Arts Friday | The Undeniably Cinematic Romance of Train Travel

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[PROGRAMMING NOTE: VanRamblings won’t publish Saturday, Sept. 3rd thru Monday, Sept. 5. We’ll resume regular posting on Tuesday, Sept. 6th].

As a boy growing up in the 1950s and 60s, a part of each summer was given over to train travel with my mother and sister, to the Calgary Stampede, Edmonton’s Klondike Days, to Saskatoon or Regina, or out to Winnipeg.

There was nothing I cherished more than to arise at sunrise, standing between the trains cars, the summer prairie winds blowing across my face, as I gazed upon mile after mile of blonde fields of bluish green or mustard-yellow flowering and deeply scalloped gently rolling hills of oil-rich rapeseed.

All of which is to say, trains hold much for me in the recall of my life.

Cinema and trains go together like no other form of transport. Equal parts romantic and thrilling, they offer a sense of unequaled escapism.

Whether it’s the tearful goodbyes of Casablanca, the secretive affair of Brief Encounter, the epic crash of The Fugitive, the chase scenes of The General, the fateful encounter in Before Sunrise, the comings and goings of trains have been used to give metaphorical dynamism to countless films.

Trains are so popular that entire stories have been set on them.

This is due to the way they are able to keep action moving forward as its characters are forced to occupy the same physical space. From action thrillers to class commentaries to classic whodunnits, here are a few films set on a train that you’ll want to board should you be afforded the opportunity.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Perhaps the best of all Alfred Hitchcock’s British films, The Lady Vanishes tells the story of a young woman traveling across Europe who suddenly realizes her elderly traveling companion has disappeared. Containing endless twists as well as a pre-WW2 espionage subplot, The Lady Vanishes offers a delightful concoction that doubles as a study of British mannerisms, and the classic 1930s era of train travel.

The Commuter (2018)

Billed as an actioner, there are surprising depths to Jaume Collet-Serra’s train-based thriller The Commuter, starring Liam Neeson as a former police officer turned insurance agent who has just been laid off from his job, the majority of the film taking place on a Manhattan commute. While the thrills are thrilling and the action sequences accomplished, The Commuter has a socioeconomic depth that makes this Neeson’s most profound action film.

Unstoppable (2010)

As fast, loud, and relentless as the train at the centre of the story, Unstoppable is perfect popcorn entertainment — and proved to be director Tony Scott’s best movie in years, the narrative involving an unmanned runaway train carrying a cargo of toxic chemicals, and an engineer (Denzel Washington) and his conductor (Christ Pine) who find themselves in a race against time.

Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Director Sidney Lumet’s agent called it “the dumb train movie” but the cast — Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, and suspects including Lauren Bacall, Sean Connery, Martin Balsam, Jacqueline Bissett, John Gielgud, and Ingrid Bergman, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress — gives this mystery the feel of a luxurious chocolate-box with few toffees. “Stylistically it had to be gay in spirit, even though it was about a murder,” Lumet said of the film.

Source Code (2011)

Finding the human story amidst the action, director Duncan Jones and a charming Jake Gyllenhaal craft a smart, satisfying sci-fi thriller about decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens, who wakes up in the body of an unknown man on a commuter train, to discover he’s part of a mission to find a bomber.

Europa (1991)

Director Lars von Trier boxed himself into an expressionistic corner with this hyper-stylized thriller set aboard a German train in 1945. For all its visual razzle-dazzle, this tale of a trainee conductor contending with Nazi terrorists and a collaborationist boss is an oppressively claustrophobic ride. No wonder the lo-fi, wildness of the Dogme 95 revolution was just around the corner.

Before Sunrise (1995)

Richard Linklater’s Before movies span 20 years but it all began unassumingly enough onboard a train from Budapest. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) strikes up a conversation with Céline (Julie Delpy), then persuades her to disembark with him in Vienna to while away the evening and early morning before he catches his flight home to the U.S. Had she not fallen for his charms, audiences would have been deprived of one of films most enchanting trilogies.

Runaway Train (1985)

Jon Voight and Eric Roberts were both Oscar-nominated for playing hard-bitten convicts who steal a locomotive after a prison escape. Directed with an air of existential horror by Andrei Konchalovsky, Runaway Train — based on a 1966 screenplay co-written by Akira Kurosawa — emerged as a first rate genre film, and a hard-boiled action thriller that feels a bit like Speed on a train.

Snowpiercer (2013)

Revolution is in the air in Bong Joon-ho’s post-apocalyptic thriller set on a train that endlessly circles  a frozen and inhospitable Earth, carrying the last survivors of humanity — poor folk crammed into squalor at the back, rich ones whooping it up in first class with their own nightclub in front. There was enough fuel in the furnace to keep the idea burning through a Netflix series.

Strangers on a Train (1951)

The murderous “crisscross” trade-off proposed by Robert Walker to Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train may be hatched on a train but it’s telling that the actual climax occurs on an out-of-control carousel — the antithesis of the train, and anathema to any screenwriter, since all it does is go pointlessly round and round.

The General (1926)

Cinema has been coupled to train travel ever since the Lumière brothers screened their 45-second film from 1895 of a train arriving at La Ciotat station. Incredible to think that it was only 30 years later that Buster Keaton set to work on his staggeringly sophisticated silent Civil War action comedy, the story about a doleful train engineer who goes all out to save two objects of his affection — his engine and his sweetheart (Marion Mack).

https://youtu.be/4nj0vEO4Q6s

The Lumière brothers had it right — there is something undeniably cinematic about the locomotive. When it comes to train travel, you never know who might be onboard, and therein lies both its mystery and its thrill.

#VanElxn2022 | Welcome to the Crucial 2022 Vancouver Civic Election!

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Today marks the unofficial start of the 2022 Vancouver municipal election.

Vancouver voters, and voters from across British Columbia, in every village, town and city, go to the polls from 7 a.m. til 8 p.m. on the chill autumn day of Saturday, October 15th — to elect a Mayor, 10 City Councillors, 7 Park Board Commissioners, and 9 School Trustees — with advance  polls opening at the beginning of October, on this most important of months in the 2022 civic election year — given that the newly-elected will set the direction our city will take over the course of the next four years, and likely far beyond the next critically important 4-year term of office.

Today, VanRamblings will present a treatise on what’s on the line for voters in this  consequential election year, while taking a brief, glancing blow at each of the 10 parties offering candidates for Council, Park Board & School Board.

First up, two appalling Vancouver civic parties decidedly, unabashedly not to vote for, under any circumstance: ABC (A Better City) + OneCity Vancouver.

VanRamblings will explain why later in the month (this is no reflection on the good-hearted candidates for those parties, but simply what would be wrought were either civic party to elect a majority on Vancouver’s next City Council).

In 2022, the choice for whom to cast your ballot offers you a stark choice …

  • The six Vancouver municipal parties deep, deep in the pockets of the developer class of our city, who fund much of the operation of Vancouver City Hall — civic parties including: Forward Together, Vision Vancouver,  ABC (A Better City), OneCity Vancouver, the NPA (Non-Partisan Association) & Progress Vancouver — or …
  • The four community-minded civic parties who believe in a city for all and the city we need, who see the need for densification across our city, yes, but want gentle density across Vancouver neighbourhoods, that champion respectful engagement with citizens, whose notion of gentle density includes more parks and green spaces, small business, schools, community centres and amenities — those neighbourhood-oriented civic parties offering candidates for office in 2022 would most definitely include TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver; COPE Vancouver; Sean Orr, running as the sole candidate for office with Vote Socialist Vancouver , and — we suppose — the Green Party of Vancouver — the latter four Vancouver civic parties running on platforms that will oppose the mass construction of the wildly expensive (read: unaffordable for 90% of those of us who live in Vancouver), over-developer-friendly (not to mention, developer-obsequious), the isolating, skyscraper-driven model of towers, towers and more towers that would seek to push Vancouverites out of the city we love, in favour of turning Vancouver into a Monaco-like playground for the wealthy elite who traverse our globe in their private jets.

All will come into clearer focus for those few beleaguered folks who manage to make it to the polls in October, to select Vancouver’s next City Council, as well as the cherished institutions of Park Board and School Board.

VanRamblings would wish to see activists elected at every level of civic governance, a City Council ready to reclaim ownership of our paradise-by-the-sea to Vancouver’s put-upon — and dare we say, overtaxed — citizens, where priority will be given to funding new parks and recreation centres; keeping our streets clean, and the landscape of our city pristine; where Vancouver’s new City Council will work with senior levels of government to address Vancouver’s cruel and unsustainable homelessness crisis; where in addition to hiring new police officers, priority will be given to hiring social workers for an expanded Car 87 programme, which has saved countless lives of persons suffering through a mental health crisis; where attention, and priority, will be given to working within the city, and with other jurisdictions, to respond effectively to our climate emergency.

And,  the two most important policy changes that a new Vancouver civic administration must implement as their first priorities when elected …

  • An affordable housing plan. The revival of the Community Land Trust relationship between Vancouver City Hall and the Co-operative Housing Federation of B.C., that would see the construction of 1500 new housing co-op homes built each year on city, provincial and federal Crown land, each of the next four years. Consideration is being given to a TEAM-initiated plan that could both expedite the construction of ten 150-unit family housing co-ops each year — think the City Gate Housing Co-operative on Milross Avenue, the Roundhouse Housing Co-operative on Marinaside Crescent, in Yaletown, or the Railyard Housing Co-operative on Quebec Avenue at 1st, due east of the Olympic Village — all built at no expense to Vancouver citizens — while foregoing the $1 million in development permit fees. Construction and materials cost: paid for through a combination of mandated developer Community Amenity Contributions and provincial and federal funds (both Prime Minister Trudeau and former B.C. Housing Minister, David Eby, have signed off on the above). Cost to Vancouver citizens: zero. Cost of land: zero. Cost to Vancouver citizens for construction and materials: zero. A negotiation with the federal government would ensure that all subsidy monies for Co-op members would be paid for through the federal co-op housing subsidy fund. All monies paid by Co-op residents — after administrative, amenity payments and maintenance costs, as well as monies placed into a “replacement reserve fund” for major, future renovations — would be returned to the City to build supportive social housing, at no cost to citizens.

  • A  Renoviction Policy. Not Mayor Kennedy’s watered down version of the successful Burnaby and New Westminster renoviction by-law. In May 2019, Burnaby City Council adopted a ‘best in Canada’ tenant assistance policy that provides support for tenants displaced from rental buildings with 5-plus apartments, mandating developers cover tenants’ moving costs (up to $1,400), and pay the difference between a tenant’s current rent and the rent in the new building tenants move to, while providing the right of first refusal to displaced tenants to move into the replacement building, at the same rent they paid before being displaced (subject only to the provincially mandated maximum annual increases), with developers again covering moving costs when tenants move into the new building.

A core review of staffing levels at City Hall must also become a priority.

When you’ve got 76 highly-paid folks employed in the dis-information communications department at Vancouver City Hall,  and 1100 middle-management bureaucratic staff added during Sadhu Johnston’s brief tenure as City Manager, and a senior staff who believe they’re running the show, who steadfastly refuse to answer the simplest of questions put to them by Councillors, or provide any data whatsoever — of course, there’s Green Councillor Adriane Carr, who believes any question put to staff by Councillors or the public perforce must be seen as disrespectful and out of order, requiring the good Ms. Carr’s intervention to sanction the misbehaving Councillor questioner, while moving to shut the questioning down — you know there’s a heap of trouble at Vancouver City Hall that needs fixing … achieved only by a Vancouver City Council with the gumption to prioritize the myriad interests — pecuniary, and otherwise — of Vancouver’s wearily beleaguered citizenry.

#VanElxn22 | Tuning Out, Disengagement, and Low Civic Voter Turnout, Likely

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When Canadians’ engagement with the news dropped significantly in 2021, the plunge was in some ways seen as inevitable.

The change in news consumption habits last year came after two years with no shortage of storylines — the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, both a provincial and a federal election, the ongoing circus of the politics of Trump, and a nationwide reckoning over race, Indigenous relations and related police violence.

For many Canadians stuck at home, there was plenty of time to tune in.

However, the pace of news waned toward the end 2021, as did interest in the Liberal administration in Ottawa, and politics in general. The news cycle in 2022, comparatively, has more closely resembled the frenetic years of COVID, between the war in Ukraine, and existential threats to democracy and the planet.

Yet eight months into 2022, data collected by a Leger / Public Square Research poll shows Canadians are even more disengaged than they were this time last year, with a quarter of Canadians tuning out “too depressing” political news.

In fact, most Canadians who are tuning out the news say they’re doing so because the sheer negativity of what they read and hear is turning them off from politics.

According to the Leger poll, one-fifth of Canadians engage with political news “throughout the day,” while a third of Canadians engage with it daily and 22% engage with it a few times a week.

About a quarter of Canadians are almost entirely disengaged from the news, with 10% of Canadians actively avoiding political news, and 5% engaging with politics only through conversations with friends, with 10% reading the news only a few times a month.

Fifty percent of Canadians disengage, saying they’re “tired of the negativity in politics”, 38% saying the news is too depressing.

News engagement across all platforms in the first half of 2022 — website visits, news app sessions, cable viewership, and time spent on social media — is down compared to the first half of 2021. The steepest decline — 50 percent — pertains to engagement with news articles on social media, and probably stems from changes Facebook made to its news curation model.

Cable viewership news on CBC, CTV and Global 1 “is, on average, down 19% in prime time,” losses that skew heavily across all three news networks.

The Leger / Public Square Research poll also finds a mismatch between the issues dominating the headlines and what Canadians are concerned about. Only 16% of Canadians said they were concerned about the Pope’s visit to Canada and 35% said they were concerned about the backlog in immigration processing in Canada.

“The role of the news isn’t always to give people the news they want to hear,” says Heather Bastedo, who runs Public Square Research and produced the Leger survey for The Hub, the survey to which we are referring today. “But the media needs to make the connection to people’s lives with these stories. Most people aren’t flying out from Pearson, but the fact that the government can’t run things should be an issue.”

Thirty-four percent of Canadians said they’re concerned about long lineups at passport offices, while 21% said they simply don’t care.  The number one issue for Canadians is rising interest rates. Forty-five percent say they’re are very concerned about it, with 26% saying they’re somewhat concerned; 13% say it doesn’t affect them. The war in Ukraine is similarly pressing for Canadians. Forty percent of Canadians are very concerned, with another 35% somewhat concerned.

As might be expected, younger Canadians are least likely to be highly engaged news consumers, with only 13% Canadians aged 18 to 34 reporting that they read or listen to the news throughout the day, compared to 27% of people over the age of 55. Young people are less likely to be totally disengaged than people aged 35 to 54, though. Among Canadians under age 35, about 11% report having no interest in politics, compared to 14% of Canadians aged 35 to 54.

The numbers above underscore a collective weariness among the voting public.

Higher turnout in federal, provincial and civic elections is a reflection of vibrant, robust democratic practice. Conversely, low voter turnout depicts cynicism, apathy, anomie and alienation, triggering voters not to exercise their right to vote.

A representative democracy calls on citizens to participate in the electoral process. Many voters believe they know about likely election winners, and their single vote won’t make a difference. This is a classic example of a collective action problem.

In 2018, 39.4% of  the Vancouver public voted, a record voter turnout to be sure — which still meant that a whopping 60.6% of the voting public didn’t vote. Why?

  • Lack of interest. Not everyone tunes into the nightly news every evening. Some people are simply not interested in politics, others outright hate it. The last thing they want to do is research politicians or read about the latest election;
  • Lack of knowledge. Often coinciding with a lack of interest, many people also don’t know much about elections or politics. They’re not aware of who’s running, and sometimes they don’t even know there’s an election coming up;
  • Disillusionment. A thread of cynicism that runs through the Canadian electorate. Many believe their vote either doesn’t count or doesn’t matter, so why bother voting? In Vancouver, some of this has to do with the lack of a representational neighbourhood voting system (sometimes called a “ward system”). In addition, many potential voters feel it’s pointless to vote for parties and candidates, because they don’t believe that any of those parties or candidates represent their interests;
  • Voter fatigue. Even the most dedicated voter may feel worn down by the sheer number of names on the ballot, most of whom they don’t know. Additionally, long lines and difficulty voting may discourage individuals from going to the ballot box..

Low voter turnout is also evident from the fact political campaigns rely on data that serves to ignore popular voices on issues of importance, allowing candidates for office and their political parties to feel safe, ignoring the public will while failing to comply with even the most amorphous of campaign promises.

In these cynical times, most campaign managers, political parties and candidates know few people are going to turn out at the polls, so why bother crafting a message? In this scenario, amidst an abundance of voter fatigue, some political voices win, while most of the public — particularly those who choose not to cast a ballot — lose, getting government they don’t want, rather than government they need.

#VanElxn2022 | The Season’s Most Important All Candidates Meetings

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The buzz we’ll see created during the 45-day civic election season will occur at the various, and critically important, all-candidates meetings that will be held throughout September, leading up to Election Day, on Saturday, October 15th.

In 2018, the well-attended and phenomenally moving UBC Women’s Club of Vancouver all-women-candidates meeting was a key factor in getting City Councillor Rebecca Bligh elected to office. Ms. Bligh knocked us out with her knowledge of city governance, and the challenges faced by its citizens — of course, it didn’t hurt that Ms. Bligh’s gregarious partner, Laura, kibbitzed with us all night long (talk about someone having your number! … omigosh …).

Today’s VanRamblings will be given over to presenting the crucial all-candidate events you should put on your election calendar, sure to challenge your assumptions, and certain to inform, as entertainingly a good time as you’ll have over the course of the next 48 days, and critical to your understanding of the issues we all face in 2022’s crucially important Vancouver civic election.

2022’s Vancouver Civic Must-Attend Mayoral Debates

By far, the most important Mayoral debate to attend in September, will occur at the Britannia Community Centre, in cavernous Gym D, where in 2014 Vision Vancouver Councillor Andrea Reimer blew the rafters off the room — in a hostile room, too, consolidating that, whatever you thought of her — many, many were not fans —  Andrea Reimer was a must-elect to Vancouver City Council.

Monday, September 19th’s must-attend Britannia Community Centre all-candidates Mayoral event will be moderated by the phenomenally inquisitive Kirk LaPointe, who was the Non-Partisan Association’s candidate for Mayor in 2014.

If there’s a more erudite and well-reasoned writer — and former political candidate for office — in Vancouver, we don’t know who that person might be. The Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods folks who organized the all-candidates Mayoral event scored a coup in landing Mr. LaPointe as the night’s moderator.

As has long proved to be the case, and generally the best-attended of the Mayoral debates, takes place at the Christ Church Cathedral, on the northeast corner of Burrard and Georgia, with a seating capacity of only 600, the last Sunday of the election Mayoral debate is generally packed to the rafters, with more than 850 eager voters in attendance). No official notice of the event as yet, but you can be certain the event will occur.

Cathedral Mayoral Debate

Sunday, October 9th, 2022
1:30 p.m. — 3 p.m.
Christ Church Cathedral
650 Burrard Street, at Georgia

Civic Election All-Candidate Debates: Council, School & Park Board

Here we are on Tuesday, August 30th, 2022, and truth to tell it’s still a tad early for those who are organizing all-candidates debates / forums for our myriad City Council candidates seeking office in 2022, not to mention their civic body counterparts seeking to secure a position on the Vancouver School Board’s Board of Education, or a Park Board Commissioner’s position, sitting around the table at Vancouver’s Board of Parks and Recreation’s decision-making table, snuggled within that cherished environmental jewel, (Lord) Stanley Park.

Believe us when say, though, there’ll be debates & all-candidates events aplenty that will occur over the course of the next seven-plus weeks, as anxious politicos and pundits, not to mention Vancouver’s citizenry, await the outcome of the 2022 Vancouver civic election late in the evening of October 15th.

As we’d promised our friend Dulcy Anderson at Kitsilano’s Greek Days, way back in June, we would write to her about the seminal all-candidates events that constitute the two most important candidate events that occur for all candidates running for Vancouver City Council, and the one most important debate dedicated to championing women candidates seeking office in 2022.

Dulcy, we apologize for not apprising you of  the following prior to this date — although arriving  (more than) a bit late, it’s what we’d meant to write to you two months ago, which you’ll now finally find directly below …

Dulcy, each Vancouver municipal election, the good folks who are members of the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant sponsor a bangin‘ all candidates meeting for those who are seeking to become a Vancouver City Councillor. Although RAMP has not revealed the specific date for their 2022 Council all-candidates open forum, just wait a week or so, and all will be revealed to you.

What makes the RAMP all-candidates open forum a must-participate-in event?

  • Held at the warmly inviting Heritage Hall, at 15th & Main, each election year, 25 Council candidates are asked to take a seat on the stage, while 400 or more engaged citizens pepper the candidates with questions;
  • The RAMP forum is the most respectful of all the all-candidate forums held each civic election cycle, open to women and men, and representing the diverse multi-cultural mosaic that comprises the city we love. No cat calling, no acting out, no bad behaviour of any kind allowed— although in all the civic election years past we’ve attended, the audience has always conducted themselves responsibly, unlike the cretin who recently ambushed Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister;
  • All the press in town turn up at the Residents Association of Mount Pleasant all-candidates forum, print, radio, television, independent journalists and muckrakers, bloggers, substackers and those who write what they feel on Medium. In this day and age, you want that coverage;.

Because it’s September, the evening the RAMP event takes place, the weather will be cooler, as will the temperature of the audience politely gathered inside Heritage Hall. The camaraderie of the 25 candidates on stage is something to behold, reflecting well on how our various engagements ideally should be.

Each Vancouver civic election cycle for decades, the University Women’s Club of Vancouver sponsors a well-attended women candidates forum, moderated in 2018 by VanRamblings’ friend, Lynne Kent — but as she was saying to us last week, at the TEAM … for a Livable Vancouver town hall, as the UBC organization transitions, in 2022  will be organized and moderated by a younger group of women members. Dulcy, you’ll to want to be a part of this event.

The 2018 University Women’s Club of Vancouver (video above) was a bumptious, informative and signal event in the previous Vancouver municipal election,  the event providing women candidates seeking office a forum to discuss the issues of importance to all Vancouver voters, and most particularly to women voters and their lived experience. Women vote in exponentially higher numbers than men, in general women’s innate social conscience determining the candidates for whom they will cast their ballot.

In 2022, women candidates for City Council will save our city, and will work with integrity and élan towards a fairer and more just city for all of us.

Dulcy, because we’re aware you know & support City Councillor Christine Boyle — and given Ms. Boyle emerged the victor at the raucous 2018 Last Candidate Standing event (see video below) — we suggest you meet with Councillor Boyle to discuss her rewarding experience of Last Candidate Standing.

We’ll also suggest an out-of-the blue and phenomenally witty indie candidate for City Council in 2018, Elke Porter — she and her family are longtime Kitsilano residents — contact you, in order that she might discuss her experience of Last Candidate Standing, to provide you with further context and insight.