Friday, October 16, 2015

Vancouver Events Roundup

With Halloween right around the corner, spooky stuff is all the rage. Guillermo Del Toro's much anticipated gothic horror move Crimson Peak officially comes out today, and the Vin Diesel vehicle (no pun intended) The Last Witch Hunter on tap for theatres next Friday.

Halloween night (Saturday, October 31) will see the popular horror-comedy podcast Welcome to Night Vale bring its live show to Vancouver. In fact, it will be right here at UBC's Chan Centre for the Performing Arts! I can't think of a better way to spend Halloween night. The Night Vale novel will also be available by then, so it might be a good time to head to your book retailer of choice as well.


While it's not really sci-fi or fantasy related, I know there are a few of you who are fans of The Room. Star Mark Sestero will be at The Rio Theatre November 20 for a screening of the cult classic, a live reading of Tommy Wiseau's original script, and showing of his new film Dude Bro Party Massacre III. Can't go wrong with a title like that!

That takes us through October...um...and into November. This is your VP Hunter saying: I need a witty sign off signature.

- Hunter

Friday, September 25, 2015

Icebreaker Tonight!

Hey everyone! I hope you got the chance to meet me or some of the other execs at Clubs Days this week! If not, you're still invited to the official kickoff of the SFS year, The Icebreaker!

This is the first chance for members and prospective members to get to know the rest of the club! Meet the execs! Meet the new members! Catch up with old friends. There will be games and "get-to-know-you" activities, and a vote on which movie to watch tonight: Shrek or Underworld! The movies offer laughs and/or thrills, and romance is guaranteed!

It all goes down in Buchanan B213 tonight (Friday, September 25) at 6pm! All are welcome! Be there! Don't miss it! The event of the season!

- Hunter

Friday, September 18, 2015

Non-SFS Events in Town: October 3 Swap Meet

Hey guys,

I promised on this blog that I would keep you guys up to date on some cool stuff happening around town. Well, Saturday October 3 the Scottish Cultural Centre is hosting the Vancouver Pop Culture Collectibles Fair and Computer Swap Meet from 11am-4pm. This is a big nerdy swap meet featuring computer parts, comic books, collectible toys and figures, DVDs, CDs, vinyl, video games and more. And since it's in October, there will be a special, though not exclusive, focus on Halloween and horror themed items. Admission is $3 and there is free parking on site.



If anyone is interested, feel free to leave a comment here or on the Facebook page. Maybe we can get a group together.

- Hunter

Event link here: http://www.fun-promo.com/

Monday, September 14, 2015

The Year's First Delectable Double Feature

Hello folks!

VP Hunter here again. On the very off chance that some of you are using this blog as your primary source of club news, be it known that the details of the movie night for this Friday, September 18, 2015 have been released! This week we'll be taking a trip into worlds of stunning fantasy with two movies with titles that start with the letter "S." Spirited Away is arguably the quintessential Studio Ghibli film, about a young girl transported into a strange world of ghosts and otherworldly spirits. Then we come crashing down to earth...uh, in a good way...with Stardust. It's a fun fantasy filled with romance, witches, and pirates, and if you haven't seen it, it comes highly recommended from yours truly. Meet us in Buchanan B213 at 5:30pm for a night of high adventure!

In other news, the SFS Office Hours have been sent to our mailing list and posted on the Facebook page. If you want to hang out with me specifically, you can catch me taking over the reins on Mondays from 2-4pm and Fridays from 2pm until the movie night starts. If you haven't checked out our club room yet, (Room 3206D in the Nest) I highly suggest you do. See our huge library, watch some Godzilla movies on VHS, play some Nintendo, or sit quietly and do some homework. The room is located within a larger common area, where you can hang out with our close friends at the Wargamers and Anime Club. Other geeky clubs, including the Mah Jong Club, UBC eSports, Magicians and Illusionists, and Origami Club also share this area! I'm sure it will become your home away from dorm on campus.

Keep your eyes on this blog and I'll type at you again soon.

- Hunter

Friday, September 11, 2015

New Year! New Events! New People!

Hello friends and prospective friends! It's time for a new season of SFS awesomeness. We've got plenty on tap for this year: movie nights, parties, writing circle, franchise marathons, books, oxford commas, and more! Your new Vice President Hunter is typin' at you right now, in spite of the word "SoCo" being all over this blog. I pledge to update regularly, bringing you news about the club and cool events around town. I'll also be bringing you the Underground movie nights. This year's Underground will bring you some super cool classic and cult movies that you may or may not have heard of! Plus, each Underground movie night will feature one thrilling chapter of the 1945 Columbia serial "The Monster and the Ape!" That's a hot tip and you heard it first on the blog!
Pre-clubs days movie nights are happening now. Think of them as an SFS Sampler before purchasing your membership card at Clubs Days for a very, very, very reasonable $7. It'll be the best $7 you ever spent. You can become an official SFS member starting September 23! The next movie night is Friday, September 18 with the film TBA, and everyone is welcome. Bring some friends! Acquaintances will be provided. - Hunter

Monday, January 5, 2015

Happy New Year and the Plan for the Future

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm not entirely sure what happened to 2014, but as we roll on into 2015 and all end up back on campus again, I hope that everyone had a good break, and that this year goes well for you all. Hopefully the prospect of new classes isn't a bad one, but if it is - and even if it isn't - you may be pleased to know that the SFS is back to offer distraction!

We're starting off the year with the thought that Airships Make The World Go Round, involving Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, two rather different films united by the aforementioned airships, robots, and a distinctly steampunk feel to them. As ever, we will be in Buchanan B215 from 5:30pm-ish, with the first film starting at 6pm.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a 2004 film starring Gywneth Paltrow as Plucky Reporter!Polly Perkins and Jude Law as Roguish Flying Ace!Joseph 'Joe' Sullivan (the fact he goes by the moniker Sky Captain perhaps tells you a great deal about his character). Angelina Jolie also appears as Determined and Eyepatched Naval Type!Commander Francesca 'Frankie' Cook, and Laurence Olivier makes a posthumous appearance as Mad Villainous Scientist!Dr. Totenkopf. (And yes, the exclamation marks are entirely necessary. It's that sort of film.) Set in an alternate universe and gleefully embracing the pulp and comic book genres with oodles of ridiculous gadgets, and more cliches than you can shake a stick at, I will be forever disappointed that the film didn't cover its budget and will thus almost certainly never have a sequel.

Anyway, our plot kicks off with the mysterious disappearance of scientists from around the world, an occurrence that is being investigated by our Plucky Reporter!Polly Perkins. In the midst of her investigations, things ramp up a notch when giant, flying, and seemingly indestructible robots attack New York City. The city authorities quickly realise they are outmatched and call upon the skills of Sky Captain - the Roguish Flying Ace! Joe Sullivan who appears in his highly souped up plane and proceeds to do battle. Unsurprisingly, these two meet up and proceed to team up in order to find the origins of the robots and to solve the mystery of the vanishing scientists...

This is probably the time to admit that I am really fond of this film, and think it's great fun, but am very willing to admit that it's not a 'good' film. It's doesn't take itself at all seriously (which is a good thing considering that it's really daft), begins by flying a Second World Era plane against giant robots, and then ramps up (or down, depending on your point of view) from that point on.

Our second feature of the evening will be the Hayao Miyazaki film Laputa: Castle in the Sky (released in various places under a variety of titles), which I remember terrifying me when I watched it as a kid (it's not a particularly terrifying film, I hasten to add, but I have very vivid memories of watching this film recorded onto a VHS tape on a Sunday evening with my parents and being exceedingly alarmed by it). Released in 1968, it was (and is) Studio Ghibli's first film, and we'll be showing it in its Japanese form with English subtitles.

Set in a world where, once upon a time, humans had built flying cities that were later destroyed in an unnamed catastrophe, our story begins at a time when only one city remains in the air: Laputa, lost to most and concealed within a storm cloud. We open with an airship carrying a young girl, Sheeta, and the government agent who has abducted her being attacked by air-pirates who desire the amulet that Sheeta wears. Falling from the plane, her plummet being slowed by the amulet, she lands in a small mining village where the young Pazu stumbles upon her, and takes her to his home to recover.

Pazu dreams of finding the lost city of Laputa. and his discovery of Sheeta soon catapults both him and Sheeta into an adventure that may well lead him to his goal...

Interestingly, the mining villages that appear early in the film were inspired by Welsh mining villages, which Miyazaki had encountered in his first visit to Wales during the 1984 miners' strike. He had been struck by and had admired their tenacity and sense of community, and he could see clear links between them and Japanese miners who had also recently been fighting for their way of life. Neither of the groups of miners succeeded, and some of his harrowing experience ended up portrayed in Laputa. On that note (sort of), in the writing of this email I discovered a 2005 interview with Miyazaki, which may be of interest to some people: 



As the term gets going there are also other things in the works:

Lord of the Rings Nights
The winning option in the poll was for a film once a week, starting with The Fellowship of the Ring (shockingly enough, we put aside the option of watching them backwards in favour of watching them in the more conventional order) on Wednesday January 14th (next week), probably at 5:30pm, with location to be determined. Our indomitable VP Adam will be headlining these.

Expanding The Nights We Have Events On
As indicated by the above paragraph, we are doing are best to have more things occurring at different times - hopefully this will work out for people!

Writing Circle
Our lovely assistant librarian Cecily is leading this, and I understand that people who expressed an interest have been emailed with enquiries as to when they are free. Watch this space for updates!

Book Group
Our dearly beloved librarian Alannah has volunteered to head this one up, so watch this space for further updates!

Photos
I have eventually gotten my act together and uploaded all of the photos from Halloween to Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7et2hth2j5r2ues/AAA_bAIGZGP4dRBGgabJyOLna?dl=0
Download away!

Laser Tag
This was an immensely popular option in the poll - it is now a work in progress!

Scavenger Hunt
I've also got the ball rolling on this one, so hopefully details of all of these things will be forthcoming shortly.

Suggestions
Suggestions for films, events, different ways to do things, books to read and the like are always very welcome - please do send them in! I am gleefully excited by all the responses people gave to the survey, so thank you very much for that. I hope we'll be able to implement things to make the club better based upon it.

This post is becoming inordinately long, so I shall sign off here before I think of anything else to add. Good luck with the first week of classes, and I hope to see you soon!

Catriona

Your Friendly Neighbourhood SoCo

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Monsters and Mayhem!

Just in case anyone actually checks this blog, I must make more of an effort to actually update it. For now, have the last SoCo email:

Good evening!

I hope everybody who came to the Icebreaker enjoyed themselves - I definitely did! Lots of interesting people and I had some great conversations - I really do hope you come back again, and that we didn't manage to scare you off.

This week, we will be back in Buchanan B215 at 5:30pm, kicking off the month of October by taking a (brief) retrospective through Monster Movies, with the theme of Unexplored Regions and the Creatures That Live There... So if you feel like engaging with some unknown beasties and taking a voyage to distant lands, then this is the night for you! (There will almost certainly be snark, never fear!)

Our first offering, starting about 6pm, will be the 1954 classic Creature from the Black Lagoon, starring Richard Carlson, Julia Adams, Richard Denning, Antonio Moreno and Whit Bissell. The Creature itself is played by Ben Chapman (on land) and Ricou Browning (underwater); I confess to not actually having seen this film, so I cannot shed any illumination on why this is so.

The film begins with a geology expedition in the Amazon uncovering a Devonian period fossil that suggests a link between land and sea animals. This fossil is a hand with webbed fingers, and as the leader of the expedition manages to gain funding and convince a bunch of other people to venture back into the jungle with him, it perhaps isn't a surprise that this turns out to be somewhat unfortunate...

As an aside (because I am incorrigible) while the Devonian is sometimes called 'The Age of Fishes' because of the huge diversification of fish that occurred, it was also a pretty good period for the diversification of other life - including the first tetrapods, which was good news for you and me, as these guys ended up the ancestors of all four-limbed animals today. While life was already terrestrial before the Devonian period, with arthropods and insects having made it to land previously, the Devonian was the period in which tetrapods evolved from lobe-limbed fishes and began to walk on land - so the film is not entirely incorrect right on that front!

One of the most famous fossils from this era is Tiktaalik (which also has a great name) which is a key link between land and sea tetrapods: it had a crocodile-like head, and strong front fins that are postulated to have been able to allow it to raise its head out of the shallow seas that covered a lot of the planet at the time. To prevent me getting too carried away with enthusiasm for fossils and palaeontology, let me just drop off this website all about Tiktaalik, for those of you you get excited by fossils: http://tiktaalik.uchicago.edu

And now back to the actual point.

There will be a 30-40 minute break between films in case people want to get food (alas, our budget does not stretch to providing food at all events) or talk, and then our second offering of the evening, and the one that will be particularly snarky, will be Man Beast, starring the Yeti! At least, I hope so. Made in 1956, on the human side it stars Rock Madison, Asa Maynor and George Skaff. The action begins when Connie Hayward mounts an expedition into the Himalayas to find her missing brother, who has not yet returned from his efforts to find the Yeti...

In other news, we are gearing up for our Treasure Hunt to be on Friday the 17th of October. It will be entirely on campus, and will be conducted in teams. After running around madly(ish) we will cap the night off with a movie. If you would be interested in participating in the Treasure Hunt, please do email sfssoco@gmail.com (replying to this email works) to let me know how much interest there is. More details will come at a later date!

I shall sign off by wishing everyone 'good luck!' with midterms, and I hope to see you soon,

Catriona
Your Friendly Neighbourhood SoCo