While VanRamblings continues to ruminate on what, if anything, we’ll say about the Vancouver City municipal election this past weekend (and believe you me, we are possessed of strong feelings about both the campaigns and the we’re-not-too-happy outcomes), life marches inexorably forward.
As much as we like politics (and we do), we love film, as we have done since we were a wee lad. The holiday period which, it would seem, is already upon us — just last night a friend wrote to say that she and her husband were putting up their Christmas decorations — is notable in the Tomlin household for the plethora of fine, Oscar-worthy film fare that week in, week out find their way onto a screens in your local multiplex.
Last evening, VanRamblings took in Martin Scorsese’s brilliant 3D adaptation of Brian Selznick’s best seller, Hugo, an absolutely lovely and gorgeously filmed valentine to the movies, the story of a young orphan, clock keeper, and thief who lives inside the walls of a bustling Paris train station, circa the early 30s. Due out Wednesday (American Thanksgiving, don’tcha know), Hugo is not due for particularly wide release, but is nonetheless first-out-of-the-gate Oscar fare, and definitely worth a sit.
We write today, though, to present more trailers of upcoming films that will cause you to plunk your hard-earned dollars down at the cinema box office, between now and year’s end. First up today, Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady:
The reviews are already out in England, and although some critics are iffy on the movie as a whole, absolutely no one across the pond or stateside has anything but praise for Meryl Streep’s interpretation of Maggie Thatcher, particularly the latter part of the film’s descent into dementia.
Now, if you want to catch Owen Moverman’s Rampart, and Woody Harrelson’s apparently knocks-it-out-of-the-park Oscar contending performance, you’re gonna have to look long and hard, cuz the film is not going to get a wide release, and as is often the case with niche art films picked up by tiny indie distributors, unless you’re a movie fanatic and live for films like Rampart, and read widely on ‘specialized films’, you’re not going to read much about it, either. Still, it took the critics by storm at the Toronto Film Festival, which means that this slice-of-life corrupt cop saga should emerge as the palliative we’ll need to rescue us from the more saccharine film fare that will clog our movie theatres in the coming weeks.
