Category Archives: Cinema

VIFF Movie Mania Nears: Tickets On Sale at the Vancity Theatre

September 19, 2016Cinema, VIFF 2016Raymond Tomlin

Vancouver International Film Festival tickets are on sale daily at the Vancity Theatre on Seymour Street, just north of Davie. This year’s festival will run from Thursday, September 29th through Friday, October 14th where 365+ films, including 219 full-length features, from 75+ countries will screen.
Get ready for a cinematic onslaught: Tickets and passes for the 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival have been on sale since the first part of the month. This year’s edition of VIFF, which takes place September 29-October 14, will screen upwards of 365 domestic and foreign films, including 219 full-length features and 130 short or mid-length films from 75+ countries which will play on nine screens at seven venues.

This year’s glossy programme (once again, available at no charge) may be found at the Vancity Theatre, as well as at libraries, coffee shops, community centres and VIFF sponsors all across the Metro Vancouver area.
And as per usual, films will screen (mostly) throughout the downtown core, from the Vancity Theatre (185 seats) on Seymour Street in new Yaletown, to the Cinematheque (194 seats) on Howe Street, in the burgeoning South Granville area. Many VIFF screenings will occur in the thriving, relatively new Crosstown neighbourhood, nestled in between the hustle and bustle of downtown, the new-money flash of Yaletown, the historical character of Gastown, and the colourful grit of Chinatown, with screens available to patrons at the 350-seat SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (in the Woodwards building, at Abbott and Hastings), the nearby Cineplex International Village Cinema, in Cinemas 8, 9 and 10 (799 seats in total), and the Vancouver Playhouse, on Hamilton Street (668 seats).
Perhaps the most glorious (as well as largest, and most comfortable) venue is The Centre for the Performing Arts, on Homer Street, between Georgia and Robson (1800 seats, 900 on the main floor), due west of the Vancouver Public Library. The Rio Theatre, at Commercial and Broadway (420 seats), will also play host to a wide range of VIFF 2016 films.

Beginning Tuesday, VanRamblings will publish insight into 25+ films which arrive at our 35th annual VIFF having won awards and critical acclaim at film festivals spanning the globe, from Venice and Berlin, to Cannes & Locarno, from Tribeca and Toronto, to Seattle, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, London, Park City Utah’s Sundance Film Festival, and more, as we attempt to provide you with insight into what may emerge as worthy entries, among them films which are likely to gain Oscar recognition early in 2017.

Full, daily VIFF coverage — which began on Monday, September 19th — will be available here through and beyond Festival end on October 14th, or by simply returning to VanRamblings each day. Commencing on Tuesday, September 20th, 2016 VanRamblings will provide 8 straight days of coverage of the 25 – 30 award-winning and under the radar films that will screen at the 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival that may be worthy of your interest and your consideration.
VanRamblings will also provide coverage of the International Shorts programme (thank you Sandy Gow!), and will publish an interview with the tremendously gifted Vancity programmer Tom Charity that we hope readers will find both informative and heartening. Looking forward to seeing you back here at VanRamblings regularly and often, as we seek to provide VIFF 2016 coverage we hope will be of ongoing and consuming interest to you.

2015 Oscar Contenders, The Season’s & The Year’s Best Films

November 8, 2015CinemaRaymond Tomlin

Left to right, top to bottom, 2015’s front-running Oscar contenders: Spotlight, The Martian, Room; Son of Saul, Bridge of Spies, The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road; Joy, Brooklyn, Steve Jobs; The Danish Girl, Carol, Inside Out, and Youth.

As is the case each year, the chill weather of late autumn and early winter brings on the year’s most prestigious films, an opportunity for Hollywood to prove that it’s not just all about the sanguinity of the bottom line, but that from studio heads through to directors, actors, producers, screenwriters, cinematographers, and all the other ‘crafts’ who pour their lifeblood into making films, cinema is more about celebrating the rousing, transformative filmic experience, over the more prosaic concerns of the fiscal imperative.

Tom O’Neil’s Gold Derby surveys you & the critics to predict the Oscar award winners

Each autumn for more than a decade, from mid-autumn through until the evening of the Oscar ceremony, David Poland — the founder of the film news “blog”, MovieCityNews — sets about, weekly, to survey the informed opinions of Hollywood’s top Oscar prognosticators, from recent U.S. Weekly film critic Thelma Adams, to Hitfix’s Gregory Ellwood, The Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg, the Toronto Star’s Peter Howell, Fandango’s Dave Karger, and IndieWire’s Anne Thompson, among a host of others, on what films, and which directors and actors have emerged, in any given week, as the odds-on favourites to make the final cut when — in 2016, on Thursday, January 14th — the Oscar nominations are announced, and on February 28th, 2016, Oscars are awarded to the previous year’s best films, performances, screenplays, producers & craft work of outstanding calibre.

Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells predicts the Oscar nominees in his Oscar Balloon

For those who do not follow the perambulations of the “Oscar race” (for us, it is not dissimilar to following & commenting on an “election race” — with much less on the line, of course), VanRamblings will be here each weekend to update you on which films are worthy of your time, providing as well early insight into the potential career-altering & enhancing Oscar winners.

An amalgam of Gurus of Gold film critics predict the Best Picture Oscar nominees.

This week, Poland’s Gurus of Gold Oscar panel has highlighted the riveting journalistic thriller Spotlight (opening in Vancouver next weekend) as their runaway number one film of the year, followed by Ridley Scott’s humanistic science fiction film, The Martian (which has garnered box office gold in its first five weeks of release, its international and domestic take currently sitting at a pristine $458 million), the independently-financed Canadian-
Irish co-production of Emma Donaghue’s gripping New York Times best-seller, Room, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hank’s Bridge of Spies, the upcoming Christmas Day release films, The Revenant (directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio), as well as Joy (the latest film from the irascible David O. Russell, starring Jennifer Lawrence in a certain-to-be-nominated Oscar performance), the wonderful and incredibly moving Saoirse Ronan-starrer, Brooklyn, and rounding out their top 10, the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Steve Jobs, Cannes’ Best Actress winner (for Rooney Mara) Carol, and Disney’s animated classic, Inside Out.

Six of the Gold Derby film critics weigh in on probable Best Picture Oscar nominees

Todd Haynes’ Carol will open in Vancouver on Friday, December 11th, and as indicated above, both David O. Russell’s Joy and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant will open Christmas Day across Metro Vancouver, with Spotlight opening in Vancouver this coming weekend, and Inside Out already available on DVD or On Demand for your home theatre system.

The spectacularly affecting Brooklyn (VanRamblings’ favourite film this year) opens in Vancouver on November 20th, while Room, Bridge of Spies, Steve Jobs, and The Martian are currently screening at cineplexes across Metro Vancouver. Lots of time left for you to see the very best Hollywood has to offer, all in preparation for the gala, gala “do” that is the annual dressed-to-the-nines, “look how gorgeous her gown is” end of February Oscar ceremony. Bring on the buttered popcorn and Oscar party snacks!

VIFF2015: Brooklyn Wins the Audience ‘People’s Choice’ Award

October 10, 2015Cinema, VIFF 2015Raymond Tomlin

Brooklyn, probable multiple Oscar nominee and the most powerfully affecting film to screen at the 34th annual Vancouver International Film Festival emerged as the overwhelming audience favourite at last night’s VIFF 2015 Closing Gala, held at the Centre for the Performing Arts.
Adapted from the Irish novel by Colm Tóibín, and delicately adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby, Brooklyn tells the story of Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan), an Irish immigrant who travels to America in the early 1950s for a more prosperous life.

Impeccably crafted and gorgeously rendered, as Rodrigo Perez wrote for The Playlist earlier this year, when the film débuted at the Sundance Film Festival, Brooklyn offers “a heartbreaking and poignant story about choices, country, commitments, sacrifice, and love, and a superb, luminous, and bittersweet portrayal of who we are, where we’ve come from, where we’re going, and the places we call home.”
Brooklyn will open in Vancouver for its regular run on November 4th.

VIFF’s most popular international documentary was Swedish director Stig Björkman’s Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words.
Votes are tabulated through collection of comment cards made available to VIFF patrons, and as patrons submit their appraisal of films screened, through use of the VIFF app, available for both Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms.

VIFF2015: Cinema of Despair To Come to a Close in Mere Hours

October 8, 2015Cinema, VIFF 2015Raymond Tomlin

Yes, it’s the final day for the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival films at Cineplex’s International Village, and Friday is the last day of VIFF 2015 — we’re verklempt (but, secretly, we’re kind of glad, cuz we’ve got a scratchy throat, which for us is always a precursor to a cold or the flu) — except, of course, for the VIFF Repeats, which begin at 11:45am Saturday.
The above said, there are a great many films which will screen today and tomorrow that are worthwhile, or must-sees — you’re simply going to have to take our word for it. The absolute must-see, change your schedule film:

Sparrows, screening at 2:30pm at the Vancity Theatre is, by far, the BEST film screening today; yes, it’ll be difficult to fit in other films, but no other film is as great and important and memorable and worthwhile as Sparrows, a knock you on your ass film. 2:30pm, Vancity Theatre — be there.
Otherwise, if you haven’t caught Albert Maysles’ final film, In Transit (by far the BEST documentary at VIFF 2015), you’ll want to make darn sure you catch the final screening of the year’s best documentary at 2pm, Cineplex International Village, Cinema 10. Now, it’s true — you can’t fit in In Transit and Sparrows, cuz they’re screening at competing times. If documentaries are your cup of tea, In Transit is for you, if knock you on your ass, world-class filmmaking is your cuppa, it’ll be Sparrows you want to see.
On Friday, the very, very last day, it’ll be gone forever, there’ll be no more VIFF 2015, you’se either gotta see ’em now, or … well, you know …
James White is the keeper on Friday, screening at SFU Woodwards at 1:30pm. Accused is the second must-see the last day of VIFF 2015, screening at 6pm at The Cinematheque.

Friday, if you fail to take in the 9pm screening, at The Playhouse, of I Saw The Light, well, you’re just plum loco, yer jes out of yer cotton pickin’ mind. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to go out on a high note at VIFF 2015?
Hank freakin’ Williams — Mr. Despair himself (and isn’t that what our film festival is all about, the cinema of despair? … yer darn tootin’ it is), and Mr. Despair is paired with the dishiest dish in Hollywood (and she’s durn talented, too, that …) Elizabeth Olsen, and she could very well pick up a Best Supporting Actress Oscar on Sunday night, February 28, 2016, too.
Believe you me, if you ain’t at The Playhouse on Friday night to see I Saw The Light, you’re just gonna be singin’ those lovesick blues til the cows come home — and you wouldn’t want that to happen, would ya?

There’ll be no coverage of VIFF on Friday, cuz we need a break (and then there’s that scratchy throat thing-a-ma-jiggy).
On Saturday, you will find the list of winners that were announced at VIFF 2015’s Closing Gala, at The Centre for the Performing Arts. At some point next week — in the midst of what will be daily coverage of Canada’s 42nd national election — we’ll publish a column on the audience favourites, as tabulated through your votes on the VIFF app, or on those sweet cards that VIFF volunteers were handing out.
We will likely publish a column reflecting on VIFF 2015, prob’ly next week.