reckless second husband, Henry, and Ismael Cruz Córdova’s intriguing, sexually ambiguous spin on musician-poet David Rizzio, who once scandalized Mary’s court.

by Janet Smith

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is performed by electronic composer Sun Araw, who also supplies the appropriately disorienting soundtrack.

This visit comes after Teco passes out in the tucked-away garden of a beekeeping hermit played by whitebearded Lou Castel, a Swedish actor whose Italian-neorealist lineage goes all the way back to 1965’s Fists in the Pocket. He also prowls heating ducts with a French parachutist (Aurélia Poirier) escaping her Czech boyfriend (Ivan Franek), and runs into nudist twins and other weird characters. The film’s structural weaknesses are exposed during halting multilingual conversations that don’t really amount to much. But at less than 90 minutes of breezy, children’s-book fun, it announces Risuleo as a not-tooserious talent to watch.

CONCERTS JUST ANNOUNCED KAT EDMONSON A mix of retro-style jazz with fine pop sensibilities, Kat Edmonson is a star on the rise. Nostalgic, playful, and fun. Presented by the BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts.

Jan 10, 8 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts. $35/32 at www. capilanou.ca/centre.

MARTIN TAYLOR Pat Metheny calls Martin Taylor “one of the most awesome solo guitar players in the history of the instrument”. Presented by the BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts.

Jan 12, 8 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts. $38/35 at www. capilanou.ca/centre.

A CELEBRATION OF THE BAND Music of the Band reimagined by Dustbowl Revival and Hot Club of Cowtown. Jan 15, 7:30 pm, Kay Meek Arts Centre. $19-48.

EFRIM MANUEL MENUCK Member of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, with guests rrkkttss. Jan 29, Biltmore Cabaret.

DUO RENDEZVOUS Violinist Jasper Wood and guitarist Daniel Bolshoy merge classical, jazz, and world music. Jan 29, 3 pm, Kay Meek Arts Centre. $19-48.

PARTNER Rock duo from New Brunswick, with guests Dude York. Feb 20, Fox Cabaret. $13.50.

COMMON KINGS Reggae band from Orange County, California. Feb 23, 7 pm, Venue. $22.46.

DEAD MEADOW L.A.- based psych-rock band. Feb 23, 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $17.50.

TENNYSON Rock band from New York. Mar 27, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $17.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 27 THIEVERY CORPORATION American electronic-music duo consisting of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. Dec 27, 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $59.50.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28 CONTACT WINTER MUSIC FESTIVAL Two-day electronic-music festival features headliners the Chainsmokers and Skrillex.

Dec 28-29, BC Place Stadium.

CHEAP TRICK American guitar-rockers from the ‘70s. Dec 28, 8 pm, Hard Rock Casino Vancouver. Tix $131.25.

SAM BAGLIER QUARTET Bebop saxophone jazz. Dec 28, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. Tix $10.

A lbum OF THE WEEK DEAD POPSTAR SUICIDE FOREST

Here’s a little insight into the reality of being a music critic in 2018: no one actually sends you their music anymore. When I started doing this job back in the waning days of the previous century, I soon ended up with more CDs than I ever wanted. In the past year or so, I think I received two.

So, when I get asked to write these Album of the Week reviews, I fire up the Internet machine and search Bandcamp for new Vancouver releases. This proactive approach often lets me discover music I would never have found otherwise.

And sometimes that music doesn’t seem to want to be found.

Case in point: Dead Popstar, an act that doesn’t appear to have any online presence apart from its Bandcamp page. (Take my word for it, I looked, and you really don’t want to know what sort of depressing things you find when you search for “dead popstar”.)

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 30 SIRIUSXM WORLD JUNIORS AFTER PARTY Featuring headliner the Glorious Sons. Dec 30, 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom. $40.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 31

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29

CONCORD’S NEW YEAR’S EVE VANCOUVER New Year’s Eve bash features an outdoor DJ stage and roving entertainment.

Dec 31, 7 pm, Vancouver Convention Centre.

THE DUDES Calgary rockers play a pre-New Year’s Eve show, with guest Skye Wallace.

Dec 29, 8 pm, WISE Hall. $23.

MARK FARINA House-music DJ, with guests Jesse Hills, Krown, and Luke McKeehan. Dec 29, 9 pm, The Imperial. Tix $25-30.

AN EVENING WITH EAGLE EYES: CELEBRATING THE MUSIC OF THE EAGLES Eagle Eyes is a tribute to the legendary music of the Eagles. Eagle Eyes has taken

SATURDAY, MARCH 16

The project’s willful obscurity means I can’t tell you anything about it other than the fact that it puts out one release per year, every December, and that its bio reads simply “23, Goth.”

“Goth” is a pretty broad and nonspecific descriptor; what Dead Popstar makes is better defined as industrial music. Imagine Skinny Puppy without the shifting rhythms and caustic noise, or Nine Inch Nails with most of Trent Reznor’s commercial instincts excised.

What’s left is a collection of abrasive soundscapes characterized by droning noise and looped beats, punctuated at odd intervals by brooding lyrics about fear and sickness and drugs.

Put these tracks on your “depressing” playlist alongside deep cuts from Scorn’s Gyral and the Cure’s Pornography. If you don’t have a “depressing” playlist, you probably wouldn’t be interested in an album called Suicide Forest anyway.

by John Lucas

great care and dedication re-creating the harmonies and capturing the live, true magic within the harmonies that the Eagles are renowned for. Hailing from Southern Vancouver Island, the four members of Eagle Eyes have over 120 years of combined experience. Mar 16, Centennial Theatre. $25-$40.

MUSIC EVENTS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. We can’t guarantee inclusion, and we give priority to events taking place within one week of publication. Submit events online using the event-submission form at straight.com/ AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

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SAVAGE LOVE

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I’M A 30-SOMETHING straight woman married for 16 years. Eighteen months ago, I met a man and there was an immediate attraction.

For the fi rst 15 months of our relationship, I was his primary sexual and intimate partner, as both sex and intimacy were lacking in his marriage. (My husband knew of the relationship from the start and is accepting, for the most part.) After my lover’s wife found out about me, she suddenly became very responsive to my lover’s sexual and emotional needs. My lover has told his wife that he will not let me go. He has also told me that he is not willing to let his wife go. She isn’t happy about being in a triad relationship, but she allows him to continue seeing me with limitations. I am no longer his primary sex partner, and I have been relegated to the back seat. He claims to love us both, yet his wife and I both struggle, knowing the other exists. Recently while out shopping, my lover asked me to help him pick out a Christmas gift for his wife. I got upset because I am in love with him and I have made him my priority (over my husband), but I am not his priority. I love this man, and we feel we are soul mates. My lover has said that if we fall apart, he will have to fi nd a new secondary partner because his wife can never give him the soulful ful-

fi llment he needs. Should I continue guy sees you as one of many potential seconds out there, and therefore in this relationship?

- Soul Mate Avoids Choice Knowingly utterly replaceable.

Here’s what you ought to do: you You complain about being relegated to aren’t interested in being your lover’s the back seat, SMACK, but it’s your secondary partner (nor are you much husband whose existence only comes interested in being your husband’s up in parenthetical asides. You also wife), so you’ll have to call your describe this relationship as a triad lover’s bluff. And the only card you when there are four people involved have to play—and it’s a weak hand (you, your lover, your lover’s wife, (all hands with just one card are)—is and your husband), which technic- to dump your lover unless he leaves ally makes this a quad. And from the his wife for you. Success rests on the sound of things, only one member of outside chance your lover was bluffthis messy quad seems happy—your ing when he said he’d replace you, lover, the guy who refuses to make but I suppose it’s possible he regards you a “priority” over his wife. you as the irreplaceable one and only And while you’ve convinced your- said those hurtful things to make self that your lover feels as strongly you think he wouldn’t choose you for you as you do for him—“we feel when you are the one he would’ve we are soul mates”—it kindasorta chosen all along. If it turns out that sounds to me like you may be pro- this was the case, SMACK, you’ll jecting, SMACK. Because in addi- wind up with your soul mate… who tion to asking you to pick out Christ- happens to be kindasorta cruel and mas gifts for his wife, your lover and manipulative. alleged soul mate regards you as exCalling your lover’s bluff—ending pendable and replaceable. And he’s a relationship that, in its current form, told you as much: he intends to “fi nd brings you no joy—is your only hope a new secondary partner” if you of having this guy to yourself. But the two part because his wife doesn’t likelier outcome is that you’ll be left “give him the soulful fulfi llment he alone (with, um, your husband). needs”. That’s not how people talk about their soul mates, and it’s cer- b I AM 30 and male, and I have been tainly not something a guy says to with my girlfriend for five years. For someone he regards as his soul mate. a slew of reasons (we have almost no Soul mates are typically told they’re interests/hobbies in common, our special and irreplaceable, but your personalities are completely different,

we aren’t sexually compatible), I have decided to end it. She’s a good, smart, well-educated person for whom I wish only the best. I’m thinking of breaking up with her sometime this week or halfway through next year.

I know you believe someone should tell a partner about these sorts of feelings ASAP to avoid robbing them of time they could have spent fi xing the situation or moving on. Something inside me tells me that my case is different. My girlfriend is a graduate student in a non–tech/STEM field (read: hard to find jobs) and has a decent amount of school debt. We also have a dog. We live in a city where the rents are high and it’s harder to find a place that will allow dogs. (She will definitely be taking the dog.) The thing is, she would almost certainly want to move out immediately if we broke up. I’m worried that if she tried to absorb the financial hit of a breakup, it might torpedo her education and life plans. I am at a loss for what to do. She’s leaving in a week to visit her family for a month—should I dump her before then so she can lean on them? Should I wait until she graduates but dodge questions about where I’m willing to move if she gets a job offer somewhere else?

should break up with people promptly to spare our exes the humiliation of thinking back over the last few months or the last few years and recalling every painfully ambiguous or deceitfully upbeat conversation about Our Shared Future. Another good reason to break up with someone promptly: a person your ex could spend the rest of their life with might cross their path two months from now—and if they’re still with you then or still reeling from a breakup, they won’t say yes (old-fashioned) or swipe right (newfangled).

But there are exceptions to every rule, DUMP, and I think your case qualifies. And as with many exceptions to many rules, your exception honours the spirit of the rule itself. Both reasons I cite for breaking up with someone promptly—to spare your soon-to-be ex’s feelings, to get out of the way of your soon-to-be ex’s future—are about being considerate of your soon-to-be ex. And that’s just what you’re doing: You want to end this relationship now, but you’re going to wait six months because you don’t want to derail your soon-to-be-ex girlfriend’s education or career prospects. So out of consideration for her, DUMP, you should coast for a bit longer.

- Deciding Ultimately Means Pain

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