Features
ShowbizMonkeys.com is sometimes lucky enough to cover major events and festivals in film, music, comedy, and pop culture. Whether a major international spectacle like the Academy Awards or a more regional festival like the Winnipeg Folk Festival, we're on the scene with interviews, photos, video, and special commentary.
Saturday was a busy day for ShowbizMonkeys.com at the 2011 Winnipeg Folk Festival! We interviewed a couple critical and audience favourites -- Vancouver singer/songwriter Dan Mangan and Winnipeg folk-pop band Imaginary Cities.
Friday evening brought the first rain of the festival (not the most fun for our first night camping at the festival campground), but most of the day was sunny, hot, and humid. Highlights from Friday's line-up included Dan Mangan, k.d.
Thursday night at the 2011 Winnipeg Folk Festival featured some pleasant surprises, but it was indie folk mainstays Tegan and Sara who rocked the Bird's Hill Park field to a delighted and uncharacteristically raucous crowd.
Back in 1993, the iconic Canadian roots-rock band Blue Rodeo released their album Five Days in July, probably their most defining work in their nearly three decades as a band.
In the wake of the grandest celebration of film, one must inevitably ponder the value of such an affair: the millions spent on deluxe cuisine, haute-couture and party favors; the endless road blocks manned by legions of the LAPD, their hands quivering in switch-blade readiness inches above their nightsticks; not to mention the monumental production and advertising costs.
With expectations of sunshine and celebrities, the ShowbizMonkeys.com team descended from their respective northern perches to cover the 83rd Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California.
The first thing I noticed upon arriving at the Gala screening of Janie Jones at this year's Toronto International Film Festival was the inordinate number of beautiful and svelte six-foot-tall women towering over me -- enough to make anyone of normal proportions (i.e. myself) a trifle self-conscious.
Dozens of acts, tens of thousands of festivalgoers, and countless hours of great music helped make the 37th Annual Winnipeg Folk Festival a memorable five days. The weather held up for the most part, while the music certainly did.
I'm going to be honest here...
The rain finally came to the Winnipeg Folk Festival on Saturday -- but what would an outdoor festival be without a bit of the wet stuff falling? It didn't seem to damper the spirits of festival-goers, however, as plenty of people were out at all the workshop stages throughout the day -- some decked in ponchos and others just letting the rain cool them down.
On the first full day of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the story was the sun and the heat. And of course the music, which is always the cornerstone of a festival like this, was in strong form, allowing the people in the sun to enjoy everything from blues to folk to roots to a conglomeration of pretty much every genre one could imagine.
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