Did you notice the swell looking graphic at the top of today’s post?
Intrigued?
In a story published on Anne Thompson’s IndieWire blog, Vancouver emerged in fourth place worldwide as the place where filmmakers might choose to shoot their film. Locations one through ten? Here they are …

1. Los Angeles, California
2. New York, New York
3. New Jersey
4. Vancouver, B.C.
5. Toronto
6. Montréal
7. Texas
8. Chicago, Illinois
9. New Mexico
10. Australia

Want to see the same thing graphically, and with much more detail? All you have to do is click here. Thrilling, huh? (ok, maybe not quite so much).

Continue reading Cinema: A Potpurri of Film Items To (sort of) End The Week →

Having had a look at Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere Oscar Balloon, peeked at Sasha Stone’s Contender Tracker take on the Oscar race (scroll down, right side of the page), and Kris Tapley’s In Contention 2011-2012 Oscar Predictions, VanRamblings is confident that should you read what follows you’ll have a handle on the probable contenders in the coming Oscar race, all of which serves to point in you in the direction of a handful of quite decent films already in your local multiplex or soon to arrive.

BEST PICTURE

The Artist
The Descendants
Drive
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Help
The Ides of March
The Iron Lady
J. Edgar
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy
Tree of Life
War Horse

Continue reading Oscar Watch: Early Contenders in the Major Categories →

In the early going, the sight unseen favourite, the numero uno pick for the Best Picture Oscar has to be, going away, Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, adapted from the play (and the book with the same name) by acclaimed children’s writer Michael Morpurgo. Set for release Christmas Day, even the most cynical film critic will not discount the prospect of Spielberg’s War Horse walking off with all the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Oscar hardware late in the evening of Sunday, February 26, 2012.

Continue reading Oscar Watch: More Trailers of Upcoming Oscar Contenders →

This year, perhaps more than any Oscar year in recent memory, the stage has been set for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make more relevant choices, forced to do so by the number of prestigious contenders entering the race with palpable Festival buzz from across the globe, not the least of which comes from our own Vancouver film festival.
From Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation to the art-thriller Miss Bala, which has generated considerable crossover appeal among the journalist bloggers who influence Academy decision-making, at the 2012 Oscar ceremony we may be in for the most nourishing winner we’ve seen since Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa — VanRamblings’ favourite film of the past decade — took the Best Foreign Language film prize in 2003.
As of this past Thursday, the Academy announced that 63 countries have entered potential nominees for the Best Foreign Language Oscar, to be awarded at the 84th Academy Awards the evening of February 26, 2012. The Academy’s Foreign Language Committee will review all the submissions and vote for the five nominees. The final five nominees will be announced the morning of Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 5:30 a.m. PT.
The films that appear to be the primary frontrunners include Vancouver International Film Festival Audience Award winner, A Separation (Iran), Nadine Labaki’s Toronto Film Festival Audience Award winner Where Do We Go Now (Lebanon), Anne Sewitsky’s Happy, Happy (Norway), Aki Kaurismäki’s Le Havre (Finland), Agnieszka Holland’s In Darkness (Poland), Monsieur Lazhar (Canada), and The Flowers of War (China).
The official submissions for the Best Foreign Language Oscar are:
Albania, “Amnesty,” Bujar Alimani, director;
Argentina, “Aballay,” Fernando Spiner, director;
Austria, “Breathing,” Karl Markovics, director;
Belgium, Bullhead, Michael R. Roskam, director;
Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Belvedere,” Ahmed Imamovic, director;
Brazil, “Elite Squad: The Enemy Within,” José Padilha, director;
Bulgaria, “Tilt,” Viktor Chouchkov, Jr., director;
Canada, “Monsieur Lazhar,” Philippe Falardeau, director;

Continue reading Oscar Watch: Best Foreign Language Film Nominees, by Country →