Window on Yuri's World

Max Manus, Chloe

2010-04-12T12:23:00.014-03:00

Busy times my friends! I have two units coming vacant in my building, a garden to whip into shape, taxes to prepare for, bathroom renovations to coordinate, and the minutiae of life to attend to. Thus, it was a blessed relief last night to turn my back on the world as I walked into the Park Lane cinemas.

Max Manus (2008, Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg) (Park Lane) It is April 9, 1940, and Max Manus, who has been fighting the Russians in Finland, has returned to Norway on the very day of the German invasion.

Though haunted by his front-line experiences in the Finnish campaign, Max throws himself into the work of the nascent Norwegian resistance movement, organizing dissenters and fighting the occupying forces in any way that they can. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1941, Max escapes in dramatic style, makes his way to England with his best friend Greggers, and joins the Norwegian Independent Company to be trained as a saboteur.

Upon returning to Norway, Max quickly makes a name for himself as a daring saboteur, a fearless partisan, and a passionate leader of men engaged in dangerous campaigns to disrupt enemy operations by sinking ships, burning office records, and disseminating propaganda.

Alongside the genesis of a war hero, we see glimpses into Max's personality through the complications of friendships and loves nourished amid the turmoil and uncertainty of war. This theme is especially poignant towards the close of the film, when Max sits - unemployed, uneducated, and unskilled - in the company of the ghosts of comrades fallen in battle.

Max Manus is a beautifully crafted film that concerns itself more with presenting the man and the times than with erecting a pedestal on which to enshrine a hero - the film is much more evenhanded than, for instance, Schindler's List. Indeed, Max Manus scrupulously avoids controversy, touching on important issues such as the efficacy of propaganda as resistance, the collateral casualties of sabotage missions, and collaboration with the occupying forces, as pedestrians events and issues that are dealt with daily instead of as deep philosophical questions to be debated.

The sets, costumes, and props are beyond reproach, and Aksel Hennie - a doppelganger for a young Steve Buscemi - does a fantastic job in the lead role, which he plays with admirable restraint. In fact, the whole film feels respectful without, as I alluded to above, ever straying into reverence - and is not bad in the nail biting espionage and heart pounding excitement departments either.

In my book Max Manus is winner. It is probably not in wide release, so be sure to watch it at home when you get a chance.

Chloe (2009, Atom Egoyan) (Park Lane) On my way out of the theater, a poster for Atom Egoyan's newest film caught my eyes and drew me in like a honey bee to a succulent blossom.

I left 2008's Adoration in absolute awe of Egoyan's craft as a story teller, as a creator of physical and moral realms, and Chloe left me virtually speechless. It is the tenderness and passion of Egoyan's films that is virtually physically painful to experience.

Catherine and David Stewart (perennial favorite Julianne Moore and always reliable Liam Neeson) are an established, well-educated, upper-class couple who have lost the instinctual intimacy that first brought them together. In a moment of desperation, Catherine hires Chloe (Amanda Seyfried), an ethereal beauty and high-class escort, to seduce her husband and prove his suspected philandering.

However, Involving Chloe in her problems is akin to opening Pandora's box, as the lady of the night proves a virus that nurtures the seeds of confusion, fear, and desperation that are born of the desire for love, comfort, compassion, and warmth. Egoyan, working against the backdrop of a Toronto somehow rendered exotic and romantic by masterful cinematography and artful lighting, plays Chloe's character like an instrument, teasing out a subtle web of sexual intrigue.

Moore is a wonder to behold in this film, playing a role reminiscent of her character in Todd Haynes' Safe (a terrifying film built around a sufferer of multiple chemical sensitivity), and Neeson is his usual blend of intensity and restraint. Meanwhile, Seyfried plays the nymph beautifully, seeming almost transparent in her role as angel of destruction - will we see her in more films of this caliber rather than the disposable roles that seem to have populated the majority of her career?

In my mind, Chloe firmly establishes Egoyan in the company of directors such as Ang Lee, the Martini Brothers, and Kim Kiduk, all of whom make wrenching films that feed raw emotion directly to the viewer's soul. Chloe, as a quick scan of the reviews reveals, is not for everyone - but is a must see in my book...

And speaking of books...
I enjoy trying to see what books are on the shelves in the background of movie scenes. In Chloe, I spied an interesting assortment in David Stewart's collection, including books by former Israeli Prime Minister Menachin Begin and American right-wing bull horn Rush Limbaugh. In addition, I spied a volume on German history and a tome entitled Titan, which is probably the biography of US philanthropist John D. Rockefeller. Are these books chosen at random to add atmosphere, or are they carefully placed in shot to suggest something about the characters?

Cracker Barrel: A Journey to the Heartland of American Cuisine

2010-04-02T21:12:00.006-03:00

Walking into the Cracker Barrel at Rocky Mount, North Carolina after 12 hours on the road, the down-home flavour of the place struck me immediately - it was like it had been painted on! However, we all know that we should not judge a book by its cover, so I followed our hostess as she wound her way through the establishment's sprawling dining room and settled in to study the entrees on offer.

Carolyn, my step mother, and I opted for succulent southern cooking, ordering up hot plates of pan-fried catfish with hot biscuits and all the fixins, which included two of a long list of sides ranging from green beans and steak fries to the "special vegetable of the day." Now Carolyn was quick to select green beans and lightly breaded okra, while I was intrigued by the veggie special, which turned out, inexplicably, to be brown rice. OK. Green beans and okra it is. Dad, meanwhile, ordered up a wholesome ham steak with veggies.

As the food was being lovingly prepared, we occupied ourselves with small-talk and playing peg games that were laid out on the table. But not for long, as the food was in front of us before we knew it.

A Feast (of sorts) for the Senses..
Ye gods! How does one begin to describe such a meal! Let's begin with the catfish, cooked to the consistency of soggy leather and smothered in a sauce that can be best described as...um...yellowish-orange? Ugh. Now this sad excuse for an entree was accompanied by the South's finest canned beans, which proved inedible, breaded okra that was surely fresh from the bulk plastic bag and into the deep fryer, and a bed of rice as soggy as surely every serving of Uncle Ben's Quick Rice ever boiled up. Ugh.

Have you ever read a story that takes place in a nursing home? Remember the description of the grayish, over-boiled mush of veggies turned out by the kitchen? Well, i'm willing to bet Cracker Barrel caters for them!

Ahh, you ask, but what of the ham steak? Indeed, the ham steak. Well, it barely made it onto the table. This 4-5 millimeter thick slice of ham loaf, fried to the texture of tough leather (various leather textures being well represented in the meal) was sent back to the kitchen post haste and replaced with a chicken salad that soared above everything else on the table in its shining, inspiring mediocrity.

Bleagh
What else is there to say? I feel positively polluted. There should be health advisories on the front doors of every Cracker Barrel from coast to coast. Give this one a pass folks!

Green Zone

2010-03-19T10:01:00.013-03:00

Green Zone (Paul Greengrass, 2010) (Park Lane) The buzz preceding Matt Damon's latest outing established the film as a continuation of the Bourne series set amid the political intrigue and heavy artillery combat of Iraq as Operation Desert Shield approaches George Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished." Essentially an intelligent action movie that addresses relevant political and social issues alongside thrills and chills. This is a laudable goal, and one that Katherine Bigelow's The Hurt Locker made seem achievable, but is apparently much more difficult than one might think.

The film follows Miller (Matt Damon), a US Army officer leading a team charged with securing Saddam Hussein's purported store of WMDs in the days immediately following the advent of the second Iraq war. The opening of the film, a collage of news footage interspersed with scenes of Miller's team infiltrating a reported WMD site, evoked memories of where I was and what I was thinking as the second Iraq war began - establishing a sense of immediacy and relevance.

The purported WMD site, alas, is empty - and apparently is not the first empty site that Miller and his men have risked their lives to secure on the strength of woefully inadequate intelligence. Returning to base and able to find no answers regarding the source of the faulty intelligence, Miller has no choice but to go rogue, delving into dark corners of political intrigue to learn the dirty secret behind America's reasons for going to war. It is Matt Damon against a global intelligence conspiracy - Bourne 4.0 indeed!

The problem is that, much like Body of Lies before it, Green Zone is not what it claims to be/tries to be/pretends to be. The political intrigue - what shady deals were worked out behind closed doors and in torture rooms to ensure US involvement in Iraq - is paper thin and in no way illuminating. The action sequences - shot in the same annoyingly jerky Bourne style that made The Quantum of Solace so difficult to watch - are distracting and disjointed. And Matt Damon - the darling of the intellectual action film scene - is flat, lifeless, and very out of place shlepping an M16 in uniform and shouting orders (huwah!).

Green Zone is a mess! And, sadly, Matt Damon, whom I have always considered a sign of a film worth paying attention to, proves yet again how limited he is as an actor. Like many of the biggest stars in Hollywood, Damon essentially plays himself in every role - he has never hit one out of the park by playing brilliantly against type a la Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love or Reign Over Me (both HIGHLY recommended). I found The Informant flat and lifeless despite a brilliant back story, and Green Zone essentially boring despite impressive explosions and - again - a compelling back story.

The Iraq wars have not fared well in the theater to date, producing one brilliant film, Bigelow's Hurt Locker, and a bevy of interesting and entertaining films that never really rise to the challenge of delving into what many claim to be the Vietnam of our age: an ill-conceived, mismanaged military folly in a place that the US little understands and has even less right to interfere. I understand that documentary film has done a somewhat better job of tackling the subject, but have not sampled any of these films.

Among the interesting and entertaining films that I can recommend are some that are very worth spending a few hours with. A few that come to mind are: Three Kings, Jarhead, the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and Brothers, which, against all expectations, succeeded in engaging me and bringing tears to my eyes (by the end it even had me impressed by Tobey Maguire, something I am loathe to admit!).

Green Zone, on the other hand, is a solid, non-qualified PASS.

Not Crazy about Crazy Heart

2010-03-12T09:13:00.006-04:00

With the Oscar buzz still echoing in our ears and the big winners enjoying renewed interest at the megaplex, I am truly at a loss as to how to write about how much I wanted to like Crazy Heart and how disappointed I was with Crazy Heart.

Let's start on a positive note: Jeff Bridges. The dude, as they say, abides. On the radar since the Coen brother's cult hit The Big Lebowski, Bridges deserved his best actor nod for his portrayal of Bad Blake, and continues a tradition of the academy rising above politics to recognize true dramatic brilliance by lauding artists such as Forest Whitaker, Helen Mirren, and Mickey Rourke, among others.

In fact, the casting of CH is entirely above reproach, which Colin Farrell fitting in the skin of a "new country" idol as if he had lived the part, and Maggie Gyllenhaal playing up her fleshy, sex-kitten, come hither look for all it is worth. This cast simply works together, giving flawless performances against a seamless backdrop that is a testament to the craft of legions of set designers, wardrobe experts, lighting crews, and sound men.

In fact, the whole film fits together as smoothly and elegantly as its cast, rendering it slick and shiny as a new dime that is worth about 2 cents.

The thing is that CH was a phony. It is a paper-thin, paint-by-numbers, stock Hollywood tale: man at rock bottom meets woman, woman inspires man, man makes mistake and breaks woman's heart, woman dumps man, man returns to rock bottom and finds new hope in: a) woman's forgiveness; or b) realization he can live a respectable life without her.

Wonderfully inspiring stuff!
I am really being a lot harder on CH than I should, considering that I was entertained by it. The thing is that there are some films that I go to with the mere expectation of entertainment - think Casino Royale or the Bourne series - rather than serious intellectual engagement. CH, on the other hand, sold itself as more than light entertainment: The Christian Science Monitor, along with virtually every other newspaper and website, gushes "Bridges draws us deeply inside Blake’s moment-to-moment heartbreaks. He makes us root for him as we would root for a dear friend. Ultimately, his triumphs become our own."

I saw the movie that the Monitor is talking about, and it is called The Wrestler. An edgy tale of redemption that takes risks, pushes boundaries, and takes us deep into the dark recesses of its protagonist's heart and soul. CH suffers in agony by the comparison, maintaining its slick patina by playing it safe all the way, never taking any risks. At one point Maggie Gyllenhaal's character asks Bad Blake if Colin Farrell's character is "real country" under his "new country" guise - maybe CH is real dramatic brilliance under its slick Hollywood guise, but I resent having to search for it.

To return to the critics by way of closing, it is impossible to miss the fact that few of the rave reviews really spend much time talking about the movie itself. In the end most seem to be reviewing Bridges' absolutely brilliant performance rather than the film: The New York Times proclaims CH "A small movie perfectly scaled to the big performance at its center."

I expected more than a one-man show...

Blogging, Olympics, and Avatar 3D

2010-02-18T08:38:00.016-04:00

Five months
Has it really been five months since my last post? I can't imagine! And honestly, it could be five more months after this, I just don't know. I reached a point last year where I just didn't know why I was blogging anymore - a few core friends were reading my posts, but besides that I felt I was working hard to express my ideas and opinions, and they were just echoing in a void.

Well, be that as it may, I have been thinking of late of returning to this forum, but of doing so in a less specialized manner. I will keep commenting on movies, as they remain a passion, but will also try to include more ideas, opinions, and anecdotes on other topics. No promises, mind you, but let's see if I can get back in the groove.

Olympics
And, of course, given current events, the first topic has got to be the seemingly all-consuming Vancouver Olympics. Now in terms of "fete of the century" or "fiasco," I have nothing to add. However, watching Mike Robertson go from sure-fire gold to silver in the men's snowboard cross the other night got me thinking about our competitors to the south and their seemingly superhuman ability to dominate international sporting events.

Now I am not begrudging Seth Wescott his Gold medal - anyone who can come from that far behind, that low on the course, deserves to wear the laurels. However, watching Lindsay Vonn and Julia Mancuso beat the world's top alpine skiers by almost a full second (an eternity in these events), I got to wondering about the bigger picture. I have three theories:

1) Food Supply Doping: Think about the American food supply system as revealed in documentaries such as Food, Inc. and Fast Food Nation: a concoction of ground GM corn, meat raised on steroids and growth hormone, and a raft of other chemical additives. Is it possible that the amount of such additives consumed by Americans in a standard meat, potatoes, and apple pie diet "pumps them up" in such a way as to give them an advantage over athletes from nations with stricter food additive codes?

2) Funding: It's hard to argue the obviousness of the fact that American athletes benefit from significantly higher financial resources than those from most nations. This is not necessarily due to higher government spending (I would have to research this), but due to higher corporate sponsorship - think about the largest, richest companies in the world, and think about what nation they call home and which athletes they are more likely to support. That's what I am talking about.

3) The Cold War: Yes, Dr. Strangelove has a hand in this also. I was talking with some friends the other night, and it hit me: The USA's current sport training system and mentality is a direct offshoot of the intense rivalry that existed between the Americans and the Soviets during the second half of the twentieth century.

Think about it: in addition to stockpiling bombs and expanding "spheres of influence," the cold war was fought viciously on the ski slopes, skating ovals, velodromes, and sprinting tracks of the summer and winter Olympic games. Sport was one of the many proxies for armed combat used by the American and Soviet governments to prove their superiority over each other - and this mindset shaped the sporting mentalities of many of the coaches, in particular, and some of the athletes competing in Vancouver. Winning is everything.

Now I am not disparaging the American athletes - as I said, Wescott showed amazing skill and stamina and deserves his gold - I just want to illuminate some of the context of what we are seeing happen on the slopes and in the rinks. American athletes are the product of a system that has murky roots, but in the present enables them to truly be the very best that they can be.

Own the Podium
And I guess that this is where a lot of the concern about the Canadian "Own the Podium" campaign arises from. The Cold War tainted sports with politics (e.g. the 1980 and 1984 Olympic game boycotts), warping the spirit of the games by taking the emphasis away from performance and personal achievement, and some fear that the Own the Podium Campaign amounts to the same thing and could be a pretty murky foundation to build on in and of itself.

Overall, I hope that governments around the world continue to fund sports and the arts so that the skiers, bikers, swimmers, painters, singers, and poets of our nations can continue to inspire the dreams of young people and build the rich tapestry of our global culture (a round of Kumbaya anyone?).

Avatar (James Cameron, 2010) (Bayers Lake Imax) To switch gears a little bit, I just want to add my two cents about Avatar 3D, which I saw a few weeks ago in the local Imax. I will skip preliminaries and get right to the hyperbole: by about two-thirds of the way through I consciously thought "I am glad that I am alive to witness this achievement in technology."

The new form of 3D filming that Avatar relies on is achieved by filming two offset images that are simultaneously projected onto a specially coated screen. The viewer dons special glasses in which the two lenses are polarized at perpendicular angles to each other, meaning that each eye views one of the offset images independent of the other (with none of the image "cross talk" that typified the old red and blue glasses 3D). The brain is essentially "confused" by the two images, and resolves its confusion by interpolating the images in a clean, crisp, three-dimensional picture.

This is a stunningly powerful colour to add to the palette that filmmakers use to compose their masterpieces. It sucks the viewer deeply into the film, creating a world entirely separate from that outside the theater walls - and this is essentially what I feel that a great film should do.

But this is not to say that Avatar is a great film - a great moment in technological evolution certainly, a great experience without doubt, but a great film in no way. The proof of this pudding is under the crust: if you watched Avatar in 2D, I am sure that it would lose more than a little of its shine, revealing all the more baldly the predictability of the story, the sometimes painful dialog, and the cringe-inducing acting of some of its key characters - things that jarred me even in 3D, but were forgiven in the name of the overall experience.

And the Oscar Goes to...
Sure, Avatar will likely win best picture, but hopefully this will clear the way for the best director Oscar to go to a more deserving director like Kathryn Bigelow, who's Hurt Locker would have been stunning in 3D, but managed to suck me into the world she created on screen solely based on a compelling scenario, taut writing, subtle acting, and sublime cinematography.

Where the Wild Things Are, Zombieland

2009-10-23T10:09:00.013-03:00

Wow, I just browsed the new cinema listings for the coming weeks, and am slightly overwhelmed! I haven't had much time for the movie theater of late, and wonder how I will ever fit in: Amelia, Cairo Time, The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D, Astro Boy, The Invention of Lying, and A Serious Man - alas, it appears that I have missed The Informant. I feel like I have to construct some kind of matrix to compare the virtues of the films and, in particular, how important it is to see them on the big vs the small screen.

Amelia is definitely a priority in terms of big-screen impact, Astro Boy may well lose any interest on the small screen, and Nightmare 3D, of course, can only be experienced at the multiplex. But there is another class of films to consider also: A Serious Man and Cairo Time sound marvelous, but am I likely to search them down to view at home if I miss them? Decisions, decisions, decisions...

On the other hand, if you are in Halifax and want to go to a movie, drop me a line! In the meantime, here's a taste of what I have been watching.

Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze, 2009) (Park Lane) Over the past few days I have talked with a few people about the children's book Wild Things is based on, only to hear that the average individual seems to have read it "about a 100 million times." Was I deprived as a child? Am I somehow lacking for not having entered this imaginary land as a tyke?

In any case, this lack of childhood exposure did little to blunt the intensity of the pleasure I derived from the film. In the first 10-15 minutes, as Max (Max Records) is buffeted by the trials and tribulations of childhood - including stormy relations with a teen-aged older sister and a single mom trying to date - I was astounded by how powerfully the scenes evoked my parallel emotions of joy, disappointment, love, hate, fear, loneliness, jealousy, and determination. Max is awash in a maelstrom of feelings and ideas that seem to rule him and to resist any attempt at restraint.

After one confrontation too many, Max runs away, hops on a sailboat, and after a dark night of the soul spent pounded by wind and waves, finds himself on an island inhabited by large, furry, humanoid approximations of birds, goats, and a menagerie of other creatures. More interestingly, however, each of these creatures seems to personify one of the emotions that Max is subject to in his everyday life. For example, there is Carol (James Gandolfini - brilliantly "cast"), who represents impulsive, petty rage; Judith (Catherine O'Hara), who personifies petty jealousies and vindictiveness; and Douglas (Chris Cooper), who is loneliness and exclusion.

These ultimately symbolic but physically furry creatures are living in chaos and misery, and quickly install Max as their king, electing him with a mandate to bring them happiness. Period. At first all is well, with everyone laughing and playing and sleeping together in a big warm pile, but jealousy, loneliness, exclusion, and petty rage are, of course, just around the corner. And Max, of course, is no more able to reconcile the personifications of these emotions than he is able to rule his own.

As one may expect, Wild Things does not end with the protagonist vanquishing the antagonist. Max's final lesson - and the lesson so many of my peer's apparently learned decades ago - is that his emotional depths and heights cannot be overcome, but must be accepted. In this sense, the film's message reminded me very much of a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat I attended in India, which taught the value of equanimity: recognize, acknowledge, and experience the conflicting storm of emotions and thoughts, but do not allow them to rule you.

In terms of film craft, Wild Things is beautifully made. Carol, Judith, Douglas and their peers are presented as slightly scruffy, life-sized teddy bears that evince an interesting melange of human and super-human characteristics, and are subject to wild emotional swings that are amplified by super strength that allows them to leap great distances and hoist (and hurl!) very heavy objects. The island itself is similarly a mixture of real and fantasy lands that allows fine-grained middle-eastern dessert to border rugged northern rocks and scrub trees.

I imagine that very early production meetings for Wild Things were alive with debate over whether the film should be animated, live action, or a blend of the two. I am glad that live action ruled the day, as it somehow made the film more immediate for me, grounding it - oddly - as something that could really happen - the wild things are strangely human for all their outlandish shapes and size.

I was moved to applaud by the end of Where the Wild Things Are, which touched me deeply and left me feeling warm and encompassed in a moment of comfort and goodness that somehow entirely eluded me during 10 days of 14-hours-per-day seated meditation...

Zombieland (Ruben Fleischer, 2009) (Park Lane) We never planned to see Zombieland, but upon arriving at the theater, it seems that Internet listings had misled us, and it was our only option. Decision made.

Despite my high regard for Danny Boyle's zombie horror masterpiece 28 Days Later, I can't say that I am a huge fan of the genre - to put it plainly, I was apathetic about Zombieland going in.

I have mentioned my thoughts on Woody Harrelson before - he's in a large number of great films, but they generally are not great because of him. I remain lukewarm on Harrelson and apathetic about Zombieland after having spent 90 minutes watching blood pour from zombie mouths, bullets, axes, and gardening shears dispatch the undead, and romance flourish for a loser and a "hot" survivor.

That being said, I did not dislike Zombieland and even enjoyed it for the most part, succumbing to some genuine belly laugh inducing moments, particularly when Bill Murray made an unexpected appearance. Overall, however, I have to conclude that I am not the target audience for this particular film - all power to you if you are!

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, Where Eagles Dare, Wall Street, New in Town

2009-10-15T10:52:00.005-03:00

Well, it's been a while, n'est pas? Apologies, but I have been fairly busy of late, what with hectic days at work, consulting projects at home, the commencement of my French class, and lingering projects around the house that must be done before the full brunt of winter descends upon us. Primary among these projects - and the one you would think would not be subject to procrastination - is the need to reassemble my heating ducts to fend off increasingly cold morning temperatures. Brrrr...

This hasn't left much time for movies either. I think that I have set a new record for not visiting a movie theatre. The Halifax Film Festival has come and gone, and I, lamentably, made it to only one screening. I've watched the odd film at home, of course, and will take this opportunity to update you on a few of them.

Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (Jan Kounan, 2009) (The Oxford) It is 1920, the dawn of one of the greatest eras of indulgence in modern western history, and a young Coco Chanel (Anna Mouglalis) is attending the Paris debut of Igor Stravinsky's (Mads Mikkelsen) opera The Rite of Spring.

Chanel and Stravinsky sit in the concert hall amid a high-society crowd that is increasingly shocked and outraged as the music swells and the performers begin to shake and sway, shrugging off centuries of tradition in orchestration and dance in favor of the cacophony of the already full-fledged modern age that the privileged class is not yet reconciled with. This is an epic moment that is emblematic of the clash the traditional and modern that had permeated art and public discourse since the Victorian Age - Chanel, whose fashion and fragrance would be emblematic of the modern age, and Stravinsky are immediately and inextricably linked by their eager acceptance of the new age.

From this moment of well-documented history, the film moves rapidly to well-documented rumour: "In 1920, she was introduced ... to world famous composer Igor Stravinsky (The Rite of Spring), to whom she extended an offer for him and his family to reside with her. During this temporary sojourn it was rumoured that they had an affair." (Wikipedia)

The two court each other slowly and deliberately, brushing and then moving apart in a dance of seduction played against the backdrop of Chanel's emerging aesthetic: black and white wallpaper prints in elegant but sharp geometric lines; simple, almost austere fashions that render the feminine form powerful yet breathtakingly elegant in a world of puffy, impractical couture; square, solid, yet somehow delicate furniture that foreshadows the emergence of art deco; and sculpture and even fixtures that recall Auguste Rodin or even Ayn Rand.

This beautiful but edgy backdrop and the intensity of our hero and heroine combine to build a delicious tension that is finally released in a sexual union that feels like the first torrent of rain in a thunderstorm - the intertwining of bodies, and specifically Mouglalis' beautiful, powerful, long legs and arms somehow echoing Chanel's distinctly modern aesthetic while in the throes of passion.

From that moment, unfortunately, the film just sort of falls apart. Carefully constructed and strictly defined characters that made virtues of personal power and self expression devolved into aimless individuals just looking for the next opportunity to rut. The film was no less beautiful to look at, but quickly became tiring to engage with: a case in point is a digression in which we travel to Paris to witness the creation of the scent that defines the era, Chanel No. 5, played out as a boring and mundane affair that strips the powerful symbol of any resonance.

I can't even begin to describe how aggrieved I am to write this: I was astounded by the beauty and power of the first hour of this film, but by the end of the second hour I was treating it like a catalog: "nice suit, I wonder where I can get one" or "exquisite lamp, maybe I should redecorate my place in art deco".

Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton, 1968) (Home) Speaking of taking moments of history and spinning flights of fancy that bear no relation to reality, Where Eagles Dare follows a crew of allied spies sent into Nazi-occupied Europe to rescue the pilot of a plane that has crash landed in the Alps. Eagles delivers in exactly the area where Coco and Igor falls flat: it establishes a fictional world, drawing its characters and setting the "rules" by which they will play, and then sticks to those rules so that everything makes sense within the world of the film - the backdrop is rife with inaccuracies, but the structure of the film is sound. Minute for minute, Eagles delivers a rollicking World War II action adventure film that makes the most of its cast of suave secret agents, menacing Nazi's, double agents, imposing mountain-top fortresses, rat-a-tat gunfire, and spectacular explosions.

Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987) (Home) I will paraphrase the CBC Radio Program The Current: Wall Street portrays the greedy, money-obsessed bankers of the mid-1980s who played with people's lives and livelihoods like toys, and shows us how much things have changed since then: the cell phones have gotten much smaller." In powerful, career-defining performances, Michael Douglas and Charlie and Martin Sheen give us a peek inside the sleazy side of high-finance that I firmly believe is essentially realistic - but hopefully the exception rather than the rule.

New in Town (Jonas Elmer, 2009) (Winnipeg) I have been sorely remiss with regard to New in Town and apologise sincerely if you have gone out and rented it before I had a chance to warn you: this is a dismal failure of a film with nary a redeeming quality. Renee Zellweger was a star for about 10 minutes due to Bridget Jones's Diary and co-stared in some pretty good films (think Cold Mountain and Cinderella Man), but really her star faded fairly quickly (think - and shudder - Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason).

Based on the film New in Town, I surmise that Zellweger's response to her waning moment in the sun has been: crash diets (frighteningly skinny), botox overdose (face like a death mask, that seems to sag at points, perhaps in between treatments), and a painfully pathetic "star vehicle." The movie New in Town is the film equivalent of TOXIC WASTE - avoid at any cost!

The Wrestler: A Masterpiece of Cinema

2009-09-17T22:52:00.007-03:00

The Wrestler (David Aronofsky, 2008) (Home) The Wrestler is a quintessentially human film, and is heartbreaking in its simple honesty: Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke) is a broken down old piece of meat that has only ever felt alive in the wrestling ring, invigorated by the adoration of the crowd.

Rourke plays Randy straight up: he's not a complicated or conflicted character. He likes to live hard and fast to a soundtrack of Gun-n-Roses and Skid Row, but a few too many fights and a heart attack under the belt and it seems like time to slow down. Time to take stock before he's wearing a catheter, wheel chair bound, or rendered a mental cripple.

As Randy looks around him and sees how empty his life outside of the limelight is - a crappy job, a ratty trailer to call home, an estranged daughter, a sort-of-maybe girlfriend - my heart ached. I felt his confusion and fear as he scrambled to build a few connections, to root himself in a real world where relationships are not choreographed and there is no roaring crowd to render even the most egregious sin forgiven.

This film brought tears to my eyes, and made my heart literally ache at the vast emptiness this simple but quintessentially good man lives in. I have always loved Scorcese's Raging Bull for its ability to make the audience understand even a little bit the way that Jake LaMotta sees the world - but in the end La Motta never boils down to anything but a wounded animal.

Randy the Ram is wounded, but it's his heart that is broken by more than cardiac arrest, and he understands instinctively that his redemption is not to be found in the ring - even though that may be all that is left.

I lament the fact that I missed The Wrestler in theatres, where I could have sat in the dark sharing the experience with the crowd and savoring that glorious last shot, and the abrupt climax, haunted as it is by the spectre of what could have been. It's not often that we have a chance to see such powerful performances as those given by Rourke and Marisa Tomei as they wound and soothe each other - their characters have both been used hard in this life, and they have so much to give each other.

The Wrestler is a compelling portrait of the human condition, and a true masterpiece of cinema. I saw Milk, and I respect Sean Penn - but Rourke deserved the Oscar.

Julie & Julia

2009-09-09T11:29:00.006-03:00

I'm a bit slow out of the gate with this one, having seen it at least two weeks ago. However, one way or the other, here we go.

Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron, 2009) (The Oxford) I have recently received some feedback on my blog to the effect that my posts are too long and too detailed - it seems that many people don't make it to the end of the post, where my recommendation is usually served up as a grand finale. In a nod to the wishes of my long-suffering readers, I shall dispense with preliminaries and declare Julie & Julia a wonderful film that is very worth watching- actually, I think that delightful may just be le mot juste.

No Basterds Here
However, J&J is not delightfully indulgent as was the case with Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds. Far from it: J&J is delightful for bringing a luminous character to life on screen and making the audience feel that they are getting to know her via some kind of telephone line through time - no blood, gore, gunfights, or explosions folks.

The film actually intertwines the stories of two now famous cooks: Julia Child herself (Meryl Streep), as she discovers the wonders of French cooking while in Paris in 1948 and decides to share it with the average American housewife by writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking; and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a young American who hated her job and in 2002 found a way out of it by writing a blog chronicling her determination to cook every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the space of one year.

Two Stories Boil Down to One
Sure J&J is ostensibly the story of these two aspiring cooks, but to my mind it is really only about one person and one cooking journey: Meryl Streep steals the show so completely as Julia Child that when I think of the movie I barely think of the Julie part of it. This is no slight to Amy Adams, who does a very good job playing the pouty/perky/precocious/pouty New Yorker cooking away her frustrations in life and making her own lucky break in the process. Rather it is a tribute to an actress who hardly needs another tribute (As The Onion is happy to point out).Few actors or actresses reach the height of the dramatic arts with as much class as Ms. Streep. I don't even know where to begin: an angel on earth, appearing in a soft halo of ethereal beauty in The Deer Hunter, a poet dreamer in Out of Africa, an action hero in The River Wild, a bitch goddess to beware of in The Devil Wears Prada, a temptress of the innocent in The Simpsons, and a flinty incarnation of the cold, inhuman power of politics in the 2004 remake of The Manchurian Candidate.

And Meryl Streep is the essence of J&J, outshining the entire cast by reincarnating Julia Child right before our eyes. A cursory viewing of Julia Child clips on YouTube immediately shows how minutely Streep captured every detail ranging from the master chef's cadence of speech to her sweeping body language. The vivacity of this performance cannot be overstated, and the sheer joy with which she plays the sometimes overbearingly bubbly role is evident in every frame

Admittedly I don't know much about Julia Child, and the film may have (and, who are we kidding, probably did) present a biased imaged. One way or the other, it makes for an engaging movie that leaves you smiling, full of culinary optimism, and hungry for beouf bourguignon.

District 9.

2009-09-01T15:35:00.009-03:00

District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009) (Bayers Lake) About 30 years ago, a massive alien spacecraft entered earth's atmosphere, passed over the great cities of Washington, Paris, and Rome, and came to rest above Johannesburg, South Africa. And it just hovered there, making no contact and showing no signs of life. As time passed, curiosity got the better of those living in its shadow, and a team was sent up to cut its way into the ship.

First Contact
First contact was not epiphanic nor even remotely uplifting - rather than the marvels of a more advanced civilization, those that entered the ship found a motley crew of dirty, malnourished, and thoroughly stranded arthropod-like aliens. A full-scale humanitarian mission ensued, ferrying the pathetic creatures to earth for resettlement and rehabilitation.

The aliens quickly wore out their welcome, as the people of Johannesburg increasingly resented the time and money that was being spent on the newcomers. Far from integrating into human society, the aliens were herded into District 9, which became a heavily-guarded slum rife with crime (such as an underground cat food market to complement a booming arms trade), gang violence, and prostitution.

District 9 picks up up at around this point, with the government having decided to adopt a policy of "out of sight, out of mind." MNU, the multi-national security company charged with policing alien affairs, is assigned the task of evicting the aliens - derogatorily referred to as prawns - and transporting them some 200 miles into the desert to a makeshift concentration camp.

Wilkus van de Merwe (Sharto Copely) is the hapless (read ignorant) middle manager tasked with overseeing the eviction, which quickly devolves into mayhem as heavily-armed, government-sponsored thugs break into the stinking, broken-down hovels and heap both insult and injury on the degraded inhabitants

Echoes of Reality
District 9 is presented as a pseudo-documentary, and is shot in a grainy, raw light that makes it feel very real - similar to The Hurt Locker, or footage you would see from Iraq or the Middle East on the evening news. Everything we view looks extremely real and, more to the point, plausible: the space ship is dirty and rust-streaked even in its hovering majesty; the aliens are individuals with children to care for and mundane real lives that are very apparent rather than merely sci-fi, special effects eye candy; and the MNU agents are (for the most part) bumbling bureaucrats with very human failings. This is not a slick, spit-and-polished movie with a patina of reality - it is gritty realism done right.

Ranging as it does from pseudo-documentary to gory-horror film, shoot-em-up action movie, and thinking man's sci-fi, the look and feel of District 9 is a great accomplishment in film making and a pleasure to behold - even if the short "gory-horror part" was a little more than I could handle.

This sense of realism is further heightened by - and indeed adds to - the eerie resonance of the aliens' milieu vis-a-vis South Africa's very real experience of apartheid, particularly when the fictional neighbourhood of District 9 is contrasted with historical reality of District 6, an inner-city area of Johannesburg that was forcibly cleared under apartheid.

District 9 opened in South Africa yesterday (August 31), and the viewers I heard interviewed on the radio this morning made much of this retelling of the history of apartheid and the all-to-present legacy of that system today - but those reports strike me as a little biased towards the feel-good marketing side of things.

Social Commentary or Rehashed Stereotypes?
I have no doubt the filmmakers were very aware of the correlations between the fictional world of District 9 and South Africa's history of racism and abuse. However, after viewing the film and discussing it with a few friends, I am not sure that this intention is more than skin deep.

There are three main reasons for this, the most glaring being the stereotypes that the filmmakers fall back on. The slum area of District 9 is not a post-apartheid collection of the disadvantaged segment of South Africa's population. Rather, it is an old-school ghetto inhabited by the near-feral aliens and black African arms dealers, pimps, and drug lords who prey on the newcomers. Now, true to the allegory that the makers claim to be presenting, the aliens move towards a light at the end of the tunnel, ending the film with a glimmer of hope. Not so their black cohabitants, who are a literal embodiment of the heart of darkness, not given even the most subtle hint of redemption.

Secondly, the glimmer of hope that the film ends with is not achieved by the aliens overcoming odds. Rather, it is handed to them by a white bureaucrat (Wilkus) who has seen the essential flaw in his character and taken the high road. No, in District 9 the possibility of dignity for the aliens is a gift from a white ruler, not a natural expression of the will to be free on the part of the oppressed.

Thirdly there is the arc of the story itself, which does, as I alluded to earlier, an incredible job of portraying everything from the spaceship to the aliens as very real rather than as fantasy. However, this tone, which is particularly suited to prompting introspection on the part of the audience, is severely undermined by the film's climax. By abandoning the reality augmented by the odd piece of alien technology that seems altogether feasible in favor of a no-holds-barred alien robot vs human heavy weaponry showdown (the shoot-em-up action sequence alluded to above), any semblance of this being a topical film is lost.

Worth a Visit to the Multiplex
I still recommend District 9 highly, especially - as I discussed above - for the sheer pleasure of experiencing the dystopian reality that the filmmakers have so artfully created. However, I do caution that you should not attend in hope of seeing the in-depth analysis of apartheid-era South Africa that the media has gleefully portrayed it as being. Watch, enjoy, cover your eyes at times - but mostly, discuss the issues I have raised above upon exiting the cinema. Even if the film subverts its supposed intention of educating and/or inspiring its audience, you can bring this analysis of the real world it echoes to the table yourself - that's what I would call responsible viewing.

Inglorious Basterds: Delicious Indulgence

2009-08-26T20:11:00.005-03:00

The reign of the summer blockbusters seems to have come to an end, and it has been a marvelous few weeks to be a movie lover!

Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009) In the opening scenes of Inglorious Basterds, Col. Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz), the notorious German "Jew Hunter," arrives at a small French farmhouse to "investigate" the possible presence of Jews in hiding. Banishing the farmer's three buxom daughters from the house, the two sit down, switch to English, and begin a delightful verbal game of cat and mouse. Landa is a pleasure to listen to, with words seeming to sparkle as they pass his lips, and is equally satisfying to watch, as he visibly takes great pleasure in the dialog Tarantino has furnished him with.

What Landa wants, Landa gets, and with a first blazing flourish of violence capped with one sweet but moment of release, Inglorious Basterds has begun.

Cut to England. Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is giving his boys - his ten basterds - a pep talk ahead of their deployment deep behind enemy lines on a mission with a sole purpose: to kill Nazis and collect their scalps. And in this film, that is synonymous with killing Germans - cause save one honorary basterd, Tarantino's script allows for only one kind of German: a dyed in the wool, Jew-hating, Hitler-lover Nazi. You will not find an Oscar Schindler (Schindler's List) or a Claus Von Stauffenberg (Valkyrie) in this film...

Game on
From this point on we follow twin stories that slowly converge: that of a mild-mannered young Jewish woman who improbably operates a cinema in Nazi-occupied Paris with the soul help of her African lover, and that of the swaggering basterds. These stories slowly converge towards a delightfully indulgent conflagration that encompasses the ultimate revenge fantasy of the twentieth century - one worthy of the pages of the Sgt. Rock or Sgt. Fury comics of my childhood.

Along the way the audience cringes at the sight of almost unimaginable violence, but always ends up laughing uproarously in a coup of black humor that few save Tarantino and perhaps the Coen Brothers are capable of pulling off . I think back to Pulp Fiction, and the audience roaring with shocked laughter after Jules (John Travolta) accidentally blows Marvin's (Phil LaMarr) head all over the back seat of the car.

And the Award for Best Actor Goes to...
Basterd's is an ambitious, big-budget, Hollywood movie, and there is no doubt that Brad Pitt is the big gun of the cast. His name is emblazoned on the poster and his cocky, redneck American swagger is all over the preview for Basterds. So when it comes to the best actor award for this film, it is seemingly his to give away - and he does.

I like Brad Pitt, I like many of his movies, and I like his character in this film. However, the bottom line is that I found his character pretty one-dimensional in Basterds. Sure he is supposed to be a caricature, but if this is the case he could surely have a little more fun with the role. He could knead it and punch it up into something as gloriously indulgent as the film it inhabits. But no, much as was the case in Burn After Reading, Pitt plays a delightful stereotype perfectly straight - faithfully rendering the typecast to the millimeter without seems to understand that its all in good fun.

So the award goes to ... Christopher Waltz as Col. Landa.

No, I'm not kidding. Waltz gets the fact that he is playing a stereotype, and he is out to have fun with it. He enunciates every word with glee, adds extra flourish to every motion, and drips Dr. Evil-level eeee-vil with every word he utters. Bravo! Tarantino's words become art when Waltz utters them...

Love it or hate it, as you will...
Aside from my measured disappointment with Brad Pitt, which in no way detracted from my enjoyment of the film as a whole, there is little to criticize in Basterds - you either love it or you hate it, period. I hinted before that I was less than pleased to see every German in the film save one portrayed as pure evil, but that is the type of film we are watching - it wouldn't work if you made the evil in Basterds in any way ambiguous or open to interpretation.

My last bit of praise for Basterds will be to commend Tarantino for making a WWII film in which Germans for the most part speak German, the French for the most part speak French, and the English speak English, red neck, a bit of German, and spaghetti Italian. Again, bravo.

Once Upon a Time
Basterds lays it all on the table within five seconds of the beginning, when those five magic words are painted across the screen in medieval script: Once upon a time.... Keep this in mind if you ever find yourself shaking your head (something I never thought to do even when some scenes got a little laborious): this film is indulgence, pure and simple. Roll with it...

Food, Inc.

2009-08-14T10:39:00.011-03:00

Food, Inc. (Robert Kenner, 2008) (Park Lane) The basic premise of Food, Inc. is that the way that a society treats its food - plants and animals - mirrors the way that it treats its people. But that can't be true, because if it were, the film would be saying that North Americans are selfish, materialistic, gluttons who value instant gratification, a chemical high, and social isolation over true connection to and communication with each other and the world of wonders that we live in.

Oh. OK ... he may actually have something there.

The Food Factory
Food, Inc. is divided into chapters, each discussing one aspect of the highly mechanized path that food - corn, wheat, fruit, vegetable, chicken, red meat, etc - travels from the expansive factory farms of middle America to the warehouse grocery stores where Americans and Canadian shop. Kenner paints a picture of a food supply chain that has sacrificed nutrition, hygiene, and humane practices (towards workers and livestock) in favour of calories, shelf life, cost cutting, and market share.

Highly disturbing images are de rigeur as the film progresses, ranging from dark, high-density coops housing chickens that cannot even stand under the weight of their enormous breasts to the appalling conditions in which migrant workers risk their lives on slaughterhouse floors. These images do not stand alone, however, as facts and figures accompany at a frenzied rate - like many documentaries with one axe to grind, the facts come so fast and furiously that it is hard to actually "learn" anything specific. Among the scariest bits are the fact that:

One of every three children and one of every two minority children born after 2000 will develop type II diabetes;
Middle American farms portrayed on butter and pork chop packages that grace supermarket shelves have long given way to highly automated high-intensity feedlots, nation-state-sized corn fields, and genetically modified crops;
While five American slaughterhouses controlled 20% of the US market in the 80s, four control about 90% of that market today (not sure I remember the exact figures, that this is the idea).

Phew...and its almost lunch time.

Light on the Horizon
But Food, Inc. is not only about the lamentable state of America's current food supply. It also takes the time to visit and document the efforts of small-scale farmers and food producers who are working to counter these disturbing trends: a rootsy farmer in Virginia who is grass feeding cattle and letting chickens run free and eat worms; farmers that are engaged in life-or-death courtroom struggles to resist the advances of Monsanto and its frankencrops; and the multitude of smaller food processors that are driving and organic revolution, which even Walmart is acknowledging with its decision to provide organic produce in response to customer demand.

But for me, Walmart's shift to providing organic produce also undercuts the hope that Kenner sees in the organic revolution. The very companies that he portrays as having ripped the heart out of North America's food supply are even now co-opting the revolution: Walmart jumping on the organic bandwagon (he does not address the problematic issue of what USDA "organic" actually means) and the myriad of smaller-scale organic producers that are rapidly being bought up by the same conglomerates that he vilifies so thoroughly (Kashi, for example, is now owned by Kraft).

Unfortunately, this leads me to the point where I must note my exceptions to this overall laudable film. With the organic revolution not serving as a solidly positive note to end on, Kenner flails around a bit for a ray of light to end with. I take issue with the fact that he ultimately concludes with an inappropriate comparison between the tobacco companies and food suppliers: he argues that the "fact" that tobacco companies have been brought to heel proves that food producers can also be brought into line. In the first place, I would argue that the assumption that tobacco companies have been brought to heel is just plain mistaken (they remain highly profitable multi-national corporations peddling sickness and decay). I would further suggest that if they had been, it would still be irrelevant - when government "took on" the tobacco companies in the 80s and 90s, corporations were but a shadow of the multi-headed hydras they now are, and they were not nearly as deeply embedded into the fabric of society and the government itself (as Kenner himself points out, most government regulatory agencies are run by former executives of food conglomerates).

Not a "Fun" Film
Ultimately, Food, Inc. is a compelling film that is sure to spark debate among friends and family, but is not a film that you "enjoy" watching - however, as I have said before, respectable films usually raise issues that are pertinent and important but ultimately disturbing. In this sense, I greatly enjoyed Food, Inc. and recommend it highly - not much of what you hear will be new information, but the impact of hearing it together in a more-or-less coherent narrative is worthwhile experience.

That being said, this is not a film that needs to be seen in a theater. The full effect will be conveyed on your home theater system, and, as a bonus, you will be able to pause it and discuss individual points, and/or launch into discussion at the end instead of having to file out of the cinema and drive home while gesticulating and pontificating. Actually, I think that a student union building would be the natural setting in which to watch the film and then hold a panel discussion.

The Hurt Locker

2009-07-28T13:02:00.026-03:00

I have a thing for war movies, the legacy of many weekend afternoons spent with my Dad in front of WWII flicks ranging from the shoot-em-up bravado of The Dirty Dozen and The Guns of Navarone (a tradition of war movie seemingly soon to be reincarnated in Brad Pitt's Inglorious Bastards) to veritable docudramas like The Longest Day, Patton, and Der Untergang (Downfall).

WWII is by far the conflict most covered by Hollywood, with the recent HBO mini-series Band of Brothers probably best capturing the individual soldier's experience of this conflict. With the exception of M*A*S*H, the Korean War seems to have been largely skipped over in the cinema, as it has been in the popular imagination (please correct me if I am dismissing classics of the genre). Vietnam, like WWII, has spawned as many films as casualties, with my favorites being Scorcese's The Deer Hunter, Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, Stone's Platoon, and, of course, Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Modern conflicts are a little harder to address on the silver screen, or over coffee for that matter, as our culture has not had a chance to reach some form of consensus on them (WWII as a righteous campaign, Korea as a "forgotten war,"and Vietnam as superpower hubris). Perhaps for this very reason, the war films - modern and classic - that I love are ones that shy away from explicit judgements on the justification of the specific campaign and more on the individual experience of the soldiers posted to the maelstrom - and filmmakers have not shied from contributing to this aspect of the conversation.

For cinematic treatment of modern wars, my top picks include David O. Russell's Three Kings, Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, Stephan Gaghan's Syriana (a stunning film that is seemingly out of place, but very relevant in my opinion for its perspective on corporate involvement the US War on Terror), and the recently released The Hurt Locker.

The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008) (Park Lane) Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) is replacing the bomb sapper in an active explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) unit nearing the end of its tour in Iraq. Tasked with finding and difussing the seemingly endless number of deadly contraptions that take young lives every day in Iraq, I can't think of a better scenario for investigating the bonds of trust and the sense of connection that I can only imagine that soldiers depend on in the field, each looking out for the other regardless of the grand political slogan that they are fighting for.

Indeed, when James arrives, one his new partners, Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), welcomes him to "Camp Victory." Upon replying that he thought it was "Camp Liberty," James is informed that it was recently changed to something that "sounds better." So the slogans keep changing and soldiers have neither influence over nor allegiance to them, but they can do something about keeping each other alive. Period.

I don't think I need to go into detail regarding why a replacement sapper was necessary, but needless to say, the tight-knit team that James joins is counting the days til they can return State-side, and more than a little bit wary of the unknown quantity that has been thrust upon them. Is James someone that they can trust with their lives?

Early in the film, the recently arrived James is approached by an officer who queries him on his track record. A telling dialog ensues:

Officer: "How many bombs have you disarmed?"
James: "873"
Officer: "873! You're a wild man."

And herein lies the problem: James is a wild man. The dialog continues with the officer asking what the best way is to disarm a bomb, to which James replies "The way that keeps you alive." The thing is, James seems to care just a little bit less about staying alive than do the other members of his team, who quickly find his way or working to be uncooperative and even reckless. During an EOD assignment when James is sent to disarm a booby trapped Hyundai Sonata (product placement gone horribly wrong?), he removes his protective headgear with the glib comment "If I'm going to die, I'm going to die comfortable," and goes on to also remove his radio headset, cutting off communication with his frustrated and scared compatriots.

Where the Wild Men Are

The story arc of The Hurt Locker, in a sense, is how the team members come to trust each other through the process of understanding their individual reactions to being constantly haunted by the specter of death. James, Sanborn, and the younger and more timid Specialist Owen (Brian Gerachty) all share the seemingly standard soldiers' diversions of loud heavy metal music and heavy drinking, but each also has their own private coping strategy:

James cares less, seeming reckless to others but actually freeing himself of surely crippling fear. He lives by the seemingly contradictory coda that the less you care about living the more likely you are to survive.
Sanborn trusts procedures, relying on constant contact with the team to ensure that basic army protocols are followed: perimeters are maintained, standard procedures are adhered to, and x-factors (like James) are eliminated.
Owen has faith in the longevity of his more experienced peers, constantly turning to them for confirmation of the instincts that should be automatic survival mechanisms.

None of these three leopards is about to change his spots, so what we witness is a chain of increasingly intense encounters with progressively more complicated and essentially evil explosive devices planted to kill Americans and wreak havoc for "collaborators." Through these trials by fire we watch the slow and painful process of the three men learning to become - despite their differences - what Shakespeare so aptly called "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."

I find it interesting that this film was made by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow. In The Hurt Locker, if I recall correctly, there are a total of two female characters who collectively garner about 25 seconds of screen time. On the surface that makes this is a movie about men - brothers, so to speak - in combat, but in reality it probably makes it a realistic portrayal of the war experience. Women soldiers fought on the front line of operation Desert Storm, and, presumably, the subsequent Desert Shield campaign of "shock and awe," but I imagine that they remain statistically irrelevant in combat situations - and probably virtually non-existent in the ranks of EOD specialists that are a hair from death at every moment and reliant on highly specialized and very heavy suits and equipment that are probably still designed with men in mind.

One way or the other, Bigelow, like Ridley Scott in Black Hawk Down, is masterful at her craft. The filming of The Hurt Locker is sublime, with explosive shock waves rolling across the screen like a ripple on a calm lake or the undulation in a flapping satin sheet. The ugliness of the surroundings and the sheer menacing evil of the bombs that James uncovers for our voyeuristic eyes is contrasted sharply with the strange sense of beauty that is evoked by the explosions themselves - the sense of catharsis that allows the viewer to relax again and take a deep breathe. To get a sense of this visual effect, it is only necessary to see the opening flash presentation on the masterfully designed movie homepage (http://thehurtlocker-movie.com/), which boldly declares that the film has "an intensity you can't shake."

I certainly left the theater with the shock waves rebounding in my head, and even a little bit of a feeling that I had experienced something of the EOD specialist's life. I didn't necessarily understand James, Sanborn, and Owen or agree with their individual coping mechanisms - but I felt that maybe I could trust them if, god forbid, I were ever to find myself in such ravaged climes.

Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-15T12:39:00.010-03:00

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (David Yates, 2009) (Bayers Lake) Now for those of you in fear of your mortal soul just for having read the title of this potentially heretical posting, rest easy: the Vatican has officially approved the newest installment in the Harry Potter franchise. Apparently the learned guardians of a billion or so catholic souls around the globe are happy to endorse the film's "'clear' depiction of the eternal battle between good and evil represented by the struggle between Harry and his nemesis, the evil sorcerer Lord Voldemort."

Now I don't claim to have anywhere near the influence of the Holy See, but, for what its worth: I'm Yuri van der Leest, and I approve of this film. In fact, The Half-Blood Prince was my favorite of the books, and, after two pretty weak installments of the film franchise (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), is a welcome breathe of fresh air.

The pace of the film is masterful, with the story moving along quickly but engagingly - although there was one moment when I glanced at my watch, I quickly lost myself in the film again. This is largely due to the filmmakers having made some difficult choices to eliminate scenes from the book, an exercise that would have greatly benefited the jumbled mess that comprised The Goblet of Fire.

These plot choices make the story flow smoothly and produce a thoroughly enjoyable film, and are only questionable in retrospect: in the car on the way home, after the initial awe had started to give way to critical thought, we started to notice some of what was missing. The scene where Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) travel to a storm-ravaged coast to secure a valuable object that can help weaken their foe is dark and painful in the book, but passes easily in the film. This is also apparent in the climactic confrontation between good and evil that pleased the Vatican so much: the epic confrontation of the novel is a passing occurrence on the screen.

What the filmmakers pay a lot of attention to, on the other hand, is the personal lives of the familiar magician triad of Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson). As in the novel, by this installment there is romance in the air for the tight crew of apprentice wizards, each augmented by their respective "person of interest." Indeed, Harry, Ron, and Hermione are growing up (though perhaps not so fast as the actors that are playing them), and they are paying attention to more than just every-flavour beans and butter beer!

Now romance has not been entirely absent from the franchise, Harry's junior-high courting of Cho Chang (Katie Leung) in The Goblet of Fire for example, but was largely a side-show to the action adventure and served - in the films - primarily to highlight the ineptitude of actors chosen more for marketability than talent (I believe). Not so in The Half-Blood Prince, which admittedly overplays the budding relationships as key plot lines, but at the same time highlights the fact that Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson must be taking acting classes: Watson has always been the strongest among the three, but even Radcliffe, a cringe-inducing bad actor in the last few installments, manages to convey subtle emotions. This admittedly could have to do with David Yates' direction, but is welcome nonetheless.

What Yates most certainly has a hand in is the overall look and feel of the film, which is awesome to behold, composed as it is with rich set pieces, luxurious, vibrant colors, and beautiful costumes that create a convincing fantasy world capable of completely encompassing the viewer for the entire 2.5-hour run time. The cinematography literally stunned me from the opening shots, which follow Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) and Narcisca Malfoy (Helen McCrory) through narrow, shadow-filled, cobbled alleyways in the dark of night, the camera panning widely to use the long, narrow, seemingly cavernous space to gorgeous effect.

I am aware, of course, that the visual effects that I am praising - and even the warm, glowing ambiance of the film as a whole - are largely the result of the same computer graphics (CG) that I often lament, but they are used to such great effect in this film that I can find nothing to impugn. Indeed, the computer effects in The Half-Blood Prince are used like the paint on an artist's palette. Perhaps my favorite scenes are those that occur in the pensieve, a shallow bowl of water in which thread of memory are deposited and can be revisited at will. When Harry plunges his head into the bowl, we see the memory slowly coalesce in a shadowy form reminiscent of ink diffusing in a bowl of water.

It must be apparent by now that I am recommending this film whole-heartedly, so will thus tie up this posting with a shout out to one of the most delightful additions to the franchise's cast and character roster: Jim Broadbent playing Professor Horace Slughorn. A veteran of such classic fare as Time Bandits, Brazil, Richard III, and Gangs of New York, I am used to seeing Broadbent in minor roles in excellent films. Not so in The Half-Blood Prince, in which he portrays a key character beautifully and convincingly.

I understand that the final Potter chronicle will be adapted for the screen in two parts. Whether the logic of this is to milk the series for every last drop of cash or to relate the story as faithfully as possible, I cannot say, but I can venture one vote for keeping Yates at the helm and using The Half-Blood Prince as a benchmark.

Adoration, Great Expectations

2009-07-13T11:29:00.014-03:00

This week's headline movie is the perfect cure to the generally abysmal quality of cinema fare at this point of the summer blockbuster season. If you have already suffered through Transformers II, I have the perfect prescription: Adoration.

Adoration (Atom Egoyan, 2008) (Bayers Lake) As a translation exercise, Simon's (Devon Bostick) French teacher reads his class an article about the attempted bombing of an El Al flight to Tel Aviv - the would-be bomber had planted explosives in his pregnant wife's carry on luggage. Having lost his father, Sami (Noam Jenkins) and mother, Rachel (Rachel Blanchard), in a questionable accident years earlier, the article inspires Simon to write a dramatic monologue re-imagining his past through the lens of this scenario: with his middle-eastern father as the bomber and his Canadian mother, a concert violinist, as the hapless bomb mule.

Simon's French teacher, Sabine (Arsinee Khanjian), also of middle-eastern extraction, encourages Simon to polish the monologue and to present it at the school drama festival. Although the school principal vetoes this idea, the simple but powerful narrative seems to take on a life of its own as Simon posts it on the internet and more and more people are touched by it.

The movie follows the growing shock waves created by the monologue on the internet through Simon's laptop computer screen, which starts with a nine-person video chat discussing the issue but slowly expands to 30, 40, 50, and maybe even 60 small windows filled with strangers united by the monologue but bitterly divided by the political, religious, and social beliefs that they impose on the narrative - all in the belief that it is a non-fiction account of the actual events surrounding the attempted bombing

This virtual widening of the influence of the monologue is mirrored in Simon's real life, where - like their internet counterparts - many seem unaware that the events described are inspired by true events and personal trauma rather than a direct recounting of the facts of the matter. Indeed, scenes where Simon reads from his composition are chilling, with his voice a matter-of-fact monotone relating a compelling but confusing and frightening tale: for most of the movie I was unaware that the monologue was fictional, although in retrospect there is nothing to suggest the opposite - a confusion that I think Egoyan exploits beautifully.

Sabine is almost immediately ensnared by the influence of the monologue, and ends up intimately involved not only with the fictional account of Simon's bereavement, but with the non-fictional reality of its legacy. This legacy includes Tom (Scott Speedman doing an excellent job with a complex role), Simon's older brother and reluctant guardian since the death of his parents, and the specter of racial intolerance - embodied by Simon's grandfather, Morris (Kenneth Walsh) - that has haunted the family since Rachel first brought Sami home

Simon maintains an impressive/disturbing equanimity through this entire process. He seems like a dispassionate documentarian weaving his unsettling fiction on the one hand, even as we learn his version of the "real" story of his parents meeting, marrying, and ultimately dying through a series of flashbacks on the other. A story that intimately touches the lives of Simon, Tom, Sabine, Morris, and - of course - Sami and Rachel - in a web of fear, loss, and recrimination. There is light at the end of the film, however, as Simon, Tom, and Sabine seem to reach a point where they can move beyond the trauma that has brought them together.

Adoration is a complex film that probably warrants multiple viewings to fully understand the relationships between its main characters, the issues that each is working through, and the highly relevant theme of intolerance. It is beautifully shot in dark, saturated colours that often present the speaker as if in a spotlight, with shadows behind, giving an intimacy and immediacy to what is being related. I was also struck by the music, which seemed to be integral to the theme of each scene both in terms of ambiance/tone and subject matter. In particular, I think of XTC's Dear God, which played in the background as a member of the internet chat forum raves about the 40 virgins said to be awaiting Muslim martyrs in the next world.

I loved this film, passionately. It seemed to caress the viewer like gentle waves on the surface of an inky-black lake that is as beautiful as it is chillingly cold and frighteningly inscrutable in depth.

Great Expectations (Alfonso Cuaron, 1998) I finished reading Dickens' Great Expectations this weekend, and feel like I lived a whole life inside the novel, a feeling I remember having after David Copperfield as well. While reading the novel I made a resolution to revisit Cuaron's modern reinterpretation, which I first viewed in the theater in Seoul. I remembered greatly enjoying the film, but had only blurred remembrances of its substance.

So, with Dickens' words echoing in my mind, I closed the back cover of the novel, flicked on the flat-screen, and pressed play. From the opening moments of the film I was in love with this modern re-imagining of Pip's trials and tribulations, as told through the story of Fin (Ethan Hawke, fitting the role, but looking overly pathetic when introduced), a budding young artist, his unattainable love Estella (Gwyneth Paltrow), and the snarling, pit bull convict/benefactor Lustig (a powerhouse performance by the brilliantly cast Robert DeNiro giving ). I could go on an on about the cast of this film, which also includes a picture-perfect incarnation of Joe (Chris Cooper) and a delightful, aging-hippy Mrs. Dinsmore (Anne Bancroft) standing in for Dickens' Miss Havisham.

From the Page to the Screen

But what of the film's relationship to its Victorian progenitor? How does the essential tale stand up to being shorn of half its cast of characters, its sooty London locale, and the host of side stories and diversions Dickens' furnished us with? (As people love to complain, Dickens was paid by the word :) )

Well, there are two main differences that come to mind, one wholly acceptable and one less so. Firstly, in the film Estella is not quite the ice queen of Dickens' imagining. Indeed, she does more than her part to arouse Fin's interest and fire his blood, making his infatuation with her all the more understandable. Now it might seem that this dismisses the central tension of the novel, but actually it is a wise reworking of the premise by filmmakers who know that the great stuff of literature does not necessarily directly translate into great stuff on screen. In this case, Cuaron and his crew need to foster the viewer's attachment to both Fin and Estella and their relationship, so that we will care about their fates despite having known them for such a short time (two hours vs ~400 pages). Bottom line, it works.

The second major alteration, and the one that I am not as comfortable with, is the revision of Fin's/Pip's ultimate fate - I warn you to stop here if you do not wish to encounter any spoilers. In Dickens' Expectations, Pip loses his great fortune and fall from all expectations, ending up working a nine-to-five job (so to speak) and living a normal middle-class life. Not so Fin, who ends the film firmly possessed of "portable property," which means to say that he is very very rich - as heartbroken as Pip, but rich nonetheless. Now Fin's ending is in keeping with his character throughout, which is generally even-tempered, kind, and unassuming vs Pip's decent into a spendthrift, snobby, overbearing, boorish, frat boy of the novel, and perhaps it can be justified as stripping out Dickens' moralizing message and focusing on the essentials of the story. Nonetheless, it hit me like a curve ball.

I don't mean to impugn Cuaron's beautiful and lovingly crafted film with this dissent, as I am aware that this is a re-imagining of Great Expectations, and that the main character is renamed expressly to distance him from his inspiration. Overall I think that the spirit of Dickens' novel was admirably captured in Cuaron's film, and highly recommend it for Paltrow's stunning beauty in her early scenes if for no other reason ;)

Public Enemies, Easy Virtue, Transformers II

2009-07-06T09:35:00.018-03:00

As the Halifax summer has to date been typified by angry, black-gray, rain-swollen skies of a decidedly apocalyptic tone, I have seen a fair number of films of late, but have not, you may remark, blogged on many. To begin addressing this backlog, I will dispense of those films viewed at home and instead concentrate on my visits to the theater, which, I lament to relate, have not been rewarded by silver screen magic for the most part.

Public Enemies (Michael Mann, 2009) (Park Lane) I have tried several times in the past few days to write about Public Enemies, and I just don't seem to be able to get my thoughts on "paper". The problem, you see, is that I was greatly anticipating the film, and even after watching it I still want to love it so much - I mean, what's not to like? Depression-era Chicago echoing with the bass thunk-a thunk-a thunk-a of tommy gun fire, gangsters playing cat and mouse with earnest G-men prosecuting J. Edgar Hoover's "war on crime" with the "latest scientific methods," gleaming straight-8 Ford sedans powering away from the heist. There's also Johnny Depp, portraying John Dillinger, recently paroled and out to reclaim his crown as the king of the waning golden age of bank robberies, and Christian Bale playing Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent charged with tracking down public enemy number one. The movie poster alone still gives me a thrill...

That's a lot to love, and we can add to that the fact that the film nods to some of the serious issues arising from the prosecution of the war on crime: the birth of the FBI and Hoover's Congressional battle to be granted interstate jurisdiction, the advent of modern scientific techniques in police work, and the mob making its shift from gun-blazing larceny to the more "respectable" pursuit of corporate crime such as sports gambling (and one can assume prostitution and drugs).

So why didn't I love this movie? Well, the easy answer is that despite lavish sets replete with highly polished hardwoods, gleaming chrome, and snazzy pin-striped suits, the film did not manage to create a convincing world. Throughout the 140-minute run time I was keenly aware that I was sitting in a theatre watching a film - a beautifully crafted film, but still one that did not invoke my sympathies or raise my ire.

I think that there are two main reasons for this. The first has to do with the filming itself, and is a little hard to describe. Whereas most big budget movies you go to see have a soft, post-processed patina over them that renders them "dream like" and allows for easy entry by the viewer, Public Enemies shifted between this soft-tone picture and a higher-contrast "real life" visual mode in which lighting popped and edges were sharp and defined. Essentially, I found myself always aware that I was watching actors on a set playing roles - think about the difference between watching your favorite drama (Say Sopranos) and then watching the "behind the scenes" special features where raw footage is shown. (Addendum: I have recently learned that Mann shot Public Enemies with digital HD cameras, which could go a long way to explaining its sterile feel. Oh for the days of cracking and popping celluloid!)

Which brings me to the second problem, which I am well aware borders on sacrilege. Johnny Depp and Christian Bale never became believable characters for me: I never felt like I identified with or was emotionally invested in the plights of either main character. The movie didn't touch me. Now this is partially a deep-rooted flaw in the film as a whole, which focuses very strongly on the characters of Dillinger and Purvis but is so concerned with looking slick and polished at every moment that it never lets us into the messier recesses of their hearts or minds. But it is also partially - here it comes - a problem with Depp and Bale, who play their roles with a cool reserve that seems almost arrogant.

I enjoyed Public Enemies, but, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't love it and can't recommend it out of hand. As I overheard one audience member tell a friend he met in the lobby after the show, "It was great at the beginning when they were robbing shit and shooting everything up, but then it got kinda slow." Well, the slower part - the adagio, so to speak - should have been the best part, uncovering the persona under the swaggering gunman...but never did.

As an addendum, I believe that Slate Magazine may have said it best: "It's like spending an afternoon...at a beautifully lit wax-museum display inspired by earlier gangster movies."

Easy Virtue (Stephan Elliott, 2008) (Bayers Lake) I was out last night with a friend who is a working actor in Halifax's performing arts community, and she was aghast to learn that I had not been swept away by this screen adaptation of a Noel Coward play - perhaps some stories are not meant to escape the stage to the silver screen. I went to see Easy Virtue on a Sunday night in every expectation that I would be treated to an hour or two of delightful whimsy - an incisive, Wildean stab at the heart of upper-class Victorian manners.

John Whittaker (Ben Barnes) is returning to the sprawling family estate to present his scandalous race car driving, pant wearing, cigarette smoking, American wife, Larita (Jessica Biel), to his stiff-upper-lip, no-sex-please-we're-British family. The family estate, ruled with staunch propriety by Mrs. Whitaker (Kristin Scott Thomas), is fading into financial ruin but still keeping up appearances, a fact little known by John's sisters and met with indifference by her husband (Colin Firth), who long ago stopped caring about appearances and tradition.

A delicious scenario for a comedy of "old-country manners meets new world vigour" to be sure, but is ultimately squandered and ends up largely bland and lifeless - which is a shame as it starts out with some degree of promise. The odd gag elicits laughs, such as when Larita accidentally sits on and kills Mrs. Whitaker's dog, but the dialogue - which is reputed to sparkle on stage - falls largely flat in the incapable hands of the cast. This should perhaps be laid largely at the feet of Ms. Biel, extends to Mr. Firth, who has never been known for dramatic range, but certainly not to Ms. Scott Thomas, who, despite her impressive credentials and arguable strong performance even in this film, just is not strong enough to pull the whole film up by its bootstraps.

Catch Easy Virtue the next time it plays on a stage near you, I am sure your local theater group will breathe more life into it than this crew has.

Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen (Michael Bay shudder, 2009) (Bayers Lake) Let's be brief: pure, utter, unadulterate, SHIT. Painful dialogue that makes you cringe delivered by hacks that insult the words actor/actress (Shia LaBeouf should be taken out and shot), sophomoric jokes that range from dogs humping legs to Mom getting high by mistake and chasing all the university hotties. The intelligence that conceived this travesty of a film is akin to the brilliance of the political and military minds that ended its mildly more interesting precursor, Transformers, by deciding to stash the recently defeated carcass of the most dangerous alien robot in the world at the bottom of the ocean - where no one would ever find it. Evil laugh. LAME.

But you don't go to this kind of film for brilliant acting or sublime scripts, right? You go for special effects and action, right? And state-of-the-art special effects films are a legitimate creation, after all, often pioneering new techniques that allow other artists in the industry to add to their collective palette. Except that this rationale is wearing thin these days, with CGI having reached a point where it, in itself, seldom manages to blow the tech-jaded audience away.

In addition, Transformers II did not even manage to leverage the technology that it had at its disposal to good effect - I would have loved to have seen the Autobots and Decepticons transform from cars, airplanes, and motorcycles into awesomely powerful super robots, but was even cheated of this. Every transformation starts with the disguise incarnation starting to convulse a little, upon which the camera zooms in and shows a bunch of randomly shifting pieces of colored metal before pulling back and showing the massive resulting robot, which has a mass at least an order of magnitude large than the original, and massive weaponry to boot (hmm, I guess that that five-foot-long, barrel-girth cannon was hidden in the muffler...).

Why oh why did I not walk out of this 2 hour and 30 fricken minute travesty? Why oh why was the surely 100s of millions spent to make this lemon not spent to completely eradicate hunger in any of numerous countries around the world where suffering is so rife?

Away We Go: A Happy Ending that I Can Believe

2009-06-11T08:42:00.014-03:00

Away We Go (Sam Mendes, 2009) (Park Lane) In the opening 10-15 minutes of Away We Go, a dispirited and recently pregnant Verona (Maya Rudolph) turns to her partner Burt (John Krasinski, of The Office fame), and asks the simple question: "Are we fuck ups?" Burt assures her that they are not.

But as I sat in the theater, already in love with this film, I knew that the real answer was "yes."

There I sat in the dark, in every way as fucked up as Verona and Burt - young, unmarried, not overly successful or stylish by the standards of grocery store checkout line magazines, and largely without community roots - and wanted to tell her that I understood exactly why she felt that way. Yes, they probably are pretty "fucked up," and that that is absolutely fine: I already knew that these were truly beautiful people and that I would love to have them over for the barbecue that I am planning...

Away They Go
So Verona and Burt hit the road, travelling across the United States and into Canada to visit friends and family in search of a "home" - a community to nestle into, feel a part of, and raise their little daughter in. During their travels, they are exposed to numerous examples of how "family" can manifest itself and what "success" can mean: in Phoenix they meet Verona's former co-worker (Alison Janney), who could mount a serious bid for worst mother of the century; in Tucson, they meet Verona's sister (Carmen Ejogo), who constantly pushes Verona to recall their long-deceased parents; in ???? they visit Burt's childhood friend (the always enjoyable Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is a "cuckoo for coco puffs" spiritually aware mother in the most patronizingly detestable manner; and in Montreal, they meet the possibly perfect couple with a gaggle of adopted kids but a secret torment over Mom's inability to conceive.

And along the way Verona and Burt start to learn what family, success, and community mean to them, as is the tradition of the great American road movie. These lessons are divided by city into vignettes of a sort, and are not maudlin or cliche in anyway - they are incredibly poignant and heartwarming, and touched me deeply. One of the strongest of these moments for me was the scene where the young couple lay in their hotel room in Phoenix, with the shadow of the "mom from hell" hanging over them. As Burt reassures Verona, we see a shadow of sadness cross her eyes as she buries her face into the pillow and laments that no one else seems to be in love the way that they are.

Sounds sappy, I know - but this is only one of several points in Away We Go when tears of tenderness and joy welled up in my eyes - where I felt an aching to be inside the beauty of the relationship I was watching. Indeed, I was truly moved by this film.

Not All Sentimental "Crap"
But Away We Go is not a tearjerker at its core - I am just a sucker for over romanticizing these things :) The film is essentially half road movie in the vein that Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown claimed to be/tried to be/so disappointingly was not, and half unabashed romantic comedy - and nothing gets me running to the theatre quicker than the newest summer rom-com. (Sarcasm anyone?)

Our saving grace on the rom-com front is that the romance is real and the comedy is side-splitting. Krasinski is far from a great actor, while Rudolph has a gift for displaying subtle emotions with her facial expression, but the bottom line is that as characters Verona and Burt are very likable people and their on-screen chemistry is undeniable. There is a tenderness that is endearing and altogether absent in much of the rom-com fodder we are subjected to.

Away We Go also delivers on the comedy front, keeping the theatre in stitches for much of the movie's 98 minutes and effectively counterbalancing its more serious themes of life, love, and community. While the opening scene is almost shocking and throws you off kilter in an "uncomfortable laugh" kind of way, the film keeps up a stream of good-natured humour that never sinks to the crass - keep your ears perked for the pregnant seahorse discussion. I read Dave Eggers' "You Shall Know Our Velocity" and enjoyed it, but I had no idea he could write such sparkling comedic dialogue.

Let's End on a High Note
The credits role on Verona and Burt as they arrive at their new home, where we have no doubt that they will love and cherish each other for eternity and raise a cute and precocious little girl: a happy ending that I believe and that I left the theatre virtually aglow with. Indeed, the crisp, cool Halifax air seemed cleaner and made me feel somehow more alive and the outlines of the buildings and telephone poles seemed sharper and more solid - my whole word seemed imbued with a sense of optimism.

Can you tell that I liked this film? Can you tell that I recommend it highly? Thanks for the tickets Jess :)

I may even forgive Sam Mendes for Revolutionary Road if he keeps this up....

Lymelife: What Would Han Solo Do?

2009-05-25T11:37:00.010-03:00

Last night I saw a commercial for Star Trek claiming that it was "the first great movie of the summer." Now I have great affection for the Star Trek franchise, I did think it was a great movie (see post), and can't really argue with box office results ($193 million domestic as of May 26), but feel compelled to put a word in for one of the legion 98-pound weaklings that are trying to fill seats alongside the ~$160 million intergalactic fantasy.

Lymelife (Derrick Martini, 2008) (Bayers Lake) Like Star Trek, Lymelife tells the story of a teenage boy growing up and trying to find his way to become a man, and is a film that I think easily deserves the adjective "great," along with a few others such as "compelling," "engaging," and "beautifully made" - it was obviously a labour of love for Martini, and held me spellbound.

Jimmy Bartlett (Kieran Culkin) is at that awkward age that is clinically labeled "puberty," but could perhaps be more appropriately titled "chronically awkward" - witness our hero in his tighty whiteys posing in front of a full-length mirror in his bedroom, Han Solo's pistol menacingly in hand as he rehearses what he wishes he could say to the bullies who torment him, or, with scrawny chest puffed out, reeling out "slick" pick up lines to the girl who thinks of him "like a younger brother."

It is scenes such as this one - so true to real, everyday, average life - that make Lymelife such a special movie. We follow the pains and triumphs of an average boy growing up in perfectly rendered 1970s America, replete with turtlenecks, orange everything, and Star Wars collectibles.

We see him humbled at school and virtually ignored at home, where the litany of standard teenage woes is complemented by a womanizing father (Alec Baldwin, excellently cast as a bitter and lonely man) who uses any excuse to escape the realities of marriage and fatherhood, a mother (Jill Hennesy, of Law & Order fame) rendered miserable by the move from downtown New York to the isolated and tick-ridden suburbs, and an older brother (Rory Culkin) driven to join the army to escape his dysfunctional family and the economic malaise strangling the global economy as tensions in the Middle East boil over.

This noxious brew of fear, resentment, and misunderstanding lends Lymelife an overwhelming sense of doom that is perhaps best embodied by the deer tick, which is lurking in the forests surrounding burgeoning suburban America, waiting to infect the masses with Lyme disease. Jimmy's neighbour, Charlie Bragg (played by Timothy Hutton in one of the strongest performances of the film) has been infected, and the resulting near madness has torn his family apart. The Bragg family's situation mirrors what is happening to Jimmy's family in many ways, except that the Braggs are being destroyed by a chance infection, not by a string of questionable personal decisions and explosive personalities that are reeking havoc in the Bartlett household (although Cynthia Nixon's turn as Charlie's wife hints that it was headed nowhere good in any case.)

Indeed, as I have commented so often about other films I have reviewed and loved, Lymelife is not necessarily a pleasant movie to experience. It does not pull its punches or glamorize the world it reflects - instead it forces the viewer to see things as they really are, in the process arousing emotions that are primal, but seldom allowed such almost embarrassing free expression.

Its a lot to take in, but so is life
The natural point of comparison for Lymelife is Ang Lee's masterpiece The Ice Storm. Both films take us inside the minds and hearts of young boys trying to navigate the slow disintegration of their families for reasons that they little understand. Both are also set in the 1970s, and present the time as being so much more bleak and bland than it really could have been - right?

Perhaps the key difference between the two films is that Jimmy is older than The Ice Storm's Paul Hood (a very young Tobey McGuire), which means that the perspective we share is more mature (or at least maturing), and increasingly aware of the subtleties of what is happening - it also means that he is more able to make his own choices. Indeed, Jimmy is a much more active than is Paul, implying that Lymelife is more about its main character than it is about the brooding milieu that surrounds him, as is the case in Ice Storm.

This point is perhaps in no way better illustrated than in the general trajectory taken by each film. Whereas Ice Storm inexorably pushes towards an indescribably tragic conclusion, Lymelife is ultimately warm and even hopeful as Jimmy makes more choices for himself, becoming a man in his own stead, and seems to be escaping the drama that surrounds him. I won't go into details, but suffice to say there is a girl involved - a young lady that I feel guilty for not mentioning as much for her budding beauty as for her strong performance.

Letter to the Editor
If I may editorialize for a moment, Lymelife is a perfect example of the myriad of insightful, artistic, and deeply touching films that are being made every day in countries all over the world - but being shown only in the precious few theaters that are willing to accept less than top dollar by not pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Go see this film - if we don't watch quality cinema, there is no guarantee that cinema artists will continue to find patrons for their creations.

Angels and Demons, Taken

2009-05-21T09:02:00.008-03:00

The Bad and the Blase
Yesterday I promised to write about the good, the bad, and the blase (to stretch the term a little), and I seem to have only gotten around to the good. I am ready to make good on my promise, save the need to decide which of today's films is bad and which one is "blase."

Angels and Demons (Ron Howard, 2009) (The Oxford) I am going to have to start with the blase, a term for which I think that Angels and Demons is a poster child.

Based on Dan Brown's blockbuster novel of the same name and following the phenomenal success of The DaVinci Code, Angels chronicles a night in the life of Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a symbologist who has been summoned to Rome by the camerlengo (essentially the deputy pope, played by Ewan McGregor) to save Vatican city, the College of Cardinals assembled in papal conclave to select a new pope, and thousands of pious onlookers from annihilation at the hands of the resurgent order of the Illuminati.

In Angels, the Illuminati, which also figured prominently in The DaVinci Code, have stolen a particle of dark matter - considered by some to be the "god particle" due to its presumed role in the genesis of the universe - from the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Bent on destroying the Catholic Church for its history of persecuting scientists and free-thinkers, the Illuminati have kidnapped the four top candidates for the papacy, and are planning to murder one each hour ahead of midnight, when the particle of dark matter will be unleashed with a force akin to a nuclear detonation of significant magnitude - incinerating Vatican City and its environs.

A Whole Lot of Nothing
It is no small feat to summarize the plot of Angels and Demons, as is evidenced by the number of Wikipedia links in the preceding paragraphs. Indeed, like The DaVinci Code, the action in Angels plays out against a rich tapestry of secret societies, conspiracy theories, the long-standing "feud" between religion and science (here typified by Galileo's execution for heresy), and the Vatican pageantry that plays out largely behind closed doors.

Add to this fertile ground the talents of a director who has contributed to notable projects ranging from the recent Frost/Nixon and Changeling to Inventing the Abbots, Apollo 13, and Willow, and respectable and generally reliable actors like Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor, and one would think that Angels has the stuff that magic is made of.

So why is the movie so mind-numbingly boring? Indeed, perhaps the best word to describe my reaction - even while ensconced in the cinema, surrounded by the soundtrack and warmed by its glow - is blase. I just didn't care. Not that the film isn't beautiful to look at. Indeed, no expense was spared in crafting an onscreen world that drips with the atmosphere of modern Rome, its ancient churches and sculptures, and the mystique of Vatican City.

Weakest Links
The film's key failings, I believe, are twofold. Firstly, as is evidenced by the aforementioned profusion of Wikipedia links, there is a lot of extremely interesting history underpinning the narrative, but this translates into a lot of screen time spent providing context - Dr. Langdon and his sidekick for the film, Vittoria Vetter (Ayelet Zurer), essentially give the audience numerous mini lectures. This is acceptable in Brown's ever-so-slightly more engaging novel, but does not make for scintillating cinema. Angels strikes a better balance between education and action than did its unwieldy predecessor, The DaVinci Code, but nonetheless left this viewer drumming his fingers at times.

The other weakness of this film arises from the action that is supposed to balance the education. There is lots of rushing through the dark, crowded streets and squares of Rome, there are shadowy villains and murders most foul, and there are the lives of thousands and a cultural trove of near matchless value (the Vatican library) at stake, but the film still failed to convey a sense of jeopardy. There was no sense of impending doom, no aura of evil, no hero to root for (the church? the mild-mannered professor?) and no villain to pillory (the amorphous society of the Illuminati? the shadowy villain who's face is revealed a few times but is never named? the ultimate kingpin shockingly revealed at the end to yawns and indifference?).

Yawn. Stay home and watch reality TV - it is probably more interesting for it anthropological implications if nothing else.

Taken (Pierre Morel, 2008) (Home) Or stay home and watch Taken, which represents the bad film in this triptych of reviews, but is nonetheless infinitely more engaging than the blase.

Brian Mills (Liam Neeson) is a former special forces member who has retired from the life in order to be close to his 16 or 17 year old daughter Amanda, who lives in LA with his ex-wife and her super-rich new husband. Mills feels pretty pathetic and appears pretty irrelevant to his daughter's life as the film opens, but becomes intimately involved and highly relevant when Amanda's summer trip to Europe lands her in the clutches of an Albanian ring that runs a network of sex slaves.

Cue look of internal anguish that is Neeson's trademark, and a murderous rampage through Paris in hope of finding his daughter within the 96-hour window that these abductions apparently present before the victim becomes statistically irretrievable. I am tempted to watch this film again just to count how many knee-capped, garroted, and otherwise dispatched bodies litter Mills' path across Paris - I would lay odds that it approaches 40.

Now sex slavery and human trafficking in general exacts a horrid toll on its victims across the globe, but in this film it is treated largely as a plot device. We are not being educated about the problem or enlightened about attempts to stem the tide. No, Taken is unabashedly an upscale Steven Segal film about kicking ass and not bothering to take names - i.e., its a bad film.

But if your choice is between suffering the more cerebral but entirely un-engaging Angels and Demons or indulging in the throw-away action hero antics of Taken, I recommend that you opt for the latter.

Star Trek

2009-05-19T08:57:00.009-03:00

Well my friends, it has been a bad few days for a long weekend (read: rain), but a good weekend for a movie lover (read: screen time). Yup. When skies cloud and an insidious chill settles on the city, its time to find a plushly upholstered seat in the cinema and let yourself be carried away by the good, the bad, and the blase...

Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, 2009) (IMAX) Let's start with the good. I was a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG), and always had a soft spot for The Original Series (TOS), but I am far from a die-hard Trekkie, not having a single syllable of useful Klingon in my vocabulary.

Overall, however, I am enough of a fan to salivate at the idea of a new Star Trek movie despite all of the painfully bad screen time we have been subjected to (read: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Generations (gasp and shudder), and Insurrection) in hopes of once again experiencing the thrill that has embedded the franchise so deeply in western culture (read: Star Trek TNG, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (perhaps the best of them all), and First Contact).

The newest Star Trek outing predates all of the above in terms of chronology, and definitely outstrips many of them in terms of quality: J.J. Abrams, admittedly not a long-standing Star Trek fan, got a lot more right than wrong.

The interesting thing about Star Trek is that it is more about the characters than the stories or the technology. The movie begins in the days before Kirk was Captain and Spock was logic-bound first officer, and follows the events that forged the characters we know so well from TOS. Thus, getting it right for Abrams essentially means getting the right actors to inhabit the roles, something that, after much deliberation, I must say was well accomplished.

Chris Pine's turn as James Tiberious Kirk was the hardest for me to swallow. The brash, reckless, womanizing drunk was such an off-putting personality that I allowed my personal dislike to cloud my better judgement - I forgot how essentially vain, impulsive, and basically unlikeable William Shatner's Catptain Kirk was in TOS. As I have commented so many times before, the character may be essentially unlikeable, but may be serving the best interests of the film in being so - as is the case in Star Trek.

Zachary Quinto's Spock is a much more palatable incarnation for all of his crusty inflexibility. Quinto's task was no easy feat considering that he was starring opposite Leonard Nimoy in the flesh, and risked being overshadowed by the denture-wearing (according to DreamQueen) progenitor of the character. Instead we watch Quinto straddle the line between impulsive human and logical Vulcan in an entirely believable and endearing manner - we don't understand Spock's dilemma as much as Kirk's, but we definitely like him a lot more.

The rest of the menagerie is also well-represented:

Uhura (Zoe Seldana) is portrayed with confident, modern sexuality that is in keeping with her 1960s incarnation, which seems muted by modern standards, but pushed the boundaries of propriety in its day by participating in television's first ever interracial kiss.
Dr. McCoy (Karl Urban) is played sternly and seriously, and seems to miss a bit of the congenial humor that typified the original character. However, his role is far from pivotal in this film, and has room to mature. No complaints overall, save for Urban's overly strong resemblance of Matt LeBlanc of Friends fame...
Chekov (Anton Yelchin) is played to a T measured against the TOS template, with the always enjoyable and seemingly perpetually young Yelchin punching his heavily-accented English for comic effect
Sulu (John Cho) is also spot on by comparison to George Takei's 1960 portrayal - overly serious but steady as a rock. Sulu sees some action in this film, and that could foreshadow bigger things to come for his character in future outings.
Scotty (Simon Pegg) is barely introduced in this film, but has all the Scottish brogue and sarcastic humor that one could want from the surly chief engineer.

Indeed, a lot of the supporting cast of Star Trek are merely introduced to us as token nods to their place in the pantheon - suggesting that they will have amply opportunity to flesh out their characters in films to come. Much as Casino Royale did for the Bond series, the latest big-screen incarnation of Star Trek pushes the reset button on the franchise, working from a blank sheet and setting a high standard for the sequels that are sure to come.

I'd love to end on that positive note, but must say that there was one thing that bothered me about the newest Star Trek outing: the darkness of its mood/tone. This is best typified by - not surprisingly - the Romulon bad guys, who inhabit an oily black spaceship seemingly fashioned of ominous tentacles. There is nothing redeeming in the Romulons, who appear in this film as heavly tatooed, brutish humans rather than the more alien guise portrayed for most of their history.

Now I know I am usually looking for a darker and/or more serious edge to films that insist on the sun only shining on TV. However, in this case I could not help but miss the naive optimism of Star Trek TOS or even TNG. You see, Star Trek has always been the one sci-fi future that shows humanity having overcome war, famine, economic inequality and other base desires, emerging a still-flawed but entirely admirable creature.

Overall a small complaint against a wall of praise, and one that I will not insist on, as I do not want the new film to be held hostage to the standards of its long and storied history. And this, I think, is the point - the newest Star Trek, rather like the most recent Bond outings, was made for a new generation of fans that are not measuring it against its predecessors.

So neither will I.

Che: Part One

2009-05-14T14:14:00.006-03:00

Che: Part One (Steven Soderbergh, 2008) (Oxford) Before heading to the theater to view Che: Part One, Steven Soderbergh's biopic of the omnipresent revolutionary, I figured that I should know more about him than the fact that he was instrumental in Castro's Cuban revolution and graces at least 500 gazillion t-shirts worldwide. I optimistically pulled up Wikipedia's entry on the bearded revolutionary, but quickly got distracted by something else (ie, my job) and decided that the film itself would have to serve as an education.

Because that is what the biopic usually is: we learn the story of a person's life - the actions and reactions that shaped their life story - and the core social and/or political beliefs/philosophies/ideas that drove them. Basically, we learn about the fight and why it is fought.

Half a Film and Half a Story
Except that in Che we really only get 50% of this package deal - and I don't think that other 50% will be offered up in part two! Intertwining the Cuban guerrillas' slow march through the dense and mountainous terrain to Havana with Che Guevara's later journey to New York to harangue the United Nations about the crimes of capitalist America, Che: Part One is a slow but nonetheless enjoyable history of the actions that comprise Che's involvement in the Cuban revolution. It rings of authenticity, and is beautiful to look at as a result.

However, it is the 50% that was missing that nags me. I appreciate greatly the sacrifices made to slowly crawl over densely forested mountains and wade through engorged streams while fighting a technologically and numerically super force, and I think that this is clearly and effectively captured by the film. What is not conveyed to the viewer is why Che or the guerrilla's undertook this daunting campaign.

There are certainly the odd references to the corrupt nature of the puppet government of Batista, the unfair advantage taken by corporations, and the lack of basic services delivered to the Cuban people - indeed, Che takes it upon himself to try to ensure that all of his fighters are literate. However, the film fails to capture - and in truth does not even try to convey - the political and social ideas/philosophies/beliefs that impelled the Cuban revolution and inspired Che.

And the latter is the most important - I do not, after all, want to be subjected to a piece of sociopolitical propaganda on the evils of the capitalist west and the virtues of the revolution. However, if the goal of a biopic is to increase the viewer's understanding of the subject - in this case Che - then I think that it is important that we be given some appreciation of what they believed in and why they were fighting.

Indeed, as the slow progress over mountains and through valleys progressed, I found myself wondering why these people were following Che. I could easily understand why they would believe in the revolution based on my preexisting hazy knowledge of the situation, but the portrait of Che that was presented was not inspiring or uplifting. He was a reticent intellectual at worst, and a stern schoolmaster at best - always having the best interests of his men at heart, but never showing any connection to them on a human level.

As a highly politicized figure in a film that could easily have generated great controversy, I can understand the filmmakers' insistence on strict adherence to the historical facts of the revolution. However, I can't help but feel cheated by their decision to complete ignore the spirit of the man and of the times - I don't feel like I know or understand Che the man any more than I did before entering the Oxford Theatre.

Where was the inspiration for the filmmakers, let alone the revolutionary? Maybe I should return to Wikipedia to try to learn more about what ideas and beliefs drove Che the man, about the wellspring of his passion.....

Kate Winslet: Little Children & Revolutionary Road

2009-05-05T19:08:00.011-03:00

When I last wrote about Kate Winslet, in the context of her Oscar winning performance in The Reader, I managed little more than gushing - the film had rendered me speechless, leaving me with nothing else to give. Winslet's turn as Hanna Schmitz, the strangely innocent holocaust gaurd who is caught by her past, sent me in search of other films starring the virtuoso actress that had impressed me in notable films such as Finding Neverland and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but really was frozen in my mind as young Rose parting the sea on the ill-fated bows of HMS Titanic.

Some images die hard.

Little Children (2006, Todd Field) (Home) Last night I curled up in a blanket to escape the still frigid climes of Nova Scotia and immersed myself in Winslet's turn as Sarah Pierce in Little Children, a film that also left me awestruck, but that I can hopefully address with at least a modicum of critical distance.

Little Children follows the budding relationship between Sarah and Brad Adamson (Patrick Wilson), two young parents who feel trapped in comfortable, even affluent, suburban lives that could be postcards for the ever-foggier American dream. Sarah is married to a drab older man and has borne him a child that she feels little connection to, while Brad is married to the super-hot (always) but bitchily controlling Kathy (Jennifer Connelly) and plays stay-at-home Dad to their son.

Both are primary caregivers: such being Sarah's part to play in her "picture perfect" life, while Brad cares for his son while not studying for the bar exam that he does not want to take in order to become a lawyer that he does not want to be.

Voice of Reason
The first hour of Little Children is punctuated by the ever-reasonable voice of the omniscient narrator, who lets us know precisely what each character is feeling or thinking in a dispassionate, almost analytical manner. We never doubt the narrator's omniscience, because the truth of his reportage is ever apparent on the screen. Indeed, we even begin to adopt his analytic distance, feeling an anthropological fascination with the relationship we are witnessing, much as Sarah opened the film by explaining her anthropological fascination with the inane lives of the desperate housewives that she rubs shoulders with before Brad's appearance.

When their first passionate embrace - inevitable but somehow unexpected - leads to animal lust, we feel tension break like a thunderhead cracking open - the analytical distance is shortened like a choke chain viciously tugged. I gasped, clutched the sofa arm more tightly and let the electricity of their union slow through me. Sweet release.

But its not that easy, as the omniscient narrator reminds us about 20 minutes later, reimposing the perspective of a biologist beginning a dissection. Sarah and Brad are still part of postcards, after all, and wives, husbands, and children - little children - circumscribe the potential of their relationship.

The Pervert
Which is where the pervert comes in. Initially a side story, but increasingly prominent as the passion and deception grows, Ronnie is a convicted pedophile who has completed his sentence and returned to the neighbourhood to live with his ever-loving and surely long-suffering mother.

Initially I had trouble pegging Ronnie's role in Little Children, and I am still not sure that I fully understand it. Sure he plays a role in Brad's rebellion against his domineering wife, and certainly he represents jeopardy to the children that can only help being Sarah and Brad closer together in a protective circle.

But what stuck with me as I pondered the film last night and this morning was Ronnie's mother, who accepts that her son is guilty of the crime of exposing himself to young children, but still stands by him in the stolid belief that his crime was the past:"but we can always choose the future." I am paraphrasing, to be sure, but this is the essence of her eternal optimism for her son's potential to get a girlfriend, build a relationship, and "be good."

We Can Always Choose the Future
And that is a key reason for Ronnie's role in the film, it seems to me. He shows us that we truly can't always choose the future. He is a pedophile, pure and simple, and his only escape is horrifying and entirely lacks satisfaction for the audience despite its poetic appropriateness. We feel sorry for him, for god's sake....

And this perhaps is also the essence of the situation Sarah and Brad find themselves in. Dissatisfied with wholly-enviable lives of comfort and limitless potential, they feel trapped in roles they are not sure that they want to play, and, like many adulterers before them, find escape and new hope in each others' arms literally - and in the dream of running away and starting over figuratively. Bat can Sarah and Brad choose their futures?

Little Children left me in awe, pure and simple. WATCH THIS FILM.

Revolutionary Road (2008, Sam Mendes) (Home) The other film that I encountered on my journey through Kate Winslet's career was Revolutionary Road, which reunites her with Leo DiCaprio in a role that is surprisingly similar to that she plays in Little Children.

April (Winslet) and Frank (DiCaprio) met and fell in love with each other and with the idea they are dramatic outliers in the cookie-cutter landscape of 1950s, suburban America. They fell in love with the idea they were somehow better than the average Joes living in little pink houses all over post-war USA, commuting to drab jobs in corporate America, and raising the next generation to play the same role ad infinitum.

Except that they live in a large, sprawling, white picket-fenced "little pink house" in the suburbs, Frank commutes every day to a drab job that he hates, and April stays home to raise the next generation of kids that we can only assume are destined to the same fate. And it makes them feel like failures who have compromised their dreams in trade for a wooden nickel. And this makes them bitter, which makes them lash out at each other, and makes them miserable.

Until they remember the dream that glowed around them when they first met: Frank had been to Paris, and in Paris, he believes, people are really alive. And this dream grows in April, who believes that moving to Paris is their ticket out of mediocrity, out of compromise, and out of misery - she believes that she and Frank can choose their future.

Which would be all well and good if the viewer really cared. If we looked at them and empathized with their "untenable" situation, wished that they could escape the confines of their "smothering" lives.

But we don't. Instead we feel that they are spoiled and selfish, like they feel that the world owes them something that it clearly doesn't. After all, like Sarah and Brad in Little Children, April and Frank made all of the decisions that led them to the comfortable if glamourless lives they now live.

Perhaps if we saw April and Frank being loving parents to the children that occupy the edges of Revolutionary Road like wooden props of convenience we could care. Perhaps if Frank were less flippantly cool and assuredly better than everyone around him. Perhaps if April ever said or did something realistic to try and improve their lives.

But no. Perhaps the one great scene in RR comes when the mentally ill son of a neighbour throws a tantrum and tells them in no uncertain terms how selfish and self-deluded they are. How they have sold out anything real they could have been in support of the illusion that they are somehow princes and princesses merely passing for paupers.

Game, Set, MATCH.
I hadn't realized until I sat down at the keyboard how similar these films are in the scenario that they present. Hell, even Titanic is about two young people feeling trapped in lives they weren't meant for and are struggling to rise above.

In Little Children this milieu plays out as a complex, compelling, physically and emotionally engaging drama. But in Revolutionary Road it ends up under the tires, making Titanic look like an insightful and intelligent accomplishment. Little Children accomplishes a modern work of art, Revolutionary Road wastes good talent.

Antz - but not the movie...

2009-04-22T14:14:00.009-03:00

Remember the animated film Antz, starring the voices of Woody Allen, Dan Ackroyd, Anne Bancroft, Jennifer Lopez, Sharon Stone, etc, etc? Well I loved the movie when I saw it in the theater in Seoul, and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone that missed it - great animation, excellent dialogue, lots of laughs, and a refreshing take on the tried, tested, and true "rescue the princess" storyline.

Well, I am talking about antz today, but these antz have more in common with the pests in Joe's Apartment than the accidently heroic and always wryly mirthful Woody Allen variety - these are, after all, the antz in my apartment, and those of my tenants.

Carpenter ants to be precise.

Now these are not fire ants that will bite people, but are objectionable nonetheless by: a) their presence; and b) the fact that they are almost certainly slowly munching away at the structure of my building. I have found one colony in the basement in a badly chewed and distrubingly soft section of the rim joist, and am afraid that there is another upstairs in the third-floor unit - which by all reports is crawling with them.

Now I would love to find some natural deterant to convince these creatures to move on - scattered mint leaves, chalk lines, or cinnamon - but as a landlord I am in the position of having to act quickly and decively - so the pest control people it is.

So far in my life as a landlord I have had few serious issues to deal with, the largest being the replacement of a few ceiling fans and some other fixits on the third floor, but the challenges are likely to continue arising.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle
Like this morning, when I was greeted by an e-mail about the rodent that has moved in to keep the antz company in the attic unit. And this is not the cute and perky Stuart Little of the big screen, nor Beverly Cleary's equally adorable little rodent from The Mouse and the Motorcycle, which I read repeatedly as a child.

No, this is the "yucky, yucky mouse" that my tenants are not too happy to share their unit with. Now antz are one thing, and don't ask me for the logic behind my thoughts on this matter, but I just don't like the idea of dispatching mice with miniature guillotines.

Suggestions are welcome...

Sunshine Cleaning: The sun always shines on TV

2009-04-22T09:55:00.006-03:00

Sunshine Cleaning (Christine Jeffs, 2009) (The Oxford) Sunshine Cleaning opens with a suicide in a sporting goods store and quickly moves through a CSI-style investigation scene (with a decidedly less earnest tone than its network TV namesake) before reaching the less glamorous (or at least less glamorized) part of the process - after the fingerprints are dusted, the splatter tests run, the site inventory completed, and the body wheeled away, it is time to clean up the blood.

It stands to reason that every grizzly crime scene has to be buffed and polished so that the location can be restored for day-to-day use. It also stands to reason - as we learn in Sunshine Cleaning - that this would be a pretty high paying job, not the least because of the general aversion to handling brain matter and body parts, but also because the crime scene is often literally smeared with biohazard (I promise that that is the most graphic that I get in this post!).

Enter Rose Lorkowski (Amy Adams), former cheerleader and girlfriend to the captain of the football team who has since "fallen" to the point where she works as a maid to support her precocious and ever-so-movie-cute son Oscar - its a prototypical "peaked in high school" situation. Long story short, Oscar is not fitting in in public school, and Rose wants to place him in an expensive private school that she cannot afford. Unless....

See where we are going here? Rose's married cop "boyfriend" hooks her up with a crime scene cleanup, and next thing you know she and her reluctant sister Norah (Emily Blunt) are disposing of blood-soaked mattresses and scrubbing all manner of biological matter from walls and floors.

Of course this does not instantly solve all of Rose's problems, and instead serves as an avenue for introducing more of her own - such as her difficulty dealing with her fall from "queen of the prom" status - and the misfortunes of her entire family: Norah's conflicted search for love in a less-than-orthodox manner, Oscar's inability to understand what he is a "bastard" child, and her father's (Alan Arkin) affinity for get-rich-quick schemes.

Short Cuts
Yeah, there are a lot of stories going on in Sunshine Cleaning, but it is not confusing, convoluted, or overly cerebral. In fact, despite its gruesome subject matter, the film is decidedly light-hearted and - real moments of despair and sadness aside - is actually suffused with hope and wholesome family goodness.

For the obvious reason of its title - and the perhaps coincidental involvement of Alan Arkin - I, and a lot of people that I have spoken to, automatically refer to Little Miss Sunshine when I discuss Sunshine Cleaning. I have searched IMDB, and besides Mr. Arkin and the word "sunshine," there seems to be no correlation.

That being said, I enjoyed Little Miss Sunshine, but not nearly as much as the legion of adoring moviegoers seem to have - the movie on the whole was just a little bit too glowing with perky and positive energy. I enjoyed Sunshine Cleaning greatly - and liked it a lot more that LMS - but still must say that it also bordered a little on the side of overly happy and excessively positive.

I don't mope around in all black or anything, but especially given its subject matter, I would have welcomed a bit more of an edge - some black humour to balance the family affirmation storyline. I mean, these girls are cleaning brain matter off the walls of seedy motel shower stalls for god's sake! That's gotta mess with your head, and I would have liked it if the film had explored this a little bit.

On the other hand, maybe this theme would have been the straw that would have broken the camel's back. As I mentioned, there are a lot of story lines and themes in this film, most of which are never resolved or even explored in any depth - adding another is perhaps the last thing that it needs.

This lack of resolution of many story lines, I feel compelled to add, is not necessarily a negative. Sunshine Cleaning plays fast and loose with a lot of heavy themes, but we don't finish the film feeling confused or cheated - we end it with a warm glow, with a bit of sunshine of our own to take home from the theater.

A feel good movie that I can wholeheartedly recommend. Sure I would have liked something with a little more edge (I'm not asking for Bringing out the Dead here), but am really happy with what I got :)

Sophie's Choice

2009-03-30T11:25:00.005-03:00

Sophie's Choice (Alan J. Pakula, 1982) (home) Sophie's Choice holds a prominent place in my memory, as the novel was always laying around the house when I was a child, and I often heard my mother express her admiration of the film. I finally sat down with the movie the other week, and was left in awe for days following - I believe that Sophie's Choice could be close to being a perfect film.

Sophie's Choice tells the stories of Stingo (a VERY young Peter McNichol), an ambitious southerner recently moved to New York to follow his dream of becoming a great author, and two eccentric housemates who befriend him: Sophie Zawistowski (Meryl Streep), a polish immigrant and survivor of Auschwitz, and Nathan Landau (Kevin Kline), a flamboyant provocateur who slowly loses his sanity as the narrative unfolds.

The real core of the film, however, is Sophie's experiences under the Nazi occupation of Poland in WWII, as told in flashbacks that punctuate the modern drama. This slow and measured retelling of her past life adds depths to the wisp of a character that Sophie is in modern New York - indeed, the modern Sophie is almost numb, bringing nothing to the table but ethereal beauty and a channel for Nathan's eccentric fancies and brutal tempers.

It is in her recollections that we learn what stripped Sophie to this vapour of a person, leaving her less than half a spirit in need of someone else's passion, someone else's desire, someone else's joie de vivre to animate her. And these recollections lead ultimately to the single choice that made her what she is today - and that shocked me to silence and stillness.

Beauty to be Told
One would think that the story of a shell of a woman recounting her memories of the holocaust and living vicariously through a madman would be pretty depressing fare, but this is far from the case. Sophie's Choice bubbles with simple joys of the moment as Stingo, Sophie, and Nathan indulge their every imaginative whim on the wings of childlike spirits mixed with copious quantities of wine.

This childlike innocence imbues Sophie because it is all that her wartime experiences left her with, Nathan because of his madness, and Stingo because he is but a child, first venturing out into the world to test a dream that has yet to be seriously challenged. The innocence also innoculates the story, serving as antidote to the pain and suffering recounted in its backstory.

A compelling, emotionally mature story, characters that you want to be real, and Meryl Streep - beautiful beyond compare - are engaging and affecting. Viewing Sophie's Choice is an incredibly intimate experience that touches you somewhere deep inside and glows and grows inside you long after the credits have rolled.

Charlie Bartlett

2009-03-27T09:29:00.006-03:00

Underestimated, Overlooked
Charlie Bartlett (Jon Poll, 2008) (home) Critics don't make movie decisions for me, but a good one can help me narrow my options. Thus, when Bob Mondello of National Public Radio listed Charlie Bartlett as one of the Neglected Films of 2008 Still Worth Watching, I paid attention and was rewarded.

Starring Robert Downey Junior and Anton Yelchin, who seems to have played bit parts on every major TV drama but is only now moving into film, Charlie Bartlett tells the story of a super-rich youth who has been kicked out of every private school available for running entrepreneurial scams that unnecessarily line his pockets and - more importantly - give him a thrill.

When his over-medicated and far-from-nurturing mother finally reaches her last straw, Charlie is dispatched to public school - wisely eschewing the limo in favor of the bus, but seemingly oblivious to the equally voluble statement made by his crested dinner jacket.

What follows is a mix of standard high-school movie plots following an arc from bullied and ridiculed outsider/geek to beloved school hero/rebel dating the Principal's attractive daughter and prescribing psycho-active medications to fellow students in ad hoc therapy sessions held "confession style" in adjacent bathroom stalls.

What!?!?!?!?!

You see, Charlie Bartlett is strictly American Pie in many senses - but it is the really funny and good-natured 1999 original, well-baked pie rather than the numerous half-baked sequel pies that followed. However, in the place of American Pie's single-minded obsession with all jokes adolescent and sexual, Charlie Barlett is also a refreshing and funny take on standard fish-out-of-water fare - a feat accomplished largely by Yelchin's strong performance, as he really captures and conveys the "I don't know who I am" feeling that being a teenager is all about.

What Charlie Bartlett ends up being is absolutely hilarious and heart-warming. We care about Charlie because we never resent his riches, we understand his motives, we see that the adults around him have little more idea of who they are than he does, and we never fail to appreciate that he is ultimately a good guy who will make the right decisions.

No Coins Please
To shift frames of reference a little, what Charlie Bartlett reminded me of most was the work of young-adult Canadian lit author Gordon Korman. Those who read Korman in their younger days will recognize a bit of Artie Shaw from one of my favorites, No Coins Please.

Charlie Bartlett, like much of Korman's earlier work (not having read his later outings), is a variety of pure, innocent pleasure that leaves you smiling and feeling good about the world without the "I just ate too much sugar" sick-to-the-stomach hangover that feel-good films can induce - Charlie Bartlett has an edge, and it should not be overlooked.

Watchmen

2009-03-24T08:38:00.009-03:00

I first read the graphic novel of Watchmen in the early 90s, when a large part of my life revolved around comic books. I came to funny books a little late in life, and it was publications like Watchmen that sucked me in - it, and series like Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, were being written for a more mature audience that would understand how the complexity of Bruce Wayne's life as the Batman could lead him to face challenges such as an addiction to performance enhancing drugs and would appreciate what that pollutant of the body could do to his mind.

These were not the perky shenanigans of Archie, Jughead, and the crew - after all, Betty and/or Veronica never got pregnant, Reggie was not the deadbeat father of a legion, and I do not recall Moose being imprisoned for assault.

The worlds that drew me into the comicverse were dark, moody explorations of conflicted characters who inhabited gritty realities in which right and wrong were divided by a murky and ill-defined line. Morality was relative at best. And they were illustrated in matching style, depicting worlds of shadows and fear that needed heroes - and heroes that were often uncertain whether they could or should meet this need.

From the Page to the Screen
The movies that have been made from these comic books have rarely captured this murky atmosphere or cared to delve into the twisted minds of the heroes/villains that inhabit them. There are exceptions, of course, in the form of Tim Burton's 1989 Batman and the franchise's two most recent outing, Batman Begins, based on Frank Miller's seminal "Year 1" (Batman 404-407), and the weaker but more politically/socially pointed The Dark Knight.

Other good adaptations abound, I am sure, but the Batman franchise sticks out in my mind because it is the comic book series that was nearest and dearest to my heart.

Perhaps needless to say, I had been anticipating the film version of Watchmen for some time, hoping against hope that I could add it to this list.

Who Watches the Watchmen
Watchmen (Zack Snider, 2009) (IMAX) A lot of fans of the graphic novel are watching Watchmen, that's who, and I think that for them - like myself - it is a rewarding experience. The movie is faithful to the graphic novel to the point of recreating exact panels from the pages (something that the better Batman movies have also benefited from, if in a less methodical manner), even to the point of limiting camera pans so as to frame each scene as if it were a cell on a page.

Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that Watchmen is faithful to the mood and ambiance of the alternative reality against which the narrative unfolds: a 1980s America where Nixon is serving his 5th term, there are rumours that an actor named Reagan may run for office, the world sits precariously on the brink of thermo-nuclear war, and costumed heroes have been outlawed.

It is a gritty, dismal reality in which signs of riches or privilege come off as brassy and cheap - tarnished by an aura of corruption and sleaze. Rorschach, the one hero who remains active, is our window into this world, and surely his twisted internal darkness lends to the oppressive feeling that imbues the setting.

Most of these heroes - which is one of the most intriguing aspect of the story for me - are regular men and women who have faded back into more-or-less regular lives. These are human beings that rose above their all-to-human weaknesses - fears and traumas - to become something more than mere man - like the Batman, they do not have superpowers, but via dedication and determination overcame their demons and kept themselves physically up to the challenge of fighting evil.

The only exception to this is Dr. Manhattan, a man who was turned iridescent blue and gained the power to manipulate matter at the atomic level through the standard scientific-experiment-gone-wrong. Interestingly, Dr. Manhattan is as tortured a character as any of his less superhuman compatriots, and spends much of the movie musing on whether or not he is still human and what - if anything - is his tie to the planet earth and the human race that he was born into.

I don't want to get into the minutiae of the story, as I do not want to risk spoilers for any who have not seen the film/read the book - also, the story itself is so complex and multi-textured that I feel a quick synopsis would quickly swell to fill the available space (which is how much exactly on the interweb?). However, I do want to emphasize that this is a story - and film - of questions.

Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Are vigilantes and their personal crusades a ray of light in the darkness or a menace to society?
Can large for-profit corporations work for the common weal, or does their very nature render all such efforts self-serving?

Thus, I highly recommend that Watchmen neophytes sit down with the newly reprinted graphic novel and enjoy the delicious pleasure of reading a comic book when you obviously have "better" things to do ;) For the reaction of a first time reader, head over to Bookphilia to check out Dreamqueen's thoughts.

This recommendation brings to light the key problem with Watchmen. I really enjoyed the film, loving the already oft-alluded to ambiance of the reality presented. However, seeing as the original comic tale spans generations, continents, and even planets, it is a tall order to reproduce it faithfully on the screen. I am certain that many newcomers to the story are left more than slightly bewildered by the amount of information that they are called upon to synthesize - indeed, at the two-hour point of this almost-three-hour saga we are still learning back story that is essential to understanding the movie.

Thus, the main weakness of this film is its fidelity, its unwillingness to compromise on the smallest detail of the story - not that I care to imagine what would have been left out if the director had had to choose.

High Fidelity
Which raises an interesting issue that dogs many a film adapted from a novel: how much artistic license can be taken with the source material? Bad choices seem to greatly outweigh good in this area, with the original Harry Potter coming to mind as a stilted, slow, overly pedantic retelling of the facts of the book that did not offer anything new on screen.

At the other end of the spectrum sits a film like About a Boy. I just finished reading the book last night, and was shocked at how different the ending of the brilliant film is from that of the book - but how appropriate and true to the spirit of the story the film version is.

Watchmen is at the Harry Potter end of the spectrum for fidelity, but achieves the superhero feat of simultaneously occupying the About a Boy end for the initiated among its viewers. Read the graphic novel and I guarantee a good read - but I can't guarantee the same enjoyment of the film, I can only share my enjoyment of it.

The Reader

2009-02-23T20:54:00.012-04:00

The 81st Annual Academy Awards
I have to admit that I have not yet taken a close look at the results of the 81st Academy Awards, some movie critic, eh? I know some broad strokes, and, much as I already knew a week and even a month ago, Slumdog Millionaire has been anointed the best film of 2008.

Now Slumdog Millionaire, in all fairness, probably was not the best film made in 2008. That does not, however, in any way suggest that it is unworthy of its Oscar night acclaim - Slumdog did something that all movies attempt to do: it touched millions of people in an intimate way. It touched some of those people through memories of India, some through the rhythms of song, some through the poignancy of the story and some through the gorgeously filmed colors and textures.

Slumdog won best picture because it has come to mean something in the basic fabric of our cultural consciousness at this moment - and that is what the Academy Awards are: a look at what is at the core of our modern culture (as reflected in cinema) at this moment.

I will not peruse the list further tonight, because it is 9:00 pm and I am tired. No, I am not tired (and 9:00 is not my bedtime). I am drained. I am emotionally spent. I am wrung dry and completely subdued - I have been rendered silent in front of the flickering images of The Reader (oh how I wish film still flickered...).

The Reader (1998, Stephen Daldry) (Park Lane) I remember enjoying the book this film is based on when I read it years ago (despite the contrary opinion of DreamQueen), but I was not really planning on seeing the film in the theater if at all. As The Reader began I thought perhaps the reasons for my resistance were founded, as artfully posed nude shots proliferated, areolas appeared willy nilly, and seemingly shallow symbolism reared its head in the small stars of David that decorated the window-glass of the door to Hanna's apartment.

A young Michael was being seduced by a flinty, older Hanna - a former concentration camp guard in Nazi GErmany - and I shuddered in expectation of The Notebook playing itself out for the next two hours (yes, purely prejudicial slander, as I have not seen The Notebook). But sparks of a great film were already apparent even as my fears mounted - that first shot of Hanna (Winslett) in the Berlin rain - so hard, so practical, so steely in her demeanor.

And that spark blew into a flame as the themes of this film weighed upon me more and more heavily. It's easy to call out Michael's brief visit to Auschwitz as such a moment of emotional strength, but harder to explain and embrace the conflicted thoughts and feelings that are elicited by Hanna's simple honesty in the face of questioning at the Nuremberg trials - her insistence on the real necessity she saw in actions that horrify.

Similarly, it is perhaps impossible to convey the coldness, and the fear, and the longing when an old woman meets the middle-aged man she seduced as an impressionable teen.

Winslett gave a stunning performance in this film. No one even came close. Ralph Feinnes was good, if a little smarmy in the opening (I think Ralph Fiennes should be in the dictionary under smarmy). Winslett and a monumentally good screenwriter were the stars of this film, which weighs heavily as I sit listening to the soundtrack to The Piano and grope for words to convey my mood.

The film ended at the perfect time to slip into another show - Doubt was starting next door - but I could not do it. I had to savor this film, and I will do so at the cost of several other films that I have fallen behind on mentioning.

Go and immerse yourself in this film like you would in a hot bath on a cold day, when there is a hint of sadness in the air and you light a few candles and try to soak it away.

Benjamin Button; The Devil Wears Prada

2009-01-28T21:31:00.006-04:00

I am known among family and friends for having overly serious taste in films. Indeed, whenever someone is over and we decide to peruse my movie collection to find a good flick, it is found to be rife with titles that are heavy meditations on serious themes or subtitled.

However, I think that it is pretty clear from my previous posts that I truly love any film that is well made - be it comedy, mystery, suspense or thriller - and that one of my criteria for this is heavily weighted towards whether or not the director can suck me into the screen and make me forget the "real" world around me for a few hours in favour of the world being created onscreen.

Which, coincidentally, is why I am so adamant about seeing films in the theater: creating a world takes a large canvas.

Today's films are both examples of movies that made me forget my critical distance and just disappear into the lives of the characters for a few hours - and what diverse films they are!

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008) (Park Lane) Twelve academy awards nominations point to the fact that this year's Golden Globes may not live up to their legacy of being an accurate predictor of Oscar trends.

I loved Benjamin Button with virtually no reservations - well, I can find a fair number if pushed to it, but I prefer to just enjoy the warm glow that this film left me with.

Benjamin Button was born on the final day of WWI in a rather ass backwards fashion - he was an old man at birth, with his advancing years seeing him grow younger rather than older. This unique condition makes him an outsider in a world he should inhabit instinctively (that of other children) and an insider in a world that he is not equipped to understand (that of adults).

Abandoned by a father horrified by his condition and nurtured by a foster mother working as a servant in an old folks home, unflappable good nature allows Benjamin to navigate his curious situation with grace and poise in a story that spans continents and the arc of modern western history.

As he grows in age and approaches physical youth, a cast of characters ranging from an alcoholic sea captain/tattoo artist to the father he never knew play key roles in Benjamin's mental growth even as he gets physically younger. However, it should come as no surprise that it is the women in his life that define the arc of his strange life.

The first, the phenomenal Tilda Swinton as Elizabeth, the adulterous wife of a British diplomat in Soviet Russia, introduces him to love (as opposed to just sex) as the basis of a muted but strangely compelling relationship that for me was one of the most intriguing in the film. The austerity of this relationship is embodied in the cold and distant Russian setting, but its importance to Benjamin is all the more compelling against this backdrop.

The second, a "childhood" friend named Daisy, played in adulthood by the incomparable Cate Blanchett (well, OK, comparable to the likes of Meryl Streep maybe), is meant to be the passionate core of the movie - coincidentally also being the part of the film when Benjamin's chronological age and apparent age begin to meet in his 30s and 40s. The computer manipulation of his features switches tone dramatically at this point: after having presented the child Benjamin as Gollum and the 20s Benjamin as a dignified match for Elizabeth, he is now let loose on the audience as...well...Brad Pitt. Three girls behind me gasped in unison at his pinup glory.

But strangely the relationship with Daisy, which is supposed to be about unfettered exploration of passion as Benjamin finally becomes comfortable with who or what he is, lacked chemistry and came across as slightly flat. This did not compromise the movie for me, but left me with an impression similar to that of Slumdog Millionaire - the magic in both being weighted towards the beginning, in the fairy tale story of childhoods lived extraordinarily.

Indeed, Benjamin is not a complex character, and the eponymous film is far from complicated, steering clear as it does of the myriad social and moral issues that typified the times in which it is set. I would venture so far as to say that Benjamin Button borders on simplicity in the innocence of the character and the benign nature of the world he inhabits.

I hate to say it, but in this regard the film brings to mind Forest Gump, the screenplay for which was also penned by Eric Roth. Now it is tempting to sneer at Benjamin Button as a rerun - a sea captain as a best friend indeed! - but this is no Forest Gump, a fact that is perhaps best evidenced by the wise decision not to engage in the history that frames it. Benjamin was in WWII but played no pivotal role, he met no presidents and did not play ping pong in China - the film recognizes that it is a fairy tale and does not aspire to be anything more.

The bottom line for me is that I never looked at my watch, never thought about a snack, didn't consider the weather or have a thought about my job - I just enjoyed the world of Benjamin Button, and recommend it wholeheartedly.

I might add that one of the great virtues of this film is the computer graphics (CG). I am generally as wary of CG as the blockbuster cash fests that are generally hung on them, but recognize that amazing things can be accomplished - and amazing things are accomplished in Benjamin Button, which is perhaps only the second film that I have ever watched that relies heavily on CG but where the simulations have not been so poorly realized as to distract me. Much like in 2007's The Golden Compass, the CG is Benjamin Button is seamless and stunning - a true testament to what can be done when CG is treated like a paint brush to apply atmosphere rather than a frame to hang a limp story on. I sense technical Oscars going this way...

Enjoy :)

The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006) (Home) When The Devil Wears Prada hit theaters I dismissed it out of hand - much the same way I dismiss many wedding movies or the Sex in the City Movie. It looked like so much marketing of fashion and make up and little else. What was Meryl Streep doing?

Well, as it turns out, she was playing a nuanced and demanding role that challenged her to rise to the height of her craft - Meryl's turn as Miranda Priestley, vicious bitch goddess managing editor of Runway, the fashion world's leading magazine, is a pleasure to behold, and literally left me in awe.

The story revolves around Andy Sachs, played by Anne Hathaway, a journalist of principal who just can't find a job until she lands a position as Miranda's assistant at what she considers an essentially pointless magazine dedicated to girly indulgence. What she doesn't count on, however, is getting drawn into the cutthroat world of a multi-billion dollar fashion industry that insiders take as seriously as she takes politics and social activism.

And - aside from the fantastic acting - this is where I identified with The Devil Wears Prada. As Andy entered the high pressure world of fashion publication, I identified at every step based on my almost eight years in the pressure-cooker corporate world of South Korea: working 12 hours days as a minimum, being judged as much for the brand of your suit and tie as for the quality of your work, being on business trips or stuck in the office instead of home for anniversaries or even birthdays, barely fitting in a healthy meal between meetings.

And getting off on it! Feeling a drug-like rush that only more work, a more expensive suit, or another whirlwind business trip could maintain.

And then suddenly stopping one day and realizing what you have lost, and choosing to try to get some of it back.

The thing with The Devil Wears Prada is that it was real life, just not a real life that everybody experiences or understands. In much the same way, I guess, many of the wedding movies that I dismiss out of hand could be great films that I just don't identify with - or don't give the chance to. For me The Devil was a sleeper hit in much the same way that Clueless was: I never imagined I could find any good in it, and in the end I loved every minute of it.

You may not, and that's totally OK.

Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Torino, MILK, Valkyrie

2009-01-18T16:54:00.014-04:00

I sit in the glow of my computer screen with a hot cup of tea, watching the snow fall outside in what is already Halifax's fourth large storm of this winter season, wondering again - like a mental record that has hit a skip - what the hell I am doing in this frigid climate.

Especially as my father - a heavyweight in terms of the family I came back to be closer to - has long since abandoned the frigid northern climes of Nova Scotia in favour of the beaches of sunny Florida. The snowbird has flown the coop, and I sit in a house that feels like an igloo on a vast northern steppe.

But wherever I am, movies are, of course, a constant - save for the lack of variety offered in our quaint port city on the sea. The last week has provided a fair amount of fodder, so here we go - and as I often claim, I will be brief.

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan, 2008) (The Oxford) Woah, pressure. I wish that I had written this review before the Golden Globe for best picture had been awarded to Boyle and Tandan, because then I could avoid the nagging question of whether or not it deserves that designation.

Cop out warning: my judgement is that I really enjoyed this film an immense amount. I think that I experienced this film the same way that a youth enjoys a story of magic and adventure: by surrendering to the story's world completely and immersing myself in the world on portrayed to the point where I smelt the smells, sweated in the heat, and felt the joy and pain of the heroes keenly.

The sounds and sights of India are so beautifully captured as our protagonist, Jamal, narrates the winding path of his journey from a precocious child in the sprawling slums of Bombay to the grand prize winner on the Bollywood version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The water steams, the rain churns the ground to mud, the crowds jostle and sweat, the food sizzles, the garbage coats the landscape and the shit stinks (as it does everywhere in the world, but usually you are more isolated from it than you often are in India).

I felt like I was back in India, riding the rails through verdant countryside, lining up at the Taj Mahal, shopping and eating in the warren of market alleys, summoning the chai wallah for a cuppa black tea laced with cardamom, cinnamon and clove, counting the smiles of Gandhi that grace each 100 Rupee note, and listening to the singsong of Indian English speakers waggling their heads in an endearing and/or infuriating hybrid of yes and no.

I can't really say what your experience of Slumdog will be if you cannot approach it as a documentary of your personal experience, but based on the Golden Globe and the Oscar buzz this film is tapping into something with wider and less-travelled audiences as well.

And the soundtrack does not hurt, having been a regular on my iPod since leaving the theater. M.I.A.'s Paper Planes figures heavily in the film and anchors a soundtrack that melds the techno beats of London's club scene with the lovelorn standards of Bollywood musicals. Stick around for the credits to see a tribute to the highly choreographed dance and song routines that are de rigeur in Bollywood fare.

The one thing that I will say to balance my rave opinion is that for me the magic of Slumdog is weighted to the first half and a little beyond. I found that as we approached the present and Malik grew up and his life became more tied to the modern urban landscape of Mumbai than to the colourful exoticism of his life in the slums and rural India, the magic dulled a little, and was not adequately compensated for in the love story at the center of a narrative that by this point is typified by cash, glitz and guns.

But go and see Slumdog Millionaire. Immerse yourself in the film and enjoy the ride - then hit a bookstore and pick up Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram to continue your travels in that world.

Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008) (Park Lane) Clint Eastwood has a checkered history of film making, but of late - with the notable exception of the painfully bad Flags of Our Fathers - he has delivered a spate of fantastic films best embodied by (or perhaps limited to) Changeling and Million Dollar Baby.

I enjoyed Gran Torino, but remain somehow reluctant to recommend it wholesale. While it is a refreshingly non-PC look at racism in America, as typified by the relationship between Walt Kowalski, a flinty Korean war vet, and the Hmong refugees that settled en masse in the mid-western states in the early/mid-70s, the film retained an "after-school special" feeling that I just could not shake.

Eastwood inhabits his character completely, playing Walt as a cross between Dirty Harry (at one point, when facing down a gang member, you are almost on the edge of your seat waiting to hear him sneer "do I feel lucky, well do ya, punk?" and the Dark Knight (with the gravelly, throaty voice even serving as a point of comparison and/or annoyance).

The film making is heavy handed, and the symbolism overt, perhaps best evidenced by the opening shot at the funeral of Walt's wife, where he sits at one end of a church pew, separated by one space from his estranged children and grandchildren - the point obviously being that his wife served as his connection to his children, and that that connection is no longer there.

Things do not get any more subtle as they progress.

There are some laughs as the cultures collide, but overall the movie - which Eastwood claims will be his last performance as an actor - is not a high note to end on. Interesting, even enjoyable, but ultimately short of compelling.

MILK (Gus Van Sant, 2008) (Park Lane) Portland, Oregon's patron saint, Gus Van Sant is a powerhouse director who has served up films that resonate strongly for my generation: Good Will Hunting (nuff said), My Own Private Idaho, Drugstore Cowboy and To Die For come to mind.

I was highly anticipating the film MILK, not the least for Sean Penn's participation in the project, but also because it portrays a civil rights movement in its own respect - one that played out in my lifetime and changed the face of the society that I live in.

With the fundamental rights of an entire segment of society hanging in the balance, one would think that MILK would arouse the sympathy of audiences, enlisting moral outrage as - for lack of a better term - a device to help engage the audience's interest and emotions.

But that is my main problem with MILK. Sean Penn was good as Harvey Milk, as always, although I did feel initially that he was playing the character as too stereotypically gay, and Josh Brolin (who shone in Oliver Stone's W) was solid - but neither really engaged me or enlisted my sympathy. The film work was as solid as the acting, seamlessly melding archive footage and modern shooting, but overall felt flat and uninviting - very 1970s ;)

The bottom line is that when I watch a film about a struggle for rights or freedom or peace or justice, the beauty of the experience is in vicariously feeling the passion of those involved, walking a mile in their shoes and appreciating more fully the sacrifices made, the pain experienced and the thrill of victory or the ignominy of defeat.

This film seemed more like a documentary in the end than a tribute to a crusade - I have to recommend a pass on this one.

Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008) (Bayer's Lake) Valkyrie is obviously in a different class than the three films we have looked at so far, being as it is essentially an Indiana Jones movie that takes itself more seriously.

Early in Valkyrie we are treated to an homage to Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will, although I doubt that Singer would frame it in that context, with Hitler descending from the sky in a boxy Junkers trimotor flanked by malevolent looking Messerschmidt 109s. It is a scene conveying all-encompassing power, as airplanes were still far from common in the early years of the war, and Hitler was among the first politicians to fully exploit them for both mobility and to inspire awe.

Hitler disembarks, and makes his way into a meeting room, followed by a camera that is shy of his face until he sits down at the meeting table - with a dark, brooding and essentially evil presence that was the first thing that annoyed me about the film. Over the past decade we have seen several films earn widespread approbation for daring to portray Hitler as a human being, Menno Mayjes' Max comes to mind, as does Chistian Duguay's Hitler: The Rise of Evil. Valkyrie avoids any such complications by making it clear in this one shot that Hitler is pure evil - and I don't dispute that, but think that it is worth pointing out, as it is a clear example of how cut and dried Valkyrie portrays World War II and Nazi Germany. There are bad guys and there are good guys. Period. (George Bush would approve.)

But this brings me to my next point. If the bad guy is pure evil, what about the good guy, you know, Maverick. The first shot of Cruise painstakingly donning his uniform despite horrible wounds sustained in the North Africa campaign elicited a surprisingly violent reaction from me: what the hell is he doing in this film?

Now I am not a rabid Tom Cruise hater like so many, but I am pretty used to not taking his films seriously, which was an attitude that I quickly realized I was going to have to adopt for Valkyrie. Sit back and enjoy the multi-million dollar recreation of 1940s Germany Yuri. Marvel at the machinery, the uniforms, the high polish of the Rolls Royces and the click of the polished boots marching in unison. Because this is not an examination of history or a documentary about a group of high-ranking German officials, led by Claus von Stauffenberg, attempting to assassinate Hitler before the allies enter Berlin and indict all of Germany as complicit in the crimes of the Third Reich.

And as eye candy and even an adventure film, Valkyrie is compelling and enjoyable, but this brings me to another question: in raising von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators to the position of heroes in a dark night of the soul - much as Schindler's List did for Oskar Schindler - are we oversimplifying who they were and what they did during those years of fear, oppression and darkness?

I know it is tantamount to blasphemy to suggest that Hitler had a soul, but he did at some point, and turned his back on it perhaps more fully than any other figure I can name in the history of Western culture and politics. Thus, what of Schindler? What of Stauffenberg? I know that we need heroes, but please allow them to be flawed - something that, to its credit, Schindler's List was careful to do but Valkyrie never considers.

I grew up watching old good vs evil WWII films with my Dad, and Valkyrie - although Cruise is still hard to swallow in the role - fits in with this tradition: The Guns of Naverone and A Bridge Too Far. Rollicking good war film that don't ask any questions and don't provide any answers - its just that this one really wants to be taken seriously....

A Real Nowhere Man

2009-01-07T23:03:00.003-04:00

A Life Less Ordinary
Nine years in Korea, one and a half years in Portland and a year traveling in Europe, India, Nepal, and Hong Kong. A life less than ordinary indeed, resplendent with the glamour of foreign lands, exotic languages and esoteric cultures and cuisines.

All the world as a stage, so to speak, and me one of the actors in a play that is surely an action adventure or a comedy, but that I insist on seeing as a tragedy. And you know, its all in the eye of the beholder ;)

I wandered through the rooms of my cavernous new home today, surveying the scene of my latest adventure, and I wondered about that carefully constructed image of the seasoned flaneur, traveling light and collecting naught but a few photographs and a handful of good stories. the easy breezy me...

And I had to laugh.

Baggage
Many of the meditative faiths of the world speak of "letting go," escaping attachment in order to free oneself of craving and aversion, but also of tactile goods and even memories - and the mental baggage that they invariably carry with them

And here I was literally looking at my "baggage." For one who is so fancy free amid the wonders of the world and learning the lessons of the road, I sure have a LOT of crap. In fact, it is fair to say that I have learned nary a thing about letting go of attachments. In fact, I am carrying almost 1,000 pounds of attachments - an entire life that doesn't exist anymore except in memory

I am carrying around the photos of a life that I left behind along with the dishes that sat in my kitchen, the 1000s of photos that chronicle that life and hundreds of other artifacts that have no relevance to today, but belong to a yesterday that is already ancient history and should be allowed to moulder away in dusty corners.

I am carrying the lives I lived in Halifax and Kingston in the 90s, in Korea in the late 90s and early 00s, in Portland in 06 and in India in 07/08. Diplomas, clothing, postcards, photographs and more photographs, dishes and duvets, birthday gifts and tokens of affection, testaments to pain and joy that don't need to be memorialized but have been dragged across oceans and a continent.

And will now go on shelves in a musty basement.

And are attachments that may one day be given up...

Home for the holidays; Australia; Synecdoche, New York

2008-12-16T10:58:00.013-04:00

Home for the Holidays :) Not only is this Christmas the first that I will spend with family since 1999, but it is also the first that I will spend in a house of my own. Unexpected but true: I seem to have put down some roots in the Maritimes, making Halifax my home insofar as I have purchased an edifice here - the actual making of a home involves the much more complicated fostering of community, which I hope will happen organically.

Yes, I have moved into the first-floor apartment in my three-unit building, and, along with the pride of ownership, am beginning to feel the weight of the many tasks that accompany it. Here's a taste: caulking the old, drafty windows on my floor, painting the second bedroom in the second-floor apartment and refinishing the floor in said unit, insulating the floor of my vestibule, renovating my bathroom, sealing and insulating the basement (by digging a five foot trench all the way around the house in the spring), etc, etc.

Volunteers are welcome :)

The move and laying the groundwork for this dizzying array of projects has cut pretty deeply into the time I can dedicate to my cinophilic pursuits (to coin a new term), but I have managed to take in two particularly intriguing current offerings.

Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008) (Park Lane) To lay the groundwork for this commentary, I must begin by unabashedly stating my love of the film Moulin Rouge. Although some of the cinematography was overly kinetic and disorienting, the musical collage that drives the plot - comprised of 1980s anthems of heartache, pain and desire - hooked me into the love story at the center of the film. Romeo + Juliet is another favorite, evidencing stunning camera work and great music that helps develop characters and drive the plot.

Australia is a much harder to be so unequivocal about. I entered the theater with great trepidation due to serious misgivings about the sub-plot involving the relationship between Nicole Kidman, a rich British aristocrat fresh off the boat in rough and tumble Darwin, and a young mixed-blood aboriginal/Caucasian boy, Nallah, who wants to avoid the mission schools that until the mid 1970s were tasked with "civilizing" the "native element" to assimilate them into "white Australia." (Run-on sentence! Hurrah!) Those fears were not assuaged by the opening narration, read by said aboriginal youth in a type of "pigeon English" that made me cringe.

My misgivings quickly multiplied, as Kidman took over management of a cattle station struggling to hold out against a beef baron with designs of securing a meat supply monopoly to the pacific fleet as war with Japan loomed large. I kept waiting to hear Kidman's voice murmuring "I had a farm in Australia" as the camera panned the dusty outback plains.

And this quickly became one of my key annoyances: Nicole Kidman is a great actress but is no Meryl Streep, Hugh Jackman annoys the hell out of me at the best of times (I'll accept him grudgingly as Wolverine...but that's it) and the outback is most certainly not the mountains of Kenya. I draw my line in the sand at this: Don't mess with Out of Africa.

Similarly, while I am less a fan of The Wizard of Oz than of Out of Africa, I quickly got pretty ticked off by the literally spelled-out-for-you-word-for-word "this is an homage to Dorothy's adventures in Oz" aspect of the film. (Although I must admit that the scene where Kidman sings 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' in an attempt to comfort young Nallah is one of the most beautifully filmed scenes I have seen on the big screen in quite some time.)

So is Australia a copy of Out of Africa or an homage to The Wizard of Oz?

I don't think that even Luhrmann really knows the answer to that question, but the bottom line is that the above complications conspired to make the first 1.5 hours of Australia thoroughly unenjoyable for me. There were, of course, a few pun-induced laughs (after all, Kangaroo humour is to be expected in a film called Australia) and a few heart thumping moments amid a cattle drive across the same territory used to film the race scenes in Star Wars Episode I.

Well that makes the film sound pretty wretched indeed - and leans towards decidedly unequivocal! Australia must be a wretched movie to be avoided at all costs! Except that...well, Luhrmann - as alluded to in my opening words on Moulin Rouge and Romeo + Juliet - is a sucker for cheesy romance. And so am I.

You see, 1.5 hours of Australia only gets you to the equator of the film, and there is a whole other hemisphere to go! As Jackman pulls his Denys Finch Hatton and decides that freedom means more to him than family, as Nallah falls into the church-sponsored and government-sanctioned cultural genocide of the aboriginal peoples of the outback, as Kidman moves into town to support the commonwealth war effort and as Japan launches its Pearl Harbouresque attack on the port of Darwin, I got sucked into the romance (which thankfully was not done as an homage to Michael Bay's Pearl Harbour).

Yes, I threw caution to the wind and allowed my heart to soar and swell and cringe and cry along with Luhrmann's rousing score and wide cinematic vistas that seem to encompass all of the knowable world in one shot.

In the end, all I can say is that the previews for this film are pretty true to what it is, and that if you are intrigued by those images and ideas I am sure you will love the film. However, in the final analysis I have to say that this is not a film to be touched by even a ten-foot pole. Yes, I got sucked into the romance, but I was desperate for something to ease the pain by that point...

For those who are not as likely to get caught up in the sentimentality of the romance at the core of Australia, I can suggest a film that deals with many of the issues raised above - native populations and colonial authorities, WWII's impact on these communities, establishing a life and livelihood in a hostile environment - and does so seriously and splendidly. Try Caroline Link's best foreign film winner of the 2003 Academy Awards, Nowhere in Africa.

Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008) (The Oxford) Few people ever know or care who the actual writer of a film is, and although I always stay til the end of the credits, I rarely remember this detail either. Charlie Kaufman is an exception to this rule, being the genius behind some of the most unconventional, quirky and just plain brilliantly written films of the past decade: Being John Malkovitch, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (although this one did disappoint me) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Kaufman - whom I hold in esteem equal to the Coen brothers - writes dialogue that simply sparkles with wit, exploring the motivations of characters that live on the fringes of society and don't quite understand why things work as they do.

Synecdoche increases the comparability of Kaufman and the Coen brothers by adopting a much less lite-hearted tone than previous work - for the Coen brothers, Burn After Reading seemed to introduce a note of cynicism previously masked or absent in the face of satire and self-deprecating humor. Similarly, Synecdoche is less delightfully mind-bending black humour than serious indulgence of morose contemplation of death and loneliness.

Which is not to say that Synecdoche is not entertaining and engaging. Indeed, with a cast that includes Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh (in a lamentably small role) and Emily Watson, we are treated to some first-class drama.

In fact, Synechdoche can perhaps be best described as meta-film in the vein of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead. Seymour-Hoffman's character, Caden Collard, a brilliant playwright whose marriage and health are falling apart, is awarded a McArthur scholarship for genius. He decides to take this money and create a piece of theater that is completely honest and unflinching in its portrayal of life - and in doing so hopes to divine who he is, why he is on earth and what the point of the whole thing is.

To do so he builds a massive set that is New York in miniature, and hires hundreds of people to spend years playing the roles of the people in his life - ultimately leading to a point of brilliantly beautiful absurdity when he is on set with the actor playing himself, and his wife, an actress, is on set because she has been hired to play his wife. As this scenario escalates the line between the play and Collard's life begin to blur together, and the artifice becomes more real than the real world - to the point where another actor must be brought in to play Collard the director, while he takes on the less demanding role of a night cleaning lady.

The key to this seemingly bewildering but surprisingly simple scenario is to remember that it is all about Collard. The failure of his marriage is because he only thinks of himself, the failure of his health is because he obsesses about himself, his failed romances are because he is so wrapped up in himself, and the lack of any clear framework - a recognizable beginning or middle or end to his grand play - is because he is so focused on himself and his place in this world that he misses the forest for the trees.

Perhaps one of the most impressive (if obvious) symbol in the film is a burning house that is purchased by Collard's true but unrequited love, Hazel. She seems uncertain whether to buy a house that is already on fire - but in the end decides to go for it, because she is willing to live life as it comes and savour the danger, fear, uncertainty, excitement and passion that results.

Something Caden has never learned to do...but perhaps I can...and perhaps so can you.

This movie is not for everyone, and I am sure more than a few people have walked out of theaters muttering about how boring, depressing or self-indulgent it is. But I enjoyed every word...and hope you will too!

My New Home; House of Sand and Fog; Transsiberian; A Life Less Ordinary; Wag the Dog

2008-11-28T10:37:00.018-04:00

Yes, I have bought a house here in chilly Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I am moving in this weekend. It's a huge move and a big commitment to this city and this weather, but it is also exhilarating. In Korea we owned a few apartments, but they were brand-new, cookie-cutter units in 29-story buildings in clusters of identical monoliths. There was no history or ambiance in the units, and no tactile involvement with the structures themselves in terms of being able to see and feel the lives of the people who had inhabited the homes before you or in terms of hands on maintenance and upkeep.

There is plenty of both in my new building, and I am sure that the latter will become a bane before too long!

No, the property is more than 90 years old and oozes ambiance and history from its creaking Douglas Fir flooring to the original trim that skirts its nine-foot ceilings. I have added a few photos to give you an idea of its character...

I will occupy the first-floor one-bedroom apartment, and am looking for a tenant for the second-floor two-bedroom unit. The third floor is rented to a young lady who seems comfortable and happy to stay on.

I am sure that this development will mean that my stream of movie reviews will be punctuated from time to time with updates on the trials and tribulations of landlord/home ownership, so stay tuned.

Which brings us to my latest movie reviews, which I plan to keep brief (as I always plan)...

Hou se of Sand and Fog (Vadeem Perelman, 2003) (Home) I originally saw House of Sand and Fog when it was released in the theater in Seoul, and left the film amazed at its power and heavy import - and more in love with Jennifer Connelly than ever (I'd say yes if she were to propose).

On second viewing I have to confirm this initial impression. Like many of the films I have written about of late (Rachel Getting Married in particular), this is a character drama that chronicles the clash that occurs when strong personalities are placed in an emotional and confrontational situation.

This is also a film in which those characters are in most cases not terribly likable, but at the same time not entirely unsympathetic. Think the young recovered (or not so recovered) alcoholic who allows her life to crumble through apathy and then claws to get it back,; the police officer who uses her desperation as a channel for his own discontent; or the Iranian exile who is really just trying to look after his family and prevent their suffering, but in the process is blind to the suffering of others.

And this leads to unthinkable tragedy that is Shakespearean in its proportions, and hangs over the head of the viewer like a dark cloud in the hours that follow it. Yes, I will go so far as to say that this is a very depressing film - but will give it top marks in the same breathe and recommend it highly based on its accomplishment in film making.

Top marks also go to the cast, with Kingsley acting at his top calibre, which is awesome to behold (especially for an actor that wastes his talent in so many mediocre films), and Connelly showing the talent she displayed in Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream. Props to the supporting cast also, with Ron Eldard playing the sympathetic/sleazy cop beautifully and Shohreh Aghdashloo embodying the confusion and fear of Kingsley's wife.

On second viewing I had only one criticism, which is of the score. This is a heavy and sombre film, but it rendered virtually elegiac by a funerary soundtrack that weighs on the viewer to the point of being emotionally draining. I don't mean to suggest that this is not in line with the film's intent, but that the acting is strong and the characters clearly convey this feeling/idea without the need for such an oppressive score.

Hopefully my home ownership will be filled with more sunshine and smiles :)

Transsiberian (Brad Anderson, 2008) (home) I want to talk about Transsiberian briefly because, as I alluded to above, this is one example of Ben Kingsley wasting his abundant talent on a mediocre film.

OK, maybe I am being too harsh. Young married couple (Woody Harrelson and Emily Mortimer) are taking the Transsiberian to Europe as an adventurous way to return home from a church mission to China. They meet young, drug smuggling couple (50% of which is Kate Mara) and corrupt Moscow police investigator (Kingsley) and the adventure ratchets up a level, with steamy, adulterous affections, attempted sexual battery, kidnapping, torture (happily not shown) and murder most foul.

Only the movie doesn't really ratchet up a notch, which is a shame. Its a decent, more-or-less engaging (if completely conventional) plot taking place in exotic and beautiful climes. The acting is fine, with Kingley putting in a solid performance and Harrelson doing his usual adequate job - he is, after all, in many great films, its just that none of them are great because he is in them.

The film was lauded at Sundance, but it never got me excited or interested or involved. Not to say it was boring or bad, just that it was merely a mildly intriguing way to pass a few hours. With so many great films to chose between (such as House of Sand and Fog, off the top of my head) I'd say give this one a pass, but if your partner or friend already brought it home from the video store, don't castigate him or her too vociferously!

A Life Less Ordinary (Danny Boyle, 1997) (home) I first saw this film at the Cineplus Theatre near exit 6 of Apkujong Station in Seoul, Korea. At that time Cineplus was a big deal, as it was the first really modern theater to open in Seoul, with comfy seats imported from America and Dolby surround sound. I can't count the number of films that I watched at Cineplus over my nine-year stint in Seoul...

This movie, like Wag the Dog (see below), has assumed epic comedy proportions in my mind. I recall my friend Julien and I laughing our asses off in the otherwise eerily quiet cinema - I don't think the Korean audience really got the humor.

But humorous it is, with Boyle teaming up once again with John Hodge, who also wrote the sublime black comedy Shallow Grave. In the character positions we have Ewan McGregor (also of Shallow Grave) when he was still channelling the naive joy in acting that I think he recovered in Moulin Rouge after having trampled it thoroughly in the lackluster Star Wars I, II and III. Across from McGregor we have Cameron Diaz, in a very early "precocious and slightly dangerous blond" role that fits her to a T - but before she was typecast into that particular T.

The two play star-crossed lovers who meet amid one of the most thoroughly botched kidnapping imaginable (in fact, the Korean title was "Hostage") and slowly and reluctantly fall in love - with a little help.

You see, God is pretty pissed off that divorce and infidelity seem to have eradicated true love, and he tasks the archangel Gabriel (Dan Hedaya, who none of you know by name but have all seen a million times and liked) with sending a few angels down to earth to nurture the spark (or lack thereof) between one young couple into a flame of love. The young couple he has in mind are, you guessed it, McGregor and Diaz, and the angels - well played by perennial favorite Holly Hunter and Delroy Lindo - have their hands full.

This is one funny film, that I recommend wholeheartedly for belly laughs and general glee.

Wag the Dog (Barry Levinson, 1997) (Dad's place). Dustin Hoffman, Robert DeNiro, Anne Heche, Dennis Leary, Willie Nelson, Woody Harrelson, William H. Macy, Jim Belushi, Jay Leno, Kirstin Dunst, Merle Haggard....need I say more?

I will, but am getting pretty blog fatigued, so this will be brief...I hope...

Wag the Dog was amazingly topical, presenting a situation in which a Presidential incumbant faces a sexual scandal in the last weeks before an election. A movie producer (Hoffman) is brought in to "produce" a war between the USA and Albania as a distraction from the scandal. In real life, the release coincided almost perfectly with Clinton's decision to bomb Kosovo while the Lewinsky scandal boiled in Washington. They say that art imitate life, but that life imitates TV....

Wag the Dog is interesting as a historical document in this regard, but is also intriguing as a comment on technology in our lives and the theater. The digital effects used to "create" the war with Albania were stunning and even slightly scary to audiences in the late 1990s, which had not yet abandoned their belief in the axiom "seeing is believing." Ten years later, however, the technology is in every home PC, and the movie suffers a bit from having had its magic rendered mundane.

This is another film that Julien and I watched at Cineplus, and was another occasion when our hilarity contrasted starkly with the generally dark silence of the theater. However, the bottom line is that Wag the Dog is the only film that I have ever watched that made me laugh so hard that I literally fell out of my seat - wait for the moment when Willie Nelson starts the voices soaring for a beautiful parody of the Band Aid/We Are the World/Voices that Care genre of song.

As I said, its a little dated now, but still very very entertaining...

Return to Quantum: No Tortured Soliloquies

2008-11-23T19:06:00.004-04:00

Today I trudged through more than 12 inches of slushy snow to take in a second viewing of The Quantum of Solace at Park Lane cinemas. If you have not read my first review, I suggest that you peruse it first here. Warning, while the first review is relatively safe for those who have not seen the film, this installment contains numerous spoilers.

Sober Second Thought
I stand by my initial reaction to The Quantum of Solace in all regards, but one thing has been nagging at me since posting those thoughts earlier this week: how much of Bond's inner conflict/character do we really see?

In my former post I commented: "in Quantum, we see a James Bond that is trained to use his license to kill, but also has a heart and soul that can love, lose and suffer. We see uncertainty and torment in Craig's eyes as he seeks resolution after the loss of Vesper, in the process trying to reconcile his role as a spying and killing machine with his experience of vulnerability and trust."

On second viewing, I stand by these words, but feel duty bound to point out that this is, above and beyond all, and action movie. The explosions tend to be more realistic, but the film is, in its essence, one of action and adventure - not about exploring the tortured psyche of a hired gun. And that action, while we are on the theme, is fast-paced and often disjointed - on second viewing, the initial car chase was less heart-thumping and more plain disorienting.

A bit of research on IMDB quickly revealed the reason for this: the film editing was done by Richard Pearson, who also worked on The Bourne Supremacy, another film that is typified by fast cuts between squealing tires, firing guns, fast gear shifting and bone-crunching collisions.

That being said, the torment that Bond is experiencing in the wake of Vesper's death does hang heavily over this film, and trust is a key theme: the trust that Bond put in Vesper herself, his trust of Rene Mathis, the trust (or lack thereof) between James and his CIA counterparts, and, most importantly, the level of trust between Bond and M.

It is three key relationships - aside from Vesper, of course - that underpin the plot of Quantum and really struck me in this viewing:

M. In the past M has largely been a throwaway character, exasperated with Bond's flippant disrespect for his authority and the rules and regulations of MI6 - not to mention the "no sex please, we're British" decorum. That all began to change when M shifted from a throwaway he to a stern and central she

Judi Dench began to breathe life into this character during Pierce Brosnan's tenure, and in this film we see a relationship develop between her and Bond based on implicit trust in a world where there are no certainties. Indeed, near the film's opening we see Bond bring Le Chifre into a safe house for questioning, only to have him executed by a henchman who has served as a sleeper in M's own office for eight years. As she comments after this near-death experience: "when someone says "we have people everywhere" you tend to think it's hyperbole, you don't expect them to actually have someone in the room."

By the end of the film, however, we are aware that an unbreakable bond of trust has been forged between 007 an M. A bond that bodes well for the series to come, as it foreshadows a more active role for M and a continued prominent position for Judi Dench, who is a pleasure to watch.

Rene Mathis. One could be forgiven for thinking of Mathis as a throwaway character in Quantum, a crewmen Jones of a sort. However, going to Mathis for help is an important step for James, who has not trusted anyone implicitly since Vesper's betrayal - and this act of faith also leads to a death.

The scene of Bond cradling Mathis' bloodied, dying body as he whispers "don't leave me" is a powerful moment. We see compassion in Bond that is so strongly contrasted moments later as Mathis' dead body is thrown in a dumpster and plundered of ready cash. Here is the conflict I mentioned earlier this week between the compassion and the machine-like efficiency - an efficiency that Bond is praised for explicitly in Quantum.

Felix Leiter. Felix does not play a large role in Quantum, but, as we know from the long history of Bond's character - which Casino Royale and Quantum reset to a blank slate - Felix is destined to play a large role in the films to come.

In this film Felix is an underling to a typically morally bankrupt agent of America's military-industrial machine, but by the end he has: a) earned Bond's trust; and b) been promoted to replace his corrupt boss - as Bond comments on hearing the news "At least the right people kept their jobs." Hopefully Felix will not end up quite as dead as most of the other people Bond has trusted, and hopefully he will return to play an important role in future outings.

Final Thoughts
As I said earlier, Quantum is an action movie above and beyond all else, and is not meant to be taken too seriously - let go and enjoy the gun fights, car chases and explosions. However, it also does an amazing job serving as essentially Casino Royale part two, and leaves a solid structure of characters and relationships on which to build future films that meet or exceed the bar set by this film.

The Quantum of Solace: Exactly as Good as You Would Expect

2008-11-21T08:34:00.020-04:00

The Quantum of Solace (Marc Foster, 2008) (Park Lane) Bond. James Bond. The Quantum of Solace opens with one of the most gut-wrenching, adrenaline pumping car chases ever choreographed and captured for film. Bond is back in his signature Astin Martin, where he is meant to be. I was gripping the edge of my seat within 45 seconds, and the pace of Quantum rarely relented.

When Timothy Dalton first assumed the Bond persona in 1985 for A View to a Kill we were told that this was a return to James Bond as Ian Flemming created him: a lean, mean, spying machine who was a world removed from the parody that the character had become. The Dalton Bond was not using fantastic sci-fi gadgets at every turn and had dropped the goofy puns that Roger Moore had leaned so heavily upon.

And it might have worked, save for the fact that Dalton (besides being a mediocre actor at the best of times) was cast in Bond films that were 1980s to the core - favorably comparable to Schwartzenegger's Commando or Norris' Delta Force, but little else. These movies stunk.

Quantum, on the other hand, is most definitely a new James Bond, and I like it! Gadgets are virtually non-existent (as is their traditional purveyor, Q) and even lines that could have been puns coming from Moore take on a earnest tone when uttered by the steely-eyed Daniel Craig.

Which, in my mind, points to the secret of the success enjoyed by both Quantum and the preceding Casino Royale: neither film is tongue in cheek and neither is going for cheap laughs or mere explosion-fueled adrenaline rides. In fact, while there is plenty of adrenaline flowing as Quantum unrelentingly drives towards its conclusion, one thing that I noticed in particular was how small the explosions actually were - cars go over cliffs and fall to the rocks below with nary a nuclear device-like combustion to show for it. These are realistic explosions, which is a novel pyrotechnical choice if I have ever seen one (we will discuss the Hindenburgesque conflagration that closes the action later).

But the root of the change in tone evidenced by Quantum and Casino is more fundamental than the trappings of the action: it is the character itself and Craig, the actor that inhabits his skin. James Bond, in all of his glory, has never been more than a two-dimensional character, and we have rarely seen any of the inner thoughts and emotions that motivate his actions beyond the stirring declaration "For England" or the next Bond girl to fall his way. Notable exceptions to this rule include the ironic play on loyalties that surrounds the "For England" declaration in GoldenEye and the less-than-noteworthy George Lazenby's turn as Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, where we first saw the secret agent's soft side as he suffered the death of his wife, Contessa Vicenzo in this incarnation rather than Vesper.

In Casino, on the other hand, and even more so in Quantum, we see a James Bond that is trained to use his licence to kill, but also has a heart and soul that can love, lose and suffer. We see uncertainty and torment in Craig's eyes as he seeks resolution after the loss of Vesper, in the process trying to reconcile his role as a spying and killing machine with his experience of vulnerability and trust - a theme that is echoed in his relationship with Rene Mathis.

This shift does not entail tortured soliloquies or primal cries of bereavement on mountain tops, but is clearly evidenced in Craig's subtle protrayal of a thoughtful but disciplined Bond. For me, this shift in tone makes Quantum and Casino more real, and allows me to identify with the character and feel his motivations rather than just going along for the ride.

The Gadgets: Noted by Absence
As a technology-junkie (partially reformed), another aspect of Quantum that I must comment on is the gadgets, or, more appropriately, the lack of them. Now I always loved the Bond gadgets as a kid, and still enjoy them greatly, from the rocket pack in Thunderball to the Lotus Esprit E1 "aqua car" of The Spy Who Loved Me.

However, I agree strongly with the director's decision to essentially cut the gadgets out of Quantum - or at least to make them less prominent and less unrealistic, the latter trend having been evident since Die Another Day, and, as mentioned above, typical of the Dalton films.

The Gadgets in Quantum are all realistic or commercially available technologies: the high-tech ear piece used to hold a conference in a crowded opera house, the Microsoft "Touch" table top used to manipulate multimedia (still just a concept when showcased in Minority Report), and the Sony-Ericsson cell phone that tracks a business card homing device. The key "gadget" in Quantum, however, is the perennially "just around the corner" Hydrogen fuel cell.

In addition to arriving at the hotel in the desert in a hydrogen-powered Ford SUV (score one for product placement), the hotel itself turns out to be entirely powered by prominent and volatile fuel cells set into the wall of each unit. I find it interesting that Ford chose to highlight its hydrogen fuel cell concept car in this film, since the technology does not enjoy the glamour enjoyed by the Touch. Quite the opposite, the rousing "kick out the jams" explosion mentioned above is caused by a chain-reaction of hydrogen fuel cells exploding with fantastic ferocity.

If you were trying to develop and market a hydrogen-powered vehicle, would you do so in a film that makes you think more of the Hindenburg crashing in flames and killing 37 souls than of the clean, green fuel of the future? Seems like an odd choice to me.

That being said, please do leave me comments about your favorite James Bond gadget from movies past

Final Thoughts
My bottom line - if it is not evident from the preceding - is that Quantum of Solace is a very good film. The action is fast-paced and exciting, the story is clear and supports the action well (indeed, at 106 minutes this is one of the few bond films not to suffer from the all-too-common curse of being 20 minutes longer than it should be) and the characters, or at least the title character, are (is) nuanced and compelling.

If I were to nitpick on one topic it would be that I did not leave the theater as bowled over as: a) the opening car chase led me to expect; or b) the overall quality of the film deserved. I think that this is because Quantum, unlike Casino, was exactly as good as I expected. No more and no less. Casino was a game changer, revolutionizing the James Bond franchise, and I left with my jaw dropped open, wondering "what was that"? Quantum continues this trajectory, and does so well - but does not present anything particularly new.

You either like the new James Bond or you do not - and I do :)

(As a closing note, I realize that I have committed a crime of exception in this review, having discussed James Bond at great length without mentioning Sean Connery. Sean Connery - nuff said.)

Rachel Getting Married, Masked (live theater)

2008-11-14T11:15:00.010-04:00

Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008) (Oxford) Not really an inspiring title, is it? I mean, what are we talking about here? My Best Friend's Wedding? Runaway Bride? The Wedding Planner?

Now I don't mean to suggest that there are no good wedding movies out there, as a situation so rife with emotion and potential conflicts/resolutions is surely prime fodder for film making - think Muriel's Wedding or even Four Weddings and a Funeral - but all the same, the prospect of a wedding movie does not generally whet my appetite...

The Critics Speak
But Rachel Getting Married..well, I don't even know where to start. Metacritic, a site that compiles Internet movie reviews and assigns an aggregate score based on those critiques is not a bad place. Besides the professional critics referenced for RGM, which gave the movie an average score of 82%, there are 49 "user opinions" listed with an average score of 5.1/10.

What I mean to suggest by this is that while the critics have pretty universally praised RGM, the film has polarized viewers - at least five rated the movie a "0" and at least two rated it a "10." Let's look at a few samples:

"0" : "One of the most boring movies I have ever seen. The characters were all unlikable. Too much talk and not enough action. Awful!"

"0" : "I was about to throw up at the bridal dinner when guest after guest made stupid toasts. This movie meandered along at a snails pace. After an hour I had had enough and walked out. I could care less about any of the characters."

"9" : "If you like your films realistic, this is the one for you. It doesn't serve the lowest common denominator by explaining everyone's history and intentions. Instead it respects the viewer (or observer as the case seems to be). And the pacing and subtlety are perfect."

"10" : "It speaks beautifully to how life-changing tragic events are never fully processed or "moved past" by those immediately affected or possibly causal toward same. The film tackles this subject matter relentlessly, and successfully. A masterpiece of compassion."

The Blogger Speaks
Well I think that this polarization is a good thing - and I was immensely impressed with RGM.

No, there are no explosions or car chases or sex scenes to distract you from the often unpleasant emotions and ideas that are being raised. You are forced to squirm in your seat through Kim's brutally uncomfortable wedding toast, you are supposed to notice the repetitive nature of the complaints aired - because these characters have been making these complaints for years, and we are meant to be as sick of hearing them as everyone in the movie is.

And no, these are no particularly likable characters, but they are strong characters that do not pull their punches (literally at times) or try to placate each other. They are so unvarnished and blunt that I can understand that it is uncomfortable for viewers more accustomed to post-processed cookie-cutter film making (a la Runaway Bride or The Wedding Planner) - it feels almost indecent to be a voyeur in some of these scenes.

After all is said and done, this is a character movie with no princess to save, no jealous rival to thwart, no potty humor to elicit guffaws, and no triumph just in time for a tearfully joyful conclusion at 110 minutes or so. The characters elicit emotions in the viewer that are not pleasant to experience - love, compassion, loneliness, fear, helplessness - but are testaments to the power of film making. Demme reaches into your heart and mind and prods and pushes at your most secret fears and doubts and hopes and dreams and demands that you pay them heed.

And I applaud him for this - because this is what I feel that all great filmmakers are striving for, and I don't believe that they should limit this effort only to sweetness and light. The comparison that popped into my head during the movie was the level of insecurity and anxiety elicited by Ang Lee's 1997 masterpiece of modern cinema, The Ice Storm, or even Deepa Mehta's Heaven on Earth (reviewed earlier on this site).

Sometimes movies are escapism and distraction, and that is great, as I love to disappear into another world and forget my troubles. But sometimes films can edify us on a deeply personal level, uncovering and allowing us to examine pieces of ourselves that we've never seen - or never admitted to. Rachel Getting Married is such a film.

Patience Running Thin
More than a week ago CTV ran a review of movies currently at, or soon to play in, local theaters, implying in the process that Kristin Scott Thomas' French-language film I Have Loved You for So Long was waiting in the wings. However, it has yet to appear in Halifax, and I am beginning to fear that it will pass us by...I'll keep you updated!

Masked (Neptune Theater)
I also wanted to comment briefly on a play that I saw last night at Halifax's Neptune Theater. My friend Theo did a fantastic job portraying one of three Palestinian brothers who are watching their childhood bond deteriorate even as society crumbles around them under the weight of the occupation.

The play deals with heavy themes, focusing on the inevitable reality of collaboration with an occupying authority, and how this degrades and demoralizes all that are affected by it.

Much like Rachel Getting Married, this is a character study where extreme personalities are clashing in circumstances that bring powerful emotions into play. Also like RGM, there is no slow build-up - in this case the play is unrelenting from its opening moment, with scenes cut in a choppy fashion that is accentuated by loud, hard music and the theater being plunged into sudden darkness.

Another interesting facet of Masked is that it is an exercise in limited location, which film buffs will be familiar with from classics such as Hitchcock's Lifeboat. In this case I think that the use of limited location is a powerful way of evoking the situation of the Palestinian people in the play's physical set. The entire play occurs in one room in the back of a butcher shop, where the brothers blow off their anger and fear and frustration as if they were in a high-pressure canister - much as the Palestinian people are every day locked into the crowded occupied territories and inevitably end up clashing with each other.

My main reason for bringing this play up, however, is to share the pure joy of watching live theater and to urge readers to patronize a local show. It is beautiful to watch the actors: at the beginning of the stage they are naturally slightly stiff and a little self-conscious, but in a matter of minutes we see them begin to soften, settle in and feel comfortable in their character's skin.

This transformation is something we lose in films, and is the essence of the actor's craft. While loving the perfect finish of a well-made movie at the multiplex, let's not forget the opportunity to see the basic genius of the actor's craft at the local playhouse :)

Changeling, Pride and Glory: Two Sides of a Coin

2008-11-06T09:02:00.007-04:00

I got to wondering today whether my movie critique posts to date actually qualify as "critical" in the strict sense of the word. I watch a lot of films, and find things to like about almost all of them - shouldn't the "reviewer" be a little more discriminating? Well never fear, today's posting was inspired by one fantastic film, and another that gives occasion to pull out all manner of metaphors evoking the noxious stench of spoiled eggs.

Shall we begin? There are movies to be considered!

Changeling (Clint Eastwood, 2008) (Park Lane) When Christine Collins (an emaciated Angelina Jolie, wasted away to Lara Flynn Boyle-esque skin and bones) waves goodbye to her son Walter one Saturday morning in 1928, she has no idea that she will never lay eyes on him again - and no inkling of the hell that her life is about to become. Walter ultimately became one of about 20 young boys brutally murdered as part of the "Wineville chicken coop murders" - but his mother's torment went far beyond losing her only son.

Enter the corrupt and scheming LAPD, which, desperate for good press, finds a random young boy and returns him to Christine despite her protests that he is not her son - who, among other things, was three inches taller and uncircumcised. With the help of Rev. Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovitch), a contemporary crusader against the LAPD, Christine begins a fight for justice that sees her publicly humiliated, slandered as a negligent mother and ultimately committed to an insane asylum on the authority of one police officer's signature.

Changeling is a very good film that interested and engaged me completely for 141 minutes, which is no small feat in his era of overly long epic-wannabes.

Perhaps the most compelling thing about Changeling is its lead actress, Angelina Jolie, who is usually cast in racier affairs by virtue of her "I could hurt you and you would enjoy it" sex appeal - we won't even talk about those lips. I must admit that although I greatly enjoyed Mr. and Mrs. Smith in the throw-away shoot-em-up vein and consumed Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow gleefully, like a kid with a full cookie jar and a good hiding place, I have generally been pretty ambivalent about Jolie.

However, with Changeling I believe that I am reaching the same tipping point that I reached with Brad Pitt and even Leonardo DiCaprio some years ago - recognizing her as a great actress that does an unfortunate amount of Hollywood crap due to the misfortune (?!?!) of her good looks.

Jolie phones this one in. I think in particular of her first interview with the head doctor of the asylum. She has been forewarned by a fellow inmate that she will be diagnosed as: purely insane if she smiles too much; clinically depressed if she is quiet and passive; and catatonic if she remains neutral. As the doctor interrogates her about how she feels, we watch as Jolie tries desperately to decide how to act and react - and watch as terror builds in her eyes when the full degree of her helplessness becomes apparent. Chilling.

And this takes us to one of the prevalent themes in this film: the heartless dismissal of women in general by patronizing male authority figures. At one point in the film the chief of police is actually heard to mutter "women" in a frustrated tone as Christine (Jolie) responds in an understandably emotional manner to the situation she is in. Over and over we see how police officers, doctors and scientists dismiss her opinions and ideas solely because she is an "emotional woman incapable of logic." Frightening.

That being said, there is one other character that bears mentioning, as he is the only male figure who extends any sympathy to our protagonist: Rev. Gustav Briegleb. Played by Malkovitch as a sanctimonious but sympathetic champion of the damsel in distress, Rev. Briegleb occupies a purely utilitarian role in the story - we do not feel his passion or learn enough about the man to feel invested in his campaign against the LAPD. While Malkovitch is a reliably good actor, reliably good is all that he is in this role. A wasted opportunity.

Similarly, the set of the film should have been rich and lush, with a luster of the optimistic pre-crash flapper era shining from every surface (think the highly stylized presentation of New York in the Coen brothers' brilliant Miller's Crossing). Somehow this film makes 1920s LA look a little drab - which is admittedly in keeping with the somber tone of the story, but is a missed opportunity nonetheless.

No, this movie is Jolie's from the very beginning, and she brings enough to the performance to compensate for any deficiencies the production as a whole may suffer. I sense an Oscar nomination in the offing - and am eager to watch A Mighty Heart this weekend to get another dose of the Angelina Jolie that I never knew.

Pride and Glory (Gavin O'Connor, 2008) (Park Lane) While exiting the theater after watching Changeling, I caught the name Edward Norton on the poster advertising Pride and Glory. Throwing caution to the wind, I slipped into the theater and hunkered down in a prime seat with little idea of what to expect.

Sometimes you should quit while you are ahead.

Here we go: Respected elder "always played by the book" New York cop (Jon Voight) has two sons who are cops (Norton and Noah Emmerich) and a daughter married to a cop (Colin Farrell). I believe that they, to fulfill one of the checklist requirements for a New York cop film, are all supposed to be Irish - but the accents come and go willy-nilly, so it is hard to tell from one scene to the next.

Farrel is dirty, Emmerich tolerates his indiscretions because it makes him look good as station head, and Norton is tortured by a lie he told on the stand two years earlier to help cover up Farrell's earlier misdeeds.

When four random cops are killed in a vicious shootout, and Norton is assigned to the task force investigating the deaths. The investigation leads Norton to Farrell and Emmerich - didn't see that coming did you? - and necessitates a lot of soul searching (I can only assume from the wounded puppy look in Norton's eyes) before he ultimately turns them all in. Sounds simple enough, right?

Wrong, before this this bloated drama says die we are subjected to 130 minutes of gun fights, heads exploding over car windshields, mano-a-mano fist fights, heart-to-hearts with father, and out-of-left-field sub-plots involving Emmerich's wife's losing battle with cancer and Norton's pretty but pointless soon-to-be ex-wife. I actually believe that this film could have been made on a budget of about $35 if they had just patched together pomp-and-circumstance cop funeral scenes and gun battles from the numerous other really bad cop films that Hollywood foists upon us.

It is painful to watch an actor as capable as Edward Norton sink to this level - not that he hasn't done it before, but why is he doing it again? Does he choose his own films? Colin Farrell is acting at about the level he is capable of (I mean, he really has an Irish accent, so that alone explains his presence), but Norton is wasted.

And so are 130 minutes of my life. I considered walking out of this one.

Two Sides of a Coin
So those are the two sides of the coin: one film that achieves great things on the strength of one great actress' performance, and one drags a great actor shamelessly through the mud.

W., 25th Hour, The Illusionist, The Prestige

2008-11-05T09:04:00.015-04:00

Well I can't let the opportunity to personally congratulate Barak Obama on his victory last night pass - the time has come for a change. And I hope that this really does mean change, but fear on some level that one man with a vision is no match for the complex web of oil money, interest groups and back-scratching that is Washington.

But I want to believe, and perhaps all that is needed is a reason to believe. A reason for hope in a land with no moral center or common ideology to serve as motivation for making each day better in even the smallest ways.

Yes we can...

And, as the inspiration for art is so often real life, this segues nicely into my first film of the past week or so.

W. Politics on Screen and Stage
There is a long tradition of portraying the glorious ascendancy and ignominious fall of the politically powerful on stage and cinema. Off the cuff I think of Shakespeare's Richard III, Elizabeth, Blaze and All the King's Men - and I am sure that Google could extend this list manifold.

Oliver Stone, of course, features prominently in this tradition with biopics such as JFK and Nixon and, more recently, W., which opened to decidedly mixed reviews.

It was brave of Stone to attempt the story of such a controversial figure as George W. Bush before the bumbling fool s even tripped off left (just to make my opinion clear right from the start), and the film left me with mixed feelings.

One the one hand, disappointment that I had been cheated of the embarrassingly hackneyed leftist diatribe that a filmmaker such as Michael Moore would surely have delivered. On the other hand, however, pleasure at the fact that Stone had avoided this pitfall and delivered a more sympathetic portrayal of the 43rd president of the United States of America - a sympathy that dooms the film in the public consciousness in much the same way as Menno Meyjes Max was pilloried for even hinting that Hitler was in any way essentially a deeply-flawed human being underneath it all.

No, a sympathetic portrayal of Dubya was never going to be a crowd pleaser, but I think that - on this note anyway - this is a better film than it has been given credit for.

Following his unsuccessful first bid for the Texas statehouse Bush, in frustration, tells a comely Laura Bush that he will never be: "out-christianed or out-Texaned again." The film goes on to prove that this is essentially the essence of the George W. Bush presidency - a befuddled young man in way over his head and clinging for dear life to fundamentalist "black and white, good and evil" dogma guide him through a complex and nuanced political and personal world.

Ministers and missionaries guide him (Richard Dreyfus brilliantly portraying Dick Cheney), missionaries follow (Toby Jones as Karl Rove) and brilliant men of character find themselves increasingly marginalized as reality is subsumed to Bush belief in cut-and-dried right and wrong (Jeffrey Wright as Gen. Colin Powell).

W., despite what you may had read, is an interesting portrait of George W. Bush that seems overly sympathetic only insofar as it avoids the temptation to revel in the abject stupidity of the man and insidious implications of the evils he has visited on our world. That being said, it is no JFK, it is no Richard III - it has not the things that great, enduring portraits of powerful men and women are made of.

In the end, its a renter :)

25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2003). This is not the Spike Lee of Do the Right Thing or Ju ngle Fever. It is closer to the Spike Lee of Inside Man, but makes that film look like a cookie cutter Jason Stratham heist movie. No, this movie is art - it is what Spike Lee is reputed to be, but somehow never is when I actually watch one of his films.

A jacked up muscle car is cruising the dark side of New York city late at night carrying the slick gangster Monty Brogan (Norton) and slimy gangster Kostya Novotny. They stop at an alltogether unsafe looking intersection, and in the piles of debris and litter illuminated by pale yellow light find a mortally wounded pit bull that obviously lost one fight too many. Monty takes the dog under his care, showing a glimmer of the tenderness the life he has chosen forces him to hide under a tough, scaly shell.

But now Monty has 24 hours left before he has to report to prison to serve seven years on drug charges. In these 24 hours, - spent with his best friends (a timid Philip Seymour Hoffman as a schoolteacher who is all tenderness and a flinty Barry Pepper who seems to have nothing but his hard shell), his beautiful girlfriend (who may or may not have ratted him out), and one of Hoffman's student's (Anna Paquin as temptation personified) - we see Monty confront who and what he has become and what he must do in the morning to begin his act of atonement.

It is a night of drinking, dancing, fighting, embracing, crying, screaming and wondering what if ... a passion play counting the stations of the cross for one who is no innocent lamb. And it is a beautifully moving film.

The Illusionist (Neil Burger, 2006). I have been tempted to revisit The Illusionist for months now, and, after 25th Hour, I was in need of another dose of Edward Norton. This is a sublime film, lovingly crafted of compelling characters and opulent set pieces that engage you thoroughly in a fairytale world - complete with a prince in disguise and a princess courted by a malevolent heir to the throne. I mourn that I did not have the chance to see this story in the theater.

The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006). I remember seeing this film on the marquee for a brief moment and never knowing what it was - I opted to see Babel instead on that particular evening, and have no regrets. Nolan does not have an extensive repertoire as a director, but done some good work: think Insomnia, Memento, Batman Begins and its lesser cousin The Dark Knight, .

Prestige is worthy of this impressive pedigree for the delicious simplicity of the twist that underlies its seemingly complex story alone - but a sliver of doubt has always haunted me, and on second viewing the fatal flaw revealed itself: poor set work. This is a movie that could and should be the equal of The Illusionist, but its internal world is compromised by cheap, unconvincing sets that do not allow the viewer to step through the screen, so to speak - very worth watching as a clever tale with an always compelling Christian Bale at the helm, but not a masterpiece. (A cheesy poster reminiscent of Face/Off does not help.)

Anticipation of Things to Come
It's a good week to be a movie lover, with Clint Eastwood's Changeling newly opened in theaters and Jonathan Demme's Rachel Getting Married soon to follow. The former promises to be a return to the hard-nosed sentimentality of Million Dollar Baby after Eastwood's disappointing Flags of Our Fathers. I am particularly interested in the latter, as interviews with Demme have prepared me for a cast of strong, well-rounded characters that avoid the Hollywood cliches that wedding movies are made of (shudder).

I will let you know...

Movie time: City of Ember, Heaven on Earth, Stone of Destiny

2008-10-23T10:43:00.000-03:00

I remain, on some level, unwilling or unable to write about the themes and ideas that typify my life these days. However, my urge to blog has not abated in the least – especially as I read the regular updates by my good friend and fellow blogger over at Bookphilia. Highly recommended reading :)

So the question arises: What subject I shall unleash my words upon? Well, the obvious answer at this moment is the myriad of movies that I watch. Yes: I relish a good read, I thrive on travel and I savour the flavour of well-prepared food – but I am also a cinephile to the core. Regardless of genre or origin, nothing pleases me more than a well-made film.

At the Movies

I go to the theatre several times a week, because I believe that films are made to be seen in this setting. Widescreen TVs and home projectors are all fine and well, but there is something about the experience of entering a temple to vision and sound, filing down plush carpeted aisles and sidling across a row of politely angled knees (excuse me, excuse, thank you) to immerse yourself in the experience of a movie. It just cannot be replaced…

Do you go to the movies?

Find a friend in the films

Hold hands with the hero

Fall in love with the heroine

And I even go to the movies alone quite often, melting into the anonymity of the luxurious dark space and allowing myself to sink into the plot and spend quality time with the characters.

Now frequenting of the theatre has a downside as well, as the higher the number of films you attend, the more bad or merely mediocre films you encounter – especially here in Halifax, where the usual Hollywood releases dominate screens and art films barely squeeze into the margins.

But the diamonds in the rough are worth it, and I have found a few of late. Lets take a VERY perfunctory tour of a few of the flicks I have seen of late:

City of Ember (Gil Kenan, 2008) (Park Lane) Ember was built as a haven for the survivors of a great unknown calamity that made life on the surface of the earth untenable. Buried 1000s of feet underground, the city is powered by a great generator that is reaching the end of its usable life – a problem multiplied by the fact that some 200 years of subterranean existence has bred a collective amnesia under the thrall of which no citizen understands how to maintain the technology that keeps the city alive. Even more importantly, however, is the fact that the population has long forgotten that there is a world outside of Ember.

Enter two youths with unquenchable curiosity and vigour that refuse to accept that there is no alternative, and the dangerous and delightful dash towards the outside world begins.

Except that despite an excellent cast (including artful casting of Tim Robbins as a father who tried to escape Ember in his youth and Bill Murray as a more bored than villainous mayor) and an amazing set comprising the clockwork city of Ember itself, there is no visceral sense of danger, and the delights are equivalent to ridding a log jam at the local amusement park.

Which is not to say that I did not enjoy City of Ember, but more to say that I enjoyed the look and feel of the movie more than the story and message – which is never explored beyond skin deep. I hope that the eponymous book, by Jean Drapeau, explores the psychological, physical and/or moral issues arising from post-cataclysm existence more deeply than this film, and hope to read it someday. In the meantime, I can definitely recommend The Chrysalids for a taste of the real thing…

Next!

Hmmm… I expected these reviews to be more brief, and am now wondering where to go with the list of about 12 other films that I have seen over the past month or so. I guess the best course of action is to skip on to one that I can recommend unreservedly.

Heaven on Earth (Deepa Mehta, 2008) (The Oxford): Chand is a beautiful, well-educated young Punjabi woman sent from her home in India to consummate an arranged marriage with a young Indian living in Toronto, Canada. Almost immediately upon arriving in the frigid winter of central Canada it becomes apparent that the cold of her new homeland is a physical manifestation of the bleak and unloving life she finds.

This includes a mother-in-law who sees Chand as an intruder intent on stealing her son; a job in a local laundromat that wastes her university education; isolation from her family and community with not even the chance of a phone call home; and a sullen and angry husband whose physical abuse of young Chand is horrific to witness.

Indeed, this is a powerful film that reaches out and touches the viewer on a visceral level – but it is not enjoyable in the strict sense of the word. A desperate lack of hope pervades the film right down to its mechanics, as it is shot in raw, hand-held black and white that is grainy and lacks the post-processed “the sun always shines on TV” patina that typifies most films.

And that first instance of violence – that first brutal slap – hit me where it hurt. An icy hand crept into my chest and constricted my heart. I left the theatre with this feeling and took it home to my comfortable bed, falling asleep with the chill and even awakening with an eerie echo of the emotion.

No, this is not a feel good film that imbues you with joy at the wonder of life. But it is a film that achieves what only a few of the best films can – it makes you feel at one with its protagonist, taking you inside her experience so completely that there is no luxury of considering it from a distance.

And one more thing that I feel is important about this film is the fact that it is set in Canada. Water and Fire, two other films in Deepa Mehta’s quartet about the experiences of Indian women in the modern world, are both set in India – which allows the Western viewer to consider them in the abstract, as parables or lessons. It is happening over there to those people. Heaven on Earth, on the other hand, is happening in North America, here, where we live, among us and as a part of our social fabric as Canadians.

This film will not allow you to ignore or dismiss it. You won’t enjoy it, but in this case that is the film’s primary virtue…

Stone of Destiny (Charles Martin Smith, 2008) (Park Lane) This Canada/UK co-production is based on the true story of a group of Scottish university students who break into Westminster Abbey in the mid-1950s to steal the Stone of Destiny, an ancient relic on which the kings of Scotland were crowned for centuries before the nation fell under British dominion. (Run-on sentence!)

I will be brief about this one, because I really only have one thing to say: this movie made me smile. It was such a sheer pleasure to watch that I became aware at one point of a silly grin playing across my face as an unbridled expression of how fun and suspenseful the movie was.

Why? Because it is an unabashedly enthusiastic adventure in the vein of Enid Blyton, whom many of you may remember from childhood forays into the Rat-a-Tat Mystery and The Secret of Cliff Castle.

And while we are on the subject of films that are a pure pleasure to watch because of their youthful and innocent esprit de corps, another "made in the UK" film that you may want to check out is Starter for 10. Recommended viewing!

Body of Lies (Ridley Scott, 2008) (Park Lane) Fun action movie with lots of explosions but a story that is too thin and scattered to support itself. Russell Crowe does his usual great job, while Leonardo DiCaprio seemed too baby-faced for the role. Basically, this story has been done to perfection in Syriana, so go to see it for action movie fun, not an in-depth look at American meddling in the Middle East

Passchendaele (Paul Gross, 2008) (The Oxford) This is a love story, which does not in and of itself make it a bad film, it just makes it a movie about love and passion rather than a horrifying moment of history. Without a doubt some the highest production value I have seen from a Canadian film.

Burn After Reading (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2008) (Park Lane) The Coen Brothers, Francis McDormand, John Malkovich, George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Brad Pitt – need I say more? This film seems more cynical than other Coen brothers ventures, with a little less comedy attached to its blackness - infinitely worth watching.

Donkey Punch (Oliver Blackburn, 2008) (The Oxford) Yes ladies and gentlemen, we have a new contender for worst film I have ever seen – and I knew it from the opening credits and still subjected myself to the full length. Not even the gratuitous, essentially hardcore porn scenes made this intriguing in the least…

Flash of Genius (Marc Abraham, 2008) (Park Lane) Good “based on the true story” plot that ends up being as grey and flat as the 1970s architecture that it is filmed amidst.

A taste of freedom: Spiced Dal

2008-09-23T08:41:00.001-03:00

Not much blogging going on around here, is there?
I asked a friend the other day how long she figured a blog had to languish without update before being considered "defunct." I am happy to say that she replied that her subscription to my blog (you can subscribe to my blog???) would tell her about a new post whether it were to appear one week or one year in the future - and that she would read it :)

One week later...
...I have put some thought into why this page has seen so little activity, and have a few theories. The core of these ideas is that I don't know quite how to write about the experiences I am having now, since they seem so out of place with the trajectory I thought that I was building (and blogging about) while on the road.

After 16 months of traveling, visiting friends and - well - pondering, I find myself in a cold northern city, sitting at a desk in an office in front of a computer and wondering where the inspiration is in this experience.

What about the dream of freedom I hatched in India.

I am fully aware, of course, that freedom is in the heart, soul and mind and can survive and flourish in the dankest dungeon - let alone at a desk in an office in front of a computer - as well as on the most pristine beach at sunset.

I'm still just a little disappointed, I guess...

A taste of freedom
To switch gears, the inspiration for this particular post is the desire to give my few remaining readers a literal taste of my time on the road.

Since returning to North America, I have conjured up a few Indian feasts that have ranged from poor imitations to genuine feasts for the senses. The most recent - prepared with the help of my visiting sister and consumed in the same good company - was by far the most delicious to date: spiced Dal (lentil stew), hearty Palak Paneer (spinach with white cheese) savory Chicken Curry and garlic naan to sop up the juices with.

Now when most people about Indian (or Nepali) food, they think about curry. But one of my discoveries in the land of spices was that Dal is actually the literal heart of Indian cuisine - being analagous to the Kimchi on a Korean table. The recipe below is by far the best I have tried to date, and I hope you enjoy it!

Spiced Veg/Non-veg Dal
1 cup red lentils
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp veg oil
2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
1 tbsp minced garlic
1 large onion, halved & slivered
2 tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp ground cloves
Pinch fresh turmeric
4 cups fresh veg/chicken broth
4 ripe plum tomatoes, seeded & cut to 1/4" pieces
1/2 cup coarsely chopped parsley
Salt/pepper to taste

1) Heat butter and oil in a heavy-bottomed pot on medium heat. Add ginger, garlic and onion and cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle in teh cumin, cloves and turmeric.
2) Stir in lentils, add broth and bring to a boil on high heat. Simmer uncovered about 20 minutes till soft - not mushy. Skim off foam as it rises and stir occassionally.
3) Stir in tomatoes and parsley and cook, stirring, for about another 15 minutes.
4) Season with salt/pepper to taste.

I have found that this dish benefits greatly from being prepared ahead of time and then heated up just before serving - it allows the flavours to mature and meld.

Bon appetite! I shall try to write more in the das and weeks that follow...

Desiderata

2008-08-13T12:45:00.000-03:00

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

OGENKI DESU KA?

2008-07-30T22:56:00.000-03:00

I once asked a girl what was the most romantic thing that ever happened to her, and she replied that once a boy she was seeing spontaneously bought a rose for her as they walked down the sidewalk - even though it seems a cliche, that moment touched her heart.

And who is to say what funny little thing can touch our hearts?

Tonight I rewatched the movie "Love Letter", directed by Shunji Iwai, and was transported in time to one of my most romantic moments even as the film's power and grace brought tears to my eyes.

In 1998 I sat in a dark movie theater in Seoul, hunched down as far as possible in the plush seat with my ear millimeters away from soft lips that quietly translated that same movie for me line by line.

OGENKI DESU KA? WATASHI WA GENKI
How are you? I am fine!

She was my entrance to that world, but also tinged it with a little bit of who she was - in the words she chose and the pauses when a scene stole her from me for a brief second of time.

However, it seems that Iultimately missed much of the film's import. Ironically, it seems that the one part of the plot that went over my head was the love letters in the film - the small symbolic acts that showed someone's love more honestly than words could say, but ultimately proved inscrutable.

And believe me, each line translated softly into my ear, the warm breathe tickling the lobe, was a small love letter that burned the experience in my mind and lit a fire in my heart - setting another stone in a foundation that would not crack for many a year to come...

But you know - and forgive me for being so inscrutable, as I am certain few others have seen this masterpiece - in the film recognizing those love letters and their import is part of letting go of the loved one...

Moving on :)

Where Am I?

2008-07-01T21:02:00.000-03:00

Halifax, Nova Scotia
That's the easy answer to the question that I have received in a few e-mails from people wondering both where I am physically and where my blog posts for the past few months are.

Well, first of all, I have to say thank you for reading my blog during my travels of the past year - it has really been beautiful to find out how many people followed my path and thought about me while I was gone.

The Cobequid Basin
I am actually spending most of my time in Upper Economy, Nova Scotia, where my Dad and Carolyn have a beautiful house sitting atop dramatic cliffs that fall 50 feet to the Cobequid Basin, part of the Bay of Fundy. This enormous stretch of mud flats (at low tide) and creamy white caps (high tide) is famed for having the highest tides in the world.

I spend my days marveling at the stunning beauty of the bay, trying in vain to gain some respite from the black flies, gnats and mosquitoes, which are legion, and practicing to be on a chain gang. Seriously (almost)!

Dad has a great love for physical labour, and considers its truest form to be embodied by the shovel, the wheelbarrow and mounds of dirt and rock. We are currently digging out about 30% of the front driveway with the aim of softening the approach to the house by replacing the gravel with luscious lawn. I measure my days by the wheelbarrow, with 15-20 loads comprising an average turn of the earth

Where Am I
But this is really a much more complicated question than can be answered with geographic details or numbers of barrow loads.

I spent a year in India and Nepal, wandering the countryside and exploring new areas of life such as kirtan (devotional singing), yoga, massage, meditation, dance and energy work. These were, as the "pages" of my blog indicate, inspiring experiences that seeded dreams of how to incorporate them into my life.

And some of them, like yoga, are in my life in a very tangible manner. I have found a great yoga Podcast called YOGAmazing (www.yogamazing.com) and do workouts at least once a day. What is harder to put a finger on, however, is how the less tangible experiences I had on the road are manifesting themselves.

For instance, has Kirtan had an impact on me? I know it has the potential to have a significant impact if I follow the path further, but what is the net result of the month or two of exposure now that I am back in the "real world." What is the impact of it if I taste it and find it nourishing, but then do not feed on it?

The New World
What I find interesting in this context is how much North America has changed since I left it a little more than a year ago. The whole continent is abuzz with the environmental messages that have quietly sung in the ear for decades, and everyone is talking about clean energy, organic eating and the need to do something to change our society and its impact on the planet.

Of course this is in keeping with longer gestating "trend" of wider acknowledgment of lifestyle choices such as "well-being," but what I find even more interesting is how paper thin it remains in most cases. Society has seen the impact of our lifestyle vis-a-vis the health of our planet and is tasting the alternative (at least those that are packaged and advertised attractively), but is the collective diet of our society changing in favour of more nourishment?

Call me cynical, but people are concerned about the planet these days because gas costs too much, not because the planet or our society is in trouble. - if gas fell to 70 or 80 cents per liter again this entire shift in consciousness would evaporate.

So please call me cynical...

The Canadian Shield

2008-04-29T00:48:00.000-03:00

Marathon, Ontario
This is a small town abutting the shores of Lake Superior and clinging to the cold, stone surface of the Canadian shield, and perhaps distinguished by only one thing: it is roughly equidistant of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Toronto, Ontario.

By virtue of this fact alone, I find myself sitting in a cheap hotel room abutting the trans-Canada highway, which runs a straight-arrow course across this true North strong and free country and is the path that I follow towards what was once a home - and hopefully still holds the promise of such comfort.

Pilgrim's Progress
And thus this pilgrim's progress continues, having passed out of the booming oil-rich sprawl of Calgary in a raging blizzard, having spent a few alcohol-infused days in Winnipeg in the comfort of friendship long-cherished, and having since skirted the edge of the above-mentioned Lake Superior with its gorgeous white-rimmed shores and half-frozen blue depths.

This beauty is stunning - as was the scenery during the early days of my travel, traversing Northern Oregon, Washington, the southern corner of British Columbia and the great and seemingly never-ending Canadian prairies.

And so I continue, with Toronto lying ahead tomorrow, and many more destinations closer with every meter of highway covered: Ottawa to see my younger brother, Montreal to meet and old friend....

City of Lights

2008-03-27T03:32:00.000-03:00

I have nothing but respect for Paris, the "classic" city of lights (and love), but think that Hong Kong can as easily wear the appellation - this city of towering office and apartment buildings glows at night with the soft hues of a million neon signs, a million lit windows and a million headlights. To appropriate a line from Milan Kundera, this agglomeration of soaring concrete and glass adds up in the end to an "accidental beauty"...

My 26 hours in this hybrid of London and Tokyo makes my heart warm and exercises an amazing draw on me - it seems that it is easier to take the man out of the North-East Asian mega-city than it is to take the mega-city out of the man! It warms my heart and brings a smile to my face just walking these crowded Asian streets with their aforementioned riot of light and color, shops and restaurants of every persuasion and - in sharp contrast to my experience in Seoul - people from every corner of the world speaking every language imaginable!

The Quintessential Tourist
I have done a lot here in 26 hours! Arriving yesterday afternoon, I soon met a young South African and the two of us hooked up to do a whirlwind tour of a few highlights.

First order was to get into the city and find a room, which was accomplished in short order with the help of a businessman from Botswana who introduced me to "Chun King Mansion," a 12-15 story tower crammed floor by floor with what can best be described as "micro-motels." Semantics aside, I soon deposited my luggage in a cozy 1.5 x 2 meter room that contained a bed and a full bathroom (including hot shower) - this was smaller than any room I have ever slept in in Tokyo!

And off we went, first heading to the world's largest seated bronze Buddha, where we rode a cable car up the mountain to gaze at a 25 meter or so statue that stunned us both to silence with its serene presence - despite its towering dimensions, the figure maintains a meditative aura that calms the spirit. Now I don't know my Guinness Book of Records, but can only assume that, as the name suggests, there are larger Buddhas in the world that are either: a) not seated; or b) not bronze. Oh well...

Speaking of The Guinness Book...
While we are on the subject of the Guinness Book, we next shuttled back into town to ride the world's longest escalator through the area of Hong Kong known as the "mid-levels." This brought us to the "Soho" district, aptly named after a foreign neighbourhood considering that there is NOTHING Chinese about this area, not even the people in it! This was seriously the most Caucasians I have seen in 9 months, all chattering and quaffing ales in a myriad of pubs and fancy eateries.

So no Dim Sum, but some sumptuous Mediterranean fare!

Solo Again
And with that my South African friend headed to the airport, and I headed down to Hong Kong harbour for a ferry ride that gave me a magnificent view of the city lights at night, reflected on the water of the bay, and got me back to my bustling neighbourhood and my cozy little cubicle.

Morning in the City
Morning came quickly, with my first Starbucks Latte in about 9 months to give me a kick (pathetic, isn't it?) as I headed to the that carries tourist masses to the crest of Hong Kong Peak for a magnificent view of the city center. Now I don't know if my line of sight was obstructed by a romantic mist in the air or a vicious cloud of smog, but one way or the other, it was a peak worthy of climbing...

Return
And here I sit, back at the airport barely a day later, waiting to depart for North America with a hurricane of thoughts in my head. The tug of the city I am leaving makes me nostalgic for life in Asia and all too aware of how easily I could have it back, but the lessons of life and of this journey simultaneously telling me my path lies on a different trajectory.

I will see many of you soon....

Around the Corner...

2008-03-23T01:53:00.000-03:00

Kathmandu Calling
I am not yet back in Portland, Oregon - or, more generally, North America - but I am just around the corner, so to speak.

I leave Nepal tomorrow (Mar 25) and, after a hellish itinerary that involves sleeping and or lounging for extensive periods in not one or two, but three airports, will arrive PDX on Mar 27...

I don't quite believe that this trip is ending, but look forward to seeing family and friends...

Lightening Crashes

2008-03-19T12:03:00.000-03:00

Family Ties
Since last posting, my super cool and way-to-hard-working sister has been to India and departed. We spent most of her two weeks on the beach at Agonda, South Goa, which I believe I have raved about in previous post(s).

It was great to see Kristin, as we are pretty close but have few chances to meet face to face. It was especially cool to have her come to meet me at the tail-end of my trip - I return to North America next week, and this was a chance to think about and talk through some of the ideas about myself and the world that I have pondered in India, and how they may fit into my new life. This, of course, includes feelings of excitement and fear at the unknown vastness of it all.

Lightening Crashes
On the day after Kristin's departure, I returned to Agonda Beach and immediately walked down to the scorching sand to survey the endless sea stretching to the distant horizon. My adoration of the wonder was rewarded by the spectacle of a lone dolphin in the bay, leaping ecstatically in the air with an abandon that most of us can only dream of. My amphibious friend threw him/herself into the salt-tinged air once, twice, a third and a fourth time.

What a welcome!

Of course the whole day, like a whole life, cannot be made entirely of perfect moments such as this, a fact made clear in the following hours as menacing storm clouds built in the sky that had remained pristine blue for weeks and even months before.

The humid, sticky and dark day that ensued - more reminiscent of Portland at this time of year than my experience of Goa to date - heralded the rapidly approaching end of the tourist season ahead of the monsoon rains of summer. Indeed, the gray afternoon, as beautiful in its own way as the glorious sun that has since reasserted itself, was punctuated by the hammer falls of crews dismantling some of the resort colonies behind me, which are actually torn down and reconstructed every year to escape the wrath of the seasonal winds and rains.

By sundown the tension in the air was palpable, with low rolls of thunder rumbling from the next bay across a sea that was eerily calm.

Lightening Crashes
A child cries in a coco hut nearby and, as if on cue, dogs begin to howl.

A symphony of thunder begins to play directly above while the first fat drops of heavy rain pound on the palm fronds above my head.

Lightening Crashes
The world flashes incandescent as brilliant white light, diffused by low cloud cover, seems to come from every direction at once - a flash photo being shot of everything, from every conceivable direction, at once.

Lightening Crashes
The show has begun! With ferocity that is inconceivably just a foreshadow of the powerful monsoon season to come, the elements unleash themselves on the shore. While most of the flashes are strangely diffuse, the horizon serves a cinema show of electricity, with one, three, and even five bolts slicing the sky from heaven to sea simultaneously.

And I sit entranced as the seemingly inexhaustible fury play before my eyes for minutes and then hours. The elements, of course, ultimately prove to have more stamina than I, and I soon retire, drifting to sleep to the unseeming lullaby of the cataclysm outside my suddenly fragile hut.

Far from ruining a beautiful day, the squall crowns it with awe-inspiring splendour.

Rising Dawn
And the following morning? Brilliant tropical sun bakes several kilometers of sand, now a shade darker with the influence of torrents of rain absorbed through the night.

I spread my mat on the damp sand and begin to stretch and relax in the warm rays of sun piercing a sky that harbours light, fluffy white clouds that seem another species compared to the wrath of those that closed over us the previous night.

The Morning After
As I sat and wrote this post in my journal that same morning - literally hours after - banana lassi at hand and pen scratching feverishly, hoards of birds were squaking and reeling overhead as evidence of tension that is building once again. Ominously, dark clouds begin to gather yet again, harbingers of the next storm to come...

Return to Paradise

2008-02-28T00:47:00.000-04:00

That Glorious Stretch of Beach & Bass Beats
I am in Goa again, at Palolem - the same party-hard beach I wrote about disliking so much a few months ago. What a difference time and circumstances can make! This time I return to a place that is familiar - something rare on the road that warms the heart in and of itself - and to the friendly faces, warm smiles and welcoming hugs of many travelers I met on my last stay and who seem to never move!

Yesterday I explored a beautiful beach called Patnem, slightly south of here and a beautiful place, and today I will check out a stretch of sand called Agonda - one of these two will win the grand prize of hosting Kristin (my younger sister, who arrives tomorrow) and I for a good portion of the next two weeks.

I have a good feeling about Agonda, as it is reportedly relatively undeveloped - which means it should be "boring" enough to keep away the drugs and alcohol crowd - and apparently has an Osho center that does Satsang (teachings) every morning.

I am pretty sure that Kristin and I are on the same page regarding activities over the coming weeks, which can be summed up as reading, drinking lassis, swimming, eating Palak Paneer (spinach cottage cheese) and veg curry, and talking about life and the world as the sun sinks into the sea - lather, rinse and repeat!

Me. Myself. And Why I am Here
As for me, I am in a pretty good place now physically and mentally. Some of you know that I was hospitalized for a few days again last month, but I have bounced back fully and am into a regular yoga and pranayama practice that I feel good about.

But the health alerts on this trip do make me think about what I expected from this trip, which was - to be embarrassingly honest - a "yoga miracle" (as I have written about in previous posts).
Well, if i have had a miracle it is in a more subtle sense than the classic "water into wine" deal that the world immediately conjures in our minds. I have learned new practices and precepts that will make life a miracle everyday if I am diligent in their application - which means incorporating them into everyday life when I settle into Nova Scotia in the not so distant future.

So don't expect an entirely "new" me - but even if I look relatively the same, don't doubt that it is an "improved" me!

Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright

2008-02-24T04:46:00.002-04:00

Land of Spices

In the mountain range that surrounds Kumily, Kerala, temperatures soar in the day, but plummet at night, making a warm blanket and a hot shower seem less of a luxury and more of a necessity. The cool temperatures are actually a relief after months of humidity and heat on the sweltering west coast of south India.

Tea and spices form the backbone of the local economy, and surrounding hills are verdant with tea bushes and aromatic plants forming the backbone of a spice trade that traces a lineage in centuries: cardoman, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and dozens of others.

But Kumily also boasts a lineage of tigers that are said to haunt the nearby, more-than-700-square kilometer wildlife sanctuary of Periyar. Local officials claim a population of 35 to 45 of the majestic beasts, so I set off with a few new friends yesterday morning in anticipation of an intimate encounter with the animal that symbolizes my very life - my 1974 birthdate falling in the Chinese zodiac's year of the tiger.

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

In the forest of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

We set off at dawn to meet our guide at the sanctuary ranger station, where we were faced with the several dozen other intrepid tourists eager for a taste of the exotic. As groups of 5-7 camera and binocular touting Europeans set off at short intervals into the so called "tourist zone" of the park, I began to realize that I might be harbouring unrealistically high expectations...

But off we went, into a lush but obviously highly trafficked forest echoing with the mating call of the black monkey. And the monkey is pretty much where the romance of this safari stops, as this powerfully-lunged simian was not nearly outshone by our subsequent encounters with a pig (yeah!), a chicken (yeah) and caterpillar (yes, a caterpillar - yeah!).

Now in all honesty I never expected to see a tiger, but had harboured faint hopes of a wild elephant or two, or maybe a herd of bison or Sambar deer - all dashed, of course, as this reserve is surely the Disneyland of all wildlife reserves in India. Hundreds of package tourists a day pass through its gate and add to the labyrinth of tracks and cacaphony of morning noise that ensures no tiger in its right mind would come close.

The Big Picture?
But what about India's other wildlife reserves? Less accessible tracts of land only visited by adventure tourists that make it a priority to visit the wild outdoors rather than an after-thought on a crowded itinerary.

I am sad to say that it is not a pretty picture, with USA Today reporting that "India's population of royal Bengal tigers is half of what it was just five years ago, and only about 1,400 remain in the wild, according to a new study." (Feb 13, 2008)

A sobering fact, pointing to yet another of the most majestic species on our planet that does not stand a chance against the tide of modernization and globalization that is sweeping it away - the Polar and Panda Bears being other examples that come to mind...