SCREEN | In the (Living) Room Where It Happens – 'Hamilton'

"You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story."

Walt Disney Pictures

There's not much left to be said about composer/playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda's award-winning historical Broadway smash hit musical phenomenon, Hamilton: An American Musical, exploring the eponymous Founding Father's unbelievable life and legacy in spectacular fashion.

CINEMA | Top 10 Films of 2020 So Far

Each film reviewed where linked below:

1) Swallow (dir. Carlo Mirabella-Davis)

2) Da 5 Bloods (dir. Spike Lee)

3) The Vast of Night (dir. Andrew Patterson)

4) Tigertail (dir. Alan Yang)

5) Bad Education (dir. Cory Finley)

6) Shirley (dir. Josephine Decker)

7) The King of Staten Island (dir. Judd Apatow)

8) Big Time Adolescence (dir. Jason Orley)

9) Never Rarely Sometimes Always (dir. Eliza Hittman)

10) The Invisible Man (dir. Leigh Whannell)

SCREEN | 'The Story of Fire Saga' Mocks 'Eurovision' on Netflix

"The elves must hate us."

Gary Sanchez Productions

Movie stars Will Ferrell (also a producer) and Rachel McAdams fire up their best Icelandic accents to satirize the popular annual European singing competition in the very silly but sincere Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. Wedding Crashers director David Dobkin reteams with his leads to feature some lush pop visuals with hyper-surreal musical imagery.

BEERFEST | Shipyards x North Point Brewing Co. x North Van

North Shore—One of North Vancouver's newest craft micro-breweries North Point Brewing Co., founded by a trio of friends, opened up late last year located around the Lower Lonsdale area smack dab in the middle of the burgeoning new Shipyards Brewery District.

SCREEN | 'There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace' x DOXA 2020

"What happens at this corner will impact our neighbourhood for the next hundred years."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Cinematographer Lulu Wei stays close to home by directing and co-starring in a documentary about displacement and gentrification in a changing metropolitan city. There's No Place Like This Place, Anyplace documents the transformation of one very notable city block, Mirvish Village in Downtown Toronto, surrounding the redevelopment of the beloved landmark discount store Honest Ed's by Vancouver-based luxury condo developer Westbank.

SCREEN | A Collage of Memories – 'Wintopia' x DOXA 2020

"Life is more complex than any camera can record."

DOXA Documentary Film Festival

Unfinished films can often be fascinating artifacts of artists' ultimately incomplete creative endeavours. In the NFB documentary Wintopia, radio producer Mira Burt-Wintonick captures herself remembering her father, famed Montreal documentary filmmaker Peter Wintonick, while trying to finish his lost "Utopia" project and also grappling with her own mixed feelings in creating a moving collage of memories of both their works at the very same time.

CINEMA | Spike Lee Bleeds for Gold – 'Da 5 Bloods' on Netflix

"War is about money. Money is about war."

40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks

African-American auteur Spike Lee tells the Black military experience of the "American War" in Vietnam through his unmistakably aggressively creative lens for his latest film. Set in both the past and present, the extraordinary Da 5 Bloods spans decades narratively while being firmly planted in today's political moment in time.

CINEMA | Pete Davidson Gets Crowned 'The King of Staten Island'

"I feel bad that you don't think you're great."

Universal Pictures / Apatow Productions

Comedian Pete Davidson and director Judd Apatow have teamed up for another loosely fictionalized, semi-autobiographical therapy session of a slacker comedy about adult arrested development. The King of Staten Island dramatizes elements of Davidson's real-life including the ramifications of his firefighter father's death on the job as a child and what has become his cult of personality or offbeat everyman appeal.

GENRE | Gothic Lit – Elisabeth Moss Hallucinates 'Shirley'

"What happens to all lost girls? They go mad."

Neon / Los Angeles Media Fund

Award-winning actress Elisabeth Moss portrays the legendary Shirley Jackson (writer of the chilling short story "The Lottery") in director Josephine Decker's highly fictionalized gothic nightmare of a biopic about the famed horror author. Based on the book of the same name by Susan Scarf Merrell, Shirley uses hypnotic storytelling and a transfixing performance by Moss to create a hallucinatory psychodrama about female identity with a literary bent.