Login / RegisterBest of Vancouver 2012 contributors' picks: Entertainment
For the Georgia Straight’s 17th annual Best of Vancouver issue, our editorial team has spent months on the lookout for good deeds, weird urban details, and various howlers to highlight. Here’s our contributors’ picks for Best of Vancouver 2012.
Best lap of luxury at a cinema
A whopping $3 million. That’s approximately how much Cineplex dropped to upgrade its SilverCity Coquitlam venue, bringing it into the 21st century in high-flying style. The swanky new digs (604-523-2911) include a chic lounge, a new gourmet-popcorn counter, interactive video games, and more. The adult-only VIP auditoriums boast fancy high-back leather rocker seats that allow couples to get cozy and snuggle up. What’s more, patrons can enjoy in-seat food and beverage service, allowing them to order everything from mocktails to deep-fried pickles to meals. Oh, we almost forgot—you can watch movies there, too.
Best place to spot a Bollywood star
Indian Summer Festival
In each of the past two years, the Indian Summer Festival has featured audience question-and-answer sessions with Bollywood actors. This year, screen icon Sharmila Tagore, winner of the International Indian Film Academy lifetime-achievement award in 2011, regaled an audience at SFU’s Surrey campus with tales of her 50-year career. Last year, Tabu, one of the stars of Mira Nair’s The Namesake, joined novelist Yann Martel on-stage at the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts at SFU Woodward’s. If the organizers manage to line up Shahrukh Khan for next year’s fest, let’s hope he isn’t detained at YVR—which is precisely what’s happened to the Bollywood megastar twice at U.S. airports.
Best local reality show you don’t admit to watching
Has any other Vancouver-based reality-TV show received so much attention? The Real Housewives of Vancouver premiered on April 4, showcasing the oh-so-luxurious lives of five women—Reiko MacKenzie, Mary Zilba, Christina Kiesel, Ronnie Negus, and Jody Claman—and their families and friends. Based on the popular TV series that includes casts in Orange County, New York, and Atlanta, Vancouver’s offering was filled with predictably similar doses of high fashion, fast cars, gossip, and catfights, all cast against the beautiful backdrop of our city. Whether audiences secretly loved the show or truly despised it, at the end of the day, enough people watched it to warrant a second season.
Best way to sit on your ass for charity
Join Reel Causes, which is more than 1,400 Vancouver film lovers who use their purchasing power to help groups ranging from Amnesty International to the Greater Vancouver Food Bank. The Vancity Theatre offers Reel Causes a chance to screen one film a month, with the box-office proceeds going to a charity of the group’s choice. And the theatre sells tons of popcorn and other treats because Reel Causes has more than enough members to fill its seats.
Best way to shake it up at the movies
Feeling like movie-watching has been getting too predictable and in need of a shaking-up? Buy tickets to a movie with D-Box seats at SilverCity Metropolis or SilverCity Riverport. D-Box technology embedded in theatre seats is designed to coordinate vibrations and movements with on-screen action, so by the time you’ve finished being numbed by the blowed-up-real-good action of The Expendables 2 or the latest Bond flick, you and your friends (not to mention your popcorn) will be more than adequately shaken and stirred.
