Category Archives: Vancouver

VIFF 2019 | Late Summer Early Autumn Film Festival Season

August 23, 2019A & E, Arts Friday, Cinema, Vancouver, VanRamblings, VIFF 2019Raymond Tomlin

Although many believe that the Oscar season begins in mid-May at the Cannes Film Festival, in fact the Oscar race officially kicks off at the end of August with the Telluride (Aug. 30 – Sept. 2), Venice (Aug. 28 – Sept. 7), Toronto (Sept. 5 – 15) and, at the end of September, both the New York Film Festival (Sept. 27 – Oct. 13) and our very own homegrown film festival (VIFF 2019, Sept. 26 – Oct. 11), where most of the upcoming Oscar contenders will make their auspicious and much-anticipated débuts.

Winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes this year, Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables — débuting at VIFF 2019 as part of the Spotlight on France series — emerged as one of Jeff Wells’ (Hollywood Elsewhere) favourite films at Cannes this year, a film he describes as “explosive, urgent, furious, riveting, breathless and impactful,” and about which VIFF’s festival guide says …

Set in the same suburban Paris neighbourhood, Montfermeil, used by Victor Hugo as the location for the Thénardiers’ Inn in his Les Misérables, débuting director Ladj Ly’s gripping, incendiary police-thriller gives us a young cop, Stéphane (Damien Bonnard), who joins an Anti-Crime Squad team led by loose cannon Chris (co-writer Alexis Manenti, superb) and is soon immersed in a world of poverty and internecine power struggles. When images of police brutality start circulating, the shit hits the fan…

The full VIFF 2019 festival guide will be online two weeks from today, on Friday, September 6th, on the same day the glossy cover programme will be available at libraries and various other outlets across Metro Vancouver.
With the summer silly season of dreaded movie sequels having drawn to a close, with box office down 19% this summer over last, the failed popcorn blockbusters are about to give way to the more serious fare all cinephiles cherish, all of which are ready to elbow their way into the Oscar derby.
At the various film festivals that will unspool future Oscar award winners over the course of the next month and a half, new films from Pedro Almodóvar, Noah Baumbach, Terrence Malick, Edward Norton, and more will launch into the awards season or fizzle out.
In respect of VIFF 2019, as more information about the 38th annual Vancouver International Film Festival becomes available, we’ll publish our idiosyncratic take and insight into the information with which we’re provided. In the meantime, take a look below for films that will début at one or more of the above-mentioned film festivals, including our own illustrious Vancouver International Film Festival …

Writer-director-producer Edward Norton has transplanted the main character of Jonathan Lethem’s best-selling novel Motherless Brooklyn from modern Brooklyn into an entirely new, richly woven neo-noir narrative: a multilayered conspiracy that expands to encompass the city’s ever-growing racial divide, set in 1950s New York.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

On the cusp of the 19th century, young painter Marianne travels to a rugged, rocky island off the coast of Brittany to create a wedding portrait of the wealthy yet free-spirited Héloise. An emotional and erotic bond develops between the women in Céline Sciamma’s Cannes-awarded subversion of the story of an artist and “his” muse.

In this richly burnished, occasionally harrowing rendering of the persistent scars of war, two women, Iya and Masha (astonishing newcomers Viktoria Miroshnichenko and Vasilisa Perelygina), attempt to readjust to a haunted post-WWII Leningrad.

Noah Baumbach’s new film is about the rapid tangling and gradual untangling of impetuosity, resentment, and abiding love between a married couple — played by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson — negotiating their divorce and the custody of their son. It’s as harrowing as it is hilarious as it is deeply moving.

Pedro Almodóvar taps into new reservoirs of introspection and emotional warmth with this miraculous, internalized portrayal of Salvador Mallo, a director not too subtly modeled on Almodóvar himself and played by Antonio Banderas, who deservedly won Best Actor at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

A searing exploration of the consequences of upholding one’s convictions in a time of terrifying upheaval, this latest work from Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life) mines the themes of spirituality and engagement with the natural world that have permeated so much of the American auteur’s late-period renaissance. Set in Austria during the rise of the Third Reich, A Hidden Life movingly relays a little-known true story of quiet heroism.

Stories of a Life | 1978 – 1982 | Chief Cook and Bottlewasher

June 1, 2019fixin to die rag, Jude and Megan, Stories of a Life, Thought for the Day, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

1978. Jude, at age 3½, and Megan at 2 years of age. At the kitchen table for breakfast.

A couple of weeks ago, when I was extolling the virtues of my Instant Pot to a friend, in a lull in the conversation, she turned to me and said, “You like to cook, don’t you?”
The short answer: I derive pleasure from both cooking and baking.
Here’s the story behind my love for the culinary powers of the kitchen.

1616 Semlin Drive, at E. 1st Ave. in Vancouver. One of the homes I lived in growing up.

From my earliest days, I fended for myself. My mother worked three jobs, and my father worked the afternoon shift at the Post Office. When I arrived home, although my father often left a stew bubbling away in the slow cooker, from age seven on, for the most part if I wanted to eat, I’d have to make breakfast, lunch and dinner for myself and for my sister.
So, being somewhat industrious, I learned to cook — well, make sandwiches and, for dessert, Jello, at least for the first few years. I loved turkey growing up (all that triptiphan), so with the help of my mother, I learned to make her delicious turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes and vegetables. For the most part, though, my cooking skills were rudimentary — but I didn’t starve, and more often than not there was food in my belly.
When in 1970 Cathy and I moved in together, marrying soon after, I was responsible for most of the cooking. Cathy’s mom sent her out $1000 a month (she didn’t know we were living together), visiting every three months, taking us to the local Woodward’s grocery floor, where she dropped in excess of $300 at each visit. With Cathy’s mother money, we ate a fairly staple diet of generously thick T-bone steaks and baked potatoes.

Simon Fraser University’s Louis Riel House, student family 1 + 2 bedroom residence.

Soon after moving into the Louis Riel Student Residence at Simon Fraser University in 1971, Cathy joined a women’s group, who met every Wednesday evening. Among the decisions that were taken by the women’s group was this: men shall participate in all household chores, and share in all food preparation. As we often ate together with other of the students in the residence, my specialty became salads — all different kinds of healthy, nutritious salads, chock full of vegetables, nuts, sunflower seeds, and more.
At this point, Cathy still hated to cook — there was immense pressure placed on Cathy by her peers to develop culinary skills, but she refused. All that changed in the summer of 1973, which is a story for another day.

2182 East 2nd Avenue, in the Grandview Woodland neighbourhood of Vancouver.

When Cathy and I separated in 1978 — Jude and I lived in the home above, before Jude, Megan and I moved to Simon Fraser University and Louis Riel House, when I began work on my Masters degree — the thought occurred to me one morning when making breakfast that I was now the lone parent, and the sole person responsible for ensuring the children ate nutritious foods at each meal in order that they might grow up into healthy adults. I took on the task of learning the art of cooking (and baking), in earnest.
There was, however, a quid pro quo involved.
After returning from a day of larnin’ and T.A.’ing at SFU, after picking up the children at daycare at 4:30pm, and walking the relatively short distance to our two-bedroom apartment at Louis Riel House, while the children played with their friends on the lawn in front of our apartment, I prepared dinner, calling them in about 45 minutes after dinner preparation had begun. The kids were famished, and so was I.
Here’s where the quid pro quo came in: at the end of each meal, each of the children had to turn and say to me some version of, “Daddy that was a good dinner. It was mmmm, delicious. Thank you for making dinner for all of us, and all the work you put in to feeding us healthy and nutritious breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and all those wonderful desserts we love!”
I needed the incentive provided to me by both children, so their gratitude — which, in time, they came to acknowledge as their own — and the kids felt good about encouraging me, as I encouraged them in all of their endeavours. We were a happy family & all was well with the world for us.
Now, I was an adventuresome cook, and not everything I made turned out to the liking of each one of us.
Being a dedicated democrat, Jude, Megan and I made a deal with one another in respect of dinner. Both children had to eat at least two bites of each food item I prepared: after all the work I put into preparing a dish, the least they could do was try out the dish to see whether they might like it. Most of the time they did, but sometimes not.
One night, I made cream of escargot soup. Honestly, it wasn’t bad. But at the end of the soup entrée, I turned to the children and asked them what they thought, to which they replied almost in unison, “It was all right, tasty enough I suppose, but I’m not sure if I’d ever want to have it again.” I agreed with them. We never ate cream of escargot soup ever again.
Each of us were allowed to have three foods on a list of our creation, foods we did not have to eat, no matter what. Megan had three foods, Jude had three foods, and I had three foods — those foods changed over a period of time. In order to add a food to our individual “nah, I don’t want to eat that food” list, some food on each of our lists had to come off. Took some thought on the part of the children as to whether they wanted to remove a food. Megan, for a great long while didn’t like avocados — but one day, while placing a new food she didn’t like onto her “don’t eat” list, she took out avocados, eventually coming to love avocados, as she does to this day.
Watching me prepare meals all the time he was growing up caused Jude to want to become a chef — he worked in the food industry throughout his late teens and twenties, before getting into teaching, which paid better, and was overall less stressful, with “more honourable people”, he’d say to me.
In her teens, Megan became a vegan — there’s a story there, too, which I’ll leave for another day — and, for the most part, took on the preparation of her own meals, as did Jude over a period of time. After the summer of 1973, Cathy became a great cook — there’s not much I miss about that tumultuous marriage, but I sure miss Cathy’s avant-garde cooking, her culinary craftsmanship, spicing & phenomenally delicious cooking. Ah well.

#VanPoli | Vancouver City Council | Vapid & Not on Your Side

May 30, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Politics, Vancouver, Vancouver Votes 2018Raymond Tomlin

Today’s VanRamblings column was originally intended to take our “new” Vancouver City Council to task, a City Council in which we are profoundly disappointed — who have against all reason turned out to be a reactionary amalgam of self-serving, do-nothing municipal politicians who have surrounded themselves with sycophants who praise them for their “good works”, a group of electeds who not only have lost the thread of why it was they were elected (read: build affordable housing!), but rather who have proven these past seven months to be just like the character in the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, who seem to as the child in the story says appears not to be “wearing anything at all!”
We here at VanRamblings had intended on employing satirical commentary, combined with our tried-and-true hyperbolic approach to recording our thoughts on the screen in front of you for the Thursday post today.
But, alas, we’re simply not up for doing that on this tremendous day!

VanRamblings’ new carbon blue Vessi shoes. Comfy. Stylish. 100% waterproof!

For you see, it is a wonderfully sunny day in Vancouver, deserving of a walk along the beach and an opportunity to spend time with friends. Today, VanRamblings — our disappointment in our “new” Vancouver City Council notwithstanding — find ourselves enjoying our new carbon blue Vessi shoes that are comfy and swell-looking and oh-so-stylish, which makes us happy.
So, in consequence, VanRamblings will hold off until next week to spell out exactly why we find ourselves dispirited in respect of Vancouver’s “new” do-nothing, survival of the fittest Darwinian City Council, and instead will set about to enjoy the day, while thinking to our self: why was editor, author, columnist, political activist, father, lover of baseball, and person of principle (always!) Derrick O’Keefe not elected to Council, to hold the current ne’er-do-well group of “oh we love our City staff, they’d never give us advice and provide direction to us that is anything other than true to the interests of the citizenry of our fair city” members of our inept Council to account?
Arts Friday on Friday. Stories of a Life on Saturday. Music Sunday Sunday.
And back to municipal political writing on Monday or Tuesday. See ya then.

#VanPoli | The Rapid, Unforgiving Pace of Development in Our City

May 29, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, VancouverRaymond Tomlin

May 2019. Artist rendering of a planned residential tower on the northwest corner of Alma and West Broadway, in the Point Grey neighbourhood.

Meet the thin edge of the wedge, the future of residential neighbourhood development along the Broadway corridor, just one part of the changing architectural landscape planned for the city of Vancouver.
While the building above is under construction, the Musqueam and Squamish Nations development on the Jericho Lands, just one block west, will be well underway, with residential towers and townhouses planned for what will be the largest development project in the City of Vancouver in a generation, designed to house up to 30,000 residents on the 90-acre site.

And lest you believe that our city, over the course of the next 15 years will not undergo a massive change to the landscape of our city, there’s always the Oakridge Centre re-development at Cambie and West 41st Avenue …

And let us not forget, either, the development of the Heather Lands just north of Oakridge, a 21-acre site between West 33rd and 37th between Willow and Ash centred around Heather Street, built on First Nations land that will see the construction of 2500 new homes, which according to the development’s pro forma will house 40%, or more, secured low or moderate-income households, with the remaining homes “market rentals”.

The Heather Lands, set to begin construction. 2500 homes north of Oakridge.

While Rome Burns Our City Councillors Will Be Attending Gala Gala Do’s

All of the above is by way of saying: if our novitiate Vancouver City Councillors don’t soon get a handle on the planned development of our city, long in the works under the previous Vision Vancouver civic regime, our city will be well on its way to substantive architectural change and dramatically increased density well before our elected officials at Vancouver City Hall are able to have an impact on the future livability of our city, what kind of housing will be built across our city to address our current affordable housing crisis, what our neighbourhoods will look like 20 years from now, and how much land will be set aside for parks and community amenities.
At the moment, the pace of change is rapid and unforgiving — yet, after seven months in office, our Vancouver City Councillors seem not to have developed, or even given much thought to developing, a coherent City Plan that will not only preserve but enhance the livability of the Vancouver they, as our elected officials, and we as the general public, love and cherish.
Time for our Vancouver City Councillors to put on their big girl and boy galoshes, and settle down to the primary task at hand: creating our city.