Shirt of Fury!

I found this awesome polyester shirt at Value Village some months ago and bought it for my friend Gary’s birthday which was this weekend. I thought it might be a little small for him, but I figured he’d like it even if it didn’t fit. At the very least, he could probably sell it on Ebay for a lot more than I paid for it.

But it did fit (more or less).

The images are from 70s and 80s kung fu movies, many starring Bruce Lee. I scanned the fabric, and using the magic that is Google Images (you can drag and drop images from your computer into the search window and it will look for a match – genius!), I was able to identify most of the movies:

1. Fist of Fury (not to be confused with Fists of Fury)

2. Also Fist of Fury

3. The Big Boss (aka Fists of Fury)

4. Way of The Dragon

5. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin

6. Shaolin Temple (1982)

7. Men From The Monastery

8. Possibly Executioners from Shaolin

9. Game of Death

10. Snake in The Eagle’s Shadow

11. Blood Brothers (Dynasty of Blood)

12. Mr. Boo (The Private Eyes)

I couldn’t positively identify these three:

13.

14.

15.

Do you know what movies they’re from?

Fall Film Feast

I’ve mostly recovered from last week’s film festival binge – 23 features and 24 short films in eight days – or about as much filmgoing as I do the rest of the year combined.

My favourite thing about this year’s EIFF was probably the 20 minute walk from my house to the Garneau Theatre through pleasant tree-lined neighborhoods.

The fall weather couldn’t have been nicer.

High Level Bridge trolley.

I’m so happy the Garneau was a venue again. For many years the festival has been exclusively downtown in a soul-crushing mall with limited food & beverage options. The Garneau block and surrounding area offers so many more interesting choices including two Japanese restaurants, several diners, pho, cupcakes, poutine, and no end of places to grab a good cup of coffee.

The Garneau is the last of the single screen movie theatres in town. This is the view from my favourite seat – the first row of the “balcony” (I don’t know if you can really call it a balcony since it doesn’t actually project over the main floor – but close enough in these multiplex times).

I spent the entire first Saturday of the festival here watching five features – even managed to stay awake through the midnight show.

Everything I saw was worthwhile (more or less) but I’m going to single out a couple of short films for kudos:

Manhattan Flyer Deluxe was a charming, stylistically assured little boy-meets-girl story set against a background of bicycle thefts at Emily Carr University. I think director Bernie Yao is still a student there. I look forward to seeing a feature from him one day.

Kudzu Vine is a stunningly beautiful documentary shot in widescreen on b&w 35mm film that was hand-processed by director Josh Gibson in his basement. There’s a 5 minute excerpt on Vimeo

See these films if you get a chance.