Day Three of the 29th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, and the Fest held two movies in store …
Cold Fish (Grade: B-): A wacky, phantasmagorical and generally sort of wigged out take on a gruesome and bloody murder spree that occurred in Japan earlier in the decade, Japanese writer-director Sono Shion introduces us to a typically unhappy Japanese family, a recently remarried father, his none-too-happy bride and his even unhappier teenage daughter. Enter the owner of a local tropical fish store who employs the business as a front for underworld crime, not the least of which revolves around his delight in ‘making people invisible’, an avocation consisting mainly of cutting his victims into pieces and disposing of them. Want some sushi? Grisly, sexy, brash and ultimately pointless, Cold Fish is just about as dark as they come (we’re referring to the comedic elements in the film), and apart from the bloodbaths splattering the screen during the film’s overlong 144-minute running time there’s some actual cinematic inventiveness at work in the film. (No more screenings planned, which may not be such a bad thing)

Continue reading VIFF 2010, Day 3: Saturday Night at the Film Festival →

Day Two of the 29th annual Vancouver International Film Festival proved to be everything that Day One was not. Which is to say that VanRamblings loved each of the three films we took in on Friday, our most favourite …

The Man Who Will Come (Grade: A): A devastating tone poem, winner of the Jury Prize and Audience Award at last year’s Rome Film Festival, The Man Who Will Come tracks six months in the lives of the inhabitants of a small Bolognese Apennines village circa 1944, almost all of whom were massacred in reprisal for the village’s support of partisans fighting against their Nazi occupiers. As observed through the eyes of 8-year-old Martina (Greta Zuccheri Montanari, in a spellbinding performance), the young girl acts as a mute but powerful agent for her family and a ‘narrator’ for our perception of the film’s events. With engaging, naturalistic performances, a superb musical score and lambent cinematography by Roberto Cimatti, The Man Who Will Come emerges as a tragic tour-de-force and one of the must-see films at this year’s Festival. (Screens again on Mon., Oct 4th @ 11:40 am, Gr. 7 Th3, and Tue., Oct 12th @ 9:30 pm, Park Theatre)

Continue reading VIFF 2010, Day 2: A Spectacular Day at Vancouver’s Film Festival →

Ordinarily, we’d post upon arriving home from a day of filmgoing at the Vancouver International Film Festival, but Thursday, September 30th turned out to be such a strange day, and the films we managed to get to so underwhelming that we’re simply going to wait til Friday, Day 2 of VIFF, to have our socks blown off, as the inimitable Mr. ‘Showbiz’ Shayne and Mr. Know-It-All (aka VanRamblings) take in screenings of …

• The Man Who Will Come, a dense historical drama that earned the Silver Grand Jury prize at the Rome fest, as well as the Audience Award (12:15 pm, Gr7, Th7).

• Reverse, a darkly comic story about three women, set in both the present and in 1950s Warsaw. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the recent Seattle International Film Festival. (6:45 pm, Gr7, Th2), and

• Of Love and Other Demons, about which Andrew Barker wrote in his Variety review: “In her startlingly assured debut … Costa Rican writer-director Hilda Hidalgo has seemingly unlocked the key to translating the cerebral sensuality of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s writing into film, providing one of the few screen adaptations worthy of the Colombian novelist’s source material.” (9:15 pm, Gr7, Th4)

Continue reading VIFF 2010, Day One: iPhone 4 vs The Festival →

The Vancouver International Film Festival will celebrate its 29th birthday September 30th thru October 15th, all across Vancouver.
For the first time, VIFF will offer screenings at the Park Theatre on Cambie Street, which replaces longtime Festival venue The Ridge. Otherwise, venues operating throughout the entire fest are the same as last year: the Empire Granville 7 (again, ‘home’ to VIFF), Pacific Cinémathèque on Howe Street, and the VIFF’s own Vancity Theatre on Seymour.
On those screens, VIFF will unspool 600 screenings of 230 feature-length films and 150 shorts, from 80 countries. And, as always, 80% of the films screening at VIFF will never screen in Vancouver again (so see them now).
As Canada’s largest Festival venue for Canadian film, in 2010 VIFF will present 87 Canadian films, including 20 dramatic features, 16 nonfiction features, one mid-length film, and 50 ‘shorts’. Selected from 700 submissions, VIFF will also present 115 non-fiction films, of which 98 are feature-length. The Non-Fiction Features series represents Canada’s second-largest “documentary festival,” with an estimated 63,000 of VIFF’s total 150,000 admissions last year attending this portion of the fest.
As in past years, in 2010 overall VIFF will present 85 premières: 12 world, 23 international, and 50 North American.
This year’s Festival officially kicks off this evening with Barney’s Version, Mordecai Richler’s acclaimed 1997 satire, which tracks the life of Barney Panofsky (Paul Giamatti), a Montreal Jewish mensch, marital philanderer, foul-mouthed social liability, hard drinker, self-hater, low-grade TV producer and possible murderer, through four decades of his messily authentic life. Directed by Richard J. Lewis, Barney’s Version arrives in Vancouver after débuting at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month.
VIFF will close two weeks later with a gala screening of master animator Sylvain Chomet’s The Illusionist (Gala, Fri, Oct 15 7 pm, Empire Granville Th7; & Fri, Oct 15 9:45 pm @ Empire Granville Th7), a follow-up to his award-winning 2003 tour-de-force, The Triplets of Belleville. Bathed in self-aware melancholy and lightened by slow-burn humour and a sensibility rooted in silent-era filmmaking, The Illusionist offers plenty to look at, all of it magnificently rendered, as it deploys superb hand-drawn imagery to bring to life an unproduced screenplay the late Jacques Tati finished in 1959.
In between — during the 17 days of the Festival — are numerous special events and multiple daily screenings, as many or more screenings, says VIFF artistic director Alan Franey, than in previous years.
In 2010, VIFF places a focus on a Best of Cannes 2010 film series, including Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Recalls His Past Lives, which screens next Wednesday, October 6 at 9 p.m. (Granville 7, Theatre 3) and Tuesday, October 12th at 4:15 p.m. (VanCity Theatre).

Continue reading Vancouver International Film Festival projectors are set to roll →