I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.
Like René Clément’s “Forbidden Games,” British director Brian Percival’s The Book Thief focuses on the effect of war on children who are forced by circumstances into coping with events beyond their capacity to understand. Written by Michael Petroni and based on the novel by Australian author Markus Zusak, it is a story told with power…
When my children were young, we went to the killer whale (orca) shows at the Vancouver Aquarium. It was fun to see the 8,000+ pound whales doing tricks for the trainer while the audience was being splashed. We gave little thought, however, to how the whales felt about it. Today, millions who attend SeaWorld shows…
Though Upstream Color is supported by many other professionals in the field of visual and audio effects, it is mainly the product of one man, Shane Carruth, who is the director, producer, writer, cinematographer, composer, and co-star. It is no secret Carruth’s films play with our minds but, though his latest film is enigmatic and…
Alexander Payne, in his comedy-drama Nebraska, paints a picture of a decaying rural America, one that has become a spiritual and economic wasteland for the few that remain. Its empty streets, boarded up storefronts and the few businesses left cater to an elderly population that seems to care nothing about improving the quality of their…
Produced in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada, Canadian director Sarah Polley’s documentary Stories We Tell is a tender and often moving inquiry into the life of her mother Diana who died in 1990 from cancer when Sarah was only eleven years old. Her investigation, consisting of interviews with her Toronto family members…
Real heroes do not always end up with glory and parades. Heroism is sometimes reflected in small scale actions that no one ever hears about but occur every day in schools, hospitals or wherever there are people who need compassion. Werner Erhard defines true heroism as “the kind which ends up in the truth, in…
At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s, patients were advised to wait. In the six years following the first recording of the AIDS outbreak in 1981, more than 40,000 people in the U.S. died while waiting. In response to the clamor for action on the AIDS crisis, then Vice President George…
