The Ex-Press Oscar Predictions 2016
Movies: Oscars 2016
Our expert guide -- and some good guesses -- about who will win the little man with the gold complexion come curtain time
By Katherine Monk
Chris Rock is in a hard place. Hosting this year’s Oscars isn’t a task for amateurs who get by on dimples, he’ll need to do an entirely different song and dance and address, and hopefully undress, the diversity issue that continues to ripple through every corner of the industry, putting legendary stars in embarrassing situations. Poor Meryl Streep. You know she’s going to get some zinger about about how “we all come from Africa.” And poor Sylvester Stallone, having to represent Creed as the white guy, and poor Bryan Cranston and Michael Fassbender who handed in spectacular performances as two different brands of genius in Trumbo and Steve Jobs but will not take home the big prize. It was a year of great performances in so-so movies, or at least movies that never fully connected with audiences in the ...
Luke Kirby takes another waltz with romance
People: Luke Kirby
He played a problematic brand of Prince Charming in Sarah Polley's Take This Waltz and now Canadian-born Luke Kirby is walking a tightrope of sanity as a bipolar Romeo in Paul Dalio's Touched With Fire
By Katherine Monk
He played a pedicab-driving Romeo opposite Michelle Williams in Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, and now he plays a bipolar brand of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Paul Dalio’s Touched With Fire, but if you think Luke Kirby has a thing for playing the problematic prince charming, it’s just optics. The Guelph-raised Kirby is also a regular on the Sundance Channel crime drama Rectify, did several seasons of the Astronaut Wives Club and recently appeared in The Good Wife. And for those who weren’t paying attention to Canadian cinema at the turn of the present century, Kirby starred as the gay son of traditional Italian parents in Emile Gaudrealt’s Mambo Italiano. “Right now, I’d like to work on my tan if I could find the ...
What Color Is Donald Trump?
Listicle: What Color is Donald Trump?
He won't be painted by any brush, unless it's covered in bronzer. It's enough to make you think Donald Trump has not only destroyed the traditional boundaries between party lines, he's destroyed your television's onboard color processor. The Ex-Press heads up a special investigative team headed by designers, painters, political pundits and Pantone experts to solve the compelling mystery: What color is Donald Trump?
By The Ex-Press Staff
Red? Trump's tie is red, suggesting he's Right when it comes to financial policy. And so are his lips, because he knows he needs to talk like a Republican. Hey. Talk is cheap. Blue? His suit is navy, his eyes are sky blue and so is pie-in-the-sky line about making "America Great Again." What? It's not great already? Orange? A day without Donald is a day without his sun shining on the rest of ...
Ryan Reynolds: swimming in Deadpool success
People: Ryan Reynolds Interview
Ryan Reynolds wears his love of Vancouver on his fleshy sleeve with a tattoo of the Nine O'Clock Gun, but thanks to the skyrocketing success of Deadpool, the sexiest dad alive is making a big noise of his own.
By Katherine Monk
VANCOUVER, BC – He’s officially the hottest star in Hollywood now that Deadpool has racked up a quarter-billion $US in its first week of release and launched an on-line fan frenzy demanding he host SNL, get his own statue in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, and get on with spawning a series of Deadpool sequels. Vancouver’s Ryan Reynolds has come a long way since his so-called “breakout year” back in ’02-’03, when he made the leap from recurring roles on TV shows such as Fifteen, The Odyssey and The Outer Limits to being the star of features films. He played a party hound Van Wilder, and a master thief in Foolproof, Canada’s first full-size experiment with the action genre. The whole movie was geared ...
Snowtime! animates a Canadian classic
Movies: Snowtime!
The creators behind Snowtime! talk about the challenges of tinkering with an emotional strand of the Quebec's cultural DNA, and getting Celine Dion onboard to sing about loss
By Katherine Monk
PARK CITY, UT — The footsteps they chose to follow were Yeti-sized craters, but that didn’t stop the filmmakers behind Snowtime! from recreating one of the most popular films in Canadian history. Originally released as a live action feature in 1984, La guerre des tuques went on to become the highest-grossing film of the year in both English and French Canada with well over a $1.2 million in domestic receipts, not to mention several more million in ancillary merchandize in the years that would follow as the film became the go-to Christmas season broadcast — the Rudolph or Frosty for French-Canada. “What you have to understand is this is part of the DNA of the quebec people,” said producer Marie-Claude Beauchamp, who sat down with The Ex-Press during the ...
András Schiff conquers gridiron goliaths
Rod Mickleburgh: The Super Bowl vs. Classical Piano Recital
How a 62-year-old pianist in a knee-length tunic made one lifelong sports fan forget about the Super Bowl, and feel the magic of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert
By Rod Mickleburgh
The treasured Leila Getz, described in the program as “Head Honcho” of the Vancouver Recital Society, welcomed us with her usual enthusiasm. “Thank you for choosing András Schiff over the Super Bowl. The magic begins.” And indeed, it did. Moments later, the stately, 62-year old master pianist, wearing a knee-length black tunic, walked out from the wings, acknowledged our applause, sat down on the cushioned bench, rested his hands on the top of the piano for 20 seconds of contemplation, and began to play. While gazillions tuned into the greatest annual event in the history of the world, aka the Super Bowl, which surpasses even the Eurovision Song Contest in global importance, I sat entranced, with hundreds of others at the packed ...
Deadpool reanimates comic book form
Movie review: Deadpool
Ryan Reynolds's physical skills and comic timing prove unbeatable as he takes on the role of a nihilist antihero in Deadpool, a self-conscious wink to Spandex form that would have been unwatchable without him
Konelïne drills deep into the dark heart of colonialism
Movies: Available Light Film Festival
Veteran documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild heads North to explore a motherlode of ugly conflict unfolding against a backdrop of pristine beauty in her latest film, Konelïne: Our Land Beautiful
By Katherine Monk
WHITEHORSE, YUKON — “We didn’t want it. We still don’t want it. But it was a done deal when they called us to the table.” Tahltan elder Lillian Moyer was speaking about a transmission line along the once-scenic Highway 37 in Canada’s Yukon, but the comments she uttered at the premiere of Nettie Wild’s latest documentary, Konelïne - Our land Beautiful, seem applicable to just about every situation that pits traditional First Nations’ values against the continuing colonial reality. From resource extraction in pristine wildlife habitats in the North to condos and casinos on traditional lands in the South, Canada’s colonial history clearly didn’t end with when Europeans left the garrison. It continues to claim ...
A reporter on the run
The Sick Days: Part 20 - Into the Frying Pan
When I was a young reporter, there were no “self-help” books about how to manage your workload, ask for support from your employer, or even disclose an illness.
By Shelley Page I’d like to torque my personal narrative and claim that I left my ‘dream job’ because I’d had an epiphany: journalism would never be a cure for lupus. Except, I wasn’t that clever. These days, there are many books written for the chronically ill about how to scale back your dreams and still find career success: Despite Lupus, written by a former NBC producer who quit her job to control the constant flares of her illness, which eventually attacked her kidneys, arguably the most serious manifestation of lupus (a stage I didn’t yet have to worry about). The writer encouraged readers to work smart, or in bite-sized chunks, and sometimes not at all. Fabulupus (yes, that’s really the title), is filled with similar advice. When I was a ...
What makes a political campaign ugly?
Politics: The art of the campaign
You know the gloves are off when someone makes a comparison to Hitler. It's already happened in the race for the Republican nominee, but Rod Mickleburgh reports it can happen anywhere when tempers flare and common sense is thrown under a campaign bus driven by fear.
By Rod Mickleburgh
Forty years ago this month, all these things really happened. The premier of British Columbia waited for the provincial election results with his wife and kids in a nondescript Coquitlam motel room behind closed drapes, the windows covered over by aluminum foil to discourage possible snipers. Plainclothes members of the RCMP prowled the corridors, making sure no one approached the premier’s room to try and make good on several anonymous death threats Dave Barrett had received. It was a fitting end to the nastiest, most laced-with-hysteria election campaign in B.C.’s long polarized history. The man under police guard was Dave Barrett. For the past ...
