Category: Movies

Try and understand it

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We saw our first Hot Docs selection last night: The Railroad All Stars. It was about a group of prostitutes from the worst slums of Guatemala who form a football team and enter a tournament in the hopes of drawing attention to their plight (they’re beaten or killed by their clients, harassed by police, etc.), and the hoopla that followed. We saw the whole range of backgrounds that brought the women there, and marvelled at the conditions they live and work in. I was flabbergasted by the attitudes some of these women had…an old woman who’d lost a house to a rainstorm — and an eye to an old boyfriend’s drunken rage — thanking god for all her blessings because her boyfriend had built her a wood and aluminium shack in the slum, or the woman who said “I’m not ashamed of what I do because I don’t hurt anybody; in fact, doing what I do, I probably keep young girls from being raped.” This didn’t strike me as temporary self-delusion on the part of someone in denial about her situation; this woman knew where her life had taken her, and seemed at peace with it.

And yet, somehow, the whole movie was funny. So there you go. Kudos to the director.

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Because of the timing last night, I could only watch the first half of the hockey game; I watched just long enough to see Montreal tie the game at 2, but when I got home I watched the remainder on the PVR and saw them lose 3-2. While the officiating was still wonky (Justin Williams high-sticked Andrei Markov in the face with no call; Rivet also got hit in the face with a high-stick sans penalty; on the flip side, though, the Hurricanes had a goal called back when the ref at the blueline overruled the ref behind the net…it was the right call — Brind’Amour kicked the puck out from under Huet — but it was just weird that no penalty was called if the goal was waved off) but at least the Hurricans deserved their win this time. They just beat the Canadiens, pure and simple. The Habs just couldn’t recover from the loss of Saku Koivu, it seems, with their top line completely ineffective, and their second line just as useless. I’m hopeful Gainey will make some line changes — like, say, putting Plekanec on the top line with Higgins and Ryder — but in general I really fear for their chances in this series now. It’s a best of three, with two of the games in Carolina. Montreal’s lost their captain and best centre, and the Hurricans have all the momentum. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but Montreal’s going to have to find some kind of reserve their didn’t know they had to take this series.

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By some unholy twist of fate, I’ve had “You’re The Voice” by John Farnham stuck in my head for the past 24 hours. It was playing in Green Mango yesterday when I picked up my lunch, and I haven’t been able to shake it (except for the hour or so when my brain had “I Wanna Drive The Zamboni” on repeat).

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[tags]hot docs, canadiens, hurricanes, NHL, koivu, zamboni[/tags]

Well…I suppose they're experts at ball handling…

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Stephen Brunt, in yesterday’s Globe column (it requires registration, but if you search for ‘Stephen Brunt’ through Google News you can get the full content) is all too happy to jump on the reduced expectations of a Stanley Cup win in Montreal, recounting a friend’s observation that the city, content with winning a round or two nowadays, has become like Toronto. In this he may touch on the truth, but he’s more wrong that right. Montreal doesn’t have the same expectations now that they did, even as recently as 10 years ago (once Patrick Roy, who was known to single-handedly win a cup, left town just two years removed from their last cup win, the expectations began to drop), but become like Toronto? Not quite. Having lived here in Toronto for the past few, I’ve had plenty of chances to roll my eyes at LeafsManiacs. Yonge street doesn’t fill with honking cars when the Leafs win a playoff series, it fills when they win a playoff game. When they win a series, the mayor begins planning the parade route (at least, Mel Lastman did; David Miller seems a bit less frantic. Lastman actually wanted to throw them a parade for getting to the third round, for chrissakes).

There’s also a difference between the cities in the sports demeanor come October. Montreal fans are hopeful that their team can win it all, and passionate about the season’s outcome, but will grudgingly admit that their chances aren’t good. Toronto fans, on the other hand, seem genuinely convinced that their team will win it…each and every year. I’ve never experienced anything like it. They like to claim it’s devotion and dedication, but it smacks mainly of delusion. It’s kind of creepy. Like being in a sports bodysnatchers town.

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Hot Docs starts tonight. Our first documentary is about soccer-playing Guatemalan prostitutes. Seriously.

"Artists do not want to sue music fans."

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I read a couple of articles today about the new Canadian Music Creators Coalition — Canadian artists who’ve formed their own lobbying group after growing tired of having the CRIA speaking for them — and I’m pretty impressed. The three main points, discussed in much more detail in the Listening Post and Michael Geist articles above, are as follows:

  • Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
  • Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
  • Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

Zowie. CMCC, je t’aime. For now.

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Stephanie Zacharek reviews United 93 for Salon, and though she feels it’s well done, wonders if it’s worth watching:

“Paul Greengrass’ ‘United 93′ is a movie made with tremendous care, and with almost boundless sensitivity to persons living and dead. But just hours after seeing the picture, I’m finding it hard to care about Greengrass’ integrity: I’ve never had a more excruciating moviegoing experience in my life, and as brilliantly crafted — and as adamantly unexploitive — as the picture is, it still leaves you wondering why it was made in the first place…I walked out of ‘United 93’ feeling bereft and despondent; my stomach muscles had tensed into a seemingly immovable knot.”

This only strengthens my desire to see the film. If a movie is well-crafted enough to feel gut-wrenching, even a fraction as much as I did on the actual day, then it’s worth seein. And, in my opinion, it’s a story worth experiencing, buried as it has been beneath and behind the greater spectacle of the World Trade Center destruction.

Pirates & poison

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Check out this Movie Blog post about a new Warner Brothers pricing scheme (which they found at Gizmodo). Frustrated with the popularity of $3 pirated DVDs in some Asian markets, they now plan to sell legal copies for $1.50. So can someone explain to me why I’m getting charged $25+ per disc? I know, I know, they charge what the market can bear, blah blah etc. That’s fine. But don’t turn around and bitch to me about how online piracy — which might…might…account for a 5% downturn in business — puts the poor stuntmen and set designers out of business and then turn around and mark your product down 94%.

Apparently if we were to download 19 movies and pay full price for the 20th, Warner Brothers could bear it. Makes it hard to feel sorry for all their whining…

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This doesn’t make me happy: Toronto Star: 2,4-D said to cause cancer. Growing up on a farm I was around 2,4-D all the time, but my dad was licensed to use it commercially and watered it down. I suppose it freaks me out more than a whole army of suburbanites obsessed with the color of their lawns have been able to buy it off the shelf for years now and dump it into their front yards and patio plants with abandon.

By the way, it’s the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl meltdown.

ScaryStupidScary

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I think that when my guy at Harry Rosen teases me for spending way less than usual, I have a bit of a clothes spending problem. And here I was proud of myself for walking out with only a pair of shoes (these ones, in fact).

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I watched a pile of movies this weekend, most of which we’ve had stored on the PVR for a while and I just hadn’t gotten to (along with the fifteen or so still on there):

  • Warrendale (Allan King Films) was a CBC documentary made in the late 60s that the CBC refused to air. It was about emotionally troubled kids living together in a house with some (remarkably patient, by the look of it) caretakers, and seemed shocking in a few ways: the language the kids used (you’re used to any TV made during the 60s being scrubbed so clean that to hear a little boy screaming “fuck you!” over and over is startling), and the methods they used to control the kids (calming them during tantrums by wrapping up their arms and legs). It was also a little weird to see a teenage girl being bottle fed by the same woman whose face she was screaming in earlier that day. Interesting, certainly, but hard to watch.
  • The Rules Of Attraction (imdb | rotten tomatoes) wasn’t so serious, but it was depressing in its own way. I’ve come to learn that I don’t really like movies based on Bret Easton Ellis novels, and I’m also more certain than ever now that I despise the 80s; Ellis, if his books even remotely resemble an accurate picture of what things were like for rich college kids, has just given me more reason to despise them. I’ll say this for the movie: it managed to keep me from thinking about Dawson’s Creek every time James Van Der Beek was on the screen, which is no small feat.
  • I got back to the serious stuff with Ghosts Of Attica (imdb). I knew little about the Attica riots, since they happened four years before I was born, but if you’ve seen Dog Day Afternoon and you watch enough Oz you pick up a few things. It ended up being a similar story to a topic I’d discussed recently with friends: the Kent State massacre, which happened just 16 months before the Attica riots. The problem — social unrest and mass uprising — and the response — a violent overreaction by police — were eerily similar in both cases. Whatever horrible things the Attica prisoners did to get themselves thrown in prison (ignoring any bearing racism or poverty might have had on their incarceration), they didn’t deserve to be shot in the back, and the guards surely didn’t deserve to be shot in the same cowardly way by their would-be rescuers.

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We also downloaded the first season of Deadwood this weekend; I watched the first couple of episodes, but I’m just not as into it as Nellie is. She’s always had a bit more of a western fascination than I.

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Now that basketball’s over with (for me, not the Raptors…although I think even I played later into the year than they did…) I’ve gone back to running. I only did two miles tonight, just enough to get back into it. My legs felt a bit tight, probably since I haven’t run on a treadmill in a while. It should be warm (and dry, more to the point) enough soon to run outside, but that doesn’t last long; by June Toronto’s too choked with smog and humidity to run outside. For me, anyway.

Parabrix

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We just got back from watching Brick with CBGB. It’s just as good the second time.

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We (Nellie and I) had dinner at Fieramosca first. Damn, that place is good. I had orecchiette with sausage, chicken, rapini and sundried tomatoes; Nellie had the gnocchi with porcini mushrooms and zucchini. We were pretty stuffed by the end, too full even for dessert. Not too full for the limoncello though…

Adam & Eva

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We just got back from watching The Sentinel (imdb | rotten tomatoes), to which we’d won free tickets from Now. It was…not so good. Basically there was nothing in the movie that you couldn’t see coming six miles away, and Eva Longoria was completely, absolutely, 100% useless. I think she just wandered by the set one day and they grabbed her, put her in a secret-service-y-looking suit and gave her a couple of lines. I’d skip this one unless you’re having a stupid day and want something predictable. Or unless someone gives you free tickets.

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Oh god no: Kerry ‘thinking hard’ about 2008 run for president.

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I finally got my economics mark back today, which means that course is officially over with. I’m well into the book for my next course — marketing — and it’s oh-so-thrilling. It’s also a bit hard to plough through, since I regard marketing as just below cheese-in-a-tube on the scale of human accomplishment. I’m trying to read this textbook at the same time as Cluetrain, which is kind of like reading Wealth Of Nations and The Communist Manifesto at the same time.

CBGBBQ

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The Star has once again started dumping free newspapers outside my door. They do this a couple of times a year, unprompted. Normally a free newspaper is a good thing, except that I feel compelled to read a newspaper if it’s put in front of me (well…unless it’s a complete shitrag like The Sun) so I end up getting to work late every day. My own fault, I suppose, but dammit, they’re enabling me.

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Carl Bernstein, a guy who knows a thing or two about impeaching presidents, asks in the HuffPo if the president should be impeached. I have a recommendation, but I don’t think I get to vote on this.

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I’ve won tickets from Now Magazine for the second time in as many weeks. This time it’s for The Sentinel, which probably won’t be quite as good as Brick, but hey…it’s free and I was gonna see it anyway, so 3 shy little hipster hoorays for Now.

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This month’s Toronto Life, in addition to humorous letters, contains an article about the Don Valley Parkway. They make the point that further north — near Eglinton or Lawrence — it feels like a big, dead, cold highway, but the further it gets into the downtown core, it paradoxically becomes more and more green…more trees, more grass, better conformity to the landscape. Near the Bayview extension you can see the Don River, trees, fields, and the downtown towers pulling up over the trees. The first time I rode down the DVP with a friend, shortly after moving here, I was blown away as we neared the bottom of the valley at sunset, shocked by how green space I could see (I lived at Yonge & Sheppard, so I wasn’t used to seeing any), and then suddenly we were on the Gardiner and I was looking at the incredible cityscape. I remember it was the first time that I liked looking at Toronto.

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CBGB had us over last night for a barbeque, which was pretty sweet. It’s never a bad thing to have friends who own meat grilling equipment and live within the city limits in quick transit distance. And, of course, are nice enough to invite us over on a whim on a sunny Sunday afternoon for some red wine & red meat. It made us [sigh] look forward to the day when we have our own barbeque.

"When America's values are under attack, we need to act."

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From CNN: GOP hones its core agenda.

Protection of marriage amendment? Check. Anti-flag burning legislation? Check. New abortion limits? Check. Between now and the November elections, Republicans are penciling in plans to take action on social issues important to religious conservatives, the foundation of the GOP base, as they defend their congressional majority.

Hooo boy. It’s gonna get interesting down there. And by interesting, I mean bass ackwards. The quote up there in the title is from Bill Frist; I truly hope the American people listen to what he’s saying and do something…just not in the way that Frist expects.

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We finally got around to watching Hustle & Flow (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. It was pretty good, though probably not quite as good as I’d built it up to be. It’s certainly worth renting; just be prepared to have “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” stuck in your head for two days.

As only celluloid can deliver

Dan Dickinson1 Comment

Just got back from V For Vendetta (imdb | rotten tomatoes). I liked it, quite a bit actually. More than I expected to, given the negative reviews I read when it first came out. Not sure what I was reading, since it’s carrying about 75% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The storyline, and the implications of the setup, were very well done, and they managed to portray the dystopian future without making the fascism over the top (usually movies in such settings are like watching the marching cartoon hammers from The Wall). There was just enough darkness, hope, and relevance to make it seem like fantasy and warning all at once.

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This NY Review essay of the new book by two writers of Daily Kos (which I found on POGGE) contains some interesting theories, such as the one that Howard Dean’s campaign was attacked from the inside by other leading Democratic candidates (John Kerry included), large political donors and media advisers for subverting the usual “kingmaking” process.
While I find this, if true, very interesting, I do not find it terribly surprising. I suspect the Republicans would have welcomed a fight against Dean (given the political capital their manufactured war had temporarily given them), so it was unlikely they who made sure Dean’s half-crazed yell from an Iowa stage was made the subject of such mockery.

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Still on some heavy topics, Scott Adams — the writer of Dilbert — often says interesting things on his blog, but I took a special interest in this one: he asks why he must be forced to respect all religious beliefs, even the ones he finds ridiculous. He stops short of saying they’re all ridiculous, but I get the feeling he wanted to. One of the commenters sums it up nicely: “I think Scott’s saying that tolerance, as a principle, shouldn’t be taken so far as to distort reason.”

Somebody write that down.