Your plane was delayed because some woman demanded to know why the rules about overhead luggage should apply to her. Youve squeezed yourself into your middle-row seat only to be jolted deeper into a claustrophobic crisis when the passenger in front of you suddenly decides to hit the recline button. And then the baby three rows back starts crying, expressing what everyone is already feeling on this five-hour flight get me out of here!!
Thats when Eric Lauzon comes to your rescue. The manager of in-flight entertainment for Air Canada, hes the one who helps determine what you can choose to watch on the small screen ahead of you. He can literally make time fly by.
He knows that most of us are going to reach for the most recent Hollywood releases. But after watching that first movie, he invites you to take a few moments on the Enroute Film Festival channel. For the next four months, the 2013 finalists will be aired, four per month, with the winners including a Peoples Choice to be announced at the Toronto gala in November.
Two of the films are by Vancouver filmmakers and both are absolutely delightful.
Asian Gangs is a self-mockumentary written by and starring Lewis Bennett. In Grade 5, Bennett got into a schoolyard fight in Langley. When the principal called his mother into the office, he told her that if Lewis didnt change his ways, hed end up in an Asian gang.
When, years later, his mother reminds him of the principals dire warning the revelation sends Bennett into a tailspin of angst. Bennett whose white, middle-class face would scream guilt! if you caught him eating one of his favourite Oreos cookies just before dinner interviews his mother, some Asian friends, a retired police officer and a former gang member. Could it be possible that he was a member of an Asian gang and didnt know it?
But the funniest scene is when Bennett invites his former elementary school nemesis back to the the soccer field at North Otter Elementary School. Reading the principals notes, they re-enact the fight and, in the end, make their peace.
Asian Gangs screens this month.
SFU grad Sophie Jarviss The Worst Day Ever is magic thanks to finding the perfect actor to play Barnard, White Rocks Jakob Davies. (Hes Pinocchio in Once Upon a Time and has just filmed the next Jean-Pierre Jeaunet [Amelie] film, The Young and Prodigious Spivet, with Helen Bonham-Carter.)
Barnard is an earnest and absolutely adorable eight-year-old who carries the weight of the world on his sturdy if small shoulders. In this malady of errors, he gets blamed for everything even though hes an idealized version of the perfect child. Every scenario gets more and more absurd. Its one thing to ask What have you done now? in an exasperated tone when a ball breaks a window; its another when ameteor crashes into a house (When his father shows him a drawing of what the word divorce means dad in one house, mom in another your heart almost breaks when Barnard asks, Where do I fit in? What about me? He then has to listen to his parents fight about who gets to keep the dog.)
Brilliantly funny enough to take your mind off even the most obnoxious person sitting next to you, The Worst Day Ever will screen in November.
But you dont have to book an Air Canada flight to watch the films, or vote. Go to enroutefilm.com., sit back, stretch out your legs and enjoy.
