Category Archives: Cinema

Arts Friday | The Much Anticipated Autumn Film Festival Season Underway

September 9, 2021A & E, Arts Friday, Cinema, Vancouver, VIFF 2021nyff, telluride, tiff, venice biennale, viff 2021Raymond Tomlin

In 2021, wherever a film festival may take place, appropriate COVID protocols will be in place, including mandatory masks in the screening rooms and common areas, and proof that cinephile patrons have been vaccinated.

The pandemic – particularly given the ravages of the COVID-19 fourth wave – will probably mean, and has meant at the Telluride and Venice film festivals, prejudiced attendance numbers at fall film festivals. As was the case in 2020 – and once again will be so in 2021 – films on offer will be made available for home viewing, with a small number of films available exclusively for in-person screenings. In other words, in order for film festivals to “work” in 2021, festival directors have adopted a “hybrid model” to satisfy the viewing demands of their loyal patrons.

At Telluride and Venice, major film studios made their star-driven, Oscar contending film slates available to these two prestigious film festivals, as will be the case in Toronto – which got underway yesterday – and later this month in Gotham City, at the 59th annual New York Film Festival, which will share half their slate with VIFF.

At Telluride and Venice, Hollywood stars turned out in all their finery, engaging in post screening discussions with audiences, sitting in rapt & appreciative attention.

Above is a clip of Japanese-English director Will Sharpe’s The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, a whimsical Victorian biopic starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy — which, it was announced at the annual Vancouver International Film Festival media conference has been selected as VIFF40’s opening night film, on October 1st.

“Movies are a distraction from reality,” says a character in Paolo Sorrentino’s Hand of God — which débuted at Telluride — a sprawling, funny-sad, autobiographical coming-of-age story. That’s a good thing. Reality is drab and painful — “lousy,” according to the film’s English subtitles — and film provides a much needed respite.

The break-out Oscar contenders that débuted at Telluride include …

Cyrano, a lovely new telling of the classic story of Cyrano de Bergerac, which had its world première at Telluride, and took that film festival by storm — with guaranteed Oscar nods all around;

https://youtu.be/MUnsoxe7K4g

The North American première of Spencer, the mesmerizing new drama starring Kristen Stewart (a guaranteed Best Actress Oscar nominee) as Princess Diana; and

The crowd-pleasing King Richard, a drama charting the rise of tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams, expected to launch Will Smith into the Oscar race for his portrayal of the girls’ demanding dad and coach, Richard Williams — a loving, egocentric father who, it turns out, did know what was best for his daughters.

Céline Sciamma’s exquisite Petite Maman — which débuted at the Berlinale, and has been set as VIFF40’s closing night film (cuz it’s VIFF programmer, Curtis Woloschuk’s, favourite film at VIFF this year, he told VanRamblings earlier in the week — don’t tell anybody, though, cuz it’s a secret) — a delicate film full of surprises. Sciamma, whose Portrait of a Lady on Fire was a VIFF standout in 2019 (at the pre-pandemic VIFF festival), examines female intimacy from a different angle.

Nelly and Marion (played by young twins named Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz) are 8-year-old girls living in similar houses in the woods. They strike up a friendship tinged with elements of fairy-tale supernaturalism, magical realism and time travel. The twists packed into the film’s compact 72 minutes arrive gently and matter-of-factly. The intense emotions they leave behind — this is one of the quietest tear-jerkers you’ll ever see — are at once familiar and wholly new.

Soon, the sane and responsible among us will be fully vaccinated and in possession of our province-issued vaccine card — making attendance at movie theatres, restaurants, bars and pubs safer and more enjoyable for the vast majority of us.

As much as COVID’s fourth wave will keep us in its troubling grip, for the most part it is the anti-social unvaccinated amongst us who will bear the malignant brunt of the coronavirus — for the rest of us, a return to a near normal state of being holds promise for our immediate future, and the prospect of an autumn movie-going season sitting amongst our brothers and sisters inside a darkened movie theatre.

Arts Friday | Netflix Debuts ‘Worth’ Today

September 3, 2021Arts Friday, Cinema, NetflixRaymond Tomlin

A week Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that was 9/11.

Sara Colangelo, the award-winning writer and director of the 2018 film, The Kindergarten Teacher, brought her latest film, Worth, to the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, Now, some 19 months later, Netflix makes Worth available on their service — the film starring Michael Keaton and Amy Ryan.

Following the horrific 2001 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Centre and the U.S. Pentagon, Congress appointed attorney and renowned mediator Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton) to lead the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Assigned to allocate financial resources to the victims of the tragedy, Feinberg and his firm’s head of operations, Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), faced the impossible task of determining the worth of a life to help the families who had suffered incalculable losses. When Feinberg locks horns with Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci), a community organizer mourning the death of his wife, his initial cynicism turns to compassion as he begins to learn the true human costs of the tragedy.

Available now on Netflix.

The State of Cinema | Women, Misogyny and The Old Boys Club

August 27, 2021Arts Friday, CinemaRaymond Tomlin

From the earliest days of Hollywood, women were stage managed and manipulated by older men in powerful positions.

And it remains clear that, although Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, John Lasseter, Luc Besson and James Toback, among a host of other male predatory Hollywood executives have been outed, little has changed.

In the Hollywood dream factory, trauma surfaces as light entertainment.

In 2013, introducing the list of Best Supporting Actress nominees during the Oscar ceremony, comedian Seth MacFarlane quipped: “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.” What was chilling in that moment was that no one got the joke.
The idea that female stars and aspiring actresses are required to accept the attentions, at the very least, of older male studio executives, producers and prominent male stars, is as old as the Hollywood hills.

Given the profile that the #MeToo movement has brought to sex discrimination, why does sexism continue to prevail in Hollywood?

According to San Diego’s State’s Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film, women made up only 7% of directors on the top 250 films of 2019, which was actually a 2% decline from 2018.
The San Diego State study found that while women made up higher percentages of other fields in the industry – 24% of producers, or 17% of editors, for example – they only accounted for 17% of the workforce of all the jobs surveyed. And that too, was a 2% decline from the year before.

The University of Southern California’s Viterbi School of Engineering’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab (SAIL) revealed how sexism is embodied by characters on the silver screen. If female characters are taken out of the plot, it often makes no difference to the story the study found.

Men’s language was linked with achievement, while their conversations contained more coarse language and was associated with sex and death. “Writers consciously or subconsciously agree to established norms about gender that are built into their word choices,” Anil Ramakrishna, one of the San Diego study’s researchers, said in a Los Angeles Times report.

Upon analysis of 1000 scripts, the study found that there were 7x more male than female writers and 12x more male directors than women.

The biggest impact in counteracting the gender imbalance was if female writers were present at script meetings. If this was the case, female characters on screen was around 50 per cent greater, the study found.

Inherent in these observations of the film industry are powerful messages about what it means to be female.

In our “post-feminist” era, where we are frequently told the problems of girls are yesterday’s news — that girls are awash in the largesse of civil rights, and it is boys who really require our attention — it is worthwhile to consider the conduct of male Hollywood writers and executives.

Actress Geena Davis, founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

The problem is so glaring that in 2005 actress Geena Davis, who would go on to start her own gender institute, commissioned researcher Stacy Smith, from the University of Southern California, to study the issue and help push the studios beyond the staid male-centred film industry. From 2007 through 2019, according to Smith’s ongoing research, women made up only 30.2% of speaking or named characters in the 100 top-grossing fictional films.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media reports that films featuring women are financially profitable. “Guess what, Hollywood? Female-led films consistently make more money, year over year,” reported Madeline Di Nonno, the Institute’s chief executive, in a 2021 interview with Variety.
Hollywood actor Charlize Theron has criticized the movie industry for gender bias. Promoting her film Atomic Blonde, she told feminist Bustle magazine: “Fifteen, ten years ago, it was almost impossible to produce female-driven films, in any genre, just because nobody wanted to make it.”

A quiz that was designed to find out how sexist a film might be was developed by Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace in 1985.

To pass what has become more commonly known as the Bechdel test, the film needed three positive answers to these questions: Does it have more than two named female characters? Do those two women talk with one other? Is that conversation about something other than a man?

The Hollywood Reporter applied the Bechdel test to the top-selling films in 2019, finding that only around half of the films passed the test.

The sheer scale of Hollywood sexism is daunting, the stories of what actresses have to put up with disturbing, the tales of pay inequity and pushing for more female-led stories instructive.

Actress Zoe Kazan (‘The Big Sick’) told IndieWire reporter, Kate Erbland, “There’s so much sexual harassment on set. And there’s no HR department, right? We don’t have a redress. We have our union, but no one ever resorts to that, because you don’t want to get a reputation for being difficult.”

In the lead up to this year’s Oscar ceremony, actress Emmy Rossum sounded off during a Hollywood Reporter roundtable about her experience with overt sexism in the industry.

“I’ve never been in a situation where somebody asked me to do something really obviously physical in exchange for a job, but even as recently as a year ago, my agent called me and was like, ‘I’m so embarrassed to make this call, but there’s a big movie and they’re going to offer it to you. They really love your work on Shameless. But the director wants you to come into his office in a bikini. There’s no audition. That’s all you have to do.'”

If the dynamic of older men and younger, submissive women greases the wheels of Hollywood production offices repeats itself on screen, it is not an accident, but the desires of the producers and directors who create these films played out on the biggest stage of all: Hollywood cinema, the world’s most effective propaganda machine.

The Best in World Cinema | Film Festival Season Has Arrived

August 20, 2021Arts Friday, Cinema, Vancouver, VIFF 2021Raymond Tomlin

Film festivals are a vital link in the chain of global film culture.
Week in, week out, in pre-pandemic times most of us were bombarded with marketing messages extolling the virtues of mainstream movies.
But the films that make it into film festivals are a whole different kettle of fish than the blowed-em-real good, blockbuster films that make it into our local multiples. In point of fact, a good and vibrant film festival screens films that are as resistant as possible to the commercial pressures of standard mainstream fare. It is through independent films from across the globe, films that are made by independent voices that new ideas are expressed, new genres of film are created, and new, important directors emerge who serve to create a whole new cinematic landscape.

Great film festivals champion these ideals and filmmakers at their core.
Many festivals, including our own homegrown and much celebrated Vancouver International Film Festival, feature engaging panel discussions and masterclasses on aspects of filmmaking, bringing in diverse members of the film industry of interest to both filmmakers and to the general public. Events such as these offer a critical way to promote the filmmakers and their films, as well as to help film festival attendees learn about what goes on behind the mysterious black curtains shrouding the film industry.
A good series of learning events at a festival also strives to create debate about important issues facing not only filmmakers, but humanity in general. VIFF festivals past have engaged in panel and post screening audience discussions on a wide range of general interest topics — everything from climate change, to racial and sexual prejudices and social injustices.
Any community with a successful film festival prides itself on the artistic, cultural and commercial kudos a festival brings.
For local community film festivals like VIFF, it’s not just the red carpet and all the hype surrounding the festival. It’s also the jobs the festival creates, the hospitality provided to visitors, and the buzz around the commercial establishments in the festival area. Not to mention the hotels, snacks and meals of which festival attendees partake.

With 20,000 unique attendees in 2019, the Vancouver International Film Festival estimates that the boost to the Vancouver economy to be in excess of $1,500,000, engaging with local businesses to amplify the festival, and bringing business to the Vancouver’s central core.
Film festivals also serve to unite a community.
Festival staff reach out to a wide range of ethnic, gender and other diverse communities to enjoy the films on offer, engage with the filmmakers, as well as celebrate the stories told with the verve and enthusiasm of the filmmakers. Festivals serve to create a sense of community, where local audiences are afforded the opportunity to mingle with visiting filmmakers and share their experiences, and react to the work they have seen.

We live in very troubled times.
Polarization is a trend best opposed. And what better way to break down prejudices than through cinema. Is it not that most of today’s troubles are caused by misunderstanding of how different people live? Or how they love, work or play in different cultures with different religions?
And what better way to break down this misunderstanding than to take an audience to these different worlds and show how life really is?

“We love cinema at VIFF,” says VIFF associate programmer Alan Franey.

“And we love when an audience comes out from a screening feeling as if they have seen something cutting edge, something culturally informing, or something just plain straight entertaining. VIFF is known for showcasing issues and ideas that cannot be mass-communicated due to local laws and cultural taboos. And that’s why we continue, year after year, to bring the very best of independent cinema to the heart of our province.”

In fact, the 40th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is set to get underway in October, and will run for 11 days from Friday, October 1st thru Thanksgiving Monday, October 11th.
Roughly 110 feature films and 100 shorts will screen in Vancouver venues — with a selection of films also available for online viewing via the VIFF Connect streaming platform — at this year’s festival.
VIFF 2021 will showcase a vibrant programme of films and events, including a kaleidoscopic collection of revelatory Canadian work, visionary East Asian cinema, powerful and provocative documentaries, narrative cinema from some of the world’s leading lights, and elevated genre fare.
Curated short film programmes will allow audiences to discover inventive storytellers, while VIFF Talks aims to take viewers behind the camera. The Totally Indie Day, VIFF AMP, and VIFF Immersed conferences provide extraordinary support for local creative communities.
Every film in the 40th annual Vancouver International Film Festival lineup to be screened in-cinema this year will follow strict COVID-19 health and safety protocols, with seating capacity in the well-ventilated venues reduced to 50%, or a figure mandated by B.C.’s Public Health Officer.
As per usual, in-person VIFF box office will open at the VIFF Centre, located at 1181 Seymour Street just across from Emery Barnes Park, noon to 6pm daily, beginning Thursday, September 16th.
Before VIFF40 kicks off, though, there are four important film festivals which will precede ours.

Following on the success of the 73rd annual Cannes Film Festival in July, programmers with the Telluride Film Festival (September 2nd through Labour Day, September 6th) will programme some of Cannes’ best, as will the prestigious Venice Film Festival (September 1st through 11th), many of which films on their programmes will make it to the 40th annual Vancouver International Film Festival programme, as well, in early October.

Titane, Palme d’Or winner at Cannes this year, and rock solid to make it into VIFF40.

Titane, the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes this year is all but certain to screen at all festivals this late summer and early autumn. David Chase’s Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark, Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho, King Richard with Will Smith, Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and Michael Showalter’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye are all festival bound, and certain Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Oscar contenders.

The Toronto Film Festival (September 9th to 18) is probably the world’s most prestigious film festival, not only celebrating world cinema, but presenting most of the films that will feature in the Oscar race early next year. The 59th and heavily curated New York Film Festival (September 24th thru October 10th) always shares half of their programme lineup with Vancouver’s homegrown film festival — something to anticipate in 2021.

Jessica Chastain, the odds on favourite for Best Actress, for The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

Even though VanRamblings is taking a three-day break from coverage of the exceedingly dull, verging on enervating 40th Canadian federal election, as they become available, we’ll still provide you with the latest edition of David Herle, Scott Reid and Jenni Byrne’s Curse of Politics podcast.

The David Herle, Scott Reid & Jenni Byrne Curse of Politics podcast for August 20, 2021