March 19, 2024

GRUB | Marugame Udon x Grand Opening x Downtown

Marugame Udon Canada | Downtown Vancouver

Downtown—(March 15, 2024) World-famous Japanese noodle restaurant chain Marugame Udon officially opened its very first location in Canada, alongside a thousand other outlets worldwide, last week after a wildy successful initial run—already among the top 5% of all Marugame shops—starting in late February.

March 18, 2024

IMBIBE | Zarak x ¿CóMO? x Tocador x Vancouver Cocktail Week 2024

¿CóMO? Taperia  | Vancouver Cocktail Week 2024 | Mount Pleasant, Vancouver

Mount Pleasant—(March 5, 2024) In its third year, the annual Vancouver Cocktail Week continued its libatious celebration of the art of the cocktail through a variety of bartender-forward events, tastings, and dinner pairings across the city. Among many of the thirsty daytrips offered, I was invited on one of VCW's neighbourhood jaunts, the Main Street Cocktail Crawl, visiting three of the hottest restaurants for a drink and snack at each stop.

March 14, 2024

GENRE | Sydney Sweeney Births 'Immaculate' x SXSW 2024

"This is not God's work!"
Sydney Sweeney Michael Mohan | Immaculate Neon
SXSW Film & TV Festival
Actress Sydney Sweeney (also a producer) reteams with her The Voyeurs director Michael Mohan in this religious psychological horror thriller. Clearly inspired by the 1960-70s Italian giallo cinematic movement and nunsploitation subgenre, Immaculate elevates its pulpy material until a wildly memorable final act but never quite commits to its attempted audaciousness.

March 11, 2024

GENRE | Kristen Stewart Chills – Acts of 'Love Lies Bleeding'

"I've never been anywhere but here."
Kristen Stewart Rose Glass | Love Lies Bleeding A24
A24 / VVS Films
Saint Maud writer/director Rose Glass helms the late-'80s New Mexico-set lesbian noir romantic thriller, Love Lies Bleeding. Starring Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian as a reclusive gym manager and her hitchhiking bodybuilding drifter lover, we focus on the cyclical nature of violence told through a destructive queer romance between two very lost, broken women at the insection of desperation and desire.

March 7, 2024

WEEKENDER | Vancouver International Wine Festival 2024

"Taste the world."
Vancouver International Wine Festival 2024 | Vancouver Convention Centre West | Coal Harbour

Waterfront—(February 29 to March 1, 2023) The 45th annual Vancouver International Wine Festival returned to its usual late February slot for another eight fun-filled days of wine-related hoopla and imbibing. Like always, VIWF entertained, wined, and dined thousands of eager guests across the city at various tastings, pairing meals, and signature wine events at two-dozen different venues.

March 4, 2024

CABLE | 'Shōgun' Battles Samurai Lords on FX

"Why tell a dead man the future?"
Yuka Kouri Rachel Kondo Justin Marks | Shōgun FX
FX Productions
Shōgun, the exciting new FX miniseries (first adapted in 1980) based on the 1975 novel of historical fiction of the same name by Australian-born British WWII prisoner of war James Clavell and created by married screenwriters Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, explores the late isolationist Sengoku period of feudal Japan during the turn of the seventeenth-century when only capitalist Portuguese Catholics had access to the closed island Empire nation in a sweeping samurai epic.

February 29, 2024

SCREEN | Adam Sandler Ponders – Lost in 'Spaceman' on Netflix

"Your loneliness intrigues me."
Adam Sandler Paul Dano Johan Renck | Spaceman Netflix
Tango Entertainment
Comedian Adam Sandler stars in Swedish music video director Johan Renck's ponderous sci-fi drama based on Jaroslav Kalfař's novel Spaceman of Bohemia. His film adaptation, Spaceman, proves to be an absorbing but detached experience focused on the central character of a lonely Czech astronaut aboard an international space station all alone.

February 26, 2024

REEL | Timothée Chalamet Powers 'Dune: Part Two' – A Spice Empire

"May thy knife chip and shatter!"
Timothée Chalamet Josh Brolin Denis Villeneuve | Dune: Part Two
Warner Bros. Pictures / Legendary Pictures
Dune: Part Two, the latter half of French-Canadian director Denis Villeneuve's staggering two-part film adaptation of science-fiction author Frank Herbert's classic 1965 novel, about an interplanetary empire's rebellion, expands the scope and storytelling beyond Part One's ambitious spice opera. Its visionary spectacle makes sense of the thorny, dense literary mythology by cementing it as a groundbreaking cinematic blockbuster saga.

February 22, 2024

WEEKENDER | Patti Harrison Live x Just For Laughs x Vogue Theatre

"You better start agreeing with me right now!"
Patti Harrison: My Huge Tits Huge Because They Are Infected Not Fake! | JFL Vancouver 2024 | Vogue Theatre
I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson
Granville—(February 17, 2024) On Saturday night, I spent over an hour witnessing Ohio-born actress/comedian Patti Harrison perform her truly bizarre but side-splitting My Huge Tits Huge Because They Are Infected Not Fake! show—previously seen at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and New York Comedy Festival—alongside hundreds of other fans seated inside the Vogue Theatre as part of the annual ten-day-long eighth annual Just for Laughs Vancouver live comedy festival.