Well, as I write on the eve of Valentine’s Day (which seems to be a true Hallmark holiday), it is a wonderful time to extend warmth from one heart to another. January started off chilly and forced me to wear multiple layers as I walked to work, but it must have wanted to impress our California guests because it brightened up when they arrived. We welcomed Sister Carol Sellman and Alan Liebrecht from Holy Names University to Winnipeg and St. Mary’s Academy for four action-packed days. I love the challenge of filling other people’s schedules! It was wonderful to share our city, my SNJM home and of course SMA. It was an enriching visit for all. Students are showing serious interest in HNU. Admittedly, there was a method to our madness in promoting a California university to students in Winnipeg in January! Work in the Charism and Mission Office is progressing. SMA has just officially launched our five-year strategic plan, and charism is a priority. This, combined with a successful open house that welcomed 450 visitors to our school, might translate to some degree of job security.
This is Catholic Schools’ Week for us so we are celebrating in a number of ways. One is by offering our annual “Retrally” (retreat + rally). This year we’ll combine multiple grades and walk to the synagogue where the theme, Women at the Heart of Change, will guide the day. The animators for the day are from Development and Peace (the Canadian counterpart to CRS). I am pleased that we will carry this theme through the Ash Wednesday liturgy, Lent and our Human Rights dinner in May. We conclude this week by hosting the division-wide faith day for staff. My ministry at Gonzaga Middle School has a regular weekly rhythm where my understanding of First Nations culture deepens. I continue to meet with the young adults’ group every three weeks. At our last faith-sharing evening, we baked cookies and wrote Valentine’s Day cards for the residents at Despins. I was challenged and blessed to share a session with the RCIA group at the Catholic College on the campus at the University of Manitoba.
The topic of “Vocations – A Way to Life,” served as an additional formation for me on the journey. Life continues to provide “on the job training” experiences for me and as difficult as it is in the moment, I appreciate the incredible support I have around me. As Batman learns in the Lego Batman movie, we were not created to do it alone. I am looking forward to my visit to California this month. It is interesting – when I visited in November, we drove to Campbell for the Thanksgiving liturgy. This time, we will travel there again as we gather to give thanks to God for the life and gift of Sister Barbara Williams. I feel very blessed to be able to share in these special moments with our SNJM community. As we greet one another on Valentine’s Day, let us remember the words of Mother Marie Rose, who invites us to “meet in the heart of Jesus” as it seems even more poignant on this day. Note: Michelle Garlinski was received as a novice of the Sisters of the Holy Names in July 2015.
During her first year living with Sisters at our Province’s welcome house in Berkeley, CA, she began sharing her journey through a series of "News from the Novice" letters. She is now spending her missionary novice year at St. Mary’s Academy in Winnipeg, Manitoba. To learn more about becoming a Sister and the SNJM formation process, please click here. In the photo: The young adults' faith-sharing group in Winnipeg. (Sister Michellle is in front, at right).We're sorry, but we could not fulfill your request for /lego-batman-movie/ on this server. An invalid request was received from your browser. This may be caused by a malfunctioning proxy server or browser privacy software. Your technical support key is: 36b3-fe9c-1756-6707 You can use this key to fix this problem yourself. and be sure to provide the technical support key shown above. The Lego Batman Movie is pretty awesome, too Will Arnett's minifig marauder gets a spinoff that's as much of an unexpected delight as the last Lego Movie
Get 25-40% More Spending Money This week in Print > "lego" in toys, games in Ontario Use Distance Search to find Ads based on where you are and how far you want to travel. Get an alert with the newest ads for "lego" in Ontario. Centretown Movies Outdoor Film Festival will be back in Dundonald Park this summer! All films begin at 9pm. Friday August 26 – The Martian (Starts @ 8:30) Saturday August 27 – Brooklyn (Starts @ 9)In an industry where time is money, a 15-hour time difference can be costly. That’s one of the reasons Animal Logic, the Sydney, Australia-based digital effects studio responsible for bringing The Matrix and The Lego Movie to life, is opening shop in Vancouver, where it’s in the same time zone as Hollywood and there’s talent and opportunity in spades. The move follows the smash success of the animated kid flick The Lego Movie, which, on a US$60 million budget, grossed over US$450 million in 2014 for Warner Bros Pictures.
Warner Bros. has since locked in Animal Logic for three more animated features to be produced out of the B.C. studio, starting with The Lego Movie Sequel, scheduled for 2018. It’s a far cry from 1991, when AL started doing VFX for the advertising industry as a 10-person mom-and-pop shop. In 1996, the company branched out into features, from Warner Bros.’ Happy Feet to Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Along the way, “we’ve had many great Canadian artists coming to Animal Logic [in Sydney] to work over the years,” says Zareh Nalbandian, co-founder and CEO of the company. “Vancouver stood out to us because of the incredible growth in artists and technicians, and just generally in terms of talented crew in the digital industries over the last five years.” VFX is dominating film. The top 10 films of 2014, for example, is chalk full of titles like X-Men: Days of Future Past, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
According to Warren Franklin, an independent producer and president of Vancouver’s Visual Effects Society, visual effects eat up an increasing proportion – roughly 20 per cent – of movie budgets. “Even a film you may not think of as a visual effects film, like The Theory of Everything or The Imitation Game, all have visual effects in them,” Franklin says. Animal Logic, whose 45,000-square-foot space will open in September and plans to employ 300 people, mainly from Vancouver, to start production early 2016, joins the big-time animation and digital effects studios flocking to the region. In the last year alone, Sony Pictures Imageworks and George Lucas’ s Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) both opened permanent studios, joining Digital Domain and Gener8 Digital Media Corp – to name a few – which have contributed to the $1.4 billion film and television business in British Columbia, according to the film and media agency, Creative BC. Calgary boy, 11, detained by security at Lego Store for committing the modern-day crime of being alone
Tadhg Dunlop is 11-years-old and, like a lot of kids his age, he loves Lego. He loves its nuances, how the different pieces fit with the different sets, and he loves shopping for Lego, alone, with the permission of his parents. While it’s a bonus not having to deal with the 15-hour time difference between L.A. and Sydney, which makes meetings and phone calls with Hollywood colleagues challenging, the three-film deal provided the stable funding to make the B.C. move feasible for AL. “Of course, there’s the great government support [in Canada] on offer,” Nalbandian adds. In 2003, the province introduced the Digital Animation or Visual Effects tax credit (DAVE) – a 15 per cent break on production costs, which increased to 17.5 per cent in 2010. In this year’s budget, B.C. announced it would extend DAVE to cover post-production costs. Coupled with the federal government’s credit of up to 16 per cent, Nalbandian says the move to Vancouver is “a no-brainer.”
Provincial tax credits in Ontario and Quebec are even larger — 18 and 37.5 per cent respectively — but Vancouver’s talent pool and proximity to L.A. have long created an irresistible magnet for savvy producers. Franklin, who worked with ILM and other studios in the U.S., before moving to Vancouver in 2005, says: “The industry was small but I could see the talent coming out of Canada for visual graphics – it’s pretty important to the whole industry.” The weaker Canadian currency attracted foreign producers in the early days. “Canada was a cheaper place to go,” says Franklin. “Once that levelled a little bit, then the tax incentives kicked in and it’s still a very financially viable proposition for the studios to work up here.” A 2014 snapshot of Canada’s film and television industry shows that foreign productions in Canada increased 4.9 per cent from the previous year, according to a report from strategy consulting firm Nordicity. The Canadian dollar in 2014 was also the lowest it had been in three years — something the report speculates helped attract out-of-country producers.