Two high-concept comedies open this weekend, the first has Tina Fey making her leading lady debut in Baby Mama, starring as a businesswoman who, when discovering she is infertile, hooks up with a trailer trash-type surrogate mom, Amy Poehler, in order to have her baby. Co-Starring Greg Kinnear, Sigourney Weaver and Steve Martin, it's been getting mixed reviews but fans of Fey and Poehler's work on 30 Rock and SNL should enjoy it nonetheless.

The other big comedy is the sequel to one of the biggest stoner comedies ever, Harold & Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Kal Penn and John Cho return in the title roles, this time running from government agents after trying to sneak a bong onboard their flight to Amsterdam. Neil Patrick Harris returns as himself and former Daily Show correspondent Rob Corddry makes an appearance. It's been said that if you enjoyed the first movie, there would be no reason not to enjoy this one.

If you're a big Freaks And Geeks fan like myself, you might be interested in this weekend's new film Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which F&G vet Jason Segel wrote and stars in, along with Kristen Bell, Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd. Produced by Judd Apatow, Forgetting Sarah Marshall tells the tale of a man who devastation after a messy break-up leads him to a tropical resort, only to find his ex and her new beau are staying at the same place. It's been netting surprisingly good reviews and if you like Jason Segel it's pretty much a no-brainer.

Opening in Vancouver this week is Smart People, starring Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church and, Juno herself, Ellen Page. If an actor grows a beard and wears a brown sport coat, a la Robin Williams, they must be portraying someone in a respectable profession playing against type and, coincidentally, Quaid plays a widowed professor who falls for one of his former students, played by Parker. Church plays an art house goofball, just like the one in Sideways, and Page plays a sassy, ahead-of-her-years teenager, just the like the one in Juno, but you know the old saying, if it worked once...

From writer/director/star Nadine Labaki comes the acclaimed comedy Caramel, opening in Vancouver on Friday. In Caramel, a Beirut beauty salon serves as a microcosm of modern society, following the lives of five women of varying generations. Screened at the Cannes Directors' Fortnight in 2007, the film has generated sparkling reviews from around the globe and can be seen in an exclusive engagement at Fifth Avenue Cinemas.

Has it really been 18 years since the last Rolling Stones Imax spectacular? It's nice to know that, even at ninety years old, Mick Jagger has enough energy to keep making Imax concert films. This one might be pretty good, as the director is none other than Martin Scorsese. But a collaboration with Christina Aguilera?? Yikes. Shine A Light starts Friday at The CN Imax Theatre.

An imaginary unicorn, cursed to wander the earth guarding the the child who first dreamed of him; a deal made with forest witches for the sake of love; a fortune-cookie-fortune inheritance cloaked in feline abduction; and finally, a naive attempt to construct an amphibious Jesus.

No I'm not recounting the hour-by-hour of my easter weekend mushroom trip (I wish my mind was that creative...) Rather, those are the brief plot synopses of four films screening as part of Terminal Cinema's inaugural celebration of local underground film. I talked a bit last week about the state of local movie-making when I highlighted Paul & Ben's festival, and coming right on the heels of that great event is another needed antidote to the Hollywood-blues, and another opportunity to support some truly local art.

Aside from the surreal sounding short films listed above, the event will include thirteen productions in a variety of styles; from documentary to comedy to animated & experimental. What unites them is their bond to Vancouver and their existence outside the mainstream; representating the best of our city's independent scene. Terminal Cinema: Underground Film in Vancouver will screen at the Pacific Cinematheque at 7:30 on Tuesday, April 1st, and entry is free...

Before we move onto the films playing this week, I must urge every filmgoer to see The Counterfeiters, which is still playing at Tinseltown. I saw it last weekend and it's incredible. Telling the true story of how the Nazis forced Holocaust concentration camp prisoners into making them millions of dollars in counterfeit money, the film won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and it truly deserved it. All the performances are fantastic and it's very realistic. Make sure to catch it before it leaves the theatres.