2007 Vancouver International Film Festival
Another Epic Immersion in Films From Across The Globe

VIFF 2007

2007 VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

On Thursday, September 27th, the annual marathon Vancouver International Film Festival opens its 26th edition. Over the course of the next 16 days, the city will play host to more than 350 films. Statistically, VIFF is Canada’s largest film festival. Here’s a breakdown: 242 features, 90 documentaries and 119 shorts — representing 50 countries, 42 world premières, 29 North American premières and 34 Canadian premières.
Beyond the record number of débuts, VIFF ’07 is mounting more film-related events — celebrity appearances, director Q&A’s, forums, panels — than ever before. VIFF continues to be both a supermarket of films and an industry convention all in one, while offering a window on the world to an ever-increasing and enthusiastic group of cinéastes from across the globe.
This year, the Vancouver International Film Festival expands its traditional Dragons & Tigers: The Cinemas of East Asia series to include a spotlight on China. Speaking at the Festival launch earlier in the month, Festival Director Alan Franey emphasized B.C.’s importance as Canada’s “Pacific Gateway” to Asia. “China will take centre stage — not just this year but for the next couple of years,” Franey announced at VIFF’s VanCity Theatre.
Meanwhile, all the usual VIFF features will be back: Galas and Special Presentations, Non-Fiction Features; Canadian Images, Cinema of Our Time, and Spotlight on France. New this year is Climate for Change, a series that will include both dramatic features and documentaries emphasizing fresh information, vision and cinematic artistry, a $25,000 juried environmental film series committed to eco-consciousness, sponsored by Kyoto Planet.

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In A World of Change, Some Things Are Constant

Music

CHRISETTE MICHELE

If you haven’t heard the music of Chrisette Michele, there’s no time like the present to rectify that oversight. Presenting a funk-driven, old school-flavoured R&B, Michele‘s fusion of the sounds of Philadelphia and Detroit re-invents urban contemporary talkin’ blues in such an engagingly satisfying manner that you’re bound to come away dancin’, smiling all the while, upon your first listen. At which point, you’ll want to rush out and buy her début CD, I Am.
Here’s a streaming, four song introduction to Chrisette Michele.

Friendly for The Environment: A New Bulb Is On The Block

Environment

ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND LIGHTING

Being the environmentally conscious sort of people that we are, during the course of this past week, VanRamblings installed a low flow shower head in the bathroom, and visited our local Home Hardware to purchase a surfeit of compact fluorescents, this time for the living room, bathroom, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. All and all, we’re feeling pretty good about ourselves.
Seems, though, that with Canada banning incandescent bulbs by 2012 — in Ontario alone, replacing the 87 million incandescent bulbs in that province with more efficient bulbs will save six million megawatt hours every year, enough to power 600,000 homes — the hunt is on for an alternative, other than compact fluorescents, to the traditional incandescent bulb.
The knocks on compact fluorescents are few, but for some significant. Initially, concern was expressed about the tube design of CFs, but now that you can purchase a CF in the traditional incandescent bulb shape, for any room in the house, that concern would appear to have been dealt with. For some, the fact that CFs take awhile to “warm up”, that the lights can’t be placed on a dimmer, and many consumers believe the light seems a little harsh and unforgiving (VanRamblings believes we’re still gorgeous, though, when we look in our mirrors) are barriers to switching to more efficient lighting. Is there an alternative to compact fluorescents, then?
Seems that there is, or soon will be. In this Associated Press story, destined to be the next big thing in the lighting market, we will see the emergence of the LED “bulb”. According to the AP story, at the recent Lightfair Trade Show, in New York, the Dallas-based Lighting Science Group Corp. showed an LED “bulb” that screws into a standard medium-sized socket, producing a warm light equivalent to that of a 25-watt incandescent bulb, consuming just 5.8 watts. Although the bulb currently costs $50 — let’s face it, kinda pricey when we can purchase a 4-pack of standard bulbs for only a couple of dollars at our local grocery store — word out of New York was that “by the middle of next year, they’ll be priced for consumers.”