Packing tips

One of the few (very few) things I miss about Hades is the opportunity to view the Academy-nominated short films, live or animated. The following is a nominated animated short from 2017 that I missed. It's deceptively simple, and devastating.

This is a hold-up

Got a message from elder daughter this morning. I was in the middle of my art lesson at the time, and my fellow students looked around for the harp. (I find it less stressful than the whistles and bells usually used for notification.)

When you have library fees, she texted from Hades, you are a "delinquent" user. Just one more delinquent book to go and then I should be on the straight and narrow.

She's been piling up and extending library holds since obsessively insisting on reading all seven books in the Harry Potter series in French. She thought she could do it over the Christmas holidays. She was wrong. She finished last week, and there's an impressive stack of library books on her coffee table.

Not that I can talk. I annually insist - that's "annually", not the other adverb you might be inserting - on watching as many Oscar-nominated films as I can manage before the Academy Awards ceremony. I got to five of the eight so-called Best Film nominees, plus a half-dozen films that figured in other categories.

This means I will be reading books from my own suddenly burgeoning holds list. Most of the films were "based on real events". We all know what that means, don't we? Two books on Dick Cheney (Vice) have just become available, and I expect my requested book on Queen Anne (The Favourite) to follow fast. I'll have to wait quite a bit longer for the books Can You Ever Forgive Me? and Black Klansman, the latter being the inspiration for this:

For the record, my favourite of the bunch was Roma, and my least favourite was Bohemian Rhapsody.

Sure, I like Queen, but this movie had every cliché in the book - which isn't on hold.

More story than history

We like to begin the year with a film, but this year, it just wasn't possible.

Elder daughter took off for Hades in the middle of the afternoon, and we're bound to drift off in an evening screening, so we delayed our film until midday today - well, after the twenty-five minutes of car commercials, public service ads, reminders to turn off our cell-phones dove-tailed into cell-phone service provider ads, and oh yes, several trailers.

Our choice was The Favourite due to the cast, the premise, and the fact that it's likely to figure heavily in the Oscar nominations, if the Golden Globes nominations are anything to go by.

The Golden Globe nominations are, predictably, rather mystifying for this film. For one thing, it's been nominated under the "Best Comedy or Musical" category, even though what humour is in it is very dark. The soundtrack features baroque stuff, of course, with a rather strange ditty from Sir Elton John playing out over the illegible, but highly artistic credits. There's also a dance sequence that is so weird, I wondered if it might be a fantasy brought on by one of Queen Anne's ailments.

This brings us to the second thing: Olivia Coleman has been nominated for a Golden Globe as a lead for her role as Queen Anne of Great Britain (1665-1714; reigned 1702-1714); her costars Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone are nominated as "supporting roles" - in a film with a title that indicates the story is about them - each is a "favourite": Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, and her less fortunate cousin Abigail Hill (later Baroness Masham). This sort of thing seems to happen a lot with women's film roles, lead roles are interpreted as supporting roles, so they can be fitted into the categories.

At any rate, it's a strange film, but quite a beautiful one. The camera angles are sometimes folded into panoramic shots, or stretched into oval fish-eyes, with the shadows, highlights and shades of Vermeer paintings, lots of dark blues, black-and-whites. You can't find fault with the acting. It's the sort of film that makes me say inwardly, as I gaze on tastefully filmed scenes of royal lesbianism and bunnies (not in the same scenes): Goodness, I wonder what really happened?

Because it's a mistake to equate film-going with a history lesson.

Don't get me wrong; do go see it, and then find out how much is likely to be true. I suggest you start here - a web site entitled History Vs Hollywood, which, currently, provides historical context on about 200 recent movies, most of them made since 2000, although films such as Jaws and Schindler's List are included.

If you're like me, you'll want to check afterwards, not ahead of time, as facts do get in the way of a good story.

Prepared

This has to be some kind of new record for me.  I've seen seven of the nine Oscar nominations for Best Picture this year, and I would have seen eight, if this weren't Victoria, where movies rarely stay for more than a week or so.  However, Victoria is also the reason I've seen the seven films; we now live within easy walking distance of two of the city's four multiplexes, and one of the city's two art-house cinemas.  (Also, this is one year when I actually wanted to see most of the films -- except Get Out, because I'm not great with horror flicks, no matter how witty.)

One film I caught last summer.  Younger daughter wanted to see Dunkirk because Harry Styles is in it.  I was keen to see Kenneth Branagh and Mark Rylance.  It was clever and sprawling; I'm not sure it would work on a small screen.

We saw The Darkest Hour because Gary Oldman is a front-runner for Best Actor.  Excellent cast, dark, bleak -- and I'm afraid I nodded off at one point.  Woke up and Churchill was sitting in the Underground - had no idea why.

The Post is another Stephen Spielberg patriotic epic; it reminded me strongly of Lincoln in scope and attitude.  It's set up - probably not deliberately - to segue into 1976's All the President's Men.  It has Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, fer gawd's sake, and has proved to be extraordinarily well-timed.  Recent events in the current American administration have made it all too pertinent, and there's more than a nod to the renewed awareness of women's rights - or lack thereof.

Lady Bird was our New Year's Day film this year.  I like Saoirse Ronan, and have always adored Laurie Metcalf.  The film is charming, heartbreaking - and also a bit alarming that we're clearly moving into Aughties nostalgia - the film is set between Autumn 2002 and 2003.

The Resident Fan Boy loved The Shape of Water -- I didn't.  He says it's because I'm not crazy about science fiction.  Maybe he's right.  I thought the art direction was amazing, with the feel of the early 1960s -- even though there's not enough men wearing hats; they wore hats, people.  However, I didn't enjoy the gratuitous violence, particularly an unnecessary scene showing the villain rutting his helpless wife. This was a long movie, that somehow didn't find the time for character development.

Elder daughter particularly wanted to see Call Me By Your Name.  I don't think she did, but I just managed to catch it yesterday, when it showed up unexpectedly at the art-house cinema.  It's undeniably well-done, and is being sold as a bitter-sweet coming-of-age flick.  Okay, a seventeen-year-old boy falls in love with a twenty-four-year-old man.  It's 1983, just before AIDS became well-known.  It's Italy.  The parents are unobtrusive, and understanding - as is the shoved-to-one-side girlfriend.  Suppose females were cast in the lead roles.  Would it be believable?  Would it be uncomfortable, rather than bitter-sweet?

Which brings me to Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, a film I was rather scared to see, as I've seen a live production of The Pillowman, and a "live-stream" Cineplex presentation of an English production of Hangmen, both harrowing, both by Martin McDonagh, who wrote and directed this film.  I did know that this would mean fabulous writing.  And I adore Frances McDormand.

So I went. By myself.  And was engrossed.

Wonderful acting.  Character development.  Unpredictable plot.  We have a winner.

Tonight, I'll watch the Academy Awards.  I may be tempted to throw snack food at the screen, although,  if Three Billboards doesn't win it, I'll be fine if Lady Bird does.  I have a feeling The Shape of Water will win, so I'm keeping the vacuum cleaner charged.

Concluding with cartoons

March Break is ending. Younger daughter is unhappy and volatile, yet I know I will only make things worse if I interfere. From the sounds of things, the Resident Fan Boy is handling the situation - he has been younger daughter's favoured parent for some time - but he will drained as he heads to bed.

I stay downstairs and think of today's outing to the Bytowne Cinema to see a collection of the animated shorts nominated for the Oscar this year. The winner, of course, was Feast, a charming if formulaic Disney number, about an adorable dog who lives for delicious people food, yet remains healthy and trim. It was younger daughter's favourite, of course.

I can't say if I had a favourite this year, but I was never bored. I rather like this one, a Danish/Canadian collaboration. I doubt it will be up on YouTube for long.

Things I learned during March Break

The corridors leading to the exhibits at the National
Gallery. It's a slow incline and is rarely this deserted.

March Break is usually pretty grim in Hades, but younger daughter gets two weeks off from her independent school.  We generally spend the first week catching up on movies, because the museums are crammed with kids from the regular school system -- usually in March Break day camps, so they're there under duress and often with not quite enough supervision. It can be a bit of a zoo.

In the second week, we hit the museums because Hades, being The National Capital, is rife with them. We found them well-attended (lots of university and school groups doing special tours and scavenger hunts), but less zoological.

Younger daughter has been snappish and short-tempered.  For the past five years, the catch-phrase in our household has been:  "Is it autism or adolescence?"  This year an exacerbating factor has been The Winter That Won't Leave.  The whole city has been in the doldrums for over a month.  We've actually had longer winters and colder winters, but this one has had a depressing persistent sameness that has worn everyone down.

Younger daughter seems to be in perpetual fear of another White Easter, like the one we had in 2008. Elder daughter flew off with her class to Europe between blizzards and enthusiastically described the turquoise waters off Cassis as I held the phone in my slackening hand and gazed out at the three-foot drifts on the deck.  Mind you, Easter was early that year and is not until late April this year, so we should be safe.  That's what I keep telling younger daughter.

Anyway, we must grasp what grace and beauty we can, even in the midst of this off-white (and downright dirty) limbo in which we find ourselves.  Keats tells me that all I need to know is that beauty and truth are one and the same, so here are things I've learned during March Break:

1.  John Ruskin, whom I knew superficially as a writer and critic, was one hell of a sketcher and watercolourist.  There's a visiting exhibit about him at the National Gallery of Canada this "spring".  Here's an overview of the exhibition, which focuses mainly on his architectural preservation work. The video excludes, alas, his amazing nature drawings and paintings.  I've dabbled in watercolour and know that the crispness and detail here ain't easy in that medium. The fellows here do natter on a bit; I'd just focus on the paintings and ignore the first couple of minutes. Ruskin was a photographer too -- did you know that?  In short, I went to the gallery feeling vaguely interested and came away stunned.  If you're in Ottawa before May 11th, do go see it!

2.  The 40 Part Motet art installation by artist Janet Cardiff has been to the National Gallery before, because  a)  it is amazing; and b)  the gallery has an actual historical chapel restored and reconstructed off the indoor garden which is the ideal space to set up forty individual speakers so you can wander around or sit in the centre of a flood of Thomas Tallis.  This video is in a less ideal space, but the roaming camera gives you an idea of how you can get close to the separate voices: 

However, that is not what I learned.

I've had a sore knee since before Christmas and am beginning to despair that it will ever entirely go away, so I had to sit down and rest while the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter zoomed off to the Modern galleries. The motet is on repeat, of course and I gradually became aware that the babble in the Rideau Chapel was rather louder than it should be for the half a dozen people visiting at the time. I realized that the installation includes the conversation of the singers as they wait to begin. I got up and limped around the circle of speakers, hearing someone warming up, two baritones joking and shooting the breeze, etc. Then the singing began again, in small groups taking turns before all forty voices filled the chapel with tsunamis of sound.

Gosh.

3. The renaming of the Museum of Civilization which, as I've mentioned in a previous post, has annoyed elder daughter, has changed it not one whit.  We made it in to see a rather unimpressive exhibit called "Snow"(which is about snow), and I discovered I'd actually seen the IMAX film on Kenya before.  However, they have a wonderful new bistro, an extra balm to the spirit since the food in the downstairs cafeteria has been dropping precipitously in quality over the past few years.

4.  The Museum of Nature, a favourite of younger daughter's due to its beautifully renovated exhibits on wildlife, marine life, and dinosaurs (also its close proximity to the Elgin Street Diner), has actually quite a beautiful basement, featuring what they call a Stone Wall Gallery and a 3D theatre. In our past visits we've always used the upper floor washrooms, so this was a pleasant surprise.  We'll have to take in a film sometime.

5. I already knew from past experience, that sometimes one of the most interesting (and indeed devastating) exhibits can be hiding down the little corridor just behind the grim but clean washrooms beyond the Hall of Honour at the Canadian War Museum (another rather inexplicable favourite of younger daughter).  This time we were lucky to catch a tiny display devoted to Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank and their work recording the plight of Japanese-Americans (Adams) and Japanese-Canadians (Frank) -  when citizens of the USA and Canada were rounded up, dispossessed, and placed in internment camps because they or their ancestors happened to be Japanese.  I had long been familiar with the photography of Ansel Adams; I even attempted to replicate his famous photo of the church in Bodega, California when I was staying there the summer before the advent of elder daughter, but I was unfamiliar with this aspect of his work and knew nothing, I'm afraid, of Leonard Frank.  This was the last week of the display; I'm glad we saw it.  (And am even more hopping mad about the subject.)

6. Being close to the Bytowne Cinema, we have seen the collection of Oscar-nominated animated shorts in past year and enjoyed it again this year.  However, I've never seen the nominated short live-action films, and after seeing this batch, I'd like to do it again next year, though I really wish we could see these compilations before the awards ceremony.

Three of the films are about half an hour each, one is about fifteen minutes and one is about eight minutes. As with the feature films, it's difficult to say which one is "best", because it's very much an apple and oranges situation.

Helium, the Danish winner of the Oscar, is a gentle film about a children's hospice which I sat through dry-eyed until the very last image which hit me in the solar plexus and left me struggling for control while waiting for the next film.   The Voorman Problem (England) is one of the shorter films; it feels very much like something from The Twilight Zone and stars Martin Freeman as a psychologist confronting a prisoner who claims to be a deity.  Do I Have to Do Everything? is also very short, very funny and features a Finnish family struggling through disasters to get to a wedding.  The Spanish production That Wasn't Me was the hardest to stomach, being about child soldiers and serving up a graphic rape scene which I wasn't expecting, sitting there with my seventeen-year-old special needs daughter.

The film that continues to live with me is Just Before Losing Everything which takes a seemingly ordinary day in small-town France and gradually heightens the tension as a woman's break for safety from her abusive husband leads to and through her workplace.  The understated performances and the ambiguous ending are haunting, as is the knowledge that this is happening around the corner, every day.

So, while truth and beauty cannot removed the sting of a relentless winter, nor the heartbreak of a young girl who clearly didn't want to go back to school, I can only imagine how bleak March would have been without some helpings of food for the soul.

Perhaps it's better not to imagine it.

Double feature

I've always tried to see a healthy percentage of Oscar-nominated films before the big ceremony, if only to give me enough knowledge to cheer or boo.  It was tough enough with five nominated films, but since they upped the maximum to ten, my percentages have been pretty dismal.

This year, nine films have been nominated.  I have no intention of seeing 12 Years a Slave (too squeamish), Gravity (too block-bustery and epic), Captain Phillips (ditto), or The Wolf of Wall Street. (Dubious entrepreneurs and scantily-dressed women? Again?  Give me a break.)  I missed an opportunity to see Nebraska a couple of weeks ago, due to rotten weather and too much else going on.  We saw Philomena over the Christmas break, and Her about ten days ago.

Yesterday was cold, but clear, and I had the chance to catch a morning screening of Dallas Buyers Club.

Rainbow Cinemas is a second-run franchise with half a dozen theatres in Ontario (four of which are in Toronto -- a place that loves its movies), and two in Saskatchewan.  The one in Ottawa is a little bleak, being in the lower level of the St Laurent Shopping Mall nestled between a business college and a fitness centre, but the staff is pleasant and the prices are reasonable.

Very reasonable yesterday, which turned out to be "$2.50 Tuesday".  This meant a rather better turn-out than one might expect for a 10 am show.  It also meant an older crowd, which included people turning up who might not ordinarily choose such a movie.

Dallas Buyers Club is based on a true story and as such, probably had very little to do with what actually happened.  This doesn't trouble me that much; most "true" films cannot afford to be that accurate, because they need to tell an entertaining story in a limited amount of time.  As it was, the film is longer than a lot of movies these days, just under two hours.  (Feels longer.)

Although the real Ron Woodroof was apparently not quite as tough and homophobic as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey, the film does capture the terror of AIDS in the eighties, when a diagnosis was an automatic death sentence, and AIDS patients were ostracized and feared.  I was a hospice volunteer in Victoria, and for the first few years that AIDS patients began being admitted, the true nature of their illness was not made public (although we volunteers were usually allowed to know), for fear of the janitorial staff refusing to clean their rooms.

Our "$2.50 Tuesdays" crowd had a touch of that eighties hostility.  It was, as I've mentioned, an older crowd and a couple of fellows apparently thought they were home watching television.  One guy kept saying, "Hurry up and die," and got into a shouting match with an elderly man who shouted "Asshole!" several times after him as he left the theatre which was odd, because the elderly man had been commenting throughout the film himself.

Leto with post-Felicity-and-Alias Garner

I managed to concentrate despite the interruptions.  I was more distracted by remembering Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto from their nineties television careers, to tell you the truth.

Leto in "My So-called Life" with Claire Danes

How did I feel about the flick? Well, if we're continuing to be truthful, I only went to see this because elder daughter requested it. I think it was well-done, but if actors are competent (and these were), is it really necessary to go through the frankly dangerous weight-changes to make us believe how sick they are?

On the whole, I was rather glad I'd only paid $2.50.

That evening, I was out at a cinema again, snatching my only opportunity to see at least one of the nominees for best foreign language film.  Besides, I had heard good things about The Great Beauty.

The Bytowne Cinema is a very different venue from Rainbow Cinemas.  It shows mainly art-house films and is a glorious old theatre with a huge screen and a balcony, if you please.  The clientele probably don't frequent the St Laurent Shopping Mall much either.

Then there was the film which was Italian.  Very Italian. The story -- if you can call it a story; it's really more a parade of beautiful images -- follows a fellow who has just celebrated turning 65 by having a large bacchanalia on a rooftop in Rome (his posh apartment overlooks the Coliseum, doncha know) and is now contemplating mortality when he's not having meals with friends or having sex with women.  Of course, this being an Italian film, the women are in their forties, rather than in their twenties as in a Hollywood production.

Mind you, it didn't help when I fell asleep and woke up in the middle of a funeral scene. (No, it wasn't due to boredom; I was just really comfortable.)  There was more than one possibility for the dear departed and I was further confused when one of these candidates turned up in the next scene, appeared to die, then didn't.  Then her father was being consoled a couple of scenes later.

And that was only halfway through the film.

Anyway, the cinematography was lovely; the music was evocative (Tavener, Gorecki, etc.).  My favourite bit was actually the ending credits, which play over the view from a boat moving steadily up (or down) the Tiber in the half-light of dawn (or dusk).

Then I got up and made my way home over the ice flows.

Tomorrow night, if it isn't too grim, I'm off to see American Hustle, which, if nothing else, will mean I've seen at least one performance in each nominated category.

Out in the cold

Family Day is a Canadian holiday that has only been around for a few years, born of a yearning to have some sort of long weekend in February, the shortest month that is still too damn long.

In Ontario, it was today (it was last Monday in British Columbia), so the Resident Fan Boy took the day off and we cast around for something to do with younger daughter that didn't involve a museum. We all like museums but they're hellish places to be on Family Day, because there's usually a windchill and everyone is looking for indoor pursuits.

With the Oscars coming soon -- albeit mercifully delayed by the Winter Olympics this year -- we decided to catch Her at the Rainbow Cinema, a second-run venue in the bowels of the St Laurent Shopping Centre.  I had a rough idea of the premise of the movie, a fairly time-honoured one of a human being bonding with a computer: shades of Electric Dreams, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Robot & Frank, etc.

We arrived at the shopping mall by bus and found it locked for Family Day.  Unfazed, we set off around the outside of the complex, the signs assuring us that we could access the movie theatre "at the entrance between Sears and the business college on the south-west corner".  We headed confidently for the door we had used the last time this had happened, an Easter long weekend a couple of years ago, and were startled to find it locked with the same notices directing us to the south-west corner.

It's a pretty hefty hike around the edges of the shopping centre and this was a bleak morning with a windchill of -23.   We had arrived in plenty of time, but we kept encountering padlocked doors with the identical posters. We were also running into more and more would-be cinema-goers, including an older fella who told us he had seen people leaving the first door we had found locked.  After nearly circling the complex, we made our way back to the door that we had used before, where a crowd was gathering, several people on cell-phones.  We told them about the other locked doors.  ("Did you try them all?" asked one suspicious young woman.)  Finally, someone got through and informed us,  "It's one level down."

We trooped down a cement staircase and through a parking level, fuming at the uselessness of the signs.  We arrived with five minutes to spare for our movie.

"This one is subtitled for hard-of-hearing.  Do you mind?" asked the box-office lady.

We were delighted.  Younger daughter has always found having "words" a big help in following the plot, and my own hearing has never recovered from too many hours listening to rock on the headphones in my misspent youth.

Besides, Her is a movie about people who live mostly inside their heads, so a lot of words are involved. The story is set in a rather sterile Los Angeles of the presumably not-distant future.  These Angelenos move through a landscape of corridors and tall buildings.  The colour schemes feature browns, beiges and oranges and everyone is dressed in casual, nondescript sort of clothing and seem to be in the same income bracket, having spacious uncluttered apartments and plenty of free time.

We meet Joachin Phoenix's character Theodore, a gentle and wounded man who makes a living working for a company that writes personal letters for people who neither the time nor talent for personal correspondence nor even the experience, but have some sort of nostalgic yen for it. He drifts through his day in a lonely haze, in the last stages of a divorce from a woman he has known since childhood (portrayed, because this is L.A., by a woman who is eleven years younger than Phoenix).  This changes when he purchases an "OS" (operating system) for his computer, an intuitive programme that names herself Samantha by consulting a book on baby names in the second between when he asks her name and when she gives her answer.

Samantha's personality emerges and develops by leaps and bounds with exposure to Theodore and like most technology, he becomes increasingly dependent upon her, and unlike most technology, a very personal relationship grows between them.

It's quite a long movie, just over two hours, and I had plenty of time to imagine many different outcomes -- all of them tragic.  The actual outcome is gentler than one would expect, and I was left with all sorts of questions about what makes a relationship genuine.

In a world full of daily superficial interactions, is a deep friendship with someone lacking a physical body not really a friendship?  So much of my correspondence these days is with people I never see.  And you know, I couldn't help but dream about younger daughter having a constant and accessible companion tailored to her needs, even though this movie neatly illustrates the hazards.

You wouldn't think a movie about people living mostly in their heads and online would be sexually graphic, but in many ways, the imaginary sex is more intense for not being seen.  Thus younger daughter,  an autistic adolescent who is really more comfortable with animated kids' films despite being in her latter teen years, spent quite a bit of this film with her hands covering her face.   She says she liked Her anyway, and she was clearly delighted to recognize Amy Adams.

I'm usually a bit more careful about checking advisories, though.  I doubt younger daughter would appreciate Dallas Buyers' Club or American Hustle, even though the latter has Amy Adams in it as well. (When I initially suggested Dallas Buyers' Club, she admonished me: "Mawwwwm!  I'm a teenager!") I'll probably have to sneak off to see those on my own before the Oscar ceremonies.

We checked the doors when we left the cinema by the upper level.  They were unlocked by that time.

Love it or loathe it? (Not the Oscar telecast)

As expected, the Oscars were rather predictable with the possible exception of what's being described as a "Kanye moment" between two acceptors of the Oscar for best documentary short film. Other than that, the foreign film I wanted to win (The White Ribbon) didn't. The animated short I least wanted to win did. Pretty well no one won whom I wanted to win, but I was expecting that because there are few surprises at the Academy Awards. I had to be content with enjoying the fact that there were at least three awful evening gowns. (Thank-you, Charlize Theron.)

Of the ten nominated films, one, I would say, falls into the category of "films you either love or hate". I was actually rooting for Up in the Air which of course didn't win a single thing, but A Serious Man is the kind of film that neatly splits commenters at movie sites such as IMDb or Yahoo Movies into "love" or "loathe" camps. I am so glad I saw this film on DVD, because the DVD extras really helped. The film begins with a beautifully filmed, baffling folk tale set somewhere in Eastern Europe where an old man may be (but probably isn't) a dybbuk. (The DVD also contains a useful Yiddish glossary for those of us who are goyim.) An interview with the Coen brothers assures us that this story has nothing to do with the ensuing film. Imagine my relief.

Things only get odder as we enter into a nightmarish week in 1967 for a Jewish professor, where everything goes wrong and he blunders in a haze of bewilderment toward his son's bar mitzvah. Said son, a rather obnoxious boy of thirteen (is there any other kind?) attends the ceremony good and stoned and stumbles his way to the ritual appointment with the mysterious elderly rabbi who now refuses to see anyone but kids who have just been bar-mitzvah'ed. I can't embed the clip, but here 'tis.

I imagine people who hate this film (and there are a fair few) are bothered by the lack of a clear storyline. This is probably the same reason that so many people hate 2003's Elephant, a movie that follows about half a dozen students through the same ten minutes leading up to a Columbine-type school massacre:

It takes a while to realize that with the introduction of each new character (announced by their names appearing on the screen), we move back to about the same point in time. The camera falls in behind, and follows each student as he or she move through the endless halls of an American high school. (I remember the shock of traveling in the States when I was a teenager and seeing how enormous the high schools are there. They call them "campuses", like universities.) It's only when we meet the young shooters that we drop further back in time to see their strange detached manner while they plan to murder their peers. What's even more disturbing is that their detachment matches that of their future victims who move through the few minutes they have remaining of their lives with little genuine interaction with each other. I understand much of the dialogue was improvised, which may add to the isolation.

I watched this for the first time in the company of elder daughter who was still in elementary school at the time. This didn't do much to ease her jitters about high school, although I assured her that although this may reflect the atmosphere of a typical high school in the United States (and anyone with an experience of this may correct me if I'm wrong), it bears little resemblance to the Canadian high school experience, at least as I remember it. Now that she's about to graduate, I should ask her if I was right...

Other love-it-or-hate-it films? I see a great divergence of opinion about Happy-Go-Lucky, a film about which I blogged a little over a year ago. This was a charming (I thought) albeit rather plotless film following a few weeks in the life of an optimist. What makes this character interesting is that her cheerfulness can veer from charming to grating. Maybe this clip will give you an idea. (Warning - if you're expecting a sexy scene here, you'll be disappointed):
As I recall, Poppy's back problem is a very small episode in the movie, and we never see her physiotherapist again. The whole movie's kinda like that. I loved it.

A movie I didn't love was Moulin Rouge which I think may be the perfect example of a film you either love or hate. It irritated the blazes out of me, yet I know plenty of pleasant and perfectly intelligent people who adore this flick.

What do you think? Is there a movie you love that others can't stand? Or vice versa?

Yet another blogger nattering on about the Oscars...

This will have to be quick, as elder daughter will soon rouse herself from her Saturday slumber and turf me off the computer, supposedly for scholarly reasons...

I should mention, in case it has passed unnoticed, that I am participating in my third NaBloPoMo. After accepting its challenge to blog every day of the months of February and September 2009, I am tackling my longest month to date. Wish me luck.

We are already plotting the purchase of fatty snack foods to accompany our viewing of the 82nd Academy Awards. Okay, let's face it; the Oscars get less surprising each year -- we don't even get the delicious fashion disasters of old because all the stars consult with experts beforehand.

Yet, each year, I feel somehow compelled to view a least some of the nominees. I think it helps me to judge the appropriate moment to hurl said fatty snacks at the screen when a less worthy candidate gets handed the gold naked guy.

In brief, Sandra Bullock will win for best actress. This is because, for all the hyperbole, these awards are like a high school popularity contest and everybody likes her. For the record, I think Meryl Streep should win, based unscientifically and unfairly on the three Best Actress performances I've actually seen (also saw Carey Milligan in An Education and Helen Mirren in The Last Station). I managed to see Streep in Julie and Julia, and she was bloody amazing. Yes, I know she gets nominated nearly every year, but I think she's only actually won once.

Jeff Bridges will win for best actor. Again, I've managed to see two of the performances in this category, that of Colin Firth in A Single Man, and George Clooney in Up in the Air . Clooney was very good (as basically himself, as far as I can tell) and Firth, damn it, should get it. He won't.

The Academy, in its desire to reel in more television viewers and commercial revenue, has nominated 10 films this year, including some more popular ones. I have seen four of them, and have no desire whatsoever to see the rest: An Education is well-made, but not particularly memorable; A Serious Man is memorable and as weird as all blazes (in a good way); Up is an instant classic and should win the Animated Film category (a category in which, of course, given younger daughter, we have seen four out the five nominations). The film I keep thinking about and which I'd really like to win is Up in the Air: strong performances, strong writing. It won't. It's a head-to-head between The Hurt Locker and (gawd help us) Avatar.

I've managed to see one blessed Foreign Film nomination this year (which is one better than last year). If The White Ribbon wins, however, I'll be mightily pleased. It was remarkable, and another film that haunted me for a long time after viewing.

For me, the most exciting category this year will be Best Animated Short Film. This is because (sound the trumpets) I have actually seen all five nominations! Younger and I saw A Matter of Loaf and Death (the latest Wallace and Gromit outing) last autumn at the Ottawa Animation Festival, and The Flick Filosopher (gawd love 'er) has posted links to the other four nominees at her always controversial and entertaining blog. Hurry on over there and have a look. We adore and worship Wallace and Gromit at this house, but I'm rooting for Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty, a twisted offering from Ireland which combines beautifully detailed computer animation with more traditional animation. The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) (from Spain) will probably win; it's produced by Antonio Banderas, for gawd's sake, and as I've said, Oscar Night is nothing if not a popularity contest. (Actually, I'm fine with La Dame winning, too; it's very well done.)

Gotta go; our Norton Update is acting up -- it may be time for our weekly computer virus attack...

Shame and indignation at the movies

Last night I dreamt I tried to board a bus with a hot iron. The bus driver turfed me off, and I gave her the finger. I awoke wrestling with feelings of shame and indignation, upset I'd been tossed off the bus and ashamed I'd been so churlish, after all, she had every right to refuse to let me ride. Which is a lot of unpleasant emotion, considering none of it really happened.

As I've mentioned before, my dreams seldom make any sense. Oh, I imagine they would, if I really settled down to analyze them, but dammit, I can't be bothered. I have a sneaking suspicion I wouldn't like the interpretation.

I like to think of myself as a pleasant and considerate person, but then, I imagine most people do. Even that woman at the ByTowne Cinema last Saturday. The Resident Fan Boy and I had scuttled away to take in a late matinée showing of A Single Man, partly because I wanted to see the film and partly because Colin Firth might get an Oscar nomination for his role in it, and mainly because we like to have seen at least a smattering of the nominated movies and performances before the Academy Awards broadcast.

The RFB headed off to find us a seat while I hit the concession for a small bag of popcorn and a headset. Bytowne Cinema now offers what they call an "FM audio assist" and since my hearing never has been fabulous, I've tried it for the last couple of movies there. I just plug in my own earphones and gee, I can hear most of the dialogue.

Balancing my trophies, I went in search of the Resident Fan Boy who was waving from a couple of nice seats. An older couple were seated in the aisle, and did not get up to let me pass, so I had a brief tussle disentangling my ankles from the bag the wife had left at her feet as I squeezed past her knees apologetically. At the time, I was feeling charitable enough to assume she had physical reasons to stay put.

I had decided to try a different set of headphones for the film, rather than my iPod ear buds which are mildly uncomfortable. This may have been a mistake. Early in this particular film, there's a flashback to a very rainy evening in LA when Colin Firth's character George first learns that his partner of sixteen years has died in a car crash. As the rain pelts down outside his study, George receives a phone call from someone connected to his lover's family who tells him (nearly two days later) about the accident and that the funeral will be "family only". George, obviously in shock, is detached and polite, until we see him running in a coat-less panic of grief through the storm to a friend's house for comfort.

"Would you stop making that noise?"

Startled, I turned from George's anguish to see non-rising woman who is seated two seats away from me.

"What noise?" I asked, in genuine bewilderment. She made an angry gesture and turned back to the screen. What's she going on about? I whispered to Resident Fan Boy, who shrugged. As I tried to re-focus on the movie, I wondered if she was bugged by my popcorn, but that had never seemed to have been an issue before. Then it gradually occurred to me that the scenes involving the rainstorm were over. Was it the hiss of the precipitation escaping from my headphones? I sneaked my iPod ear buds out of my coat pocket and put the other headphones away. I heard nothing else from old lady, but I caught her looking daggers at me later when I attempted to fold my popcorn bag away quietly. Oh dear. Am I becoming one of those people? Or is she already one of them? To tell you the truth, watching films at the ByTowne is a bit of a minefield, due to art-film-revering regulars who have strong views about where they should sit and how others should behave while they are sitting there. I'm not unsympathetic, but a bad-tempered growl doesn't help me rectify the situation. That's all I'm sayin'.

A Single Man is great, by the way. A dream-like sepia-view of a rather more innocent Los Angeles about to be hit hard by flower power. Colin Firth should get an Academy Award nomination at least for a performance of heart-breaking dignity.

I'll go do that ironing now.

The Oscars go MTV

I'd thought I'd seen the ultimate surreal Oscar moment. It occurred in 1989 when Rob Lowe did his infamous opening musical number with Snow White. Watch it if you can bear it: See, I think it was meant to be ironic and a bit over-the-top, but instead...

Then there were last night's Oscars, also meant to be ironic and a little-over-the-top. Now, I like Hugh Jackman. I'm familiar with him as a musical actor (I've never seen him as Wolverine) and enjoyed his hostings of the Tony Awards on Broadway. I think the opening "financial cutbacks, so I made it in my garage" musical montage was quite funny and certainly well-performed (with some very able assistance from Anne Hathaway). Not quite up to Billy Crystal, but entertaining. But people, what the hell was that "tribute to musicals" thing in the middle? Okay, Beyoncé has the musical chops, but the kids from High School Musical and Mamma Mia? Dear gawd, no.

"Lady Marmalade???" I said to elder daughter in bewilderment. "Since when is that from a musical?"
"Moulin Rouge," she replied.
O-o-o-oh. Baz Luhrmann. There's yer problem. He put this together and as far as I can tell, you either love Baz Luhrmann, or you just don't. Guess where I end up...

Then there was the dog's breakfast that was the nominated songs medley. They were meddled so well that I couldn't tell where one song ended and the other began. No wonder Peter Gabriel steered clear of it.

Things I thought worked (kinda):
a) The presentation of the actors' awards by five previous winners, each of whom addressed a different nominee. It probably went on for too long, but it gave each nominee a part of the spotlight and the impression that they too were winners in a way that simply hasn't been accomplished before.

b)Steve Martin's and Tina Fey's presentation of the writing awards. Mostly very witty and articulate, as writers are, y'know.

Not so much:
a) Ben Stiller's rather unfunny comic turn in a fake beard, that ended up taking attention away from the nominated cinematographers. (I think that was the award in question; I was somewhat distracted by Stiller's antics.)

b) Queen Latifah's tribute to academy members who had died in the past year. Not her fault, but the camera was undecided whether to focus on her while she sang, or the accompanying video, which really should have been what we were watching. The camera seemed to try to solve the problem by swaying back and forth in front of the monitor showing the deceased academy members (why? to the music?), making it difficult to read names and titles. Surely not the point of a memorial, right?

c) James Franco's and Seth Rogan's weird MTV-Awards-type skit of two dudes watching movies in the basement, and laughing inappropriately at movies like The Reader. James Franco's response to footage of himself as Harvey Milk's lover was a bit of a giggle though.

d) Framing the introductions and the winner's speeches with a construction of scenes from all nominated films. Thus, we'd be listening to rather a moving tribute, and Ku Fu Panda would be leaping into slow motion just below...

e) Having the orchestra launch into something under the presenter's introductions. Meant to be an accompaniment and mood-setter; ended up sounding like an interruption.

All in all, "A" for effort, guys, but "C" for the end product. If they're trying to be that hip and with it, why don't they just invite good-looking fans in and have them stand around the stage, like the various MTV awards and imitators? (Gawd, I'm getting old...)

I've deliberately kept from reading others' impressions in the newspapers and the blogs. I'm off to see if anyone agreed with me. (You'll notice that I failed to say anything about the winners. That's because, like the dresses and tuxes, there were no surprises.)

Reading and watching The Reader

During the autumn of 2001, the Resident Fan Boy brought home about a dozen books passed along by a workmate of his, no doubt because she was trying to clean out her bookshelves. They were novels I normally wouldn't have read, so I viewed it as a opportunity, and dutifully started through them. It was hard going, especially in those weeks limping along after the shock of September 11th, when everyone seemed overwhelmed. As far as I can figure, all of the books were on Oprah Winfrey's reading list from her popular "book club". Gawd, they were depressing.

I'm glad I persevered, though, because I found two gems: While I Was Gone by Sue Miller (I've since read most of her novels), and The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. I maintain that good art is not depressing; these books were good enough to rise above their tragic story lines.

Yesterday, the Resident Fan Boy and I (in our continuing and doomed bid to see as many Oscar-nominated performances before Academy Awards Night as possible) went to see The Reader. This was the first day OC Transpo buses were running after a two-month strike, so in honour of the occasion, we missed the bus. The bus we did catch had a solicitous bus driver who allowed elderly and disabled riders to actually sit down before taking off. I wonder how long this will last before the drivers are back to their surly selves.

We arrived just in time to suffer through a Myley Cyrus video, but we had been prepared by Marie's preview (thanks, Marie!) to look away at the right moment. I mean the opening scene of David Kross's character getting violently sick, not the Myley Cyrus video, although, in the case of the latter, looking away [and industrial strength ear plugs] would be advisable.

It's been over seven years since I read the book, which is probably a good thing, so I didn't waste too much time comparing the two. I am reasonably sure that the book did not include the young protagonist touring Auschwitz (without a soul in sight --- is that even possible?), but on the whole, I found the performances satisfying and the plot feasible if unsurprising. (I had remembered the two revelations about Hannah [Kate Winslet's character] from the book.) What I don't remember is being puzzled and appalled by the young man's failure to intervene. I think the book may have outlined his motives, so I supposed I'll have to reread it. As it was, I spent a good part of the movie wanting to shake young Michael Berg. And also wondering why Ralph Fiennes fails to age between 1977 and 1995. Who does he think he is, Francesca Annis?

The movie left me wondering who was the most damaged, in the end. Hannah, for all her paradoxes, is oddly true to herself, with a moral code that is only slightly incomprehensible. I felt somehow that it's Michael who is truly emotionally and morally crippled. He tells Lena Olin's character towards the end: "She (Hannah) has done worse to other people," but I don't think it's Hannah who has broken him. Michael is fifteen in 1958 and so was born in 1943. In the uncommunicative and stilted family scenes, it seems that Michael has already been smothered by the heavy burden of shame and silence his generation inherited from their parents who somehow found themselves unable to halt the horrors in which Hannah has participated more directly, and perhaps with less hypocrisy.

I've been amusing myself with trivia from IMDB: David Kross, who plays the young Michael, had to wait until after his birthday to play the sex scenes with Kate Winslet. He was born in 1990 and is just two years older than my elder daughter. The Resident Fan Boy and I agreed that the early scenes would be a fifteen-year-old boy's dream come true, but we later amended that to include any male, period. Gorgeous or not (and she is, damn her), I'd have no problem with her winning the Oscar for this. It's a difficult character skillfully portrayed. Let's just hope she's prepared a better speech this time.

Skating away on the thin ice of a new day

In the mid-nineties, someone named Fiona Zanatta was writing columns for The Vancouver Sun. (The Resident Fan Boy and I couldn't bear The Victoria Times-Colonist, so we subscribed to The Sun. Now, they pretty much all suck...) Anyway, I really liked her columns and clipped a couple, soaked them in milk of magnesia and club soda, then pasted them into my scrapbook with snaps of my preschool elder daughter.

I don't know what became of Fiona Zanatta; her name doesn't even show up on Google. Anyway, she wrote about the fact that we are rarely aware of the last time things happen; our scrapbooks and diaries will note the first time, but it's only in hindsight that we realize things are gone for good, and more often than not, we don't remember when something ceased to be. Concluding with a story of her six-year-old son climbing into bed with his parents, she said:
It may turn out to be the last time my son will crawl into bed with me and ask me to make the world perfect. But I was paying attention this time. I saw it coming and stayed up to watch it pass. This time I got to say goodbye.

Yesterday was the annual Perfect Canal Day. There's usually only one day when the canal is frozen enough for good skating, yet the temperatures are warm enough that your feet don't freeze before you get your skates on. (There's a bitter wind that rips up the Rideau Canal from the Ottawa River, even on the warmer winter days.) My husband, the weather junkie, obssessively checked with Environment Canada and the evening before, we began preparations by browbeating elder daughter into joining us.

The next morning, we worked on convincing younger daughter that this was a great idea. "It'll take too long!" she protested, fearful that she would lose out on valuable DVD-viewing time. Then we fetched the skates up from the basement and discovered that it's true, you shouldn't store skates in the blade guards, so I scrubbed off what rust I could and we hastily scheduled a visit to Home Hardware for skate sharpening en route. Younger daughter was still not enthused, and was even less so by the stops and delays. By the time we were waiting yet again at a bus stop after retrieving elder daughter from clarinet lesson, I was pondering on the wisdom of the whole enterprise, even more so as we trekked all the way through the Rideau Centre, over the McKenzie-King bridge, finally arriving and struggling to help younger daughter into brand-new skates.

I had brought my skates, but elected not to don them. (The Resident Fan Boy is a determined non-skater.) I cajoled elder daughter into skating with younger daughter, but before long E.D. was complaining that the slow skating required for escorting Y.D. was tiring her out and making her leg ache. I passed the cloth bags containing boots, skate guards, elder daughter's clarinet and music to the RFB, took younger daughter's hand and picked my way carefully along the ice in my boots, watching elder daughter vanish into the crowd of skaters under the next bridge. (Cue Jethro Tull.)Younger daughter hollered and clutched at me each time she came close to losing her balance. This continued for the next kilometre. I stopped to get a snap of younger daughter with the Chateau Laurier rising capitalistically in the distance, but when she glanced over her shoulder, she noticed, for the first time, that other skaters were bearing down on her and she panicked.

Part of the bargain for subjecting our children to enforced family fun had been a promise of lunch at the Elgin Street Diner, so at the Waverley Street steps we made a beeline for one of the scarce benches. This one was partially occupied by a chic young couple in matching alpaca hats who were leisurely getting ready, with plenty of pauses to sit back and watch, while chic woman blew her nose. We worked around them the best we could, juggling bags, struggling to wipe blades without a towel and ease on the skate guards. Chic couple was oblivious and eventually got up and skated south, leaving the snotty tissue on the bench. The garbage can was a whole ten feet away. Charming. Fearful of the tissue being attributed to us, I put on my gloves and disposed of the thing.

"So," we enquired of our daughters, "how was it?"
"Fine," said younger daughter, heading for the stairs.
Elder daughter said her leg ached when she was still and she got tired when she wasn't.
Inwardly I was euphoric due to pulling the thing off at all.

The Elgin Street Diner was packed of course, probably mostly with Canal traffic, but we ordered enormous lunches, and younger daughter, revived with a vanilla milkshake, glowed prettily. I handed her my camera and invited her take some pictures. Holding the camera lopsidedly, she peered through the viewfinder with both big brown eyes wide open. Within moments she was calling our names and asking us to smile. Soon she was chattering away easily on a variety of topics. The pictures she took weren't bad, either. Maybe we need to get her a camera...

That night, the Resident Fan Boy and I watched a DVD of Away From Her, a very Canadian film despite featuring the talents of Julie Christie (up for an Oscar tonight), Olympia Dukakis, and an almost unrecognisable and largely wordless Michael Murphy. The rest of the actors are Canadian and this was adapted and directed by the frighteningly talented Sarah Polley. The whole thing is based on "The Bear Went Over the Mountain", a short story by Alice Munro, which I'm sure I've read, but only faintly remember.

There's a lot of last times in this film, as a bright and practical woman fades away into Alzheimer's.
Here, again, is the uncertainty of when the last time is:
"I'm not gone," she tells her devasted husband (the remarkable Gordon Pinsent) on the way to the nursing home, "I'm going."

Yesterday was, I think, a last time. Elder daughter is fifteen, sixteen in two months, and heading to Europe on a class trip. She's increasingly reluctant to come out to Victoria in the summer; her ties are now to Ottawa. Family excursions with the four of us are increasingly rare. Yesterday may well have been the last time. So, I'll say goodbye.