True movie lovers will be busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest this week. First up we’ve got The Best Of Banff Mountain Film Festival Friday and Saturday nights (Nov. 28, 29). The Banff Mountain Film Festival, held in Banff every November, features films about mountain sports, mountain culture, mountain people, and pretty much anything to do with mountains. This year there were over 300 films entered in the festival from 36 countries. Such a vast field ensures some amazing highlights and what the nice people at the Banff Centre do is package up the best and favourite entries and ship them out on the road. The Best Of Banff has been coming to Whistler for 13 years and always produces two of the most entertaining nights of the year. Go check this out at the Rainbow Theatre. It’s also a good place to pick up, if you’re into granola or fleece.
As if that wasn’t enough, Sunday to Tuesday, 9 p.m., the Rainbow is showing Quentin Taratino’s Kill Bill , the ultra-violent revenge flick featuring Uma Thurman with a samurai sword and almost the right amount of blood and severed limbs. This is the first half of a two-part film. This is your last chance to see it before Volume Two opens in February.
But wait, there’s much more. The Whistler Film Festival is a quality young festival picking up steam and giving us a look at some movies we’d never otherwise see. Featured at both the Village 8 and the Rainbow, this year’s festival offers a diverse selection of feature films and shorts. Lots of Canadian content this year, from Go Further , an environmental piece featuring weed-smoker and all-around-good-guy Woody Harrelson, to the local-ish In the Shadow of the Chief , the story of the 1961 first direct ascent up the middle of the Stawamus Chief (For all those who just stepped off the bus that’s the massive hunk of rock in Squamish.)
But the Whistler Film Festival selection I’m most excited about is The Delicate Art of Parking, winner of the Best Canadian Film Award at the Montreal Film festival . Directed by Vancouver’s Trent Carlson …Parking is a hilarious mockumentary about a devoted parking enforcement officer who thoroughly loves and enjoys his job until losing his friend and mentor to an irate motorist. Here’s hoping The Delicate Art of Parking does for those bastard parking officers what now-classic Fubar did for uneducated, charismatic head-bangers.
If you still need a dose of recycled plots, stupid budgets, over acting and too-adorable-to-be-believable children check out Ron Howard’s The Missing at Village 8. At least it’s a Western.
If there’s one lesson to learn this week it’s that superior movies can be made outside of the Hollywood system. And the more exposure we have to these Non-American movies, the better, so support the Whistler Film Festival and The Best of Banff. They come but once a year and they’re far more interesting than Christmas.
At Rainbow Theatre Nov. 28-29: Best of Banff Mountain Film Festival. Nov. 30-Dec. 2: Scary Movie 3, Kill Bill. Dec. 3-7: Whistler Film Festival.
At Village 8 Nov. 28-Dec. 4: Timeline, Matrix Revolutions, Gothika, The Haunted Mansion, Elf, The Missing, Love Actually, Cat in the Hat, Master and Commander.
