Category Archives: A & E

Arts Friday | Oscar Contenders Already Playing in Theatres

November 16, 2018A & E, Cinema, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

It’s that most wonderful time of the year: the season when blockbuster holiday movies and Oscar contenders collide.
Do you like to take yourself too seriously and lecture people on the pitfalls of British period pieces? No worries: VanRamblings has your back.
No matter what you’re looking for, November probably has it in store for you. Today on VanRamblings, the best movies — Oscar contenders, and just plain, flat out good fun inside a darkened movie theatre, plus a probable Best Picture Oscar winner opening next month that is a must-see — but mostly, films currently playing at your local multiplex (and at the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Vancity Theatre) that you should keep an eye out for during the early part of the 2018 holiday season.
Holiday Movies & Oscar Contenders Currently Playing in Vancouver

A Star is Born
Whaddya mean you haven’t seen Bradley Cooper’s smashing directorial début? This multiple Oscar contender, since it’s October 5th opening weekend, has (as of Wednesday) already grossed a record $330,259,035 on a puny $36 million production budget. You don’t care about that stuff? Fine. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t see the single most entertaining film on offer this holiday season, worth every penny you’ll pay at the box office.

Transit. Opens today. Vancity Theatre.
Christian Petzold’s masterful new film, Transit, opens today at the Vancity Theatre for a limited, seven screening run. A refugee portrait that lands at a place of piercing emotional acuity, Petzold’s adaptation of Anna Seghers’ 1942 novel takes a brazen, bounding risk right off the bat by stripping its story — about a German concentration camp survivor seeking passage to North America in Nazi-occupied France — of any external period trappings, relocating it to a kind of liminal, sunburned present day. As Variety critic Guy Lodge writes, “there’s a method to the madness of Petzold’s modern-dress Holocaust drama: Transit invites viewers to trace their own speculative connections between Seghers’ narrative and the contemporary rise in neo-Nazism and anti-refugee sentiment, all while its principal story remains achingly moving.” Startling and gut-wrenching. Recommended.

Say it with me, “Melissa McCarthy. Best Actress Oscar winner.” I knew you could. Currently screening exclusively at Vancouver’s Fifth Avenue Cinema.

77,000 women and men are currently being held in conversion therapy across North America. Arising from a motion moved by retired Vancouver City Councillor Tim Stevenson, gay conversion therapy is now banned in the city of Vancouver. Boy Erased oughta provide some insight into why that is.

The most compelling reason to see A Private War is Rosamund Pike’s stunning, sure-to-be Oscar nominated performance as Marie Colvin, the American war correspondent who died in a bombardment while covering the Syrian government’s 2012 siege of Homs. Absorbing & transformative.

Academy Award winner Damien Chazelle’s First Man has emerged as the most compelling, Oscar contending movie of the holiday season, a film that demands to be seen, a lock Best Supporting Actress contender in Claire Foy, with a raft of other Oscar nominations sure to follow. A must-see film.

Widows. Opens today. Cineplex International Village + more.
Tour-de-force filmmaking from Academy Award-winning director Steve McQueen & the breakout surprise of the holiday season that has catapulted Viola Davis into the Best Actress Oscar race, Widows is gracefully written, soulful, smart and darkly exhilarating, weaving statements on race, gender, crime and grief into a tick-tock heist plot, a sinewy treat of a film that seamlessly intertwines close-up character studies & big picture politics into a mournful, brilliantly tense and strikingly relevant entertainment that will have you gripping your seat throughout its taut 140-minute running time.

Alfonso Cuarón’s Golden Lion winner (that’s Best Film to the uninitiated) at this year’s Venice Film Festival will win the Best Picture Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards on Sunday, February 24th, 2019. You read it here first.
And we don’t mean Best Foreign Language Film — we mean, the Academy Award for Best Picture. Period. Funded by Netflix, and due to début on the streaming service in mid-December, Roma demands to be seen on the big screen. But where? Yep, Vancity Theatre programmer Tom Charity has managed to secure the exclusive rights to screen Alfonso Cuarón’s new film next month, as the film is meant to be seen: in a darkened theatre, in comfy seats, in the respectful, hushed confines of the Vancity Theatre.
From Friday, December 14th at 3pm (when I’ll see the film), through Thursday, December 20th at 8:20pm, this year’s certain Best Picture Academy Award winner will screen an unprecedented three times a day (except for Sunday, December 16th, when Roma will screen only twice).
Update: Due to demand, more screenings of Roma have been added, daily through December 31st (not Christmas Day). See Roma as you are able.
Think of it as a very special post-Chanukah / early Christmas present from the good and fine and tremendous folks at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and the esteemed and erudite (and cinema-loving) Tom Charity — the best darned gift any cinema lover could wish for this holiday season.
Click here to book your screening of Cuarón’s Golden Lion winner, and treat yourself to great cinema. You’ll be mighty glad you did — we promise.

The Music of One’s Life, The Gift of Music from My Son

November 11, 2018A & E, Music, Pop Culture, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

From the late 1960s on, I have been gifted with having a series of publications publish my music reviews. My love for music started much earlier than that, though — in all likelihood, probably from the womb, because my mother loved music, our home filled always with the popular music of the day, which seemed to give my mother life, and succeeded almost always in bringing joy into our home.
The gift of the love of music was passed on to my children, by both their mother and me, both of us from an early age finding succour and sustenance in music that embedded itself into the lifeblood of our lives.
My son, Jude Nathan Tomlin, extended our family’s love of music beyond mere singing in the home, or playing music on the home or car stereo: Jude makes music, and has traveled the world as a progressive house D.J., playing his own special brand of house music. Most, if not all of his music collection is on vinyl, because he (and many others) experience the sound of music that emanates from vinyl as fuller, warmer and more intimate.
Over the years, every now and then, Jude would run across a piece of music that was not intended to be digitized, and had not been digitized, but as he knew that almost all of my music is either on CD, DVD or mp3, Jude would take pity on his poor dad and convert the vinyl “song” he had discovered into a high quality mp3 to add to my music collection (although he’d find the juxtaposing of the words “high quality” and “mp3” a curious construction indeed, and mutually exclusive concepts … still and all …).
Even today, I could not find Transglobal Underground’s remix of Dub Tribal’s Elastic Reality anywhere as an mp3, or on YouTube, so I uploaded the “song”, which you’ll find at the top of today’s Music Sunday column.
I recall one day not all that many years ago, when Jude arrived home from his travels, his sitting down at my computer, whereupon he added Transglobal Underground’s remix of Dub Tribal’s Elastic Reality to my iTunes music collection, and subsequently to my iPhone’s 5000+ song collection of music. I find the song calming, as does Jude, and as he knew I would.
Jude continues often, if less often than previously, to provide me with the gift of music, as he did some years ago with the second song on today’s Music Sunday roster, an historical piece of music by The Art of Noise, featuring the late British actor John Hurt performing the narrative vocal, the song about Claude Debussy, titled, The Holy Egoism Of Genius.

Arts Friday | Burning & Madeline’s Madeline | Vancity Theatre

November 9, 2018A & E, Cinema, Diversions, Pop Culture, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

The 37th annual Vancouver International Film Festival — home to all that is good, great and life-changing in independent film, and award-winning film from countries spanning the globe — wrapped one month ago.
For many, the Festival closing for another year is cause for despair, for where else other than VIFF will lovers of film discover authentic cinema?
As we have written many times previously on VanRamblings, Tom Charity is the year-round programmer of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Vancity Theatre, on Seymour just north of Davie & across the street from the expansive, much-cherished community amenity, Emery Barnes Park.
Eleven months of the year, the good and great Mr. Charity programmes the very best in independent and world cinema, home to transcendently lovely films of import, award winning cinema that finds a home in the gorgeous, comfy and intimate 175-seat Vancity Theatre. For our new Mayor and ten new Vancouver City Councillors, the Vancity is not only our — which is to say, the citizens’ — cinema, it is your cinema. Why, your cinema?
The home of the Vancouver International Film Festival, and the creation of the Vancity Theatre, occurred consequent to a demand by the city of Vancouver with the developer of the overshadowing Brava condominium complex that a constituent element of the Brava development, as the developers’ community amenity contribution, would be the realization of a year-round home for VIFF, and the creation of a city and a neighbourhood state-of-the-art cinema, which came to be known as the Vancity Theatre.
As our new City Council’s point person on the arts, and as a member of our community who fought hard for the preservation of the east side’s Rio Theatre, Councillor Michael Wiebe — who, on occasion, we have seen in the audience of the Vancity, as we have seen other of our newly-electeds, as well as recent and past members of Council — should, from time to time, remember that the Vancity Theatre is their home, as it is home for so many of us who look to VIFF for cinematic insight into the human condition — and you know what, the Vancity Theatre always, always comes through.
As is the case today, with two outstanding films that have captured the interest of cinéastes everywhere, and this year have taken the globe, and film festivals across the globe, by storm as ineffable, astonishing and triumphantly inventive cinema of the first order, compelling, extraordinary and intoxicating cinema magic that demands your attention & attendance.

Madeline’s Madeline, Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street. Now playing.
Friday, November 9th, at 6pm
Saturday, November 10th 2018, at 5pm
Sunday, November 11th, at 8pm
Wednesday, November 14th, at 4pm
Thursday, November 15th, at 1pm
Written and directed by Josephine Decker and starring remarkable newcomer Helena Howard, Madeline’s Madeline is a stunner, a hit at Sundance earlier this year, cinema considered by many critics to be one of the best films of the year. Described by IndieWire’s David Ehrlich as …

“… an ecstatically disorienting experience that defines its terms right from the start and then obliterates any trace of traditional film language, achieving a cinematic aphasia that allows Decker to redraw the boundaries between the stories we tell and the people we tell them about, Madeline’s Madeline emerges as one of the boldest and most invigorating American films of the 21st century, a dazzling hall of mirrors, a mesmerizing and unshakeable cinematic experience that demands your attention.”

Madeline’s Madeline opens at 6pm tonight at the Vancity Theatre.

Burning. Opens tonight at 7:50pm, at the Vancity Theatre, on Seymour.
Saturday, November 10th, 2pm
Saturday, November 10th, 6:50pm
Sunday, November 11th, at 5:10pm
Wednesday, November 14th, at 1pm
Thursday, November 15th, at 3pm
Friday, November 16th, at 8:30pm

Lee Chang-dong’s masterful thriller and Cannes FIPRESCI Prize winner, Burning is South Korea’s 2018 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar entry, and a film sure to end up on a raft of critical top-10 lists, cinema that shudders with ravenous desire, a meticulous and mysterious slow-burning thriller that transforms into a masterful look at jealousy, class, and revenge that, despite its 148 minutes, quickens its pace as it moves along, all the while torching genre clichés, Burning emerging as a subtle, teasing mystery that develops into a full-blown thriller, and cinema that leaves a lasting, scorching blister that purifies the soul. Clearly, then, a must-see film.

The Music of One’s Life, The Voices of Women | The Rescues

November 4, 2018A & E, fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Music, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

In 1993, my friend J.B. Shayne was visiting in my home, and as I was preparing a bit of lunch, he scanned my vast (at the time, anyway) CD collection — about 10 minutes into his investigative process, J.B. turned to me and said, “Do you realize that 80% of your music collection features female vocalists?” At the time, the thought had never occurred to me that J.B.’s statement might be true. Somehow, I’d just never realized it.
Over the coming months, then, as you might well expect, VanRamblings’ readers may reasonably project that the vast majority of music I’ll be writing about will feature women vocalists, from my country and Americana favourites Kasey Chambers, Allison Moorer, Iris DeMent, Kacey Musgraves, Lady Antebellum, Lori McKenna, Miranda Lambert, Nickel Creek, The Secret Sisters, Julia Stone and Lucinda Williams, to my fave urban contemporary artists like Chrisette Michelle, Teedra Moses, Nicki Flores, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige, Amel Larriuex, and Krys Ivory, to the following cross-genre artists …
Cat Power, Emiliana Torrini, Julien Baker, Laura Nyro, Lianne Le Havas, Rickie Lee Jones, Stina Nordenstam, Tracey Thorne, Gemma Hayes, Eva Cassidy, Feist, Imogen Heap, Robyn, Missy Higgins, Sharon van Etten, Laura Jansen, Lily Allen, Fiona Apple, Bic Runga, Beth Orton, Adaline, Coeur de Pirate, Emil Sande, Jem and Lykke Li, to female fronted groups like …
Apples in Stereo, Azure Ray, CocoRosie, The Roches, Rumer, and more.
The above artists only scratch the surface of my musical itch for discovery.

Sometimes, there are songs that I just keep returning to, music with harmonies featuring women’s voices, songs that pick me up, brighten my mood and give me hope. That’s the music I’m presenting today.
The Rescues were formed in Los Angeles in 2008, a female fronted indie supergroup, featuring acclaimed singer / songwriter and multi instrumentalist Kyler England, composer, video director and artist Adrianne Gonzalez, who were joined by conductor and film score composer Gabriel Mann, and a rotating fourth vocalist, The Rescues together creating a free form amalgam of cross-genre musical styles ranging from acoustic, folk and Americana to progressive dance, electronica, hip-hop and rap.
Although Katy Perry did a cover of The Rescues’ Teenage Dream, Kyler England, Adrianne Gonzalez, Gabriel Mann and Rob Giles created the captivatingly gorgeous four-part harmonies that you’ll hear in their definitive version of Teenage Dream. Listen for yourself & enjoy …