I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.
When the media began to co-opt the sixties counter-culture’s anti-establishment message and turn it into advertising slogans and the marketing of tie-die shirts, you knew it was the beginning of the end for any serious purpose the movement may have embodied. If the Duplass Brothers’ slacker comedy, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, is any indication,…
Of all the problems you want in your village, probably the last one would be having dragons destroying your crops and livestock. In How to Train Your Dragon, a wonderful animated film from DreamWorks Animation studio based on a novel by Cressida Cowell, these pesky creatures ignore the no-fly zone and create havoc in the…
According to Japanese anime director Makoto Shinkai, his latest film Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below is a study of “how people are connected” and the relationship between individuals. Although the film is designed primarily for a young audience, adult themes of love and loss abound in its story of mourning lovers attempting…
One of the greatest fears of childhood is being abandoned by your parents and left to face the world alone. In A Brand New Life, winner of Best Asian Film Award at the Tokyo International Film Festival, French director Ounie Lecomte recalls her childhood in South Korea with this sensitively rendered and touching story of…
“Dance the winds will touch your feet, just dance and dance feel the beat, dance the last atom cutting a knot, just dance and dance until you cannot” — Miroslava Odalovic I sometimes have dreams about being in a place with gorgeous colors and heightened emotions and a feeling of weightlessness. I was thinking about…
Our society has often been called “death-denying,” one in which grief is suppressed and the inevitability of death ignored. Author John Fowles said, “Death’s rather like a certain kind of lecturer. You don’t really hear what is being said until you’re in the first row.” The children at a primary school in Montreal are definitely…
“Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery The ability to see events from different perspectives is one of the most important elements of a successful relationship, whether it involves a married couple, a parent and child, or a group of nations. Warring…
