What do you get when you combine: Star Trek, East Vancouver indie kids and $200. Nerds doing jager bomb shots at the dive bar? No, no, you get Chains of Betrayal DVD Release Party. Chains of Betrayal is a Star Trek fan film written, produced, directed in East Vancouver starring East Vancouver kids. The film is a tribute to the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series that influenced their lives and many others including you (dont lie, you love this show). It was written by Derek Howard and Racan Souiedan a few years ago when they lived together in a house near East Hastings. The two friends asked Sam Scott, an SFU Film Graduate to jump on ship or should I say starship enterprise and the rest is history.

I caught up with Pilon during the festival, and was able to chat about this distinctly Canadian film. In the first of a two part interview, he speaks about his personal background, the genesis of the film, and the pressures of working with Inuit star Natar Ungalaaq...

You are relatively unknown to the public. Can you tell us more about yourself like where you're from, and what schooling you attended for filmmaking?
I'm from Toronto and I've lived there for the last ten years. I studied filmmaking at Concordia back in the nineties in Montreal and I then went to the Canadian Film Centre, a post-graduate film school. They have a program called the Feature Film Project, and I made my first film there. It was a $200,000 digital film called 19 Months and actually starred Vancouver actor Ben Ratner. It was a part of the Vancouver International Film Festival in 2002, and got picked up by Think Film, where it was released in Canada and a few other places.

So for our readers, could you please give a summary to your most recent movie, Real Time?
It's fairly straight forward. It's basically a hitman, played by Randy Quaid, who has been hired to kill a gambler (Jay Baruchel) that's racked up debts and made some stupid comments to the people he owes money to. But Randy's character has known him since he was a kid. He takes him in his car and basically says, "Sorry I gotta do this but I'm gonna give you an hour to do what you want. Put your life in order or whatever, you've got an hour and I didn't just want to pop you." I certainly think he expects him to maybe do some deeper things than his first impulses where he tries to find a hooker and get revenge with an old boss. It's not what we would necessarily expect but they're the kind of things that might pop into our head at the same time. And as the time draws near, it gets a little heavier, once he realizes that he's not gonna get away.

(more of the interview after the jump...)

OK So I'm being a little dramatic. I'm allowed. Like most of my family, or any family for that matter, our history is convoluted and often unspoken; stoic and solemn. And I'm sure like any family, there are fissures that run deep. Mine just happens to fall between one of the longest struggles for political independence and human rights in modern history. You see, and again, without any sort of celebration, my grandfather was the leader of the protestant organization the Orange Order and a British Member of Parliament. My brother was 2 when Bloody Sunday happened in the city where my mother was born, Londonderry. Before he was born, my dad marched in similar demonstrations, essentially against his own father, to demand equal rights for Catholics.

First, there's Kym. Played by Anne Hathaway, Kym's a woman freshly released from rehab on a crash course to join her family for the wedding of her sister Rachel. It's is definitely one of the more complex roles Hathaway has undertaken in her career, pretty much as distant as you can be from her Princess Diaries/Devil Wears Prada characters. Kym's idiosyncrasies emulate the most Paparazzi-ed of dysfunctional celebrities: a little bit of Britney thrown in with a side of Lindsay for good measure. And it all seems very natural and entirely believable. With some fantastic monologues, she easily steals much of the thunder from her father, played by Bill Irwin, and the bride herself (Rosemarie DeWitt), although their performances are both spectacular in their own right.

11:26 AM, Thursday, October 2
The management of Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) is doing everything in its power to avert a serious disruption of our event by construction work just now beginning outside the Empire Granville 7 Cinemas at 855 Granville Street. The noise generated from this work could well mean the cancellation of many of the 200 screenings remaining at this venue. We received assurances from street engineers that consideration would be made of the fact that the Film Festival attracts 100,000 attendees to this block between September 25 and October 10. That consideration appears to be inconvenient now. We have received sympathetic counsel from everyone we spoken to at City Hall and at B.C. Hydro, but nothing has so far averted this extremely serious blow to the Festival. Since no explanation has been forthcoming as it why this work absolutely needed to coincide with our brief event, it is time to warn our public. Hopefully a more public airing of our concern will encourage reasonable action to be taken in time.

Set against the backdrop of the first Robert Pickton trial, Valentines is the heartbreaking and disquieting story of a young girl's growing awareness of the powers she has - and doesn't have. Fifteen-year-old Joey can't afford the gift his thirteen-year-old girlfriend Jess wants for Valentines Day. His solution to this problem is to pimp her out to his fourteen-year-old best friend Kyle.

Valentines is based on the short story by Nancy Lee, from her acclaimed collection "Dead Girls", which was named Book of the Year by NOW Magazine and which was a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award.

With all the hoopla lately over the possible end of the world and the recent launch of CERN's new Large Hadron Collider, this movie's release was timed pretty well.

The Atom Smashers follows a group of physicists who are all involved in research at Fermilab to look for the famed Higgs Boson, or "God Particle", well before the folks in Europe started looking. But instead of just chronicling the hunt itself, the documentary examines the daily lives of the men and women who have devoted their careers to look for something they don't really know exists. An apt quote from the movie goes, "It is difficult to see a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat."

Stone of Destiny goes a small step further with the classic caper genre and integrates a little Scottish nationalism in the mix. The film, based on the memoirs of Ian Hamilton, recreates the story of four exuberant Scottish youth who, on Christmas day in 1950, travel by car south to Westminster Abbey in London and successfully steal the Stone of Destiny (also commonly known as the Stone of Scone). The theft, although futile as the stone was returned to the Abbey shortly thereafter, created a large stir amongst Scots all over the world and helped to reinvigorate Scottish national pride within the population. This eventually led to the official return of the stone back to Scotland decades later in 1996 (with the stipulation that the symbol be transported back to England for any future coronation ceremonies).

My picks of the fest (in a totally random order) are after the jump...

That film has been playing in Vancouver for a couple of weeks now, and I imagine come Friday the Tinsletown Cinemas could axe it to open up space for another 'Batman' or 'Pineapple Express' screening (I'll update this when I confirm). The other one is Archangel, his newly-restored second feature, screening tonight at the Pacific Cinematheque. A bit more, and a trailer, after the jump...

I gave you the lowdown on Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer when I gave it a positive review last weekend (and I'm not alone, as the films been getting good reception all 'round). Short version: the Canadian-made indie horror-comedy tries to recreate the fun of those good ol' 80s splatter movies, and while never quite reaching the heights of 'Evil Dead 2' or 'Cabin Fever', it's a hell of a lot fun; full of enough gore and laughs to fill anyone's need for ninety minutes of escapism.

The movie opens on Friday, but we've got a handful of passes for a 7:00pm Thursday night preview screening downtown at the Granville 7. If you're not en route to Pemberton, wrapped up in a pre-No Age beer pong tournament, or heaven forbid, seeing Judas Priest at GM Place, you can't do much better for Thursday evening entertainment than free gore.

View a trailer and win tickets after the jump...

While 'shock horror' has existed for a long time (did someone say 'Texas Chainsaw?'), it's never been near as popular as it is today. I'm not here to perform a deep social analysis, but I can tell you about one new Canadian made film that works against the grain, hearkening back to the days when horror was about cool monsters, buckets of blood, and weekend escapism (i.e, the 80s?). Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer is the work of a trio of Ottawa based independent filmmakers (and VFS alum) who grew up on a steady diet of 'Nightmare on Elm Street' and were put off by the "recent trend towards R-rated torture porn." After five short films, Monster Slayer may still be a decidedly R-rated debut feature, but this tale of a reluctant young antihero battling the mythical (and bloodpack-loaded) forces of latex evil in the halls of his own night school is ultimately more gut-busting than it is gut-wrenching, and will appeal to anyone sick of pseudo-snuff and still crossing their fingers for an 'Evil Dead 4'.

3) Priceless (Hors de prix) - This is a light comedy about a gold digger (Audrey Tautou) who sleeps with a hotel bartender (Gad Elmaleh) because she mistakes him for a rich man. The guy decides that she's just too good to let go, and here begins his quest to win her heart. Yeah, the plot has been done before. Yeah, the movie came out in 2006. But it's potentially an enjoyable film that contrasts with the more serious subject matter of some of the other ones. If you find Audrey Tautou as charming as I do, perhaps this film is worth seeing. You can catch it starting July 4th.

2) Love Songs (Les Chansons d'amour) - I don't usually like musicals, but something about the quirky trailer and the Parisian backdrop makes me want to see this one. It's all about the intricacies of a love triangle, and also what happens when a fourth actor comes into the picture (does that make it a love rectangle?). This film, which has become a bit of a cult favorite in France and Belgium, makes its debut on July 11th.

1) The Last Mistress (Une vieille maîtresse) - Something about steamy 19th-century romance makes for good film. Think The Atonement, but more French (that means that at least the sex scenes should be more exciting!). I'm definitely looking forward to seeing this one - it's been acclaimed at a bunch of movie festivals, and I've generally heard good reviews. It starts July 25th.

Quitting his job, he began to put his plan in motion. He built a tandem bike that can be altered on the road to ride as a single. He consulted maps and planned routes. He put the call out to find a riding partner or two. Then he got hit by a car. A minor setback turned positive; Castellan was not seriously injured, but used his settlement to purchase a camera and the final piece to document the journey fell into place.

The resulting film - Long Road North, directed by Castellan and Ian Hinkle - had it's world premier at the Doxa Film Fest and sold out both screenings. The filmmakers are putting on one more screening this Tuesday, June 24th at the Ridge Theatre as a fundraiser for the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition. Ticket info and an interview with Castellan after the jump...