KAFFE | New in Town x Flourist Mill & Bakery x East Van

"This is not grocery store flour."

Kensington–Cedar Cottage—East Vancouver's new Flourist Mill & Bakery (formerly known as Grain) is the local brand's first proper brick-and-mortar shop and café from the well-known premium dry good purveyors.

SCREEN | Finding Romance – 'In A New York Minute' x VAFF 2019

Vancouver Asian Film Festival

For a film with its setting in the title that doubles as a famous song lyric, first-time Beijing filmmaker Ximan Li's In A New York Minute—not to be confused with the similarly titled 2004 Olsen twins comedy—feels like it could take place anywhere aside from the various obligatory NYC establishing shots. Focused on separate but interconnected love stories about three different immigrant Asian-American women, Li's romances tragically fall apart, because they potentially have too much to offer.

CINEMA | Ewan McGregor Shines On – 'Doctor Sleep' Awakens

"You shine on."

Genre filmmaker Mike Flanagan takes on the unenviable task of following up both the iconic legacies of master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and famed author Stephen King in a sequel to both versions of The Shining. Doctor Sleep follows a grown-up Danny Torrance, last seen as a tike riding his big wheel and played soulfully as an adult by Ewan McGregor, thirty years later as he reconciles his supernatural powers with his childhood experiences in the spooky Overlook Hotel.

GETAWAY | Sightseeing x 2 Days in Whistler x Pangea Pod Hotel

Whistler—(October 23 to 24, 2019) A small group of us were invited on a guys-only media trip to experience the still newish Pangea Pod Hotel located in the middle of the mountain village. As the first pod hotel in Canada, Pangea aims to offer modern delights and amenities in an affordable package when staying at the (usually expensive) resort town.

CABLE | Doomsday and Gloom – HBO Watches the 'Watchmen'

"I got a nose for white supremacy and he smells like bleach."

HBO's new episodic television sequel adaptation of the landmark 1986 DC Comics graphic novel Watchmen, written by the legendary (and notoriously cantankerous) Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons, aims to take the source material's deeply layered exploration of the history of America's sociopolitical ills and further bring a contemporary urgency to it.

SCREEN | Tim Heidecker Runs for 'Mister America'

Comedian Tim Heidecker takes his idiot host character from the performance art, cable access style web series based around amateur movie reviews On Cinema at the Cinema, a fictionalized version of himself, and extends the premise into a bizarre vérité mockumentary, Mister America. This Heidecker runs for district attorney of San Bernardino County despite not being a lawyer or even resident after narrowly avoiding being convicted of second-degree murder thanks to a botched music festival (think Fyre Festival).

SCREEN | Eddie Murphy Digs 'Dolemite Is My Name' on Netflix

"I want the world to know I exist."

Hustle & Flow filmmaker Craig Brewer recreates the X-rated blaxploitation world of underground comedian Rudy Ray Moore, considered the "godfather of rap", alongside his famed Dolemite character and its feature film production in a joyously biographical film. Starring a vivacious and chunky Eddie Murphy as the entertainer and his larger-than-life alter ego, Dolemite Is My Name does justice to both Murphy as a performer and Moore as an iconic 1970s figure in African-American culture.

CINEMA | 'Zombieland: Double Tap' Strikes Again

Everyone is back for the decade later sequel Zombieland: Double Tap. Original Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer and his team revisit their self-aware comic version of a world after an undead invasion for another mostly fun (if entirely unnecessary) zombie comedy ride.

VIFF 2019 | Damon and Bale Outrace 'Ford v Ferrari'

"We're gonna bury Ferrari at Le Mans."

Vancouver International Film Festival

VIFF 2019—Journeyman director James Mangold puts to screen the long-in-development biographical film recreating the events leading up the legendary 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race. Structured like a racing procedural with a methodical pace mirroring the actual competition being dramatized, the immersive Ford v Ferrari (aka Le Mans '66) is an expertly realized ride chronicling of the Ford Motor Company racing program's humble beginnings and ultimate triumph.