VanRamblings’ return to the Festival was hard-going, for varying reasons.
First up on Monday evening, for a 7pm screening, at The Ridge, of …
Cloud 9 (Grade: C-): With long, lingering scenes redolent of watching paint dry hour upon tedious hour, Andreas Dresen’s woefully uninvolving Cloud 9 proved more than a bit of a tough slog to sit through on Monday evening.
With no one on screen achieving anything remotely close to a rooting interest, this soporific exercise in ‘elder porn’ — the lead characters are aged 66 – 76, and spend much of the film having sex — ostensibly tells the story of a marriage disintegrating because the titular wife has developed a hankering for new man. The new (but older) man is thrilled because he’s getting laid, as is the woman, who experiences satisfying multiple orgasms. The husband being left out in the cold? Happy? Not so much.
With a narrative style bereft of insight, a surfeit of enigmatic performances (we’re being generous here), with a story just plain dull in the telling, and with indulgent nude scene after boring nude scene of the principles “making love” (which hardly serves to propel the story forward), Cloud 9 was, for VanRamblings, an utter waste of time, and anathema to what we look for in good filmmaking (i.e. sympathetic, relatable characters; an engaging narrative economy bordering on onscreen poetry; lush, lambent or just downright striking cinematography; and “punch in the gut” storytelling).

Greg Lyons, and the luminous Jennifer-Lynn Welsh, in Tom Quinn’s The New Year Parade

The New Year Parade (Grade: A): An absolutely stunning tour-de-force piece of filmmaking, writer-cinematographer-producer-editor Tom Quinn’s The New Year Parade makes for 2008’s most auspicious directorial début.
With a luminous, engaging and often heart-wrenching central performance by newcomer Jennifer-Lynn Welsh, there are just not enough good and great things that VanRamblings can write about The New Year Parade.
But we’ll certainly try.
Set in an evocative working class neighbourhood in south Philly, in the spare 87-minute running time of the film, Tom Quinn achieves such a warm sense a character and place that the viewer is pulled right inside his tale of a marriage in disintegration, and the impact on all of those directly involved.
There’s little wonder that The New Year Parade wowed ’em at the Slamdance Festival earlier this year, where it took the Grand Jury Prize.
Every moment of The New Year Parade is wondrous — from the enchanting and boisterous Mummer’s Parade rehearsal scenes, to Welsh’s quiet, ruminative high school scenes, from the scenes with Greg Lyons and his entirely sympathetic and humane new girlfriend, Julie (Irene Longshore), to the scenes along the Philly docks, and every scene before, after and in-between. Quite simply, The New Year Parade proves to be a must-see!

As we do each year, VanRamblings will survey coverage of our annual Vancouver International Film Festival, in various media, local and beyond.

The Vancouver Sun ran this story about the winner of the 15th annual Dragons & Tigers Award for Young Cinema, Perfect Life. Diminutive director Emily Tang, who we’d run into earlier in the day at a Starbucks on Seymour Street, gladly accepted the $10,000 prize, which was announced this past Thursday, prior to the 6:30pm, Granville 7 screening of Hansel and Gretel.

The following represents coverage by the Georgia Straight …

• VIFF08, Part 1, Still Walking, Craig Takeuchi’s screening of the Japanese feature Still Walking, a birthday present for his mother.

• VIFF08, Part 2, about the long line-ups at VIFF screenings, and …

• VIFF08, Part 3, coverage of the Festival opener, Blindness, as well as Witch of the West, and Maman. Parts 4 through 9 of Craig Takeuchi’s Georgia Straight blog coverage of VIFF08 may be found here.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Straight’s Janet Smith, Ken Eisner and Mark Harris take a sneak peak at the 27th Vancouver International Film Festival, with capsule reviews of more than 100 films, reviews available here and here.
Jason Whyte, of eFilmCritic.com, has been managing almost daily coverage of the 27th edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival.
Jason, VanRamblings, 24 Hours’ Volkmar Richter, CITR’s J. B. Shayne, and Christian News’ critic, Peter Chattaway, held an informal “scrum” (at least, that’s what Alan Franey called it when he came over to say ‘hi’) a couple days back, and compared notes. As it happens, our taste in movies seems to run to a similar vein, as we keep running into one another. This is Jason’s 6th year covering the Festival (he lives in Victoria), and although VanRamblings believe that we work hard covering the Festival, we are pikers when it comes to coverage, compared to what Jason is accomplishing.
The Tyee’s Dorothy Woodend writes that her “can’t miss” picks are: Let the Right One In, one of the big winners at the Tribeca Film Festival this year; Paruthiveeran, also one of Festival director Alan Franey’s favourite films in 2008; the quietly devastating Waltz with Bashir, also one of VanRamblings’ Festival favourites; The Lie of the Land; and, “to leaven things up with a bit of comedy,” Woodend writes, Welcome to the Sticks and The Grocer’s Son, both of which have a couple of screenings this coming week.
Sean Axmaker, who also freelances for the Seattle P-I (you can regularly read his reviews on Friday), writes in GreenCine Daily that …

I’ve always found Vancouver the most enjoyable film festival of my year, whether for a couple of days or a full week. It’s an easy fest to navigate, with seven screens of a downtown multiplex dedicated to the festival and all but one of the ten screens within a few blocks of one another.

iofilm sets about to cover Vancouver’s 27th annual Festival, as well.
Vancouver’s own, Only magazine (rising from the ashes of Terminal City), offers daily, relatively in-depth coverage of VIFF 08: here’s Day One, wwwaaayyyy bbbaaaccckkkk on September 25th, and for a more up-to-date look at the Fest schedule, here’s a look at Day Twelve (today).
David Bordwell, Roger Ebert’s fave film theoretician, makes it out to Vancouver each year for our annual Festival, and in 2008 – along with companion, Kristin Thompson – has posted, in an erudite fashion, and at some length, on their flick picks that are in the mix to catch at VIFF 08.
SuperUwatchers.ca recommends Flame and Citron (buzz has been very good; we’ll catch it later in the week), JCVD (gone, but almost certain to return for a regular run, somewhere, arising from strong positive response here and at Toronto’s fest), and Let The Right One In (on VanRamblings’ must-see list, and one we’ll catch either tonight, or on Wednesday).
Rich, at A Random Walk Through Film, offers in-depth coverage of VIFF 08, where his Fest pix to click are: Sita Sings the Blues, The Song of Sparrows, Cherry Blossoms – Hanami, Let the Right One In, and Still Walking.
The local blog, Civilized Spice, covers the Festival. Then there’s WordPress blog coverage (VanRamblings employs Movable Type, as our blog software). Jaunted.com weighs in, recommending The Cannery (VanRamblings’ favourite restaurant) as a place to grab a bite to eat during the run of the Festival. And, finally, Sarah Fobes writes about her schedule of films to take in at our august, and oh so pleasurable, 27th annual Vancouver Film Fest.

The screening of Wendy and Lucy so unsettled VanRamblings this past Wednesday, that we needed a couple of days to recover from the melancholy that had us in its grip following our mid-week viewing of Kelly Reichardt’s woeful reflection on living a sad, dispossessed life in America.
Nonetheless, we trudged forward to continue our Festival attendance.
We became aware, as well, of the buzz films at this year’s Fest, some having completed their run, some still to screen. Among the buzz films are: Eden, the small-but-powerful Irish film that tracks the slow disintegration of a marriage; and, Modern Life, Raymond Depardon’s film about dairy farmers struggling to eke out a living in the French highlands. Modern Life was greeted with a standing ovation at its Cannes première. Screens again Mon, Oct 6 @ 11:30am, Gran7, Th 3, and Wed, Oct 8 @ 7:15pm, Gran7, Th 6.
Over the past three days, among other films, VanRamblings has taken in …
Among The Clouds (Grade: B+): Iranian director Rouhollah Hejazi’s bittersweet drama, set in southwest Iran near the Iraqi border, presents the touching story of a resourceful 16-year-old baggage porter who becomes smitten with a slightly older Iraqi woman who’s not what she seems. Winner of the prize for best Iranian feature début at the Fajr Film Festival, with its lyrical cinematography and a haunting score, Among The Clouds ranks as one of our favourites at this year’s Festival. Screens one more time, on Monday, Oct 6th @ 5:45pm, Empire Granville 7, in Th 1.
Firaaq (Grade: C): A narratively confusing, misogynist, sprawling low-
budget melodrama about the 2002 sectarian carnage in Gujarat, where 3,000 Muslims were killed, a film that sets about to address the humanitarian tragedy in Gujarat should offer far better treatment than this.
Tulpan (Grade: A-): Set on the the harsh but lustrously beautiful Kazakh steppe, and presenting the traditional lifestyle of nomadic sheep herders, this Cannes’ Un Certain Regard winner is absolutely teeming with life as it tells its eminently engaging story of Asa (Askhat Kuchinchirekov), who shares a yurt with his beautiful older sister Samal (Samal Yeslyamova), his unforgiving brother-in-law Ondas (Ondasyn Besikbasov) and their four boisterous children. With its arresting scenes of a blue sky landscape that seems to go on forever, and with scenes of moving (and often humorous) familial intimacy inside the yurt, Tulpan was a must-see at this year’s Fest. As Tulpan has completed its Festival run, let’s hope Mark Peranson brings it to the VanCity Theatre for a one-week run at some point in the next year.
The Girl by the Lake (Grade: B+): Playing to a packed house at The Ridge, on a rain-drenched Saturday afternoon, The Girl by the Lake tells the surprisingly leisurely story of the murder of a young woman who is found nude on the side of a rural lake, but with no signs of sexual assault or a struggle. Into the picture comes Inspector Giovanni Sanzio (Toni Servillo), who is called in from the provincial capital to solve the mystery of the woman’s death. More concerned with the Inspector’s home life with his daughter and their travails revolving around the hospitalization of their wife/mother, and an exploration of the idiosyncracies of the town folk, any one of whom seems a prime suspect (not the least of whom is the father, who has filmed his daughter just a little too lovingly). The Girl by the Lake is not great art, but it certainly emerges as watchable Festival film fare. Mon, Oct 6th 6:40pm, Gran7, Th 3, and Wed, Oct 8th 11am, Gran7, Th 4.