Battle Royale screens at the Rio
By Steve Newton
FRIDAY: Canadian rock legend Tom Cochrane (“Life is a Highway”), former frontman of Red Rider (“Lunatic Fringe”), plays the Pacific Coliseum as part of the PNE Summer Night Concerts series. Here’s my interview with Tom Cochrane from 1983.
FRIDAY: late-night 4K screening at the Rio Theatre of writer-director Sam Raimi‘s gory 1987 horror-comedy Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn, starring Bruce Campbell as freaked-out demon-battler Ash. Here’s my interview with Bruce Campbell from 2005.
FRIDAY: Grammy-winning jazz and jazz-fusion bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer Esperanza Spalding plays the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts.
Magnolia screens at the VIFF Centre
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY: screenings at the VIFF Centre of Magnolia, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic 1999 drama about interrelated characters in California’s San Fernando Valley searching for happiness, forgiveness, and meaning.
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY: the 2025 PNE Fair, running until September 1, features nightly concerts, attractions like the SuperDogs and I-Flip aerial shows, cultural showcases, agricultural displays, sand sculptures, family play zones, food and market vendors, the PNE Prize Home, and dozens of rides and midway games at Playland.
FRIDAY TO SUNDAY: Star Witnesses, running at the Polygon Gallery until September 28, assembles works by 11 artists whose observations of the cosmos bring new understandings of exploratory and migratory movements on Planet Earth.
VanDusen Garden 50th Anniversary
SATURDAY: the VanDusen 50 Year Anniversary at VanDusen Botanical Garden features live entertainment, hands-on activities, local food vendors, and guided historical tours that highlight the Garden’s history.
SUNDAY: screening at the VIFF Centre of director Amy Berg‘s new music documentary It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley, about the American singer-songwriter who died tragically at the age of 30 after recording one highly acclaimed album.
SUNDAY: 25th anniversary screening at the Rio Theatre of Battle Royale, director Kinji Fukasaku‘s dystopian action-horror film about a group of junior high school students forced to fight to the death by a totalitarian Japanese government. In Japanese with English subtitles.
Jason Bonham plays the Orpheum
SUNDAY: Jason Bonham, son of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, leads Jason Bonham’s Led Zeppelin Evening, a tribute celebrating 50 years of the Physical Graffiti album, at the Orpheum Theatre. Here’s my interview with Jason Bonham from 1989.
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