Troy Davis is Dead

Buffy's back! Fall season reviews, part one

Don't know what to watch this Fall? Fear not, Comrade Bingo is watching everything for you and telling you what to hit and what to miss. This is promising to be an exciting season so it's worth keeping tabs on what's going on.

Ringer (Premiered 13 September)

Genre: thriller

Stars: Sara Michelle Gellar

Channel: The CW

WARNING: all the trailers below give away plot and jokes

Sarah Michelle Gellar's return to the small screen with a plot that is such a ringer (sorry) for The Lying Game which started airing one month ago, is a tad disappointing. Mind you, this is a well-trodden storyline; twins who have been apart for some time reunite and switch lives. The plot inevitably involves following the downtrodden twin into the life of the rich twin. Rich twin dies or is other unable to resume her life which leaves downtrodden twin in luxury -- which is fine by the fooled family of rich twin who don't know what's happened to "twin" but they find her inexplicable sudden amenable personality rather enticing. I first read that plot in an Higgins Clark novel when I was a kid.

Derivative Buffy is better than no Buffy at all and The Lying Game isn't of better quality anyway and this is the grown up version. Acting is solid. Pilot ends with a non-shocking shocker but it's up to you whether you decide to play along.

Verdict: Recommend, although series-long thrillers are always a gamble. So, don't lock in that time slot for the entire year.

Free Agents (Premiered 14 September)

Genre: sitcom remake of a Britcom of the same name

Stars: Hank Azaria, Kathryn Hahn

Channel: NBC

Kathryn Hahn is an interesting actress who I didn't know before this but it's not enough to stick with a series that seems tired by the end of the pilot. Anthony Head (Buffy again!) plays the a-hole boss. Since The Office, every boss has to be a special kind of a-hole. Hank Azaria plays a newly-divorced man who is having trouble getting back in the sadd… zzzz…. there's nothing new here. No sense is wasting time telling you more.

Verdict: Don't recommend. Surfing the internet is a much better use of your time. Oh, and that joke in the trailer is the only funny joke in the entire show.

Up All Night (Premiered 14 September)

Genre: sitcom

Stars: Christine Applegate, Will Arnett

Channel: NBC

Yes, Will Arnett was brilliant as Gob in Arrested Development, but I am truly surprised he was ever forgiven for Running Wilde, a show which was pulled after a handful of episodes, a show which should have been pulled ten minutes into the pilot.

Here, we have a couple dealing with a first born. Mother goes back to work, father stays at home. We are meant to believe Arnett's character has never been in a grocery store. Now, how funny is that? Applegate's character has a female boss who is child free and (therefore) self-centred. Childfree people are all so awful, don't you know.

Run wild from this show.

The Secret Circle (Premiered 15 September)

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy Romance

Channel: The CW

Another series based on L.J. Smith books and don't you wish you'd got on the Twilight bandwagon and got rich because, seemingly, there is no possible way of quenching that teenage/adult female thirst for this sort of tosh.

Ok, so I watch Gossip Girl because it's decadent and lurid. I watch The Lying Game because I'm a sucker for that twin thing. But I draw the line at The Secret Circle. Ok, that's not true. I'll be watching for a while but this is lacklustre execution of a lacklustre trope: girl moves in with grandma after mother was killed, to a town said mother fled as a young woman. Everybody in the town of New Salem (subtle) is a witch but they need our heroine's power to be, like, super powerful. 

If you decide to give up the day job, don't forget to involve adults in the plots of your books and soon-to-be tv series and make them super evil. This way you get a double audience, teenage girls and their loser (me) mothers (I'm not a mom).

The acting is blah, and, for the genre, the pacing for this pilot was lazy. 

Verdict: I hate myself for watching this show. Unless you are a girl under the age of 18, just don't do it.

Whitney (Premiered 15 September)

Genre: sitcom

Stars: Whitney Cummings

Channel: NBC

Ah, Whitney, Whitney, Whitney. Whitney Cummings is a terribly bad comedian who is hated by other comedians and that is quite a feat because that crowd is tighter than a bunch a rich boys who find themselves in separate interrogation rooms after raping the country club maid. You have to work hard to make that crowd turn on one of their own. Whitney (the real one) is cute and deluded into thinking that she's amazingly beautiful. Actually, she is an anti-feminist who say stupid stuff like that the problem with television today is that women on it are not beautiful enough. For starters. So she had to put herself out there to push up the beauty quotient. Her stand up isn't funny. Her show even less so. I don't know that one would have to work hard to convince me they were a photographer but I never believed for one second that (fictional) Whitney could be one. She can't act. Seinfeld couldn't act either and yet the show worked. Her boyfriend cannot convince us for one second that he would be with her.

Verdict: nothing to see here, folks. Move it along.

Homeland (Premieres 2 October)

Genre: Psychological thriller

Stars: Claire Danes, Mandy Patinkin

Channel: Showtime

Showtime was smart enough to build up momentum for this show by releasing the pilot on the intertubes. It's time television understood the internet is its friend, not its enemy. Now I can't wait for the second episode of Homeland. 

A CIA agent after the bad, bad, bad terr-rists isn't at all my bag yet Homeland is simply excellent. The writing is tight. The cast is packed with excellent character actors and the story begins with an arc I could see stretch whilst maintaining tension for a while. The Manchurian Candidate highlights only add to the tension and potential of this show.

The problem with tv series thrillers is that the writers don't know how long the show will last. Will they have to stretch the story for one, two or five years? The problem with this of course, is that if writers are not prepared for a long run, they will keep adding complications to the plot until it makes no sense and there will never be a way to elucidate the plot. The sad casualties of this phenomenon include  The X-Files, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost. However, if the writers plan for a long run, they will drag the plot and hardly ever reveal anything and bore us all. It's a catch-22. The Wire is one series which avoided this by ending a story every season. It's not as ambitious and dareisay lyrical but there is a reason why critics and viewers alike call it the best television show ever made.

Back to Homeland. Danes is a troubled CIA agent who screwed up an operation in Iraq and almost lost her job over it. Patinkin, her mentor, is not entirely deluded by his attachment to his duckling, and yet he realises she is a valuable asset to the agency. The chica has brains and let us pray the gods of television the writers won't bring relationships into the mix and make her all forlorn and tortured. So far, this show has respect for its female character: write the day and date. Danes is the bad cop who breaks the rules to get at the truth with her fist clutched to her heart and tears streaming down her cheeks whilst the star-spangled banner is playing, but, somehow, her zeal is attractive because the writing treats it for the dysfunction that it is. And, no, the show doesn't have a star-spangled banner scene, it's too smart for that, but we know she's that girl.

Verdict: Do not go to pass Go. Watch this.

Next week is the big one and I will probably break it down by posting a mid-week blog by Thursday or Friday. And I will try to add British shows but, British television seasons are even more fluid than they are over here, so I'm struggling a bit to find them.

Shows premiering this week:

Sunday 18

Downton Abbey

Monday 19

19 Two Broke Girls

19 The Playboy Club

Tuesday 20

New Girl

Raising Hope

Body of Proof

Unforgettable

Wednesday 21

Fresh Meat

Modern Family

Harry's Law

Revenge

Thursday 22

Person of Interest

Prime Suspect

Friday 23

A Gifted Man

Nikita

Saturday 24

Rules of Engagement

If Only She'd Run...

Margaret Atwood asks: ‘Are people like me welcome in this city?’

She means artists in Toronto. Since last year, Toronto has a mayor who makes Sarah Palin seem intelligent and literate. He was elected by the areas of Toronto which used to be suburbs but were swallowed during the nineties' trend of turning every big city into a mega-city. People who live in the old suburbs tend to prefer cars to public transit, sterile streets to funky, graffiti-ed ones, tidiness, not creativity. 

Well, Rod Ford is his Fool, of a brother, Doug Ford, have surpassed all expectations. Blind privatisation, transit, garbage disposal, libraries are being discussed even if such policies will affect service and cost billions more to the taxpayers (watch this public debate on public transit ). The right-wing disease has grown savage in recent years, mindless and cruel and it is spreading fast in Canada. Poor people are scum and don't deserve human dignity, don't you know. Toronto, with its urban heat, can get to 50 degrees Celsius in the Summer, but Ford resisted for a long time before finally declaring an extreme heat alert for the first time this year, two weeks ago. He resisted because such an alert triggers measures like keeping pools open late for people without AC and leaving homeless shelters open during the day. This costs the taxpayer money.

Like a mad hatter, like an American Tea Partier, Ford wants to rule not to make the state work but to make it disappear. And like those false libertarians South of the 49th, he hates gays and immigrants and artists, with a special kind of wrath for cyclists.

I am an artist and I left Toronto months ago. I don't think Toronto is a good place for a creative person to be right now.

Of course, I still live in Canada, a place now ruled by that horrific Lord Protector Stephen Harper. He takes money from small theatre companies and gives them to big arts organisations that don't need it nearly as much. He is worse than Ford in many ways and his power has greater reach. And he's not found of the LGBT community or brown people at all.

These are dark times for liberals. Dark times for all intelligent, free thinking people. After Doug Ford criticised the existence of public libraries, writer Margaret Atwood rose to defend them. Many think like her but individual wingnuts are calling for people to burn her books. Book burning. In Canada.

It's true that the fall of the Soviet Union is partly to blame for this. I hate totalitarian regimes as much as the next guy, but communism forced capitalists to participate in some wealth distribution, pensions, unions, universal healthcare of some form of it in many western countries. I also believe this is a white man, white race problem. Heterosexual white men (well, the ones who insist they are) feel threatened in a world where women, visible and invisible minorities have taken power and ceased to be voiceless. Several American states have a white minority and 18% of Canadians were not born in Canada. Of course, this last figure is interesting because in 1931, 22% of Canadians had not been born in Canada. One thing for sure, the shift in immigration, from immigrants of European extraction to those from Indochina, Africa and the Middle-East means that to some narrow-minded people, Canada doesn't "look" the same and this stirs up fear.

In the last quarter only, since the Lord Protector has gained his majority, immigration has fallen by 25% in Canada. It would be interesting to know how that reduction has affected immigrants from European countries.

Toronto, Canada, are undergoing a makeover. And when everything is wrecked, infrastructure, social programs, the arts, when children and women have nowhere to turn to when they are abused, who will pick up the pieces? I used to joke that Blade Runner was becoming more true everyday and I think savage and cruel capitalism will create the dystopic world writers like Suzanne Collins are writing about today. Not an exact copy of course, but her post-climate-change world (because, of course, Harper and Ford couldn't care less about the environment) in its resulting social inequities, may just around the corner for us.

Artists don't run for office and I very much doubt Atwood would. They shouldn't be an election for another four years, but I have high hopes Ford is a dirty politician and that something is afoot between him and KPMG. After all, it seems hardly possible to underestimate the man.

Amy Winehouse 1983-2011

The mane of the lioness

Why didn't Rebekah Brooks start tying back her hair back when this whole thing started? If some contexts, her hair might evoke all manner of the pre-Raphaelite ideals and sexuality, although that probably would have worked better when she was younger. But since the scandal exploded in full force a couple of weeks ago, her mane has only served to feed the idea that the woman is a crazed crone who bake babies in a pie. The fiery hair helped the public perception that this woman once suspected of physically abusing her then husband actor Ross Kemp is some kind of maniac. Even a tasteful chignon still revealing the lushness of Ms. Brooks' hair would have been better than the uncontrollable, over-abundant, draping crown.

Martin Rowson 2011, The Guardian

In praise of Sarah Vowell

Vowell has a masters in art history. She started her career as a rock critic, became a public radio commentator, then turned to writing populist history books written from a highly personal point of view. She's quirky with a singular sense of humour. Always great if you can learn and have fun at the same time. The Wordy Shipmates is about the puritans in America. What struck me despite the puritan's genuine Bible literacy and sometimes literacy full stop, is how batshit crazy they were, just like many right-wing Americans today. There's a real continuum there. 

Unfamiliar Fishes is about western contact with Hawaii starting with Cook and all the way to the eventual annexation in 1898. In all her books, Vowell writes about visiting historical sites and talking to curators and guides and uses this as a technique to weave the past with the present and her reactions to what she sees. The personal technique is in lieu of academically rigour but it does give a good idea of how history survives in every day life.

Assassination Vacation is the oldest of the three books and my favourite. Vowell travels around the US looking for historical sites linked to the assassinations of three American presidents, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. Like me, she keeps going back to the Lincoln Memorial, "the closest thing I have to a church". Three American presidents killed within thirty six years gives you an idea of how volatile the country has always been. She also rehabilitates Garfield, a forgotten president who escaped political corruption and might have made been a great president had he served for more the a few months. Garfield was a bookworm who would much have preferred staying in his library for the rest of his life. 

Jesus Christ Superstar review

(Members of the company in Jesus Christ Superstar. Photography by David Hou)


Jesus Christ Superstar

Lyrics by Tim Rice
Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Directed by Des McAnuff


Avon Theatre
until October 29





(No spoilers below but still a warning: I don't talk about the shows in any detail because I believe in virginity when approaching art. Hopefully, by telling you what I like, you can figure out how to position yourself vis-a-vis my impressions and take it from there. Sorry for the vague modifiers and feel free to read this apology as a mask for lack of erudition. Either way, I still think this is for your own good.)


As a non-fan of musical theatre, I don't possess the necessary scope of knowledge nor the experience of a seasoned musicals spectator to write a review with the necessary critical acumen. This situation does not invalidate this endeavour I think since my point with this review is to tell you should believe all those extravagantly glowing and awe-struck critical reactions to the 2011 Stratford production of Jesus Christ Superstar. Critics have been promiscuous in dispensing superlatives for this show, so much so that readers might resist believing the hype. I'm here to set you straight, you with your hard earned cynicism and doubtfulness. I hope that my input as someone who doesn't like musical theatre and who likes Andrew Lloyd Webber even less might prove a useful gauge.


I would not have gone to see Jesus Christ Superstar had I not being obligated out of friendship. I was dreading it. I think I saw a few seconds of the film version on television once. I had to switch it off so irritating I found it. As we were making our way into the Avon Theatre to see Des McAnuff's version of the show, my companion who knows my feelings about musicals and Webber whispered to me, "close your eyes and think of England". 


As an audience member who had to be won, the energy on stage was probably the first thing that pulled me in. Not one hint of a grocery or to-do list ever entered flashed passed my ADHD brain. I can be deliberately reluctant (and so can you, hipster that you are) especially when my image as an artsy chic who is sooo cutting edge aesthetically is under threat. Redde Caesari quae sunt Caesaris: when faced with a convergence of such talent in conception and execution, to refuse to surrender and open up to the experience would have proved to be a form of self-injury.


The show only got better as it went along. Everyone, every aspect of the show is outstanding — costumes, sets, lighting, choreography, music, everything. Let's just say that the show is better than the sum of its parts; if you think about it, that is quite rare in live performance.


I do hope Josh Young isn't reading the reviews. He is wondrous and shouldn't be spoiled by excess of critical adulation. The part of Judas puts him at an advantage as it is by far the meatier part of the play. It allows for a range and depth rarely seen in the far too often thinly-drawn characters typical of the genre. You expect Judas to do a good job but Young connects with the audience from beginning to end. He's as stellar as an actor can be without ripping the carpet from under the rest of the show. Brilliant actor and singer. 


Pilate is potentially complex but with so little time on stage, I doubt many actors who have played the part in the past have been able to telegraph as much as Brent Carver  does in the role. Carver renders Pilate's turmoil with immediacy and quiet directness, a subtle feat in what is a crude artistic context (the musical theatre context, that is). He conveys sense of interiority to the audience while "rock" music is blasting. I could not help but be moved by his tears streaming down his face as he condemned Jesus.


I was entertained and compelled and that would have been more than enough but the show only got better. 


Jonathan Winsby does a great job in the lead role considering he was the understudy. Winsby is replacing Paul Nolan who is experiencing health problems. I saw Jonathan give a courageous performance in what was only his third performance. Some members of the public have expressed their disappointment at not seeing Nolan on stage, or so I've read. As a musical theatre neophyte, I have no idea what it is I am missing but Jonathan Winsby was especially good in the second half where he displayed Christ-like charisma and pain and feeling. 


I don't understand the politics of how such decisions are made but I understand performed in the premiere even though his voice was strained. I wish Winsby had performed. Now the "real" critics won't review his performance and that is a great shame.


Felicitations as well to Chillina Kennedy, that public and media darling on account of successful musical performances in previous Stratford seasons. Her voice and acting as disarmingly natural, she was a wonderful surprise to me.

When I got home after the show, I downloaded the motion picture soundtrack from iTunes. Now, I would like the record to reflect that I have not suddenly turned into a musical theatre nut. I simply wanted to confirm my suspicion that this Jesus Christ Superstar is a more insightful interpretation than the movie version. It is, by leaps and bounds. Kudos to Rick Fox, musical director. 


The musical theatre genre is a mystery to me for many reasons and I was always particularly intrigued by the relationship between a musical director, choreographer and director. I'm not sure what it is that McAnuff does when he directs a musical although one can logically deduct that part of his job consists in fusing different forms of expression together. He demonstrates his mastery throughout but the King Herod's Song number is an especially noteworthy example. I genuinely bow to Bruce Dow's Herod and ALL other aspects of this number — seriously, don't read about this scene in reviews, it will spoil your fun. In the end though, it is McAnuff who deserves idolisation for making this idiosyncratic scene work in the context as a sombre second half. To stage the scene as he does is a courageous move. Striking the wrong tone might have destroyed the rest of the show. The number brought down the house.


Jesus Christ Superstar has yet to make me want to see more musicals. To me, it is a genre saps meaning from story. I like to be entertained and I like to just have a  good time but, for me, that is contingent on substance. McAnuff's Jesus Christ Superstar isn't Chekov but it is extraordinary in itself. Even though I speak from a self-declared position of ignorance, I think the critical input around this show affords me the liberty to proclaim this Jesus Christ Superstar the best that musical theatre can be.

Theatre and missionary sex

Random theatre photo: Tantalos, a theatre company in Iran rehearsing Medea

My first Shakespeare performance was in my native French at Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in Montréal. I didn’t know a word of English until my late teens and had only experienced Shakespeare in French thus far. Le Théâtre du Nouveau Mondeis one of the best renowned and prestigious theatre in Québec. I saw Le songe d’une nuit d’été directed by Robert Lepage. The production was erotically charged, if not explicit, erotic enough that I was glad I sat next to classmates and not my parents. We’d gone as a group of classmates to get a school group fare but Midsummer was not assigned that year so we hadn’t read it. When we talked to our teacher about it the next day, he said that a highly sexualised interpretation of Midsummer was right there in the text and that Lepage didn’t take much liberties at all.

Lepage’s production was a feast of colours and movement. It was frenetic and self-assured, the actors were bouncing off poles and scaffolds in a manner I would describe as well-adjusted and joyous crystal meth addicts. I remember Puck (played by a woman) often screaming her lines out to great effect. The overall effect was rather like having been brutalised emotionally and yet my memory isn’t doing this production justice after all these years because it was punctuated with beautiful moments of quietness and tenderness. Again, Lepage gave us a completely justifiable interpretation of the text with its Dionysian tendencies. I’d never seen anything like this in my life and I wanted it again and more every day. We went for coffee after the show and alternated between talking over each other and long silences whilst we were replaying bits in our heads and tried to make sense of what we’d seen.

I’m telling you this because of online discussions I’ve participated in over the weekend after the announcement that Des McAnuff will be leaving his post as artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival at the end of the 2013 season and the announcement of the 2012 season line up. There was some disgruntlement over a so-called “Shakespeare” festival would only be offering three Shakespeare plays next year and the production of crowd pleasers like You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. If some Canadians cheer a right-wing fembots on cable TV for spewing vitriol over the public financing of a contemporary dancer, (Google Margie Gillis and Sun TV News) others wonder whether tax payers should foot the bill for Canadian productions of Broadway blockbusters. My take on it is that if Charlie Brown pays for Sophocles (also part of the 2012 season), I’ll take it.

McAnuff seems to have been a popular AD and many are sad to see him go. I’m not in the know enough to participate in discussions judging his AD-ship but every Stratford production I’ve seen under McAnuff’s tenure has been of high quality. In one discussion, we did muse about who would make a good replacement and I argued for an iconoclast.

In reading what follows, please don’t think I have a bad opinion of Ontario theatre versus Québec theatre. I lived in London for several years and saw the likes of Jacobi, Stevenson, Fiennes, Ejiofor and Russell Beale in pedestrian productions that had the imagination and experimental qualities of missionary sex. I have seen wonderfully inventive theatre in Toronto but, and there is a but, I have seen it mostly in tiny theatres, productions the mass public doesn’t easily have access to. I can assert this because even me, as someone who occasionally works in theatre, often almost miss such amazing productions, so ephemeral and small scale they are. 

What I am comparing are the big, prestigious non-for-profit Québec versus Ontario theatres who at least dabble in repertoire and new productions and get millions of dollars in funding year after year. My knowledge is not comprehensive but from my point of view one province is far more willing to challenge its audience than the other. Is this a cultural thing? Are Ontario audiences far more conservative? I truly could not tell you but when I saw the Lepage (sorry, him again) production ofProject Andersen at CanStage last year, the theatre was so packed, one could hardly breathe. One thing we’re aware of as audience members even if we’re not paying attention to others is the level of attention being directed to the show in front of us. Not one cough, I tell you. I’ve never seen such a captive audience since I moved to Ontario almost ten years ago. Too bad the word “rapture” has taken such unfortunate connotations these days as it would have proved a fitting term.

Talking to other commenters online, the issue of audience development came up as it always does. In terms of content, do we reach for the audience with crowd-pleasing productions or do we ask the audience to rise the material? I refuse this idea that the internet and Xbox have drawn bums off theatre seats. People between the ages of twenty and fifty (an age group woefully underrepresented in theatre audiences) do drop one to two hundred dollars on a meal at a trendy restaurant rather than go to the theatre. That’s, I do know.

Thinking more generally about why many people don’t go to the theatre it struck me that maybe some people stay home because they are more challenged there. Television has come a long way and the risks and experiments taken by shows like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, Breaking Bad, and so on make many contemporary theatre productions seem positively provincial. I’m not taking about mature language, violence and sex but about complex, substantive, layered content which forces me to think and sparks many long conversations in aforementioned eateries discussing David Chase, David Milch, David Simon and Matthew Weiner (respectively creators of The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire and Mad Men). Look for Bill Moyers’ interview of David Simon or the five hour interview of Matthew Weiner by the American Television Archive on youtube. These are thinking men with a highly developed sense of aesthetics. My point is this though: if television takes more risk than theatre then there is something very wrong and perhaps we cannot chastise an audience for not turning up.

Theatre has advantages over other media: intimacy and immediacy. When done well, it’s an art form that distinguishes itself from the pack in its visceral impact. I don’t expect every single play I see to achieve this but I certainly think it should try. Or not. Maybe I just need to learn my place, maybe I belong in tiny theatres at the end of dark alleys. I don’t mind going there but it’s a tad strange that someone like me who lives a very middle-class lifestyle and who is getting rather long in the tooth feels the need to turn to countercultural outlets of theatre. That’s not the case with other art forms. HBO and Ian McEwan are mainstream, they are not the “dark alleys” of their medium. I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels this way, it is possible that theatre are not filled, or not filled with people who are going to be alive in twenty years from now because theatre does not go far enough. We may need to rethink this idea that one can never underestimate the taste of the population.

I have recently moved from Toronto to Stratford and I’m having a great time going to the festival this year. No production has turned me inside out yet, but every show I’ve seen has been good. Repertory demands great acting talent and, to be honest, that level of quality is rarely found in my “alleys”. An actor needs time, support, and mentors to achieve great performances. This takes money and Stratford is obviously a great place for actors to hone their skills. I am truly grateful I will get to see every Stratford show this year. There is nothing like the best lines ever penned down in humankind being spoken by the best actors in the world. When I first saw Simon Russell Beale playing Ferdinand in The Duchess of Malfi, I felt completely overtaken by him. Let’s be blunt about it, missionary sex with a great partner can be hugely satisfying.

Despite all this, I must admit, I’m still puzzled over why the big Ontario productions I’ve seen in the last ten years stand so far away from the precipice. I’m not talking about stunts like actors urinating on stage, shock for shock value. I’m not a prude and I understand how certain extremes have a dialectical purpose in art but I’m far more conservative than that. We all have our thresholds and as an artist I do force myself to see what I know will make me feel uncomfortable at times but I’m not sure this is a demand on the audience that can/should be applied widely. So, I’m a bit conservative but “Truth is beauty, beauty, truth…” is my motto and this means that when I see a Shakespeare play on stage I want to see something I’ve never seen before. The text affords theatremakers unlimited possibilities. On the other hand, I do know a few SSF people personally and I get the feeling they do feel the festival has its edgy tendencies. It’s all subjective. 

The matter of the audience, in my humble opinion, is a broader social question; it’s the commitment to educate children to be subversive aesthetically because that is the only way to nourish and advance culture. I’ll extend Woody Allen’s comparison of selachimorphas and love and state that culture is like a shark. If it stops moving, it dies. If there is one thing we can all agree on I think it’s the notion that we, our contemporaries, do all kinds of things not to be numbed. Video games, extreme sports, and all kinds of behaviours online and off. I want to add theatre to be on this list, a theatre that not only excites but takes us to the precipice because the precipice is where art happens. It’s where a life is examined and therefore understood and truly lived. It is where we feel in a world that numbs us.

Great Mad Men interview

I haven't watched all five hours of this Archive on American Television interview from Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner but it is proving to be riveting stuff so far. From his family background, to his education, to the show itself, this series of interview deserves to be archived and will be valuable to television historians, makers and fans for generations to come.

Weiner is an interesting one: I remember an online interview in which he alluded to all mothers being like Betty and reading commenting, "like, well, uh, no..." It was clear that Betty was based on his mother. His mother, he explains, was a lawyer who couldn't find work because she had children and no firm would hire her. This turned her into a very unhappy and frustrated woman. As far as Don goes, he is also apparently based on Weiner's father, a prominent doctor with better lineage than his fictional counterpart.

Matthew Weiner was a writer for The Sopranos along with showrunner David Chase, the heart and soul of The Sopranos who based Tony's mother, Livia was also based on Chase's mother. Ouch. Apparently we should thank evil mothers for contributing in giving us the best television of all time. You can find a couple of hour long interviews with David Chase on Charlie Rose's website, but for Mad Men people, I recommend you put time aside to sit back and watch these fascinating Weiner interviews below:

Part one:


Part two:


Part three:


Part four:


Part five:


Part six:


Part seven:

Snow in Toronto - Anatomy of a Tragedy

Today it snowed.

In Toronto.

There are about three inches right now and the white stuff is still falling and searing through our skin like the ashes of a nuclear winter.




Here's a gut wrenching testimony:

TIFF at the Bell Lightbox - The Essential 100 Films

How many of these films have you seen? "This list represents the merging of one 100 film list as determined by an expert panel of TIFF curators with one 100 film list as determined by TIFF stakeholders." We are so lucky to have that place

Roger Ebert admits he's only seen 92. I'm afraid I've only seen 48. How many have you seen?

Ok, just on a personal note, isn't it The Bicycle Thief and WTF is bloody Amélie doing on the list?

Here's the list


1 THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
2 CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles)
3 L'AVVENTURA (Michaelangelo Antonioni)
4 THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola)
5 PICKPOCKET (Robert Bresson)
6 SEVEN SAMURAI (Akira Kurosawa)
7 PATHER PANCHALI (Satyajit Ray)
8 CASABLANCA (Michael Curtiz)
9 MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)
10 BICYCLE THIEVES (Vittorio De Sica)
11 ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
12 8 ½ (Federico Fellini)
13 BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (Sergei Eisenstein)
14 RASHOMON (Akira Kurosawa)
15 TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu)
16 THE 400 BLOWS (François Truffaut)
17 UGETSU (Kenji Mizoguchi)
18 BREATHLESS (Jean-Luc Godard)
19 L'ATALANTE (Jean Vigo)
20 CINEMA PARADISO (Giuseppe Tornatore)
21 LA GRANDE ILLUSION (Jean Renoir)
22 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (David Lean)
23 PERSONA (Ingmar Bergman)
24 GONE WITH THE WIND (Victor Fleming)
25 SUNRISE (F.W. Murnau)
26 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (Stanley Kubrick)
27 VOYAGE IN ITALY (Roberto Rossellini)
28 AMÉLIE (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
29 CITY LIGHTS (Charlie Chaplin)
30 STAR WARS (George Lucas)
31 SHERLOCK JR. (Buster Keaton)
32 RULES OF THE GAME (Jean Renoir)
33 THE LEOPARD (Luchino Visconti)
34 LA DOLCE VITA (Federico Fellini)
35 L’ARRIVÉE D’UN TRAIN À LA CIOTAT (Frères LumiereLouis Lumière and Auguste Lumière)
36 THE WIZARD OF OZ (Victor Fleming)
37 LA JETÉE (Chris Marker)
38 VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock)
39 NIGHT AND FOG (Alain Resnais)
40 PULP FICTION (Quentin Tarantino)
41 THE SEARCHERS (John Ford)
42 SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (Danny Boyle)
43 THE CONFORMIST (Bernardo Bertolucci)
44 CITY OF GOD (Fernando Meirelles)
45 TAXI DRIVER (Martin Scorsese)
46 APOCALYPSE NOW (Francis Ford Coppola)
47 SALÓ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (Pier Paolo Pasolini)
48 THE SEVENTH SEAL (Ingmar Bergma)
49 LE VOYAGE DANS LA LUNE (Georges Méliès)
50 METROPOLIS (Fritz Lang)
51 THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (Gillo Pontecorvo)
52 IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar Wai)
53 VIRIDIANA (Luis Buñuel)
54 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (Roberto Benigni)
55 THE SORROW AND THE PITY (Marcel Ophüls)
56 PAN'S LABYRINTH (Guillermo del Toro)
57 THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE… (Max Ophüls)
58 BLADE RUNNER (Ridley Scott)
59 THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES (Abbas Kiarostami)
60 LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS (Marcel Carné)
61 BRINGING UP BABY (Howard Hawks)
62 SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (Stanley Donen)
63 JOHNNY GUITAR (Nicholas Ray)
64 A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (Stanley Kubrick)
65 MEMORIES OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea)
66 M (Fritz Lang)
67 SCORPIO RISING (Kenneth Anger)
68 PSYCHO (Alfred Hitchcock)
69 DUST IN THE WIND (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
70 SCHINDLER’S LIST (Steven Spielberg)
71 NASHVILLE (Robert Altman)
72 CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Ang Lee)
73 WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
74 JULES ET JIM (François Truffaut)
75 CHRONIQUE D’UN ÉTÉ (Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch)
76 THE LIVES OF OTHERS (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
77 GREED (Erich von Stroheim)
78 SOME LIKE IT HOT (Billy Wilder)
79 JAWS (Steven Spielberg)
80 ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen)
81 THE BIRTH OF A NATION (D.W. Griffith)
82 CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar Wai)
83 LA NOIRE DE… (Ousmane Sembene)
84 RAGING BULL (Martin Scorsese)
85 THE MALTESE FALCON (John Huston)
86 CHINATOWN (Roman Polanski)
87 ANDREI RUBLEV (Andrei Tarkovsky)
88 WINGS OF DESIRE (Wim Wenders)
89 VIDEODROME (David Cronenberg)
90 WRITTEN ON THE WIND (Douglas Sirk)
91 THE THIRD MAN (Carol Reed)
92 BLUE VELVET (David Lynch)
93 THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Sergio Leone)
94 BREAKING THE WAVES (Lars von Trier)
95 A NOS AMOURS (Maurice Pialat)
96 CLEO DE 5 A 7 (Agnès Varda)
97 ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Pedro Almodóvar)
98 EARTH (Aleksandr Dovzhenko)
99 OLDBOY (Park Chan-wook)
100 PLAYTIME (Jacques Tati)

Xmas music and film - Day Three

No Room in the Inn

Today's discovery thanks to Sam. A beautiful gospel Christmas song.

Pippi Goes on Board

What's Christmas without Pippi? I grew watching Pippi in French and much prefer the dubbing in la langue de Molière but Pippi's spirit transcends all language barriers.

Xmas music and film - Day Two

Are you ready for Badder Santa?

It's easier for me to give my mother a list of books and DVDs to buy so I don't get ten boxes of chocolates or a gift card to a store I would never be caught dead being seen in. So, I few years ago, mom and her friends went Christmas shopping and when they saw that mom's daughter wanted Badder Santa, they ALL thought, what a great idea, let's ALL buy Badder Santa. When I learned of this, caught between delight at the DVD I had just unwrapped and the sense that I might have coronary any second now, I just put the DVD aside and tried not to think about it too much.

If you're not in the know, know this: Badder Santa is very, very rude. In every conceivable way. That being said, if you can bear rudeness, this will surely become one of your favourite Christmas movies. The comedic genius in this film stems not from its depravity but from the intelligence in its treatment of it. Any concession to propriety here would diminish the film. 

The film is dedicated to John Ritter who passed shortly after the making of this film. It is the best performance of his life. Within a couple of years, the comic world would also lose Bernie Mac who renders a pitch perfect performance in "Badder Santa". "Pitch perfect" is a term that is overused these days in describing performance, but it is the proper phrase here, Mac makes you believe in every breath he takes on camera and every pore of his being is in character. This is quite a feat when one consider that his character has little naturalism to it, but is a rather mannered, fanciful conception.

If you see Badder Santa and laugh, I will have earned my stars for Christmas.

"Happy Kwanza!"

Do I really need to say WARNING: explicit content. Don't get Bad Santa which was censored by our charming friends over at the MPAA, get Badder Santa.

Badder Santa

Terry Zwigoff

Ok, this may be not the greatest song but I loved it as a kid

Barefoot Santa Claus

Sonny James

Xmas music and film - Day One

Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians Of The British Empire

A Poundland Christmas

Without Billy Childish, it wouldn't be a punk rock Christmas

Metropolitan

Whit Stillman

One of the best Christmas movies of all time.

Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair Munk Debates, part two

Continuing the Munk Debate clips. Parts six to nine.

Part Six

Part Seven

Part Eight

Part Nine