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Mood:
Ok
Outlook:
Industrious |
Listening
to: My
iPod, Stellastarr*
Last TV watched:
Last film watched: Inside
Man, Friends with Money
Last book read: Collapse
by Jared Diamond
Last magazine read: The Atlantic
Last comic read: BPRD, The Walking Dead
Currently reading: "The Absolution Gap" by Alastair Reynolds
Currently playing: Battlefield
2
I want to see: Good
Night and Good Luck
Forums and blogs I visit: |
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Up
one level
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The Sultan's Elephant
London is the site for one of those
live public theatre extravaganzas I wish would pop
up in Vancouver more often. Currently the French theatre
group Royale de Luxe has the run of London streets
bringing with them a
huge robotic elephant that is marching down selected
routes. The four day event features not just the robot
but other players telling the story of a sultan and
his time travelling retinue. A huge gallery of photos
of the spectacle is up on Flickr. |
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Spanish destroys lost Roman city
for car park
Archaeologists glee at finding
the remains of a Roman forum, bath house, gymnasium
and temple complete with hundreds of statues and other
artifacts turned to dismay this week when the town
of Ecija went ahead and paved over a large section
of it for a planned 250 stall car park whose construction
had initially uncovered the archaelogical site. Read
more >>No more on Tofino
For a few days I couldn't stop talking about the Tofino
trip but then a group of masked men sporting dreadlocks
and looking extremely fit showed up to my home and asked
me to stay quiet about the beautiful beaches, blue sky
and dramatic rocky peninsulas. I guess I can't post
more photos to my Flickr
set. Nor can I suggest to people that there is no
way they should miss going to the Maquinna
Park Hot Springs or eat at the Sobo
restaurant or suggest a
nice romantic and elegant B&B to stay at. |
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Great time in Tofino
Sun, trees, coast.
I'm now re-adjusting to life walking on concrete after
four days of walking beaches, boardwalk, rocky shore
and forest paths. I can see why some people choose
to live roughly out in Tofino
(or live luxuriously if they are in that class) when
they can look forward to gorgeous sunsets, endless
surf / ocean and lucious
green forest. Our time out there was just great
except for catching the tail end of the last of the
winter weather. By the second day we could make do
with only windbreakers and the final day the T-shirt
climate had descended on the peninsula. I will write
more about the trip later but I recommend it highly
for a getaway weekend. I've begun to upload pictures
to my
Flickr set. I took about 10gb of photos so it
will take some time sorting through them all.
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Yes, I was that jackass at the
Cinematheque
Kelvin and I were officially called
jackasses last night when we watched the close to
three hour "Bandits
vs Samurai Squadron" at the Cinematheque.
Yes, true art.
The film had been touted as "the best samurai
movie of the 70s" and evidently at least one
audience-member believed it for when the curtain rose
he said in a loud voice to his friend "I would
have enjoyed it better if not for the jackasses laughing
in the audience" (they were sitting right behind
us). Moi? I said to Kelvin. My word, I believe that
gentleman was referring to you and I! Indeed, said
Kelvin. Oh dear. I suppose I should feel bad for ruining
this card-carrying-Cinematheque-member's experience
but you know, going to the cinema is called an audience
experience. One could always rent "Bandits
vs Samurai Squadron" from the Videomatica
and watch it in complete silence, making notes and
nodding sagely at every whip-pan, snap-zoom and appreciating
the slap-bass funky soundtrack and terrible sound
effects on one's own Harmon Kardon sound system. I
suppose one might think that every movie
presented at the Cinematheque is already a gilded
classic and cannot be enjoyed for badness as well
as crowd pleasing content. Of course, Shakespeare
is only appreciable by sitting quietly and
perusing the programme while sipping champagne. The
Bard himself never intended for his material
to be shown to general audiences. Please
note the sarcastic tone. Similarly, I doubt very much
that Hideo Gosha was aiming his film at a film asethete
audience who might be seeking some deeper analysis
of heads flying and blood spraying and liberal reveal
of titties through ripped kimonos. To Mr. Cinematheque:
come on. You think that was high art? |
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Now you can say there is at least one good Jennifier Aniston movie, especially when she is surrounded with (but by no means propped up by) a cast like Catherine Keener, Frances McDormand, and Joan Cusack. "Friends with Money" could also be a feature coming out party for writer/director Nicole Holofcener, a longtime scripter for "Sex and the City", "Gilmore Girls" and "Six Feet Under".
The "Sex in the City" credits show in this funny comedy about a group of women (and their mates) who struggle with dealing with their relative economic disparities and their relationships. Keener's character is trying to manage an addition to her bungalow and at the same time continue writing a screenplay with her husband who harbours a cold nasty side (why else would you cast Jason Isaacs?). Frances McDormand designs dresses overpriced at $800 and above and may be married to a gay man. Of all the friends, Joan Cusack seemingly has no particular worries, regularly donating millions of dollars to causes, married to a fussy man who dotes on their son. On the polar opposite, Jennifer Anniston's character is a former teacher and potsmoker who has works as a rent-a-maid.
"Friends with Money" hinges on the issue of whether money can bring you happiness both for yourself and in your relationships. Anniston's character has no success in either money or relationships - she is still hung up on a one-time fling with a married man - but, of course, it wouldn't be a movie if the answer was yes, money does solve all your troubles. All of Anniston's friends (we don't really know why they became friends to begin with) are older and have ageing worries. McDormand's fashion designer character is the funniest - she externalizes her issues, barking out at life's challenges in open conflict. Keener's screenwriter, on the other hand, crushes in on herself until her too obvious strained relationship implodes.
(The only male character who has even the start of any kind of journey is Keener's husband (the fey Simon McBurney) who most assume is gay. Precious and absorbed with clothing threads, he is continually hit on by other men to comedic effect. However, his story has nothing to do with the question and goes nowhere.) All thje other males serve as counter-points.
Something was bound to lose out in the middle of a seeming wealth of storylines (and opportunities for arch dialogue between longtime mates) and that is everyone's story. Except for Anniston, who chooses passivity and makes only one decision in the entire movie toward resolving her story, we see no unforseen resolutions, just the mostly pleasurable churning on of scene after scene of setups and encounters. Again, we are seeing the TV roots here where the plots wind on throughout the season. One could easily imagine "Friends With Money" as the somewhat abbreviated version of a TV series - albeit one with an A-level cast. "Gilmore Girls" the movie. "Sex and the City: the Movie".
On the surface you might be tempted to dismiss this as another angsty yuppie laugher where couples stress about building additions to their houses, attending charity dinners and worry about giving their children too much. And the inclusion of Anniston as the sole non-achiever among the friends isn't quite so woven into the rest of the stories. Yet, the repartee, the individual stories and the comedy beats roll along. Whatever the creaks in the second act, everything moves quickly along. We may not care that much about the nouveau riche but the setups are funny and you can't lose with the cast. |
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North Shore Minor Lacrosse website
I'm just coming up for air to let everyone know what
has been keeping me busy the past while. I've been
maintaining a number of websites, making slight updates
and so on but my big part-time project has been the
website for the North Shore
Minor Lacrosse Association, the governing amateur
and sport-developing lacrosse body for North and West
Vancouver. The main part has been public for a couple
weeks however I've been spending most of my time delving
deeply into the world of blogging using Movable
Type. Movable Type is easy to use - once
you have set it up correctly. After a series of missteps
I finally am getting close to getting the news section
of that site up and running so that any of the staff
members can post. See
the NSMLA site here >>
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Review: Jared Diamond's "Collapse:
How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" (Penguin)
Another big bestseller from the author of "Guns,
Germs and Steel" follows his survey of cultures
approach to answer the question why certain societies
survive or do not with the provocative subtitle that
many cultures choose to die by making seemingly irrational
decisions that lead toward their doom. Unlike his
earlier book in which environmental determinism seemed
to indicate that cultures were gifted by being in
the right regions of the Earth, leading to their greater
opportunity to become the leading countries of today,
Diamond delves deeper in examining how selected societies
faced with an environmental crisis had the opportunity
to turn back from the brink but either lacked the
knowledge or allowed themselves to be lead into oblivion
by cultural and marketplace factors. In doing so Diamond
presents a stark choice to today's world facing the
multiple threats of scarcity, global warming and overpopulation;
change or go the way of these societies.
Diamond structures his book into case studies for the first two thirds: past societies and modern societies and then delivers his prescriptive analysis based upon his observations. The obvious challenge to the reader is that if you disagree with his anthropology and environmental science in the first two-thirds, the choices he presents to the world are not going to change your view. After each case study you might ask yourself what lessons these cultures - the Maya, Easter Island, the Greenland Norse, and assorted Pacific islanders - have to show our modern industrial society with its benefit of technology, built up knowledge and control of resources. However, Diamond addresses the questions head on at the end of each chapter.
Not all of these case studies is a lesson on how societies cleaned out their environmental resources and then dwindled away which may come as a relief considering the doom and gloom of the weight of environmental predictions in the news. Although most of the case studies have the tone of "this could be US", some also contain lessons on how certain societies such as the Japanese and the New Guineans made difficult decisions to deal with their challenges. The Japanese Tokugawa regime, for example, after determining that they would shortly strip the main island of timber, instituted a replanting regime and made forests the property of local lords who then had incentive to preserve their resources.  The mighty viking remains More poignantly, though, Diamond relates stories of now exterminated peoples such as the Greenland Norse who, despite building Cathedrals and farm structures that still stand today, could not adapt to a changing global climate change that destroyed the foundation for their sheep and cattle farming. Instead of reaching out and learning from the Inuit peoples who shared Greenland with them, the descendents of vikings maintained a low level warfare with them and never learned how to survive when their farms dwindled away.
In modern examples Diamond levels much of his criticism on the resource extraction industries, with mining his most common target. Anyone familiar with the 'tragedy of the commons' arguments will find Diamond's examples more fodder. Diamond returns over and over to the example of how mining industries leave their polluted sites behind, often declaring bankruptcy so that they are not saddled with the costs of the cleanup with the only benefitters being the top shareholders who have sold out long ago. However, Diamond, who since the success of "Guns, Germs and Steel" has become a minor celebrity in environmental causes, also praises the oil industry who have seemingly recognized that public perception of their past disasters is something
that has to be won back through strict environmental policies and programmes. Diamond advocates that environmental groups co-opt industries rather than be seen only as critics.
On that note Diamond says he is "cautiously optimistic". The world faces the deepening problem of the growing population of China which combines the three problems of overpopulation, consumption and pollution. Yet, Diamond notes that Chinese leaders are cognizant of the environmental costs of their growth and unlike many of the societies in his case studies have shown they are able and willing to force change upon their society. It should be noted that one theme in Diamond's book is that he advocates more top-down affectors: government, big business rather than the traditionally bottom-up change. This may put him at odds with many on the left.
A huge part of Diamond's success has been his ability to span great amounts of information in an extremely easy to read style which obviously has translated into its bestseller status. Diamond however does not shy away from statistics and sources. Perhaps stung by criticisms of "Guns, Germs and Steel" for its liberal interpretation of environmental cause and effect, Diamond is more giving with his reliance on previous well-known works. Diamond is first and foremost a communicator and in this makes "Collapse" a book well worth taking to bed.
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Nature disgusts me: Bats, Cockroaches
& Worms
First, last night I had the displeasure
of watching the fourth episode in the BBC/NHK
documentary Planet Earth
which explores the different, least known climes of
our planet. In this last episode - "Caves"
- a team explores a dark cavern inhabited by over
three million bats whose droppings have accumulated
in a mountain of guano. On that mountain of guano
are teeming thousands of cockroaches who live on the
stuff. Any creature unfortunate enough to fall on
this pit are immediately consumed by the cockroaches.
Bleah. The series, btw, is excellent. It is narrated
by Sir David Attenborough.
 Rolled up like spaghetti Then this morning I read about the
guinea worm. This is by far one of the most
disgusting and scary afflictions on humans that I've
read about. The guinea worm is a parasite that villagers
in Africa contract by drinking untreated / unfiltered
water that has the guinea worm's larvae. Once ingested,
the larvae begin growing into its adult phase (the
worm) inside the host's body, growing many dozen inches
burrowing up to the skin where it exudes a painful
acid. ( The
CDC has details on the affliction, also called
dracunculiasis)
At this stage the worm is wriggling out onto the surface
so that its length resembles a spaghetti thread hanging
outside of the victim's body. Many victims cope by
rolling the worm up with a stick. This stage proves
so painful that the victim eventually seeks to relieve
the burning sensation by dipping the afflicted part
(sometimes the eye!) into water. Once the worm detects
that it is in water, it completes its life cycle by
exploding thousands of its own larvae back into the
water where they wait to be ingested by the next victim.
More
from the NY Times >>
One of my readers on New Medievalism has pointed out
that there is a satirical (I hope) website dedicated
to saving the guinea worm from extinction. See the
Save
the Guinea Worm Foundation website here >> |
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Accidental pillow fight
I was wandering downtown waiting
for a movie to start ("Inside Man" - review
later) and I heard a big roar at the Vancouver
Art Gallery. That's usually the site of protests
so for lack of anything to do I walked over to see
the air filled with feather dust. That is, there was
a huge pillow fight raging on the sidewalk. Dozens
of happy people were whapping each other over the
heads with feather pillows. Everyone was beaming and
laughing. They were part of a Flash
Mob. Incidentally, I got onto Flickr
recently so I could post photos. See
my pillow fight photos here. Also, still on Flickr,
see everyone's
pillow fight photos. I'm in this
one. |
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V for Vapid
Get ready for the lecture V for Vendetta
The adaptation of the legendary Alan Moore novel
is brought to the screen by the Wachowski production
team and director James McTeigue with mixed results.
We have a handsome production with bold images and
game performances by Hugo
Weaving (behind the mask) and
Natalie Portman but a story that hits the
viewer over the head with its self-impressed exhortation
for mass action against a fascistic government.
It's something that is quite familiar already to
readers of Orwell and unfortunately it is nothing
quite so as revolutionary as the makers seem to
think.
Portman plays Evey, an everywoman swept up by the
agents of the paranoid authoritarian government
of a near future Britain that seeks to keep its
citizenry in a state of fear from 'terrorists',
the chaos of a world brought down by pandemic and
a never-ending American war. Evey's unfortunate
encounter with the government 'finger men' leads
to her rescue by the Batman-like "V" (Hugo
Weaving), a knife-weilding subversive who never
removes his Guy Fawkes mask. Despite being saved
from rape by "V", Evey returns to her
prole existence and comforts until the next time
that V strikes, taking over the national TV station
where she works.
V's intentions are to shake the cow-like masses
from their abeisance to the Big Brother-like government
(the big brother is played in a turnabout by John
Hurt who was in the Evey-like role in the film adaptation
of "1984") and to expose a conspiracy
that created the artificial terror threat that thrust
them into power. One trouble with this is that we've
seen it many times before, even in the Wachowski's
"Matrix" trilogy. In "V for Vendetta",
the ideas are written large, so large that the message
is already painfully blunt from the beginning. The
layering of the contemporary parallels with the
Bush government have slightly updated the material
but not in any way more evident than in the headlines
of our news today. Indeed, I found it deeply ironic
that the advanced screening I attended was the first
one in which I was searched, scanned and my bags
looked into before I was allowed in (anti-piracy
show of force).
More disappointing is the central relationship between
Evey and V never rises above the Phantom of the
Opera-lite cliches that have been tired since Beauty
and the Beast. But in this case V castigates Evey
and her fellow citizens with lectures and bombast.
The one serious development later in the movie that
is of interest in which V turns the screws on Evey
to get her to come around to his way of thinking
is telegraphed and will surprise hardly anyone.
All of this builds toward the drawn out conclusion
and exhortation for everyone to rise up and use
the force of morality and will to bring down the
government. It is the "I'm Spartacus"
moment that is so earnest and so awful that it made
me wish I had a mask to hide behind.
Other problems involve some curious editing, blase
action pacing and a real lack of threat of the villains
despite the posturing. This is what you get when
you put Agent Smith on the good guys' side and replace
him with the sad-eyed Stephen
Rea in a thankless Inspector Javert role.
Anyone hoping for at least a splash of action will
also be disappointed; if you've seen the trailer
you've seen most of it.
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Lessons from Israeli urban combat
This is a good six page overview
in which lessons from the Israeli
operations in the occupied territories recently are
reviewed. Regardless of the political implications
of combat in areas like Sammara, the Israeli army
(IDF) has certainly been at the leading edge of developing
tactics and technologies to help them battle forces
like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other irregular forces.
For technophiles, you may want to page to the middle
section where they show such military porn toys like
a camera mounted on an
'arrow' that can be fired by a rifle so that
it sticks into hard to reach vantage points. |
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