Category Archives: Pop Culture

#Holidays | Bah Humbug! | 2021 Christmas Lights Tour

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When VanRamblings began our first annual Christmas Lights Tour 50 years ago, the residences along every block of the city of Vancouver and the whole of the Lower Mainland was alight in Christmas light decorations, whole stretches of blocks where every homeowner had strung lights on the balconies around their homes, and on their lawns, competing with their next door neighbours and the neighbours across the way to take the community prize for best residential light display.

That was then, this is now. Much has changed.

Over the past 50 years, fewer and fewer homeowners have taken the time and trouble to put up Christmas light displays around their home. Back in the day, there were no Christmas LEDs available, so putting up residential Christmas decorations proved to be a costly seasonal expense, often topping $1000. For the past 20 years or so, LEDs have been all the rage — more environmentally sound, and much less costly — yet fewer light displays.

In 2021, VanRamblings’ recommendation to our readers: take a walk, or a drive, around your neighbourhood, and you’re likely to see a surprising number of residential light displays — which is what we found to be the case this year, across all 23 Vancouver neighbourhoods.

                                             Sutton Place Christmas tree

As in past years, our Christmas Lights Tour begins with the downtown hotels.

The photo above of a decorated Christmas tree was taken at the Sutton Place Hotel on Burrard Street. In the 1990s, when the hotel was named Le Meridien, and the General Manager was the diehard romantic, Louis Daniel, the hotel went out of its way to create a festive environment in the hotel.

Each year, the chef created an entire chocolate village in the front lobby, featuring a huge chocolate village table, and a continuation of the chocolate village all along the south wall at the entrance to Le Meridien. The remaining area in the lobby and the seating area north of the lobby was filled with a riot of lustrous Christmas trees.

That was the 90s, this is now. No more chocolate displays, no ‘huge’ trees, and many fewer of them. Even before COVID this was the case. One supposes fiscal times were tough even pre-COVID, and the first things to go were the chocolate villages, and the riot of huge Christmas trees. Alas.

  Hyatt Regency Hotel Gingerbread display, located at the entrance to the lobby

Next, it was a stroll down an almost deserted Burrard Street (amidst the supposed hustle and bustle of the Christmas shopping season) to the Hyatt Regency Hotel at Georgia Street, to see if the hotel had come through with their annual Metro Vancouver public and private school-created Gingerbread villages. As was the case last year, again this year, aside from the gingerbread display you see above — created by Hyatt Regency staff, one would suspect — there were no gingerbread village displays to be found. Must be this new Omicron variant that’s been spreading so wildly this past week, or so.

Hotel Georgia Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel. Don’t miss the optical illusion art on the wall.

Next it was to the Hotel Vancouver, and then to the Hotel Georgia. In the past, the Hotel Georgia set up a free hot chocolate bar every visitor to the hotel might enjoy. Not this year, or last. There’s still the optical illusion art work on the wall in the lobby area to admire, and the trees you see in the photo above.


View of Stanley Park, from the concourse of Canada Place. Don’t miss the Woodwards window displays.

Next on the gloriously sunny and clear-skied Thursday, December 16th, it was to Canada Place to see the Woodwards window displays, and to admire the view from the concourse. VanRamblings could continue to bah hug! our way through this portion of the tour, and comment on the fact that neither the Pan Pacific Hotel nor the Fairmont Hotel had bothered to create any kind of festive atmosphere in their hotels, and once again this year there were no 25′ decorated corporate Christmas trees in the Canada Place open area — but we won’t do that, because we’re in an upbeat and festive mood!

As always, the Woodwards windows — which VanRamblings enjoyed as a child — were spectacular if, as our friend commented, “more than a bit colonialist in their presentation.” Still and all, free, something to behold, and a must-see.

We got back into our comfy and spacious EVO sedan car (with heated seats!) — although we had tried to secure one of EVO’s fleet of Kia Niro EV’s, of which there are only four in a fleet of 2500 EVO vehicles, but were unsuccessful. Next year maybe.

As the Christmas Lights Tour is supposed to be a free event, as we drove by the Christmas Market at Jack Poole Plaza we noticed the line was long, and entrance to the Market was fiscally dear — so we drove on to see the row houses in the 100 block of Victoria Drive that were all lit up last year. Not this year.

We drove to Victoria Park, where last year we noticed that the entire 1800 block of houses along Kitchener Street were lit up with Christmas decorations galore. Not in 2021. The same proved true along Victoria Drive from East 3rd Avenue south — with no light display surrounding the house at 12th and Semlin Drive, either. A minor disappointment, as we made the decision to drive along the residential streets of Grandview Woodland, from Victoria Drive and East 2nd through to East 8th Avenue, and up to Nanaimo Street. There were  in the neighbourhood a pleasing number of residential Christmas light displays, so our festive holiday lights needs were more than met, we found.

We next drove through East Vancouver (see photos above), along Kitchener Street, up Rupert Street to Price Street, then over to Ontario Street just west of Main Street, and finally to Canuck Place west of Granville Street.

We continued our Christmas Lights Tour drive through Vancouver, as we drove through Vancouver’s neighbourhoods towards Canuck Place (always a delight!) — although, this year, there is no entrance to the grounds, as in past years —  but we did run across the home pictured above that was not on our Lights Tour last year. In fact, we found that the entire 3200 block of West 14th Avenue was completely lit up. There are also a great number of holiday light displays west of Waterloo Street, from West 11th Avenue to West 14th Avenue.

We continued our drive, now over to the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club light display, then to Granville Island, and downtown past the St. Paul’s Hospital Lights of Hope display, to English Bay, and then on to the Bright Nights display — which we were disappointed to find this year requires a purchased-in-advance $13 ticket that both gains you entrance into the Firefighters Holiday Lights Display, and a ride on the Christmas train. VanRamblings is of a parsimonious nature (we had our $10 in hand to donate to the Firefighters Burn Fund), and given that by this time we were famished, we decided to drive over the Lion’s Gate Bridge towards the Cactus Club at Park Royal, where we both enjoyed nutritious bowls of goodness.

Preparing for our drive out to Horseshoe Bay along Highway 1 — which affords an eagle’s eye view of Metro Vancouver — we first ‘stopped in’ at the 800 block Eyremount in the British Properties, where we were wowed by the Christmas Lights Display. On the way back from Horseshoe Bay along the lower road of Marine Drive, right next to the water and then along and through Dundarave, we next decided to take in the lights of North Vancouver, which may be found in the Google Maps display just below.

Traveling over the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge we took the turn off, and headed towards Hastings Street where the street was all lit up.

As the hour was late, and my Lights Tour companion was fading — with Google Maps on his smartphone, he had acted as the navigator throughout, and did a darn fine job — prior to heading home we stopped in for a late night hot chocolate at Timmie’s, after which we returned to our respective homes.

When conducting the Christmas Lights Tour from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s, Megan (VanRamblings’ very decided ‘knows her own mind, knows what she wants’ daughter, 8 years of age in 1985), along with her brother Jude decided that the Christmas Lights Tour would begin at 3pm, when they were let out of school, and last until the wee hours of the next morning, usually around 4 a.m., when we took in not just the whole of Vancouver, but the entirety of the North Shore, Burnaby, New Westminster, the Tri-Cities, and then over the Port Mann bridge to Surrey — the ability to get by on only four hours sleep a night, and get a second wind to take us through the night, but one salutary feature inherited from their loving and devoted papa.

If you wish to go further afield than what we’ve outlined above, take a look at the second half of VanRamblings’2020 Christmas Lights Tour guide.

On a final note, should you click on the 2020 Christmas Lights Tour guide, you’ll find the following festive home in Surrey, near Guildford.

Flavio Marquez, the homeowner of 16468 104 Avenue, in Surrey, wrote to VanRamblings awhile back to say …

In 2021, my family has built an even larger holiday lights display, with many more lights and more lawn decorations than last year. During the holiday season in 2020, we raised over 1,400 lbs of food and almost $1,800 in cash donations. With the support of your readers — who we would very much like to see visit our home this year — we hope to do even better in 2021!

Again this year, my family has created a Facebook photo album (click on preceding link) that will provide your readers with even more insight into what we’ve been able to achieve.

Hoping your family, and all of your readers’ families, enjoy the merriest of Christmas seasons. Merry Christmas, and may the New Year fulfill all of your fondest wishes.

Thank you, Flavio! And thank you to all VanRamblings readers. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, and the happiest & most rewarding holiday season.

#Cinema | Holiday Oscar Awards Season, Part 1 | The Streaming Oscars

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The Oscars are just around the corner and Netflix is bringing its A-game, with a collection of movies released or soon to be released that are not only eyeing the top prizes and figure in the conversation, but may come out on top.

Here are Netflix’s Oscar hopefuls for 2022.

Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (débuts on Netflix, next Wednesday, December 1st), a neo-Western that won the Venice Best Director prize for Campion, currently tops a raft of critics’ polls in major cities across the continent.

Demonstrating her own strong, clear vision — not to mention superb control of her craft — Campion once again proves her ability to illuminate hidden truths and let the viewer see what was hiding in plain sight all along. Her first film in 9 years is a contemporary Western masterpiece imbued with the same pacing and style of westerns of lore. Campion takes her time, letting the story, based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, reveal itself in languid style. Kirsten Dunst has a lock on a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod, if not an outright win.

After sending up the financial crisis (The Big Short) and Dick Cheney (Vice), in Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay — who makes no secret of his progressive politics — turns his satirical eye to a less serious target: a global catastrophe.

A thinly veiled allegory for climate change, critics who’ve had an early look at the film praised its humourous satirical flourish — comparing it to Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Dr. Strangelove. Even for those critics who weren’t entirely won over by Don’t Look Up, there was appreciation for a film most found to be incredibly funny — perhaps too funny to find itself in the Oscar conversation.

Jennifer Lawrence plays an astronomy grad student and Leonardo DiCaprio her professor in this broadly comic film, as the two try to alert the world to an approaching comet. The cast, including Meryl Streep as the President and Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry as TV hosts, makes this Oscar contender the starriest Netflix film of them all. (December 10th in theatres, Christmas Eve on Netflix)

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s buzzed about feature directorial début, The Lost Daughter (New Year’s Eve), leads the Gotham Award nominations, and has an outstanding performance by Olivia Colman,  making her a lock for a Best Actress nod.

Playlist critic Tomris Laffly opened his review of The Lost Daughter this way …

“With The Lost Daughter, director Maggie Gyllenhaal wears melancholy like a second skin. One of her generation’s most underrated actors, she moves through her films with a flicker of otherworldly woe; an organic ability that has routinely informed the highlights of her filmography, from the erotically manic ‘Secretary’ to the gritty ‘Sherrybaby’, and more recently, the wistful thriller, ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’. In other words, Gyllenhaal has always possessed an auteurial sway over the films she was in, putting on them her signature ethereal stamp.”

Gyllenhaal’s film is a story of self-ascribed transgression and of shame buried and turned bitterly inward, and it too, is made with such alertness to the power of cinematic language — particularly that of performance — that, according to the critics, even as you feel your stomach slowly drop at the implications of what you’re watching, you cannot break its spreading sinister spell.

A masterwork in perception and all that society places upon motherhood, what makes The Lost Daughter a rewarding picture, is in how the film shatters the binary distinction between a ‘good’ mother and the bad one.

There are 2 films already streaming on Netflix that are Oscar award worthy …

While some Netflix Oscar contenders, like In the Heights, have struggled, Tick, Tick…Boom!, helmed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, emerges with a terrific lead-actor performance delivered by Andrew Garfield, his performance so outstanding and affecting, Garfield seems a lock to sing and dance his way into the hearts of Academy voters, who will thrust him into the Best Actor Oscar race, an award come Sunday, March 27th, 2022 he might very well win.

Miranda, who starred as playwright Jonathan Larson in a theatrical performance of the Broadway play, directs Tick, Tick…Boom! with a deep understanding of the passion, struggle, and ebullience of an artist committed to an art form celebrating the power and the pressure of the world both artists love most. A must-see, Tick, Tick…Boom! is a heart-filling work showcasing two musical geniuses: Larson’s musical legacy, and Miranda’s unparalleled artistry.

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And then, of course, there’s VanRamblings’ favourite indie film of the year …

In our November 5th review of Passing, British actress Rebecca Hall’s remarkable directorial début we wrote this …

“From the very first frame, Passing grabs your attention, in this piercingly sad story of characters who can’t escape the confines of their lives. The vulnerability of Irene and Clare’s smallest gestures and experiences, delicately conveyed by Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga and magnified by Eduard Grau’s judicious close-ups — a tear rolling down a cheek, the slight bow of a hatted head in the presence of a white man, a stolen glance of desire — under the genteel mask these women show to the world lies a roiling unease about their true desires, their barely hidden secrets, and their place in the world.”

Tessa Thompson is a lock for a Best Actress Oscar nod, while Rebecca Hall will likely be nominated, and perhaps win, as Best Director & is a certainty to win the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony.

Neither Apple nor Amazon have any intention of being left out of the mix …

Apple has Joel Coen’s rip-roaring The Tragedy of Macbeth (débuts Jan. 14, 2022), starring Denzel Washington, as well as CODA, the heartbreaking Sundance sensation that could catapult newcomer Emilia Jones into the Best Actress — and Marlee Matlin, into the Best Supporting Actress — awards race.

One of Amazon’s choice Academy Award Oscar contenders is The Tender Bar, the new film directed by George Clooney, and starring Tye Sheridan as an aspiring writer with an absent father, with Ben Affleck playing the young man’s bartender uncle. The script, by William Monahan (The Departed), is based on the memoir by J.R. Moehringer. (December 17th in theatres for a brief run, then come January 7th, on Amazon Prime)

Amazon’s Being The Ricardos takes a chance on recognizable actors playing beloved Hollywood icons, but as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem may very well overcome the enduring memories of generations of TV viewers. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed this drama about the Ball-Arnaz relationship and the making of I Love Lucy. (December 10th in theatres, December 21st, on Amazon Prime)

For those of us older folks who grew up with Lucille Ball, who was the most beloved actress on television in the 1950s and 1960s, there’s a ready-made, built-in audience for Being The Ricardos. How the film does with the younger crowd we’ve yet to see — but word out of Hollywood is that Javier Bardem is a lock for a Best Actor nod, and in all likelihood Nicole Kidman has a Best Actress Oscar nod all but wrapped up. Aaron Sorkin will be up for an Oscar, too.

C’mon back next Thursday for Part 2 of VanRamblings’ Oscar / holiday season movie preview, when we’ll write about Steven Spielberg’s much anticipated new film, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film — both of which are shoe-ins for Oscar attention. We’ll also write about a couple of under-the-radar international films that could feature in the main Academy Award categories.

#ArtsFriday | Passing | Searing, Heartbreaking, Tragic Cinema | #Netflix

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Début film by Rebecca Hall (left), Passing, stars Tessa Thompson (centre) & Ruth Negga

A complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of a 1920s-era Harlem Renaissance that celebrated Black novelist Nella Larsen captured in her seminal 1929 novel, Passing, marks British actress Rebecca Hall’s assured feature directorial début — a certain 2022 Oscar contender, having taken New York by storm last month at their annual New York Film Festival, and already up for a passel of Gotham Awards — will be available on the Netflix streaming service this coming Wednesday, November 10th. “We’re all of us passing for something or other, aren’t we?” muses Tessa Thompson’s melancholy character, Irene Redfield.

Ms. Hall’s choice of material for her début as writer-director is elevated by her evident personal investment in the story, having learned years ago that her American maternal grandfather was Black passing as white for most of his life. That intense personal connection pervades every lovingly composed shot of a work that takes a subtle, unwavering approach to the film’s subject matter, that resonates at a moment Black Lives Matter has exposed the simmering racial divides within society.

The story takes place in 1929, as Harlem resident Irene (Thompson) carefully navigates her way through a sweltering New York City summer day, tucking her face inside her hat so as to all the better, well, maybe not hide exactly, but at least obscure her face so that her black skin isn’t as evident to the privileged white locals surrounding her. Feeling self-conscious about being out of place, she’s shocked to run into Clare (Negga), a school friend with whom she had lost contact, now married to a wealthy (and avowedly racist) white man, John (Alexander Skarsgård), who has no idea that his wife is black. Clare “passes” for white, allowing her entree into an upper-crust American society that contemptuously shuns people of colour.

Inviting Irene up to her hotel room, upon returning to her home, there’s a marked visual switch from Clare and John’s suite, an airy space drenched in white light, to the more textured look inside the Harlem brownstone where Irene lives with her doctor husband Brian (André Holland) and their two boys. The action flashes forward to the autumn, when a letter from Clare, postmarked New York, indicates she has moved back to the city as she had hoped. Irene is hesitant to open it, but Brian is more curious, arching his eyebrows at Clare’s florid description of “this pale life of mine,” as she gently chides Renie for exposing her “wild desire” for another life.

Shot in luminous black-and-white by cinematographer Eduard Grau (a choice that, given the material, might sound gimmicky, and is not), Ms. Hall also opted for a boxed-in 4:3 aspect ratio, all the better to heighten the film’s constant tension and the sense that its piercingly sad characters can’t escape the confines of their lives.

From the very first frame, Passing grabs your attention with its striking aesthetics. Most notably, as mentioned above, the desaturated black-and-white cinematography and 4:3 aspect ratio that recalls both vintage photography and classic cinema. The period-appropriate costumes and production design — stylishly rendered by the production designer Nora Mendism, and the costume designer Marci Rodgers — gives a strong sense of a time and place when flappers lived their best life. To add an elegant finishing touch, the intermittent piano refrain of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s Homeless Wanderer, and the gorgeous score composed by Black composer Devonté Hynes, provides a further nostalgic nod to the Jazz Age.

Passing tingles through the vulnerability of Irene and Clare’s smallest gestures and experiences, delicately conveyed by Thompson and Negga and magnified by Eduard Grau’s judicious close-ups. A tear rolling down a cheek. The slight bow of a hatted head in the presence of a white man. A stolen glance of desire. Under the genteel mask these women show to the world lies a roiling unease about their true desires, their obvious and barely hidden secrets, and their place in the world.

And it’s through this discomfort that Passing transcends its mannered trappings to resonate with us as a poignant and powerful exploration of the human condition.

#Netflix | Oscar Fare Rolling Out in November

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Although Red Notice is the blockbuster film Netflix is bringing to the streamer on Friday, November 12th — starring a Hollywood A-list cast that includes Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds —  it is the “smaller films” that will prove to be the celebrated Gotham, Indie Spirit, Oscar and critics’ awards fodder come December and into 2022, when early in the morning of Tuesday, February 8th, the 2022 Oscar nominations will be announced.

As we all return to some semblance of “normal” —  whatever that means these days? —  now that British Columbia’s Public Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has lifted all indoor capacity limitations in movie theatres, arenas and elsewhere, in communities where full vaccination rates are on track to hit 90% or better at some point in November, and COVID infection rates are low, we can all look forward to a surfeit of serious-minded film fare to help us celebrate the coming holiday season.

On Friday, November 5th, VanRamblings will publish our full review of Passing —  already nominated for a raft of east coast film critic, ‘indie’ Gotham Awards, including Best Director, her first-time in that role, and a simply outstanding outing for British actress, Rebecca Hall, garnering, as well, a Best Screenplay nomination for her adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1920s novel; Tessa Thompson, for Outstanding Lead Performance (take our word for it, Ms. Thompson’s performance is more than well-deserving of all the accolades she will receive in the weeks and months to come); and the always luminous Ruth Negga (Loving), for Outstanding Supporting Performance, much-deserved recognition for her breathtakingly fine work here.

A complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of the same ’20s-era Harlem that Larsen was so keen to be part of, Passing will be available on the Netflix streaming service come Wednesday, November 10th.

Not to be missed!