Hip Deep In Pie

Bad As I Want To Be

2006-09-01T16:18:00.000-05:00

In Search of Mozart

2006-08-15T09:28:00.000-05:00

I just saw a wonderful documentary by Phil Grabsky called In Search of Mozart. See it - you'll be very glad you did. It's a very thorough account of the life of the composer for whom even words like "genius", and "inspired" seem to miss the mark. There are excerpts from performances of a great range of his work for solo instruments, chamber groups, orchestra and, of course, from his operas. The interviewees include musicians, conductors, directors and singers. The musicians are charming, and passionately devoted to Mozart's music, but are probably not in the best position to articulate in words why this is so, or just what it is that makes Mozart's music so sublime. If you want to know how a musician feels about Mozart, I guess, ask him or her to play - not, er, talk. The musicologists, singers, historians and directors, including surgeon/writer/director/polymath Jonathan Miller, fare a little better with the explanations and elucidations; Miller, a gifted mimic with great comic timing, is a fascinating source all on his own. He's just an all-around interesting guy to listen to. English baritone Sir Thomas Allen and conductor Sir Charles Mackerras also have interesting things to say. (Sir Roger Norrington appears to be just as pompous and dull as I ever feared.) Also interviewed a few times is Canadian bass-baritone (and 2006 nominee for Gramophone Magazine's Artist of the Year award) Gerald Finley, otherwise known as the World's Best Baritone. (Okay, in Sandman-world.) I could have wished for more concert footage, but I can't complain about the use of The Marriage of Figaro - the 1994 production from the Glyndebourne Festival is excerpted very nicely, and Finley and the brilliant English soprano Alison Hagley are shown to great advantage. What great chemistry they have: Two wonderful singers who look their parts, sing like angels, and can act pretty damned well, too. I never saw the Glyndebourne production, but I saw Finley and Hagley in a production for the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto around the same time. I still get shivers when I think of it. Of that now-famous Glyndebourne production, which was created for the re-opening of the Glyndebourne Festival Hall after two years of renovations in the early '90s, English critic Andrew Porter said that Finley was "the best Figaro we've seen in fifty years." (See? WBB.)

Mozart's early life must have been one long, crazy dash around Europe. From the age of about six or seven, he was touring something like 75 cities on a schedule that would have today's musicians checking themselves into rehab clinics for exhaustion. (Oh, wait - they do that anyway. Never mind.) The documentary goes a great distance to undo some misconceptions which probably began with Amadeus, and which have acquired the power of myth, if not the legitimacy of historical fact, in the public mind - such as that Mozart died penniless (he didn't); that he was buried in a pauper's grave (he wasn't - it was most usual in Vienna at that time for any member of the public to be buried in a group grave). Though the Milos Forman film is only mentioned once in Grabsky's, a few of the documentary's contributors, such as historian Cliff Eisen, make no bones about the fact that the play and the movie got lots of things wrong. (No use talking to a historian about dramatic license, I suppose.) Oh, and Mozart wasn't poisoned, and there is no indication in the record that he and Antonio Salieri despised one another. Although the Italian-born court composers of Vienna apparently did conspire together to make sure that 12-year-old Wolfie's first opera, La Finta Semplice, was never performed, and probably made it very difficult for subsequent operas, including Figaro and Così Fan Tutte, to succeed, at least in Vienna. (They probably weren't jealous, so much as having a giant collective coronary over their job security. Can you imagine the cussing in Italian? Who writes operas at twelve, for the love of heaven?)

The film left me with the conviction that Mozart's life - and the man himself - was full of contradictions; his music sparkles with pure joy, but it also carries hints of deep sorrow. He usually composed with great ease, but he also worked very hard and was often unsatisfied with his own work; his music is full of self-assertion and assurance, and he wanted to be treated as a genius, as what we think of as a star; at the same time, he could be very humble and self-effacing, and had a deep sense of how connected he was to other people. He was a Freemason, possibly attached to the ideals of freedom and brotherhood expressed in the Enlightenment, but he was also deeply religious. His education was not extensive, except in music, but his compositions suggest an intimate and profound knowledge of the human heart that few have matched. The film also left me humming.

Based On A True Story

2006-02-27T09:48:00.000-06:00

The nicest thing about the Winter Olympics 2006 for me was that my series of house concerts, which I'm calling Perfect Third House Concerts ('cause I'm predictable like that) got to be in the anchor spot on Nathan Caswell's Winter Olympics 2006 Tour. I'm not sure that Nathan specifically designed a tour to compete with or highlight the Olympics, but on the other hand, his way there were far fewer problems with massive changes to infrastructure and crippling civic debt. Also, Nathan's closing ceremonies didn't deploy eleventy-four thousand Italian brides carrying calla lily nightlight-torches. I'm just saying.

Nathan's songs very often carry the footnote 'Based on a true story' - sometimes this is quite a feat: one of Nathan's songs is a loopy sort of ballad recounting the post-mortem road trip adventures of Einstein's brain in a Mason jar. But Nathan is a teller of truths. Whether it's of growing up in Northern Ontario and thus being able to identify, blindfolded and a hundred paces off, the sulfur-and-wet-dog smell of a pulp mill, or of the sights and sounds of a lonely midnight drive along a nearly deserted highway, Nathan sings of truths he knows deep down. You'll laugh till it hurts; or maybe laugh so it doesn't hurt quite so much. There are few songwriters funnier than Nathan, but while you're laughing, you realize there's something wistful threading along under his sharply turned wit: He can write a song at the point where modern life and technology meet old fears and longings, as in "Baboon Heart" or "Pierre Trudeau (I Have The Technology)"; he can write about the moment when you realize your hometown's never going to be the same without your oldest friend in it. He can write that

Einstein's brain says that love is like gravity
No one knows exactly how it works, or what's it for

with perfect, if not literal, truth.

The song called "Caleb" is a highly personal, unusual statement about how we Canadians think of ourselves and our neighbours, and is both thought-provoking and shiver-inducing.

He sang
No more talk of separation
No more Western tax revolt
I don’t want to hear no more
Arguments against or for
Gun control or the Young Offender’s Act
I want love and compassion, sunshine on my face

Go to Nathan's webpage, or better yet, see him in concert, the first chance you get.

All lyrics copyright Nathan Caswell.

Shoe Money Tonight!

2006-01-24T13:03:00.000-06:00

According to my forum-mates at Television Without Pity, NBC has indeed picked up the new drama by Aaron Sorkin, tentatively titled Studio Sixty On Sunset Strip. Apparently the show is a behind-the-scenes look at a television comedy troupe, and if you saw a resemblance to a group of comedians who do a weekly live show on Saturday night, I think you could be forgiven.

While I'm not crazy-nuts about the alliterative title, I figure anything new from the guy who gave us Dan, Casey, Dana, Sam, Josh, Donna, CJ, Jebediah and Mrs. Landingham - not to mention the inspiration for the name of this blog, as well as for the title of this particular entry - is worth celebrating. I still haven't found the draft script online that I heard rumours about a couple of months ago, but this discussion thread has some interesting information (as well as a fair amount of kvelling. What? I have to brush up my Yinglish if Sorkin's gonna be back at the keyboard again.)

Also: Tommy! Schlamme! It is fun to say.

Ten Random Things About Me

2005-12-19T09:24:00.000-06:00

The "Ten Random Things" meme has, apparently, reached me. So:

1. My favourite colour is red.

2. I have no sense of direction. No, really - none.

3. I had two letters read on CBC's Morningside, and I once convinced Peter Gzowski to autograph a book to "Gran" - mine, not his.

4. I could read before I could walk.

5. I know almost all the words to all the songs in The Sound of Music.

6. I'm told I could eat nothing but eggs for the first few months of my life, and now the sight of a boiled or fried or scrambled egg makes me nauseated.

7. I'm just the sort of person who insists on the distinction between "nauseated" and "nauseous."

8. I have a terrible habit of "telling a movie" the way most people tell a story - as in, the whole thing: scene changes, dialogue, stage business. Ask my brothers. It drives them nuts.

9. I have never broken a limb - but I've had it done professionally (doctors, that is, not mobsters).

10. I gave moxywoman her copy of the Riddlemaster trilogy, the three volumes of which together form one of my favourite books, now available again in a one-volume paperback.

Inspirational, Celebrational, Muppetational

2005-12-07T14:23:00.000-06:00

The picture on the right describes my mood with stunning and pathetic accuracy. The reason is not only that I've found what I hope will be a great Christmas gift for my niece and nephew

http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000A2ZU6/701-7655662-7602716

But also because I hear rumours that one Aaron Sorkin, creator of My Poor Beloved Sports Night and The West Wing, is creating a new series which NBC has picked up for Fall 2006. More on this soon.

Can He Be A Sensible Man, Sir?

2005-11-21T17:22:00.000-06:00

"'He must be an oddity, I think,' said she, 'I cannot make him out. There is something very pompous in his style -- '" - Pride and Prejudice

My defect, I freely admit, is a propensity to hate movies admired by Mr. Roger Ebert. His defect, it seems, is wilfully to misunderstand them.

When a movie is based on another work, it may be too much to expect a movie reviewer to know something of the source material. (I didn't expect, to take an example which I hope will not be too ridiculous, that Mr. Ebert should be familiar with the comic-book source of X-Men in reviewing the movie version in 2000. Doubtless, however, his review would have displayed more sense if he had been. Indeed, his opinions seemed so peculiarly derived, and so inelegantly expressed, that they could hardly have conveyed less matter while still in written form.) Mr. Ebert's views on the recent remake of Pride and Prejudice show every defect of a mind determined to be thought clever while giving as little attention as possible to the substance of a question. Mr. Ebert begins his essay by quoting the first sentence of Pride and Prejudice; he surmises that everyone knows it. But such explicit inclusion of Miss Austen's work does not reflect well on either Mr. Ebert's style, which is disordered, or the movie he is discussing, which appears so far from the original as to make comparisons fruitless. Throughout, Mr. Ebert attempts the archness for which Elizabeth Bennet is justly famous, but it is unfortunately quite beyond his powers. The following sentences sound as if they ought to sparkle:

Romance seems so urgent and delightful in Austen because marriage is a business, and her characters cannot help treating it as a pleasure. Pride and Prejudice is the best of her novels because its romance involves two people who were born to be in love, and care not about business, pleasure, or each other.

But what do they mean? The first sentence may be discarded for its imperfect understanding of what a good marriage means to Miss Austen's characters. The second must be derided for its want of sense.

Mr. Ebert also remarks upon the visual style of the film, saying that it appears to be set sometime in the 1700s, which makes it unlike the "usual" Victorian romances. Mr. Ebert, I suppose, could not tell Elizabethan England from Victorian, let alone make such finer distinctions as telling, say, Restoration London from Regency Hertfordshire. Perhaps "Merrie Olde Englande" is all one to him. Mr. Ebert goes on to say:

The crucial information about Mr. Bingley, the new neighbor of the Bennet family, is that he 'has' an income of four or five thousand pounds a year. One never earns an income in these stories, one has it, and Mrs. Bennet (Brenda Blethyn) has her sights on it. Her candidate for Mr. Bingley's hand is her eldest daughter, Jane; it is orderly to marry the girls off in sequence, avoiding the impression that an older one has been passed over.

It seems uncharitable to argue with Mr. Ebert's supposing that the difference between having an income and earning it is owed to some unwonted delicacy of address on the part of the movie-makers, but viewing the distinction in such a way betrays Mr. Ebert's ignorance of the society he is, however indirectly, writing about. It will not have occurred to him that to the landed gentry of this period, the idea of earning one's living at a trade was quite literally unthinkable. Next to this, it is a quibble that it is not Mrs. Bennet's ideas of order, but rather the rules of society, which require that the elder Miss Bennet must be married before her younger sisters are eligible to be so. But this remark, too, is meant to be cutting, while all it exposes is the dullness of the wit that made it. One may say that the movie and the novel have different purposes, and the one ought not to be scorned because it fails to be the other; or that the audience for which the movie is intended does not care for reading satirical novels of Regency England, but if Mr. Ebert will not take the trouble of exerting himself to understand a little of Miss Austen's art and the world that shaped it, how can we take seriously his remarks on whether this version, Pride & Prejudice, is worth the time it takes to see it? Suffice it to say that Mr. Ebert finds Miss Knightley delightful, and Mr. McFadyen worthy of her, but Pride & Prejudice is not a story that Miss Austen would recognize as her own. The shift in tone from the delicate acerbity and sharp-eyed observation of the novel to the high-stomached, almost Gothic romance of the movie version, indeed, might reduce Miss Austen to helpless giggles. It certainly appears beyond Mr. Ebert's ability to illuminate, or perhaps discern.

Rick Mercer Takes Over The Internerd

2005-11-09T14:47:00.000-06:00

Rick Mercer, Canada's prime pretend pundit, who was doing the fake news when Jon Stewart was in short pants (well okay, not quite) has launched his newest assault on complacency, windbaggery, and political self-congratulation. Rick Mercer - the man who single-handedly created a grass-roots movement to make Stockwell Day change his name to Doris - is now a blogger!

If there were no other reason to admire Mercer, the ranter par excellence of Canadian satire, his take on the recent Parliamentary Press Gallery Dinner would be enough to make you fling yourself at his feet:

Nothing else to report really. Sheila Copps should probably check her meds and Belinda's dress was all the talk. One of those bright young conservative MPs in the Tory youth caucus asked me if I thought Belinda's dress was "appropriate". Maybe he was confusing me with his pastor. Usually when guys in their 20's talk about boobs they are pro cleavage. Maybe next year she should consider a Hugo Boss Burka so as to not offend the young conservatives.
Run to Rick Mercer's Blog now.

Hee. I'll probably be laughing about the "Hugo Boss burka" for days.

Also: This is vintage Rick Mercer: The National Citizens' coalition has a letter to the Editor in
today's Globe and Mail claiming I'm a liberal shill. I'm not a Liberal, I'm just lazy and the Tories make it so dammed easy. Maybe if they would just stop dousing themselves with gas and waving matches around for five minutes I could focus on corruption and greed in the Liberal Party. It should be pointed out of course that Stephen Harper used to run the National Citizens' coalition. Having them write a letter defending him is the equivalent of me getting my mother to write someone who thinks I'm a liberal shill. And she would too.

At Least We Know Now Why They Call It Yahoo News

2005-11-04T15:24:00.000-06:00

Because apparently the yahoos are in charge.

I saw the following story linked on someone's livejournal, under the tag line "Best. Typo. Ever."

They're made of whaaaat?

Don't make your underwear out of meat, boys and girls. Bad things will happen. Bad, bad things.

Badfic for the Internet-Unready

2005-09-30T14:04:00.000-05:00

For twenty minutes, I want Ryan Murphy’s life; for five, even. I want critics to shower my overwrought, self-indulgent, derivative fiction with goggle-eyed praise about its daring artistry and fearlessness. (Apparently gormless looks a lot like fearless, if you're a television critic.) And the sacks of money would come in handy. I admit it, I was curious about the season opener for Nip/Tuck. There is a certain morbid fascination in this show for me. I mean, this guy will write anything. I, on the other hand, apparently have limits as to what I will watch. (I know, who knew?)

Murphy knows how to get press, I guess; but for the entire show to be based on the premise that the characters will always and only do whatever can't be shown on network t.v. - well, it gets a little wearing after a while. The main plot of the season premiere went something like this:

Main Character gets his throat slashed by a razor-wielding maniac in a porcelain mask? Gross, but bearable. Said maniac proceeds to drug and rape main character? Really, really gross, but shown mercifully briefly. Main Character then interrogated by stone-cold police inspector, as if he were an inmate of Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, and she Nurse Ratched's younger, butcher sister? Highly unlikely, but whatever. Inspector Stoneface then takes Main Character to the scene of the crime (his own bedroom) and proceeds to re-enact the crime? Uh, hello, wildly inappropriate and dizzyingly unprofessional! So glad you could make it in time for the Euuurgh.

Crime re-enactment leads to rough sex in the victim's bed, where Inspector Stoneface's "tough love" technique is supposed to lead to some sort of psychological breakthrough for Main Character? Uh, what the hell? This sort of thing only happens in the stickier examples of badfic. Not that I have anything against fan-fiction, if it's well made. (In fact, I find good fan-fiction really interesting as an idea and it can be cool in execution.) Iolokus was harrowing, but at least it hung its loopier excesses - and hoo boy, there were some - on a workhorse classical structure. Also, it had characters I could bring myself to care about, and who behaved like recognizable, if massively screwed up, human beings; none of this may be said of Murphy's snakepit of raving, erethetic narcissists.

Honestly, I could do better. Now if I could just get that cable-tv deal...

Blogging For A Good Cause

2005-09-08T12:38:00.000-05:00

I may be hip deep in pie much of the time, but some folks are going to be up to their waists or higher in floodwaters for a while. Just when I was beginning to despair of anything useful being done, I noticed that bloggers in various places are getting the message out in very constructive ways. For anyone who hasn't seen this yet, the wonderful Fug Girls have an updated and comprehensive list of ways to make donations to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Here in Canada, the Red Cross has set up a fund for donations in aid of those displaced or injured by Hurricane Katrina. Link to the Red Cross for more information. The activity of the government of Canada is set out here: http://canada.gc.ca/main_e.html (check under the drop-down list of questions).

Even the good people at Television Without Pity are doing their bit; creatively using their combined powers of snark to achieve some pretty impressive results (twenty grand and counting). And finally, there's this. About which, I can only say

Dear Bar:

OY.

Sincerely,

The World

Well, it makes at least as much sense as the Lucas version

2005-07-27T17:41:00.000-05:00

More from Overheard in New York:

Overheard at 58th and Lexington:

"...and he looks evil and the Princess is saying to him, 'You are a good person' and he looks so evil and then she is with Obi King Wasabi and he said he is on the dark side and then the shorty guy--what is his name?--Yoga said, 'He is on the dark side' and then Dark Wader he is with the cape and looks all angry and evil reminded me of me on Mondays."

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/002291.html

A Month of Sundays

2005-07-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

In which I hold forth on house concerts, numerous movies, and the decay of language in urban centres.

I haven't updated in a while, but here's what's caught my attention over the last few Sundays:

Be A Friend of Music - Attend or Host a House Concert: As my friend (and constant inspiration) moxywoman will tell you, a house concert is exactly what it sounds like: a concert (usually, lately, of music in the folk/roots/independent songwriter idiom, but I've heard of house concerts here and there of Classical and Baroque chamber music) held in somebody's house. It's a very relaxed, intimate way to hear some new music, support an independent (i.e., potentially underfed) performer and hang out with your friends, all at the same time. Back in mid-June (when room temperature in Ottawa and body temperature were, oh, roughly equivalent) I hosted a house concert for the brilliant and too-little-known songwriter Aengus Finnan (see over to the right side of my page somewhere). Aengus is a Renaissance man for the Third Millennium - storyteller, guitarist, poet, actor, teacher, concert organizer and now, music festival founder. He has a way with words quite unlike anyone else's and he can connect with an audience like nobody's business. He graciously appeared at my door, guitar in hand (he even worked the door, and greeted some of the guests as they came in), and played a wonderful couple of sets of songs - the second set out in the backyard, when it occurred to some sweaty but smart person to suggest taking the music out there, rather than having everyone melt down in my living room - like, hello, Sandman! Just because it says "house" in the name doesn't mean we have to expire inside your house! But Aengus might be as brave as he is talented, and it was all good. Aengus is an artist in the truest sense of the word: his work is honest, compelling and springs from a very deep place. If you get a chance to go down to Shelter Valley, outside of Grafton, Ontario - about 90 minutes east of Toronto - this coming Labour Day weekend, go: don't miss the Shelter Valley Folk Festival - the first one ever last year was a big hit, and this year promises to be brilliant - check out this year's lineup!

If you want to know more about hosting a house concert, or going to one, here's a good place to start: houseconcerts.org.

And now, on to the movies.

The Aviator: I liked the detail with which Scorsese evokes Old Hollywood in this picture, but that's about all. The cameos are thick and fast on the ground, but not always interesting, or even appropriately cast (Kate Beckinsale is almost beautiful enough to play Ava Gardner, though she's a little too sweet-looking, and lacks Gardner's heavy-eyed air of exoticism. Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow? Well, okay, she's very ... blonde. Jude Law as Errol Flynn? As. Freakin'. If.*) Ultimately, the thing collapsed for me because I don't care that much about Howard Hughes, and little Leo Dicaprio ain't the one to make it happen. (Before you ask, no, I haven't seen What's Eating Gilbert Grape yet, though I do plan to.) In most of the parts I've seen him in, Dicaprio looks somehow milky and unfinished; as if he'd just wandered onto the set and somebody gave him the big-boy pants by mistake. Sometimes, as in Catch Me If You Can, this works. Sometimes, as in Gangs of New York, it's a disaster. But there were other disasters, and worse ones, than Dicaprio in that howler. (Hi, Daniel Day-Lewis? That frrrrrbbtttrrzzzzzzzzpppp! sound you just heard? That was your artistic integrity shrivelling up and blowing away.)

The only time Dicaprio really makes Hughes' batty intensity really accessible is in the scene where Howard, living in his screening room on chewed fingernails and milk (and becoming Beverly Hills' first recycler by using the empty milk bottles to pee in) has a face-to-door meeting with an industry rival played by Alec Baldwin. There's Leo, bearded like one of the Prophets, naked as a jaybird, twirling his eyeballs in opposite directions as proof of the crazy, screeching threats through a locked door at Alec Baldwin. I mean, who hasn't done that, right? Cate Blanchett has a lovely time channelling Katherine Hepburn. She's so good it's a little spooky. The fun goes out of the picture along with Katie, though.

(*Apparently I'm the only person alive who cannot see the appeal of Jude Law. He did okay - but no better - in Cold Mountain, but it seems to me that his range is limited to playing sleek upper-class cads of the kind that Hugh Grant used to specialize in, during his pre-Working Title Films phase - before the whole entire world fell in love with Grant's impersonation of a floppy-haired stammering schmoop.) Law lacks even Grant's ability to play against type, and he always looks (on screen, anway) like he takes himself so seriously. Good Lord. His turn as the "bad boy" (yawn!) in Midnight In The Garden of Good & Evil was easily the most cartoonish thing in the movie, which is remarkable considering it co-starred a transsexual demi-mondaine diva, and it allowed Kevin Spacey to gnaw his way through a whole warehouse's worth of scenery as a foppish and epicene antique dealer with a cocaine habit and a worse jones for thinking he's Rhett Butler. (Frankly, my dear, nobody gives a damn.) And Law's work in Road To Perdition was simply embarrassing. But that entire movie was misconceived, so it's hardly a distinction for Mr. Law. I'd say that Law's early appearance as Lord Alfred Douglas (a.k.a. Bosie the Superbrat) in Wilde was a brilliant piece of casting to type, but I'd hate to be thought uncharitable. If they'd only asked me, I could have told the studio that Alfie was gonna be a big flopperoo. Because, feh. Also, come on - he's not that good-looking. I'm sorry: He's just not.)

Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason: I enjoyed this one more than I expected to. Yes, it covers too much of the same ground as the first really to be considered a sequel, and Bridget still isn't very grown-up, but she does grow on one. I don't really understand the criticism that the movie faced that the jail scenes were out of step with the rest of the movie. Do movie reviewers think that Jane Austen wrote fluffy little comedies? (Wrong. Austen has teeth, man.) Lydia's near-ruin in Pride And Prejudice is exactly that; it isn't just an embarassing little faux pas - it's just about the worst thing that could possibly happen. Being thrown into jail far from home for drug smuggling seems correspondingly grim to me. (And by the way, Bridg's friends? You lot are all so unbelievably fired.)

Bridget is not very much like Elizabeth Bennet, since she lacks both Lizzy's circumspection and her backbone. Well, maybe that's not quite fair: Bridget is absolutely uncowed by embarrassment; when she decides what she wants, she lets nothing stop her. It's kind of noble, in its way. Say what you want about whether her behaviour is appropriate - she goes after what she wants, once she makes up her mind. And she may not be the cleverest girl, but she has wit. One of my favourite exchanges in the picture goes like this:

Bridget's parents pick her up at the airport, after she returns from Thailand in disgrace. She decides her relationship with Mark Darcy is irretrievable, but she's going to see him anyway. Bridget declares that she's going to lay it all on the line, and no matter what happens, "I'm going to try not to fuck up, Mum." Bridget's mother says, mildly, "Language, dear." Bridget apologizes instantly: "Sorry. I'm going to try not to fuck up, Mother." How can you not love her a little for that?

Before Sunrise: Imagine, a movie that didn't make me want to kick Ethan Hawke in the shins. It's clever and rather sweet-natured, but I think I'm about fifteen years too old to be knocked on my teakettle by it. Oh, and it's very, very talky. Good gravy, these kids can yap! Ethan Hawke is surprisingly appealing as Jesse, the wildly romantic kid who thinks he's very worldly and cynical - the veneer is about as thick as the average human hair. Julie Delpy is a good match for him as Céline, the practical French girl whose cool reserve masks a dreamy, tender and voluble heart. I was interested to see the sequel, Before Sunset, that came out this year. It revisits the same pair after they have about ten years' more life experience under their belts. I expect I'll have more to say once I've watched that one.

And now, for something completely different: I recently discovered this website, and it's giving me fits. It's called Overheard in New York: Here's a favourite entry: I think of it as The Perils of Modern Vocabulary. Heh. I'll never think of the word "biotech" the same way again.

Currently reading: The Englishman's Boy.

British Resolve

2005-07-13T17:30:00.000-05:00

I don't really know what to think about the bombings in London last week. It's a terrible thing to happen to any city, and my heart goes out to the families of those lost or injured, and I hope anyone not in London, near or far, has been able to reach loved ones since the train bombings.

I really have to wonder about those responsible for the attacks. Not to take such a thing lightly, but Londoners have a well-earned reputation not only for bearing up under circumstances like this, but for the being the sort of people in whom just this kind of adversity brings out the deepest-rooted survival instinct. Londoners have a core of pure steel. For all I know, it's genetically encoded in them. I mean, really, have these mad bombers heard of the Blitz?

Three cheers for London-town! Surviving the Roman Empire, the Plague, the Great Fire, the Nazis, and, let's face it, whatever the 21st century is going to throw at it.

What the ... ?

2005-06-10T07:46:00.000-05:00

In which I cram as many links as possible into a single post.

Jessica writes for, among other things, my second home on the web, Television Without Pity, where she was keeper of the The Scully and The Mulder Action Figures. Jessica is one half of the Fug Girls, and one of the funniest people you could hope to read.

This is probably desperately wrong - the situation is certainly highly confusing. But that didn't keep me from nearly peeing myself with laughter.

And then I scratched my head. Again. Some more. What is going on with these two? And why, exactly, do I care?

Book Blather

2005-06-08T18:17:00.000-05:00

In which I quote from the book I just read. (You should expect this to happen from time to time.)

They waited, father and son, without speaking, until finally the darkness fell and the first breath of music stirred from someplace far below them. Tiny people, insects really, slipped out from behind the curtain, opened their mouths and with their voices gilded the walls with their yearning, their grief, their boundless, reckless love that would lead each one to separate ruin.

-- Ann Patchett, Bel Canto [on Rigoletto]

It's not necessarily great art, but Bel Canto has moments of real insight, and includes some of the most crashingly romantic (or perhaps that should be Romantic) language that I've seen in a while. The rumour is that the main character is loosely based on the American soprano Renée Fleming.

Also: Louis Quilico, the greatest Rigoletto there ever was.

An Open Letter

2005-06-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

Dear CBC Radio:

Please understand that I am an unshakably loyal listener. CBC News is my news; As It Happens is the best thing ever to happen to the telephone since the invention of the pushbutton. I have Radio Two on all day Saturday and all day Sunday. Stuart McLean has a permanent place at the breakfast table, as far as I'm concerned. Rick Phillips is similarly welcome any time. My Saturday afternoon isn't complete without Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. So I say this in the most loving and constructive manner possible: Stop it already with the Songs of the Auvergne.

Today was the last straw. If you play the G-D Songs of the Ferkakte Auvergne one more time, I'm going to pitch a hissy the like of which has never been seen. What is it, like eight times in the past year alone? Get a grip. I mean, I love Karina Gauvin, too - she's aces. But enough is enough! I've heard the things so much I could sing them myself. Honestly, I'm dreaming in Auvergnais now. I can't take one more airing; take them out of the rotation or somebody at the shiny new broadcast centre on Sparks Street is in for the frowning of a lifetime. I'm talking foot-stamping, peel-the-paint-off-the-plaster, full-bore tanty. With bad words, even.

Seriously: quit it.

Much less love than usual,

Sandman

A Long Time Ago, In A Theatre Far, Far Away

2005-06-02T15:26:00.000-05:00

If you haven't seen the last Star Wars movie, look away now.

I saw Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on Friday, and I have to say I enjoyed it more than I expected to. (I thought Episode I: The Phantom Character Development was dreadful, and Episode II: Attack of the Clowns was worse. And that's the last concession to Big Georgie's pretentious naming convention I'm going to make. Just typing out the colon in the middle of all those titles gives me a pain in mine.) I knew that the dialogue would be cheesy, because, come on. And I knew there wouldn't be much (hah!) in the way of psychological complexity, because Georgie Boy doesn't do that. And yet.

I somehow cared about what happened to these characters, even though I'm not entirely sure why. Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen are given dialogue which is almost literally unspeakable. The relationship between Padmé and Anakin is about as passionate as a bowl of jelly beans: sugary and full of pretty surface colours, but sickening if you get too much of it. And they're not the only ones who are forced to emote around mouthfuls of Lucas's undercooked expository wodge. Poor Ewan McGregor fares better at finding a consistent character buried under all the mythic expectations surrounding Obi-Wan. Others, like Samuel Jackson, sink without a trace. When he is allowed to express something like honest emotion (in other words, to behave like a human being, instead of a Living Embodiment of Wisdom) McGregor does fine, even moving, work. (Obi-Wan is the real hero of this story, it seems to me.) When Lucas gives Portman and McGregor scenes together, something good happens: the story (such as it is) moves along, and it's even involving. There were moments where McGregor and Portman made me shed tears - when they were allowed to use their expressive faces. And I admit I cheered when Yoda kicked about six different kinds of nasty droid butt. But I shouldn't care, really, at this point, what happens to Anakin Skywalker. After all, in - ::sigh:: all right - Episode I - he's a whining, selfish brat with an obvious talent for destruction. In the next film he's a snot-nosed teenager in a galactic sulk. I don't envy Christensen having to pull together a performance out of Anakin's raging sense of entitlement, incomplete motivations, short-sightedness and passionate self-regard. And yet.

Why does the fact that Anakin is so easily manipulated bother me so much? I wouldn't care at all if Christensen didn't bring something to the role. On some level, I wanted Anakin to remember that Padmé and Obi-Wan loved him and valued him, even though I knew it wasn't going to end well. Lucas's biggest problem isn't that he has an ear for dialogue made of purest tin, though he does: it's that, even with his infamous absolute control over every aspect of these movies, he can't be consistent within his own creation. It's never satisfactorily explained, for instance, why all the secrecy around Anakin's marriage to Padmé is even necessary. (Hey, kids - one of you is the Chosen One, and one used to be the Queen of her own planet; make a plan like grownups - it's not like you're gonna get shipped off to the Mos Eisley Home For Over-Dressed and Unwed Mothers. Also, a little backbone wouldn't be out of place. I'm just saying.) And if the Jedi Council is made up of the wisest, most evolved minds in the galaxy, why can't any of them make a decision where Anakin is concerned that displays the sense God gave a lemon? The kid is ignored, excluded, manipulated and just plain bossed around in high-handed fashion just for funsies, as far as I can tell. (I’m tempted to think that the ever-so-fetching Padawan haircut - with its soul-destroying combination of militaristic buzzcut and punk-ass asymmetrical rattail - was the thing that pushed young Anakin over onto the path toward the Dark Side, but Obi-Wan appears to have survived the experience. Aren't there interstellar conventions against cruel and unusual punishment that would cover that horror? Yeek.)

Worst of all, though, is the fact that Anakin's transformation into that wonderfully hissable villain known as Darth Vader never feels like tragedy - because it doesn't feel inevitable. Clearly Lucas wants us to think that it is. But he allows Anakin to be convinced on the slenderest of pretexts that the Jedi are corrupt, and has the Jedi attempt to counter Palpatine's obvious ploy with equally hamfisted tactics. Strategy, it would seem, is not the Jedi way. So when Anakin's dark night of the soul finally comes, it’s entirely forced (if you'll pardon the expression) on the audience. It's meant to be horrific, but it lacks the power it might have had, because it could have been prevented if any of these laser-powered dunderheads had given over the solemn speechifying and talked to each other. (Worst in this category is Jackson's Mace Windu, whose sour-pussed, pompous windbaggery ensured that I would have kicked him out of that pretty CGI window myself if no one else had got the job done.)

What frustrated me most about this movie is how good it could have been. The talk around the final installment is that it's the best one since the original Star Wars, and certainly it comes closest to the breathtaking feeling of that very first movie. When that iconic line appeared in blue phosphor in front of me on Friday night, and then the introductory crawl started up the screen away from me, I held my breath and waited for magic. I was transported backward to the moment when I was first drawn into that galaxy far, far away. That moment is part of my childhood - it's part of me. I suspect something like it belongs to all of us. In spite of his grip on all aspects of the Star Wars universe, more crushing than Grand Moff Tarkin at his most ruthless, Lucas does not own that moment where we all waited, breathless in the dark, for something wonderful to happen - we own that moment. We want to feel swept up in that magic again. We want him to recreate it, to fulfill his original promise to us. To the extent that he lets McGregor and Portman and Christensen act honest emotion, he does honour that promise. For the rest, forget Jar-Jar and General Grievous and all that computer-generated, ultra-expensive noise. Rent Star Wars again and boo Darth Vader. Feel that shiver you get when his ominous theme rumbles out of the speakers in martial 4/4 time. And think that maybe, somewhere, a long time ago, even Darth Vader was loved. What a pity we didn’t get that movie.

Postscript: Sarah said it first, and better

Meriadoc's Lost Diary

2005-05-30T15:45:00.000-05:00

Because I am a creature of habit, I couldn't help thinking that the character played by Dominic Monaghan on Lost seemed more than a little familiar. This is what I thought on seeing the first couple of episodes of the series. (With apologies both profuse and profound to Mr. Abrams, Mr. Monaghan, Ms. Fielding, Professor Tolkien, and Miss Cassie Claire.) Of course, it probably goes without saying that any theory I had about this show was blown clean out of the clear blue water by the season finale.

Dear Diary:
This is absolutely the last time I let Pip and his stupid cousin talk me into anything. "Come West for a holiday," they said. "Just head for the Havens and over the Sea," they said. "Nothing to it." What they didn't know was that an "aeroplane" is a much less trustworthy form of transportation than even a horse! Next thing I know I'm falling out of the bloody sky from some contraption that even Saruman wouldn't be caught dead in. Apparently the Sea tries to eat aeroplane machines when it gets hungry enough. The wreckage looked like Bagshot Row after Sharkey and his ruffians got hold of things. Bloody awful! Am certain there is magic on this Island. Distressingly taller than ever - almost of a height with the Men! P. will be frantic with jealousy. Sadly all out of leaf. Withdrawal symptoms unbelievable. Cannot remember own name. Keep calling myself "Charlie". Have not used middle name in yonks. Am beginning to find one of the local shieldmaidens disturbingly attractive. First time I ever saw a pregnant shieldmaiden. Bonus: tall enough to talk to her eye-to-eye. Strangest side-effect: feet no longer hairy - v. odd.
As far as I can make it out, Númenor has risen from the waves to trap us all. Though Mister Bilbo's stories never mentioned any Ents on N. I believe there is a very angry Ent on this Island, making just the sort of noise that Treebeard and Quickbeam made just before knocking dirty great holes in Orthanc. Must find out if he knows T. (Disturbing thought: what if it's one of the Entwives, driven mad with loneliness and deprivation? V. sad for Treebeard & co., if so.) No Entwash or any decent vittles anywhere on this sodding Island. Entwives’ presumable feelings of deprivation understandable. Makes me long for the stores of Orthanc. Or even some of that lembas. Mmm - lembas. V. sad state if reduced to longing for dry, tasteless Elvish snacks. On the positive side, many Elves appear to have made journey with us on aeroplane. So many tall, slender, appallingly good-looking people. Must be Noldor as I don't recognise any names, but Kate, Boone, Shannon clearly of the line of the Firstborn. Jack could well be one of the Dunedain, but Sawyer reminds me slightly of Boromir - good with weapons, and has similar habit of nicking things that don't belong to him. Note: must remember not to call Hurley "Samwise." Will knock F's and P's heads together for their holiday suggestion, if ever rescued. Miss ale desperately.
Meriadoc C. Brandybuck