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VanRamblings tag:www.vanramblings.com,2008-08-20://50 2016-09-29T08:21:42Z Reflections from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Movies, media, music, machines, and more! Movable Type 4.23-en Subscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with Pageflakes VIFF 2016: VIFF movie mania is upon us tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4786 2016-09-29T07:33:39Z 2016-09-29T08:21:42Z It's that time again — Vancouver's yearly 16-day immersion in films from across the globe. The 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is as always a daunting prospect. This year's edition of VIFF, which begins today and runs through until Friday... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

It's that time again — Vancouver's yearly 16-day immersion in films from across the globe.

The 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is as always a daunting prospect. This year's edition of VIFF, which begins today and runs through until Friday October 14th, will screen 365+ films, including 219 full-length features, from 70 different countries.

Here are some tips on navigating it.

Programme, tickets and venues

As you get ready for a cinematic onslaught, you'll want to pick up a copy of the glossy 2016 VIFF programme, available at no charge all across Metro Vancouver, at the Vancity Theatre, as well as at libraries, bookstores and coffee shops.

You can skip the box office lines and buy your tickets online at viff.org, or simply by pressing on the buy option when choosing of a film of interest to you, and then simply print the ticket at home. Note that there is a service charge for online orders: $1 per single ticket, up to $4 per order. Patrons can save by purchasing ticket packs or all-access screening passes.

Tickets or passes can be bought in person at the Vancity Theatre, or at any of the Festival venues: The Centre for the Performing Arts, The Cinematheque, the Rio Theatre, SFU's Goldcorp Centre, the Vancouver Playhouse or Cineplex International Village. The box offices will be open daily, one half-hour before the day's first screening.

Throughout the Festival, VIFF offers a helpful customer service line, open daily 9am to 7pm, staffed by friendly and informed volunteers, who can answer any of your questions. Simply call 604-683-FILM (3456) for assistance.

What about all those lines?

Each VIFF screening will have three separate queues: a pass-holder line (for those with passes hanging around their necks; you'll know them when you see them), a ticket-holders line (for those who've purchased tickets in advance, and have the tickets in hand) and a rush line. Standby tickets, for screenings that are sold out, go on sale 10 minutes before showtime, at full price (cash preferred). No matter which line you're in, arriving at least 30 minutes early — or for popular screenings (the VIFF website will let you know which screenings are popular and almost sold-out) is a good idea, particularly if you're picky about where you sit.

Food and drink, parking, bus routes

Though most VIFF venues serve the usual popcorn/candy/soft drinks fare, some have a few extras (there's wine at the Vancity, and beer and wine at The Rio, for example). Most venues have a wealth of restaurants just steps from the door.

Outside food and drink is officially not allowed in the theatres, but VIFF-goers have been known to get away with it; be discreet, considerate and tidy (and, please, please, do not eat during the course of a film screening).

VIFF is pretty much a no-car zone — transit is definitely the way to go. Still, there's free parking available at Cineplex International Village for VIFF patrons, with a fair bit of parking in the area around The Rio. Otherwise, you're best taking advantage of Vancouver's transit system. Typing m.translink.ca into your smartphone browser will give you all the information you need to navigate between venues.

What movies should I choose?

There is always something new to see at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Many of the 365+ films have already screened elsewhere, though, either in their home countries or at other festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, Berlin, Telluride, Locarno and Venice, among other far flung places across the globe.

As a service to readers, for the past nine days, VanRamblings has published previews of award-winning and lauded films that have been scheduled as a part of VIFF 2016. Just click here to read 36+ previews of celebrated VIFF feature films (most with trailers, all with reviews from erudite critics).

Several of these titles — among them Kenneth Lonergan's Manchester by the Sea; Jim Jarmusch's Paterson; Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake; Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman; Olivier Assayas' Personal Shopper; Jean and Luc Dardennes' The Unknown Girl; Paul Verhoeven's Elle; and Barry Jenkins' Moonlight will look to build on their enthusiastic early acclaim. All of these films have been previewed by VanRamblings.

Another one, Nate Parker's Sundance prizewinner The Birth of a Nation, although it has become a lightning rod for controversy given director Nate Parker's 1999 sexual assault charge, promises an unflinching look at slavery, and emerges as a must-see at VIFF 2016.

And those are just the movies everyone recognizes and talks about. That the Festival programme contains still more multitudes - that it counts short masterworks, below-the-radar genre items and avant-garde mind-blowers among its essential offerings each year is a fact that can sometimes by lost amidst the deafening reams of Oscar hype that can issue forth throughout the fall season.

A massive annual confluence of art and industry, as well as a cinematic buffet of tremendous cultural and aesthetic diversity, is invariably reduced to just a handful of heat-seeking titles.

As much as we may look forward to the more lauded VIFF entries, many of which will reach our local multiplex in the weeks and months to come, there are many more VIFF films worth seeking out than the films VanRamblings has highlighted in our nine-day preview. But when a Festival boasts nearly 365+ films to choose from, a critic must start somewhere.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-viff-movie-mania-is-upon-us.html VIFF 2016: Paradise on the Near Horizon tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4785 2016-09-28T10:15:50Z 2017-02-10T21:47:41Z Despite the obstructive jaundice diagnosis VanRamblings wrote about yesterday, we do not have pancreatic cancer. Phew! Spent the day in the hospital yesterday undergoing a series of tests, and am scheduled for surgery tomorrow, on the opening day of... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

Despite the obstructive jaundice diagnosis VanRamblings wrote about yesterday, we do not have pancreatic cancer. Phew! Spent the day in the hospital yesterday undergoing a series of tests, and am scheduled for surgery tomorrow, on the opening day of the 35th annual the Vancouver International Film Festival, and will continue to write daily about VIFF through the end of the this year's Festival, on Friday, October 14th.

So, it is on to the final three previews of lauded films that will arrive on our shores beginning tomorrow in what is a very strong year for VIFF.

Before we get started today, this: Andrew Poon, long one of VanRamblings favourite Communications folks with VIFF — this year working with the very wonderful Owen Campbell, and the doyenne of all things Communication with VIFF, Helen Yagi — wrote yesterday to say that there are six Asian films — all part of the Gateway | Dragons & Tigers series — he believes are worthy of your attention, so take note — Andrew is never wrong ...

 Crosscurrent. Winner of Best Cinematography in Berlin this year, director Yang Chao brings a beautifully shot film perfect for cinephiles to VIFF this year, Andrew says. Writes Patrick Gamble in Cinevue, "Traversing China, from the riches of Shanghai's financial hub, to the nation's impoverished hinterlands, Yang combines a daring mix of realism and lyrical fantasy to create a sense of where China is drifting, merging imagery and poetry to create a film of uncontrollable sadness, arresting visuals and ruminative grace;

Out of the Frying Pan, a phantasmagoria of six dazzling anime shorts, ranging from powerful evocations of earthquakes and tsunamis to scenes from the life of a girl whose mother is a ghost and whose father is a cat (which, by the way, won the Grand Prix award at the 2016 Image Forum Festival), conceptually brilliant works all, and very much deserving of your consideration;

Lifeline. Making its North American premiere, Japanese director Shiota Akihiko will be in attendance at VIFF to present his new film, a slapstick, bloody battle between mortality and immortality, and a darkly comedic exploration of the depths one person will sink to save herself and the lengths another will go to in order to lose himself;

The Bacchus Lady. No, this film by E Jyong is not about our indefatigable Vancouver School Board trustee, the fabulous Patti Bacchus, but rather is a tour de force from the grand dame of Korean cinema, 69-year-old Youn Yuh-jung, who delivers a powerful performance as a sex worker confronting her and her ex-patron's problems in old age, in a graceful film that while exploring a bounty of taboo subjects provides an engaging picture of the lonely lives of people considered by society as past their sell-by date. Says Clarence Tsui in his review in The Hollywood Reporter, "The Bacchus Lady is certainly audacious, and a powerful reminder of how lives could or would be lived once the youthful vigor is gone";

Emma (Mother). An International premiere at VIFF 2016, Indonesian director Riri Riza (who will be in attendance this weekend at VIFF, along with the producer) to present his new film, an adaptation of Alberthiene Endah's novel Athirah, which focuses on social, political, sexual and psychological issues centering on questions of emotional and moral strength, says longtime Dragons & Tigers programmer Tony Rayns, who goes on to say, "Emma (Mother) is infused with Riza's signature lyrical realism, wise and humane as it deals with Athirah's stoic efforts to keep herself and her family together";

The Road to Mandalay. Debuting at the Venice Film Festival at the beginning of this month, Chinese-Burmese director Midi Z's Bangkok-set drama revolves around the loves, fears and loathing of two migrant workers in the Thai capital, the film an engrossing drama that works on an intimate level of moving human tragedy while providing insight into the travails that face the Burmese people. Say Vittorio Scarpa in his review in Cineuropa, "A blunt and accurate portrayal of the condition of the many Burmese migrants living in Thailand, searching for opportunities that often end in disaster, based on a number of true stories (among them, the story of the director's brother), Road to Mandalay shows us how the world, when it comes to problems of integration, is extraordinarily small."

Six more films for you to consider as VIFF film fare in 2016.

A Copy of My Mind. Comes highly recommended from VanRamblings' friend Mathew Englander who saw A Copy of My Mind at TIFF, and wrote to us to rave about it. Says Jason Bechervaise in his review in Screen Daily ...
"Prominent Indonesian filmmaker Joko Anwar (The Forbidden Door) sets his new film in Jakarta, telling the story of young couple who fall in love but end up in trouble when the woman steals a DVD from a client. Both affecting and absorbing in equal measure, A Copy of My Mind shirks melodrama to explore the difficulties faced by those living in a city marred by political corruption. Conveys the political and social turmoil faced by so many in Jakarta through the eyes of the two protagonists, it's the pair's genuine and natural abilities that give the film more than a touch of authenticity and sincerity."

Next on to this year's Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes ...

The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki. Finnish newcomer Juho Kuosmanen chronicles the buildup to the 1962 world featherweight championship title match in this idiosyncratic boxing drama that is, as Sarah Ward says in her review in Screen Daily, "contemplative, inspirational and sweet rather than brutal and action-packed, a quietly charming film that will punch above its weight on its way to finding a broader audience." Tender, lyrical and bittersweet, as Guy Lodge says in his review in Variety, "It punches its way into the upper ranks of cinematic pugilist portraits by virtue of its exquisite craft and a lead performance of heart-bruising melancholy by Jarkko Lahti."

The Salesman. Iran's Best Foreign Film Oscar entry, Asghar Farhadi, the masterly Iranian director of Oscar winner A Separation offers another finely cut gem of neorealist suspense, Irish Times critic Donald Barnes writing, "The Salesman is flawlessly acted. Ordinary-looking people pass through huge emotions without ever resulting to histrionics. Outbreaks of violence are rare and, thus, when they do occur, they are all the more shocking, Farhadi once again trading in the poetry of the unsaid." Variety film critic Owen Gleiberman writes ...
"The film's title refers to an amateur production of Death of a Salesman that the film's two central characters are both performing in. He's playing Willy Loman, and she plays his wife, the beleaguered Linda. It's a conceit that comes off as something of a contrivance — at least, until the very end, when the parallel between Emad and Willy at last hits home. They are good men who, through the tragedy of their choices, wind up letting down the people they love. Farhadi has fashioned a dramatic critique of what he portrays as the Iranian male gaze — a gaze of molten judgment and anger. As a filmmaker, though, his gaze is true."

And thus concludes VanRamblings 36+ film preview of the 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival.

A coda: broadcasting legend and longtime VIFF aficionado J.B. Shayne called yesterday to say that he feels a screening of Jim Jarmusch's documentary Gimme Danger is mandatory viewing VIFF 2016, for any one who has any appreciation of rock history and who loves Iggy Pop and The Stooges. Mr. Shayne will be present at the sure-to-be-raucous 9:15pm screening at The Rio on VIFF's opening night, Thursday, September 29th. Betcha his friend John Tanner will be there, as well.

VanRamblings has now previewed 36+ acclaimed VIFF films that are about to arrive on our shores having garnered critical acclaim at film festivals in every far flung community across the globe. For a survey of all the VIFF films VanRamblings has previewed for VIFF 2016, just click here.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-paradise-on-the-near-horizon.html VIFF 2016: Hey, Is VanRamblings Checking Out, Or ... tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4784 2016-09-27T07:54:22Z 2017-02-10T21:53:05Z Almost every year as the Vancouver International Film Festival is about to get underway, or has just started, something happens to prejudice VanRamblings' attendance at the festival. In 1992, VanRamblings collapsed at the back of The Cinematheque while watching... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

Almost every year as the Vancouver International Film Festival is about to get underway, or has just started, something happens to prejudice VanRamblings' attendance at the festival. In 1992, VanRamblings collapsed at the back of The Cinematheque while watching a screening of Michael Haneke's Benny's Video, which we'd already seen in preview, but wanted to see again. VanRamblings was rushed to UBC Hospital where we spent two weeks watching the U.S. election on TV, and Bill Clinton's performances in the debates. For the most part, VanRamblings missed VIFF that year.

In 2004, VanRamblings attempted to take in an early Sunday morning screening of a film at The Cinematheque, and while parking our car were rear-ended by a late model SUV — we were almost killed. Once we got out of the hospital, we returned to VIFF, standing at the back of the various VIFF cinemas (we couldn't sit) to enjoy the latter half of VIFF that year.

This year — according to our doc, we've been diagnosed with something called obstructive jaundice, the root causes of which we'll discover upon attending UBC Hospital on Tuesday for an emergency battery of tests. Wondering why there was no VanRamblings column yesterday? We were simply too weak. Before week's end VanRamblings' very able physician has indicated that we'll have a definitive diagnosis of the root cause of the current malady, and will take whatever correction action is required.

How many films will VanRamblings get to see at VIFF 2016, and how many columns will we be able to write over the 16-day course of the Festival?

Time and health will tell.

After Love. Belgian director Joaquim Lafosse brought his stunner Our Children to VIFF a couple of years back. In 2016, VIFF brings Lafosse's new, Cannes-debuting family drama After Love — starring the can do no wrong Bérénice Bejo, co-star of the Academy Award winning film, Best Picture Oscar winner The Artist — to our 35th annual Festival by the sea.

Says Wendy Ide in Screen Daily ...
"After Love presents an unflinching portrait of the final weeks of a marriage. Fifteen years worth of simmering grudges about sock laundry have boiled over, the battle lines have been drawn in the house that they are still forced to share, and the time they spend with their twin daughters is neatly apportioned between them. A relationship which is largely built on recriminations and point scoring is a dispiriting thing to witness, and this is certainly a tough watch at times. But it is a compelling drama, with its strong performances and adult themes.
 While Lafosse scrupulously avoids taking sides in the break up, it is hard to muster much sympathy for either party. Captured with a handheld camera that prowls around their contested living space like a caged animal, the atmosphere is charged with petty sniping, the atmosphere undeniably sad, with moments of discomfort, where the tensions crackle and the fault lines in the bedrock of the marriage become clear."

Says Peter Debruge in Variety, "As in Our Children, observing how the characters respond to a song reveals far more than any amount of dialogue could, and as Marie and Boris (Cédric Kahn) humour their daughters, we see the love they once shared for one another and realize why it's so hard to break free from its shackles."

All This Panic. One of the buzz films coming out of the Tribeca Film Festival this year, Jenny Gage's intimate documentary portrait of female youth has been called evocative, ethnographic, raw and heartwarming, engaging and reminiscent of the Maysles Brothers' work, Gage and her husband and director of photography, Tom Betterton, appreciative of the girls' beauty, employing magic-hour light throughout, bathing the film's subjects in a soft glow, the filmmakers far more interested in the girls' inner lives.

Says Elise Nakhnikian in Slant Magazine ...
"Loosely tracked over a three-year period as they hang out, play games, throw drunken parties, and interact with their families, the girls talk constantly, and they have insightful and touching things to say about friendship, their hopes for the future, love, sex, and more. The intensity and volatility of young female friendships surface in the relationship between loyal, grounded Lena and high-strung, unhappy Ginger, who start out as best friends, but go through a rocky period after Lena heads off to college and Ginger stays home, where she works and hangs out with a new group of friends.
There are also poignant glimpses into the girls' family lives. A moment of intimacy between Ginger and her little sister, Dusty, on a rooftop is so resonant because we've heard Dusty confess that she wishes she had a closer relationship with the standoffish Ginger. Meanwhile, Ginger's defensiveness and quick temper may be due at least partly to the prickly relationship she has with her father, who can't seem to find a kind word to say to or about her.
Every scene in All This Panic feels vivid and true, in this honest, impressionistic portrait of a cohort of 21st-century American girls."

All This Panic offers a fierce, sure-footed and remarkably intimate portrait.

Goldstone. From director Ivan Sen, Australia's premier filmmaker of aboriginal descent, says Luke Buckmaster in his five-star review in The Guardian, "Goldstone is a masterpiece of outback noir that packs a political punch ...
"... the film belonging to a suite of Australian films that contemplate land ownership in memorable ways, from 1932's On Our Selection to 1950's Bitter Springs and even 1997's The Castle, Goldstone has more weight than any of them, because the film's spiritual roots hark back to the traditional owners of the land. In a small but moving role David Gulpilil plays a man who cannot be bought; his soul is connected to the ground and the sky."

Says Eddie Cockrell in his review in Variety, "The sun is hot, the motives are cold and the film is blazingly noir as Indigenous detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) returns for another investigation of Outback moral rot in multi-hyphenate helmer Ivan Sen's socially conscious, supremely accomplished procedural thriller, a film unequalled in contemporary Aussie cinema."

VanRamblings has now previewed 27+ acclaimed VIFF films that are about to arrive on our shores having garnered critical acclaim at film festivals in every far flung community across the globe. Previous VanRamblings' VIFF 2016 columns, very much like the one today, may be found here.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-hey-is-vanramblings-checking-out-or.html VIFF 2016: Oh My Love, I've Hungered for Your Kiss tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4783 2016-09-25T07:11:18Z 2017-02-10T21:59:03Z The Vancouver International Film Festival's particular mix of glamour and discovery merge each year during the much-looked-forward-to 16 day festival, attracting hundreds of film people and the glitterati to the Opening Gala party, while at the same time screening... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

The Vancouver International Film Festival's particular mix of glamour and discovery merge each year during the much-looked-forward-to 16 day festival, attracting hundreds of film people and the glitterati  to the Opening Gala party, while at the same time screening 219 feature films from 70 countries, including as many as 20 of the 75 submissions for the foreign language Academy Award, and 140 short and medium length films. Last year more than 150,000 people attended VIFF, making it one of the top film festivals for attendance in the country. From the end of September through until mid-October each year, VIFF is simply the place to be, a cultural must.

Today VanRamblings continues our cinematic investigation of films we think you should place on your VIFF must-see list ...

Julieta. Perhaps lesser Almodóvar, but even lesser Almodóvar is far superior to what you'll see onscreen at your local multiplex throughout most of the year. Pedro Almodóvar is 66, his latest film reflective of the darker themes that increasingly bedevil us as we age. Not light and airy Almodóvar. but not over-serious Almodóvar, either. Even given all the foofaraw, Screen Daily's Chief Film Critic Fionnuala Halligan finds much to recommend ...
"Pedro Almodóvar's 20th feature is a tantalising creature full of hints and omens, a Hitchcockian drama, the story one of loss and grief, this adaptation of three short stories by Canadian writer Alice Munro carefully stitched together into an elusive film, Alberto Iglesias' humming contrapuntal score contributing much to a story given over to sorrow, the film a sad, grieving counterpart to the brazen antics of Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, where the possibility of hope still entices."

Says Rory O'Connor in Filmstage, "Riffing on Spanish telenovelas, Hitchcock, and film noir, Almodóvar has put together an undeniably gorgeous bauble with a simple sort of story that nestles in somewhere between the high and lowbrow. Ugarte and Suárez might have made for great Hitchcock heroines. They certainly make great chicas for Almodóvar."

That's the beauteous Adriana Ugarte above, beseeching you to take in a screening of Julieta.

Paterson. The buzz out of Cannes for writer-director Jim Jarmusch's newest film was through the roof, critics referring to the film's restrained aesthetic and Adam Driver's sublime, understated performance (with much talk of Adam Driver garnering a Best Actor Oscar nod come January 24th 2017) rendering it the director's most recognizably human and poignant film to date. Says Jessica Kiang in her review in The Playlist ...
"Jim Jarmusch's Paterson is like a balm to soothe your aching limbs, quell your clamoring mind and restore your tired spirit. An unfeasibly charming film full of little wisdoms and quiet comforts where we might expect to find provocations, its only deception is that it is so much richer than it seems at first glance. Most cinephiles are well acquainted with Jarmusch-ian minimalism, and the trick of reading more into his droll silences and laconic pauses than exists up on the screen. But, even aside from a difference in tone which favours sincerity over irony, and warmth over cleverness, this is something else: this is miniaturism. Paterson is a tiny little film, sharp in every detail, but minuscule, like a portrait on a grain of rice. And sometimes the smaller you go, the more colossal your impact, which means Paterson might just be Jim Jarmusch's God Particle."

Or, how about John Bleasdale's over-the-moon review in Cine-Vue ...
"No ideas but in things" wrote William Carlos Williams, the patron saint of Jim Jarmusch's sumptuous sonnet to poetry and ordinariness, Paterson. The film presents us with a week in the life of bus driver and lunchtime poet Paterson (Adam Driver). In many way, Paterson's life is idyllic. He is deeply, almost boyishly in love with his wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani); his work, given he's a bus driver, is remarkably stress-free and gives him plenty of time to think. Like Frank O'Hara, he writes his poetry in his breaks and before his shift. Sure enough we glimpse O'Hara's Lunch Poems anthology in the driver's cab.
 There's a shot of Paterson holding a book of William Carlos Williams' poetry which is so sensual and tactile —  the heft of the book in the hand, the feel of the paper cover — it will make any lover of books toss their e-readers in the bin. Drama does show up, but Jarmusch wisely sidesteps it. Marvin the bulldog is as bad an enemy as Paterson has to face and he's adorable."

One of the can't miss films at VIFF this year, and another must-see.

After The Storm. From the VIFF programme guide, "Over the years, VIFF has been proud to bring present the work of Kore-eda Hirokazu. Festival favourites like I Wish (VIFF '11) and Like Father, Like Son (VIFF '13) have touched audiences with their warmth and tenderness, their keen understanding of the way families come together and come apart. This year the Japanese master returns with this bittersweet take on life's rewards and disappointments. From Deborah Young's Hollywood Reporter review ...
"The story is beautifully balanced between gentle comedy and the melancholy reality of how people really are. A young divorced dad tries to get back into the good graces of his ex-wife and son in After the Storm, a classic Japanese family drama of gentle persuasion and staggering simplicity from Kore-eda Hirokazu. This bittersweet peek into the human comedy has a more subtle charm than flashier films like the director's child-swapping fable Like Father, Like Son, but the filmmaking is so exquisite and the acting so calibrated it stays with you."

No-one goes into a Kore-eda Hirokazu film expecting dynamite and runaway trucks. But even long-standing fans of the Japanese filmmaker (and in Vancouver, there are many) may be taken aback by the supreme subtlety of his latest, achingly beautiful ode to the quiet complexities of family life.

The Unknown Girl. Palme d'Or winners Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne can do no wrong, their films always subtle and compassionate evocations of the human spirit. From Guy Lodge's review in Variety, "Adèle Haenel joins the rich tradition of superb lead performances in Dardennes-directed dramas, their tenth feature The Unknown Girl offering a film noir, in a thoroughly dressed-down, cleanly lit and most satisfying way."

Or, from Lee Marshall's review in Screen Daily ...
"Haenel's character Jenny looks like a lost little girl at times, but her medical bravura is never in doubt. We first see her with her stethoscope to a patient's back — one of many scenes that manages to stay grounded in realism while saying something more, here to do with the way we interpret the signals people send out. Jenny is tormented by the thought that if she had opened that door to the young African immigrant who had visited her clinic late one night, the girl would still be alive, and it's this torment that powers the dramatic motor of a film that is about the burdens but also the healing potential of responsibility.
The Unknown Girl doesn't take the easy genre route, preferring to focus on the moral spring of Jenny's guilt, which as it uncoils, leads her not only into personal danger, but causes a blur between her doctor and detective roles that comes close to having fatal consequences."

Phew! Well, that's it for today. Four more VIFF films for you to consider.

VanRamblings has now previewed 24 acclaimed VIFF films that are about to arrive on our shores having garnered critical acclaim at film festivals in every far flung community across the globe. Previous VanRamblings' VIFF 2016 columns, very much like the one today, may be found here.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-oh-my-love-ive-hungered-for-your-kiss.html VIFF 2016: Four More Indelible Must-Sees tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4782 2016-09-24T07:25:10Z 2017-02-10T22:16:28Z This year's broad selection of Vancouver International Film Festival films showcases award-winning films that wowed viewers at international festivals, presented to Vancouver audiences for the first time. Selections from Cannes include Ken Loach's Palme d'Or-winning I, Daniel Blake; Olivier... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

This year's broad selection of Vancouver International Film Festival films showcases award-winning films that wowed viewers at international festivals, presented to Vancouver audiences for the first time. Selections from Cannes include Ken Loach's Palme d'Or-winning I, Daniel Blake; Olivier Assayas's Personal Shopper and Cristian Mungiu's Graduation, which tied for Best Director; and Maren Ade's highly acclaimed Toni Erdmann, awarded the Cannes Critics' Prize. From Berlin, Gianfranco Rosi's Golden Bear winner, Fire at Sea, will mark the director's VIFF debut, and Mia Hansen-Løve returns to the Vancouver International Film Festival with her fourth outing Things to Come, which won her Berlin's Best Director award.

As we've written about I, Daniel Blake, Graduation & Fire at Sea previously, today VanRamblings will introduce you to Personal Shopper, Toni Erdmann and Things to Come, as well as Barry Jenkins' widely acclaimed Moonlight.

Personal Shopper. Kristen Stewart is the medium, in more ways than one, for this sophisticated genre exploration from director Olivier Assayas (Clouds of Sils Maria). As a fashion assistant whose twin brother has died, leaving her bereft and longing for messages from the other side, Stewart is fragile and enigmatic — and nearly always on-screen. From an opening sequence in a haunted house with an intricately constructed soundtrack to a high-tension, cat-and-mouse game on a trip from Paris to London and back set entirely to text messaging, Personal Shopper brings the psychological and supernatural thriller into the digital age.

Here's what The Guardian's lead film critic Peter Bradshaw had to say in his five star review of Personal Shopper ...
"... captivating, bizarre, tense, fervently preposterous and an almost unclassifiable scary movie from Olivier Assayas, the film delivers the bat-squeak of pure craziness that we long for at Cannes, although at the first screening some very tiresome people continued the festival's tradition of booing very good films.
 Personal Shopper has that undefinable provocative élan that reminds me a little of Lars Von Trier's Breaking The Waves. It is actually Assayas' best film for a long time, and Stewart's best performance to date — she stars in a supernatural fashionista-stalker nightmare where the villain could yet be the heroine's own spiteful id. Is it The Devil Wears Prada meets The Handmaiden (also in Cannes, and at VIFF) with a touch of Single White Female?
Kristen Stewart's performance is tremendous: she is calm and blank in the self-assured way of someone very competent, smart and young, yet her displays of emotion are very real and touching. She is entirely devoted to her smartphone, which is to be the conduit of her fears and there is a dash of pure Hitchcockian brilliance in a scene where she turns it on and a backlog of texts starts mounting up, bringing danger ever closer. With his reckless, audacious Personal Shopper, Olivier Assayas has brought excitement to the festival."

Peter DeBruge in his Variety review calls Personal Shopper "a spine-tingling horror story," while Indiewire's Eric Kohn writes, "Personal Shopper presents a fully realized universe that merges visceral dread with deeper observations about its causes," and Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells, and a surfeit of other films critics, are quite simply gaga over the film.

Toni Erdmann. The most divisive film to play at both the Berlin and Telluride film festivals, one of the best reviewed art films of the year, some folks loved it while others hated it.

Here's what Lee Marshall wrote in his Screen Daily review ...
"Surprising, awkward, refreshing and, at times, downright hilarious, German director Maren Ade's dazzlingly original follow-up to her 2009 Berlinale Silver Bear winner Everyone Else is that rarest of things: a nearly three-hour-long German-Austrian arthouse comedy-drama that (almost) never drags. Eliciting laughs and applause — in all the right places — at its Cannes press screening, this tale of a prankster father who uses practical jokes and disguises to rescue his adult daughter from the work-obsessed spiral of seriousness he feels she has sunk into also manages, without an ounce of schmaltz, to address big issues relating, among other themes, to a stressed, permanently online modern world where work is no longer something we leave behind at the office; how families communicate (or fail to); business ethics and sexism in the workplace."

Giovanni Marchini Camia writing in Filmstage gives Toni Erdmann a solid "A", writing, "This is a superb second feature well-deserving of Berlin's Jury Prize, one of the most stirring cinematic experiences of the year, immensely rewarding to witness, ferocious, dazzling, and a masterpiece."

Things To Come. One of VanRamblings favourite directors, in our books Mia Hansen-Løve can do no wrong, and a plethora of film critics would seem to share our sentiment in their reviews of her latest, Things to Come. Writing in Variety, Guy Lodge says ...
"Mia Hansen-Løve and Isabelle Huppert prove a dream partnership in the director's gorgeous, heart-cradling post-divorce drama. Huppert is such a persistently and prolifically rigorous performer that she risks being taken for granted in some of her vehicles, but this is a major, many-shaded work even by her lofty standards. Hansen-Løve's oeuvre has acquired its own signature character of light, with sunshine streaming through even exchanges of most disconsolate darkness; conversely, only in the film's contented, Brittany-set pre-credits prologue, set several years before a heartsore storm, do skies turn a flannelly grey. Hansen-Løve's musical selections surprise just as often with their note-perfect sympathy to the action at hand: A critical use of that old chestnut Unchained Melody — crooned here not by the Righteous Brothers, but by the Fleetwoods — reps a very different appropriation of another film's glory from the Kiarostami hat tip, but the outcome could hardly be lovelier."

That's all we're going to give you, no précis of the story, no more excerpts of reviews, but only, "Go see Things To Come; you won't be disappointed."

Moonlight. One of the must-sees at VIFF 2016, a certain Oscar contender, and one of the best-reviewed films of the year, Barry Jenkins' acclaimed tour-de-force, a Special VIFF Presentation, will screen only once, on Friday, October 7th, 9pm at The Centre for the Performing Arts.

We'll do something a little different this time: Here are few "A" reviews ...

The Guardian (5 stars), Benjamin Lee. Moonlight is a profoundly moving film about growing up as a gay man in disguise, a difficult and damaging journey that's realised with staggering care and delicacy and one that will resonate with anyone who has had to do the same. We're starved of these narratives and Jenkins' electrifying drama showcases why they are so hugely important, providing an audience with a rarely seen portrait of what it really means to be a black gay man in America today. It's a stunning achievement.

Screen Daily (A), Tim Grierson. An indelible portrait of an imperilled life, Moonlight is quietly devastating in its depiction of masculinity, race, poverty and identity. Ambitious in scope but precise in its execution, this deceptively small-scale character piece reverberates with compassion and insight.

The Hollywood Reporter (A), David Rooney. A haunting reflection on African-American masculinity, writer-director Barry Jenkins' intimate character study traces the life of a black gay man from his troubled Miami childhood to maturity, the film laced with superb and widely varied music choices that often play in illuminating contrast to the scene unfolding, the drama divided into three chapters unfolding during formative times of the central figure's life, the early scenes especially beautiful, the film filled with moments of swoon-inducing romance to equal those of suffering and solitude, Nicholas Britell's score melancholy and melodic, James Laxton's cinematography soaked in sleepy, sun-scorched light early on and then burnished, darker tones later, it would be tempting to call Moonlight an instant landmark in queer black cinema, if that didn't imply that the experience it portrays will speak only to a minority audience. Instead, this is a film that will strike plangent chords for anyone who has ever struggled with identity, or to find connections in a lonely world. It announces Jenkins as an important new voice.

 And there we are. Four more indelible must-sees at VIFF 2016.

VanRamblings has now previewed twenty acclaimed VIFF films that are about to arrive on our shores having garnered critical acclaim at film festivals across the globe. Previous VanRamblings' VIFF 2016 columns, very much like the one today, may be found here. Enjoy the read!

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-four-more-indelible-mustsees.html VIFF 2016: More VIFF Greats, as the Hits Just Keep on Comin' tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4781 2016-09-23T07:22:37Z 2016-09-23T08:05:42Z The cinema is so many things at once. And when VanRamblings looked at the films in this year's VIFF selections, we became aware of the fact that it is a form of response. The Dardenne Brothers, Ken Loach, Cristian... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

The cinema is so many things at once. And when VanRamblings looked at the films in this year's VIFF selections, we became aware of the fact that it is a form of response. The Dardenne Brothers, Ken Loach, Cristian Mungiu, Gianfranco Rosi, and Kleber Mendonça Filho are sounding alarms, while Jim Jarmusch, Kenneth Lonergan, Barry Jenkins, Maren Ade and Olivier Assayas are fixed on internal landscapes, proclaiming the urgency of self-realization. What can also be seen in this year's Vancouver International Film Festival lineup is a bounty of vital work from artists from all around the world who will not stop until they see their visions all the way to the end.

Today on VanRamblings, four more outstanding VIFF films that are destined for greatness in the annals of human scale cinema.

The Birth of a Nation. Winner of the Audience and Grand Jury Prizes at the Sundance Film Festival this year, up until the emergence of the controversy surrounding the film's writer-director Nate Parker and his co-writer and friend Jean Celestin arising from 1999 sexual assault charges leveled against both, The Birth of a Nation was an odds-on favourite for a Best Picture Oscar nomination, and perhaps a win. Now? Not so much. VIFF is very much aware of the controversy, VIFF Chief Programmer Alan Franey stating, "We need to be sensitive to the opinions and controversies here so we will be doing our best to keep people in that safe zone of not prejudging or getting too upset, making sure opinions don't get treated as fact if they're just opinions." Note should be made that Nate Parker was acquitted of the sexual assault charge. Jean Celestin was convicted and later granted a new trial, though the woman declined to testify again and the case never made it back to court. In 2012, the unidentified woman took her own life.

Will you attend the single screening of The Birth of a Nation, at 5pm, Saturday, October 1st at The Centre for the Performing Arts? The issue is art versus realpolitik. Nate Parker will be present in Vancouver to introduce the Special Presentation of his award-winning, and much lauded film ...
"A significant achievement for writer, director, producer and actor Nate Parker, a searingly impressive debut feature, a biographical drama steeped equally in grace and horror, The Birth of a Nation builds to a brutal finale that will stir deep emotion and inevitable unease, the film an accomplished theological provocation, one that grapples fearlessly with the intense spiritual convictions that drove Nat Turner to do what he had previously considered unthinkable.
 Artfully modulated and fitfully grueling, Nate Parker's well-researched screenplay offers its own bold take on the widely contested narrative of Turner, a Virginia-born slave and Baptist preacher who led the 1831 uprising that claimed 60 white lives and led to the killings of 200 blacks in retaliation, and served as a crucial moment of insurrection en route to the Civil War three decades later. The film's most resonant element isn't its physical realization so much as its spiritual and intellectual acuity, its warm, earthy saintliness, and its historical and contemporary evocation of the ongoing black struggle for justice and equality in the United States. The Birth of a Nation earns that debate and then some."

The above quote is from Justin Chang's Sundance Festival review in Variety.

The Handmaiden. A bodice-ripper, a sexy and depraved lesbian revenge story about a pickpocket who poses as a maid to swindle a sequestered heiress, an erotic thriller that prioritizes female sexuality and exquisite set design to intoxicating effect, an intensely pleasurable and lavishly shot Gothic melodrama, exquisitely filmed, kinky, brimming with delicious surprises and spiced up with nudity and verbal perversions, accomplished South Korean director Park Chan-wook transposes Sarah Waters' sapphic Victorian potboiler Fingersmith to Japanese-occupied Korea at the beginning of the twentieth century, the story told in three parts and from multiple points of view like a modern-day Rashomon. Amidst the heavy slogging of VIFF, The Handmaiden may be just the sort of palliative you'll require to rescue yourself from VIFF's annual foray into cinema of despair. You know who you are. See you at a screening of The Handmaiden.

Under the Shadow. Curtis Woloschuk and the Alt(ered States) crew of twisted programmers put in so many hours in preparation for their genre defying series, and year-in, year-out VanRamblings pays the series short shrift. Not this year. First off we'll start from this brief column by Indiewire editor Anne Thompson ...
"Wait a second. Can the U.K. submit a film for consideration for the Best Foreign Language Oscar? Sure. As long as it's not in English. Take last year: Ireland, not Cuba, submitted Spanish-language film Viva. And France controversially chose the Turkish Mustang as its official entry over a list of top French auteurs. If the submitting country paid for the movie and supplied key personnel, it doesn't matter what language it's in. The French produced Mustang and its director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, born in Turkey, is based in Paris. (Her next movie is English-language.) And the Irish produced Viva, even though director Paddy Breathnach shot with local actors in Havana.
 And thus the UK's selection organization, BAFTA, has submitted writer-director Babak Anvari's well-reviewed Sundance mother-daughter drama Under the Shadow, a 1988 Iran-Iraq War thriller shot in Farsi starring Narges Rashidi, Avin Manshadi and Bobby Naderi."

Otherwise, there's this representative review of Under the Shadow ...
"Consequence of Sound (A-). Terrifying, a spooky ghost story that singes the nerves as much as it coddles the mind. Set in 1988, the story follows a small family in Tehran trying to cope with the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War. This isn't an easy life: bombs come and go, windows are taped in the likelihood of an explosion, and the basement provides daily refuge from any oncoming missiles. These aren't even the larger issues, at least not to Shideh (Narges Rashdi). When we first meet the brave mother and wife, her dreams of studying medicine are crushed by a stern administrator. "I suggest you find a new goal in life," he tells her, following a severe brow beating about her riotous political history. You see, Shideh is a black swan — she's rebellious, strong, fierce, and independent.
 Everything clicks in Under the Shadow. Rashdi is captivating, sweating her way through a terse 84-minute performance that's physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausting. Her chemistry with Avin Manshadi is equally remarkable, almost too real, which sells the heart-stopping finale in ways similar productions have stumbled hard. Director Babak Anvari spares no expense with his characters, dedicating as much time to their backstory as he does to the film's creepy mythology. Extraordinary, captivating, jarring, calimitous, genre bending, claustrophobic, messy, convincing and unnerving, Under the Shadow embraces the original tenets of horror, back when eerie tales were meant to enlighten rather than simply scare. On his first try out, Anvari wildly transcends the limitations that modern audiences have placed on the genre, and it's a bold testament to his abilities as a filmmaker."

Worth considering for a terrifying VIFF screening, don't you think?

Growing Up Coy. There is no more humanizing experience than attending the annual Vancouver International Film Festival, to remind ourselves once again that we're all in this together, that there is much injustice in the world, and our world will only change if we fight for, demand that change. Growing Up Coy is a film of the moment, the story of Coy Mathis, a transgender girl who was born a boy, garnered international attention in 2013 when her parents, Jeremy and Kathryn Mathis, filed a complaint accusing the school district of violating the state's anti-discrimination law.

The Mathises went on to win their case, but not before coming under heavy criticism for putting Coy, then a 6-year-old first grader, in front of reporters and camera crews and on television with Katie Couric. Now, they're poised to be foisted back into the spotlight with the documentary Growing Up Coy, which had its premiere on June 16 in New York at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival.

Directed by Eric Juhola and produced by his husband, Jeremy Stulberg, Growing Up Coy picks up with the Mathis family in early 2013, about six weeks before they went public with their case. Together with their lawyer, the Mathises believed that speaking openly was necessary to sway the public in Coy's favour and to help win her case. But, as the documentary shows, the move unleashed a media feeding frenzy that previewed the fights that would roil America in 2016, fraying the couple's relationship, drawing excoriations from talking heads and internet trolls, at times alienating their four other children and indelibly etching Coy's name into cyberspace's inexhaustible memory bank.

Nigel M Smith's four star review in The Guardian is as good an entry point as any into providing meaning for the struggle of the Mathis family.

Today's, and previous VanRamblings' VIFF 2016 columns that present information, trailers, and reviews by thoughtful and erudite critics of films screening at VIFF 2016 — and soon, much more — may be found here.

And, oh yeah, the opening paragraph of today's VanRamblings column? An excerpt from the opening address by Kent Jones, the director of the 54th annual New York Film Festival, which opens the day after our home grown VIFF gets underway, on Friday, September 30th.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-more-viff-greats-as-the-hits-just-keep-on-comin.html VIFF 2016: More Must-See Films That Will Debut This Year tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4780 2016-09-22T07:15:12Z 2017-02-10T22:46:14Z There is always something new to see at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and always an acclaimed director debuting a new film that is worth catching up with. It's a lesson that should be kept in mind as the... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

There is always something new to see at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and always an acclaimed director debuting a new film that is worth catching up with. It's a lesson that should be kept in mind as the ever-competitive fall movie season — of which this now 35-year-old festival has, surprisingly for many, long been an important pillar — gets underway.

The VIFF programme this year as in the past contains multitudes — that it counts short masterworks, below-the-radar genre items and avant-garde mind-blowers among its essential offerings each year — is a fact that easily gets lost amidst the deafening reams of Oscar hype that issues forth throughout the fall movie season. A massive annual confluence of art and industry, as well as a cinematic buffet of tremendous cultural and aesthetic diversity, can invariably be reduced to just a handful of heat-seeking titles.

In today's VIFF highlights column, VanRamblings will introduce you to four more films that may or may not garner Oscar attention, but should most certainly garner attention from you in order to sate your cinematic palate.

Aquarius: One of VanRamblings' favourite 2012 highlights was Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighbouring Sounds, which we called a masterwork. In 2016, Mendonça is back with Aquarius, the controversial Cannes debuting film that Brazil did not choose as its Best Foreign Film Oscar entry (at Cannes, Mendonça protested the suspension / inevitable impeachment of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, holding a sign that read "Brazil is experiencing a coup d'etat" and "54,501,118 votes set on fire!"), which means that if you don't see Aquarius at VIFF you may not get to see it at all — now, there's incentive enough to see the work of this master.

Variously described as a richly detailed and colourful character study, with a riveting and magnetic performance by Sonia Braga at the film's centre, Braga plays Clara, a 65-year-old widow and retired music critic, who refuses to sell the beloved Recife beach apartment she's lived in for most of her life, finding herself under attack from a powerful property company, former neighbours, and members of her own family who question her judgement.

Says Giovanni Camia in Filmstage, "Aquarius establishes Mendonça's authorial voice & his place as one of the most eloquent filmic commentators on the contemporary state of Brazilian society," going on to write ...
"Aquarius' central narrative has a clear social-allegorical dimension, the film's opening introducing two important motifs: a bygone sense of unity that has disintegrated in the present, and the idea of memory — and therefore history — as embedded in materials being swept away by contemporary economic processes. Mendonça's despondency at these developments is succinctly expressed through the dissolve that closes the scene: a shot of the apartment filled to the brim as the entire family dances together gives way to one of the same apartment, 34 years later, now empty.
 Clara is the film's heroine and Braga deserves high praise for her phenomenal performance. Stately, headstrong, and all-too-recognizably human, she's a delight to watch from start to finish, keeping the viewer mesmerized by her charisma and intensely rooting for her victory. And, anyway, how could one not love a 65-year-old who smokes a joint before the final showdown with her nemeses?"

Clearly, you'll want to place Mendonça's Aquarius on your must-see list.

American Honey. The North American debut for acclaimed British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank), American Honey took Cannes by storm back in May, Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells writing ...
"American Honey is a truly exceptional film, a kind of millennial Oliver Twist road flick with Fagin played by both Shia Labeouf and Riley Keogh (Elvis' granddaughter) and Oliver played by newcomer Sasha Lane ... but with some good earthy sex thrown in. There's no question that Honey stakes out its own turf and whips up a tribal lather that feels exuberant and feral and non-deodorized. It doesn't have anything resembling a plot but it doesn't let that deficiency get in the way. Honey throbs, sweats, shouts, jumps around and pushes the nervy. (Somebody wrote that it's Arnold channelling Larry Clark) It's a wild-ass celebration of a gamey, hand-to-mouth mobile way of life. And every frame of Robbie Ryan's lensing is urgent and vital."

Praise for American Honey is near universal, the acclaimed Jury Prize winner at Cannes this year, Variety's Guy Lodge writing ...
"American Honey is a ravishing feminine picaresque, a scrappy, sprawling astonishment, as a girl's gaze meets a boy's across the packed aisles of a Midwestern Walmart, the euphoric EDM throb of Calvin Harris and Rihanna's 2011 smash We Found Love hijacks the soundscape, setting a love story emphatically in motion by the time he hops up to dance on the checkout counter. "We found love in a hopeless place," the song's chorus ecstatically declares, over and over, as well it might — does it get more hopeless than Walmart, after all? It's a gesture so brazenly big and romantically literal that it can't help but have your heart, and it's such an early, ebullient cinematic climax that Arnold dares repeat it two hours later, cranking up the song again in a more fraught, nervous context. Like much of what the director risks, she shouldn't get away with it, but most defiantly does."

We're in. Can't wait. See ya at a VIFF screening of American Honey.

Elle. As Variety critic Guy Lodge writes at the outset of his review of Elle,
"You've never seen a rape-revenge fantasy quite like Elle, not least because the rape, revenge and fantasy components of that subgenre have never been quite so fascinatingly disarranged. Knowingly incendiary but remarkably cool-headed, and built around yet another of Isabelle Huppert's staggering psychological dissections, Paul Verhoeven's long-awaited return to notional genre filmmaking pulls off a breathtaking bait-and-switch: Audiences arriving for a lurid slab of arthouse exploitation will be taken off-guard by the complex, compassionate, often corrosively funny examination of unconventional desires that awaits them."

Sometimes you want to go into a VIFF knowing almost nothing about the film. VanRamblings could quote at length a surfeit of critics like The Hollywood Reporter's Jordan Mintzer, who writes about Elle that it is "a beautiful dark twisted French fantasy" or Lisa Nesselson in Screen Daily who writes, "Elle features a tour de force turn from Isabelle Huppert, the film suspenseful and unsettling from first frame to last, a delectably twisted tale of a woman who reacts in unconventional ways to being raped by an intruder, the film a shocking amoral romp with dark humour in curt dialogue exchanges." ... but, in this one particular instance, apart from the snippets above, we'll leave it up to you as to whether you wish to attend a VIFF screening of Elle, with the peerless, Oscar nominatable Isabelle Huppert at film's centre, and Dutch director Paul Verhoeven back at top of form.

Fire at Sea. Winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin (read: the top prize), and one of the most buzzed about documentaries of the year, Gianfranco Rosi's superb and haunting illumination of the Syrian refugee crisis, in addressing Africa's migration woes Fire At Sea turns it humanist focus on the 150,000 migrant refugees who cross from Libya in overcrowded boats each year to make their first contact with Sicily and European soil.

Capturing the migrant drama through the periscope of his camera, Rosi focuses on the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa, where wave upon waves of desperate boat people bring their dramas, tragedies and emergencies to Europe's shore, and the place where the the Italian navy and coast guard rescue as many survivors as they can. Writes Demetrios Matheou from Berlin in his IndieWire  review ...
"The selection of characters is small, precise. The dominant personality of the film is Samuele, a nine-year-old boy and a terrific bundle of good humour and contradictions, not least the fact that while confidently clambering around the island's rocky hills with his trusty, homemade slingshot, he's uncomfortable on water, and prone to seasickness, which is a little inconvenient for an islander.
We follow Samuele at school, with his uncle on his boat, and his grandmother at home, and roaming the island with his friend. When he has to wear an eye patch to deal with his lazy eye (a convenient metaphor for Rosi, perhaps, aimed at the less conscientious of those in the international community?) it plays havoc with his slingshot aim; when speaking to the doctor about his breathing problems, he wonders himself if it may be because he's anxious, a little Italian Woody Allen in the making."

Fire At Sea is one of the most talked about documentaries of the year, and chances are Rosi's film won't make it back to our shores, with VIFF likely providing your sole opportunity to screen Gianfranco Rosi's compassionate, humane, powerful, at times shocking but intensely human, documentary.

Today's, and previous VanRamblings' VIFF 2016 columns that present information, trailers, and reviews by thoughtful and erudite critics of films screening at VIFF 2016 — and soon, much more — may be found here.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-more-must-see-films-that-will-debut-this-year.html VIFF 2016: More Must-See Festival Highlight Films to Consider tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4779 2016-09-21T07:12:06Z 2017-02-10T22:20:35Z The cinema of despair arrives back on our shores for the 35th consecutive year, as the prestigious and always provocative 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is set to commence on Thursday, September 29th, bringing joy and a degree... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

The cinema of despair arrives back on our shores for the 35th consecutive year, as the prestigious and always provocative 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival is set to commence on Thursday, September 29th, bringing joy and a degree of pathos to the lives of all those who love film as creative and challenging art, and art that provides a humane and, in most instances, insightful window into this ever-changing world of ours.

Today's VanRamblings column presents four more VIFF films we believe may be worthy of both your time and your consideration at VIFF 2016.

Note should be made that reviews for the four films are not universally over-the-moon, although there's enough good that has been written about each film that further salutary investigation by you may be well warranted.

Each year for the past 20 years, VanRamblings has chosen 20 - 30 films from the VIFF programme, in advance of the Festival, that we've identified as "sure fire winners" based on what we've heard from friends, and have found in reviews on the 'Net. Our track record has been this: out of 20 films we've identified each year, five have emerged as life-changing cinema, nine have proved worthy of our time & we're glad we caught the films, three have provided travelogue-like entertainment, and three we've just hated.

Still and all, appreciation of film is subjective — one person's cup o' tea may not be another's cup o' tea. Read on, assess, then decide for yourself.

I, Daniel Blake. Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes this year (which is to say, the Grand Prize winner), 80-year-old U.K. writer-director-social activist-kitchen sink dramatist Ken Loach's latest powerful foray into humane cinematic agitprop emerges as one of the two films to which VanRamblings is most looking forward to screening at our VIFF 2016.

From David Rooney's review at Cannes, in The Hollywood Reporter ...
"For more than 50 years, Ken Loach has been making social-realist dramas tied together by a prevailing thread — the compassionate observation of the struggles of the working class to hold onto such fundamental dignities as a home, a job and food on the table within a hostile system that often views them unfairly as the cause of their own misfortunes.
 Vividly drawn, full of beautifully subdued performances, authentic, entirely of the moment and anchored by incisive characterizations rich in integrity and heart, and by an urgent simplicity in its storytelling that's surprisingly powerful, I, Daniel Blake portrays ordinary people pushed to breaking point by circumstances beyond their control, and by a government welfare system of circuitous Kafkaesque bureaucracy seemingly designed to beat them down."

Deeply moving and at times darkly funny, Ken Loach establishes himself yet again as the Clifford Odets of contemporary British cinema as his new film intervenes in the messy, ugly world of poverty with the secular intention of making us see that it really is happening, and in a prosperous nation, too. I, Daniel Blake is a film with a fierce, simple dignity of its own. Screens for a first time on Monday, October 3rd, at 3:45pm at The Playhouse; on Thursday, October 6th, 3:15pm at The Centre; and on the last day of VIFF, Friday, October 14th, 6:30pm at The Centre.

Graduation. Romanian Palme d'Or winner (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) Cristian Mungiu's latest follows a doctor's attempts to help his daughter pass a life-changing school exam with superbly subtle observation. As Peter Bradshaw writes in his five-star review in The Guardian ...
"Graduation, is a masterly, complex movie of psychological subtlety and moral weight, about the shabby choices people make as they claw their way up: people constrained by loyalty to others who have helped them with wrongdoing, who use those others' corruption as an alibi for their own failings, and those who hope that the resulting system of shifty back-scratching somehow constitutes an alternative ethical system. But how about the children, those innocent souls for whose sake all this grubbiness has been endured? Should they be preserved from graduating into an infected world of compromise and secret shame?"
An intricate, deeply intelligent film, and a bleak picture of a state of national depression in Romania, where the 90s generation hoped they would have a chance to start again, there are superb performances from Adrian Titieni as surgeon Dr Romeo Aldea, and 18-year-old Maria Dragus — who played the priest's daughter Klara in Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon. It's a jewel in an exceptional Cannes 2016 lineup."

With unfailingly convincing performances, a script that keeps the proceedings on a slow burn throughout, Mungiu's direction is the kind that refrains from drawing attention to itself, inviting the audience to fully immerse itself in the story and forget about the people behind the camera. Screens on Friday, September 30th, 1:15pm at Cinema 10, International Village; Wednesday, October 5th, 8:30pm, at The Centre; and for a final time on Tuesday, October 11th, 3:15pm at The Playhouse.

Yourself and Yours. Hong Sang-soo continues in the same intellectually playful vein that he explored in last year's VIFF favourite Right Now, Wrong Then. This is a film which, through use of characters who may or may not be doppelgangers, memories which may or may not be faulty, leaves us with questions that it resolutely refuses to answer, and as such may prove difficult for some members of the audience to process. Going in to TIFF, advance word on Yourself and Yours was not great, either, because the film had been rejected from Berlin, Cannes et al.

As Stephen Dalton writes in his TIFF review, in The Hollywood Reporter ...
"The discreet charm of Yourself and Yours will depend entirely on your tolerance levels for stylistic ticks and the ramblings of tedious, self-pitying drunks and slackers and their minor relationship dramas. Still, South Korean director Hong Sang-soo possesses a distinctive voice and an interesting track record, but his latest exercise in flimsy whimsy may be for indulgent hardcore fans only."

Wendy Ide is much more generous in her Screen Daily review ...
"Hong Sang-soo uses his trademark long takes, with occasional zooms, to capture the meandering conversations that play out between the characters. It's a technique which places emphasis on the performances. Fortunately, the actors are more than up to the task, particularly Lee You-young who is as beguiling as she is elusive. Ultimately, the film makes a case that perhaps it's better not to know everything about the person you love. And sometimes you just need to shed the baggage and start the relationship again from the beginning."

Blithe-bordering-on-farcical, wry and perplexing, with a darker than usual tone, fans of Hong Sang-soo will find plenty to like in Yourself and Yours, namely its wry humor, but for the uninitiated, it may prove a difficult entry point into the prolific filmmaker's work. Screens twice, on Sunday, October 9th, 8:30pm at Cinema 8, International Village; and for a final time on Thursday, October 13th, 2pm at Cinema 10, International Village.

Two Trains Runnin' (Grade: A-). An absolute knockout, one of the critics' and passholder favourites screened in preview at VIFF, and set to unspool at the 54th annual New York Film Festival as part of its Spotlight on Documentary program, Sam Pollard's Two Trains Runnin' is pure cinematic poetry set amidst the racial tensions and general social upheaval that were the order of the day in the '60s, when churches were bombed, shotguns were blasted into cars and homes, and civil rights activists were murdered.

In June of 1964 hundreds of university students eager to join the civil rights movement traveled to Mississippi, starting what would be known as Freedom Summer. That same month, two groups of young men — made up of musicians, college students and record collectors — also traveled to Mississippi. Though neither group was aware of the other, each had come on the same errand: to find an old, long-forgotten blues singer and coax him out of retirement. Thirty years before, Son House and Skip James had recorded some of the most memorable music of their era, but now they seemed lost to time, their music preserved only on scratchy 78s.

A tribute to a generation of blues musicians and the story of how the search for these pioneering musicians intertwined with the American civil rights movement, Two Trains Runnin' is an entirely remarkable document about how on June 21, 1964, these two campaigns collided in memorable and tragic fashion, and how America's cultural and political institutions were dramatically transformed, a story as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. Screens on VIFF's opening day, Thursday, September 29th, 6:30pm at The Cinematheque; Saturday, October 8th, 3:15pm at The Rio; and on Wednesday, October 12th, 6:30pm, at Cinema 9, International Village.

Today's, and previous VIFF 2016 columns may be found here.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-more-must-see-festival-highlight-films-to-consider.html VIFF 2016: The First of Eight Festival Highlights Columns tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4778 2016-09-20T08:25:54Z 2016-09-20T16:03:28Z The 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival begins with Maudie, a biopic of the reclusive Canadian painter Maud Lewis, and ends 16 days later with Terrence Malick's Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience, Malick's 45-minute cinematic odyssey across time... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

The 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival begins with Maudie, a biopic of the reclusive Canadian painter Maud Lewis, and ends 16 days later with Terrence Malick's Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience, Malick's 45-minute cinematic odyssey across time and history.

Among the well-known international filmmakers whose work will be presented at VIFF are France's André Téchiné, Olivier Assayas, François Ozon and Mia Hansen-Løve, Japan's Hirokazu Kore-eda, Romania's Cristian Mungiu, Cristi Puiu and Radu Jude, Belgium's Joachim Lafosse, Chile's Pablo Larrain, Spain's Pedro Almodóvar, China's Jia Zhangke, Iran's Asghar Farhadi, South Korea's Park Chanwook, Brazil's Kleber Mendonça Filho, the U.K.'s Terence Davies and Ken Loach, and the latest celebrated work from acclaimed American filmmakers Kenneth Lonergan and Jim Jarmusch.

As we'll do each day for the next 8 days, VanRamblings will attempt to provide insight into the critically acclaimed films which will arrive on our shores after having garnered recognition at film festivals spanning the globe. But first off today, a film that swept the Sundance Film Festival in January, a lock for a Best Picture Oscar nomination, a Best Actor Oscar nod for Casey Affleck, and a probable Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod for the always sublime Michelle Williams ...

A wrenching drama about a grief-stricken New England family, Manchester by the Sea is, as Sasha Stone wrote in her Telluride review, "sad and beautiful, not a dark film, nor really a depressing one. It's just about living with the truth laid bare." Justin Chang writes in his Variety review ...
"Kenneth Lonergan's beautifully textured, richly enveloping drama about how a death in the family forces a small-town New Englander to confront a past tragedy anew, gives flesh and blood to the idea that life goes on even when it no longer seems worth living, which diagrammatic description provides little justice to Lonergan's ever-incisive ear for the rhythms of human conversation, as he orchestrates an unruly suite of alternately sympathetic and hectoring voices — all of which stand in furious contrast to Casey Affleck's bone-deep performance as a man whom loss has all but petrified into silence.
While Manchester by the Sea is very much about uncles, nephews, fathers and sons, Lonergan, always a superb director of actresses, gives the women in his ensemble their due. It's been a while since Michelle Williams had a role this good, but she's lost none of her unerring knack for emotional truth, and she has one astonishing scene that rises from the movie like a small aria of heartbreak."

 From Manchester by the Sea's sound design and cinematography to Affleck's and Williams' haunting performances, Kenneth Lonergan's third feature film emerges as one of the best films of 2016, and a must-see for anyone who says they love film, as the transformative art of our age. Manchester by the Sea screens three times at the Centre for the Performing Arts, on Thursday, October 6th at 6pm, Saturday, October 8th at 2:15pm, and on Wednesday, October 12th at 8:30pm.

The Ornithologist. Screening at the 54th annual New York Film Festival at the same time it screens at VIFF, here's what the New York Times' lead film critic Manohla Dargis had to say about João Pedro Rodrigues' The Ornithologist in her Toronto Film Festival weekend wrap-up column ...
"The single most delightful and narratively adventurous movie I saw at Toronto, The Ornithologist very loosely recasts the story of Anthony of Padua, a Portuguese saint who died in the 13th century. Set in the present, this genre-buster pivots on Fernando (the lovely, pillow-lipped French actor Paul Hamy), whose one-man expedition into the wild goes weirdly, at times hilariously, wrong and then right. During Fernando's travels, he's waylaid (and hogtied) by pilgrims; takes a tumble with a goatherd; and exchanges gazes with the locals, notably the birds who look down upon him in long shots that, in movies, are known as bird's-eye or God's-eye views.
Directed by João Pedro Rodrigues of Portugal, The Ornithologist meanders as headily as its protagonist, zigging and zagging through one pastoral location and down one narrative byway after another. I'm still trying to figure out who the three bare-breasted huntresses are; they turn up on horseback with a heraldic blast of a horn, dogs barking and hooves pounding. That isn't a complaint, but an acknowledgment of the story's glories and mysteries, which makes The Ornithologist a good metaphor for both moviegoing and the festival experience at its best. Mr. Rodrigues opens up a world like a scroll as he shifts from realism to the fantastical and then the allegorical; pauses to meditate on the beauty of the world; and insists on the fusion of the spirit and the flesh. I can't wait to see it again."

VanRamblings' friend, Mathew Englander — who has just returned from TIFF — also raves about The Ornithologist, as do any number of thoughtful film critics. The Ornithologist screens only twice at VIFF, on Thursday, October 6th at 3:15pm in Cinema 8 at International Village, and Monday, October 10th at 6:15pm at the Vancity. Get your tickets soon, cuz when word gets out on The Ornithologist tickets are gonna be hard to come by.

And finally for today, Alison Maclean's acclaimed New Zealand production ...

Another one of Mathew Englander's favourite TIFF films, here's what New Zealand film critic Graeme Tuckett has to say about The Rehearsal ...
"New Zealand director Alison Maclean's The Rehearsal is a small, but undeniably ambitious film. Maclean (Jesus' Son) — shooting a script she co-wrote with Emily Perkins, adapted from the novel by Eleanor Catton — drives the play-within-the-film conceit into some smartly constructed scenes. Most successful — and often, ironically, superbly well acted — are the scenes set in the drama school classroom. In the best of these vignettes, Kerry Fox is a near-hypnotic presence, passive-aggressively manipulating and undermining her charges, while she preens and struts in front of them. Fox doesn't quite plumb the depths of repressed sexuality of Judi Dench in Notes on a Scandal — a film The Rehearsal surely owes a debt to — Fox is far more overtly likeable and forgiveable here than Dench was allowed to be in that under-rated gem. But the character, if we watch closely, is no less chilling."

An impressive technical work with a collection of remarkable performances, and well-composed imagery, with The Rehearsal Canadian born but New Zealand raised writer-director Alison Maclean has created an emotionally textured adaptation of Man Booker award-winning author Eleanor Catton's first novel, a drama that's as piercing as it is potent. The Rehearsal screens three times at VIFF 2016, on Friday, September 30th at 10:45am in Cinema 10 at the International Village; Saturday, October 8th at The Playhouse; and for a final time on Sunday, October 9th at The Centre.

Today's, and previous VIFF 2016 columns may be found here.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-2016-the-first-of-eight-festival-highlights-columns.html VIFF Movie Mania Nears: Tickets On Sale at the Vancity Theatre tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4777 2016-09-19T17:55:00Z 2016-09-20T23:34:55Z Vancouver International Film Festival tickets are on sale daily at the Vancity Theatre on Seymour Street, just north of Davie. This year's festival will run from Thursday, September 29th through Friday, October 14th where 365+ films, including 219 full-length... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

Vancouver International Film Festival tickets are on sale daily at the Vancity Theatre on Seymour Street, just north of Davie. This year's festival will run from Thursday, September 29th through Friday, October 14th where 365+ films, including 219 full-length features, from 75+ countries will screen.

Get ready for a cinematic onslaught: Tickets and passes for the 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival have been on sale since the first part of the month. This year's edition of VIFF, which takes place September 29-October 14, will screen upwards of 365 domestic and foreign films, including 219 full-length features and 130 short or mid-length films from 75+ countries which will play on nine screens at seven venues.

This year's glossy programme (once again, available at no charge) may be found at the Vancity Theatre, as well as at libraries, coffee shops, community centres and VIFF sponsors all across the Metro Vancouver area.

And as per usual, films will screen (mostly) throughout the downtown core, from the Vancity Theatre (185 seats) on Seymour Street in new Yaletown, to the Cinematheque (194 seats) on Howe Street, in the burgeoning South Granville area. Many VIFF screenings will occur in the thriving, relatively new Crosstown neighbourhood, nestled in between the hustle and bustle of downtown, the new-money flash of Yaletown, the historical character of Gastown, and the colourful grit of Chinatown, with screens available to patrons at the 350-seat SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (in the Woodwards building, at Abbott and Hastings), the nearby Cineplex International Village Cinema, in Cinemas 8, 9 and 10 (799 seats in total), and the Vancouver Playhouse, on Hamilton Street (668 seats).

Perhaps the most glorious (as well as largest, and most comfortable) venue is The Centre for the Performing Arts, on Homer Street, between Georgia and Robson (1800 seats, 900 on the main floor), due west of the Vancouver Public Library. The Rio Theatre, at Commercial and Broadway (420 seats), will also play host to a wide range of VIFF 2016 films.

Beginning Tuesday, VanRamblings will publish insight into 25+ films which arrive at our 35th annual VIFF having won awards and critical acclaim at film festivals spanning the globe, from Venice and Berlin, to Cannes & Locarno, from Tribeca and Toronto, to Seattle, Los Angeles, Palm Springs, London, Park City Utah's Sundance Film Festival, and more, as we attempt to provide you with insight into what may emerge as worthy entries, among them films which are likely to gain Oscar recognition early in 2017.

Full, daily VIFF coverage — which began on Monday, September 19th — will be available here through and beyond Festival end on October 14th, or by simply returning to VanRamblings each day. Commencing on Tuesday, September 20th, 2016 VanRamblings will provide 8 straight days of coverage of the 25 - 30 award-winning and under the radar films that will screen at the 35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival that may be worthy of your interest and your consideration.

VanRamblings will also provide coverage of the International Shorts programme (thank you Sandy Gow!), and will publish an interview with the tremendously gifted Vancity programmer Tom Charity that we hope readers will find both informative and heartening. Looking forward to seeing you back here at VanRamblings regularly and often, as we seek to provide VIFF 2016 coverage we hope will be of ongoing and consuming interest to you.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/viff-movie-mania-nears-tickets-on-sale-at-the-vancity-theatre.html Hallelujah: VanRamblings Returns After A Prolonged Absence tag:www.vanramblings.com,2016://50.4776 2016-09-19T04:21:03Z 2016-09-20T02:57:09Z With a British Columbia provincial election looming fewer than nine months away — on Tuesday, May 9th, 2017 — the time has come for VanRamblings to arise phoenix like from the ashes of the 2016 Canadian federal election. In the coming months, there... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

With a British Columbia provincial election looming fewer than nine months away — on Tuesday, May 9th, 2017 — the time has come for VanRamblings to arise phoenix like from the ashes of the 2016 Canadian federal election.

In the coming months, there will be much that will be written on this blog as to why any thinking, socially aware, informed and compassionate British Columbian must choose to vote for the New Democratic Party of British Columbia over Canada's most right-wing, least responsive (except in the lead up to an election) Liberal-in-name-only provincial political party. That most important work will begin in November, in the weeks following the ...

35th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, to which VanRamblings will dedicate almost all of its energies over the course of the next month, with the first of 30 VIFF columns to be published Monday, September 19th.

Following the conclusion of Vancouver's annual film festival by the sea, chances are that VanRamblings will focus, mainly, on the upcoming U.S. election, offering opinion and reflection on what is to be wrought on Tuesday, November 8th south of the border, and the implications of the most important election in the United States in more than 50 years.

Although VanRamblings' primary focus following the U.S. election will be British Columbia's perhaps not quite so consequential provincial election, VanRamblings will also turn its attention to Vancouver municipal politics, focusing mainly on Park Board & School Board, as strong opinion abounds.

And, finally, in a departure from past VanRamblings practice, this blog will increasingly turn its attention to a personal journal, mordantly titled fixin' to die rag, more as a service to VanRamblings' two lovely children, Jude and Megan, so that they (and you) will come to better understand who it is that has composed posts on VanRamblings dating back to February 2004.

As has long proven to be the case, what you will find published on VanRamblings will please almost no one (opinion, fidelity and truth are hardly in vogue these days), least of all my children (and their mother) in respect of the fixin' to die rag, most political figures of every stripe (as always, one can expect much consternation from the good-hearted folks involved in COPE), and those who reside on the political spectrum far from the territory where VanRamblings has long found its philosophical home.

Welcome back to VanRamblings — a raucous ride is all but guaranteed!

 http://www.vanramblings.com/vanramblings-returns-after-a-prolonged-absence.html Merry Christmas. May There Be Much Love in Your Life. tag:www.vanramblings.com,2015://50.4775 2015-12-26T01:45:34Z 2015-12-26T01:45:46Z Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

 http://www.vanramblings.com/merry-christmas-may-there-be-much-love-in-your-life.html Hope for a New Canada, as Rookie MPs Settle into Ottawa tag:www.vanramblings.com,2015://50.4773 2015-11-10T10:31:17Z 2015-11-10T11:29:15Z Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com
<align: center>Justin Trudeau meeting with his new caucus for the first time, following the 2015 federal election. Photo credit: Adrian Wyld, The Canadian Press.

On election night 2011, newly-elected Québec MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau was ridiculed for being out of the country on election night, celebrating her 27th birthday in Las Vegas. Moreover, Ms. Brosseau was attacked in the media and by opposition MPs for never having stepped foot in her Berthier-Maskinongé riding during the entirety of the 35-day election campaign, for being a unilingual English-speaking 'paper candidate' — a 'poteau' in French slang  — in a riding that was, and is, almost universally French speaking.

A 2011 op-ed in the National Post criticized Ms. Brosseau's inexperience, writing that she was "an extreme example of what happens when people sign up to run for a party with little or no expectation of actually winning." Yet, despite all, on election night 2011, Ms. Brosseau handily defeated incumbent Bloc Québécois Member of Parliament Guy André, former provincial Liberal MNA Francine Gaudet and three other candidates, winning a plurality, with 22,484 votes, representing 39.3% of all the votes cast.

<align: center>Ruth Ellen Brosseau was recognized by her fellow MPs in 2014 as Parliament's hardest working MP. Ms. Brosseau, representing the riding of Berthier-Maskinongé, was elected to a second term in office on October 19th, 2015. Photo credit: Globe and Mail.

Yet, even given all of the above, and what many in the political class considered to be Ms. Brosseau's "sordid past", at the conclusion of 2015's ruinous for the NDP 78-day election campaign, Ruth Ellen Brosseau — the failed university student and vegetarian single mother turned MP — upped her vote over 2011, raking in 42.24% of the vote, handily defeating all comers, as she secured a second term as MP for Berthier-Maskinongé.

No mean feat that, when the New Democrat Party caucus in Québec was all but decimated, crushed on election night October 19th 2015, as the NDP Québec caucus was reduced from 58 seats out of the province's 75 seats, to only 16 Québec seats out of 81 seats, of which Ms. Brosseau's was one.
"I was tagged the 'Vegas girl', and hoped from day one that I would lose that identity," says the now fluently bilingual Brosseau.
"With my win in the 2015 election, the fact that I not only won my riding for a second term, but that I was able to secure more votes and up my percentage win, demonstrates that over the course of the past four years I have gained the trust of the people I've been elected to serve — through hard work and being present in my riding for all of my constituents, as their champion and liaison to government, that through my continuing dedication to the people I serve — who like myself, live and work and raise their families in the riding — while working with a first-rate constituency team, together we have been able to accomplish much, to build on our successes, which makes me so, so very happy."

On the day of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's first meeting with his mostly newly-elected 184-member caucus — 156 MPs were elected for the first time — just one day after the Prime Minister and his cabinet were sworn in at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, the Liberal party leader told his party's MPs ...
"I need each and every one of you to remember one thing. Regardless of the committees you're on, the roles you have, regardless of party demands, and the partisanship that will continue to exist in this House ... your one job, that you cannot ever forget, is to be a strong voice in service of the people who sent you here from your constituencies."

And so it is. As the newly elected rookie MPs, from all parties, set about to get a handle on just what it means to be a member of Parliament, Ruth Ellen Brosseau's story should become the instructive story of merit, that through it all, through all of the partisanship in the House of Commons and on the Hill, the prime directive always is to "serve your constituents well", for that is what is going to get you re-elected to a second term in office.

<align: center>Last December, MPs paid tribute to the House security team for their efforts during the October shooting on Parliament Hill. Photo credit: Adrian Wyld, The Canadian Press

For rookie MPs, the transition to life as a federal politician will no doubt prove 'educational', if more than a little daunting, overwhelming and, as they burn the midnight oil, stressful. For rookie MPs must hire staff — both in Ottawa, and in their riding — sign a lease for a constituency office, find a place to live in the nation's capital, sign up for remuneration and benefits, be briefed on parliamentary protocols, and try not to get lost in the Centre Block in search of the bathroom, among other immediate tasks.

All told, there are 214 new MPs (of which 17 are former MPs but weren't sitting in the last Parliament) in the 338-seat House of Commons.

<align: center>Deputy House of Commons Clerk Marc Bosc (seen here in his office) has a few tips for new members of Parliament. Photo credit: Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa Citizen.

Last week, the newly-elected MPs participated in an administrative orientation session, the first of two being held for new MPs. A second session on parliamentary procedures will be held shortly before the House of Commons sits on December 3rd.
"It can all be quite daunting. There's a lot of information to absorb. It's not easy for them to arrive here with all the things happening to them all at once," said Marc Bosc, acting Clerk of the House of Commons, in an interview with Ottawa Citizen Parliament Hill reporter, Jason Fekete.
"The burden is very heavy. Members' time is spoken for almost from the minute they arrive here. If it's not caucus, it's committee work, or foreign travel, or constituency work. It's a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job if you let it control you to that extent. There's no limit to the amount of work you can do."

A multi-party panel of three long-serving and former MPs — re-elected Conservative MP Gordon Brown (Leed-Grenville), former Liberal MP Ted Hsu (Kingston and the Islands), and re-elected New Democrat MP Carol Hughes (Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing) — held a session last week with the rookies to share their experiences and provide advice.

One of the areas the veteran and former MPs addressed was maintaining a proper work-life balance. Parliament Hill, for many years, has been rife with broken marriages and personal struggles. In the interview with Mr. Fekete, Marc Bosc told the reporter that if he were to offer one piece of advice to new MPs, it would be: Don't neglect yourself.
"It's easy when you get here to forget about self care. It's important to have a good work-life balance, and a lot of MPs have to pay attention to that because it's easy to get sucked into the vortex of receptions and events, and lose sight of what's important in your life, whether it be exercise or your family or both," Bosc said. "Those members who are most successful obviously do a lot of constituency work but they also have some balance and carve out time for themselves and their families."

Steep learning curve, long days, a committee workload on Parliament Hill (and all that reading) will no doubt cause some of the new MPs to wonder what they've gotten themselves into. Some will burn out — which, one would have to think, played some role in the NDP's loss of 42 seats in Québec — while others will take to their new life as a swan takes to water.

<align: center>Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, holding his son Hadrien, as his wife Sophie and two children Xavier, left, and Ella-Grace wave to a crowd of supporters during a rally Sunday, October 4, 2015 in Brampton, Ontario. Photo credit: Paul Chiasson, The Canadian Press

Generational change in Ottawa, gender parity in the new Liberal cabinet, 25,000 Syrian refugees — 47% of whom will be children — on their way to Canada (perhaps, even before year's end), a new climate change policy, the long overdue end of the war on soft drugs, a new system for electing MPs to Ottawa on the near horizon and certainly in time for the next federal election in 2019, a programme for the realization of new light rail transit infrastructure in our cities, and the promise of an open, transparent and responsive government in Ottawa that will serve the interests of all Canadians — make no mistake, this is an exciting time in Canada's history, in the lead-up to the 150-year anniversary of our country, in 2017 (the celebration of which has been tasked to Trudeau confidante, Mélanie Joly).

This blush of first love, honeymoon period in the political life of Canada that we're all experiencing is, for all but the most dour of critics, nothing less than intoxicating. There is governing to be done, and a Canada to be transformed, so that we may recognize, once again, Canada as she is as a nation — recapturing who we once were and who we will be again and will remain, what we stand for as a nation, and the values we hold most dear, not just as a nation but in our warm, collective relations with one another.

We are our sisters and brothers keepers — let us hope and pray that the 214 MPs newly-elected to Ottawa from all parties, as well as the 124 returning Members of Parliament, work together in service of us all, in their constituencies, and in the House of Commons and on Parliament Hill.

For this is our Canada we want to reclaim — for each & every one of us, in every age group, from every ethnic community, from old stock Canadians to immigrants old and new, for every person along the gender variant spectrum, for every woman, man and child for whom Canada is home.

 http://www.vanramblings.com/hope-for-a-new-canada-rookie-mps-settle-into-ottawa.html 2015 Oscar Contenders, The Season's & The Year's Best Films tag:www.vanramblings.com,2015://50.4771 2015-11-08T08:01:55Z 2015-11-19T23:41:39Z Left to right, top to bottom, 2015's front-running Oscar contenders: Spotlight, The Martian, Room; Son of Saul, Bridge of Spies, The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road; Joy, Brooklyn, Steve Jobs; The Danish Girl, Carol, Inside Out, and Youth. As is... Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com
<align: center>Left to right, top to bottom, 2015's front-running Oscar contenders: Spotlight, The Martian, Room; Son of Saul, Bridge of Spies, The Revenant, Mad Max: Fury Road; Joy, Brooklyn, Steve Jobs; The Danish Girl, Carol, Inside Out, and Youth.

As is the case each year, the chill weather of late autumn and early winter brings on the year's most prestigious films, an opportunity for Hollywood to prove that it's not just all about the sanguinity of the bottom line, but that from studio heads through to directors, actors, producers, screenwriters, cinematographers, and all the other 'crafts' who pour their lifeblood into making films, cinema is more about celebrating the rousing, transformative filmic experience, over the more prosaic concerns of the fiscal imperative.

<align: center>Tom O'Neil's Gold Derby surveys you & the critics to predict the Oscar award winners

Each autumn for more than a decade, from mid-autumn through until the evening of the Oscar ceremony, David Poland — the founder of the film news "blog", MovieCityNews — sets about, weekly, to survey the informed opinions of Hollywood's top Oscar prognosticators, from recent U.S. Weekly film critic Thelma Adams, to Hitfix's Gregory Ellwood, The Hollywood Reporter's Scott Feinberg, the Toronto Star's Peter Howell, Fandango's Dave Karger, and IndieWire's Anne Thompson, among a host of others, on what films, and which directors and actors have emerged, in any given week, as the odds-on favourites to make the final cut when — in 2016, on Thursday, January 14th — the Oscar nominations are announced, and on February 28th, 2016, Oscars are awarded to the previous year's best films, performances, screenplays, producers & craft work of outstanding calibre.

<align: center>Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells predicts the Oscar nominees in his Oscar Balloon

For those who do not follow the perambulations of the "Oscar race" (for us, it is not dissimilar to following & commenting on an "election race" — with much less on the line, of course), VanRamblings will be here each weekend to update you on which films are worthy of your time, providing as well early insight into the potential career-altering & enhancing Oscar winners.

<align: center>
An amalgam of Gurus of Gold film critics predict the Best Picture Oscar nominees.

This week, Poland's Gurus of Gold Oscar panel has highlighted the riveting journalistic thriller Spotlight (opening in Vancouver next weekend) as their runaway number one film of the year, followed by Ridley Scott's humanistic science fiction film, The Martian (which has garnered box office gold in its first five weeks of release, its international and domestic take currently sitting at a pristine $458 million), the independently-financed Canadian-
Irish co-production of Emma Donaghue's gripping New York Times best-seller, Room, Steven Spielberg and Tom Hank's Bridge of Spies, the upcoming Christmas Day release films, The Revenant (directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, and starring Leonardo DiCaprio), as well as Joy (the latest film from the irascible David O. Russell, starring Jennifer Lawrence in a certain-to-be-nominated Oscar performance), the wonderful and incredibly moving Saoirse Ronan-starrer, Brooklyn, and rounding out their top 10, the Aaron Sorkin-scripted Steve Jobs, Cannes' Best Actress winner (for Rooney Mara) Carol, and Disney's animated classic, Inside Out.

<align: center>Six of the Gold Derby film critics weigh in on probable Best Picture Oscar nominees

Todd Haynes' Carol will open in Vancouver on Friday, December 11th, and as indicated above, both David O. Russell's Joy and Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant will open Christmas Day across Metro Vancouver, with Spotlight opening in Vancouver this coming weekend, and Inside Out already available on DVD or On Demand for your home theatre system.

The spectacularly affecting Brooklyn (VanRamblings' favourite film this year) opens in Vancouver on November 20th, while Room, Bridge of Spies, Steve Jobs, and The Martian are currently screening at cineplexes across Metro Vancouver. Lots of time left for you to see the very best Hollywood has to offer, all in preparation for the gala, gala "do" that is the annual dressed-to-the-nines, "look how gorgeous her gown is" end of February Oscar ceremony. Bring on the buttered popcorn and Oscar party snacks!

 http://www.vanramblings.com/2015-oscar-contenders-the-seasons-the-years-best-films.html Camelot and Sunny Ways: Canada's Welcome New Reality tag:www.vanramblings.com,2015://50.4770 2015-11-06T20:23:37Z 2015-11-07T19:54:01Z Raymond Tomlin http://www.vanramblings.com

This past Wednesday, there was something vaguely romantic, a nostalgia-inducing cinematic, neo-realist quality to the proceedings that occurred when Canadians were able to see Justin Trudeau, his wife Sophie Grégoire, their two older children, Ella-Grace and Xavier, by their side, and the thirty new, incoming cabinet ministers strolling in behind the Trudeau family, all of them ambling together down the driveway toward Rideau Hall, Canada's government house, blessed by the sun and the 3500-strong throng of supporters, on an unseasonably warm mid-autumn Ottawa morning. And then, when young Trudeau son Hadrien, just a year old, ran towards his father, jumping into his arms, seeing his father and mother light up with smiles ... well, you couldn't help but tear up at this most human scene.

Contrast the above warmly inviting familial scene with the 2006 first capturing of Stephen Harper with his two children heading off to school on the day after Mr. Harper became our 22nd Prime Minister — stiff and unyielding, formally shaking his son Ben's hand as if he'd never met him before, with no hug for his then six-year-old tow-headed daughter, Rachel.

Make no mistake, dear and constant reader, Camelot has come to Canada.

If the scene described in the first paragraph above was captured in a Hollywood movie, you'd likely be caused to reflect about the unreality of it all — but, Canadians, this is in point of fact our new human-scale Canada, the new activist Canada, as Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal Party house leader and boyhood chum of the Prime Minister, constructed the early days of "Trudeau the younger's" sunny ways incoming federalist administration.

The National Post's John Ivison lauded "the positive symbolism" of the incoming Trudeau administration, "the atmosphere providential and full of possibility, and a powerful antidote to the severe, austere Harper years."

As was to be expected, the first question in the scrum held on Parliament Hill following the swearing-in ceremony and the first meeting of the Trudeau cabinet, referenced the election commitments of the Liberal party on proportional representation, and a time frame for the regulation and legalization of marijuana — both commitments remain at the top of the government's agenda, Mr. LeBlanc said, reinforcing to the assembled reporters that the Liberal government would move both pieces of legislation within the first 18 months of the new Trudeau administration.

The very next day, two of Canada's more powerful ministers of the Crown — Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development Navdeep Bains, accompanied by Minister of Families, Children and Social Development, Jean-Yves Duclos — set about to announce to Canadians that the new government would reinstate Statistic Canada's long-form census.
"We need good, reliable data," stated Mr. Bains, in a media scrum. "We know the history of the last government, who were very much focused on ideology," he said. "In contrast, the Liberal government is very much focused on sound, evidence-based policies, which will ensure that policy development in Canada will be driven by good evidence and quality data."

 Activist, indeed, and we're all the better for it, with much more to come.

<align: center>Jody Wilson Raybould, Justice Minister and Attorney-General of Canada. In the picture above, the then B.C. Regional Chief — at a high-stakes meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper, working with a delegation of First Nations leaders — successfully argued last January for an update on Canada's policy on comprehensive aboriginal claims.

Much of the media focus in the first couple of days of the new Trudeau administration focused on two newly-appointed cabinet ministers hailing from British Columbia, Justice Minister and Attorney-General of Canada, and Member of Parliament for the newly-created riding of Vancouver-Granville, Jody Wilson-Raybould, and Harjit Sajjan, Canada's new very able and well-experienced Defence Minister, a very real Canadian braveheart.

A CBC archive video, referencing Ms. Raybould-Wilson when she was a child, and making the rounds on social media on Thursday, focused on a 32-year-old exchange between First Nations leader Bill Wilson, the father of the newly sworn-in federal Justice Minister, and then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the father of Canada's newly sworn-in PM, Justin Trudeau.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sajjan, in broad and supportive media coverage in the first 48 hours of the new governmental administration has emerged in the eyes of many as a Canadian hero, reporters and members of the opposition alike waxing poetic about the new minister as a "true badass" whose work in the military in Afghanistan yielded crucial intelligence on the Taliban defences.

<align: center>Harjit Singh Sajjan is a decorated Lt Colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces who has served four tours of duty in Bosnia and Kandahar, Afghanistan.

A defeated opposition weighs in on Canada's new government

Contrast the first impressions of the new government, the conduct of a newly accessible Prime Minister, and cabinet ministers prepared to answer all questions put to them by the media, with yesterday's coverage of the increasingly dour and hard-hearted leader of Canada's third-party, the New Democratic Party's Tom Mulcair — who could never pull off the kind of hope and change message the new government embodies. All the bearded one had to say was that it was the NDP who are the progressive party of change, not the Liberals, and it was he and his shadow cabinet who held the Harper government to account, while Mr. Trudeau went "gallivanting" across Canada, an "absent figure" on Parliament Hill. True — but who cares? Yawwnnn ... yesterday's news. Mr. Mulcair: you lost the election — a little humility might be in order, if not a statement of outright mea culpa.

<align: center>NDP leader Tom Mulcair at his first post-election press conference, readying himself to sing his favourite tune by The Beatles, "I'm A Loser".

You could hear, as well, in Thursday's NDP rhetoric what the tone of the first day of a New Democratic Party administration might have been, not "sunny ways", but rather rhetoric focused on statements not dissimilar to, "Ewww, the books are way worse than we expected. We're going to have to hold off on that change-y thing we were talking about. Not to mention, it's a cruel world out there — maybe we oughta rethink our position on repealing Bill C51." With the NDP it was always thus, dark statements devoid of hope, and a seeming inability to capture the public's imagination.

<align: center>Ain't exactly "sunny days" for Canada's new leader of the official opposition, and interim Conservative Party leader, the virtually unilingual Rona Ambrose.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have elected Ayn Rand-loving Rona Ambrose as their interim leader, and leader of Her Majesty's loyal opposition, hardly a departure from what came before (i.e. the secretive Stephen Harper), who took only two questions when the announcement of her new position was made public, the "scrum" cut short when Ms. Ambrose's faltering, and hardly up to par, French became all too evident, as she couldn't answer questions put to her in Canada's "other" official language — one can just imagine how many questions in French will be placed to Ms. Ambrose in the House in the days to come; it ain't gonna be pretty, folks.

The takedown has already begun

From Andrew Coyne's ludicrous, regressive column in the National Post, taking Mr. Trudeau to task for appointing a cabinet that had as one of its goals gender parity, to Christie Blatchford's takedown of the positive coverage of Trudeau's "ascension to the throne" in the same, right-wing rag, reporters across all media have proved more than cynical about the opening days of the Trudeau administration, from the "pageantry" of the opening day, to the news that five of the female ministers in the Trudeau cabinet are not, in fact, full-fledged ministers but "junior" ministers of state who must report to senior ministers to sign off on legislation.

On the latter issue above, a spokesperson for the Trudeau government stated emphatically that although it is, at present, contrary to the Act that governs such things, the appointed ministers of state will become, and are to be considered by Canadians to be full-fledged ministers of the crown in the Trudeau cabinet, rather than junior ministers, that each new minister will be compensated as such (note: ministers of state receive $60,000 per year on top of the $167,000 MP salary, while full ministers receive $80,000 — looks like legislation to enforce the claims of the spokesperson will be on the legislative agenda when Parliament resumes on December 3rd).

In the early days of the new Justin Trudeau-led Liberal government, expectations have been set impossibly high — no government, not even that of the affable and approachable Mr. Trudeau, could possibly live up to the expectations for the ...
"... most open, transparent and consultative government in Canadian history, a government that will act upon the wishes of all Canadians for a fairer and more just Canada, where child poverty will once and for all be eradicated, where equality of opportunity for all Canadians will carry the day, where Canadians will feel safe and secure within our borders in a too often uncertain world, a Canada where there will be a focus on the environment and the taking of very real measures to reduce the effects of climate change in Canada and across our globe, where the war on drugs will finally come to an end, and where the voices of Canadians will be heard and felt at the ballot box as Canada moves forward to an electoral system based on proportional representation, where every Canadian's vote will count. These, and the more than 300 commitments the Liberal government has made to Canadians will come to pass — patience will be required, but make no mistake, real change is on its way in Canada."

Camelot — a fantastical realm of romance and possibility, in our Canada.

Let us hope, for all our sakes, that the most positive aspects of Camelot come to pass, and not the failed idealism of the Arthurian legend, that change becomes papably real in Canada in the months and years to come, to be reflected in the social and economic experience of all Canadians.

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