Pathetic Fallacy and Amazing Truth: The Poetry of Mary Oliver

As a society, we don't read poetry like we once did. Although we still study poems in school and acknowledge our poets at prestigious award ceremonies, most of us turn to novels when reading for pleasure and are far more interested in the Giller nominees than the Griffin winner. Reading poetry is so much more labour intensive than reading fiction; it requires a different skill set than the one needed to navigate our fast-paced world. No poet seems to understand this better than Mary Oliver (Swan: Poems and Prose Poems, Beacon Press, 2010).

Back when people did read poetry for pleasure, Alexander Pope proclaimed (in verse!) “True wit is nature to advantage dressed / What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.” Had Pope lived 300 years later, I’m sure he would have appreciated the way Oliver advantageously dresses nature to express human emotion. Oliver is famous for her “affinity with the natural world” (her words) and most of her poems draw on images from nature. But Oliver is much more than a naturalistic poet. The parallels she draws between human existence and the organic world imply that we are deeply interconnected.

It Ends With A Bang: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Well, it's over. Now what do we do? For the last ten years, there was always a Harry Potter film to look forward to. And now it's all over. As I outlined last year when I reviewed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, the films have had their ups and downs. Mostly, thankfully, ups. After the strengths of Part 1, I thought we were in safe hands with director David Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves for Part 2. My trust in them has been fulfilled: Part 2 is both visually rich and emotionally moving.

As with Part 1, since I'm assuming most of you have read the books, I will keep the synopsis brief. The film starts (at the precise moment where Part 1 ends) when Harry and company have finished burying Dobby the Elf. Harry questions the goblin, Griphook (Warwick Davis), about the contents of a Death Eaters' vault in the Gringotts Bank on Diagon Alley. Harry cuts a deal with Griphook that he can have the Sword of Gryffindor if he helps Harry, Ron and Hermione break into the bank to retrieve a horcrux from said vault (a horcrux is an everyday object where the evil Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) has hidden part of his soul). Davis, who's appeared in multiple roles in all the films (including Professor Flitwick at Hogsworth), is particularly good here. He is the consummate banker looking for his edge. Next, Harry questions the gravely ill wand merchant, Olivander (John Hurt), who explains the history of the wands Harry has acquired. Both of these sequences are strictly expository, but are evidence yet again of the increasing skills of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint as actors. As I said in my review of Part 1, if these three had not been able to keep up their end of the bargain, these last two films, which are almost completely focused on them, would have failed.

The Return of the Master of Space and Time: Leon Russell

Leon Russell, The Master of Space and Time, is making a comeback. Last year’s album, The Union, with Elton John, produced by T Bone Burnett (with an accompanying film directed by Cameron Crowe), started the ball rolling and next a set of fifty dates with Bob Dylan should put Russell back in the front of peoples’ minds. For those of us who remember him from the old days, this is a welcome return. Leon has a way about him, a piano sound that is instantly recognizable and a voice ... well, more about that later. First, Sound Academy.

I’ve never been to the Sound Academy night club in Toronto before but driving in from Hamilton my wife and I were struck by a number of things. It’s simple to get to, off the Gardiner Expressway, onto Lakeshore, down Cherry Street, across the bridge and to the end of Polson Pier. It is a beautiful setting. On this clear evening, with the sun sparkling on the water, sailboats by the dozens on the lake, planes coming in for a landing at the Toronto Island airport, the ambiance couldn't be better. We sat on the deck with a club soda, soaking in this ambiance, when all of a sudden it hit us. “What is that smell?” There’s a transfer station right across the way, so the smell of garbage hangs over the place. Too bad, everything else about the venue is nearly perfect.

The Knife's Edge Between Love and Hate: Soulpepper Theatre Company's The Kreutzer Sonata

“Marriage. The endless rehashing of hurts and hatreds.”

—Yuri in The Kreutzer Sonata

The staging couldn't be simpler: a chair, a rug, a side table with a bible, a letter, jug and glass of water. The light from almost directly overhead illuminates this tableau. But within that simplicity exists layers of human emotion that can rip and tear a soul apart. Such is the setting of the Soulpepper Theatre Company's production of The Kreutzer Sonata (it runs there in repertory in Toronto until the end of August). For a 'summertime' show, this work is brave and deeply troubling, because the story it tells is of one man, talking to the audience, describing how murderous jealousy led him to kill his beloved wife.

Leo Tolstoy

Star and director Ted Dykstra (director of this season's Soulpepper productions The Glass Menagerie and Billy Bishop Goes To War) also adapted the work for the stage from a corrosive novella written by Leo Tolstoy in 1888. This is Dykstra's fifth time doing the show – a show that began life in 2009 with The Art of Time Ensemble (a Toronto-based company) and then last year as part of the Toronto Summerworks program (a series of short works that runs throughout August each year). We first see Dykstra standing behind the chair as the lights slowly, painfully come up. It's a startling image, as he looks like a demon emerging from the darkness, which sets the stage for what is to come. Dykstra as Yuri stands slightly hunched as he rests his hands gently on the back of the chair. He (and we) are listening to a portion of “The Kreutzer Sonata” by Beethoven. Finally, the lights come up full (top marks to Lorenzo Savoini for his set and lighting design, plus his costumes – they are all of a piece) and Yuri takes the chair, pours himself some water, crosses his legs and begins.

Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History: Nice Girls Just Don't Get It

"Laura, you’re being far too nice to those people!” My colleague scolds me after I hang up the phone. While he’s humorously alluding to my pleasant demeanour with a patron; he may not be too far off the mark. In fact, he has touched on an issue that, I just realize, has held me back for the majority of my life. Like many other women, I was raised on a strict regime that included rules and mantras such as: “stop asking questions,” “keep those things to yourself,” “if you want people to like you, then you should (…),” and of course “be nice.” As rebellious as I was, this philosophy was more or less inbedded in me. I became far too nice.

Fortunately, a recent publication touches on the solution to this very issue. Lois P. Frankel and Carol Frohlinger’s Nice Girls Just Don’t Get It (Crown Archetype, 2011) is directed at women who “feel invisible, taken advantage of, treated less than respectfully, or at a loss for how to get the things you most want in life.” No strangers to dishing out advice to nice girls – Frankel is best known for her bestselling Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, while Frohlinger, also an author, is the founder of Negotiating Women, Inc., an advisory firm dedicated to helping organizations advance women into leadership roles. Their work includes some sage advice that all “nice girls” should consider.

Real Teens, Real Issues: TV's Degrassi

It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure, I suppose, but I’ve just recently re-acquainted myself with Degrassi, the long-running TV series about teens in a Toronto community high school. (I am decades out of high school myself so I feel a bit sheepish admitting I like the series, an unnecessary reaction since Degrassi, ultimately, is all about fine television.) I watched it quite regularly in the '80s but somehow forgot about it after its ten-year hiatus and didn’t check back in with when it returned as Degrassi: The Next Generation, something I now regret. I was flipping the dial on a Friday a few months back when I came across a late Season 10 episode on MuchMusic and was instantly hooked all over again, eventually catching up with the entire season due to MuchMusic’s repeats. Season 11 begins on Monday July 18 on MuchMusic – Canada ’s version of the American music channel MTV – and the U.S. channel TeenNick. Judging by the exciting goings-on last season, it promises to be another gripping and fascinating installment in the ongoing saga of the kids of Degrassi.

It’s hard to believe but the show, in one form or another, has been around since 1979, beginning with its first incarnation as The Kids of Degrassi Street (1979-86) on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the country's public TV network. (Linda Schuyler and Kit Hood were its creators, but only the former is still involved with the show.) That was followed by Degrassi Junior High (1987-89), Degrassi High (1989-91), both on CBC and, finally, Degrassi: The Next Generation, which premiered in 2001, moving to CTV, Canada's leading private television network, which also owns MuchMusic. It changed its name to just plain Degrassi last season. (This being Canada, the first few episodes of The Kids of Degrassi Street were one offs, and the early seasons were abbreviated ones, as in the British television mode, ranging anywhere from 4-11 episodes. Growing exponentially, last season Degrassi hit a high of 45 episodes, 22 two part episodes, each a half hour in length, and one half hour documentary whereby some of the cast went to India to help build, appropriately enough, a schoolhouse. Overall there are close to 20 actual season’s worth of shows revolving around Degrassi.) As in real life, every few years, the Degrassi kids graduate high school and are replaced by a new crop of high schoolers. In fact, this year’s season will be split in two, with 29 episodes, running for seven weeks wrapping up the 2010/2011 school year, and another 16 shows, starting in the fall, chronicling the next school year, which means a batch of current Degrassi Grade 12ers will graduate. As such shows about teens go, it’s always been a uniquely intelligent and honest series about young people. It is perhaps the most impressive example of this particular genre.



It Can Happen Here: The Cosmology of Falling Skies

The end of the world apparently can’t come soon enough for Hollywood. While doomsday movies have been a staple for decades, the recent plethora of apocalypse fare hints at some sort of self-loathing in an industry known for boundless self-admiration. Or is it merely tapping into the collective consciousness of a populace that’s “facing a dying nation,” to borrow a poignant lyric from Hair’s “Let the Sunshine In”? Make that “facing a dying planet” and you have the current state of despair among those alarmed about the deteriorating environment and the ever-present peril of nuclear annihilation.

Now halfway through its ten-episode summer debut on TNT and already renewed for another season, Falling Skies substitutes an alien invasion for endangered polar bears and Pakistan’s arsenal. The somewhat derivative series begins six months after 90 percent of humanity has perished in the initial conflagration. Ragtag survivors in and around Boston band together to fight the “Skitters,” enormous spider-like sentient beings, and their even more gigantic metallic robots, dubbed “Mechs.” The chief writer and creator, Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan – 1998, and The Patriot – 2000) is a Harvard grad who reportedly still lives in Cambridge. Although ostensibly set in the Bay State, the series is shot in Toronto – the hometown of Graham Yost, who shares executive producer chores with Steven Spielberg. 

Etymology and Evolution: Ingredients For Innovation

Those who know me may find it strange (not ironic - that word is the subject of a future review) that I’m discussing the concept of innovation. According to some definitions of the word, I would be one of society’s least innovative people. I don’t own a cell phone, car, or anything that starts with an i. I’m not on Facebook, don’t subscribe to Netflix and still believe the foremost meaning of the word tablet describes the medium on which Moses inscribed the Ten Commandments. But meanings change; words are fluid and dynamic. Just like tablet has come to express multiple ideas, the concept of innovation has morphed and evolved too. So being a decidedly late adopter does not preclude me from being an innovator.

Echoes: James Deaver's Carte Blanche and Arthur Phillips' The Tragedy of Arthur

When critics review summer books they inevitably focus on the latest big thriller, or some highly anticipated romantic novel (dismissively labelled as 'chick lit'). But why should that be all that one reads? Are readers that confined to genre that this is all they've come to accept during the lazy, crazy days of summer? Depends on the reader. This reader, with his all-over-the-damn-place tastes, rarely confines himself to one style of writing when it comes to summer reading. In fact, two novels I've recently embraced as 'summer books' could not, on the surface, be more different. James Deaver is a respected thriller writer (though I've never read any of his work before this) but he is the latest author approached by the Ian Fleming estate to be given the task to continue the James Bond series. The result is the thoroughly entertaining Carte Blanche (Simon & Schuster, 2011). Arthur Phillips' The Tragedy of Arthur (Random House, 2011) could be more sharply defined as literary fiction, so it was far more challenging. But I found both reads thoroughly absorbing, whether it was hot outside or not. Interestingly, both books, as you will see, are recreations/copying of the work of writers from the past.

Deaver's Carte Blanche pretends that the Bond films do not exist. Instead, he embraces the universe as created by Ian Fleming. In his novels and short stories, Fleming loved to go on about the luxuries that surrounded him in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Bollinger, Aston Martin cars, etc. Deaver pays homage to  Fleming's style at the start but then he seems to get caught up in minutia of brand names without really doing it with the same zeal that Fleming brought to his books. He seems to be aping Fleming rather than expanding upon him.

Catching the Spirit: The Film Music of Ry Cooder

"What you’re trying to do is catch the spirit of a picture. And that means sometimes you go contrary to what’s on the screen, and sometimes you go with what’s on the screen. It’s a matter of instinct; if your instincts are good, it’s going to work for you.”—David Raksin (Laura, The Bad and The Beautiful).

“I used to think about this music (blues, gospel, etc.)…as being environments…so I’d look for chances to add this music to the environment in the film…I didn’t go to school to learn this…it has more to do with your own personal awareness.”—Ry Cooder.

The first time I heard Ry Cooder’s guitar was in a film score. The blues-soaked bottleneck featured in Donald Cammell's 1970 film Performance (seen in a small New York City theatre) captured my attention even more than Mick Jagger’s acting debut. I rushed to Times Square the next morning to buy the soundtrack, which wasn't yet released. It was months before I was able to find it — and I've been hooked on slide guitar music ever since. The music in Performance was overseen by Jack Nitzsche. Cooder was merely a hired hand. Yet it’s Cooder’s work (on Jagger & Richards' "Memo From Turner" and Randy Newman's performance of "Gone Dead Train") that is memorable.

"Jack Nitzsche was doin’ Candy…in those days they didn’t have rock’n’roll movie scores…played a lot of blues, Howlin’ Wolf…just sound…Mac Rebennack on piano, Earl Palmer on drums…the producer didn’t understand at all, he wondered where the strings were, where was the orchestra…then Jack did Performance which was essentially the same score…I learned…watch the film and play somethin’…”— Ry Cooder.

“Watch the film and play somethin’!” It seems like the simplest advice. But can it really be that easy? 

Polished to a Shine: The Glass Menagerie at Soulpepper Theatre Company in Toronto

Nancy Palk & Gemma James-Smith in The Glass Menagerie.

Tennessee Williams called his semi-autobiographical 1944 play, The Glass Menagerie, a memory play, using it to travel back in time to when he was growing up in the American South, a would-be writer with a paranoid-schizophrenic older sister whom his parents had institutionally lobotomized, and for which he never forgave them.

That sounds like the stuff of tragedy. But when writing his first and most famous play, Williams made it as varied and prismatic as the fragile figurines immortalized in the title, qualities polished to a shine by a new and brilliant production of The Glass Menagerie that Soulpepper Theatre Company (the critically acclaimed company that is beginning to receive justifiable international acclaim) is presenting in rep at Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts through to September. Far from being a one-note drama full of sadness, this play about the fictional Wingfield family is lightened and brightened by laughter and the big, bold dreams of matriarch Amanda, the glue holding her fragile family together.

Director Ted Dykstra (co-writer and star of the acclaimed play, 2 Pianos, 4 Hands) must be credited for drawing out the complexities in a play that is often presented simply as a study in disappointment, with Amanda typically seen as delusional and not as the dreamer she is here portrayed by Soulpepper founding member Nancy Palk, a truly gifted Canadian actress who graces the role with nuance and huge dollops of empathy.

You need only think back to the 1950 film version to know that productions of The Glass Menagerie tend to be overbearing, forgoing the lyricism and humour that really are the playwright’s abiding strengths. In the film, Amanda was played by a hysterical Gertrude Lawrence, an actress Williams himself decried as being all wrong for the part, eventually publicly calling her casting “a dismal error,” and the film itself “a dishonest” reading of his work.

Urban Bustle: James Farm

For an album of music dressed as a rural excursion, James Farm (Nonesuch, 2011) seems awfully urban to my ears. Formed in 2009, the group James Farm is clearly a collaborative ensemble interested in exploring different rhythms and harmonies to create something new. To me, this is the core of what jazz, as a musical form, should be in spite of those people who support the so-called "Smooth Jazz" sounds. If it's smooth, it ain't jazz, as far as I'm concerned. For James Farm, led by saxophonist Joshua Redman, it's about tapping into one's experience, playing with a swinging sound and challenging the audience. Aaron Parks, Matt Penman and Eric Harland, (piano, bass and drums respectively) make up the quartet. 

Their new self-titled, debut album opens with the introspective "Coax" composed by bassist Matt Penman. It offers Josh Redman room to solo in a quizzical way opening the door to Aaron Parks on piano teasing us with delicate notes designed to draw us closer. Followed by the very funky "Polliwog," written by Redman, this pleasing tune features the tenor sax player performing as lyrically as I've ever heard him. The lazy ballad "Bijou," composed by Aaron Parks, shows a lighter touch. But the mood changes again with a piece called "Chronos," also written by Parks, but clearly led by drummer Eric Harland. His brand of percussion is similar in style to Jack DeJohnette, who loves to mix it up on the kit marking the transitions of fast and slow that is the predominant feature of this composition. Clearly, James Farm is a band that is only interested in the musical pull of the ensemble as opposed to a rhythm section backing a horn-player.

Neglected Gems #4: Baran (2001)

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) acquired upon their subsequent release. In any case, here is the latest entry in a series of disparate movies you really ought to see.

Co-winner of the grand prize at the Montreal World Film Festival, Baran marked a stylistic leap forward for Iranian director Majid Majidi. It was also a less angry film than his previous two movies, Children of Heaven and The Color of Paradise, both of which had also won the top prize in Montreal. Those films were heavier--and cruder--than Baran, which is, finally, a sweet story of unconsummated love.

Talking Out of Turn #20: Toni Morrison (1982)

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.

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.

Tom Fulton of On the Arts.

After the murder of Martin Luther King Jr, in the late sixties, the momentum of the Civil Rights movement seemed to wane. No leader could fill that vacuum and black voices in the eighties became fragmented. Often the question of black identity came up during interviews. While many of the individuals I spoke to were male, author Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon, Beloved) brought perspective on black culture from a woman's point of view. On the day she came in, we discussed her then new book Tar Baby. The novel portrays a love affair between Jade and Son, two blacks who came from different worlds. While Jade is a Sorbonne graduate and fashion model who was sponsored into wealth and privilege, Son is a poor, strong-willed man who literally washes up on the shore of the wealthy white family home in the Caribbean where Jade's uncle and aunt work as servants. Although Jade and Son try to make a home in the United States, the compromises each makes (dictated by their class differences) doom the affair.

From Stage to Screen: Peeking at a Political Underbelly

John Gallagher Jr., Chris Noth and Kate Blumberg in Farragut North.

As a “press advance man” for former Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s presidential bid, Brooklyn playwright Beau Willimon spent the last three months of 2003 crisscrossing Iowa. So it’s hardly surprising his gripping make-believe account of a modern campaign would be set in that Midwestern state. Farragut North, which opened off-Broadway in late 2008, was about back-room machinations and dirty tricks among political operatives.

Yet Willimon, who had stumped for other Democratic candidates in the past, made it clear in an interview three years ago that his piece was not a Deaniac docudrama. “I drew on all those experiences to create a fictional but authentic world,” he said, while sipping orange juice at a cafe in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. “My intention is to present a universal story about power and ambition.”

It also seemed to be a story appropriate for cinema. The action has been relocated to Ohio in the script Willimon wrote after Farragut was optioned by Warner Bros, in conjunction with George Clooney’s production company. Clooney co-adapted and directed the film, now titled The Ides of March, and he also stars, along with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei, Paul Giamatti and Evan Rachel Wood. It will open the Venice Film Festival on August 31, before an October 7 release.

The dynamic original version, under the aegis of the Atlantic Theater Company, featured Chris Noth of Law & Order fame and John Gallagher, Jr., who won a 2007 Tony Award for his performance in the hit Broadway musical Spring Awakening. The cast included Olivia Thirlby, Ellen Page’s sidekick in Juno, and Isaiah Whitlock, Jr., perhaps best known for HBO’s The Wire. Doug Hughes, the director of Farragut, had earned a 2005 Tony Award for Doubt.

Irreverent Enchantment: Shakespeare by the Sea’s Robin Hood

If you live in Halifax or are travelling to the wonderfully laid-back city this summer, you must go and see Shakespeare by the Sea’s (SBTS) The Adventures of Robin Hood. The theatre company originally preformed a rendition of this classic tale in 2005, but this year’s version is a much more refreshing take. You can enjoy Alfresco Shakespeare in many Canadian cites: SBTS (Halifax and St. John’s), Dream in High Park (Toronto), Free Will Players Theatre Guild (Edmonton) and Bard on the Beach (Vancouver), to mention some of the more cleverly named. Take your snacks and sangria (er, I mean cranberry juice…most venues don’t officially allow booze) and enjoy a thespian adventure by starlight. Each year SBTS Halifax does two Shakespearean productions and one fairy tale “kids” play. Until now, I’ve been a purist and attended only plays by the Bard himself, but my tune has changed. You can take much more dramatic and theatrical liberties with a folktale like Robin Hood than with a five-act stage show with a definitive playwright. And take liberties they did. Sherwood Forest enchanted us all.

The Return of the Invisible Man: J.D. Souther’s Natural History

We are pleased to welcome a new critic, David Kidney, to our group.

“There’s talk on the street it sounds so familiar

Great expectations everybody’s watching you

People you meet they all seem to know you

Even your old friends treat you like you’re something new

Johnny come lately…the new kid in town.”

The Eagles – “New Kid in Town.”


John David Souther isn’t quite the new kid in town anymore. Back in 1970, he joined together with Glen Frey to form a duo called Longbranch Pennywhistle. They released one album and then Frey went on to help found The Eagles. While Souther was invited to join this soon to be iconic band, he figured the addition of one more guitar would not have made much of a difference to their sound. Nonetheless, he stayed close at hand and co-wrote some of The Eagles’ most memorable songs, “Best of My Love,” “Heartache Tonight” and “New Kid in Town.” Souther also had a reasonably healthy solo career releasing a handful of albums for Asylum Records while providing hit songs for Linda Ronstadt and collaborating with James Taylor. Then he just seemed to disappear.

He showed up as an actor on television in thirtysomething and in film (Postcards on the Edge) but for over twenty years he didn’t release any music. That changed in 2008 with a jazzy album called If The World Was You. He added trumpet solos and sophisticated piano and steered clear of the country-rock guitar stuff he’d been known for. The album was a surprising hit. When I saw him that year at Toronto’s Hugh’s Room he played a couple of sunburst Gibson guitars and was a surprisingly clumsy guitarist. But he more than made up for it with his warm supple voice and winning stage presence. Souther was charming, rather than the arrogant character he’d portrayed on TV. The album was only a month old, and when he moved to the piano to play one tune, he couldn’t remember the words. He asked if anyone had bought the vinyl version at the merch table, and borrowed the lyric sheet to read the song. How endearing is that? Now he’s back with a follow-up album, Natural History.

Rallying Support: The Effort to Save Showcase's Endgame

It's not often that I choose to write about a current TV show that is already cancelled, but this is a special case. This past March, the Canadian specialty channel Showcase launched Endgame to critical acclaim. Its first episodes did well, but then it started to slip. In June, Showcase pulled the plug and ever since there has been a feisty fan movement afoot to convince them to uncancel it. The best way to describe the thoroughly entertaining Endgame is to call it a whodunit with a somewhat unique twist. The solver of crimes is Arkady Balagan (Shawn Doyle), a Russian chess master who suffers from severe agoraphobia: the fear of going outside. We learn in flashback that the agoraphobia hit while he was staying at a luxury hotel called the Huxley. The condition developed when he witnessed his fiancée (Lisa Ray) getting blown up by a car bomb just as he was exiting the hotel to join her. He now spends his days either in his suite (a suite he is having trouble paying for), bugging the head of security (Patrick Gallagher), wandering the hotel corridors (often barefoot and in a housecoat) or hanging out in the hotel bar manned by the beauteous Danni (Katharine Isabelle).

Since he is very logical, people start coming to him to solve various crimes: murders, thefts, assaults, etc. They all offer to pay him a lot of money, money he desperately needs. He solves the crimes with his mind. He is ably assisted by the youthful Sam (Toorance Coombs – The Tudors) who is a chess nut. Arkady “pays” him with chess lessons whenever Sam does external investigations. A sympathetic maid (Carmen Aguirre) also pitches in by running interference for him with the hotel management and security. The show gets creatively around the Arkady-stuck-in-the-hotel scenario by having him fantasize conversations with the victims or probable perpetrators of the crimes. This allows him, in his head at least, to go outside. Frequently, they turn into rather comic encounters shot in a hyper-real manner.

Jesus As Heartthrob: Stratford Festival's Jesus Christ Superstar

 Paul Nolan as Jesus (centre). Photo by David Hou.

It’s not often I sit in the theatre, head bowed. But toward the end of director Des McAnuff’s powerful re-staging of Jesus Christ Superstar at the Stratford Festival (one of Canada's preeminent theatre companies located in Stratford, Ontario, southwest of Toronto), that’s exactly what I was doing. From that position I could see that my hands were also clasped on my lap as if in prayer. It was involuntary. I was raised Catholic – in the beleaguered Catholic enclave of Derry, Northern Ireland, no less – and so visions of Jesus hanging on the Cross move me in ways of which I’m often not aware. Faced with actor Paul Nolan suspended high above the stage, arms outstretched like the crucified Christ, instantly conjured the yearning of childhood when I used to pine for Jesus, just as the nuns taught me to do. I recalled, sitting there in the darkness of Stratford's Avon Theatre, how before I was 10, I wished for a time machine to whisk me back to Garden of Gethsemane so I could warn him to make a run for it by dawn. Jesus, in other words, was the first big love of my life, the one person I’d do anything to save for all the saving he was said to be doing of me. It’s that idea of Jesus as heartthrob that McAnuff plays up in his revival of the 1971 Tim Rice/Andrew Lloyd Webber rock opera based loosely on the Gospels’ account of the last week of Christ’s life, and it’s an idea that works miracles. This Jesus Christ Superstar is a hit. It plays at Stratford now through October.

Recent Cinema: Highs and Lows

Montreal's Seville Cinema

News that Toronto’s venerable Bloor repertory cinema was going to close for the summer for renovations has worried a lot of people in the city. Despite assurances from the owners that the Bloor will re-open in the fall, people are understandably concerned that this won’t in fact happen and a historic cinema and landmark will vanish. I, too, hope that won’t occur – I was proud to host its 100th birthday celebration in the fall of 2005 – as I have always been partial to the rep house experience. Growing up in Montreal, I frequented the city’s two major rep cinemas, the suburban Cinema V, which also functioned as something of a cinematheque (for one, it was where I was introduced to the '70s German New Wave movies) and the downtown Seville Cinema, which was known for showing late night cult movies like El Topo and, of course, The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Alas, neither of those cinemas still exists, but I’ve found other ones to attend since I moved in Toronto. (In addition to the Bloor, I also check out the recently refurbished and non-profit Revue Cinema, where I’ve lectured.) To my mind, rep houses are somewhat more authentic than many first run houses. The films are more reasonably priced, as are the concessions, and people seem more interested in cinema for cinema’s sake and not as something to do on the weekend (or for a first date). As a result, they’re less likely to talk during screenings or even text. And while you may not get the best possible print by the time it gets to the rep house and because there are actual human beings doing the projecting (instead of the machines as is the case at most first-run cinemas), glitches can and do happen. But they also happen in first run. I’ve had the disconcerting experience of sitting through movies at the Varsity theatre in Toronto where they suddenly shut down for a minute or two because the machines showing the film thought it was over. Human errors, though, are also part of the rep house experience. (I still can’t quite get used to the fact that Toronto is big enough that a movie can play at the Bloor and still be in first run a few subway stops away. In Montreal, by contrast, if the film was still in first run, the reps could never show it even if they’d booked a movie for a full week.) This musing about the reps is also my segue into reviews of three recent releases, Of Gods and Men and The Lincoln Lawyer, which were seen at the Bloor, and Certified Copy, which I caught at the Revue.

A Portrait of the Comedian as a Middle-Aged Man: The Painful Pleasures of FX’s Louie

Louis C.K. and Hadley Delaney in FX's Louie.

Ever wondered what it would look like if you mixed television comedy with indie filmmaking budget and sensibilities? Now that Louis C.K.’s darkly funny series Louie has returned for a second season, you can wonder no more.  Loosely based on his real life (as a 40-something, recently divorced comedian with joint custody of his two young daughters), Louis C.K. has been given unprecedented control over the content and direction of the series. With a promise to FX to keep the budget to shoestring levels, the network has agreed to stay out of his way, leaving C.K. to star, write, direct, edit, produce, and even cast every episode. Gleefully mixing gross-out comedy with existential anxiety, a single episode can casually touch on themes of post-divorce loneliness, the joys and traumas of parenthood, the aging male body, and even mortality itself. Last week’s episode (the second season premiere) may have hinged on an epic bout of flatulence, but it was also one of the most poignantly painful stories Louie has ever told. I’m not sure if Louie is the saddest comedy in the history of television or its funniest tragedy. Either way, it is one of the most original shows on TV today.

A Child of Walter Hill: Jonathan Liebesman's Battle: Los Angeles (2011)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, director Walter Hill made a trio of pictures that examined how men (and sometimes women) functioned when they are trapped, for lack of a better term, behind enemy lines. Those pictures were: The Warriors (1979), about a gang in New York, with dozens of other gangs between them and their home turf; The Long Riders (1980), which looked at the James-Younger gang during the planning and execution of their disastrous attempted robbery in 1876 Missouri; and Southern Comfort (1981), which followed a group of National Guardsmen on a training exercise in Louisiana's bayou that gets lost and then are pursued by a group of angry Cajuns. These are three of the greatest action films to be released during that era. Hill’s instincts in all three films could not have been better. He presented the characters in all their strengths and flaws without descending to clichés. Jonathan Liebesman's science fiction action film Battle: Los Angeles (recently released on DVD) is not without flaws, but its greatest strength is that the filmmakers clearly understand Hill's pictures, because this film has many of those three movies' virtues.

A Bed-Wetting Good Time For Shitty-Assed Parents: Adam Mansbach's Go The Fuck To Sleep

It’s late. Even for me. We’ve been through eleven bedtime stories, seven lullabies, an entire rendition of “no more monkeys jumping on the bed,” two trips to the washroom, a glass of water, one final snack and lights out. But my otherwise perfect little angel still won’t go the fuck to sleep. Apparently, I’m not alone according to author Adam Mansbach whose Go The Fuck to Sleep (Akashic, 2011) skyrocketed to the top of the Amazon best seller list before it was even available in print. In his bedtime story parody, Mansbach offers a hilarious and refreshingly honest portrayal of parenting which should be appreciated by any parent or caregiver of a toddler who insists on burning the midnight oil.

At first glance, the colourful illustrations of toddlers (by Ricardo Cortés) snuggling up next to kittens, or parachuting past a rainbow, give Go the Fuck to Sleep the essence of a children’s story book - until you notice that the f-bomb accompanies every single page. While you may not want to actually read this book to your little one(s), this profanity laden mockup is really quite innocent. It is more or less a blow-by-blow synopsis of the emotions that accompany not only bedtime, but parenting in general.

Off Escalators & On Oat Bran: the Ups and Downs of the Dukan Diet

My name is Mari-Beth and I’m a self-help junkie. I think the act of reading a self-help book will cause me to be better by osmosis. I’m the kind of person who reads a diet book while eating a piece of cheesecake, with the best intention to start eating healthier … tomorrow. If social anthropologists of the future want to learn about society today, our self-help literature is their gold mine. I mined The Dukan Diet book for insights on nutrition, psychology and culture. Dr. Pierre Dukan, the author, hails from France, the land of the notoriously slim. I have mixed feelings about The Dukan Diet, published in France in 2000, North America in 2011 and currently available in thirty counties. Some aspects are useful at best and interesting at worst; others are amusing at best and appalling at worst. I want to take what works for me and leave the rest, but every time this notion occurs to me I feel judged by Dukan as he continually reaffirms that this is a take it or leave it, all or nothing, kind of diet.

The diet itself consists of four consecutive phases: the “attack” phase (a short period of lean protein only, designed to shed pounds quickly); the “cruise” phase (three days of lean protein plus non-starchy vegetables for every pound you want to lose); the “consolidation” phase (for five days per pound lost you add minimal grains, cheese, fruit, and celebration meals); the “permanent stabilization” phase (for the rest of your life you can eat whatever you like, provided you eschew escalators, take 3 tablespoons of oat bran daily and commit one day a week to consuming only lean protein). We are reminded of the particulars of each phase often throughout the book, as Dukan includes many summaries, explanations and adaptations of his diet for people at diverse stages of life. Honestly, the phases are so straightforward and so well laid out on various websites that you need not read the book if the actual diet is all that interests you. But you would be missing out: Dukan’s assessment of why we are fat is just as intriguing as how he proposes that we change it.

Dear Jurisprudence: I Like What I See

Casey Anthony in court

Reality TV sucks. I never watch those fake shows about dingy pawn shops, creepy hoarders, tough-guy jobs, hostile cooking competitions, arch-enemy hairstylists, snarky fashionistas, squabbling housewives or ruthless people in a remote jungle forming alliances to “survive.” As the participants ridicule each other and bark orders in a quest for the requisite 15 minutes of fame, they’re all fired up with implied violence or, in some instances, outright viciousness. But I have to confess that one type of non-fiction programming always grabs me: criminal trials. The violence that informs these broadcasts is authentic, albeit offscreen.

I faithfully followed the O.J. Simpson proceedings in 1995, when he was found not guilty of killing his ex-wife and her friend. And right now, I'm among the millions of Americans with eyes trained on an Orlando courtroom, where 25-year-old Casey Anthony – who had been living at home with parents George and Cindy – is accused of murdering her toddler daughter, Caylee. The trial has been going on for a month. The prosecution recently rested and the defense is now focusing on every imaginable twist to prove her innocence and, failing that, to avoid a death sentence. The key to the latter result is whether or not there was indeed premeditation, as listed on Casey’s seven-count indictment.

Handled With Care: Blackie and the Rodeo Kings' Kings and Queens

Blackie & the Rodeo Kings is the collective name for Canadian musicians Tom Wilson, Stephen Fearing and Colin Linden. The group came together a few years ago with a mutual interest in the music of Willie P. Bennett. Bennett was a singer-songwriter who composed some great songs; a combination of blues and rural sounding ballads that made him popular in folk music circles in Canada in the late 1960s. The band’s name comes from the title of Bennett's 1979 album. Bennett's popularity soared after Blackie & the Rodeo Kings released an album of his compositions called, High or Hurtin: the Songs of Willie P. Bennett, in 1996. Suddenly everybody in contemporary folk music was hearing Willie P. Bennett songs. This initial union thus provided the founding members with a band, a name and a reason to continue working together. Six albums now make up the discography of Blackie & the Rodeo Kings.

Their seventh album, Kings and Queens (Dramatico, 2011) is their newest and finest record to date. It features collaborations with some of the band's most favourite female singers. The result is 14 songs with 14 "Queens" as guests. On one level, since this recording is being done in the 21st Century, the collaborators don't have to be in one location to work. A vocalist can lay down a track without leaving their home. For this album, with so many guest singers, the technology has served the music quite well. Rather than feel like a haphazard collection of tracks from different locations, the record comes across as a carefully prepared work. The tunes are sublime, mystical, personal and buoyant. Each performance is articulated and nuanced with nothing being left to chance. I understand it took them months to complete the sessions due to all the conflicting schedules, but it was definitely worth the time. On Kings and Queens, the artists are treated with respect and handled with care.

Bad Teacher: D for Dismal

Bad Teacher, the new comedy starring Cameron Diaz as a scheming teacher, is the latest mediocre example of what passes for humour in American movies today. Whether they’re atrocious films like Get Him to the Greek and Grown-Ups, bad ones like The Hangover or mediocre movies like Date Night, that waste superior talents (Tina Fey, Steve Carrell), genuinely funny comedies are in short supply. That may explain why relatively minor movies like Midnight in Paris and Bridesmaids which at least possess a modicum of wit and style are getting such acclaim. Compared to the usual comedic tripe on our movie screens, they can't help but come across as veritable comic masterpieces. The only redeeming aspect of Bad Teacher is that this one didn’t seem to please the audience much, either, at the promotional screening I attended. Maybe, despite their generally setting a low bar for what makes them laugh, even filmgoers are starting to run out of patience with desperately unfunny, contemptuous films like Bad Teacher. Let’s hope so because this one deserves a failing grade at the box office.

The title of Bad Teacher is no doubt meant to echo Bad Santa (2003), Terry Zwigoff’s brilliant, transgressive assault on Christmas with Billy Bob Thornton as a drunken Santa who cases the department stores he works at in a bid to rob them after hours. But this new R-rated comedy isn’t especially gutsy, raunchy or all that smart, either. And unlike Bad Santa, which never softened Thornton’s disreputable character even when he (sort of) befriended an asocial kid who believed Santa was real, Bad Teacher wants to let filmgoers leave happy, so Diaz’s ‘nasty’ Elizabeth Halsey turns out not to be so bad, after all. What a surprise.

Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz

I like Cameron Diaz. She's a real talent who stood out in last summer's forgettable Knight and Day, and who, of course, shone in the Farrelly Brothers’ There's Something About Mary (1998), one of the few great (R rated) comedies, along with Matt Stone and Trey Parker’s Team America: World Police (2004) and Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat (2006) that Hollywood has given us in recent years. Her role as the sweet and sexy Mary showcased her savvy comedic talents to perfection. But in Bad Teacher, she – along with virtually the whole cast – is saddled with a one-note character, an ostensibly ‘bad’ girl who concocts numerous shady, unethical schemes to acquire the $10,000 she desperately needs to get a boob job so she can land a rich husband. The last thing she wants to do is teach her pupils anything at all, much less show any concern for their dreams and aspirations.

Gutting The Killing

I have wasted 13 hours of the only life I'm ever going to have on a self-important piece of crap called The Killing. Brought onto AMC as their next 'great show' to go with Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead, The Killing started strongly, as I outlined here. The premise was simple. Set in a rain-soaked Seattle, The Killing was about an attractive young girl, Rosie Larsen (Katie Findlay), who was kidnapped and killed by an unknown assailant. The story was broken into three strands: Mitch and Stan Larsen (Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton) and their boys dealing with the tragedy of Rosie's death; the cops, Sarah Linden and Stephen Holder (Mireilles Enos and Joel Kinnaman), investigating her murder; and the election campaign between the young uniter, Darren Richmond (Billy Campbell), and the moustache-twirling corrupt current mayor, Lesley Adams (Tom Butler). Rosie's body was found in the trunk of a car owned by the Richmond campaign. Each episode represented one day of the investigation.

Michelle Forbes

Fine. Okay. Good start. Then things started to go terribly wrong. The rain fell and fell and fell and fell. People wandered around rooms so under-lit that it is impossible to see what was going on. To use a line my colleague, Kevin Courrier, likes to use at times like this, I wanted to give them all flashlights. After the revelation of Rosie's death, the whole show's various arcs took on layers of grief and never did anything with them. The Killing has been celebrated by its fans because they claim 'it is the first show to actually get at the truth of the grief a family goes through after the lost of a child.' What The Killing actually did was hit one note of bereavement and then played it again and again and again and again. Michelle Forbes is a wonderful actress whose work I have always enjoyed (Star Trek: The Next Generation, 24, Durham County, Battlestar Galatica, etc). She brings a vibrancy to anything she's ever been in, but here she is asked to play a rag doll. With her hair permanently draped over her eyes, she locks her gaze on the middle distance and then... nothing. That's where she starts; that's where she ends. This is an unplayable character. 

From Despair to Enlightenment: Marianne Faithfull's Horses and High Heels

Marianne Faithfull sums up her life and her music in one simple statement: “I don’t really do conventional.” The singer/ songerwriter’s controversial past and avant-garde sound are anything but ordinary. This British Chanteuse began her career in the 1960s as a sweet-voiced teenager. But after 47 years in the business, including a decade of harrowing drug abuse and heartache, Marianne Faithfull has once again lent her now bourbon soaked, vintage vocal chords to her 23rd solo album Horses and High Heels. The album is nothing less than a culmination of pretty much all the inspiration and wisdom possessed by this iconic artist.

Born the daughter of a military officer/psychology professor and a dancer in London in 1946, by the 1960s, Marianne Faithfull was developing a name for herself in the coffee house scene. After meeting the Rolling Stones' music producer and manager Andrew Loog Oldham at one of their launch parties in 1964, Marianne’s career (and lifestyle) soon became larger than her talents. That same year, her first single, “As Tears Go By,” co-written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, earned her recognition as a pop singer in her native United Kingdom; but her stunning beauty and diverse talents also opened the door to a side career on the silver screen (The Girl on a Motorcycle, Hamlet). Yet Marianne Faithfull fully embraced her newfound life as a pop star, groupie and eventually the rock star girlfriend to Mick Jagger.

Chaplin's The Great Dictator: Still Brave But Not Funny

Critic at Large’s David Churchill recently wrote on how disappointed he was upon re-visiting a film, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique on DVD, and finding that his fond memories of the movie when he first saw it on television many years earlier, had faded, replaced by a film he now didn’t much like at all. I had something of a similar experience when I re-watched Charlie Chaplin’s acclaimed 1940 comedy The Great Dictator, recently released in a spanking-new, extras-laden DVD from Criterion. But unlike David, I still like aspects of the movie; they’re just not the ones I most appreciated upon first viewing the film.

The movie is famous (or infamous in some circles) for courageously spoofing Nazi Germany’s dictator Adolf Hitler, at a time when the United States was beset by isolationist/anti-Semitic forces determined to keep the United States out of the Second World War. Hollywood had almost entirely ignored the war and the beginnings of the Holocaust except in the odd movie (Confessions of a Nazi Spy, The Mortal Storm) which as often as not excised the anti-Semitic underpinnings of what was going on in Germany, going so far as to label Nazism’s victims in The Mortal Storm as ‘non-Aryans’ rather than Jews (even though scenes using the latter word had been filmed). In addition, Hollywood’s Jewish moguls had been read the riot act by Joseph Kennedy, then U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, who had warned them that any movies attacking the Nazis could only make it worse for the Jews in Germany and at home in the U.S.. (Germany was also Hollywood’s best overseas market for film consumption.) The moguls complied with Kennedy’s unofficial threat and, as was so often the case when it came to their religion and identity, shamefully tamped down any overt references to what was going on with their co-religionists in Germany and Europe. Then along came Chaplin, a box-office behemoth, who wasn’t even Jewish, with a self-financed movie that not only daringly assailed Hitler but also dared to deal with the verboten cinematic subject of the persecution of the Jews. (I knew that the movie was also initially strongly supported by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, who hoped that it would sway Americans to support the war but I didn't know that after near riots upon its release in Latin America, accompanied by cries from the mobs to 'kill the Jews', he backed away from the film. That's just one of the many informative tidbits on the DVD's commentary track, which is ably done by Chaplin historians Dan Kamin and Hooman Mehran.) Thus, a DVD release of The Great Dictator is laden with historical baggage that does not accrue to too many other movies. In that light, I have to look at the film in two ways: as a critic examining a potential work of ‘art’ and as a writer looking at the original, audacious realities of this milestone film. The former, thus, disappoints me, as well while the latter, if anything, impresses me more than ever.

Gone Bananas: Sara Gruen’s Ape House

Ape House is not actually Sara Gruen’s second novel. But it seems like it. Gruen clearly recognizes the pressure of following up a successful novel. One of the characters in Ape House, Amanda, is trying to do just that. This self-reflexivity is just one example of Gruen’s heavy-handed attempt at being clever in a novel that is still a thoroughly enjoyable read. 

Her first two books, Riding Lessons (2004) and Flying Changes (2005), had relatively low profiles; while Water for Elephants (2006) was such a popular success that it was recently made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon. Like all of Gruen’s books, Ape House continues to educate us about animals’ capacity for emotion. While Water for Elephants is a historical novel, Ape House has a decidedly modern plot with blatant references to mainstream pornography, gaudy reality television, and email hacking. Ape House is not nearly as elegantly written as Water for Elephants, but what it lacks in elegance it makes up for in exhilaration.

Cinema of Remembrance: A Deadly Season in the Deep South

Forty-seven years ago this month, Jake Blum was 18 when he volunteered for the Mississippi Freedom Summer voter registration drive, just as three other young civil rights workers went missing in Neshoba County. Soon to become a sophomore at Yale University, he traveled south as a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, which worked with the Congress for Racial Equality to attract more than 1,000 activists to a state that then had the lowest percentage of registered black voters in America.

“There was a lot of fear,” recalls Blum, now 65 and a Vermont resident. “They were so used to being treated as second-class citizens. There had been lynchings and fire-bombings. Being in Mississippi was kind of a long, dark night.”

           

That scenario is made clear in Neshoba: The Price of Freedom, a thorough 2008 documentary that updates the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, all under age 25. They had disappeared after spending the night in jail for a supposed speeding ticket in the town of Philadelphia, but their bodies weren’t found until six weeks later. Chaney, who was the only African-American in the trio, had been tortured and buried alive.