Happy Hallowe'en!

[cheer]

I just got back from a quick stroll through the gay village, where the street is closed for Halloween. beingboring was over for a nice Halloween dinner of squash soup, pork roast and homemade apple pie. Y had the day off, so he cooked up a nice fall meal. We met up with Y2, and the four of us navigated through the crowds. On our way, we saw the Baron, who gave us warm hugs and kisses (except for Y2, who was disappointed. haha.), and we also saw brucebruce and sunshine from afar. We also saw Batman and Robin, a few zombies dragging their appendages across the road, hurricane Rita and hurricane Katrina, accompanied by a looter with a VCR. And there was also the hunky roman soldier at the Hair of the Dog pub.

The street was full of people enjoying the costumes and taking photos. It wasn't particulary scary. I suppose you have to be a little kid (or a macho straight guy) to be scared by one of the drag queens. Even Saw 2 (***), which I saw on the weekend, wasn't too scary. Just gory. I guess to be truly scared, you have to actually experience something. Like the time I had suddenly woke up in the middle of the night, totally wide awake, feeling like something had just left me, my eyes opened, untired, and all I saw was a little tiny white light disappearing into the ceiling. My bedroom suddenly felt cold. And I felt very much alone. That was scary, if only for a few minutes, since I quickly turned on the lights and tried to find something to take my mind off of it.

The picture above is from Mobilia magazine, issue #236, March 1975, which was a special edition on Verner Panton. The lamps displayed are his Panthella lamps, the shorter one was just recently acquired by Y. He got a rare chrome version of the table lamp, shipped all the way from Germany. Actually, Gerry was in town and was present for the unwrapping of Y's little treasure. I don't know who the skeleton is, but I bet he'd look great in our livingroom, on the Eames lounger.

Y's Panthella table lamp, circa 1971

So, all you kiddies, hope you had a very Happy and Scarrrrry Halloween!

when we were in Quebec

[photos]

I've had a flickr account for ages, but never used it. Now that I've fooled around with it, I think it's just great. And especially since I'm thinking of getting an actual digicam as my Christmas gift to myself, flickr would come in handy for uploading all my badly taken photos in all their amateur glory.

So, here are a few photos when beingboring, Y and I were in Quebec. Just click on a photo to get the photostream. In case anyone was wondering, beingboring is my sister. and she isn't really boring. It's a song!

We started with lunch in the antique neighbourhood. Y and I were drawn to the furniture naturally, and there were a few galleries. But first lunch at a nice restaurant, where the sole waitress was overworked. The other half of the restaurant was empty, but she told people 30 minute wait. The food was good and we were all warmed up and prepared to go to the Musée de civilisation and a few of the stores and galleries.

At the Musée de civilisation, there were a number of exhibitions, but the most interesting ones were the “Autopsy of a Murder” and one on money. The murder exhibition was interactive, where there were different stations examining various types of evidence, such as ballistics or fabric analysis. We had to read about the various techniques and examined the evidence to determine who had murdered the victim, Sarah Melville. Our little CSI team solved the case, in the dark, accompanied by snarky comments, just like on TV!

Close by was Petit Champlain, a neighbourhood of old commercial stores, the oldest church and oldest commercial street in North America from the European settler times. Y took the photo of me and beingboring, where you can see the oldest church in North America.

By early evening, we had crossed over to rue St-Jean, up the hill and outside of the walls of Old Québec, to have an allongé (like a long espresso, but way better) and some sugar pie. On the walk back down the hill and down the steep winding road to find our car, Y stopped to take a photo of the train station in the night.

fall colours

[visit]

Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré
Originally uploaded by betaman.

Well, I know I've not posted in awhile. Since I'm playing around with flickr, I figure at least a photo.

Here's a photo of my trip to Quebec with Y and beingboring during Thanksgiving. It was taken just outside of the basilica in Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré. The colours were beautiful.

hands behind the wheel

[merging]

In the car on the way home from Pacific Mall after an afternoon of hunting for mark's new eyeglasses, mark and Eric made a joke about heipel’s comment on reading War and Peace. It had something to do with a Eric’s supposed belief that Warren Buffet the big investment guru wrote the great Russian novel. (You had to be there, like all good jokes, delivery plays a big part.) While the joke was momentarily amusing, the great guffaws from the three stemmed from another joke about Warren Buffet from time past. heipel kindly explained it was a multi-layered joke, a joke that had extended into their shared memories of another joke, and so the humour transcended time as well as words.

So as I look out onto the highway, I thought how the joke symbolized the relationship between these three people. I’ve only known mark for the past year and a half, Eric and heipel even less. I don’t know their lives intimately then, and only superficially know their lives now. The shared connection they had was demonstrated by their shared humour, the inside joke.

In my life, I’ve always thought of myself as an outsider, peering in. I’ve always been fascinated by how the different groups of people get along, what kind of people they are, how they connect, but never had a real desire to actually be a real part of that group. The group mentality interested me in so far as that I could not relate to why anyone would want to conform to the group and consequently, I wanted to know what these people were like. An observer I suppose, but not always an outside one at that. In my detached way, I listened to heipel’s explanation of the joke and I tried to imagine a car trip from years past, sepia toned pictures in my mind of heipel, mark and Eric. And this made me think of how difficult it is to enter anyone’s world, when past friendships were built from a common starting point of nothingness, whereas now we are all on our own paths, merging onto highways of our lives, to borrow from Bret Easton Ellis.

When I will meet someone new whom I want to love, how difficult will I find loving his friends and his family, and entering his world? How difficult will it be for him to enter mine? How forgiving will my friends be of the one I choose? beingboring broke up with the love interest a few weeks ago. And only then did we all tell her what we thought of the love interest. While we wanted to like him and we knew that there was a man we did like, there was a lot of him that is perfectly described by beingboring’s new nickname for him: “the louse”.

And so as the love interest morphed into the louse, all of our futures with him as part of our family and friends died that second they called it quits. while we were all willing to allow him into our lives, the thing is, I don’t think he wanted to be a part of our lives. He had no interest in any of us really, and perhaps that extended to beingboring as well. I really don’t know. I can see how our group of friends and family could appear to be hard for someone to enter. Maybe the louse thought our intertwining histories and endless jokes were too layered, too deep to delve into. Maybe he thought our crazy conversations about opera and politics and the latest Y obsession and beingboring’s scaredy cats and her wacky friends were, well, crazy. but they weren't. We let him into our car on that highway to the next dinner party, the next brunch destination, the next family gathering, our lives momentarily merging, heading somewhere in more or less the same direction. I just didn’t notice him looking out the window at the car next to us. If there’s a next time, we’ll just slow down, so beingboring can push him out into oncoming traffic. And of course, we'll all be laughing about it next year, while driving to the Pacific Mall.

The Great Yokai War

[review]

Rating: * * 1/2
Fighting Stars: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Hiroyuki Miyasako, Chiaki Kuriyama
Directed by: Takashi Miike
Country: Japan
Programme: Midnight Madness

Song Synopsis: "you can make believe when we're apart/but when you leave I disappear..." - The Sisters of Mercy, When You Don't See Me

(click photo for source)

last year it was a family movie, Zebraman, this year it’s another family movie. disappointed? only in the sense that both of these movies were part of the Midnight Madness Programme. and while Zebraman had that funny, twisted loser dad, The Great Yokai War is all about the kid. in any other programme, the movie would be fine, but with this particular programme, we all expect envelope pushing madness shown at midnight. what’s the point of showing a kids movie at midnight (even if we didn’t see at midnight)? aside from the director, what about this movie that makes it belong to this part of the film festival?

based on folktales in comic books, the movie starts off with the story of a shy young boy living with his not quite responsible mother in a small rural town. his sister lives with their divorced father in the city. the dichotomy of the city versus rural life is demonstrated by the boy’s inability to get along with the kids in school and the customs of the village. at the village festival, the boy is selected to be the hero, Kirin Rider, just in time to save the world from the battle of the Yokai and the dark overlord.

competently filmed, humorously-acted, the movie did a fairly good job of capturing that sense of childhood wonderment and muppet fighting heroism. and this may be a totally unfair criticism of Miike’s movie, but it was disappointing. the disappointment is directed at the programmer for selecting this film over any other of Miike’s movies. perhaps there wasn’t anything to choose from? perhaps since this movie had opened earlier in the summer in Japan, it was selected for it’s timeliness? but as Miike movies go, this isn’t one of his best. sure, there were some of Miike’s flourishes in the movie, some things that remind you that you’re watching a movie from one of the great filmmakers in Japan. and despite my disappointment, it was entertaining. the boy was quite charming, after I got used to his screaming, and there was never really a dull moment. however, you do feel you've seen this all before, from Labyrinth to Godzilla. monsters and kids, if you like that kind of stuff, and I'd recommend it to my kid - if I had one that is, and he'd be well versed in Japanese horror films. actually, on second thoughts, the monsters are pretty scary for the infantile Disney-raised North American kids. on that note, Miike didn't dumb down the monsters. it's like watching Degrassi: The Next Generation with the abortion episode intact. I guess it's Midnight Madness for the under 12 crowd!

oh, and we got to check out the movie poster exhibit at the Japan Foundation, which had a big poster of The Great Yokai War. great posters!

again Miike no showed. I wasn’t at the midnight screening, so I have no idea what message he had sent this year. next year I pray they bring back the bloody and gory Miike.

Linda Linda Linda

[review]

Rating: * * * *
Rock Stars: Bae Doona, Aki Maeda, Yu Kashii, Shiori Sekine
Directed by: Nobuhiro Yamashita
Country: Japan
Programme: Contemporary World Cinema

Obvious Song Synopsis: "Like a rat, I want to be beautiful/Because there’s beauty that can’t be photographed" - The Blue Hearts, Linda Linda Linda

putting aside Miike’s movies, Linda Linda Linda was the one movie I was looking forward to. it’s a movie about Japanese high school students singing in a band. could this be Japan’s answer to Satisfaction? thankfully, not.

the film begins with the band’s crisis moment where the lead guitarist and lead singer has a typical teen argument, splitting up the band as a result. we don’t see the argument, and just as in real life of teens, we (adults) actually don’t have any idea why they were arguing at all. these are hormonal teens with typical teen angst. it’s not important to know why. the band gets reformed and the movie is essentially following the group practise over several days for the year end high school festival, which I am told is common throughout Japan. in between the girls practising, we slowly see the Korean foreign exchange student learn to sing Japanese, the responsible drummer girl do the grocery shopping, the young and in love but shy bassist girl try to understand love from an inarticulate crepe making boy, and the lead guitarist girl come of age through the dismantling of her original band.

this is no teen flick. if you aren’t used to watching art house flicks, you might find the pacing plodding, not that this is an art house flick at all. nothing paticularly happens but give it a bit of patience and it'll grow on you. pay attention to the details, to the way the girls look into the camera, to the way they look at each other. the way they see the world at this point in their lives, is the way the audience sees them, sees themselves. the overarching theme, I think, is nostalgia. the film title is from the eighties Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts' song, "Linda Linda Linda", which is the signature song they decide to perform at the concert. the quiet quick build up to the rousing chorus of "Linda Linda” perfectly describes this movie. the girls engaging performances personify that sense of nostalgia when we look back upon our own lives, thinking that the world was about to open up to something possibly great at the end of our schooling and innocence, but also tempered by the heartache of adulthood.

unlike a typical hollywood teen flick where love is found, the band wins the contest, or broken relationships with parents are resolved, the film ends without loose ends tied up, without a giant infantile message bashed into the audience. it’s ambiguous, like life, and exactly like the way nostalgia plays upon our memories. it also has James Iha (of Smashing Pumpkins) doing the original score, which may or may not be a good thing, but it does remind me of the ripped poster of his band that Y & I had hung up during our poor, starving year in East Vancouver. talk about nostlagia! definitely my favourite of all the movies we saw.

no Q&A again, no one shows up. *sniff*

Seven Swords

[review]

Rating: * * *
Fighting Stars: Donnie Yen, Leon Lai, Charlie Young, Lau Kar-leung
Directed by: Tsui Hark
Country: Hong Kong, China
Programme: Special Presentations

Song Synopsis: " 不要驟來驟去/請珍惜我的心... (please don't come and go in such a hurry/Please have pity on my heart...)" - Wong Faye , 容易受傷的女人 (Fragile Woman)

(click photo for source)

based on the wuxia novel, "Seven Swordsmen from Mountain Tian", Seven Swords is Tsui Hark’s latest big martial arts movie. he is unlike Ang Lee who, while versatile and talented, isn't really an action director, best capturing the subtext and the narrative themes of the genre in Crouching Tiger, but also bored the action crowd set senseless with its slow build up to the climax. (I thought Ange Lee was brilliant, so nyeh!) he is also unlike Zhang Yimou, whose art house martial arts movies, Hero and House of Flying Daggers took the best of both the visual artistry and good fighting action. Tsui Hark’s brilliance, however, is in the action portrayed. that is, action is a character in its own right.

during the Qing Dynasty, the Emperor had decreed that all practice of martial arts was outlawed for fear of an uprising and any persons with the knowledge be executed by decapitation. in some unknown northern part of China (unknown because I didn't see any nice trees and everything looked kinda sandy), a group of gothic bad guys (they looked like leftovers from a Marilyn Manson concert) wipe out town after town of people for the Emperor’s bounty. in a small town, a young woman and her former boyfriend accompanies another martial art dude to Mount Heaven to seek help defending the town from the gothic bad guys. of course just as the town is being attacked mercilessly, the two return with seven swords and assorted swordsmen to kick ass. since this is based upon an epic novel, there is some convoluted (but fairly standard) plot involving family love, displaced Korean slave girls, unrequited love, family honour, corruption, not to mention the backstories of each of the swordsmen. but it doesn’t matter, because it’s Tsui Hark! we’re here to watch some ass kicking, not watch some badly directed B-list actors act. Leon Lai as a B-list is debatable, but hey, he’s been described as the HK Keanu Reeves. pretty to look at, wooden to watch.

there are two beautiful action set pieces in the movie that stood out for me. the opening battle scene (despite the gothic badguys) was wonderfully washed out in colour, almost black and white. the big fight that involved a giant red lantern rolling against the hordes of black clad bad guys worked both as an action scene as well as an art scene, ripped almost straight out of Hero. the funereal white brilliantly contrasted the celebratory reds, the red blood of the innocent victims and the black clad costumed killers.

the second set piece is the early fight scene between the young woman (Charlie Young) and one of the gothic bad guys. they meet the first time and the young woman does not know the danger the gothic bad guy represents. when she is forced to kill him, there was a moment in her surprise and fright afterwards that pulls the viewer into the movie. it was a genuine real emotion that underscores the fun and fantastical fight scenes. but that was the only real emotion in the entire movie. unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your expectations), Tsui Hark isn’t really that great at directing the dramatic scenes. the energy comes crashing to a halt every time the characters have to emote. at almost 3 hours, you’d hope that there was more than just scene after scene of action; otherwise, you’d want to poke your eyes out. Instead, you just want to poke Leon Lai’s eyes out, just to see if they can blink.

of course, also being Tsui Hark, the action redeems all the flaws in the movie. if you can root for the good guys at their lowest point more than once in the movie, well, I think you did more than most action directors out there in the world. great fun, if a bit long!

no Q&A and Tsui Hark didn’t show up. but that’s okay. my legs were tired.

Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés

[review]

Rating: * * 1/2
QcStars: François Chénier, Isabelle Blais, Patrice Robitaille
Directed by: Robin Aubert
Country: Canada
Programme: Canada First!

Song Synopsis: " I give in to sin/Because you have to make this life liveable..." - Depeche Mode, Strangelove

(click photo for source)

in the dark, Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés (Saint Martyrs of the Damned) was full of standard horror cliches, including a dead bride, an (spooky) empty gas station, small town in the middle of nowhere, twin sisters, creepy hotel room, lingerie-wearing tavern owner and her Down syndrome son. okay, the lingerie-wearing tavern owner isn’t a cliché, well not unless you live in small town Baie Comeau or something. what was interesting however, was all of these typical horror devices and themes set in a small town in Quebec.

the film starts off intriguingly enough with the main character interviewing a mismatched couple on an UFO sighting. the old husband shows Flavien (François Chénier) a crop circle in the backyard. then quickly back to headquarters where we see a photo shoot in progress of a three-legged wife and her rabbit like husband, like that painting American Gothic. both funny and promising, the scene suggested that the movie might be quirky enough to transcend the over done genre. and for the first half it did.

soon after, Flavien is dispatched by his boss/father-figure to investigate a series of disappearances in Saints-Martyrs-des-Damnés. along with his best friend and photographer Armand (Patrice Robitaille), they go off in an old car, equipped with faux wood panelling. his friend quickly disappears and throughout the movie, we watch Flavien unravel the mystery, fall in love and discover more about himself (literally!) than we expect.

the gothic qualities seemed a lot more refreshing when placed in a Quebec setting. for one thing, the peculiar way the houses are built in some of the small towns seemed to help portray some of the alieness well. well, at least for this Anglophone Canadian. the questions raised by Flavien concerning his own identity, the secrets that hold the town together and thr stunning visuals show a lot of promise and depth.

unfortunately, after half way through, the movie loses some steam. the horror film images get piled up into one predictable and understandable narrative, anchored by a fascinatingly done love scene that is both clever and silly at the same time. imagine intertwining lovers floating through the village in an orgasmic dreamscape, right after being startled out of your seat by the death bride standing in the headlights. is this an art movie? or a horror movie? the story was too pat to be a Lynchian movie, even though it seemed to suggest that.

the greatest difficulty with the horror/ghost story genre is that the audience cannot be scared by the same visual twice. and by twice, I mean using similar/same scary images that have already been used in other movies, whether deliberately or not. the reason why a ghost story could be told again and again and still get the same chills is because of the mood that is created. as long as the narrative is strong, then the mood is sustained and so, the cliche horrors don’t seem so bad.

engaging visuals, but with a disappointing story. still, it was a great debut movie, and I look forward to seeing more of the director’s work.

(click photo for source)

“Have a good flight into my mind.” - Robin Aubert, the director said in his cute Québecois accent @ the intro. apparently, he wears only lumberjack shirts at all the film parties. so the host of one of my favourite Québec shows, Tout le monde en parle, gave him a new shirt when he appeared on the show. Cute!

Happy Thanksgiving!

[cheer]

just got back from a short Thanksgiving weekend trip to Quebec City! traffic on the way back from the stretch between Belleville and Toronto was horrible. but the trip, while short, was just wonderful! we saw the fall colours at Mont St-Anne, finally went to the Musée de la civilisation, ate lots of food and had a great time Y's mom, Momo.

hope you all had a great a weekend! the smiley pot says Happy Thanksgiving!

quotes of the moment #2

[famous/words]

"This isn't a dumpster-dive chair?"
- eL said, while joe looks covetingly at a chair left forlornly on the Ryerson Unversity's lawn, dreaming of dining room furniture.

"Well, it's not completely hideous."
- declared the Baron, upon receiving an email with a photo of Y's latest designer acquisition: the large Flowerpot lamp by Verner Panton, circa 1971.

"We can't get more fronter than this."
- explained Y at the front of the line during the Toronto International Film Festival, while eL and joe covered their ears in pain.

Capote

[review]

Rating: * * * *
OscarStars: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper
Directed by: Bennett Miller
Country: USA
Programme: Special Presentations

Song Synopsis: " You're the real thing/Even better than the real thing." - U2, Even Better Than The Real Thing

(click photo for source)

we picked our movies with an effort to cross a few genres and to avoid any movies that would be released. Capote was an exception as I wanted to see an English language movie and In Cold Blood is one of my favourite piece of American literature of that time.

finally completed in 1965, In Cold Blood was a genre bending recounting of the viscous murders of the Clutter family and its aftermath. in the small rural town of Holcomb, Kansas, Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock attempted to rob the farming family but ended up killing them all when they failed to find the money. when the book was published, it had made Truman Capote one of the most well-known and important writer of American letters. it was a non-fiction novel, fictionalizing the murders based on Capote’s interviews with the killers, the townspeople and the the authorities. the movie, however, is also based on the biography by Gerald Clarke.

in the movie, we watch Capote struggle to capture the essence of the crime in the book, watch the subtle change of his relationship with Perry as it oscillates between subject and friend, all the while navigating through his own relationship between fame, love, friendship, through his lover Jack Dunphy and friend Harper Lee.

what captivated me about the novel was the bending of fact and fiction. it was like a gothic novel written in the sixties. it reads like non-fiction, but is so pivotally drawn up as fiction that you cannot forget that it is Truman Capote’s words we read, and if you know Truman Capote, you know that the words are poetic but not objective. the constant play of fact and fiction goes to the heart of what I find fascinating in fiction, because it plays on our sense of truth, our viewpoints, it’s a play on structure, too. we never know what is true because we can never know everything.

I wanted to know how such a play would work using the grammar of film. I’ve only had one viewing, so I may have missed something, but I didn’t feel that the film structure was all that interesting. in Elephant, Gus Van Sant was brilliant with the way he handled the disparate characters and their viewpoints through the way it was filmed, while we watched the massacre unfold. in contrast with Capote, the strength lies with the actors' portrayals of real life people and characters. the performances were quiet and restrained. no over the top oscar moments. Philip Seymour Hoffman did a splendid job as Truman Capote, making him both funny and moving. the tension between fact and fiction was more aptly demonstrated by Capote’s lying to Perry about their friendship and his need for material to finish his novel.

overall the movie was quite good and subtle. no irritating oscar-baiting moments (though it does have oscar-begging written all over it). but perhaps this restraint also holds it back too. a crime so violent, a piece of literature so controversial, a writer so adored and scandalized, this restraint seems to underwhelm the very passion that made all of the fact and fiction so alive in the novel. still, I highly recommend the movie, four out of five stars, mostly for the performances.

unfortunately, the beautiful Elgin theatre was too dark to take clear photos with my crappy cellphone, but these blobs are really Bennet Miller (director), Clifton Collins Jr. (Perry Smith), Catherine Keener (Nelle Harper Lee) and of course, Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote). the screenplay was done by Dan Futterman, on whom I have a crush since watching him in the movie Urbania. don't ask me why I think he's cute. I have no idea.

“They really did travel far for this!” - Bennett Miller, as he introduced the long line of people who had a hand in the movie, which also had its world premiere at the film festival. Unfortunately, no Q&A.