Category Archives: A & E

The Road to the Oscars Begins: Film Festivals That Shape the Awards Season

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Each September, the road to the Academy Awards begins in earnest.

Before critics’ prizes are handed out, before guilds weigh in, and long before Oscar nominations are announced, four of the world’s most influential film festivals — Telluride, Venice, Toronto and New York — introduce audiences to the films, performances and filmmakers that will dominate awards season.

In a typical year, roughly 80 per cent of eventual Best Picture nominees screen at one or more of these festivals.

The first stop is the 53rd Telluride Film Festival, held high in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado over the Labour Day weekend, from September 4 to 7.

Telluride remains the most mysterious of the major festivals. Organizers refuse to announce the programme in advance, unveiling approximately 40 films only as attendees arrive in the picturesque mountain town.

That secrecy has become part of Telluride’s appeal.

Festival-goers routinely discover surprise screenings of films that go on to become major Oscar contenders. This year’s Guest Director is acclaimed British-American actress and filmmaker Rebecca Hall, who has curated a special programme celebrating overlooked classics and significant works from cinema history.

Alongside anticipated North American premières of prize winners from Cannes and Berlin, cinephiles will once again be searching for the festival’s inevitable “discovery”— the film nobody was expecting that suddenly becomes an awards frontrunner.

Almost simultaneously, attention shifts across the Atlantic to the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, running September 2–12 under the artistic direction of Alberto Barbera.

The world’s oldest film festival remains its most glamorous.

Every year the Lido becomes a showcase where international stars arrive by water taxi against the backdrop of the Venetian lagoon, while photographers line the red carpet awaiting the next iconic image.

Yet beneath the glamour lies one of cinema’s most important launching pads. Recent Golden Lion winners and Venice premières have gone on to claim Best Picture and Best Director Oscars with remarkable regularity.

This year’s Venice Biennale competition is especially rich.

Among the most anticipated films are Martin McDonagh’s 1970s-set black comedy Wild Horse Nine — which, by the way, is the Closing Gala film this year at the 45th annual Vancouver International Film Festival — starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell; Florian Zeller’s marital drama Bunker, featuring Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem; Werner Herzog’s long-awaited, Bucking Fastard, starring sisters Kate and Rooney Mara; Casey Affleck’s directorial effort, Company; Andrea Pallaoro’s The Echo Chamber, with Alicia Vikander and Susan Sarandon; Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime, starring Robert Pattinson; and highly anticipated new works from Lee Chang-dong and Hirokazu Kore-eda.

Venice’s red carpets will be equally crowded with Dakota Johnson, Pamela Anderson, Claire Foy, Orlando Bloom, Paul Dano, Parker Posey, Stephen Graham and Phoebe Bridgers, making her formal acting début in A24’s Primetime.

Noel and Liam Gallagher are also expected to reunite publicly while promoting the Oasis documentary, Don’t Look Back in Anger.

The festival’s combination of artistic prestige and celebrity spectacle makes Venice one of the defining events of the international film calendar.

North America’s largest public film festival follows immediately afterward.

The 51st Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) runs September 10–20 and remains the industry’s première North American launching pad for prestige cinema.

TIFF opens with Sian Heder’s Being Heumann and closes with Yan Lanouette Turgeon’s Villeneuve: The Rise of a Legend. Unlike Telluride’s exclusivity, Toronto welcomes hundreds of thousands of moviegoers, creating an atmosphere unlike any other festival.

Audience enthusiasm frequently helps propel films into the awards conversation, with the festival’s coveted People’s Choice Award having become one of the strongest predictors of eventual Oscar success.

This year’s lineup includes new films from celebrated auteurs Mike Leigh (Tender Loving Care), Takashi Miike (Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo), Anton Corbijn (A Talent for Murder), Lee Chang-dong (Possible Love), Andrew Haigh (A Long Winter), Jesse Eisenberg (The Debut), James Gray (Paper Tiger), Chris Rock (Misty Green) and Rebel Wilson (Girl Group).

TIFF will also showcase an impressive slate of Canadian productions, continuing its long-standing commitment to homegrown filmmaking, while serving as an international marketplace where distributors search for the season’s breakout hits.

The final major stop on the autumn festival circuit is the 64th New York Film Festival, presented by Film at Lincoln Center from September 25 through October 12.

Unlike Toronto, New York rarely emphasizes world premières. Instead, it curates what its programmers believe represents the very finest cinema of the year, drawing acclaimed selections from Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Telluride and Toronto into one strong Main Slate. For many cinephiles, NYFF offers the year’s most rigorously curated programme.

The festival’s Centerpiece Gala will be the world première of Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, starring Pedro Pascal, while Ava DuVernay’s documentary 14th, a follow-up to her Oscar-nominated 13th, will close the festival.

Rumoured selections include new films from Pedro Almodóvar, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Paweł Pawlikowski, Radu Jude, Takashi Yamazaki and Ira Sachs.

“The festival’s ambition is to reflect the state of cinema in a given year, which often means also reflecting the state of the world,” says New York Film Festival artistic director Dennis Lim. “The most notable thing about the films in the Main Slate is the degree to which they emphasize cinema’s relationship to reality.”

By the time New York concludes in mid-October, the contours of the Oscar race will largely have been established. Critics will have identified the year’s breakthrough performances, studios will begin refining their awards campaigns, and cinephiles will already be debating which films deserve Academy recognition.

For Vancouver audiences, the excitement will not end there.

Many of the year’s most acclaimed festival selections are expected to, and will, screen at the 45th Vancouver International Film Festival, running October 1–11, giving local movie lovers an opportunity to see many of the season’s most celebrated films months before Oscar nominations are announced.

Announced on August 26th at this year’s VIFF Media Launch,  VIFF programmers have curated perhaps the strongest array of films at VIFF in many, many years, including the Opening Gala film: Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.

Also débuting: Cannes winners Fjord, La Bola Negra, and audience favourite, Club Kid, and so very much more.

Plus: Minotaur, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and Mike Leigh’s final film, Tender Loving Care.

The 45th Vancouver International Film Festival Programme Guide is already online, ready for you to begin purchasing your tickets — or pass — to this year’s festival.

Purchase tickets or a pass to #VIFF 2026 by clicking here.

Each Friday throughout September, VanRamblings will publish a VIFF Insight column in the hopes of preparing you for VIFF 45.

Come October, once the festival is fully underway, VanRamblings will provide coverage each of the two first weekends — given that Monday through Thursday, we’ll be providing in-depth coverage of this year’s Vancouver municipal election —  with VIFF coverage each Friday, Saturday and Sunday in early October, on October 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 9th, 10th, and the final day of this year’s festival, Thanksgiving Monday, October 11th.

For anyone who loves cinema, September is far more than the beginning of awards season.

September announces the annual celebration of the art of filmmaking itself — the moment when the world’s greatest directors, actors and storytellers unveil the films that will shape conversations for the year ahead.

#VIFF 2026 | October 1st to 11th | Programme Guide | Sizzle Reel | Buy Your Tickets to #VIFF 2026 Now!

A & E, Arts Friday, Cinema, Film Festivals, Pop Culture, Vancouver, VanRamblings, VIFF 2026, , , ,

Explore the 2026 Vancouver International Film Festival Programme Guide by clicking on the following link …

Vancouver International Film Festival Programme Guide

While you’re on this site, enjoy this year’s #VIFF Sizzle Reel.

Purchase tickets or a pass to #VIFF 2026 by clicking here.

This Friday, VanRamblings will publish a story on the upcoming Telluride, Venice, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, and in each successive Friday in September will publish a VIFF 2026 story, covering facets of this year’s festival.

Come early October, it is our intention to write about the current Vancouver municipal election Monday thru Thursday, and dedicate Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays to coverage of the 45th annual 2026 Vancouver International Film Festival, on October 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 9th, 10th and 11th.

#ArtsFriday | Streaming | The Best Police Procedural On The Planet | #Belfast

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Grace (Siân Brooke) and Stevie (Martin McCann) respond to a distress call, in Blue Lights.

There is a quiet moment in Blue Lights when a patrol car glides through the rain-soaked streets of Belfast.

There are no gunshots. No dramatic chase. Just two police officers talking about life, fear, disappointment and the endless uncertainty that accompanies both policing and adulthood. Somehow, that simple conversation carries more dramatic weight than an entire season of many American crime dramas.

That is the genius of Blue Lights.

Broadcast on the BBC in Britain and streamed in North America on BritBox, the award winning Irish police procedural has become one of television’s finest achievements — and at present is VanRamblings’ favourite, most compelling and heartrending TV series — not because it reinvents the police procedural, but because it remembers something many modern dramas have forgotten.

Before police officers are heroes or villains, they are simply human beings.

Created by former journalists Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, Blue Lights follows three probationary officers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland as they learn their profession in a city still living beneath the shadow of the Troubles.

Belfast is not merely a backdrop; it is a character unto itself, haunted by memory, divided by history and yet stubbornly determined to move forward.

The city breathes through every frame.

The comparisons with the greatest American police dramas are inevitable.

Like Hill Street Blues, Blue Lights understands that policing is messy, exhausting work carried out by imperfect people trying to make decent decisions in impossible circumstances.

Like Homicide: Life on the Street, it finds extraordinary drama in ordinary conversations, allowing silence and uncertainty to tell as much of the story as action.

And like The Wire, it recognizes that crime cannot be separated from politics, poverty, history or community. Institutions matter. History matters. Geography matters. No crime exists in isolation.

Yet Blue Lights never feels derivative. It possesses its own rhythm, quieter and more intimate than its American predecessors, less interested in spectacular violence than in the emotional toll that violence leaves behind.

The Guardian called it “one of TV’s best shows,” praising its gripping realism, nuanced writing and richly believable characters. Rather than relying on endless action, it creates tension simply by placing two officers together inside a patrol car and allowing conversation to unfold naturally.

The second season only deepened that achievement. The Guardian admired its ability to move effortlessly “between light and dark,” noting that the evolving relationship between Grace and Stevie remained one of television’s most delicately observed partnerships.


Annie (Katherine Devlin) and Aisling (Dearbháile McKinney) attend at a bar when a fight breaks out

The Independent praised the series for being inseparable from Belfast itself, observing that the city “looms as a character” and that the legacy of Northern Ireland’s divisions informs every episode. Viewers have compared it to Line of Duty, but Blue Lights possesses something even rarer: compassion.

At the heart of all of this stands Siân Brooke.

Her portrayal of Grace Ellis is the finest television performances of the past decade.

Grace arrives as an outsider — an Englishwoman, a former social worker, considerably older than the other recruits and carrying both optimism and self-doubt. She enters policing believing that kindness remains a practical tool, even in neighbourhoods where violence has become routine.

That belief should make her naïve.

Instead, it makes her courageous.


If you’re going to watch only one of the Blue Light clips, the scene above is the must watch clip.

Grace refuses to surrender her empathy simply because the job encourages emotional distance. She listens. She comforts victims after everyone else has moved on. She sees frightened children where others see future criminals. She carries the instincts of a social worker into the patrol car, reminding both colleagues and viewers that justice without compassion quickly becomes something else entirely.

She is, quite simply, the moral centre of the series.

The heart.

The soul.

Siân Brooke never overplays the role. Grace’s strength emerges not through speeches but through small gestures — a reassuring hand, a quiet conversation, a hesitant smile, a look that communicates exhaustion and hope simultaneously.

Every expression feels lived rather than performed.

Opposite her stands Martin McCann as Stevie Neil, whose weathered pragmatism forms the perfect counterpoint.

Stevie has seen too much to believe every problem can be solved. Yet beneath the dry humour and occasional cynicism lies immense decency.

The chemistry between Siân Brooke and Martin McCann is remarkable precisely because it grows so slowly.

Their partnership is built not upon television clichés but upon trust earned over countless shifts, shared danger and quiet conversations over homemade lunches eaten between emergency calls.

The Guardian beautifully described one scene in which Grace finally offers Stevie something she has baked herself — an almost wordless declaration of affection that says more than pages of dialogue ever could.

Their relationship reflects the achievement of Blue Lights. Everything is earned.

Nothing feels manufactured.

Nothing is rushed.


Aisling (Dearbháile McKinney) and Annie (Katherine Devlin) attend at a family home to report bad news

Perhaps that explains why the series has resonated so deeply with audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. At a time when television often mistakes relentless pacing for storytelling, Blue Lights has the confidence to pause, to breathe and to trust its audience.

Its extraordinary success also reminds us that police dramas need not glorify violence to explore courage.

Sometimes heroism is quieter.

Sometimes it looks like a middle-aged officer choosing compassion over anger.

Sometimes it is an experienced partner silently standing beside her.

And sometimes the brightest blue lights are not the ones flashing atop a patrol car.

They are the fragile lights of humanity that continue to flicker in people determined to believe even in wounded places, kindness remains worth defending.

#Cinema | The Tyranny of the Tomatometer: How Aggregated Scores Are Killing Cinema Going

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There was a time — not that long ago — when moviegoing required curiosity.

You read a few critics, maybe listened to a friend’s recommendation, and decided whether to spend two hours in the dark discovering something new.

Today, that act of discovery has largely been replaced by a single number. Before many people even consider seeing a film, they glance at a percentage on Rotten Tomatoes, or a numerical score on Metacritic. If the number is high, the film is deemed worth watching. If it is low, it might as well not exist.

The result is one of the most profound — and least discussed — transformations in the modern film industry.

Review aggregation has quietly reshaped the way audiences choose movies, the way studios finance them, and even the kinds of films that get made. In the process, it has flattened audience taste, suffocated mid-budget filmmaking, and helped create the blockbuster monoculture that now dominates cinema.

The Reduction of Criticism to a Number

Film criticism once thrived on disagreement. One critic might celebrate a bold experiment while another dismissed it as indulgent. That tension created a conversation around movies.

Aggregators ended that conversation by reducing criticism to arithmetic. On Rotten Tomatoes, reviews are translated into a simple binary: “fresh” or “rotten.” The site’s famous Tomatometer then calculates the percentage of critics who gave a positive review.

In practice, this system erases nuance. A film that receives dozens of mildly positive reviews can achieve a dazzling 90% score, even if no critic thought it was particularly great. Meanwhile, a polarizing masterpiece that divides critics — half loving it, half hating it —might end up with a mediocre score.

The number becomes the narrative.

And because audiences increasingly rely on that number to decide what to watch, a film’s reputation is often determined before the public has even seen it.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Success

Hollywood has noticed. In fact, studios have been obsessing over Rotten Tomatoes scores for years.

The industry’s anxiety became obvious during the summer of 2017, when several heavily marketed films opened far below expectations after receiving poor Tomatometer scores. Studios privately blamed Rotten Tomatoes for undermining their marketing campaigns, while highly rated films like Wonder Woman benefited from glowing scores and exceeded expectations at the box office.

Films are now judged almost instantly by their aggregated scores. A low rating can create a perception of failure before opening weekend even begins. A high rating can generate momentum and headlines. Either way, the number becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Once audiences internalize the logic of the score, they begin to behave accordingly: avoiding films with bad numbers and flocking to those with good ones.

The Crushing of the Mid-Budget Film


Kristen Stewart and Andrew Garfield on the red carpet at the Independent Spirit Awards ceremony

The biggest casualty of this culture is the mid-budget movie — the $20-$60 million drama, thriller, or adult comedy that once formed the backbone of Hollywood.

These films depend heavily on word-of-mouth and critical reception. That means they are far more vulnerable to aggregated scores than massive franchise films with huge marketing budgets. In fact, research suggests Rotten Tomatoes has a greater effect on smaller or independent movies than on major blockbusters.

For a mid-budget film, a weak score can be fatal. It discourages audiences from giving the movie a chance and convinces studios that similar projects are too risky.

The lesson Hollywood has absorbed is simple: if audiences are choosing movies based on numbers, studios should make films that are least likely to receive negative numbers.

The safest way to do that is to make movies audiences already know.

Sequels. Franchises. Superheroes.
The Homogenization of Taste

Aggregated scores quietly reshape the psychology of moviegoers themselves.

When audiences use a single metric to choose entertainment, they gravitate toward consensus. The safest choice becomes the one everyone else appears to like.

Over time, this process homogenizes the marketplace. Films that aim for broad approval — competent, inoffensive entertainment — perform better in aggregated scoring systems than films that take risks or challenge viewers.

The result is a feedback loop: audiences follow the scores, studios follow the audiences, and the entire system rewards safe mediocrity.

Gaming the System

Once numbers became powerful, the temptation was to manipulate them.

Studios now carefully manage early screenings to influence aggregated scores. Positive early reactions can create a high initial rating that attracts audiences before more critical reviews appear. In some cases, marketing campaigns have even tried to boost a film’s rating by selectively promoting favorable critics or delaying negative reviews.

Meanwhile, user scores on sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes can be distorted by organized campaigns known as “review bombing,” where groups flood a site with extreme ratings for political or cultural reasons unrelated to the film itself.

When the system becomes a battlefield of manipulated numbers, the illusion of objectivity collapses.

Yet the numbers remain.

Cinema as Data

Perhaps the most troubling consequence of aggregation culture is philosophical.

Cinema is an art form built on subjectivity. The experience of a film is deeply personal —shaped by mood, taste, memory, and emotion. Turning that experience into a percentage suggests a false precision.

And so cinema — one of the most expressive art forms ever invented — has been reduced to a metric.

Rediscovering Curiosity

The tragedy is not that Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic exist. Aggregating reviews can be useful. The tragedy is how completely those scores have come to dominate the conversation.

A score should be the beginning of exploration, not the final verdict.

If the future of cinema is decided by percentages alone, the industry will continue drifting toward the safest, most predictable movies imaginable.

And the next generation of great films — the strange, polarizing, risky ones that critics initially disagree about — may never get the chance to exist.
The tyranny of the Tomatometer is not just changing how we judge movies.

It is quietly changing which movies get made at all.