Robson Street is a major southeast-northwest thoroughfare in downtown and West End of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Its core commercial blocks from Burrard Street to Jervis were also known as Robsonstrasse. Its name honours John Robson, a major figure in British Columbia’s entry into the Canadian Confederation, and Premier of the province from 1889 to 1892. Robson Street starts at BC Place Stadium near the north shore of False Creek, then runs northwest past Vancouver Library Square, Robson Square and the Vancouver Art Gallery, coming to an end at Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park.

As of 2006, the city of Vancouver overall had the fifth most expensive retail rental rates in the world, averaging US$135 per square foot per year, citywide. Robson Street tops Vancouver with its most expensive locations renting for up to US$200 per square foot per year. In 2006, both Robson Street and the Mink Mile on Bloor Street in Toronto were the 22nd most expensive streets in the world, with rents of $208 per square feet. In 2007, the Mink Mile and Robson slipped to 25th in the world with an average of $198 per square feet. The price of each continues to grow with Vancouver being Burberry’s first Canadian location and Toronto’s Yorkville neighbourhood (which is bounded on the south side by Bloor) now commanding rents of $300 per square foot.

In 1895, train tracks were laid down the street, supporting a concentration of shops and restaurants. From the early to middle-late 20th century, and especially after significant immigration from postwar Germany, the northwest end of Robson Street was known as a centre of German culture and commerce in Vancouver, earning the nickname Robsonstrasse, even among non-Germans (this name lives on in the Robsonstrasse Hotel on the street). At one time, the city had placed streetsigns reading “Robsonstrasse” though these were placed after the German presence in the area had largely vanished.

Robson Street was featured on an old edition of the Canadian Monopoly board as one of the two most expensive properties.

Before I start my review I have to be honest and say that Bill &Ted’s Excellent Adventure has great sentimental value to me as my brother and I used to watch it constantly as kids. We used to know it off by heart and quoted it endlessly. So, my ability to objectively review this without a haze of nostalgia affecting my opinion is nigh-on impossible.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure started life as a comedy skit surrounding the titular characters, devised and performed by college buddies Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. They enjoyed the characters so much they knocked together an idea for a script back in 1984 and sent it out to the Hollywood studios, in the hope that someone would pick it up. It eventually got snagged by Warner Brothers who dropped it a little while later, but their involvement helped the writers hone the script, including changing the original title and some other details. It was originally going to be called Bill & Ted’s Time Van but with Back to the Future out in 1985, they wanted to change the time travel device. Plus, it was a pretty weak title to be honest.

The project later ended up with Dino de Laurentiis and his De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG), who funded the fairly low-budget production. The shoot was reportedly a blast, with the young cast and crew hitting it off together. However, DEG went bankrupt while the film was in post-production. Director Stephen Herek and the producers desperately tried to show the rough-cut around town and managed to get it picked up by Nelson Entertainment and Orion Pictures, who got it out to cinemas after the makers were worried it’d end up airing only on cable TV or being shelved completely.

It’s a good job Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure did hit cinemas as it proved to be a surprise hit. It made $40.4 million in the US alone and was a cultural phenomenon, with Bill and Ted’s ‘language’ becoming commonplace with teens in America and beyond. It spawned both animated and live-action TV series, video games, a comic and also a sequel in 1991, with Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey. Now, over 30 years later (God that makes me feel old), it’s getting a second follow-up, with Bill & Ted Face the Music, due for release at the end of August (maybe).

To celebrate the latest sequel, Studiocanal are releasing the film that started it all in a newly remastered edition on 4K UHD, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK. Realising I hadn’t seen the film since wearing out my taped-off-TV VHS copy, I eagerly snapped up a Blu-ray to review the film.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure centres around Bill S. Preston Esquire (Alex Winter) and Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves), a couple of high school students who are in a band together called Wyld Stallyns. They’re also in danger of flunking out of school, particularly if they fail a vital history assignment. On top of this, if they do flunk out of school, Ted’s dad is sending him straight to a military academy in Alaska, so the friends will be separated and the band will come to an end.

The pair grab a pile of history textbooks to attempt to cram for the next day’s report, but Bill and Ted are not the sharpest tools in the box, so their chances of passing look slim.

However, luck comes in the surprising form of Rufus (George Carlin) who has come from the future and appears out of the blue in his time-travelling phone booth. He explains to Bill and Ted that, in the future, their music will lead to world and intergalactic peace, bringing harmony across the universe. It’s vital that they pass that history report, so he lends them a time-machine so they can travel back in time and collect world figures to be part of their project. The present-day clock ticks at the normal rate though, so they must get the job done quickly, ready to present to the rest of the school the next day. Of course, things go wrong along the way, to make this more difficult than they’d have hoped.

There’s always a worry that a film you love as a youngster won’t be as good as you remember when you watch it many years later. However, I still had an absolute blast with Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and I do believe it’s a better film than many give it credit for.

For one, Matheson and Solomon’s script is fantastic. The dialogue might sound dumb on the surface, with Bill and Ted’s unique surf-dude/Valley-girl hybrid way of speaking, but there are actually a lot of witty and very funny lines in there, riffing on the central pair’s poor knowledge of history and unique outlook on life. I think their style is best described in the words of David and Nigel from This is Spinal Tap, as treading “a fine line between stupid and clever”.

Also key to the success of the film is the chemistry of Bill and Ted. Some big names were reportedly in the running for the roles (or at least they became big), such as River Phoenix, Sean Penn, Brendan Fraser and Pauly Shore, but it’s hard to imagine anyone other than Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter filling their shoes now. They nail the mixture of clueless and lovable and work perfectly together. During the production there were worries, and I’ve also heard some criticise the film for it on release, that Bill and Ted are too similar to make a strong duo, but I disagree. I think there are subtle differences between them. Bill is a little brighter than Ted, but Ted has a little more heart. If they went too far in differentiating the pair, I don’t think they’d have made such convincingly close friends.

That friendship is part of another thing I love about the film, it’s tone. Most teen movies are cynical and focus around sex or drugs/alcohol. Bill & Ted has none of this (or at least very little – Bill’s step-mum is young and attractive and the film milks this for all it’s worth). Instead, it presents characters that are incredibly nice to everyone. They have a sunny outlook to everything, only getting mildly melancholic when things are really against them. They always quickly bounce back though and their friendly attitude is infectious, leading to a film that’s utterly charming.

The time travel aspects don’t get as mind-boggling as in some other entries into the genre but good use is made of the concept, particularly in a prison escape scene towards the end (though that trash can bit makes little sense in terms of how it’s physically set-up). Numerous moments defy logic, but in a high-concept film from the 80s, you wouldn’t expect or even want everything to make perfect sense.

The film has dated a touch perhaps. The special effects are ‘of their time’ and obviously telephone booths are little seen nowadays. There are also a couple of lines that might be frowned upon now (notably the ‘fag’ reaction to Bill and Ted hugging), but, for the most part, this is still as much fun as it was 31 years ago.

I can’t escape my nostalgic love for Bill & Ted, I’m afraid, so I have to give it a perfect score, even if I could pick out flaws here and there. I do genuinely believe it’s a great film though. It’s witty whilst seeming dumb and focussed around two of the most lovable characters in cinema history. Your taste for high concept, zany 80s adventures will be key to your enjoyment, but I think there’s enough sharp humour, exuberance and warmth in the film to win over even the hardest of hearts.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is out on 10th August on 4k UHD, Blu-Ray and DVD in the UK, released by Studiocanal. I watched the Blu-ray version and it looks and sounds fantastic. Detail and colours are rich and the print is as clean as a whistle without losing its filmic look.

The disc is loaded with special features too:

– Audio Commentary with Writers Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon
– Audio Commentary with star Alex Winter and Producer Scott Kroopf
– Time Flies When You’re Having Fun! – A Look Back at a Most “Excellent Adventure”
– Score! An Interview with Guitarist Steve Vai
– The Original Bill & Ted – interview with Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon
– Air Guitar Tutorial with Bjorn Turoque
– From Scribble to Script – extensive notes and script excerpts from the original ‘Bill and Ted’s Time Van’ story
– Linguistic Stylings of Bill & Ted
– Hysterical Personages of Bill & Ted
– Episode from “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures” animated television series
– Radio Spots
– Stills and Artwork

A lot of this material was included in the previous Blu-ray release and a fair amount of that stuff is a bit throwaway (like the air guitar video, ‘Linguistic Stylings’ and ‘Hysterical Personages’) but the ‘Original Bill and Ted’ interview is very good. The ‘Scribble to Script’ feature is fantastic too. This presents 120 pages of notes, treatments and script excerpts from Matheson and Solomon’s original idea for the film. It’s great to see what they originally thought up to see how it changed. It would have been a notably different film.

The Steve Vai interview is odd, in that he scored Bogus Journey but had nothing to do with Excellent Adventure, so I don’t know why they added it here. The inclusion of the animated TV series episode is a nice touch though and brought back memories, though it hasn’t held up nearly as well as the film.

The new material is stronger. The two commentaries are excellent in particular. Yes, a number of the anecdotes are repeated elsewhere on the disc, but there’s still plenty of new information in the tracks. Each pair has a strong chemistry too and the film clearly means a lot to all of them, so it’s enjoyable to hear them talk fondly about the experience of making it.

The ‘Time Flies’ doc is backslap-heavy but fairly lengthy (just over an hour) so covers a lot of ground and was made fairly recently, so it’s interesting to see how everyone has aged and how they see the film after time has passed.

So, a fantastic package all round that comes highly recommended to anyone that enjoys the film.

In the first of a four part complete retrospective, take a journey from 2005 to 2012 to witness the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

From the casting of Robert Downey Jr. to the first assembling of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, travel through the early days to see how the pieces first started to fit together.

It’s the beginning of Marvel’s rise to become a box office juggernaut, covering the good, the bad, and everything in between for Phase One of the MCU.

This is… A Complete Retrospective on the Marvel Cinematic Universe… PART ONE.

THE COMPLETE TIMELINE:

00:00 – 2005: The Beginning
00:02:04 – 2006: Marvel’s Grand Plan
00:04:00 – 2006: Robert Downey Jr. cast
00:04:49 – 2007: Iron Man and Incredible Hulk are underway
00:05:28 – 2007: Comic-Con 2007
00:06:38 – 2007: Iron Man trailer
00:07:12 – 2008: Marketing for Iron Man and Incredible Hulk
00:10:07 – 2008: IRON MAN
00:17:15 – 2008: Iron Man box office
00:18:29 – 2008: Marketing for Incredible Hulk
00:19:18 – 2008: THE INCREDIBLE HULK
00:23:44 – 2008: Marvel’s Next Steps
00:24:49 – 2008: Don Cheadle replaces Terrence Howard
00:25:33 – 2009: Phase 1 Solo Films Take Shape
00:27:12 – 2009: Comic-Con 2009
00:27:42 – 2009: Disney Buys Marvel
00:28:34 – 2009: Iron Man 2 trailer
00:29:13 – 2010: Spider-Man 4 cancelled
00:30:21 – 2010: Captain America casting
00:31:20 – 2010: Avengers director
00:32:20 – 2010: IRON MAN 2
00:38:18 – 2010: Reception to Iron Man 2/Edward Norton Recast
00:39:55 – 2010: Comic-Con 2010
00:42:18 – 2010: Marvel’s Frugality/Iron Man 3 announced
00:43:36 – 2010: Thor trailer
00:44:24 – 2011: Thor and Captain America trailers
00:45:43 – 2011: The Avengers begins production
00:46:18 – 2011: THOR
00:52:23 – 2011: Reception to Thor/Captain America trailer 2
00:53:43 – 2011: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
01:02:29 – 2011: Reception to Captain America
01:03:04 – 2011: Phase Two Takes Shape/Marvel One-Shots
01:04:28 – 2011: The Avengers trailer
01:06:10 – 2011: Phase Two Continues Development
01:07:20 – 2012: Phase Two Develops
01:07:45 – 2012: Marketing for The Avengers
01:10:39 – 2012: MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS
01:23:04 – 2012: The Avengers breaks Box Office Records/Conclusion

Fujian Tulou is a property of 46 buildings constructed between the 15th and 20th centuries over 120 km in south-west of Fujian province, inland from the Taiwan Strait. Set amongst rice, tea and tobacco fields the Tulou are earthen houses. Several storeys high, they are built along an inward-looking, circular or square floor plan as housing for up to 800 people each. They were built for defence purposes around a central open courtyard with only one entrance and windows to the outside only above the first floor. Housing a whole clan, the houses functioned as village units and were known as “a little kingdom for the family” or “bustling small city.” They feature tall fortified mud walls capped by tiled roofs with wide over-hanging eaves. The most elaborate structures date back to the 17th and 18th centuries. The buildings were divided vertically between families with each disposing of two or three rooms on each floor. In contrast with their plain exterior, the inside of the tulou were built for comfort and were often highly decorated. They are inscribed as exceptional examples of a building tradition and function exemplifying a particular type of communal living and defensive organization, and, in terms of their harmonious relationship with their environment, an outstanding example of human settlement.

The Fujian Tulou are the most representative and best preserved examples of the tulou of the mountainous regions of south-eastern China. The large, technically sophisticated and dramatic earthen defensive buildings, built between the 13th and 20th centuries, in their highly sensitive setting in fertile mountain valleys, are an extraordinary reflection of a communal response to settlement which has persisted over time. The tulou, and their extensive associated documentary archives, reflect the emergence, innovation, and development of an outstanding art of earthen building over seven centuries. The elaborate compartmentalised interiors, some with highly decorated surfaces, met both their communities’ physical and spiritual needs and reflect in an extraordinary way the development of a sophisticated society in a remote and potentially hostile environment. The relationship of the massive buildings to their landscape embodies both Feng Shui principles and ideas of landscape beauty and harmony.

Criterion (iii): The tulou bear an exceptional testimony to a long-standing cultural tradition of defensive buildings for communal living that reflect sophisticated building traditions and ideas of harmony and collaboration, well documented over time.

Criterion (iv): The tulou are exceptional in terms of size, building traditions and function, and reflect society’s response to various stages in economic and social history within the wider region.

Criterion (v): The tulou as a whole and the nominated Fujian tulou in particular, in terms of their form are a unique reflection of communal living and defensive needs, and in terms of their harmonious relationship with their environment, an outstanding example of human settlement.

The authenticity of the tulou is related to sustaining the tulou themselves and their building traditions as well as the structures and processes associated with their farmed and forested landscape setting. The integrity of the tulou is related to their intactness as buildings but also to the intactness of the surrounding farmed and forested landscape – into which they were so carefully sited in accordance with Feng Shui principles.

The legal protection of the nominated areas and their buffer zones are adequate. The overall management system for the property is adequate, involving both government administrative bodies and local communities, although plans for the sustainability of the landscape that respect local farming and forestry traditions need to be better developed.

Final Fantasy IV is known as a turning point for the Final Fantasy series and helped to bridge the gap from above average by-the-numbers RPGs to games that told epic stories though cinematics. Released in 1991 for the Super NES as Final Fantasy II, fans of the series were blown away by the sheer size of the game which spanned an entire world, an underworld, and to the moon itself. Playing the game on your trusty GBA proves just as impressive as the original game remains largely intact even brings a few improvements and extra side quests along for the ride. While some elements were lost in translation, this version of the game feels right at home on the GBA and gives some extra incentive to those who might be hesitant to buy the game again.

Final Fantasy IV tells the story of a Dark Knight named Cecil who is captain of the kingdom of Baron’s air force known as the Red Wings. Cecil, suspecting the king of Baron has gone just a little mad, is given the daunting task of collecting the world’s elemental crystals at all costs – even if it means slaughtering innocent people in the process. At the same time, encounters with monsters become more common. It’s only after Cecil unknowingly slaughters an entire town that he challenges the king’s intentions and is kicked out of the Red Wings. Doubting himself more than ever, Cecil vows to get to the bottom of what’s going on and hopefully undo all of the wrongs he has caused to the people of the world and to himself.

The gameplay is similar to other early Final Fantasy titles with your team occupying one side and your foes on the other. Final Fantasy IV was the first game in the series to incorporate an active time battle system, so the battles can get pretty frantic and fast-paced. The GBA seems to be taxed at times when a lot is going on which results in all sorts of small little issues to pop up like slow down which seems to result in some clunky cursor movements causing you to cast the wrong spell or pick the wrong item. Of course, none of this is good when your enemies won’t hesitate to attack if you’re taking too long to make a decision. Each character has a basic set of actions like attack, item, and the occasional magic spell. Certain characters can also do special actions like FuSoYa’s regen which gradually increases the party’s HP and Palom & Porom’s twin attack which allow them to combine their powers for ultra-powerful spells. Summons are here as well with such perennial favorites as Odin, Shiva, and Bahamut. Don’t worry about exploring the world on foot either since you’ll get your hands on a good assortment of vehicles like a hovercraft, boat, and not one, not two, but three airships. That’s not even counting Chocobos where you can ride around on the standard yellow variety or take to the air on a black one. You’ll be hard pressed to walk as you travel from town to town and into the game’s many dungeons.

Of course, what’s an RPG without a story to drive you to keep fighting random battles all the way until the bitter end? While the storytelling elements are a little crude by today’s standards, the story is still compelling enough to keep you wanting to find out more. Everything from the Edward the Bard side story to the somewhat violent marriage of Yang and his wife have made the conversion. For those who are experiencing the game for the first time, you’ll get a story full of twists, turns, betrayal, revenge, sacrifice, and a main character whose inner battle is just as important as what threatens the world he lives in. If you thought Aeris’ death in Final Fantasy VII was a pivotal point in RPG history, then you most likely haven’t played Final Fantasy IV. Fans of the original game will notice some differences from the version they all know and love since the game has been translated directly from the Japanese version. The result is some mild cursing, utterance of words like “kill” and “dead”, and some pretty big, sophisticated words that are nowhere to be found in the SNES game. Don’t fret however; the infamous “Spoony Bard” reference is still there. The story, mixed with the three different “worlds” for you to explore make for an experience that is sure to entertain you for a good thirty hours plus and then some, that is, if you’re a perfectionist. There’s still plenty to do outside of the main story line and even after the game has been completed. Right before you dive into the last level you’ll get the ability to switch out party members for characters you wouldn’t normally have had in the original game. As an added bonus a training dungeon can also be unlocked where you can complete trials for each character. After the game has been completed and the game’s lengthy (and totally enjoyable) ending has finished, you’ll unlock the Lunar Ruins, a dungeon that runs some fifty levels deep and features the most difficult monsters and bosses in the game in addition to the strongest weapons and armor. A bestiary rounds out the game’s extras and lets you know what percentage of monsters you’ve killed so you can go back out into the world and hunt everything down for that elusive 100% completion score.

As far as visuals go, Final Fantasy IV has aged very well. While the resizing of the screen causes a few graphical anomalies, more than a few improvements have been made and this version more closely resembles the version found in Final Fantasy Chronicles for the original Playstation. You’ll get some impressive mode 7 effects while you’re speeding around in the airship and the once flat towers of the SNES game now protrude into the sky. There are also a number of redrawn backgrounds during battles that look much better than the less colorful and barren earlier versions. You’ll also notice some improvements when you fly to the moon which I won’t try to ruin here. The game’s sprites remain unchanged, though some characters have been redrawn for their status screen portraits and in this case, the change was for the better. You’ll also get some really impressive and over-the-top spell effects and while summons pale in comparison to those found in the later games, they’re still pretty neat. There are some issues with the game’s level design in some spots where everything starts to look the same and treasure chests blend into the floor a little too well, but those are only small complaints.

The sound is on par with the SNES version of the game which isn’t a bad thing at all. Despite the limited hardware of the SNES, Final Fantasy IV has an excellent soundtrack with some great songs that really stand out. From the traditional Final Fantasy theme, to the militant beat of the Baron theme, and the goofy and comical Mysidia theme, the soundtrack is hands down one of the best in the series. While the soundtrack does a great job of setting the mood, the game’s sound effects do a great job too. You’ll get a number of sounds for each type of weapon a character has and some interesting sounds to accompany the impressive spell effects.

It’s about time that Square-Enix released this game for Nintendo’s handheld system. Not only was Final Fantasy IV one of the best RPGs the SNES had to offer, but it was one of the best games the system had going for it and the fact it’s not just another straight port could really win some old-school Final Fantasy fans into Nintendo’s handheld camp. If you already own the original version of this game, the improvements and extra missions offered here warrant some hardcore consideration. This game is definitely worth it.

Cambie Street is a street in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It is named for Henry John Cambie, chief surveyor of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s western division (as is Cambie Road, a major thoroughfare in nearby Richmond).

There are two distinct sections of the street. North of False Creek, the street runs on a northeast-southwest alignment (following the rotated street grid within Downtown Vancouver). As such, the street direction is approximately 45 degrees to that of the Cambie Bridge, and there is no seamless connection between the two. Instead, Nelson Street carries southbound traffic onto the bridge, and Smithe Street carries northbound traffic away from the bridge. The downtown section of Cambie Street runs from Water Street in Gastown in the north to Pacific Boulevard in Yaletown in the south and is a two-way street for its length.

South of False Creek, the street is a major six-lane arterial road, and runs as a two-way north-south thoroughfare according to the street grid for the rest of Vancouver. This section of the street was originally named Bridge Street, and was first connected to Cambie Street after the first Cambie Bridge opened in 1891; it was renamed Cambie Street after the second Cambie Bridge opened in 1912.

Between King Edward Avenue West and Southwest Marine Drive, the street has a 10 metre wide boulevard with grass and many well established trees on it; the boulevard was designated as a heritage landscape by the city of Vancouver in 1993.

When proposals to build SkyTrain’s Canada Line (formerly known as the Richmond-Airport-Vancouver or RAV Line) along Cambie Street first emerged, they were heavily protested by residents and business owners who wanted to keep the street as a heritage boulevard. They argued in favour of using the existing Arbutus Street rail corridor instead.

Once the decision was made to use the Cambie alignment for the Canada Line anyway, residents along the corridor successfully persuaded authorities to put the rail line in a tunnel instead of running it as a surface route, and to dig the tunnel using a tunnel boring machine. However, due to cost concerns and time constraints, the winning bidder decided to use a cut-and-cover method to build the tunnel – which required disruption to traffic and business along the corridor during the construction. As such, even though it cost less and was much faster than using a tunnel boring machine, the plan drew heavy criticism from area residents and businesses.

During 2006 to 2009, portions of the street south of False Creek were closed to traffic to allow for construction of the line. The cut-and-cover tunnel runs underneath the east side of the street for most of its route. South of West 63rd Avenue, the line emerges from the tunnel and runs on an elevated structure across the Fraser River.

Gregor Robertson, who later became the mayor of Vancouver, was a strong supporter of Cambie Street merchants and spoke regularly about hardships from the Canada Line construction. He called the handling of the rail line construction an “injustice.”

On March 23, 2009, Robertson testified in a lawsuit brought by Cambie Street merchant Susan Heyes, owner of Hazel & Co., in the B.C. Supreme Court regarding damage to her business from the construction, a lawsuit for which she was awarded $600,000 by the B.C. Supreme Court due in part to the fact that there was insufficient action to mitigate the effects of Canada Line construction on Cambie Street merchants. The award for damages was later reversed at the British Columbia Court of Appeal, which determined that while the project had resulted in a legal nuisance to the claimant, the government had acted within its authority and was therefore not liable for damages. Leave for further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was subsequently denied. On the Canada Line’s opening day of August 17, 2009, Robertson said Greater Vancouver needed more rapid transit but the Canada Line was a “great start” and that he was a “Johnny-come-lately” to the project.