Sailing with dolphins + Charlie's fascination + Mystery Machine marathon
Sailing with dolphins + Charlie's fascination + Mystery Machine marathon
We take a look at the lighter side of the news and what's trending online and on air.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Calgary Herald
4 days ago
- Calgary Herald
Mall life: VR experience allows Chinook shoppers to experience the first flickers of life on Earth
During the new, immersive, virtual-reality experience Life Chronicles at Chinook Centre, visitors will eventually come across a nest of hatching Dakotaraptor eggs. Article content It's a nice 'miracle-of-life' type of moment until the mother of the new hatchlings catches on and lunges at us with Jurassic Park levels of intensity, leading to one of many hasty exits via time travel with the help of a know-it-all robot from the future named Darwin. Yes, the spectacle is definitely educational. But, at that point, it's more like being thrown into The Lost World. Article content Article content 'It's like being in a sci-fi movie,' promises Fabien Barati, CEO of the Paris-based company Excurio that created Life Chronicles. Article content It is the latest VR 'immersive expedition' to open at Chinook and will run simultaneously with Horizon of Khufu in the 10,000-foot space that once housed Nordstrom. Khufu, which was also created by Excurio, has attracted 65,000 people since opening in December. It is an ambitious spectacle that takes visitors on a time-travelling trip through Cairo and ancient Europe while telling the story of Egyptian monarch Khufu. Article content But Life Chronicles is arguably even bigger in scope, taking visitors from the first flickers of life on Earth 3.5 billion years ago right up to present-day Tanzania and into a future city in 2223. Article content Article content There are definite sci-fi elements beyond the frequent time travel. The adventure begins when our excitable biologist/guide, Charlie and Darwin accidentally activate a time probe while attending a conference on the evolution of life. This whisks participants back 3.5 billion years and through various stages of evolution. Charlie and Dawrin must locate different probes in the time period to keep the robot's batteries charged so he can help bring us back to 2223. Before the journey, visitors are shown the formation of the Earth in the solar system before travelling to the Cambrian, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods as well as the modern African Savanna. Fitted with VR headsets, we follow Charlie and Darwin. At some points, visitors are miniaturized to observe early forms of life, such as marine worms and hitch a ride on the back of a trilobite. We dodge massive flying reptiles, scary-looking marine reptiles and witness a showdown between some lumbering triceratops and tyrannosaurus before encountering giant herbivores such as Edmontosaurus and Alamosaurus and eventually the Hobbit-like Flores humans. Article content Article content Article content As with Khufu, which bases its narrative on real history, Life Chronicles is as educational as it is spectacular. While walking on cliff ledges, precariously climbing massive trees filled with snakes and other creatures and dodging dinosaurs and the spear-wielding but undeniably endearing Flores humans, Charlie excitedly pontificates with dizzying scientific detail about each period. Article content Before coming to Calgary, Life Chronicles was in Paris, London, Montreal, China and Australia. Roughly 160 people were working on it for two years before it was released, helping bring 150 species to life. It is a co-production between Excurio and the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in France, which had 30 scientists lend their expertise to the project. Article content 'They helped us recreate all those species: the plants, the animals, through different periods,' says Barati. 'It was not so easy because for all these species we only know them through fossils. No one has seen them in real life. They helped us see how they look, the colours, the textures and how they moved because, once again, nobody saw them move. We are going underwater, going into the sky and in lots of different landscapes. So it's a bit crazy. It's an adventure.'
CTV News
7 days ago
- CTV News
Pooch's paradise: Pups party at Woofa-Roo Pet Fest
There was plenty to bark about for the dogs who took over the Libro Credit Union Centre for the Woofa-Roo Pet Fest. There was plenty to bark about for the dogs who took over the Libro Credit Union Centre for the Woofa-Roo Pet Fest. There was plenty to bark about for the dogs who took over the Libro Credit Union Centre for the Woofa-Roo Pet Fest. The two-day event kicked off on Saturday with hundreds of pooches and people eager to work their paws in agility training or stroll through a tunnel of vendors. For Amherstburg's Katie McEvoy and three-year-old Yellow Lab Charlie, each spring means another opportunity to compete in dock diving. 060125_woofaroo amherstburg pet festival windsor Katie McEvoy and Yellow Lab Charlie show up to the festival each year to show the latter's skills on the dock. May 31, 2025 (Robert Lothian/CTV News Windsor) One by one, dogs take a running leap off a platform and into a pool, competing to see who can jump the furthest. 'A lot of people do it for competition, we do it for fun. She loves to swim, I don't care if she does well or not, we just like to do it,' McEvoy said. The Woofa-Roo Pet Fest continues in Amherstburg on Sunday.
Winnipeg Free Press
10-05-2025
- Winnipeg Free Press
BS detector in fine fettle as Poker Face deals new hand
Opinion American movie and television director Rian Johnson has always been upfront about his murder-mystery influences. His feature film debut, 2005's Brick, was basically a Dashiell Hammett detective story transplanted to a modern high school. The Knives Out movies (with a new instalment due later this year) owe a debt to Agatha Christie, not so much the Queen of Mystery's books but those star-packed cinematic extravaganzas like 1974's Murder on the Orient Express and 1978's Death on the Nile. And then there's Poker Face, the Natasha Lyonne-led TV series that has just returned for a very welcome second season. (Season 2 is streaming on Citytv+, a Prime Video add-on channel, with new episodes dropping on Thursdays. Season 1 is available through Citytv+, as well as showing free on CBC Gem.) Johnson's most obvious pop-culture touchstone here is Columbo. (That show's vintage 1970s seasons are available to rent through Prime Video.) But like the best of Johnson's work, Poker Face is a shrewd, stylish mash-up of the old and the new, taking retro sources and refreshing them in meaningful ways. The show, which follows Charlie Cale (Lyonne), a former casino worker on the run from the mob, manages to be affectionately nostalgic but also urgently up to date. In each episode, Charlie ends up in some oddball corner of America, solving a crime (that's the old-school part) while also working some precarious, underpaid, temporary job in the gig economy (that's the 2025 part!). Poker Face's nods to Columbo start with the '70s-style network-TV title credits, which are in a blocky yellow typeface. Then we meet our underestimated, underdog detective. While Lt. Columbo (Peter Falk) had a chewed-on cigar and a clapped-out Peugeot, Charlie has a cigarillo — though this season she's trying to quit — and a beat-up 1969 Plymouth Barracuda. Charlie changes her outfits more often than the good lieutenant, but she does kind of channel Falk's hunched posture and raspy voice. She also shares Columbo's pesky, tenacious, 'just one more thing' approach to cracking cases. While Columbo seemed to immediately, intuitively home in on the guilty person and then spend the rest of the episode wearing them down with friendliness, Charlie cracks cases with her built-in 'bulls**t detector.' She can tell when people are lying, an ability she views not as a supernatural power but as an inconvenient personal tic, and then she's driven to figure out why. Like Columbo, Poker Face is not a standard whodunnit but a so-called 'howcatchem.' Using the inverted-mystery structure, it shows the crime being committed, with the audience following along. The suspense comes through wondering how the detective will trap the murderer. This format was one of the reasons Columbo was able to book guest stars like John Cassavetes, Leonard Nimoy, Laurence Harvey, Johnny Cash and Ruth Gordon. Playing a murderer on Columbo meant a lot of screentime and almost always a role as an extravagant, showy, hubristic charmer. Likewise, Poker Face is anchored by Lyonne's fabulously eccentric lead performance, but we get loads of great supporting talent playing murderers, victims (and occasionally both). This season kicks off with Wicked's Cynthia Erivo times five — she plays quintuplets! — and follows up with folks like Kumail Nanjiani, Giancarlo Esposito, Melanie Lynskey, John Mulaney, Awkwafina, Method Man, John Cho and 'character actress Margo Martindale.' The list goes on. (Really — check out the Season 2 trailer.) Using Columbo's 'case-of-the-week' format, Poker Face combines the easygoing, even predictable pleasures of episodic television with a constant rotation of new settings and new characters. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. One of the most charming personality traits Columbo and Charlie share is a genuine curiosity about other people and their lives and work. In the course of solving crimes, Columbo would learn about photography or architecture or magic or orchestra conducting or winemaking. Charlie also takes in a new subculture every episode, but there are key differences. Columbo really specialized in the 'rich weirdos' subgenre of crime, with pampered, privileged people playing for high stakes. Charlie has occasional run-ins with the rich and powerful, but most of her crime-solving takes place on the social and economic margins, often in overlooked small towns and struggling, stressed-out businesses. In Season 1, Charlie worked at a dinner theatre, a kart-racing track and a highway truck stop. This season has her hanging out with fruit pickers, hired Halloween zombies and a minor-league baseball team that plays at Velvety Canned Cheese Park. In many ways, Poker Face leans into the fun but formulaic entertainment of 1970s network television, offering self-contained crime-solving that wraps up nicely within 60 minutes. It's in Charlie's ongoing road trip — and the surprisingly realistic sense of people just getting by — that the series finds an empathetic, emotional and very contemporary resonance. Poker Face isn't just a throwback. As Charlie explores the edges of Americana, the show actually has a lot to say about here and now. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
