As we continue to update our daily amalgam of social media interests, our RebelMouse page — and given that we’re the COPE Parks Committee official twitterer — with tweets about Park Board (there’s a great article by former Park Board Commissioner Stuart Mackinnon about Vision Vancouver’s unholy grab of community centre monies that is a must-read) and, just generally, political tweets of one sort or another. As a conseqence, we’ve tended to neglect our VanRamblings, what with this new ‘toy’ of ours.
But it’s back to VanRamblings today, if only briefly.
For those who love film, who consider film to be the art of our age, the autumn movie season is just about as close to heaven as we will come during our time on this Earth — of course, love, our family, our significant other, outstrips film on our ‘as close to heaven’ list, but when it comes to art, for us it is film which moves us, generates thought, and dialogue with those with whom we feel the closest kinship.
As we’ve mentioned previously, we love the ballet — and will be attending all Ballet BC’s performances this season. Of course, we feel much the same about our première summer festival, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, and reading, whether it be on our Kindle or iPad mini, or simply curling up in bed with a good paperback classic. We are not limited in our appreciation of art, it’s just that film remains a primary interest, and means a great deal to us.
To the ‘under the radar’ film of the latter part of the week, then …
The Sapphires, dir. Wayne Blair, w/ Chris O’Dowd, Deborah Mailman
Having wowed audiences at Cannes, this past May, and setting box office records in Australia (it’s country of origin) when it opened there this past August, The Sapphires was recently picked up for North American distribution by the Weinstein Company. Originally set for a holiday season release, given that the Weinstein Company is overloaded with Oscar calibre holiday season releases — Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, David O. Russell’s, Silver Lining Playbook, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained — we may or may not get to see this rousing rock ‘n roll period piece, the 1968 set, down under aboriginal Supremes-like story, or as Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells put it, a “high-throttle razzmatzzy Dreamgirls that I liked better.” High praise indeed from the curmudgeonly Mr. Wells.
Screen Daily chief film critic Mark Adams says this about The Sapphires …
“An energetic, amusing and resolutely feel-good-film-with-a-message, 1960s music movie The Sapphires ticks all of the right boxes to click with audiences as well as being a smart advert for Aussie girl power. It is a film with soul at its heart and some great tunes to back up its simple — and rather old-fashioned — story to great effect.”
Megan Lehmann in The Hollywood Reporter writes …
“A sparkling début for first-time filmmaker Wayne Blair, The Sapphires offers an exuberant celebration of Aboriginality that fizzes with humour and heart, its soulfulness going beyond the embrace of a jukebox full of Motown, Stax and Atlantic Records hits. The festive crowd at its out-of-competition midnight screening in Cannes agreed, giving the film a 10-minute standing ovation. Racial prejudice, social upheaval and the reverberating shockwaves of the Vietnam War are all there in Keith Thompson and Tony Briggs’ screenplay — based on a play Briggs wrote in 2005 about his mother and three aunts and their true-life journey from a far-flung Australian mission to war-torn Vietnam to sing for the American troops in 1969 — although the political is largely eschewed for the personal, the mood determinedly upbeat throughout.”
With all of the heavier fare due out this holiday season, audiences will need a respite from the more serious-minded Oscar films. The Sapphires may very well fit the bill. We’ll just have to wait for a release date for the film.
