Update Sun. p.m.: Box office returns for the first weekend of the holiday season are coming in, with wide releases (more than 3000 screens) such as …

• The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 set for another first-place finish over the five-day American Thanksgiving holiday ‘weekend’, with a second weekend gross of $62.3 million
• the new family-friendly Muppets movie set to rake in $42 million
• the animated flicks Happy Feet Two and Arthur Christmas set for a box office take in the range of $18 million apiece for the weekend, and
• Martin Scorsese’s well-reviewed and entirely enchanting Hugo 3D (in only 1277 theatres) set for a quite spectacular $15.4 million début.

Now we just have to wait for the Friday opening of the critic friendly Oscar contender The Descendants, starring certain Oscar nominee George Clooney, and My Week With Marilyn, with rave reviews for Michelle Williams in the lead role, and the boffo box office holiday weekend will be complete.

Continue reading Movies: The First Holiday Weekend Rakes in Box Office Bucks →

Two heroes of Vancouver’s left passed away yesterday. Ben Swankey, a lifelong activist, died at age 98. As Georgia Straight editor Charlie Smith wrote last evening, “In 2003, the City of Vancouver turned his 90th birthday into “Ben Swankey day”.
Swankey’s 2008 autobiography, A Prairie Marxist’s Memoir, was edited by Vancouver councillor Geoff Meggs. In 2008, Tom Sandborn wrote in The Tyee that Swankey had “worked as a bartender, road construction labourer, organizer, salesman, journalist, editor, author, lecturer and researcher. He helped found an influential civic political group (COPE) in Vancouver. And well into his 80s, he agitated for seniors’ and health care rights.”
To many, Ben Swankey was a hero. He will be missed.

Activist and teacher Bob Rosen was equally well-loved as Ben Swankey.
Bob Rosen passed away Tuesday morning at the age of 64. As Bill Tieleman wrote in his tribute, “Bob’s music, commitment to the fight for social change and his humanity will be deeply missed.” As recently as last month, I saw and spoke to Bob each day at the 30th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, as we exchanged perspectives on the films we had seen, or planned to see, on any given day. As always, Bob was welcoming, with a warm and kind spirit, and always ready to engage.
I had met and worked with Bob in the 1970s and 80s when I was active in the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation. Although we were but passing acquaintances, when we ran into each other over the years, we always greeted one another and took time out of our day to talk politics.
At a time when Vancouver’s left appears to be in disarray, particularly following the defeat of the Coalition of Progressive Electors at the polls this past Saturday, Bob Rosen’s and Ben Swankey’s voices will be missed.

While VanRamblings continues to ruminate on what, if anything, we’ll say about the Vancouver City municipal election this past weekend (and believe you me, we are possessed of strong feelings about both the campaigns and the we’re-not-too-happy outcomes), life marches inexorably forward.
As much as we like politics (and we do), we love film, as we have done since we were a wee lad. The holiday period which, it would seem, is already upon us — just last night a friend wrote to say that she and her husband were putting up their Christmas decorations — is notable in the Tomlin household for the plethora of fine, Oscar-worthy film fare that week in, week out find their way onto a screens in your local multiplex.
Last evening, VanRamblings took in Martin Scorsese’s brilliant 3D adaptation of Brian Selznick’s best seller, Hugo, an absolutely lovely and gorgeously filmed valentine to the movies, the story of a young orphan, clock keeper, and thief who lives inside the walls of a bustling Paris train station, circa the early 30s. Due out Wednesday (American Thanksgiving, don’tcha know), Hugo is not due for particularly wide release, but is nonetheless first-out-of-the-gate Oscar fare, and definitely worth a sit.
We write today, though, to present more trailers of upcoming films that will cause you to plunk your hard-earned dollars down at the cinema box office, between now and year’s end. First up today, Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady:

The reviews are already out in England, and although some critics are iffy on the movie as a whole, absolutely no one across the pond or stateside has anything but praise for Meryl Streep’s interpretation of Maggie Thatcher, particularly the latter part of the film’s descent into dementia.
Now, if you want to catch Owen Moverman’s Rampart, and Woody Harrelson’s apparently knocks-it-out-of-the-park Oscar contending performance, you’re gonna have to look long and hard, cuz the film is not going to get a wide release, and as is often the case with niche art films picked up by tiny indie distributors, unless you’re a movie fanatic and live for films like Rampart, and read widely on ‘specialized films’, you’re not going to read much about it, either. Still, it took the critics by storm at the Toronto Film Festival, which means that this slice-of-life corrupt cop saga should emerge as the palliative we’ll need to rescue us from the more saccharine film fare that will clog our movie theatres in the coming weeks.