GENRE | Auditing Dreams – 'Strawberry Mansion' x Fantasia 2021

"Dream of me and I'll come to you."

Fantasia International Film Festival

Written and directed by sophomore indie filmmaking duo Albert Birney and Kentucker Audley (who also stars), Strawberry Mansion can be best described as a sort of surrealist lo-fi cosmic romance adventure. Set in the year 2035, we follow a tax auditor who must account for fees to be paid on an elderly woman's recorded dreams.

CINEMA | Dwayne Johnson Rides – Welcome to the 'Jungle Cruise'

"Haven't you been dreaming of adventure?"

Walt Disney Pictures

Journeyman horror/action filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra directs the period screwball adventure blockbuster based on the famous Disneyland ride. Jungle Cruise, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt as WWI-era explorers, tries to replicate the Indiana Jones-type formula from late the twentieth-century in mimicking other films like Romancing the Stone or The Mummy as originally inspired by the 1951 classic The African Queen. While fun and swashbuckling, it never comes quite come close enough.

IMBIBE | Patio Season x The Boxcar x Tacofino x Strathcona

Strathcona—(July 5, 2021) The Boxcar is already well on its way to having a fine summer thanks to its narrow but awesome carriageway space—sandwiched in-between the old Cobalt venue and Pizzeria Farina—leading into a pretty vibrant outdoor backlot patio tucked away off a back alley near the gates to Chinatown on Main Street.

CINEMA | Dev Patel Mythologizes 'The Green Knight'

"Now little knight, off with your head!"

A24 / Elevation Pictures

Dev Patel stars as the Arthurian figure of Sir Gawain in writer/director David Lowery's modern retelling of the late fourteenth-century poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (author unknown). In this epic medieval fantasy, The Green Knight becomes a majestic yet revisionist Middle English odyssey of chivalric romance set in Lowery's mythical version of Camelot.

GENRE | M. Night Shyamalan on the Horrors of Aging – 'Old'

"We're never getting off this beach."

Universal Pictures

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's latest supernatural thriller, Old, inspired by the French graphic novel Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and artist Frederik Peeters, has the intriguingly simple premise of a family on a tropical vacation who discover the secluded beach they've found is somehow causing them to age rapidly and reducing their entire lives into just a single day.

SCREEN | Zoe Lister-Jones Figures Out 'How It Ends'

"It's like an existential scavenger hunt for your soul."

American International Pictures / Mister Lister Films

Starring multi-hyphenate actress/filmmaker Zoe Lister-Jones as well as co-written and co-directed with her husband Daryl Wein, their latest indie comedy How It Ends was shot on the fly (at a distance) around Los Angeles during lockdown in the thick of the pandemic. The pair called up various actor friends and colleagues with no other plans to assemble a charmingly haphazard film about seeing friends on the last day before the world ends.

CINEMA | Top 10 Films of 2021 So Far

Each film reviewed where linked below:

1) Judas and the Black Messiah (dir. Shaka King)

2) Shiva Baby (dir. Emma Seligman)

3) The Killing of Two Lovers (dir. Robert Machoian)

4) Test Pattern (dir. Shatara Michelle Ford)

5) Stowaway (dir. Joe Penna)

6) The Father (dir. Florian Zeller)

7) Luca (dir. Enrico Casarosa)

8) In the Heights (dir. Jon M. Chu)

9) A Quiet Place Part II (dir. John Krasinski)

10) Zola (dir. Janicza Bravo)

CINEMA | Scarlett Johansson Chases Ghosts – 'Black Widow'

"People who have friends don't call me."

Marvel Studios

Scarlett Johansson returns as the eponymous female superspy and Avenger in a big-budget Marvel Studios solo superhero blockbuster prequel of her very own directed by Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland. Black Widow takes a Jason Bourne-style approach to its standalone action-adventure surrounded by a dysfunctional family drama while also adhering to the now well-worn Marvel formula.

FEAST | Italian Meets Chinese x Miantiao Restaurant x Shangri-La

"Chinese gastronomy uplifted by the elegant simplicity of Italian cuisine."

ostrica freddo (poached and chilled oysters with bamboo in saor)

Financial District—(June 22, 2021) Easily one of the year's most highly-anticipated restaurant openings has been the brand new Italian-Chinese fusion concept from Miantiao Restaurant & Bar—so named after the Mandarin word for "noodle"—located upstairs inside the luxurious five-star Shangri-La Hotel Vancouver after taking over the old Market by Jean-Georges dining space.