Rambling Man: Ondine and the Strange Career of Neil Jordan

Director Neil Jordan

Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan is maddening. For every film as terrific as In Dreams,  The Company of Wolves, Mona Lisa, The End of the Affair, and The Good Thief, he'll make an equally dreary film such as High Spirits, We're No Angels, Breakfast On Pluto, The Brave One, his short film Not I (more on that in second) and, yes, The Crying Game (more on that in a sec too). I've never been able to get a handle on him as a director. Perhaps that's a good thing because it means there is an unpredictability about him. But it can also mean he has a complete lack of focus. Jordan also jumps from genre to genre. He'll follow a horror film (Interview With the Vampire – never seen it, so I won't comment) with his disappointing Irish historical drama, Michael Collins. Or he'll make a terrific, underrated caper picture like The Good Thief and then follow it with a barely released disaster like Breakfast On Pluto.

A Little Daylight: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen’s latest comedy, Midnight in Paris, which opened this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a moderately entertaining and somewhat imaginative lark of a movie. If that sounds like a lukewarm recommendation, bear in mind that most of Allen’s output in the last decade and a half, including Everyone Says I Love You (1996), Deconstructing Harry (1997), Celebrity (1998), Hollywood Ending (2002), Anything Else (2003), Match Point (2005), Scoop (2006), Whatever Works (2009) and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010), has been negligible, if not contemptuous and utterly fake. (The last Allen movie that fully impressed me was 1992's fine Husbands and Wives. That one's nearly 20 years old!)  At least, this time around, Allen has fashioned a film that has a modicum of wit, a smidgen of style and, only occasionally mind you, a bit of thought. Considering how he’s been generally going through the motions in recent years, I’ll take what I can get.

The movie’s opening is even different than Allen’s usual, predictable and bland norm. Instead of an old standard playing over the credits, on a black background, Midnight in Paris begins with a montage of the City of Light’s most famous landmarks: the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Versailles, etc. Then, while the opening credits run, we hear the plaintive voice of actor Owen Wilson (Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers), as screenwriter Gil Pender. Pender, accompanying his putative in-laws on a business trip to Paris, and with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) in tow, wants to leave his stifling Hollywood career, rewriting action flicks, behind and become a ‘real writer.’ And where better to do that than in Paris? But what Pender – who has penned his first novel but hasn’t shown the draft to anyone – really wants is to be an author in the Paris of the 1920s, when famous expatriates like writers Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein, filmmaker Luis Buñuel and others made the city their home away from home. One night, strolling along the city streets, an old fashioned car pulls up, just at the stroke of midnight. Pender gets in and, voila, he’s exactly where he wants to be, the glamorous Paris of his dreams.

Talking Out of Turn #18: Thomas Keneally (1983)

From 1981 to 1989, I was assistant producer and co-host of the radio show, On the Arts, at CJRT-FM in Toronto. With the late Tom Fulton, who was the show's prime host and producer, we did a half-hour interview program where we talked to artists from all fields. In 1994, after I had gone to CBC, I had an idea to collate an interview anthology from some of the more interesting discussions I'd had with guests from that period. Since they all took place during the eighties, I thought I could edit the collection into an oral history of the decade from some of its most outspoken participants. The book was assembled from interview transcripts and organized thematically. I titled it Talking Out of Turn: Revisiting the '80s. With financial help from the Canada Council, I shaped the individual pieces into a number of pertinent themes relevant to the decade. By the time I began to contact publishers, though, the industry was starting to change. At one time, editorial controlled marketing. Now the reverse was taking place. Acquisition editors, who once responded to an interesting idea for a book, were soon following marketing divisions concerned with whether the person doing it was hot enough to sell it.

Tom Fulton of On the Arts.

For a few years, I flogged the proposal to various publishers but many were worried that there were too many people from different backgrounds (i.e. Margaret Atwood sitting alongside Oliver Stone). Another publisher curiously chose to reject it because, to them, it appeared to be a book about me promoting my interviews (as if I was trying to be a low-rent Larry King) rather than seeing it as a commentary on the decade through the eyes of the guests. All told, the book soon faded away and I turned to other projects. However, when recently uncovering the original proposal and sample interviews, I felt that maybe some of them could find a new life on Critics at Large.

author Thomas Keneally.

The concept of heroes and villains was greatly simplified in the Eighties so I wanted a chapter in Talking Out of Turn (Heroes and Villains) that featured artists who examined that concept with a little more complexity. One such individual, Australian author Thomas Keneally (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, The People's Train), took on the inexplicable subject of Oskar Schindler. In his book, Schindler's List (originally titled Schindler's Ark), he tells the story of how Oskar Schindler, a Nazi Party member, became the most unlikely of heroes. By the end of the Second World War, Schindler saved 1,200 Jews from concentration camps all over Poland and Germany. Just like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Schindler's List is also a historical novel that describes participants and events with fictional dialogue and scenes added by the author. Schindler's List won the Booker Prize for fiction in 1982. While in 1993, Steven Spielberg would make a largely faithful and successful adaptation that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

 

Neglected Gems #3: Code 46 (2003)

It’s a funny thing about movies. They may get critical acclaim, even score some box office success and years later they’re barely mentioned by anyone or even remembered. And there’s often no discernible reason for their fates. I really can’t tell why Neil Jordan’s terrific and accessible heist movie The Good Thief, which got good reviews when it came out in 2002, has pretty much vanished into the ether. Or why Steve Jordan’s powerful documentary Stevie (2002) failed to match the impact of his earlier 1994 doc Hoop Dreams. Or even why impressive debuts like Jeff Lipsky’s Childhood’s End (1997) didn’t get half the buzz that considerably lesser movies (Wendy and Lucy, Ballast) have acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

The highly prolific and inventive British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom (Welcome to Sarajevo, 24 Hour Party People, 9 Songs, A Mighty Heart) displays his prodigious talents with another startlingly original movie, this time mining, quite successfully, the science fiction genre. Set in the near future, at a time when most of humanity is forced to live in designated zones, Code 46 begins with a dream sequence voiced by Maria (Samantha Morton), a Shanghai factory worker. It's a dream that ends with her arrival at a mysterious, unclear destination. Soon after, William (Tim Robbins), an ace intelligence expert outfitted with an empathy virus that gives him mind-reading powers, arrives to investigate her workplace. Someone there is illegally making and selling 'papelles,' a combination passport/visa that allow their holders to leave their designated areas, which they are otherwise forbidden to do. When William and Maria fall for each other, they are forced to confront their mundane, controlled existences and, possibly, take a chance on something better.

Elitist, Escapist, or Everywoman?: Deconstructing ‘The Oprah Effect’

Let me be clear: the purpose of this review is not to critique Oprah’s philanthropy, or her validation of sexual abuse victims, or her support of visible minorities. These are all empirically wonderful things. Whether you love her or loathe her, Oprah’s patronage of the causes that matter to Oprah cannot be denied. I’m not sure which side of the Oprah fan club I belong to. Considering how much information is available about the Oprah brand, we know remarkably little about Oprah the person, other than the choice tidbits she and her Harpo minions choose to divulge. Who is Oprah? She morphs her personality to fit each guest. She’s dancing and thumping with Tina Turner, philosophizing with Maya Angelou and talking literature with Toni Morrison. I half expected her to jump on the couch with Tom Cruise during his outburst! Some people would argue that this is the job of the talk show host, to make each guest feel comfortable. People respect Oprah because she is self-made and there’s no arguing that she’s made a lot of money and a big impact.

Toni Morrison & Oprah

Oprah’s success is often credited to her ability to connect with Middle America. Indeed, her struggles with food and body image are something many women can relate to. We do relate to Oprah, but do we admire her? Despite my efforts to dismiss Oprah as just a mixture of favorite things, weight loss gimmicks and secret Stedman, I can’t do it. Despite my efforts to ignore her, Oprah makes me think. Not only that, but I’m embarrassed to say that Oprah makes me think harder and think better about things I think about anyway. Despite my efforts to mock Oprah, she takes my empty ambitions of thankfulness, self-realization and humor and puts them into practice with ideas like a gratitude journal, aha! moments and the ugly cry. The Oprah Winfrey Show seems to invite mocking, but when you actually examine what it stands for, mocking doesn’t make much sense.

Well Travelled Groove: Booker T. Jones's The Road From Memphis

Booker T. Jones’s new album is called, not surprisingly, The Road From Memphis (Anti, 2011). While Memphis may for some musicians be the place where you arrive, for Booker it’s where it all began. In 1962, he went into a Memphis studio with his instrumental ensemble, Booker T & the MGs, and recorded the classic hit "Green Onions" which went to Number One on the music charts. They later backed Sam & Dave and Otis Redding for some inspired sides that made the group the house band for Stax Records for the next 15 years.

But just when his youthful success was climbing, Booker T. Jones decided to hit the road and head to Indiana University to continue his college degree. It was a 400-mile drive along highway 51 north that Jones came to know so well that he could do it "blind-folded." Says Jones, "I knew that road like the back of my hand. Every turn, every hill, every stretch." Once at university, Jones finished his degree in music by playing gigs on the weekends, all with the goal to "return to Memphis" to play, record and compose. The Road From Memphis is the culmination of that fruitful sojourn.

A Witness to Shame: The Visual Legacy of Lewis Hine

Addie Card, just a slip of a girl when Lewis Hine snapped an iconic portrait of her in 1910, told him she was 12. But the investigative photojournalist, hired to document then-legal child labor in America, learned the barefoot waif’s actual age – ten – from others employed at the same Vermont cotton mill. Even more of a shock, she had started toiling there as an eight-year-old. In his accompanying text, he described the motherless-fatherless kid as an “anemic little spinner.”

May 1910: Addie Card at a cotton mill in North Pownal, Vermont

Against Her Will: Mellissa Fung's Under the Afghan Sky

Long before reading the details outlined in her book, Under the Afghan Sun (HarperCollins, 2011), I had always admired the reports of CBC-TV journalist, Mellissa Fung. Whether she was reporting on the harrowing events around the Robert Picton murders case, or examining the plight of some unfortunates in Toronto, Regina or Vancouver, Fung always seemed to bring compassion to her reporting. Many times, I wasn't sure whether she was just shy (odd for a TV reporter), or merely preferred to let the people she was presenting tell their own story. She offered up many perspectives while narrating the imagery, but she frequently filed full reports without doing a “stand-up” (literally standing in front of the camera talking to us) during her pieces. In other words, Fung didn't appear on camera. For me, this made Fung rather unique among TV journalists. This compassion is front and centre in Under the Afghan Sky. Sometimes it works; sometimes it is misplaced.

Since she seemed to prefer letting the people she was reporting on to have the spotlight, it must have been extremely difficult when, in October 2008 Mellissa Fung, became the story. In October, she was assigned by the CBC to do a five-week stint embedded with Canadian troops in Afghanistan. While visiting a refugee camp to interview people, whose lives had been disrupted or destroyed by the ongoing conflict, she was kidnapped by four men. Her natural instincts (and training – all reporters are given some sort of defensive training when they go into war zones) were to fight back. During the struggle, she got stabbed in the shoulder and hand (wounds that bled a lot, but were ultimately not too serious). After being forced to travel by vehicle, motorcycle and then foot, Fung found herself in a remote part of Afghanistan. During all this, Fung's instincts as a reporter began to kick in. She constantly questioned the men, especially Khalid (or that's what he called himself) because he seemed to understand English the best. Where were they going? When was she going to be released? Why were they doing this?

Trying To Have it Both Ways: Guillaume Canet’s Little White Lies (Les Petits Mouchoirs)

Guillaume Canet’s 2006 French thriller Tell No One (Ne le dis à personne), which was released in North America in 2008, was, hands down, the best suspense film I’d seen in years. Based on American Harlan Coben’s novel of the same name, it was a superb movie with an absolutely enticing story of a doctor (Francois Cluzet) who one day receives an e-mail from his wife, whom he thought had died eight years earlier. That’s only the beginning of a pulse pounding and highly complex tale that saw said doctor running for his life, suspected of murder and convinced that his beloved was still alive. Utterly logical – most thrillers falter in that regard – and perfectly plotted, it announced Canet, an actor who had only directed one feature before, Mon idole (My Idol, 2002), as a genuine talent to watch.

Understandably, I awaited Canet’s follow-up film with bated breath. After receiving its world premiere at last fall’s Toronto International Film Festival, Les petits mouchoirs (Little White Lies) has finally opened commercially. Alas, it’s a mostly disappointing and weak effort, albeit not without some virtues of its own. Little White Lies, which Canet wrote and directed, is being compared to The Big Chill. That's likely because its soundtrack, laid on with ‘60s American rock hits from the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Gladys Knight and The Isley Brothers, and its premise, as a group of friends deal with an accident that has befallen one of their circle, is similar to that American movie. But truth be told, it never truly reminded me of that film. Little White Lies feels like a typical contemporary French drama that,  towards its conclusion, echoes the banalities and dishonesty of so much Hollywood fare.

Dropping Out of Time: Marco Tullio Giordana's The Best of Youth

Back in 2003, I was in the midst of attending early press screenings for the Toronto International Film Festival for Boxoffice Magazine. Although the Festival officially begins in early September, the work starts for most film journalists in mid-August. Since Boxoffice is also a trade publication (like Variety), we often had to see a fair number of movies at each Festival (every year we kept inching towards seeing and reviewing close to 100 films). It took three of us to do it. (As it turns out, that trio now write for this website: Shlomo Schwartzberg, Susan Green and myself.) Since Susan is from Vermont, while Shlomo and I are from Toronto, we would plan in advance who was going to review what before Susan arrived. One of the films I was assigned that year was an Italian picture called The Best of Youth (La meglio gioventù). Little did I realize that the movie was over six hours long. Little did I realize that it would also become one of the most satisfying movie experiences I would have in over thirty years of reviewing films.

Facing Fear: Mélanie Watt’s Scaredy Squirrel

Here’s the story. Scaredy Squirrel never leaves his home in the nut tree. He prefers to live a lonely existence. He follows a redundant schedule, rather than encountering the germs, sharks or green Martians that may wait outside his tree. Scaredy is neurotic, but he’s also a loveable children’s character created by Montreal author and illustrator Mélanie Watt.  Scardey Squirrel was introduced in 2006 by Kids Can Press. The book has since sold more than 400,000 copies, has been published in 11 languages, and become a literary series that is now an animated TV program.

The Scaredy Squirrel series humorously mirrors many of the irrational (and sometimes rational) childhood fears. Each book begins with a warning label, asking kids to wash their hands with antibacterial soap, brush their teeth, or check under their beds for monsters prior to reading the book. It then follows the obsessive compulsive rodent as he confronts his fears and learns a little bit more about himself. While the series is recommended to pre-schoolers, parents may also find a bit of comedic relief in it, too. As May is mental health awareness month – an issue that continues to be dangerously ignored – the themes presented in Mélanie Watt’s books provide a lighter, humorous take on issues that so many of us struggle with.

Vive la difference: The Paris/Toronto Project (Opposites Do Attract)



It can't be dying, - it's too rouge, -. (Photo by Guntar Kravis)


Paris hasn’t been a dance capital since Marie Taglioni donned wings to dance La Sylphide more than 150 years ago, at the height of the Romantic era. Ballet in any event has always been the city’s strong suit, developed largely by the French court. Modern dance, a New World dance form, was invented by the barefoot American dancer Isadora Duncan who so hated the high-reaching artificiality of classical dance that she created a school of movement grounded in the earth and earthly concerns. Paris never really made that leap, not in ways significant enough to wrest back its reputation as a dance innovator. And so it came as a surprise when Toronto Dance Theatre (TDT), the city’s main exponent of the modern dance tradition as directed by Christopher House, announced that it had recently looked to Paris as the source of new creation for its own troupe of barefoot dancers, inviting French choreographers Alban Richard and Emmanuelle Vo-Dinh to Toronto to collaborate on the making of two new works. It felt like the dance equivalent of that old expression, bringing coal to Newcastle: what could Paris give what Toronto already had? Plenty, it has turned out.

What makes the Paris/Toronto Project such an artistic success is the very fact that the choreographers are from Paris, their foreignness giving them the advantage of being able to create here without the burden of knowing local dance traditions that might otherwise have compelled them to follow some kind of prescribed plan or pathway. As a result, each work on the program that opened last Thursday night, and continues through to Saturday at Winchester Street Theatre, represents a complete departure from anything TDT has done before, both in terms of movement vocabulary and ideas. It’s probably why the dancers, still the same solid troupe as before, look so different, in a heightened sense of the word, performing them – appearing bolder, more robust and fully present in the works at hand. This artistic experiment, sponsored on both sides of the Atlantic by government agencies representing both Canada and France, has definitely paid off. The choreographers surpass all expectations by creating works that are decidedly avant-garde while the dancers are newly inspired. They, for one, will now always have Paris as a fresh influence on their collective performing style: vive la difference.

General Interest/Generally Interesting: June 2011 issue of The Walrus magazine

If necessity is the mother of invention, then satisfaction is at least the love child of expectation. We feel the constant need to calibrate our expectations, evident in the popularity of e-commerce consumer reviews, ‘best-of’ polls and blogs such as the one you’re now reading. We want to know what we’re getting before we get it. It’s tricky to manage expectations with a magazine: does the publication in general align with our ideology? Does the issue itself interest us? Purpose also plays a role in expectation. The link between authorial intention and reader results is often murky, but can be elucidated if readers try to understand intention.

If I had to write the mandate of The Walrus magazine, it would be: to make readers question assumptions, reconsider prejudices and stretch perspectives. The magazine’s actual mandate is much more straightforward: “to be a national general interest magazine about Canada and its place in the world.” Here’s where I quibble over semantics. General interest seems to imply that any Canadian adult could pick up the magazine, read it and find it interesting. While the subject matter would interest a wide cross section of Canadians, it’s clearly written for an educated and engaged audience. Since most local newspapers are written at a junior-high reading level, The Walrus would likely not appeal to these same readers.

There’s no doubt that there are people who find The Walrus intensely readable. And unlike other periodicals of biblical proportions, one can easily read the entire magazine in one sitting. Without an Audi or DKNY ad on every second page, it’s a size you can actually put in your satchel and tote around. The articles are not current in the time-sensitive meaning of the word, but they’re definitely relevant. For a magazine presumably on the left of political centre, the contributors provide an objective, non-pejorative and eye-opening commentary.

Judgment Day: Some New TV Favourites Bite the Dust

A scene fron NBC's Outsourced

When you love television, the threat of a show’s cancellation comes with the territory. Whether it’s because of middling ratings, skittish sponsors, quirks of network schedules, or a main star with eyes on the big screen, you know that a beloved TV series isn’t going to run forever. Nor, to be perfectly honest, should you want it to. Creatively speaking, in my opinion, some of the most fruitful consequences of the cable TV revolution are shorter seasons and shorter runs of shows. Thirteen brilliant episodes of a series like Terriers are worth more than 218 episodes of Smallville (which, after 10 seasons, recently aired its final episode). This is not to say that I wasn’t – and am not still – quite a bit upset about the untimely end of Terriers this past winter, but I’ve become a lot more philosophical about the lifespan of TV shows. Ironically, what made the cancellation of Terriers somewhat less upsetting for me was how well-constructed the series was, from start to finish. The writers and stars seemed to know exactly what the show was, and who the characters were, right out of the gate. What is more frustrating are shows that get cancelled just as a series is beginning to figure out what it is: you can see how good it’s going to become, only to see that future cut short. Every television season comes with a few heartbreaking announcements, and (with the cancellations of Outsourced and Traffic Light) the 2010-2011 season was no exception.

Symbiosis: Konitz, Liebman & Beirach's KnowingLee

Symbiosis is the best word to describe the musical collaboration of Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman and Richie Beirach on their new CD, called, KnowingLee (Out Note, 2011). The three musicians came together for this session in Germany last year and the result is a beautiful record that captures the exquisite tone of Konitz on alto sax, complemented by Liebman on either soprano or tenor saxophones. Beirach also performs fully relaxed on the piano in the knowledge that he can hit any key and still be in tune. This is particularly important on the gorgeous, improvised duet, "Universal Lament." Konitz, who plays soprano sax on this track, weaves through the melody like a robin in springtime, with a solid tone that emanates from his horn which is skillfully supported by Beirach.

The album features a few standards, "Alone Together," "Body and Soul" and Cole Porter's "What is This Thing Called Love." With the vast range of experience these musicians possess, not to mention the countless number of times they've played tunes like these, you wonder where the fresh ideas come from. But the music flows as each player trades licks and improvise with sensitivity.

Bridesmaids: Still Waiting at the Altar

Usually when I review a film for Critics at Large, I avoid reading the reviews of said movie. Not because I am worried about being influenced by my colleagues – I'm not – but because I like to write my reviews without having stumbled across an idea or bon mot that someone thought up before me. I recognize, of course, that readers may think I cribbed from someone else anyway if, in fact, any point I make about a film has already been remarked upon by another pundit. But I’ll take that chance, assuring you that my ideas and critiques are fully my own. If I do quote someone else I always identify them as the source of the quotation.

That review policy only applies to movies that I review upon the day of their commercial release. There are others that I don’t initially review, because there’s not much to say about them, or only get around to seeing at a rep house weeks or months after they open. In those instances, I will likely have read some reviews of those movies by then and one thing I keep noticing – and Critics at Large’s David Churchill and Kevin Courrier have pointed this out, too (see, I told you I credit others with the same point) – is that too many film critics adopt a pack mentality when it comes to their reviews. It likely explains why so many movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes – a web site that collates critics’ reviews – have a commonality, both negative and positive. There are a couple of curmudgeons (yes, you Armond White) who can be counted on to always be on the opposite side of any critical consensus (and I am not sure that White doesn’t do that on “principle” just to be contrary), but not many. I like to think that we, on this site, do go against the grain – and often. Mostly, my fellow film critics can be counted on to have more in common with each other in how they relate to any specific movie, than to be on opposing teams in the debate. Bridesmaids, an amiable but overrated comedy which opened last week, is the latest movie to demonstrate this point.

Keep on Rockin' in the Free World: From Society to Screen

Politically oppressive regimes threatened by the liberating power of rock ‘n’ roll are a key factor in two 2009 films set three decades and 1,500 miles apart. Christian Carion’s Farewell (originally L’Affaire Farewell) is a feature that chronicles a true 1981 cloak-and-dagger tale in Moscow, where a Russian KGB analyst’s teenage son cares more about David Bowie than Karl Marx. Nobody Knows About Persian Cats, a docudrama by Bahman Ghobadi, focuses on the many illicit indie bands dodging authoritarian rule in contemporary Tehran. Both productions make for potent cinema that transcends cultures and continents, much like music.

 The Velvet Underground helped inspire Czechoslovakia’s bloodless 1989 Velvet Revolution, apparently a designation that began to take hold among dissidents when a copy of the Andy Warhol-influenced band’s first album was smuggled into Prague 20 years earlier. In Farewell, French engineer Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet) smuggles in a cassette of Queen’s News of the World, along with a Sony Walkman, at the request of a KGB mole, Sergei Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica). In a field far from prying government eyes and ears, his alienated adolescent, Igor (Yvgenie Kharlanov), mimics Freddie Mercury’s moves to “We Will Rock You.” 

(Not So) Pretty in Pink: Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter

When I became pregnant, after finding out I was going to have a girl, I was ecstatic. No offense boys, but I had whole-heartedly embraced (and still do) the honour, and challenge, of being the first strong female role model to a new member of the future generation. The one aspect I was not thrilled about – aside from the thought of my daughter turning thirteen – was the impending pinkification of everything. The thought of my baby looking like the Pink Panther was too much to bear. So I, unsuccessfully, forbade all friends and relatives from buying her anything pink. For the first two years of her life, I draped her in a wardrobe much like my own: mostly blacks, browns and burgundies (picture a pile of dead leaves). Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against femininity (many of her dead leaf ensembles were dresses), but I find the frills and feathers all too frivolous, oppressive and often downright ridiculous.

Peggy Orenstein, journalist and author of such best-sellers as School Girls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap, shared this disgust with the colour and the girlie-girl culture overall. Prior to the arrival of her daughter Daisy, the thought of having a baby dipped in Pepto-Bismol, and many other stomach-churning issues, made her cringe to the point where she actually hoped for (yikes) a boy. Orenstein opens her latest book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture (HaperCollins, 2011), with this shocking revelation. Through this work, Orenstein examines the rise of girlie-girl culture and its impact on the women they become.

Back to Africa: Criterion’s DVD release of Claire Denis’ White Material (2009)

It has become quite common of late to see black and Arab characters in the foreground of many French movies. Sometimes they have bit parts but often, as some of the films screened at Toronto’s Cinéfranco film festival demonstrated, they are the main characters. It’s a late recognition of the country’s multicultural mosaic, prompted, I suspect, by the realities of what’s actually happening on the streets of France, but also because of the increasing presence of actors and directors from those communities working in French cinema. But there was one French filmmaker, Claire Denis, who has always populated her films with members of these groups, beginning with her widely seen and hailed feature film debut, Chocolat (1988).  

That movie, loosely based on her childhood growing up in various African countries as the daughter of a French civil servant, touchingly focused on the relationship between a young girl named France (Cécile Ducasse) and the family ‘houseboy’ Protée (Isaach de Bankolé, who also pops up as an enigmatic figure, a rebel leader called The Boxer, in White Material) and brought forth a nuanced view of the colonial relationship between France and its African ‘possessions.’ Many of her other films, which were set both in France and other countries, including S’en fout la mort (No Fear, No Die, 1990), J’ai pas sommeil (I Can’t Sleep, 1994), Beau travail (Good Work, 1999) and 35 rhums (35 Shots of Rum, 2008) prominently featured blacks and Arabs, sometimes with their race or religion being a significant factor in the story, and just as often not emphasized at all and merely presented as a depiction of fact. The quietly powerful White Material (2009), her latest and tenth feature, based on a Doris Lessing novel and which Criterion has recently released on DVD in a pristine new digital transfer approved by the filmmaker herself, is one of the former, where race (and race hatred) is part and parcel of the tale. While White Material is also set in Africa, though a few decades later than the 1930s period of Chocolat, it's not in any way a sequel to that movie, it's more a re-visit to the continent. The movie also functions as a bookend to Denis’ oeuvre, not least because it, too, was filmed in Cameroon, the location of her debut.

Trusting a Skinny Chef: Gwyneth Paltrow’s My Father’s Daughter Cookbook

It’s Saturday morning at 6:45am and I just finished eating one (okay, two) of the oatmeal raisin cookies that I made from Gwyneth Paltrow’s new cookbook, My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family and Togetherness. I was introduced to the concept of “breakfast dessert” while visiting friends in Montreal a few years ago and, as someone always looking for socially acceptable ways of consuming more sweets, I immediately loved the idea. Then, while visiting Turkey last year, I was served Turkish delight after dessert…a dessert dessert! I think it’s the European way of prolonging every meal and lingering over food and conversation. Paltrow would approve. Her recipes are about preparing food with love for those we love: using wholesome ingredients to pleasurably create scrumptious dishes. So if my mother saw what goes into these oatmeal raisin cookies, even she might approve of having them for breakfast.

The abundance of celebrity cookbooks (Alicia Silverstone, Suzanne Sommers, Eva Longoria, Trisha Yearwood) makes it easy to dismiss Paltrow’s book as just another marketing agent of her media empire, which includes movies, television and the website/blog www.goop.com. Indeed, whenever I pick up a cookbook with a modelesque woman on the cover, I immediate assume one of two things: (1) the recipes are “diet” recipes and therefore insipid and uninspired or (2) the cookbook has been ghost-written and has little to do with the person on the cover. My assumption was dead wrong for My Father’s Daughter. The recipes are tested, tasty and truthful. In fact, almost every recipe opens with an anecdotal sentence about Paltrow’s memories of the dish, how she involves her children in its preparation or simply why she loves it so much. Paltrow’s children are central to this book (she claims that she is her children’s mother every bit as much as she is her father’s daughter) and there are lots of practical tips on how to get children involved in making meals. The recipes not only bring people together for eating, but also for cooking. Children, inexperienced chefs and even just taste testers, can join the culinary action.