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This article was published 08/12/2016 (3235 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

H.U.N.K.S.

It might not be what every kid asks for during that all-important pre-Christmas visit with Santa, but there’s still a lot to be said for the gift of laughter. And if the pressures of seasonal shopping have you feeling the need for some Yule-ish foolishness, H.U.N.K.S. might have just what you need.

The local sketch troupe — comprised of Tim Gray, Quinn Greene, Dana Smith, Sam McLean and Matt Nightingale — brings its live show to the Park Theatre for a single pre-Christmas show on Dec. 9 at 9 p.m. (tickets are $15, available at the Park Theatre and Ticketfly.com). Formed in 2015, H.U.N.K.S. has quickly become a mainstay on the local comedy scene, earning five-star reviews for its fringe festival shows and performing at the Oddblock Comedy Festival. The Vancouver-based comedy duo Hip.Bang will make a special guest appearance at the Dec. 9 show.

— Brad Oswald

 

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John Paizs DVD launch

“You make me so sad, Danny. Sad like I like to be!”

— Dr. Knash (George Toles) in The International Style

Winnipeg-spawned filmmaker John Paizs is undoubtedly a cult figure, but even within his cult, he may be best known for his 1985 feature film debut Crime Wave.

But Paizs was a busy filmmaker throughout the 1980s, creating, under the creative dome of the Winnipeg Film Group, a trilogy of short films connected through Paizs’s silent character Nick and an esthetic inspired by classic Hollywood.

The WFG offers a revival of those films with a DVD launch of The Three Worlds of Nick including Springtime in Greenland (1981), Oak, Ivy and Other Dead Elms (1982) and The International Style (1984), which features, among its melange of international-intrigue tropes, the unforgettable spectacle of Guy Maddin (credited as “Gal Maddin”) in a nurse’s uniform stuffing a burglar into a furnace, not to mention Toles as a sinister Peter Lorre-esque malefactor in a neck brace.

The trilogy is rounded out by the director’s not-Nick short The Obsession of Billy Botski (1980), a film that established his style, glorying in the glossy look of ‘50s-’60s album covers and Playboy magazine layouts. All four films have been transferred to an immaculate digital format from 16mm film.

The screening takes place Saturday, Dec. 10, at 7 p.m. at Cinematheque. The DVD sells for $20.

— Randall King

 

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Janelle Nadeau Ensemble

Harpist Janelle Nadeau has struck out on her own this year, but like the Beatles, she’s got a little help from her friends.

Nadeau, who had been part of Winter Harp for the past decade, now leads the Janelle Nadeau Ensemble and has enlisted the help of two of her former Winter Harp bandmates — fellow harpist Kim Robertson and multi-instrumentalist Joaquin Ayala. The result is A Prairie Christmas, a six-stop tour of southern Manitoba that wraps up with a concert at Winnipeg’s Club Regent Event Centre Thursday, Dec. 8, at 8 p.m.

Winter Harp is on hiatus for 2016, but Nadeau, who grew up in Winnipeg before moving to Vancouver, and her ensemble are following her old group’s template of centuries-old instruments, a blend of Celtic and classical carol arrangements and down-home Christmas spirit, Nadeau says.

“I wanted to make it an intimate kind of feeling, like visiting a living room of a loved one,” she says in a telephone interview. “A feeling of celebration and happiness like when I grew up as a kid. I wanted to recreate that feeling as an adult.”

The Manitoba tour allows Nadeau to reconnect with family members and old friends in and around Winnipeg.

“That’s one of the best parts, to get to come back here,” Nadeau says, adding that performing in Manitoba brings back fond memories of attending holiday events when she was a child.

“My parents are still huge live entertainment fans,” she says. “Every year we’d go to the Nutcracker and every Christmas show we could, and the school pageants. I remember getting into the car after a concerts and being totally exhausted after being enthralled by the concerts.”

The ensemble will play many Christmas classics, but one of Nadeau’s favourites, a traditional French carol called D’où viens-tu bergère? is also part of the program, she says.

Tickets for the Club Regent show are available at Ticketmaster and range in price from $21 to $26.25 plus fees. For more information about the Nadeau Ensemble, visit janellenadeau.com.

— Alan Small

 

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WSO: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

It’s not exactly a Christmas movie, like last year’s Home Alone, but if you don’t tear up at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, you might be a bit of a grinch.

Conductor Julian Pellicano will lead the WSO in a live performance of the music by renowned movie composer John Williams — who took home the Oscar for Best Original Score for his soaring, string-heavy work — which will accompany a screening of the 1982 Steven Spielberg classic about Elliot (Henry Thomas) and his Reese’s Pieces-loving friend from outer space.

Symphony fans can marvel at the precision with which conductor and orchestra match the score to the action onscreen, while movie fans will be swept away by the heart-warming story of a lonely fatherless boy and his kid sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) who help an abandoned alien return to to his home.

There are two performance at the Centennial Concert Hall on Sunday, Dec. 11: a 2 p.m. matinee and a 7 p.m. evening show. Tickets, ranging from $25 to $120, are available at https://tickets.wso.mb.ca.

— Jill Wilson

 

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L’Amour de Loin

Even the Big Apple’s often blasé audiences were abuzz last week when celebrated Canadian director Robert Lepage unveiled his latest production, L’Amour de Loin (Love from Afar) at the Metropolitan Opera last week.

Winnipeg opera lovers will be given their own opportunity to see what made tongues wag when the Cineplex’s The Met: Live in HD series broadcasts the live weekend matinee on Saturday, Dec. 10 (encore performances slated for February). The 168-minute contemporary opera, co-produced with L’Opéra de Québec, features an evocative score by acclaimed Finnish composer Kaija Saariajo; its original 2000 Salzburg Festival première was hailed by the New York Times as “transfixing.”

“There’s something very bewitching and grand and moving about this work. I was hypnotized by the score as it really just sweeps you away,” Lepage told the Free Press from NYC, mere hours before the Met premiere. The archetypal tale based on Amin Maalouf’s libretto tells of medieval troubadour Jaufre Rudel’s (Eric Owens) quest for love. He is told by the Pilgrim (Tamara Mumford) that the object of his desire, Clemence (Susanna Phillips), waits for him across the Mediterranean Sea, so he traverses it to join his lover.

As one of Canada’s most treasured dramatic artists, Lepage’s name is synonymous with brilliantly conceived grand spectacle. The Quebec City-born auteur created and directed large-scale theatrical works (including Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse production of The Dragon’s Trilogy in 1990), films, operas and even circus productions such as Cirque du Soleil’s fantastical Ka in 2004.

For his latest brainchild, he evokes the shimmering waves of the Mediterranean with ribbons of 28,000 computer-programmed LED lights strung across the stage and orchestra pit to mimic the undulating tides of the sea.

“It was important for me to find a way to be evocative and poetic and light and freeing,” Lepage, who also directed the Met’s controversial Ring cycle, says of his artistic choice. “But when you create an impression of the sea, and certainly with these LED lights and the way they’re exposed, you are able to create something that echoes or illustrates or visualizes not just the sea’s moods or humors, but also supports what comes out of the orchestra pit. The LED lights become like a fourth character.”

The production also marks another watershed moment. Astonishingly, it’s the first opera by a female composer staged by the Met since Ethel M. Smyth’s Der Wald (The Forest) in 1903. Also of note, orchestra is being led by another woman, Susanna Mälkki, marking her Met debut.

It’s no secret opera companies are experiencing their own nail-biting drama in an age of fiscal restraint. The Met, for example, continues to produce an entire season of repertory style shows each year without a nickel of public funding — hence leading to its popular (and lucrative) HD transmissions now seen in more than 70 countries around the world since December 2006.

When asked about the future of the art form, Lepage is stoically philosophical.

“People now stay home and watch Netflix or their home cinema,” he says. “Opera has to be an event. It has to be eventful, and the only way is if it’s groundbreaking or if there’s controversy.

“There has to be new ideas,” he adds.

“I still believe in the art form. I still believe it can evolve. I think opera is in crisis right now, where government subsidies are being cut as people are trying to redefine what it’s about and what use it has. But I’m optimistic to the point where I’m building a new theatre in Quebec City. I’m optimistic as long as opera is ready to experiment.”

L’Amour de Loin screens at the Scotiabank Theatre and Silver City St. Vital Cinemas on Saturday, Dec. 10, at 11:55 a.m. For tickets and further info, visit www.cineplex.com.

— Holly Harris

 

 

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Jon Klassen

Not all illustrated children’s books are created equal. There are those that stand the test of time — think Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s Goodnight Moon, Robert Munsch and Sheila McGraw’s Love You Forever — and those that are read once and quietly forgotten.

It would be no surprise if Jon Klassen’s work — especially his Hat trilogy — joined the timeless canon of children’s literature to be long cherished by parents and kids alike.

Klassen was born in Winnipeg and grew up in Ontario, studying animation at Oakville’s Sheridan College before relocating to Los Angeles. Those studies were put to use on films such as Coraline and the Jack Black vehicle Kung-Fu Panda, as well as in the music video for U2’s I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.

It was his Governor General’s Award for English-language children’s illustration — which he won in 2010 for his work on Cat’s Night Out (written by Carolyn Stutson) — that turned the spotlight on Klassen’s abilities as an illustrator, specifically for children’s books. He has collaborated on a pair of books with author Mac Barnett, Sam & Dave Dig a Hole and Extra Yarn (both of which were Caldecott Honor books). Earlier this year, he illustrated Sara Pennypacker’s young-adult novel Pax, which was longlisted for the U.S. National Book Award.

In 2011 he completed his first solo outing, writing and illustrating I Want My Hat Back, the first of his Hat trilogy. The followup, 2012’s This is Not My Hat, was awarded both the Kate Greenaway and Caldecott medals, awards presented annually to distinguished picture books for children by British and American library associations, respectively. Klassen was the first Canadian to win the Caldecott Medal.

His third book of the Hat series, We Found a Hat, is a playful story of two turtles who find a hat. But two heads can’t wear one hat, and the turtles touchingly grapple with the problem in a way that will have young and old readers chuckling.

Klassen launches We Found a Hat Sunday, Dec. 11, at 2 p.m. at McNally Robinson.

— Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson