Category Archives: A & E

Arts Friday | Netflix July | Time to Curl Up With a Good Movie

June 29, 2018A & E, Cinema, Pop Culture, Television, Video & DVDRaymond Tomlin

Meghan Markle. You know her — a princess and all, married some guy named Harry, purdy young gal, likes the Queen, feminist and known for her humanitarian work. And guess what else? For the past seven years, Ms. Markle has starred in a cable TV series called Suits — and you know what else, on July 18th you can binge-watch all of Season 7 of Suits, the last season of the USA Networks series starring the indefatigable Ms. Markle.

Meaghan Markle, a co-star of the USA Networks cable TV show, Suits

Yep, that’s Meaghan Markle above. And while we’re on the subject of recommendable and beauteous young women possessed of talent, there’s Australian actress Margot Robbie, who works with young, underprivileged children when she’s not filming a movie, as she’s doing now with Quentin Tarantino, starring as Sharon Tate in Tarantino’s new film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which partly involves the Manson Family murders.

Actress Margot Robbie will star as Sharon Tate in the new Quentin Tarantino film

On July 6th, Netflix brings I, Tonya to their indispensable service, the film in which Ms. Robbie was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award.

And, oh yeah, another Margot Robbie film, Suicide Squad, makes its way to Netflix in July, too, for your viewing pleasure, of course, or when the kids want to get out of the hot noon day sun — although Suicide Squad many not exactly be kids fare. But there is plenty of kids fare on Netflix. Honest.

Arts Friday | Illicit | Revealing The Lives of Illicit Drug Users

June 15, 2018A & E, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Illicit: Stories from Vancouver’s harm reduction movement is a community-engaged arts-based project developed and led by residents of our region brought together by the harm reduction movement, and the ongoing opioid crisis impacting on our region’s most vulnerable citizens.

Please listen to the audio above of the interview conducted last evening by VanRamblings with Illicit Artistic Director Kelty McKerracher, for full background on the development of the Illicit community-developed performance piece, what it’s all about, who developed and is involved in the project, the rationale behind Illicit, upcoming performances, and more.

Created in response to the 2016 closing by Vancouver Coastal Health of the Downtown Eastside harm reduction facility DURC (Drug Users Resource Centre), Illicit explores the lived realities of the opioid overdose crisis, the effects of Canada’s drug policy, the stigma faced by those who use illicit drugs, and the courage of community to act in the face of continuing loss.

On July 3rd and 4th, the creators of Illicit invite you to witness the next step in the evolution of their work-in-progress — by entering an immersive world of shadow, music and story that celebrates the heart of a movement. The July 3rd and 4th performances of Illicit will take place at the Orpheum Annex, at 823 Seymour Street, in the artistic heart of Vancouver.

At 1pm on July 3rd, there’ll be a ‘pay what you can’ matinée performance of Illicit, for community members and anyone who wishes to attend, with ticketed performances in the evening, at 7pm, on both July 3rd and 4th.

Towards the end of the month, or very early in July, VanRamblings will re-publish today’s post. Tickets for the upcoming performances of Illicit will be available here, at some point in the next 24 hours, for the July 3rd and 4th performances of Illicit with information, as well, on how you might contribute to the Illicit project, as well as where and when performances of Illicit will take place in Victoria and Kamloops.

“In both places,” says Ms. McKerracher, “we’re working with wonderful teams of people, to set up not only a theatrical venue but an environment where we can have a productive dialogue. Illicit isn’t just about a performance, it’s about opening a space for a conversation that needs to be happening across the board in our society.

Harm reduction and the opioid crisis is not just a Downtown Eastside issue, this is affecting people across the province and across the country. We’re hoping that by taking it outside of Vancouver we’re going to reach audiences who don’t have access to this kind of conversation, and this kind of cultural shift.”

Illicit, a site-specific installation and performance uses theatre, monologues, shadow puppetry and marionettes to tell personal stories that nurture dignity and hope. The artistic team behind the project: current Artistic Director and producer Kelty McKerracher, director Renae Morriseau, musical director and Juno award-winning artist, Devon Martin, and shadow marionette and puppeteer David Mendes, who collaborate with an active and intimately involved group of co-researcher performers — including Alanna Abrosimoff, Tyler Bigchild, Steve Cardinal, Nicolas Leech-Crier, Shawn Giroux, Jim McLeod, and Tina Shaw — to create Illicit.

Tina Shaw, who works in overdose response in the Downtown Eastside, is involved in the upcoming production about Vancouver’s opioid crisis.

Presented in partnership with PHS Community Services Society, Hives for Humanity, and SFU ‘s Office of Community Engagement. And with support from Canada Council for the Arts, Community Action Initiative, and Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. As Ms. McKerracher related to VanRamblings last evening …

“The show will be educational and anecdotal, about what’s going on in our community and how people feel, the performance of Illicit hopefully ending with a discussion. It’s about truth and understanding and about acknowledging the uncertainty, the loss, and the tragic unfairness of the current opioid crisis.”

For more information on the Illicit project, please visit the Illicit blog.

Arts Friday (well, sort of) | Radio Ratings | Whither Thou Goest

June 8, 2018A & E, Pop Culture, Radio, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

One in six people are listening to CBC Radio One in Vancouver at any given time

As I have written previously, in 1957 I received a transistor radio on August 11th, the date of my 7th birthday, which gift not only engendered a love for radio, but changed my life in significant ways.
By the time the mid-1960s rolled around, I had been hired as a rock ‘n roll deejay at the pop radio station of the day, CFUN 141, where I worked the occasional on-air shift, and read the news as directed by the news director, the late Jim Neilsen — who would go on to become British Columbia’s first environment minister, in the Socred government of Bill Bennett — as well as producing the Sunday evening foreground programming.
In 1966, a young upstart pop radio station sprung up in Vancouver — that had adopted a ‘hot clock’ format created by programme director Bill Drake for the lowest-rated radio station in the Los Angeles market, KHJ. Within three months of adopting what was called the ‘Drake format’ — which was also often referred to as Boss Radio — KHJ shot from last place to first in a Los Angeles radio market with over 70 radio stations.
Drake exported his Boss Radio format to hundreds of radio stations across North America, including 730 CKLG Vancouver. Within six months of adopting the BOSS radio Drake format, 730 CKLG shot from last place to second place in the Vancouver market, just behind powerhouse CKNW 98.
Within a year, CFUN was no more, converting to CKVN, the Voice of News.

A 1968 CKLG aircheck of J.B. Shayne, and various Boss radio station jingles. Hint: you’re gonna want to listen to the KRLA jingle (it’s the last one), which I acquired in 1972 from KRLA afternoon announcer, the legendary Shadoe Stevens. The jingle was played at the beginning of each announcer’s show, every three hours, from 6 a.m. til midnight.

All the jocks at CFUN left for CKLG, and LG-FM, including me: Terry David Mulligan, Don Richards, Daryl B., Fred Latremouille, and John Tanner, just to name a few. J.B. Shayne was already employed at the station, as he’d been hired in 1965 to do overnight on Lions Gate radio, playing classical music — which was, as you might imagine, a joy for the inimitable Mr. Shayne (not!). After adopting the Boss Radio format, Shayne remained at the station, continuing on overnights, becoming a Vancouver radio legend.

Courtesy of Ricardo Zborovszky. What has always impressed me about Top 30 music charts from the 1960s is the diversity of the music that was being played on radio, everything from Motown to pop, middle-of-the-road music for parents from Englebert Humperdinck, to trippy local psychedelia from The Collectors and their 1968 hit Lydia Purple to blues rock from the Rolling Stones & Americana folk from Simon & Garfunkel

In time to come, in VanRamblings Stories of a Life feature, I’ll write about my days in radio, including the very public broadcast throughout the entire Kootenay region of the loss of my virginity, a fond memory even to this day.

Believe it or not, there are actually people who listen to radio in this day and age of iPhones and iPods, loaded with 128GB of your favourite music downloaded onto your smartphone device with thousands of songs available at the call of Siri or Google Assistant, bluetooth, and streaming music services like Spotify, Apple Music and SiriuxXM — and, heck, it’s not all old fogeys like the publisher of this blog, either, who listen to radio.

Host Stephen Quinn dominates the radio market mornings Monday to Friday in Vancouver, on CBC Radio One’s The Early Edition, having taken over from longtime host Rick Cluff, when after some 20+ years, Mr. Cluff retired to his West Vancouver home during the holiday season that ended 2017, as it did Mr. Cluff’s 40+ year celebrated history in public radio.
If you want to know what’s going on in our city, our region and the province of British Columbia, you tune into Quinn’s The Early Edition, over the lunch hour on BC Today with Michelle Eliot, or Gloria Mackarenko’s re-invented On The Coast afternoon show — any and all issues of interest and concern are addressed on these three locally-produced broadcasts, featuring interviews with the broadest range of political figures, commentators, academics, and activists in our region and our province.
Little wonder that CBC Radio One dominates Vancouver’s radio market.
Although, CKNW comes in second in the Vancouver radio market in this last ratings “book,” the audience for that station is mainly 55+, hardly the demographic the advertisers want to reach, or so we keep being told.
QM/FM, although it’s ratings dropped a bit from the last time ratings were calculated, Vancouver’s oldest and most reliable music station continues to dominate the traditional radio market, as has been the case for more than 30 years, with its playlist of soft rock and classic radio favourites, with the occasional middle-of-the road contemporary song thrown into the mix.
Otherwise, Virgin Radio, Z95.3 and and KiSS Radio continue to compete for the ears of young listeners, a job they’re mostly successful at achieving.

Courtesy of Broadcast Dialogue magazine, David Bray, June 7th 2018
Vancouver: CBC Radio One continues its dominance of the Vancouver radio market, grabbing the #1 spot for A12+ with a 15.3% share of hours tuned (down from 15.7%). Taking the top spot for F25-54, QM-FM, posting a 16.5% share (down from 19.6% last book). FOX grabs the lead for M25-54 listeners, delivering a 13.8% share (up from 11.4%). The FOX is out in front for M18-34 with a 22.0% share of hours tuned (up from 15.8%). Women 18-34, QM-FM dominates, taking top spot with a 16.8 % share.

Even given its low ratings, TSN 1040 dominates the radio market, men aged 25 – 44, and 45 – 64, so for advertisers who want to reach that target market, TSN 1040 is the station that they’ll turn to more often than not.
Well, that’s it for this sort of Arts Friday VanRamblings post. Feels good to take a bit of break from the ever-so-satisfying maelstrom of local politics.

Arts Friday | An Indie Film Preview for the Month of June

June 1, 2018A & E, Cinema, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

A Multi-Billion Dollar Blockbuster Movie Summer
And, the 2018 Must-See Summer Indie Film Alternatives
With the summer movie season already well underway, starting earlier than ever this year, with the release of Avengers: Infinity War on April 28th, the film racing towards the two billion dollar mark worldwide, faster than any movie ever released, you are about to be brow-beaten with one big Hollywood blockbuster spectacle after another over the next three months.
Hollywood is thrilled, needless to say and Disney in particular as the releasing studio, with the record-breaking success of Avengers: Infinity War, a great start to Hollywood’s summer 2018 movie season, the movie studio heads can be heard murmuring, and a sign of good things to come.
Prospects for warm-weather moviegoing in 2018 are significantly better than they were in 2017, a year most studios and cinema chains like Cineplex would like to forget, with one box office blockbuster after another tanking with patrons, the cavalcade of failures foisted upon us last summer including The Mummy, Transformers: The Last Knight, The Dark Tower, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Baywatch, and The Emoji Movie.
Quite simply, summer 2017 was overburdened with testosterone cinema.
In 2018, though, the situation is looking better, says the president and CEO of Cineplex Entertainment, Ellis Jacob, who in a recent conference call told Canada’s film journalists …

“This summer’s film slate looks particularly strong, offering something for everyone.”

After a 2017 that saw a 9.3% drop off at Cineplex’s box office, a financial circumstance that has yet to abate thus far in 2018, box office tragedy for Cineplex is partially mitigated by the success earlier this year of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther and Jake Kasdan’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.
Still, Jacob has more than the usual reason for wanting his prediction of a 2018 big summer box office to come true.
The eight Hollywood titles Jacob predicts will do well this summer …

Ocean’s 8 (June 8), the all-female take on the caper comedy;
Incredibles 2 (June 15), one of Pixar’s best creations makes its way back into the cinema;
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (June 22), the long-awaited re-invention of the franchise;
Ant-Man and the Wasp (July 6), a reprise of the Paul Rudd starring surprise summer 2016 hit;
Skyscraper (July 13), yet another Dwayne Johnson chest-pounder, this one filmed in Vancouver;
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (July 20). Yes, the girls are back, and so are the boys;
Mission: Impossible — Fallout (July 27), another Tom Cruise stunt fest (early reviews are good).

While movie-goers have a tendency to overindulge in popcorn movies during the summer movie season, there are alternatives for adults.

What under-the-radar, low-budget films are set to break out in the month of June, films that will demand your attention, and your box office dollars?

On Chesil Beach (June 1). Opening today at Fifth Avenue Cinema, there couldn’t be a better way to kick off indie June than with Saoirse Ronan’s latest knock-out, On Chesil Beach, an entrancing adaptation of Ian McEwan’s novella about a young British couple on their honeymoon in 1962. A lyrical and exquisite film — a repressed passion play, funny, delicate and heartbreaking, the film and the story possess an intoxicating quality of emotional wonder, just the sort of indie film that you want to have lead off your summer of worthy and rapturous indie cinema

Hereditary (June 8). The most anticipated indie film to be released in June, a film that took Sundance by storm, and a film that seems poised to conquer the summer horror box office, a fitting follow-up to John Krasinski’s low-budget breakout A Quiet Place as one of the year’s best horror films. Filled with chilling images, a powerhouse performance by Toni Collette, and one eerie young girl, Hereditary is sure to terrify audiences, and emerge as an unforgettable and scarifying experience at the movies.

Won’t You Be My Neighbour? (June 8). Morgan Neville’s new documentary about children’s entertainer Fred Rogers, a breakout doc at Sundance 2018, offers sanity in an insane world, one of the most hotly-anticipated films of the summer. And there’s more to come: a Tom Hanks-led biopic called You Are My Friend, that will follow this documentary from Oscar recipient and recent Cannes casualty Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom).
More, from Matt Goldberg, writing for Collider …

I did not expect to cry as much as I did during Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, Morgan Neville’s documentary chronicling the life and career of Fred Rogers. As a cretinous youth who preferred the colourful Sesame Street to the staid Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, it’s only now as an adult that I can fully appreciate what Rogers was doing with his unique TV programme. And yet as Won’t You Be My Neighbor? shows, Rogers, an ordained Presbyterian minister with a background working alongside child psychologists, lived his values and created something special and enduring as a result. Although the documentary derives a large part of its strength simply from watching Rogers in action, it’s still a moving tribute not only to the individual, but to the kindness and compassion he and his programme embodied.

At Sundance, a standing ovation at the end seemed more for Rogers himself than the film. The image that lingers is a shot of Rogers hunched and cold in a tall field, a lone figure fighting the wind. He couldn’t control life’s storms. But he’d show people how to endure them.

Leave No Trace (June 29). The new film from director Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone) means something unexpected and thoughtfully crafted that you won’t want to miss. With quietly wrenching performances from Ben Foster, as a PTSD-afflicted vet, and newcomer Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, as his estranged daughter, this one’s a keeper. The last time Granik found a teenage actress to anchor her film it was Jennifer Lawrence. Early reviews indicate she’s found another potential breakout talent with the New Zealand-born McKenzie, the director’s latest a mesmerizing tale of life on the margins, a stunner, poignant, delicate, grim and captivating.
If you haven’t seen two other knockout indie films playing this week at Tinselown, get thee on down to Cineplex International Village now, to see …

Disobedience (Grade: B+). A gorgeously well-wrought film, with outstanding performances from Academy Award winner Rachel Weisz, with Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola giving the performances of their lives, Disobedience marks the North American English language début of Chilean director Sebastián Lelio, who picked up the Best Foreign Language Oscar just three months ago for his breakout transgender tale, A Fantastic Woman. A melancholy story involving an often surprising yet deeply felt romantic triangle, from beginning to end Disobedience exerts a powerful grip on the viewer, offering a love story, as beautiful as it is devastating.

RBG (Grade: A+). Must, must, must viewing — if you have a daughter age nine or older, if you’re a young woman with agency attending secondary school, college, university or striking out on your own, if you’re a woman who during the course of her life has lived as a feminist, whether quietly or as a community activist, run right out to the theatre right now, don’t wait, because RBG is essential viewing, a certain nominee for a Best Documentary Oscar, and a film that will see you leaving the theatre on a high, the likes of which you won’t have experienced in years! Go, now.
At the age of 85, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while in recent years becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior’s rise to the highest court in the United States has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans — until now.
Funny, sweet-natured, offering a love story for the ages, a women’s movement history lesson that will reside in you for years to come, RBG offers an unapologetic valentine to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but a sharp and spiky one too, in a fist-pumping, crowd-pleasing documentary that will have you talking with your friends and family for hours afterwards, as I witnessed at a screening last night, when groups of animated filmgoers looked for the nearest coffee shop to continue their passionate discussion of the feminist movement and women’s history and the monumental formal written legacy of a clear-eyed force of nature, the badass but even-tempered Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a figure of immense power in bringing about all that we now seem to take for granted in how women lead their lives, when only 40 short years ago, when many women, far, far too many women, were viewed and lived their lives merely as chattel, the powerless appendages of unremarkable, unforgiving men.
RBG excavates the truth buried below the surface in the late 20th century women’s movement: Ginsburg isn’t just an 85-year-old cultural icon, she’s also an 85-year-old cultural icon who spent a lifetime opting for litigating over protest, for painstaking incremental legal work that took years to bear fruit, who still feels more comfortable in the world of words and text than in the world of fame and notoriety. RBG captures that paradox beautifully.