Refusing to be daunted by icon Margaret Laurence, Kari Skogland brought a Canadian classic novel to the big screen and kept it relevant for a contemporary audience.

LOS ANGELES—You would think that a 23-year-old actor might be somewhat concerned about getting typecast after playing a cartoonlike character in a huge special-effects movie. However, Emile Hirsch doesn’t see it that way. Hirsch, who came to the film Speed Racer from an acclaimed performance as a doomed adventurer in last year’s Into the Wild, says that he thinks things have changed in the past few years and that today’s actors have some advantages over counterparts from other eras.

It’s been exactly 20 years since Errol Morris made a name for himself with The Thin Blue Line, which served notice to the film world that documentaries could be stylish, confrontational, and highly interpretive. The use of dramatic reenactments, intense close-ups, animated graphics, dark humour, and hypnotic music scores—à la Philip Glass—have since become commonplace elements. (And, yes, Michael Moore, I am looking at you.)

NEW YORK CITY—Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow would seem like an odd couple to take on lead roles in a big summer film. Both are better known for appearing in films that have budgets about equal to the size of the salaries they probably earned for costarring in Iron Man, in which Downey plays the title character and alter ego Tony Stark and Paltrow plays Stark’s supportive assistant, Pepper Potts. (The film, directed by Jon Favreau, is currently playing at Vancouver theatres.)

He’s cut off a cop’s ear in Reservoir Dogs, buried Uma Thurman alive in Kill Bill, and even kissed Susan Sarandon without flinching in Thelma & Louise, but this time Michael Madsen swears things are different with his new film, Vice. “Sure…I’ve fired some weapons in my life, yeah,” he tells the Georgia Straight on a film-set phone.

VancouverIAM.com, a new local website, is establishing the I AM Network Fund to assist local Web-TV series producers with $200 to $1,000 per episode, according to George Fleming, CEO of SoMedia Networks Inc., which owns the site.

The Vancouver chapter of the Association for Computer Machinery’s Special Interest Group for Computer Graphics will host an iconic guest at its fifth-anniversary celebration on Wednesday (May 14)-Blade Runner’s visual futurist, Syd Mead.

On Saturday (May 10), as part of Pangea Day, four hours of short films will play simultaneously in thousands of locations around the world as the result of a wish.

The silver screen hasn’t always been kind to psychiatry, according to Dr. Harry Karlinsky, a UBC psychiatrist and director of the Frames of Mind Mental Health Film Festival, which takes place May 8 to 11 at the Pacific Cinémathèque.

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and Jeff Bridges. Rated PG.

A documentary by Errol Morris. Rated 18A. Opens Friday, May 9, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Directed by Kari Skogland. Starring Ellen Burstyn and Christine Horne. Rated 14A. Opens Friday, May 9, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas

Starring Katherine Waterston and John Leguizamo. Rated 18A.

Starring Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah, and Mykelti Williamson. Rated 18A.

Directed by David Mamet. Starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer. Rated PG. Opens Friday, May 9, at the Cinemark Tinseltown