Category Archives: A & E

Sundance 2024 | Nostalgia Loomed Large in Park City

A & E, Arts Friday, Cinema, , , ,

There were a smattering of big sales and buzzy premières at this year’s 40th edition of the Sundance Film Festival, held each January since 1984 in Park City, Utah.

Even so, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the independent film business Sundance has so long championed is suffering from an identity crisis.

The box office for art-house movies has yet to regain its pre-COVID stride.

Desperate for content, streaming services once paid inflated prices for films débuting at Sundance . Now they’re conservative in their spending.

In this era of economizing, the all-night bidding wars that made Sundance sizzle are a thing of the past, not a great sign of the financial health of the industry.

Yet there was still plenty to celebrate.

Movies like Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Will & Harper received emotional standing ovations, while A Real Pain and It’s What’s Inside defied the odds to score multimillion-dollar deals.

As it enters its fifth decade, Sundance hasn’t lost its ability to excite audiences.

But, clearly, Sundance needs to make adjustments to the way it conducts itself in order to keep up with the changing times, if the indie festival is going to survive.

Actor / Oscar nominee, first time director Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin star in A Real Pain

A Real Pain, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin as cousins who travel to their grandmother’s native Poland to partake in a Holocaust tour, scored rave reviews and won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for Eisenberg, the film picked up by Searchlight for a whopping $10 million early on in the Festival. A Real Pain will receive a theatrical release later this year, and may be Oscar bound next year.

Focus Features snatched up Sundance favourite Dìdi, directed by Academy Award nominee Sean Wang, the film telling the story of a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy (Izaac Wang) who spends his last summer before high school learning how to flirt, skate, and get along with his mom (Joan Chen). Dìdi, set in 2008, won Sundance’s Audience Award and the Special Jury Prize drama award.

Richard Roundtree and June Squibb star in director Josh Margolin’s ode to his grandma, Thelma

Magnolia Pictures snagged the elderly-buddy comedy Thelma, the tale of a 93-year-old grandma (June Squibb) who endures a harrowing journey across Los Angeles after she’s conned by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson (Fred Hechinger). The film also stars Richard Roundtree as her companion, as the two seeking retribution. Parker Posey, Clark Gregg, and Malcolm McDowell co-star.

The documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, which sold for $15 million to Warner Bros. Discovery, follows Christopher Reeve on how he found his life’s purpose after he suffered from an equestrian accident that left him paralyzed.

Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza star in Canadian director Megan Park’s new film, My Old Ass

Director Megan Park’s My Old Ass will head directly to Amazon’s Prime Video this spring, the film telling the story of high-school senior (Maisy Stella), who meets the adult version of herself (Aubrey Plaza) right before she heads off to college.

Skywalkers: A Love Story, directed by Jeff Zimbalist, was acquired by Netflix. The documentary follows Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus, a couple from Moscow, who saved their careers and relationship by climbing really tall buildings, specifically the world’s last super skyscraper, to perform an acrobatic stunt.

The Will Ferrell documentary Will & Harper was also picked up by Netflix, the road trip film about two Saturday Night Live alumni, Ferrell and former SNL head writer Harper Steele, who reconnect after Steele comes out as a trans woman. The duo set out together for a cross-country trip, during which they talk in depth about their friendship and the experience of being trans in America.

Sundance hasn’t been a Festival that’s been synonymous with Academy Awards attention, though recent iterations have churned out Oscar favourites like Best Picture winner CODA, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical Minari, and Korean-Canadian director Celine Song’s wistful dramatic début, Past Lives.

Although A Real Pain and Super/Man were critically embraced, there’s a question as to whether they have enough buzz to stay in the conversation until next year.

What Sundance may have lacked in stature this year, it made up for in scares.

Steven Soderbergh’s twisty thriller Presence, which Vulture critic Bilge Ebiri wrote is “the best thing Soderbergh’s done in ages,” is a haunted-house movie seen through the eyes of the ghost. Neon picked up the film’s distribution rights.

Zombie slasher movie In a Violent Nature and other movies about things that go bump in the night were all the rage in Park City.

It’s What’s Inside, a horror story about a pre-wedding party from hell, landed at Netflix in a massive $17 million sale. Along with the haunted psychodrama I Saw the TV Glow — which arrived at Sundance having secured theatrical distribution from A24 — both films became this year’s conversation starters on Main Street.


Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine star in writer-director Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow

Nothing beats a good fright.

In the Summers, an independent film about two sisters navigating fraught summer visits with their father, won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Festival, as well as Best Director for Alessandra Lacorazza.

Shuchi Talati’s début feature, Girls Will Be Girls, about a mother’s intervention in her teenage daughter’s budding romance that creates an unexpected emotional love triangle, landed the Audience Award for World Cinema, as well as the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting, for Preeti Panigrahi.

Porcelain War landed the award for U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize for Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, the film an intimate reflection on making art in wartime Ukraine.

The U.S. Documentary directing award was awarded to Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie for Sugarcane, an enlightening and infuriating look into systematic abuse at an Indian Residential School.

The World Cinema Documentary directing award went to Benjamin Ree for Ibelin, which focuses on Norwegian gamer Mats Steen. Steen’s parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life after their son died of a rare, degenerative muscular disease at age 25. They later received messages from online friends all around the world who knew Steen for his beloved World of Warcraft avatar, Ibelin Redmoore.

All the films mentioned in today’s VanRamblings column will find their way onto your local multiplex screen at some point this year, or are scheduled to air on Netflix, Prime Video or another streamer.

Music Sundays | Todd Rundgren | 1972’s Most Auspicious Début Album

A & E, Jude and Megan, Music, Pop Culture, VanRamblings, , ,

Dating back to the late 1960s, through until today, I have often found employment as a music critic.

One of the great delights of my young life was to walk onto the property of Warner Bros. or Capitol Records, and be taken into the warehouse in behind the offices, leaving the premises with one hundred or more new albums, all ready to return to the home Cathy and I shared at Simon Fraser University.

From those days til today, my love for music, for discovering new music has known no bounds, as will remain the case through the end of my days.

Of course, I was very lucky — as were all members of the boom generation — to grow up in the era of The Beatles, and the rush of new music coming out of the UK, and down south out of Los Angeles. These were halcyon days of discovery, more often than not enhanced by the intake of cannabis (there is hardly any greater joy than listening to music stoned).

One of my early discoveries was Todd Rundgren, whose music career began in 1967 at the age of 19 with the Philadephia-based garage rock band, Nazz.

Over the next four years, Nazz released three albums, all to little acclaim, prompting Rundgren to leave the group, move to New York, and educate himself in the fine arts of audio engineering and production.

Upon arriving in New York, Rundgren was soon signed by Ampex Records, where he began work producing for various rock groups of the day.

1972 proved to be a critically important year for Todd Rundgren.

After signing with Bearsville Records — a recording studio started in 1969 by legendary music impresario Albert Grossman, manager of Bob Dylan, The Band, and Janis Joplin — Rundgren’s musical career took off into the stratosphere.

A few years back, a friend asked me, “So, what kind of music do you like?”

Today’s post constitutes one of a series of columns I’ve been writing on the Top 100 début albums of the past 75 years, music that has both changed and informed my life, my love of almost all musical genres also knowing no bounds.

I love life. I love music.

Today’s Music Sunday column tracks the early work of Todd Rundgren, and his multi-platinum solo, self-produced début album, Something/Anything?

Early in 1972, soon after signing on with Albert Grossman, one Friday afternoon early in the year, Todd Rundgren was in the Bearsville Studio offices for a pre-production meeting for his upcoming album the studio intended to record. All went well at the meeting, and at the 5 o’ clock hour, as the cleaning crew arrived, Grossman prepared to close the studio for the weekend.

Rundgren said, “I’ll have the cleaners let me out. I’m heading to the washroom.” Everyone bid their adieu, going home to their families.

But not Todd Rundgren. Instead, Rundgren hid out in a closet and slept for four hours, readying himself for the marathon production weekend ahead.

The cleaners left shortly before 9pm, when a sleepy Todd Rundgren emerged from his closet home. What occurred over the next fifty-seven and one half hours is part of rock and roll history.

From 9pm on that Friday night, until 6:30am Monday morning, Todd Rundgren wrote, produced, mixed, sang and played guitars, keyboards and all other instruments to produce the groundbreaking multi-platinum, multi-Grammy award winning hit machine, Something/Anything?

Every voice is Rundgren’s, every instrument played by the nascent songwriter-singer-producer, Rundgren over the weekend innovating on the recently acquired 8-track production studio equipment in ways previously unheard of and unimagined, writing a new chapter in the ongoing history of rock ‘n roll.

Twenty-five songs on a two disc album, recorded at a rate of under one fully produced song every three hours. When Bearsville Studio staff and executives arrived at their offices on Monday morning, they found Rundgren passed out, a master tape, track list and album cover art work on the console.

Over the next three weeks, working with Rundgren, studio engineers fine-tuned the 25 songs, the double Something/Anything? album released to critical acclaim in April, out-selling every other album that year.

Something/Anything? spawned a half dozen chart topping hits, including I Saw the Light, and a remake of the Nazz near-hit Hello It’s Me, which shot to No. 5 in the week it was released. As a reminder: both songs featured Todd Rundgren producing, as well as on all vocals and instruments.

It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference was the third smash hit off Something / Anything? to top the Billboard charts in the early autumn that year.

A dozen years later my children and I lived together at SFU with a woman, a younger doppelgänger for my now ex-wife, dubbed by my friends, and referred to by my children as Cathy 2 — as my friends said, “the sane Cathy,” and so she was.

One day when I was off teaching class, Cathy 2 put on the Rundgren album.

When I arrived home to our two-bedroom apartment at Louis Riel House, Cathy 2 greeted me, smothering me in kisses, excitedly exclaiming …

“Raymond, Raymond, I’ve spent the entire afternoon listening to Todd Rundgren’s Something/Anything? It’s gorgeous, it’s groundbreaking, I’ve never heard anything like it. I think I’m in love with Todd Rundgren!”

And so she was, and so should we all be.

On a closing note, and to provide a bit more background on Todd Rundgren.

In 1972, Rundgren began a relationship with model Bebe Buell. During a break in their relationship, Buell had a brief relationship with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, which resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

On July 1, 1977, Buell gave birth to Liv Tyler, the future model and actress.


Todd Rundgren raised actress Liv Tyler as his daughter for the first 18 years of her life. Even when she became aware that Steven Tyler was her father, she maintained Rundgren as one of her two fathers.

To protect the child from Tyler’s drug addiction, Buell claimed that Todd Rundgren was the biological father, and named the child Liv Rundgren, Todd Rundgren raising her as his daughter. At age fifteen, Liv learned that Steven Tyler was her biological father.

Even so, Liv Tyler still calls Todd Rundgren her father, and still maintains a very close relationship with the now 75-year-old musician.

The History of Musicals | Capturing the Magic of the Stage on the Screen

A & E, Arts Friday, Cinema, Essay, Pop Culture, Vancouver,

Movie musicals are often a polarizing topic.

People either love them or hate them, and even those that love them are critical of on-screen adaptations of their favourite stage shows.

In recent years, Hollywood hasn’t had a great track record of adapting musicals from the stage to the screen in a way that works, and many movie musicals in past years have been criticized for not having that certain something that makes the onstage musicals feel so special and unique.

That was the case until three years ago, 2021, which apparently became the year when Hollywood figured out how to make a good movie musical.

As the musicals that were made that year were, sadly, not big box office hits, nor successful streaming, movie musicals have once again faded from our screens, both in our local multiplex, and on Netflix and other streaming platforms.

Still and all, if you love musicals, you can still take heart with the rich and glorious history of the musical, in whatever form it has taken cinematically.

Regardless of their box office success, there were there a great many 2021 musicals that were Oscar nominated — In The Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, tick, tick…BOOM!, West Side Story, and even Encanto (which wasn’t derived from a stage play). For the most part, they were well executed, and loved by critics, if not by a mass, anticipatory audience.

For the past century, the Hollywood musical has been recognized as a distinguished part of our movie history, playing an integral role in the evolution of movies during the 1920s through 1950s, til now.

It wasn’t until 1927 that Warner Brothers first introduced to the big screen singing along with sound in their release of The Jazz Singer; a remake of the Broadway musical of the same name.

The late 1920s brought difficult economic times, and a worldwide Depression.

It was during this time that Hollywood came to the public’s rescue with the dynamically entertaining diversion of the Hollywood musical.

Hollywood studios began to release a plethora of musicals which offered the movie-going public a chance to temporarily escape from the dire economic issues that had the world in its grip.

In the 1930s, with Warner Brothers’ acquisition of choreographer Busby Berkeley, the musical genre was truly born with the release of popular musicals like 42nd Street, Bright Lights, and Gold Diggers.

Capping the decade was 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, still one of the classic musicals that continues to entertain audiences today.

It was during the 1940s that the Hollywood musical really came of age, and the popularity of the movie musical continued right through the 1950s.

One of the more popular 1940s musicals was Yankee Doodle Dandy, a film that introduced movie lovers to a young James Cagney who gave a performance that earned him an Oscar. Another popular 1940s title, long a holiday tradition, is The Bells of St. Mary’s.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer embraced old-fashioned musical films in the ’40s and ’50s, furthering the boundaries of the musicals, with stars like Judy Garland, Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney leading the way.

Starting with Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincent Minnelli, 1944), MGM began producing some of the most popular films of the era, including Easter Parade (Walters, 1948), An American in Paris (Minnelli, 1951), and Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly and Donen, 1952).

Marilyn Monroe brought a new element to the musical movie during the 1950’s.

This was also the time to bring Broadway to film in movies such as Oklahoma! and Guys and Dolls.

Elvis also started to make the big screen his home, which many believe signalled the beginning of the end for the genre.

Through the 1960s, though, the adaptation of stage material for the screen remained a predominant trend in Hollywood. West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Oliver! were all adapted from Broadway hits and each won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The genre changed slightly during the 1970’s, where in some cases, such as Saturday Night Fever and Tommy, the stars were not the singers. The movie plot was being driven by song, but in a pre-recorded way.

There were a few musicals to note in the ’80s, like Annie and Purple Rain, but for the most part, the entire genre had changed to musicians supplying the music.

With the arrival of the early 1990s, one of the more successful modern-day musical movements emerged: Disney’s animated musical blockbusters, including such films as The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Lion King, all released in rapid succession, amassing an enormous fan base along the way.

In 2000, let us not forget the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Are Thou?

Although the animated musical film has become a popular route for the genre in recent years, the success of musicals like Chicago, Rent, Sweeney Todd, and Les Misérables seems to indicate that large scale, live action musical productions are still very much relevant to film today.

In 2006: John Carney’s début film, Once, with Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová.

In 2017, three musicals were nominated for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globes: Florence Foster Jenkins, La La Land, and Sing Street, with La La Land taking home the award (well, sort of).

Although musicals might not necessarily find success in terms of receiving the most awards recognition, they are nonetheless popular and enjoyed by audiences.

Once upon a time, huge, spectacle musicals were the backbone of Hollywood.

The pandemic year of 2021 offered Hollywood a chance to return to the glory days of the 1930s Depression era musical, allowing audiences to reacquire a taste for the musical, to help lift of us out of the malaise that had us in its grip.

The Hollywood musical has always offered viewers a page out of movie history, memories that will forever be captured on film, and musical films that will continue to be enjoyed by audiences around the world.

 

Music Sundays | Norah Jones | The Discovery of a New, Young Talent

A & E, Music, Pop Culture, VanRamblings, ,

Norah Jones’ 2002 multi-Grammy-winning début album, Come Away With Me, has become one of the 21st century’s instant classics, an album for all time.

Jones comes from formidable musical stock. Her father is the heralded sitar player Ravi Shankar, her mother the acclaimed American concert producer Sue Jones.

Jones was born in Brooklyn in 1979. After her parents separated in 1986, she lived with her mother, growing up in Grapevine, Texas. Jones’ music took its form early on in the local Methodist Church where she regularly sang solos. At the age of 16, with both parents’ consent, she officially changed her name to Norah Jones.

Norah Jones showed enormous talent as a pianist from an early age, and was soon immersed in the works of pioneering American jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans, and renowned jazz singer, Billie Holiday … which led to Jones registering as a jazz piano major at the University Of North Texas, where her collaborations with Jesse Harris and Richard Julian set her on a new jazz country fusion path.

Urged by friends and mentors to move to New York to expand her musical vocabulary, Norah Jones arrived in New York City in 2000, whereupon she began appearing in ever larger clubs in and around Greenwich Village.

After a year and a half in New York, with A&R reps from the major record labels having heard of this young jazz / country-style artist, Norah Jones, and having seen and heard her in concert, a 22-year-old Norah Jones was signed to a recording contract with Blue Note Records, a label owned by the EMI Group, and production on her début album began.

Come Away With Me was released shortly thereafter, on February 26, 2002, becoming a monolithic, out-of-nowhere success in a way that’s almost hard to imagine now, when few releases can capture more than a week’s worth of attention.

Norah Jones’ début is a mellow, acoustic pop affair with soul and country overtones, immaculately produced by the legendary Arif Mardin.

Jones is not quite a jazz singer, but on her début album she was joined by highly regarded jazz musicians: guitarists Adam Levy, Adam Rogers, Tony Scherr, Bill Frisell, and Kevin Breit; drummers Brian Blade, Dan Rieser, and Kenny Wollesen; organist Sam Yahel; accordionist Rob Burger; and violinist Jenny Scheinman.

Jones’ regular guitarist and bassist, Jesse Harris and Lee Alexander, respectively, play on every track and also serve as the chief songwriters. Both have a gift for melody, simple yet elegant progressions, and evocative lyrics.

Jones, for her part, wrote the title track and the pretty but slightly restless Nightingale. She also includes convincing readings of Hank Williams’ Cold Cold Heart, J.D. Loudermilk’s Turn Me On, and Hoagy Carmichael’s The Nearness of You.

There’s a touch of Rickie Lee Jones in the voice of Norah Jones, a touch of Bonnie Raitt in the arrangements; her youth and her piano skills could lead one to call her an Alicia Keys for grown-ups.

Jones’ début record provided listeners with a strong indication of her alluring talents, Jones and Come Away With Me winning a slew of Grammy Awards.

Debuting at No. 139, Come Away With Me reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 within two weeks of its release. The single Don’t Know Why hit No. 1 on the Top 40 Adult Chart in 2003, and Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles Chart.

At the 45th Grammy Awards in 2003, Norah Jones was awarded …

  • Album of the Year: Come Away With Me | Arif Mardin / Craig Street / Jay Newland / Norah Jones / S. “Husky” Hoskulds / Ted Jensen;
  • Best Engineered Album: Come Away With Me | Jay Newland / S. “Husky” Hoskulds
  • Best Pop Vocal Album: Come Away With Me | Arif Mardin / Jay Newland / Norah Jones / S. “Husky” Hoskulds;
  • Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, Don’t Know Why | Norah Jones;
  • Record Of The Year, Don’t Know Why | Arif Mardin / Jay Newland / Norah Jones;
  • Song Of The Year, Don’t Know Why | Jesse Harris.

By February 2005, Come Away With Me was certified diamond for selling ten million copies, one of the top selling albums of the decade.