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.

Walking into History: Jennifer Stoddart & Paul Fusco's 1000 Pictures: RFK's Last Journey

Photo by Paul Fusco.

When Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968, while campaigning to be the Democratic Party's choice for President, you could feel the air going out of the culture. At the time, I was a Grade 8 student about to write my final exams. But when I woke the morning after the California primary to find out that he had both won and was mortally wounded by an assassin, I walked to school and promptly failed every one. Getting into high school just didn't seem to matter anymore. JFK's assassination might have been a seismic shock to the system in 1963, but this was a murder that curdled and darkened the nation.

Even though I was a Canadian, I was fervently following RFK's campaign as if caught up in the passion of a political dream, the quixotic idea that one could remake a country. Since Martin Luther King Jr. had just been murdered that spring, it seemed even more urgent that those ideals be realized through Robert Kennedy. Kennedy seemed to galvanize the nation by imagining a country built on the inclusion of its citizens; where rich and poor, black and white and Mexican-Americans could share in its possibilities. They would line the streets daily during that campaign clamoring to shake his hand while stepping forward as if they were walking into history, wanting to be a part of its making. There was a true sense, even with the horrible war going on in Vietnam, that the country could still be truly remade into something resembling the ideals set forth in its founding documents. In the absolute worst of times, you felt a keen sense of anticipation. But RFK's death seemed to kill any desire to hope for anything better.

A Dance of Epic Proportions: Taj at Luminato

Kabir Bedi & Sampradaya Dance Creations dancers (Photo by Divine Method Photography)

The Taj Mahal would be impossible to recreate today as a piece of architecture. Just imagine the expense of the gemstones used to decorate the mausoleum’s marble walls, not to mention the labour. According to legend, the building of this temple of grief and everlasting beauty in northern India had not only cost literally a king’s fortune to make, but also claimed many human lives. It also cost its progenitor, Shah Jahan, the 17th century Moghul who had constructed it as a memorial to his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal (who had died in childbirth), his freedom. According to legend, toward the end of his life, his own son, Aurangzeb, had him imprisoned for having spent everything in the land – riches, resources, human beings – to create this domed folly conceived in bereavement, what the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore once poignantly called, “a tear drop on the cheek of time.”

But with Taj, a dance/theatre work that had its world premiere last week at the Fleck Dance Theatre in Toronto as part of the ongoing Luminato Festival of the Arts which commissioned it (the production is slated to tour North America, Europe and India in the fall of 2012), award-wining dancer and choreographer Lata Pada has done the next best thing: a recreation of the Taj Mahal in human terms. It is by focusing on the story of filial hatred and revenge (Aurangzeb had lost his mother after all, and he held his father responsible), in addition to the ancillary theme of mortals seeking immortality through acts of art and beauty, that this staged evocation of the Taj Mahal comes alive as architecture with a beating heart.

Mother Monster: Lady Gaga's Born This Way

One would think Lady Gaga would be a little on the tired side. Since 2008, the newly minted "Mother Monster" has pulled off a lightning speed climb from obscurity to international superstardom. She's released three Billboard topping albums and become the subject of scathing celebrity gossip (including a false accusation of having a penis). Gaga has also acquired over 38,000,000 Facebook likes (that’s more than Obama). And she's now wrapping up her gruelling Monster’s Ball world tour. Born This Way is Lady Gaga’s latest full-length, shocking, absolutely fabulous record. With an incredible – almost inhuman stamina – she has proved to the world, once again, that she in an endless source of creativity, talent and energy.

Yes, that’s right, I said “fabulous.” Music elites, please feel free to write off my endorsement of this record and the artist behind it. But I’m a firm believer that just because something is popular doesn't mean it's rubbish. Her head-turning (well, more like neck-breaking) ensembles alone have caused quite a ruckus. By attending award ceremonies and wearing dresses made of meat, Muppets, or bubbles, she has the masses arguing over whether she is an activist or a loon; an artist or an attention starved phoney. And the controversy does not stop with the outfits. Media outlets, fans and naysayers have labelled her as everything from grotesque to genius due to those elaborate live performances, over-the-top music videos, controversial lyrics and political outspokenness. Love her or loathe her, the icon and her music have a substance we have not seen in a mega star in years.

Game of Thrones: Winter is Almost Here

Sean Bean as Lord Eddard Stark in HBO's Game of Thrones

This Sunday, June 19th, HBO will air the tenth and final episode of the first season of its new medieval fantasy series, Game of Thrones. Based on George R. R. Martin’s popular series of fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones is HBO’s most ambitious fantasy series to date. With more than 7 million copies of the novels sold worldwide (the fifth of the planned seven books will be published on July 12th), the series was one of the most anticipated shows of 2011, and in my opinion it has more than lived up to the hype. With a strong ensemble cast of veteran actors and newcomers and impressive production values, the show is more than an amazing example of fantasy storytelling, it is quite simply great television.

The series co-creators, screenwriters David Benioff (Troy) and D. B. Weiss, have committed to adapting one novel a season, following the model established by HBO’s other successful fantasy series, True Blood. But unlike True Blood, Game of Thrones offers a much more faithful translation of the novels. With most of the scripts for the first season penned by Benioff and Weiss, the series builds confidently towards its explosive final episodes. The novelistic pacing of this season is ideally suited to the inherent strengths of television: telling a sweeping story, with twenty main characters and dozens of supporting roles, multiple storylines, and grand themes. But despite its epic tenor, Game of Thrones takes its time. Its first episodes serve not only as an introduction to this world and its unique history but, more crucially, to the people that populate it. The series is profoundly and deeply human in the details. Heroes and villains alike are drawn with patience and sympathy. At the end of an episode, it is more often the smaller conversations and interactions that loom larger and linger longer in my mind than the show’s more epic elements. By the time the knives come out in the second half of the season, we are intimately familiar with players on all sides of the conflict, and there is a heartbreaking depth to every drop of blood that is shed.

Spectacular Nights: One Thousand and One Nights

Luminato Festival, Toronto's premier arts festival, is well-served by its prime production, a new (and accurate) adaptation of One Thousand and Nights. Since its launch five years ago, I've had a soft spot for Luminato (running this year from June 10 – June 19, 2011). Perhaps the reason that I love it so much is because this festival is all Toronto's. It's not a copy of an event from somewhere else (our much-loved film festival, TIFF, is a redo of countless film festivals from around the world; Nuit Blanche, the night-long art exhibit going on all over Toronto this fall, is borrowed from Paris, etc.). Luminato may have taken inspiration from other things throughout the planet, but it has been given a unique Toronto spin in that almost all parts of the arts are represented during the week, much of it free, and there is truly something for everybody.

A highlight for me from the first year was the powerful waterfront spotlight installation called Pulse Front, which allowed the customers' heartbeat to create the pulse the light gave out as it shot into the night sky (you held two handles and, after a second, the sensors read your pulse which fed the light). Maybe a million years from now, a distant civilization will pick up this strange, very rhythmic light caused by my heartbeat from a galaxy far, far away and wonder, 'is that life?' Okay, I'm making idle speculation, but that's what makes this big, embracing festival work so well.

This year, it is the usual combination of free concerts (such as k.d. lang on Friday, June 17) and events combined with impressive ticketed events that make it so special. One production you must see is the often-exhilarating new version of One Thousand and One Nights. This is not the Arabian Nights of Ali Baba or Aladdin (those were a creation of a 17^th century French translation), with stories to amuse children before bedtime. These are the tales (or 20 of them at least) as they were originally conceived 1000+ years ago: dark, menacing, violent, sexual, but also filled with ribald humour. It is also very adult. The production is mounted on a thrust stage with audience members on three of four sides. This creates a valuable intimacy.

Making Connections: Kronos Quartet at Luminato

The Kronos Quartet is celebrating 38 years as a vital, interesting and progressive musical ensemble. Led by founder and musical director David Harrington, this “string” quartet has foregone the conventional classical music repertoire for more adventurous ground. It’s a group that never fails to take risks. As a result, Kronos has been leading the way for new composers and in the fusing of divergent musical styles. The Kronos Quartet has always been interested in breaking down barriers between musicians and audience expectations. It’s a group that pioneered the fusion of Western and Eastern music that has inspired many people and by the same token alienated a few more along the way. But that’s the price of great music in my opinion, as the Kronos Quartet perseveres in spite of the musical trends that continue to surround them. So it comes as no surprise to learn that the quartet’s appearances this week in Toronto are programmed to expand the musical palette once more.