Emergency Room series premiere is a matter of life and death

SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 2014
WESTCOAST NEWS || A17
| BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM
TOWN TALK
Emergency Room series premiere
is a matter of life and death
Starts Jan. 21:
First episode has
man with knife
in abdomen
arrive at VGH
Malcolm
Parry
I
N THE BALANCE: Sirens
sounded this week when
Vancouver General Hospital’s emergency-medicine chief,
Dr. Doug McKnight, and other
emergency physicians, nurses
and paramedics visited a neighbourhood that sends them much
business. However, they were at
Main off Hastings Street not to
save lives but to see themselves
larger than life on screen. That
was at the private Imperial Theatre, where Knowledge Network
president/CEO Rudy Buttignol hosted a premiere of the
six-times-one-hour series Emergency Room: Life and Death
at VGH, which will air Jan. 21.
Made by Louise Clark’s Lark
Productions firm and directed by
Kevin Eastwood, its first episode opens to a man arriving at
the ER with a hefty kitchen knife
buried in his abdomen.
Eastwood knows all about dire peril,
having suffered a cardiac arrest that
dropped him technically dead in Los
Angeles International Airport.
“This show changed my life,” he said
of Emergency Room. “I couldn’t be
more proud of it.”
•
SPARKLE PLENTY: That’s in
the job description for Maison Birks
managers like Yvonne Zawadzki. It
certainly applied to a $126,000 Panthere Divine she modelled at a Cartier
timepiece launch where a diamondencrusted panther’s head all but hid
the face’s tiny hands. Adding even
more glitter, Zawadzki wore a diamond Riviere bracelet and huge, diamond-surrounded, sapphire ring from
the Birks Vintage collection.
•
DRINK TO THIS: Vancouver
International Wine Festival executive
director Harry Hertscheg was as
effervescent as all 13 sparkling wines
served at a Forage restaurant kickoff party for the glugathon’s 36thannual running. Fifty-four events will
draw 178 wineries from 14 countries
— including theme nation France —
when the festival (vanwinefest.ca)
runs Feb. 22 to March 2, Hertscheg
said. Its own fizzle was imperilled
when its charitable beneficiary, the
Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Co., succumbed in 2012. Bard On The Beach
swiftly took its place, and Hertscheg
toasted that company’s newly arrived
managing director, Claire Sakaki, at
the reception.
Among other tasks, Kamloops-raised
Sakaki will address a $5.8-million
campaign for Bard and Arts Club Theatre to occupy a $20.4-million South
False Creek facility. Wall Financial
Corp built the 44,000-square-foot
space, to include a 250-seat theatre,
under a community-amenity agreement with city hall, which has committed up to $7 million to the project.
•
CIRQUE DE 1000 BLOCK: Shenanigans on late-night Granville
Street can resemble a circus. Now
the real thing goes on indoors.
That’s at Vancouver FanClub, where
an aerialist, balancer, contortionist, singers, burlesques and even a
jellyfish impersonator are staging the Friday-to-Sunday
show Night Circus Atlantis — with or without
dinner — until Feb. 2.
What a smart move.
•
STRINGS
ATTACHED: Janey
Harper heard Happy
Birthday played on her
own violin recently.
It was the instrument’s birthday, too.
Made 300 years ago
in Paris, it still visits
Europe. Next month
it should sound in
Dublin’s St. Patrick’s
Cathedral and Ireland’s presidential
palace, then at the Vatican City’s St. Peter’s
Basilica and Sistine Chapel. Harper’s designated
player, Rosemary Siemens, co-founded the
Rosemary & Roy duo
after she and pianistsinger-orchestrator Roy
Tan played a 2007 charity gig Donny and Marie Osmond
staged at Disney World, Florida.
Siemens will play Carnegie Hall on
March 9. At the Fairmont Pacific Rim
hotel Jan. 26, she and Tan will serenade Paolo Fazioli, whose firm
makes pianos incorporating spruce
from a grove favoured by violin maker
Antonio Stradivari. While here, he’ll
inspect the $500,000 10-foot concert
grand recently installed in Zhao Zai
Chen’s Shaughnessy mansion.
•
VIVA: Every nation seemed to
hold a film festival here except the
homeland of directors Michelangelo
Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci and
Federico Fellini, and stars Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren and Marcello
Mastroianni. That’s been remedied.
Italian consulate cultural director
Alberta Lai put a pulce in the ear
of Italian Cultural Centre executive
director Mauro Vescera, and their
festival debuted at the Vancity Theatre recently with a screening of Fellini’s Amarcord, wine, chow and nine
more flicks to follow.
•
NOT SO VIVA: Former MP Anna
Terrana and supporters of the Italian Cultural Institute in Vancouver
are petitioning Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the local facility’s impending closure. They claim
that merging it into consular offices
here would maintain its promotion
of Italian language and culture while
achieving budget reductions the ministry desires.
•
CHEF’S SURPRISE: Those dining at Gastown’s Secret Location until
Feb. 15 shouldn’t ask for what they
had the night before. After rehearsing
this week, executive chef Jefferson
Alvarez vows to serve 10 different
plates a day for 30 consecutive days
without repeating any.
•
BRIGHTER IDEA: Paul Wong
turns another commonplace into art
with his new exhibition at Jennifer Winsor’s East-of-Main gallery.
Although inventive enough, it’s not
the wall of 40 video screens showing
episodes from his three-decade career.
Nor is it the wall-sized projection of
a Downtown Eastside alley filmed
in a daylong sequence of fractionalsecond frames. It’s actually a multiimage video that was not only shot on
his mobile phone but edited and compiled on it, too. Wong still thinks so
far out of the box, he likely couldn’t
say where he left it.
malcolmparry@shaw.ca
604-929-8456
Vancouver International Wine Festival chief Harry Hertscheg toasted Bard on The Beach managing director Claire
Sakaki at a kickoff reception for the 36th running of the festival from Feb. 22 to March 2.
Rosemary Siemens of the Rosemary
& Roy duo will play Janey Harper’s
300-year-old violin at the Vatican
City and Carnegie Hall soon.
Kevin Eastwood directed the sixepisode Emergency Room series
Knowledge Network head Rudy
Buttignol debuted for a Jan. 21 airing.
Sylvain Drolet, Sylvia Louis and
Jamaal Von Parker perform in
the Night Circus Atlantis show at
Vancouver FanClub to Feb. 2.
Maison Birks manager Yvonne
Zawadzki’s diamond bracelet and
sapphire ring complemented the
$126,000 Cartier Panthere Divine
watch she unveiled.
Paul Wong’s videos at the Winsor Gallery include a whole day at a Downtown
Eastside alley and a multi-image piece shot and edited on his phone.