All posts by Raymond Tomlin

About Raymond Tomlin

Raymond Tomlin is a veteran journalist and educator who has written frequently on the political realm — municipal, provincial and federal — as well as on cinema, mainstream popular culture, the arts, and technology.

Serious, Watchable Films: Months and Months and Months Away

Cinema

Click on the picture to watch THE DESCENDANTS TRAILER

Click on the picture above to watch The Descendants movie trailer

The new film from Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways) is set to open December 16th. Starring George Clooney, and a largely unknown cast otherwise, The Descendants is the sort of film that cineastes most look forward to — a well-written, well-acted prestige drama, the sort of Oscar bait film that provides end-of-the-year counterpoint to the cinematic fluff that has flooded our cineplexes for the first eleven months of the year.
From time to time, VanRamblings will post trailers of worthy upcoming films we might all look forward to.
In the meantime, this week sees the release of the new film by Kelly Reichardt, Meek’s Cutoff (Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy) — starring Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano, Will Patton, Shirley Henderson and Zoe Kazan — currently sitting at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, about which the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday writes, “a mesmerizing cinematic journey,” the consensus positive. Opens tomorrow at Tinseltown Cinemas.

37th Annual Seattle International Film Festival Now Underway

Cinema

Between May 19th and June 12th, The Seattle International Film Festival will screen more than 440 movies — in addition to holding dozens of movie-themed galas, parties and tributes.
In the 37 years since the inaugural Seattle International Film Festival, many other festivals have sprouted up — including our own Vancouver International Film Festival — some to more hype than others.
But after three and a half decades, the SIFF continues to evolve and expand, affording film lovers across the Pacific Northwest an opportunity to screen the best in independent film, the programme also offering retrospectives, and adaptive musical performances from eclectic performers.
The Seattle Times offers daily capsule reviews of the more salutary films on offer at the SIFF, while the team of nerdy film bloggers at the Dan Savage edited The Stranger offer their irreverent, but passionate, take on the various goings on during the three-plus week running time of the SIFF.
Feel like you need a holiday? Can’t stand the prospect of a summer of the mindless Tinseltown blockbusters that will pollute our cineplexes these next three months, then do yourself a favour: truck on down to Seattle, stay a couple of off-season nights at a hotel nearby one of the SIFF venues, and re-connect with the cinema of despair and hope, at the 37th annual SIFF.

Lori McKenna: Warm, Gritty, Acoustic, Melancholy and Hopeful

Music

Ever since we first read about roots / country artist Lori McKenna in late 2007, when she won Popmatters’ Best Country Artist of the Year award, we have been smitten. Here’s an excerpt from Roger Holland’s review …

If you don’t know the story, the 38-year-old McKenna is one of America’s most gifted singer-songwriters. Working out of the home in the Boston suburbs that she shares with her plumber husband Gene and their five (count them, five!) children, Lori McKenna had released a series of four increasingly impressive independent albums — culminating in 2004 with the critically acclaimed Bittertown …

With a voice a little like a female Adam Duritz, McKenna sings in the first person, effortlessly inhabiting her songs of everyday life in a manner that seems so simple, so natural, that you just know it must have taken a whole lot of skill and hard work to achieve. And when I say everyday life, I don’t mean red tag sales and soccer practice, I mean emotions like frustration and disappointment, love and hope, captured in their most natural habitat, the domestic settings in which we live our lives.


VanRamblings has engaged in a process this week of introducing our readers to a few of our favourite music artists. There is no artist we love more than Lori McKenna, no artist whose music we listen to more often.
Last evening, we uploaded a few of our favourite Lori McKenna songs to SoundCloud. Please find five of those favourites, for your listening pleasure, directly below …

Sharon van Etten: Remarkable, Riveting, Pure (and Melancholy)

Music

sharon-van-etten.jpg

As the folks at Allmusic.com write …

“Although she was born and raised in suburban New Jersey, Sharon Van Etten’s folk music evokes the open landscapes and lonely expanses of Middle America. A dedicated choir student during her childhood, she began writing songs on her guitar as a high-school student and, upon moving to New York, started playing them in concert. Van Etten signed with the Chicago-based indie label Drag City and issued her intimate official debut, Because I Was in Love, in spring 2009, followed by the lush, more band-oriented Epic in 2010.


Here’s an interview with Ms. Van Etten conducted by Rob Hakimian for One Thirty BPM from earlier in the year, and a gushing, well-written and entirely spot-on review by Jennifer Kelly in Dusted Magazine.