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ENTERTAINMENT
Saturday, Nov. 17, 2012
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Christmas help from unlikely sources CAT PLAY IS DARK COMEDY THAT STILL PROVIDES LOTS OF CHRISTMAS CHEER BY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF Sometimes help comes from the least likely sources. In Central Alberta Theatre’s Christmas comedy, My Three Angels, salvation comes from three Devil’s Island prisoners who decide to be good elves to a struggling family on Christmas Eve. Director Heather Shatford said this timeless comedy by Samuel and Bella Spewack, which opens on Thursday, Nov. 22, at Red Deer’s Memorial Centre, takes place at the turn of the 20th century in the equatorial country of French Guiana in South America. As part of their work-release program, three hardened jailbirds (two murderers and a con artist) are spending the holidays fixing a hole in the roof of Ducotels’ home, when they overhear the family’s troubles. It turns out the Ducotels are struggling on many fronts. Father Felix is managing a shop that’s losing money. “He’s giving out things on credit and not getting much money back,” said Shatford. As well, there’s been shoplifting at the store just as its owner Henri — who happens to be Felix’s cousin — is due to arrive from France to check up on things. There’s also the plight of Felix’s poor daughter, Marie Louise. She’s head-over-heels for Henri’s nephew, Paul, but has just found out that he has become engaged to another. The despondent young woman is about to throw herself into the river when the prisoners, Joseph, Jules and Alfred, come to her rescue. The prisoners soon learn how to placate Felix’s excitable wife, Emilie. And in the process, they figure out how to get what they want, since these common criminals are full of not-so-common sense. Shatford said this 10-actor comedy, which was turned into the Humphrey Bogart movie, We’re No Angels, provides Christmas cheer that’s a little on the dark side — after all, the inmates dispense their own form of justice. “They take matters into their own hands,” noted Shatford, but she believes audience members will be rooting for the so-called bad guys all the same. “They think (the Ducotels) are a nice family, who have invited them for Christmas dinner, and they’re just looking out for them.” While she hasn’t directed a CAT play since 2005 (although she’d done a lot of interim stage managing), Shatford was happy to take the helm of this
Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
Actors with the Central Alberta Theatre take to the stage at the Memorial Centre as they rehearse for the CAT production of My Three Angels.
MY THREE ANGELS AT THE MEMORIAL CENTRE What: Central Alberta Theatre presents the comedy My Three Angels by Samuel and Bella Spewack When: 7:30 p.m., Nov. 22 to Dec. 7; at 2 p.m. on Nov. 25 and Dec. 2 Where: Red Deer’s Memorial Centre Tickets: $28.70 from the Black Knight Ticket Centre production, made up CAT acting veterans and newcomers. She feels the play’s abiding humour is smart and witty.
There are also some Christmas-themed messages, including, “good things come to those who are good.” lmichelin@reddeeradvocate.com
‘Canadian Cowboy’ riding into Central Alberta BY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF
Photo submitted
Juno award winning country/folk artist Gary Fjellgaard is bringing his cowboy songs to Central Alberta.
It’s a good thing for Gary Fjellgaard that the “romance of the west” carries eternal cache. The Juno Award-winning country/ folk artist, who performs in Red Deer on Sunday, Nov, 25, and in Stettler on Friday, Nov. 30, has resided for years on Gabriola Island, off the coast of Nanaimo, B.C. But Fjellgaard continues to represent what for many people is the quintessential Canadian cowboy. The weathered 75-year-old was raised on a farm in east-central Saskatchewan before his family moved to the B.C. interior, where he took up chainsaw logging. He can easily recall the tough realities of his early cowboy existence. “I had to clean out the barns and clear land with a horse . . . it was a lot of hard work.” Fjellgaard prefers singing about the allure of being in the saddle because
“people like the romance, as opposed to the reality.” His latest CD, The Collection: Solo Acoustic, contains old and new cowboy songs with titles such as Buckskin Jacket, Caragana Wind and Streets of Laredo. While the latter traditional tune was one of Fjellgaard’s childhood favourites, he wrote Cowboy in Your Heart about a bunch of weekend cowboys, “who were pretending they were the real deal, like they were The Wild Bunch.” The song occurred to him as he was driving towards Kimberly, B.C. “I could see the Rockies to the east, this wall of rock without trees (that could still conjure) the independent spirit of the cowboy.” Dance With This Ole Cowboy was written for The Ranch, a Canadian movie that Fjellgaard once acted in that was shot near Bragg Creek. “It was not one of my most shining moments,” he recalled, with a chuckle that disparages both the film and his performance in it.
Iron fists rusty from the start The Man With the Iron Fists
Caragana Wind was inspired by his grandmother’s house, which is still being beaten by the elements on the family’s former homestead. “The house was deserted some 55, 60 years ago and the roof is all caved in and the windows are broken and the house is turning back to nature.” The caragana bushes had grown so thick around it that Fjellgaard said, “You can’t see the bottom storey.” He will play these and other tunes in Central Alberta with his longtime touring partners Saskia Overbeek and Darrel Delaronde, who will add harmonies, flute, penny whistle and even yodelling sounds to the concert experience. Overbeek, a Holland native who has been performing for 11 years with her Saskatchewan-born spouse, Delaronde, said the duo will perform some songs of their own, and take a backseat to Fjellgaard when he’s playing his solo material.
Please see COWBOY on Page C5
Assassin’s Creed III makes great gaming adventure Assassin’s Creed III
One star (out of four) Rated: 18A When The Man With the Iron Fists mercifully ends, rapper RZA’s narrating blacksmith PETER quotes a ChiHOWELL nese proverb: “Where there’s iron, there’s rust.” That pretty much sums up this clanking martial arts monstrosity, although rust implies that there was something going on to begin with. And there’s little happening here except slavish imitation and embarrassing hackwork. A combination labour of love (by genre-adoring RZA) and contractual obligation (it opened without critical previews), the film fails on all fronts, most fatally in the visuals. The incoherent action scenes look as if they were shot in the dark and edited with a dull samurai blade. Speaking of contractual obligation, whatever possessed Russell Crowe to be part of this? He plays a blade-wielding Brit psychopath called Jack Knife, which sounds like a good role for him. But his lack of enthusiasm suggests he’s on some kind of courtordered community service duty, or perhaps currying favour with
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC Genre: Adventure Publisher: Ubisoft ESRB Rating: M, for Mature Grade: 4.5 stars (out of five)
MOVIES
Photo by THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Lucy Liu in a scene from The Man With the Iron Fists: this film fails on all fronts. Quentin Tarantino, billed as the film’s “presenter.” To give RZA his due, there’s no doubting his enthusiasm for the kung fu and “wire fu” films of his youth, when the former Robert Fitzgerald Diggs (his real name) would haunt grindhouse theatres. His love of the genre carried over to the Wu-Tang, the hip-hop outfit he leads, and he’s had small acting roles in films with kung fu
themes. But loving films and being able to make them are two very different things, and RZA just isn’t ready for prime time in the multiple tasks he’s assigned himself: director (first time), lead actor, narrator, co-writer (with Eli Roth, who also produces) and co-composer (with Howard Drossin).
Please see FISTS on Page C5
Few gaming franchises could take on an epic challenge like the forging of America. Assassin’s Creed III not only weaves its hero into the retelling of the American Revolution, but does so in beautiful and often-gruesome fashion. The New World wasn’t all bonnets and cornucopias. It was a young land filled with eagerness and colored with blood. AC3 alternates between future and past with our long-running series hero, Desmond, and his connection to the past, in this edition a half-British, half-Native American warrior named Connor. Connor’s life is amazingly intertwined with major moments of America’s birth in New York and Boston. Paul Revere, the Boston Tea Party and other major (and minor) elements of colonial times
CHRIS CAMPBELL
GAME ON make appearances and interact with him. You’ll sneak around forests eliminating groups of soldiers, while in other set pieces engage in thrilling sea battles aboard enormous cannon-laden ships. There are quieter moments as well, slyly assassinating targets while sneaking around the city’s rooftops, or making a life for yourself as you expand your countryside homestead. A game this ambitious in scope (and trust me, this game’s scale is grandiose) means inconsistencies are bound to show up.
Please see GAME on PageC5