Calgary’s Doc Soup in check, Saskatchewan logo change, Edmonton’s rainbow igloo, and Winnipeg’s Imax to close.
Brooklyn Castle, a chess film about an inner city school chess team
Doc Soup is a monthly screening series that is part of the Calgary International Film Festival and runs from November until April. The series screens both Canadian and international documentaries and for the month of January the chosen one is Brooklyn Castle which will show at 7:00 on January 9th at The Plaza Theatre.
Brooklyn Castle is directed by Katie Dellamaggiore and is not your typical school sports-driven documentary. It focuses on Intermediate School 318’s blue ribbon chess team and shows how these kids find personal empowerment through competitive chess, giving them new hopes as to what may be possible within their own lives.
“When I got there, I was hooked immediately,” says Dellamaggiore. “As soon as I got there I knew there was something really special happening. You walk into the school and there are all these trophies and banners lining the hallways. You walk in and it’s the chess team. You don’t see the football team, the basketball team or the volleyball team. It was all the chess kids. Their faces were in the hallways.”
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFzUYRC3_H8
Saskatchewan’s recent logo change
Last Thursday, anyone perusing Saskatchewan’s provincial website might have been caught by surprise to see that the classic sheaf of wheat logo had a new look, two swooshing golden lines over a green provincial background. The change will appear on the website, letterhead, and news releases, while according to the government the iconic sheaf will still be used in signage and the official pin.
Law protects the former sheaf emblem, and many were up in arms when attempts to drop it were made in 2007. Buckley Belanger, the New Democrat, feels the switch was sneaky and not what the people of Saskatchewan opted for. While some may share his view, not all do according to tweets over the matter.
@action_jay: Province of Saskatchewan gets a new logo I was expecting just an arrow pointing to Alberta. via @SLangeneggerCBC http://t.co/ZpA1LGzn
@Dianne Cuddington: I love the new logo. It is about time we had something fresh.
@Whistlejackett: Doesn’t mean much outside the province. Ethical Oil is a Fail globally, actually it’s a joke globally, so this won’t bother anyone locally. Hardly anyone knows about Sask.
@LonnieTaylor: I think it looks classy.
Rainbow igloo of recycled cartons
Brigid Burton was getting her daughter home for Christmas and she was bringing her New Zealand boyfriend David Gray, home for the first time.
“I wanted to keep him occupied, not with my daughter necessarily. I wanted to keep him busy with something else,” said Burton in an interview with Global Edmonton “I didn’t want (Dan) to just be twiddling his thumbs while he’s here in Canada so I thought, this needs to be something that’s got some meat to it.”
And some meaty thought it had. Burton had the brainchild of collecting old juice containers and filling them with water back in October, which little did Gray know would be the building blocks to his first igloo adventure. In what took nearly 150 hours over 5 weeks and with 500 rainbow recycled blocks, a cozy winter abode was made. Gray credits the adhesion of the blocks to a substance called “snowcrete” and has been quite overwhelmed the response he has gotten to his little construction project after posting photos online.
Source: http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2013/01/rainbow-igloo-lights-up-edmonton-backyard.html
Winnipeg’s IMAX will close in March
IMAX has been serving Winnipeg for the past 25 years with its extra large screen showing niche documentaries and, more recently, blockbuster films. Due to a decrease in business at the Portage Place third floor theatre, which first opened in 1997, they will be closing their doors for good come March 31st.
“The business case no longer exists to run the theatre the way that it’s been running,” Forks spokesperson Clare MacKay told CBC News late Monday. “The last few years, we’ve incurred some substantial losses, and that business model just doesn’t continue to work.”
Many fans of the experience have been coming to the theatre since childhood and are quite disappointed by the decision.
“I came here a lot as a child and have continued to come to this Portage Place location throughout my adulthood, so now it’s just kind of become a family ritual,” one said.
Source:http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/01/07/mb-imax-theatre-winnipeg-closing.html
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Chadd Cawson is an intern at Spectator Tribune. Follow him at: @ChaddCawson
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