You know your son is dull when . . . How dumb do you have to be to make such a mistake!? Who do you know named "Bory!?"
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Rory's first paycheque ever: FAIL!
You know your son is dull when . . . How dumb do you have to be to make such a mistake!? Who do you know named "Bory!?"
Friday, June 24, 2011
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play
presents
William Shakespeare's
HENRY V
at the University of Victoria
Phillip T. Young Recital Hall - MacLaurin Building B Wing
July 19, 20, 21, 22, and 24
Tickets: $22.50
Students and Seniors: $13.50
Children under 12: $5.00
available at ticketrocket.org or by calling 250-2-8-7936
visit http://childsoldiercycle.ca/www.keepitsimpletheater.com/index.htm
or view our promotional video on facebook: search "Henry V"
Interview with the Mom-pire
With my unique personality blend of arrogance and unorthodoxy, I have never been a fan of parenting magazines. All too often they are aimed exclusively at the elite upper middle-class and filled with advice and hippie-parenting programs for which the rest of the (real) world could afford neither the time nor the money. I guess poverty has made Marianne and I a little cynical, but as I unfortunately learned long ago, cynicism is closer to realism than optimism. Nevertheless, as parents, and as just people, we have more positivity, laughter, and love than most (truly cynical but entirely pretentious) parents we know.
Recently while listening to Marianne storm through one of her characteristic parenting-polemics, I was struck with an idea for a magazine in response to the ubiquitous local periodical, Island Parent Magazine which we decided to call Candid Parent Magazine. We thought a great idea for a weekly column would be one in which we feature submissions from equally irreverent parents entitled WTF!? Below is our debut entry. While I have created a make-believe framework for the following fictitious interview, most of my, and all of Marianne's hilarious statements are quoted verbatim from our otherwise quite candid conversation.
MJ: Boys mature later than girls. That's why Rory has only just started to lie in the same belligerent way Megan does.
CPM: I find it interesting that the word 'maturing' is used to describe a new-found propensity for lying.
MJ: Well that's what it is! They're maturing into teens and that is teen behaviour!
CPM: I know, I just think its ironic. I might choose the word 'developing' into teenagers rather than 'maturing' in the context of lying.
MJ: It's incredible. As parents you suffer through all of these awkward and irritating changes, forced to observe and participate the whole time! It's a fucking nightmare!
CPM: Wow! Mother of the year award does NOT go to Marianne Christopher! That is a bold and revealing statement - spoken like a woman who truly hates mothering.
MJ: No, no! I love the kids. I just hate them sometimes.
CPM: Ahhh, the contradictory enigma that is you.
MJ: You know that Father's Day stuff on your desk? Camille made that stuff herself, you know. She's actually good at stuff like that when she puts her mind to it. She can actually do stuff, like, . . . make coffee, . . . and that other thing she does.
MJ: Again, astonishingly negligent and dismissive. Your inattentiveness is unparallelled. I'm truly amazed.
MJ: Oh, hush. You know what I mean. And Aiden got that cool dancing bursary. When he's medicated he can actually accomplish things too without you wanting to strangle him.
CPM: You know, you're evil.
MJ: I'm not evil. I just have a lot of kids and no time for sugar-coated, half-assed, liberal parenting.
CPM: You're partly evil - like, . . . 80%.
MJ: What!?
See you in hell,
Shakes.
Recently while listening to Marianne storm through one of her characteristic parenting-polemics, I was struck with an idea for a magazine in response to the ubiquitous local periodical, Island Parent Magazine which we decided to call Candid Parent Magazine. We thought a great idea for a weekly column would be one in which we feature submissions from equally irreverent parents entitled WTF!? Below is our debut entry. While I have created a make-believe framework for the following fictitious interview, most of my, and all of Marianne's hilarious statements are quoted verbatim from our otherwise quite candid conversation.
MJ: Boys mature later than girls. That's why Rory has only just started to lie in the same belligerent way Megan does.
CPM: I find it interesting that the word 'maturing' is used to describe a new-found propensity for lying.
MJ: Well that's what it is! They're maturing into teens and that is teen behaviour!
CPM: I know, I just think its ironic. I might choose the word 'developing' into teenagers rather than 'maturing' in the context of lying.
MJ: It's incredible. As parents you suffer through all of these awkward and irritating changes, forced to observe and participate the whole time! It's a fucking nightmare!
CPM: Wow! Mother of the year award does NOT go to Marianne Christopher! That is a bold and revealing statement - spoken like a woman who truly hates mothering.
MJ: No, no! I love the kids. I just hate them sometimes.
CPM: Ahhh, the contradictory enigma that is you.
MJ: You know that Father's Day stuff on your desk? Camille made that stuff herself, you know. She's actually good at stuff like that when she puts her mind to it. She can actually do stuff, like, . . . make coffee, . . . and that other thing she does.
MJ: Again, astonishingly negligent and dismissive. Your inattentiveness is unparallelled. I'm truly amazed.
MJ: Oh, hush. You know what I mean. And Aiden got that cool dancing bursary. When he's medicated he can actually accomplish things too without you wanting to strangle him.
CPM: You know, you're evil.
MJ: I'm not evil. I just have a lot of kids and no time for sugar-coated, half-assed, liberal parenting.
CPM: You're partly evil - like, . . . 80%.
MJ: What!?
See you in hell,
Shakes.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Horror and Drama
Here are my latest two submissions it the University of Victoria's The Martlet. They actually published one of them this time. Visit http://www.martlet.ca/martlet/article/insidious-great-scare/. Bot articles in their entirety are below.
Movie Review: Insidious
After nineteen hours in five sessions under the needle I finally got my Darth Vader tattoo finished. Oh yeah, I did it. The relationship I developed with the artist/owner resulted in his generously donating his free preview movie passes to Insidious to me. In the past few years I have become something of a horror movie aficionado and this one didn't disappoint.
From the makers of Paranormal Activity and Saw, Insidious is, for all intents and purposes, a re-visitation of Poltergeist, the only popular horror film in history to deal with the repressed fear of child abduction, until now. In this version, the child's body remains in the earthly realm while his "astral projection" is held captive in a hellish netherworld called "the further" by entities with an "insidious agenda."
The premise gives rise to myriad thrills and chills in both this realm and "the further" with visually spectacular demons, monsters, ghosts, and a particularly disturbing twilight-zone-like setting in the netherworld. The film is filled with all manner of horrific deliciousness and even includes some refreshing comic relief which openly ridicules its own horror genre. In this case the comedy is accomplished with a requisite pair of ghost-hunting buffoons reminiscent of the Ghostbusters, or the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys.
This is a great film. Unlike its production predecessors, it makes no effort at faux-documentary realism (as with Paranormal Activity a la Blair Witch Project), nor does it fall back on the easy emotional and gore spectacle of torture porn (as with Saw). It's just a good ol' fashioned horror film, but it has some fantastic innovations. There are some contrived plot conventions, and more than one moment of absurdism, but the film is unencumbered with the heavy emotion elicited by torture porn, or abused children, which one uncomfortably assumes will be the premise from the outset. Ultimately, it relies a little too heavily on the visual shocks that had me jumping out of my seat at an exhausting rate, but the visuals that caused these moments were absolutely chilling. Insidious will leave you with powerful, if not somewhat clichéd images, that will haunt your visual memory for days after. I like it more today than right after I saw it. Very cool. 4/5 stars.
Stage and Film Review: Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein broadcast live at Silver City from the National Theatre in London
Frankenstein! It doesn’t get better than Frankenstein! Ever since Mary Shelley published her wildly popular eighteenth-century novel, this tale has spawned a plethora of interpretations, especially in film. While early film melodrama made something of a camp convention out of the tale, its original text remains iconographic. Kenneth Branagh made some effort to remain loyal to the original tale, but even he could not help the impulse to take some artistic license.
Danny Boyle (creator of 28 Days) has produced a stage version that is spectacular in its effects and absolutely stunning in its performance. In Boyle’s interpretation, the first third of the novel’s original plotline is cut out. Instead, Boyle chooses to begin with the ‘birth’ of the wretch, and he maintains that as his primary perspective throughout. Boyle has his two lead actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, rotate the roles of Victor and The Wretch on alternating nights to focus on their dichotomy as foils: one lusts for social interaction and is unable to participate, the other rejects social interaction and is unwilling to participate; one desires a wife and lover who would surely reject him, the other is blessed with a beautiful and ever-forgiving wife and lover whom he cannot help but reject; one is violently desperate for the love of his maker-father, the other is unable to connect with a father that dotes on him. The racial differentiation between Victor and the actor that plays his father (Victor is white, his father is black) only emphasizes this latter juxtaposition.
But the real story here is the performance. The physical representation of a ‘new’ body is unbelievably convincing and dramatically horrific. The first almost ten minutes of the production are silently but physically acted as The Wretch comes to grips with his new body and the horror of his isolation. Victor only briefly appears in this opening scene to reject him and flee. Nevertheless, Victor is almost as compelling, and I only wish I could have seen a live performance of the next night’s show to see the actors switch roles, borrow from each other’s interpretations, and add their own.
This single live performance will be complemented by an encore performance broadcast on March 31st at 7:00 PM at both Silver City and Odeon theatres.
See you in hell,
Shakes.
Movie Review: Insidious
After nineteen hours in five sessions under the needle I finally got my Darth Vader tattoo finished. Oh yeah, I did it. The relationship I developed with the artist/owner resulted in his generously donating his free preview movie passes to Insidious to me. In the past few years I have become something of a horror movie aficionado and this one didn't disappoint.
From the makers of Paranormal Activity and Saw, Insidious is, for all intents and purposes, a re-visitation of Poltergeist, the only popular horror film in history to deal with the repressed fear of child abduction, until now. In this version, the child's body remains in the earthly realm while his "astral projection" is held captive in a hellish netherworld called "the further" by entities with an "insidious agenda."
The premise gives rise to myriad thrills and chills in both this realm and "the further" with visually spectacular demons, monsters, ghosts, and a particularly disturbing twilight-zone-like setting in the netherworld. The film is filled with all manner of horrific deliciousness and even includes some refreshing comic relief which openly ridicules its own horror genre. In this case the comedy is accomplished with a requisite pair of ghost-hunting buffoons reminiscent of the Ghostbusters, or the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys.
This is a great film. Unlike its production predecessors, it makes no effort at faux-documentary realism (as with Paranormal Activity a la Blair Witch Project), nor does it fall back on the easy emotional and gore spectacle of torture porn (as with Saw). It's just a good ol' fashioned horror film, but it has some fantastic innovations. There are some contrived plot conventions, and more than one moment of absurdism, but the film is unencumbered with the heavy emotion elicited by torture porn, or abused children, which one uncomfortably assumes will be the premise from the outset. Ultimately, it relies a little too heavily on the visual shocks that had me jumping out of my seat at an exhausting rate, but the visuals that caused these moments were absolutely chilling. Insidious will leave you with powerful, if not somewhat clichéd images, that will haunt your visual memory for days after. I like it more today than right after I saw it. Very cool. 4/5 stars.
Stage and Film Review: Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein broadcast live at Silver City from the National Theatre in London
Frankenstein! It doesn’t get better than Frankenstein! Ever since Mary Shelley published her wildly popular eighteenth-century novel, this tale has spawned a plethora of interpretations, especially in film. While early film melodrama made something of a camp convention out of the tale, its original text remains iconographic. Kenneth Branagh made some effort to remain loyal to the original tale, but even he could not help the impulse to take some artistic license.
Danny Boyle (creator of 28 Days) has produced a stage version that is spectacular in its effects and absolutely stunning in its performance. In Boyle’s interpretation, the first third of the novel’s original plotline is cut out. Instead, Boyle chooses to begin with the ‘birth’ of the wretch, and he maintains that as his primary perspective throughout. Boyle has his two lead actors, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, rotate the roles of Victor and The Wretch on alternating nights to focus on their dichotomy as foils: one lusts for social interaction and is unable to participate, the other rejects social interaction and is unwilling to participate; one desires a wife and lover who would surely reject him, the other is blessed with a beautiful and ever-forgiving wife and lover whom he cannot help but reject; one is violently desperate for the love of his maker-father, the other is unable to connect with a father that dotes on him. The racial differentiation between Victor and the actor that plays his father (Victor is white, his father is black) only emphasizes this latter juxtaposition.
But the real story here is the performance. The physical representation of a ‘new’ body is unbelievably convincing and dramatically horrific. The first almost ten minutes of the production are silently but physically acted as The Wretch comes to grips with his new body and the horror of his isolation. Victor only briefly appears in this opening scene to reject him and flee. Nevertheless, Victor is almost as compelling, and I only wish I could have seen a live performance of the next night’s show to see the actors switch roles, borrow from each other’s interpretations, and add their own.
This single live performance will be complemented by an encore performance broadcast on March 31st at 7:00 PM at both Silver City and Odeon theatres.
See you in hell,
Shakes.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Victoria Film Fiasco
Of the hundreds of lines I penned about the Film Fest, The Martlet published eight of them, and only in an online exclusive at http://www.martlet.ca/sections/culture/ for Thursday February 24, 2011. I have taken the liberty of publishing the rest below.
VICTORIA FILM FIASCO
The Victoria Film Festival. Opening night. A Friday night. Palpable excitement in the air. Kind of. After the day’s fiasco in which The Martlet press package had not arrived I was guided to an a.w.o.l. e-mail that explained why. Offered platitudes like, “My hands are tied,” I was informed that the box office would not be able to process my request until Monday – to check what was not already sold out – a coded message that everything was likely to be. Ultimately, I had to pay well over $100 out of pocket to acquire tickets for the night’s show, and to ensure I would have tickets to the others I hope to review. I was already barred from attending the long-since sold out Opening Night Gala and concomitant feature. I was fortunate to get tickets to the night’s obvious second feature. It represents the highest achievement of the indie, amateur documentary genre – the smartest kid on the short bus.
But this fiasco would not dampen my spirits. I ventured forth with high hopes; I didn’t come home cheering, but I did come home satisfied. Great Film Festival fare! The title of the indie-documentary No Fun City is somewhat misleading. The film likens the entire “no fun” problem in Vancouver to the ailing underground punk-rock industry. The film was one of the three prominently displayed on the front page of the Victoria Film Festival’s website.
The opening verbal prologue in the theatre rendered the directors Melissa James and Kate Kroll conspicuously absent. When called for an introduction, no-one stood to take credit. The audience tittered with bemusement. The film began with an ambiguously tasteless and somewhat ironic introduction: an advertisement of sorts lamenting the homeless plight in Victoria, followed by a strange image, apparently identifying the preceding as a ‘pain/pleasure paradox’ – presumably the pain of the message with the pleasure of its film media presentation. The answer to that particular riddle was never made clear.
The opening-night second-feature audience was unruly to no end. The inexplicably low volume was eventually turned up to drown them out following choruses of “Turn it up!” chirped variously from the audience. Having missed what may have been pivotal opening scenes from the noise and low volume, I settled in to be convinced, educated, informed, and titillated.
The film was well constructed. The videography, continuity, and editing were of an impressive professional level for an indie venture. As a film work of art, it was complete. The indie style and intentionally amateur-styled filmography matched seamlessly with the film’s content. Staying true to its theme of rejecting authority, there is no conventional narrative voice-over. Instead the continuity is driven by the voices of those on the screen and the occasional written interjection. Considering the pastiche of footage and the lack of narrator the film’s trajectory is surprisingly cohesive.
But for all its technical strengths, its message was unclear, and that failing overshadowed all of its less visible successes. The film outlines a problem but fails to offer even the suggestion of any recourse to stratagem. It appears to celebrate its own message of hopelessness. One punk-rock alumnus identifies the punk aesthetic as “no hope except what we’re about to do.” Tracking the entrepreneurial ventures of four major players, Malice, Wendy 13, Justin, and David, the film plays out more like a punk-rock tragedy than a documentary. All are trying to scratch out a living in the underground punk-rock culture of Vancouver – and failing. Eventually Malice takes on a disillusioned and defeated tone, reporting that he was “working with the city to make [his newest venture] work right” after the serious failing of his latest venture. Wendy is evicted from her home at The Cobalt. Justin is headed for L.A. Malice faces an insurmountable lawsuit, and the possibility of deportation. At the end of the film, David is the last man standing having found limited success in a watered-down version of the punk rock scene in a converted movie theatre, with all necessary licenses and permits in place, except a permanent liquor license. Overall, it was a gritty, ground-level expose of Vancouver’s underground punk-rock scene. As far as documentaries go, there was nothing exceptional here, nor unexpected. Even so, the movie did a very good job of depicting the endless psychobabble of “all this bureaucracy.”
The partisanship of the filmmakers was evident early in the proceedings, making champions of the under-dog punk-rock entrepreneurs. Their unfortunate heroes were punk-patrons who offered such compelling tidbits of wisdom as, “It’s always gonna have to happen until something changes.” Justin and his partner provided some witty dialogue on the ‘no-fun’ issue, suggesting that city by-laws have made underground punk about as fun as drinking in a mall, which they humorously expand to, “It actually takes the fun out of drinking in a mall.” The other side of the issue was given almost no voice at all. Villainizing the silent and ambiguous establishment, its only representatives were an extraordinarily dorky condo tenant, complete with evil euro-foreign accent, and an even dorkier low-level city employee.
The film was aimed at a fairly narrow and specific demographic. At one point the punk-rock music industry is referred to as a “melting pot” of Vancouver music. The statement is ironically juxtaposed against the almost exclusively white male demographic represented in the movie. The less complicit audience members showed mild amusement when the band “Alcoholic White Trash” was featured towards the end of the film. That ironic message was painfully clear, although not necessarily intended by the directors, unless they were brilliantly covert in some pro-establishment message. I don’t think that was their intention.
Ultimately, I was unsure what the point was. Reject authority? Work with authority? Punk rockers rule? The establishment sucks? And justice for all? Only once was a message clearly articulated: get out there and support underground punk venues if you want them to survive. Admittedly, this message was a little lost on me, but to its specific target audience, it must have been very appealing. Indeed, they made their approbation known.
The crowd was a motley mixture with an interesting balance of proud punk-rockers and more austere film aficionados. The rowdy interjections of the latter group had the effect of a claque, clearly indicating the cause’s champions as they appeared on-screen. One might almost suspect their presence was a quite intentional part of the whole presentation. The film’s effect on the mixed audience was fascinating. The mood of the room was as much Rocky Horror Picture Show as it was film festival documentary. At the end, the universal smattering of applause declared the film definitively ‘good.’ But the crowd was clearly not ready to give up its thunderous applause on this particular film.
Overall, it was worth the watch. Its documentary style was excellent: a fast-paced pastiche of interview and expose. It was interesting and entertaining, punctuated with moments of candid humour. But it didn’t set the bar particularly high. Its minor efforts to be emotionally hard-hitting were conservative and diluted with an ambiguous cause. Certainly I am better educated on Vancouver punk-rock culture, both from what was on the screen and the audience in the theatre, but I don’t feel particularly enlightened, nor motivated to join the cause, but some might be. The entire experience was surely a bit of a fiasco – a fun start for the Film Festival, and I came home just about satisfied. I give it 2-1/2 stars out of 5.
David Christopher
Culture Correspondent
The Martlet
VFF: Tragedy, Horror, and Funding Cuts
The last two evenings have been well spent in the depths of Film Festival tragedy and horror. On Saturday, the festival screened two powerful offerings concurrently: As If I Am Not There and Biutiful. The former is a powerful realist drama depicting the plight of a young school-teacher within the upheavals of militant Sarajevo. The latter is a Spanish naturalist piece set in Barcelona and starring Javier Bardem. The former was one of the three critical picks featured on the Victoria Film Festival main page. The latter starred Javier Bardem. I should have reviewed the former. I snuck into the latter. Come on! Javier Bardem! While I am remiss to have missed the former, I was delighted with the latter. Well, perhaps delighted isn’t the best word. The film follows the last months of cancer victim Uxbal’s life. His existence is saturated with tragic reality: guilt and fatherhood, responsibility and humanitarianism, and there’s even a subtle and tasteful supernatural interjection.
All superficial beauty has been erased from this world. The mise-en-scene is brilliantly stark and unapologetically real. Bardem as the tragic father is simply perfect. His liaisons include illegal immigrant street hawks, Chinese slave entrepreneurs, corrupt contractors, and a bi-polar ex-wife who is prostituting to his brother. The horrors of slavery and the regular imagery of cash money were repetitive themes. The relentless squalor and constant economic pressure is the bleak backdrop against which the very few Biutiful moments are rendered more poignant. All of them were emotional moments regarding children, confession, and reconciliation. Ultimately it is a movie that pits family against brutal reality. Eventually reality wins, but not before Uxbal experiences a compelling range of human emotions. In terms of modern social criticism, this film is as important as Schindler’s List and should be seen by everyone. The film is replete with real tension and emotional crescendos. Bardem hits all of them with subtle virtuosity. It’s Biutiful.
My next evening of film-going, Sunday, was less emotionally taxing, but more thrilling. Canadian-made horror feature The Shrine attracted a much smaller crowd than I would have thought. After the opening horror, the plot begins with a conventional shower scene, but quickly moves in a less conventional direction, still anti-feminist. The transgression of the young, beautiful, female protagonist is not a stereotypically sexual one, but rather a transgression against male authority. She defies the dictates of her male newspaper employer and her boyfriend. Nevertheless, the pair of young female protagonists still manage to get stripped naked midway through the movie. One of them is tied up and tortured.
For all its cliche it is remarkably well done and without recourse to torture pornography, although its euro-setting is reminiscent of the movie Hostel. One character even mentions that there are “no hostels” at their forbidden destination. The main drive of the narrative is constructed around a standard travel-horror format. The horror conventions in this film are many: eerie foreboding fog; deep, dark forest; spooky isolated euro-village complete with creepy little girl in an ankle-length smock and her butcher knife father; demonic Christian mythology; villainous priests; and euro-slavanian hillbilly henchmen. There are so many conventions, in fact, one would hardly think they could occupy the same space. But they all comfortably intersect in an intelligent narrative. That’s one of the things that makes this film great. It’s not trying to be the newest extreme in shocking torture pornography. This film is just trying to be a good film and unabashedly uses convention. Within that framework, Freudian oedipal eye-castration, and the psychology of masked torture is all very compelling and disturbing.
In the audience of the only Canadian screening of The Shrine this year was Executive Producer Trevor Matthews, who also co-wrote the film and starred as one of the apparent villains. I was fortuitous enough to catch up with him after the show. Matthews began a traditional university education at Carleton University in Ottawa before he skipped out to attend The New York Film Academy. Since then he has created start-up production company Brookstreet Pictures. The Shrine is the company’s second feature length production. For a budget of what Matthews informed me was under $1.5 million, the cinematographic quality and special effects were excellent. When another interviewer asked him about the decision not to use sub-titles for the large amount of Polish dialogue in the film, he responded that he wanted the audience to experience the characters’ tension in the fear that arises from being in an environment where you don’t understand your antagonists. It was very effective. When Matthews in turn interviewed my teenage son for his opinion, he responded with a candid, “Cool effects. It was scary.” It is genuinely scary, but not over the top, and highly entertaining. These are amongst the many likeable things about this film. Oh, and it’s Canadian! Bonus!
As a footnote to Friday’s fiasco, I went to Film Festival Box Office headquarters on Saturday afternoon. When I entered the office, the effects of financial cuts to the Arts were evident. There was an environment of disarray, confusion, mess, and few people seemed to know who anyone else was. It looked like an accountant’s office had exploded. One of the festival volunteers, who generously gave up her ticket of Biutiful as an act of goodwill, and who asked to remain anonymous for some reason, informed me that financial cuts had hit hard, and that the 2011 Festival had barely been able to survive. While internally it was clearly problematic, externally you’d never know it. They’ve done great work with few resources. Their volunteers have been courteous and professional. The films have been great!
David Christopher
Culture Correspondent
The Martlet
And another Victoria Film Festival winds to a close.
In their seventeenth year they offered some fantastic fare. No Fun City was an interesting watch. Biutiful was beautiful. The Shrine was horrifically stunning. The People vs. George Lucas was delightfully tongue-in-cheek, and it was a surprisingly relevant piece of film history criticism. Two Indians Talking addressed the questions of indigenous land rights and cultural oppression in an interrogative way that invited all members of the audience to participate in the machinations behind two very personalized and ingenuous first nations men grappling with the reality of their social positions and their revolutionary decisions.
Certainly one of the most interesting evenings was entitled Dinner and More than a Movie. The program included a variety of short sexualized films and was hosted at The Superior in the James Bay commercial sector. The atmosphere of the restaurant represents a sort of avant-garde 'Beetlejuice' of the North. Nevertheless, its modernist décor is not overwhelming, although somewhat risible in its blatant effort. It is comfortable with excellent service staff and fantastic food. I went back two days later for more of their fare. The films represented a range of sexual themes from the comic to the repressed and grotesque. All of them were fascinating, well made, and highly entertaining. One about teenage oral sexuality was unobtrusively didactic. The second last film which integrated torture, murder, and sex was uncomfortably compelling. All of them summarized in the Events listing for the evening’s program on the Victoria Film Festival 2011 website.
My only regret is that I hadn’t time to see more of the Festival offerings. The Box Office line-up looked spectacular and I doubt any of the films were not worth their admission. I should very much like to have seen the Family Fracases showcase but time constraints and the cost had become prohibitive. Alas, one cannot see every film they wish to in a week and half.
Festival categories and winners were announced during Sunday night’s closing ‘gala’ at Spinnaker’s Brew Pub:
Best Student Film: Heal by Mian Adnan Ahmad
Best Animation: Trembling Veil of Bones by Matthew Talbot-Kelly
Best Short Film: Apostles by Jeff Chan
Best Documentary: No Fun City by Melissa James and Kate Kroll
Best Canadian Feature: Trigger by Bruce McDonald (written by Daniel MacIvor)
Best Feature: When We Leave by Feo Aladag
Audience Favourite: Incendies by Denis Villeneuve
David Christopher
Culture Correspondent
The Martlet
See you in hell,
Shakes.
VICTORIA FILM FIASCO
The Victoria Film Festival. Opening night. A Friday night. Palpable excitement in the air. Kind of. After the day’s fiasco in which The Martlet press package had not arrived I was guided to an a.w.o.l. e-mail that explained why. Offered platitudes like, “My hands are tied,” I was informed that the box office would not be able to process my request until Monday – to check what was not already sold out – a coded message that everything was likely to be. Ultimately, I had to pay well over $100 out of pocket to acquire tickets for the night’s show, and to ensure I would have tickets to the others I hope to review. I was already barred from attending the long-since sold out Opening Night Gala and concomitant feature. I was fortunate to get tickets to the night’s obvious second feature. It represents the highest achievement of the indie, amateur documentary genre – the smartest kid on the short bus.
But this fiasco would not dampen my spirits. I ventured forth with high hopes; I didn’t come home cheering, but I did come home satisfied. Great Film Festival fare! The title of the indie-documentary No Fun City is somewhat misleading. The film likens the entire “no fun” problem in Vancouver to the ailing underground punk-rock industry. The film was one of the three prominently displayed on the front page of the Victoria Film Festival’s website.
The opening verbal prologue in the theatre rendered the directors Melissa James and Kate Kroll conspicuously absent. When called for an introduction, no-one stood to take credit. The audience tittered with bemusement. The film began with an ambiguously tasteless and somewhat ironic introduction: an advertisement of sorts lamenting the homeless plight in Victoria, followed by a strange image, apparently identifying the preceding as a ‘pain/pleasure paradox’ – presumably the pain of the message with the pleasure of its film media presentation. The answer to that particular riddle was never made clear.
The opening-night second-feature audience was unruly to no end. The inexplicably low volume was eventually turned up to drown them out following choruses of “Turn it up!” chirped variously from the audience. Having missed what may have been pivotal opening scenes from the noise and low volume, I settled in to be convinced, educated, informed, and titillated.
The film was well constructed. The videography, continuity, and editing were of an impressive professional level for an indie venture. As a film work of art, it was complete. The indie style and intentionally amateur-styled filmography matched seamlessly with the film’s content. Staying true to its theme of rejecting authority, there is no conventional narrative voice-over. Instead the continuity is driven by the voices of those on the screen and the occasional written interjection. Considering the pastiche of footage and the lack of narrator the film’s trajectory is surprisingly cohesive.
But for all its technical strengths, its message was unclear, and that failing overshadowed all of its less visible successes. The film outlines a problem but fails to offer even the suggestion of any recourse to stratagem. It appears to celebrate its own message of hopelessness. One punk-rock alumnus identifies the punk aesthetic as “no hope except what we’re about to do.” Tracking the entrepreneurial ventures of four major players, Malice, Wendy 13, Justin, and David, the film plays out more like a punk-rock tragedy than a documentary. All are trying to scratch out a living in the underground punk-rock culture of Vancouver – and failing. Eventually Malice takes on a disillusioned and defeated tone, reporting that he was “working with the city to make [his newest venture] work right” after the serious failing of his latest venture. Wendy is evicted from her home at The Cobalt. Justin is headed for L.A. Malice faces an insurmountable lawsuit, and the possibility of deportation. At the end of the film, David is the last man standing having found limited success in a watered-down version of the punk rock scene in a converted movie theatre, with all necessary licenses and permits in place, except a permanent liquor license. Overall, it was a gritty, ground-level expose of Vancouver’s underground punk-rock scene. As far as documentaries go, there was nothing exceptional here, nor unexpected. Even so, the movie did a very good job of depicting the endless psychobabble of “all this bureaucracy.”
The partisanship of the filmmakers was evident early in the proceedings, making champions of the under-dog punk-rock entrepreneurs. Their unfortunate heroes were punk-patrons who offered such compelling tidbits of wisdom as, “It’s always gonna have to happen until something changes.” Justin and his partner provided some witty dialogue on the ‘no-fun’ issue, suggesting that city by-laws have made underground punk about as fun as drinking in a mall, which they humorously expand to, “It actually takes the fun out of drinking in a mall.” The other side of the issue was given almost no voice at all. Villainizing the silent and ambiguous establishment, its only representatives were an extraordinarily dorky condo tenant, complete with evil euro-foreign accent, and an even dorkier low-level city employee.
The film was aimed at a fairly narrow and specific demographic. At one point the punk-rock music industry is referred to as a “melting pot” of Vancouver music. The statement is ironically juxtaposed against the almost exclusively white male demographic represented in the movie. The less complicit audience members showed mild amusement when the band “Alcoholic White Trash” was featured towards the end of the film. That ironic message was painfully clear, although not necessarily intended by the directors, unless they were brilliantly covert in some pro-establishment message. I don’t think that was their intention.
Ultimately, I was unsure what the point was. Reject authority? Work with authority? Punk rockers rule? The establishment sucks? And justice for all? Only once was a message clearly articulated: get out there and support underground punk venues if you want them to survive. Admittedly, this message was a little lost on me, but to its specific target audience, it must have been very appealing. Indeed, they made their approbation known.
The crowd was a motley mixture with an interesting balance of proud punk-rockers and more austere film aficionados. The rowdy interjections of the latter group had the effect of a claque, clearly indicating the cause’s champions as they appeared on-screen. One might almost suspect their presence was a quite intentional part of the whole presentation. The film’s effect on the mixed audience was fascinating. The mood of the room was as much Rocky Horror Picture Show as it was film festival documentary. At the end, the universal smattering of applause declared the film definitively ‘good.’ But the crowd was clearly not ready to give up its thunderous applause on this particular film.
Overall, it was worth the watch. Its documentary style was excellent: a fast-paced pastiche of interview and expose. It was interesting and entertaining, punctuated with moments of candid humour. But it didn’t set the bar particularly high. Its minor efforts to be emotionally hard-hitting were conservative and diluted with an ambiguous cause. Certainly I am better educated on Vancouver punk-rock culture, both from what was on the screen and the audience in the theatre, but I don’t feel particularly enlightened, nor motivated to join the cause, but some might be. The entire experience was surely a bit of a fiasco – a fun start for the Film Festival, and I came home just about satisfied. I give it 2-1/2 stars out of 5.
David Christopher
Culture Correspondent
The Martlet
VFF: Tragedy, Horror, and Funding Cuts
The last two evenings have been well spent in the depths of Film Festival tragedy and horror. On Saturday, the festival screened two powerful offerings concurrently: As If I Am Not There and Biutiful. The former is a powerful realist drama depicting the plight of a young school-teacher within the upheavals of militant Sarajevo. The latter is a Spanish naturalist piece set in Barcelona and starring Javier Bardem. The former was one of the three critical picks featured on the Victoria Film Festival main page. The latter starred Javier Bardem. I should have reviewed the former. I snuck into the latter. Come on! Javier Bardem! While I am remiss to have missed the former, I was delighted with the latter. Well, perhaps delighted isn’t the best word. The film follows the last months of cancer victim Uxbal’s life. His existence is saturated with tragic reality: guilt and fatherhood, responsibility and humanitarianism, and there’s even a subtle and tasteful supernatural interjection.
All superficial beauty has been erased from this world. The mise-en-scene is brilliantly stark and unapologetically real. Bardem as the tragic father is simply perfect. His liaisons include illegal immigrant street hawks, Chinese slave entrepreneurs, corrupt contractors, and a bi-polar ex-wife who is prostituting to his brother. The horrors of slavery and the regular imagery of cash money were repetitive themes. The relentless squalor and constant economic pressure is the bleak backdrop against which the very few Biutiful moments are rendered more poignant. All of them were emotional moments regarding children, confession, and reconciliation. Ultimately it is a movie that pits family against brutal reality. Eventually reality wins, but not before Uxbal experiences a compelling range of human emotions. In terms of modern social criticism, this film is as important as Schindler’s List and should be seen by everyone. The film is replete with real tension and emotional crescendos. Bardem hits all of them with subtle virtuosity. It’s Biutiful.
My next evening of film-going, Sunday, was less emotionally taxing, but more thrilling. Canadian-made horror feature The Shrine attracted a much smaller crowd than I would have thought. After the opening horror, the plot begins with a conventional shower scene, but quickly moves in a less conventional direction, still anti-feminist. The transgression of the young, beautiful, female protagonist is not a stereotypically sexual one, but rather a transgression against male authority. She defies the dictates of her male newspaper employer and her boyfriend. Nevertheless, the pair of young female protagonists still manage to get stripped naked midway through the movie. One of them is tied up and tortured.
For all its cliche it is remarkably well done and without recourse to torture pornography, although its euro-setting is reminiscent of the movie Hostel. One character even mentions that there are “no hostels” at their forbidden destination. The main drive of the narrative is constructed around a standard travel-horror format. The horror conventions in this film are many: eerie foreboding fog; deep, dark forest; spooky isolated euro-village complete with creepy little girl in an ankle-length smock and her butcher knife father; demonic Christian mythology; villainous priests; and euro-slavanian hillbilly henchmen. There are so many conventions, in fact, one would hardly think they could occupy the same space. But they all comfortably intersect in an intelligent narrative. That’s one of the things that makes this film great. It’s not trying to be the newest extreme in shocking torture pornography. This film is just trying to be a good film and unabashedly uses convention. Within that framework, Freudian oedipal eye-castration, and the psychology of masked torture is all very compelling and disturbing.
In the audience of the only Canadian screening of The Shrine this year was Executive Producer Trevor Matthews, who also co-wrote the film and starred as one of the apparent villains. I was fortuitous enough to catch up with him after the show. Matthews began a traditional university education at Carleton University in Ottawa before he skipped out to attend The New York Film Academy. Since then he has created start-up production company Brookstreet Pictures. The Shrine is the company’s second feature length production. For a budget of what Matthews informed me was under $1.5 million, the cinematographic quality and special effects were excellent. When another interviewer asked him about the decision not to use sub-titles for the large amount of Polish dialogue in the film, he responded that he wanted the audience to experience the characters’ tension in the fear that arises from being in an environment where you don’t understand your antagonists. It was very effective. When Matthews in turn interviewed my teenage son for his opinion, he responded with a candid, “Cool effects. It was scary.” It is genuinely scary, but not over the top, and highly entertaining. These are amongst the many likeable things about this film. Oh, and it’s Canadian! Bonus!
As a footnote to Friday’s fiasco, I went to Film Festival Box Office headquarters on Saturday afternoon. When I entered the office, the effects of financial cuts to the Arts were evident. There was an environment of disarray, confusion, mess, and few people seemed to know who anyone else was. It looked like an accountant’s office had exploded. One of the festival volunteers, who generously gave up her ticket of Biutiful as an act of goodwill, and who asked to remain anonymous for some reason, informed me that financial cuts had hit hard, and that the 2011 Festival had barely been able to survive. While internally it was clearly problematic, externally you’d never know it. They’ve done great work with few resources. Their volunteers have been courteous and professional. The films have been great!
David Christopher
Culture Correspondent
The Martlet
And another Victoria Film Festival winds to a close.
In their seventeenth year they offered some fantastic fare. No Fun City was an interesting watch. Biutiful was beautiful. The Shrine was horrifically stunning. The People vs. George Lucas was delightfully tongue-in-cheek, and it was a surprisingly relevant piece of film history criticism. Two Indians Talking addressed the questions of indigenous land rights and cultural oppression in an interrogative way that invited all members of the audience to participate in the machinations behind two very personalized and ingenuous first nations men grappling with the reality of their social positions and their revolutionary decisions.
Certainly one of the most interesting evenings was entitled Dinner and More than a Movie. The program included a variety of short sexualized films and was hosted at The Superior in the James Bay commercial sector. The atmosphere of the restaurant represents a sort of avant-garde 'Beetlejuice' of the North. Nevertheless, its modernist décor is not overwhelming, although somewhat risible in its blatant effort. It is comfortable with excellent service staff and fantastic food. I went back two days later for more of their fare. The films represented a range of sexual themes from the comic to the repressed and grotesque. All of them were fascinating, well made, and highly entertaining. One about teenage oral sexuality was unobtrusively didactic. The second last film which integrated torture, murder, and sex was uncomfortably compelling. All of them summarized in the Events listing for the evening’s program on the Victoria Film Festival 2011 website.
My only regret is that I hadn’t time to see more of the Festival offerings. The Box Office line-up looked spectacular and I doubt any of the films were not worth their admission. I should very much like to have seen the Family Fracases showcase but time constraints and the cost had become prohibitive. Alas, one cannot see every film they wish to in a week and half.
Festival categories and winners were announced during Sunday night’s closing ‘gala’ at Spinnaker’s Brew Pub:
Best Student Film: Heal by Mian Adnan Ahmad
Best Animation: Trembling Veil of Bones by Matthew Talbot-Kelly
Best Short Film: Apostles by Jeff Chan
Best Documentary: No Fun City by Melissa James and Kate Kroll
Best Canadian Feature: Trigger by Bruce McDonald (written by Daniel MacIvor)
Best Feature: When We Leave by Feo Aladag
Audience Favourite: Incendies by Denis Villeneuve
David Christopher
Culture Correspondent
The Martlet
See you in hell,
Shakes.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
The Decline of Western Civilization
Alex sent me the following link on facebook: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/misspelling. It provides a tongue-in-cheek look at the most common linguistic offenses, some of which are becoming epidemic with the rise of text and instant messaging. Facebook doesn't help much either. I like it. ALL of those listed are pet peeves of mine. Of course, I mark upwards of five hundred 2nd year exams and papers a year, so I am justifiably irritated. Here are a couple to add: Canadians who pronounce nuclear 'nucular' should immediately be deported to the U.S. 'Disorientated' should be removed from the dictionary. The correct word is disoriented. Disorientated technically means that you have failed in your Cub-Scout exercise using a compass. And you're probably lost in a forest. 'Disorientated' belongs in the same category as the word 'represent' when the word 'resent' is intended. 'Supposably' is not, and has never been a word. 'To' is a preposition - only - that's it, that's all. It NEVER means also. That requires another 'o' - one, measly, single, little 'o'. The clause following a semi-colon (;) MUST be an independent clause. By writing 'imma' for 'I'm a,' you haven't reduced the amount of typing you do by anything but a single space - and that's only if you consider the apostrophe a character.
Sea u on hel;
Sheaks.
Sea u on hel;
Sheaks.
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