While the inimitable Mr. Shayne keeps up the furious pace of four to five films a day, VanRamblings is taking a mid-Festival break, both to recover from too many late nights (and early morning hours at work the next day), and to focus on said aforementioned work, which has somehow been put to the side just a wee bit more than VanRamblings’ employers might prefer.
Just a couple of observations, then, and back to work with us.
First off, the Georgia Straight’s 2nd Film Festival review roundup came out today, and critics Mark Harris and Ken Eisner recommend …
Congorama (Belgium, Canada and France): Mark Harris describes Congorama as “independent filmmaking at its concise best,” while Jason Anderson, writing in Eye Weekly during the Toronto Film Festival, describes the film as “eccentrically endearing,” giving it three stars. Meanwhile, Variety’s Justin Cheng seems a bit more iffy, although the only way you’ll know for sure is if you attend a screening of Philippe Falardeau’s film.
La Coupure (Canada): “Dark, gruelling, and extremely convincing,” says Georgia Straight film critic / UBC professor, Mark Harris. Adam Nayman, writing in Eye Weekly, gives the film 3 stars, saying “To call La Coupure an “incest drama” would be terribly reductive — it’s intense but never lurid, utilizing up close and personal camerawork to pare its provocative subject down to recognizably human dimensions.” Meanwhile, Film Freak’s Bill Chambers just hates the film. Again, only you can be the judge.
The Elementary Particles (Germany): Whatever happened to Run Lola Run’s Franka Potente? To find out, you’ll have to attend a screening of The Elementary Particles, for which both Variety magazine and the BBC would seem to have a great deal of affection. Meanwhile, the Straight’s Ken Eisner has this to say: “A funny, tender, sexy, and overheated adaptation of a controversial late-’90s French novel.” Now, there you go: a “keeper.”

Continue reading VIFF2006: Mid-Festival Break, But Still Lots to Report →

At a screening of Dito Montiel’s A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints late last evening, while waiting for the projectionist to spool the film in preparation for the upcoming screening, Granville 7 theatre manager Ira Hannen asked the assembled audience of about 300 for a show of hands for …
Those who had attended more than 5 films. Almost everyone’s hand went up. Next: how many had attended 10 films, or more … about half the hands in the audience went up. More than 15, 20, 25, 30, 40 … and so on. The average number of films audience members had attended in the Festival’s first week was near 20, or some 3 films a day in the first six days.
This year, the Vancouver Sun is running a daily feature where dedicated film aficionados are asked why the Vancouver International Film Festival plays such an important role in their lives. For, in fact, there is a coterie of film-goers, numbering over 100, who each year plan their “vacation” — not to mention, their lives — around Vancouver’s august 17-day Film Festival.
In recent days, while waiting in the passholders line-up, VanRamblings has spoken with film-goers who have travelled to visit the VIFF — arriving from the South Pacific (“we do this every year, and have for more than 15 years”), Seattle, Los Angeles, Toronto, northern British Columbia and northern Vancouver Island, Idaho, the southern United States, western and Eastern Europe, Japan, China and Korea, Argentina and Bolivia, and even Australia and New Zealand, and other far flung provinces across the globe.
In addition, there are an equal number of veteran passholders who have taken two weeks of their annual vacation time to coincide with the VIFF, taking time off from BC Hydro, Telus, school districts (teachers who have delayed the beginning of their school year til mid-October, as VanRamblings did for years), the provincial and federal governments, Worksafe BC, Translink, their CGA firm, and more — just so they could participate in as many screenings as possible between September 28th and October 13th.
Why?

Continue reading VIFF2006: Same Planet. Different Worlds. →

Dan Ireland is a homegrown boy, a producer and filmmaker of some renown (more in the United States — where he has resided for more than a quarter century — than in Canada), the person who “discovered” Renée Zellweger when he cast her in his award-winning directorial début, The Whole Wide World, and the director of the accomplished and very lovely Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, which will make its auspicious, if somewhat unheralded (as you might expect, we’re attempting to change that with this posting), Canadian début this coming Friday at 7 p.m. at the Granville 7, Cinema 7.
Now, whether Mr. Ireland makes it to these shores from Arizona — where he is filming his latest, with Dermot Mulroney and Donald Sutherland, among others (but try to find mention of either Mr. Sutherland’s or Mulroney’s participation in the film on the Internet Movie Database) — seems a bit iffy at this writing. (Update: in fact, Mr. Ireland will arrive in town very late Friday night, in time for a 7 p.m., invitation only, screening of Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, to be shown at the VanCity Theatre on Saturday night). But whether you meet Dan at a screening, or not (at least he’ll make it to Vancouver to visit his mother, who lives just down the street from where VanRamblings resides, twice this year), VanRamblings whole-heartedly recommends that you catch a screening of the film.
VanRamblings believes that Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (starring Joan Plowright) will likely emerge as one of your favourites at this year’s Fest, and perhaps one of your favourite films of the year, as it is ours.
And, if you don’t catch Dan Ireland’s charming and completely satisfying film at one of its two screenings at the Festival, you are very likely indeed to miss Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont entirely. And that would be a pity.

Continue reading VIFF2006: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont →

Yes, it was just another day at the Film Fest on Sunday, when the inimitable Mr. Shayne and your humble agent caught three screenings: a South Korean monster flick, an unsettling true life German horror film (depending on your definition of ‘horror’), and a quiet, meditative drama about blowing up central Manhattan’s ever-so-decorous Times Square.
So far, Mr. Shayne and your scribe are nine for nine: 9 screenings, 9 great films … our best average yet, in some 32 years of Festival going (this dating back to the Vancouver Film Festival that Don Barnes held at the now-defunct Varsity Theatre on West 10th Avenue) in Vancouver.
After having taken the first part of the day to compose yesterday’s piece, do a wash in order to have something to wear to work today, as well as go out for a coffee and a perusal of the local newspapers, it was off to the first screening of the day, in line by 3 p.m. for a 4 p.m. screening of …
Requiem: Winner of the Best Actress Award for lead Sandra Hüller at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival (the young actress making her big screen début), Requiem is compelling every moment Hüller is on screen, her character a 21-year-old college student who while living with epilepsy becomes convinced that she is possessed by the devil. Not a happy film by any means, director Hans-Christian Schmid’s naturalistic approach to the subject matter turns what might have been a second-rate horror film into a first rate family drama. With fine performances all around.
Next up, after a brief break for “dinner” at the Salad Loop (very good, actually), Mr. Shayne and your scribe lined up for the 7 p.m. screening of …

Continue reading VIFF2006: Scary Monsters, Religion and Terrorism →