Moot Hooey

Vancouver actor Julia Stone shines in The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom

2011-04-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom is a lovely film about a young girl who discovers she was adopted and fantasizes about Dolly Parton being her mother.

The film is based in the mid seventies and captures that era beautifully with an extraordinary set design. Director Tara Johns cast young Vancouver actor Julia Stone in the lead role of Elizabeth. Stone does a remarkable job connecting to her character and delivers a heartfelt performance.

Stone was able to take some time to talk to us about her first feature film. Here's what she had to say.

WD: What did you think when you first read the script?

JS: I thought it was a beautiful script and really well-written. Whenever I'm reading a story, whether it's in a script or in a book, it's like I'm in the story: I'm not just reading it, I'm in it. That's how it was when I read the script. It was like I was watching what was going on.

WD: Did any part of the script stand out for you: anything you thought might be particularly difficult or exciting to do?

JS: Definitely the scene where Elizabeth and Marion (Macha Grenon fromBarney's Version) are on the cliff and Marion throws the bike off the ledge. That's a beautiful scene that really touched me.

WD: Had you heard about Dolly Parton prior to making this film?

JS: No. I hadn't heard of her before but when I was preparing for the audition I did some research into who she is and what she stands for and how she was a big part of people's lives in the 70s. I learned a lot about her and what music was like in the 70s.

WD: Do you listen to her music now?

JS: Yes, I still do. I like "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" and "Eagle When She Flies" because they're both songs about girls going for it, being who they really are, not being afraid to be themselves, and not changing themselves to fit in.

WD: What did you think of the set and the crazy clothes they asked you to wear?

JS: (laughs) When I put the costumes on it helped me to get into the character and get a feel for who she is. With Elizabeth, definitely with the elaborate prairie costume it had that affect.

WD: Did they let you keep any of it?

JS: Yes, I still have the butterfly hairclip that she wears and the majorette boots (laughs).

WD: Nice. Those are awesome. Have you seen the film yet?

JS: I saw it at the cast and crew screening. That was my first time watching it with everyone and it was really cool because it was the first time watching myself on the big screen.

WD: What did you think of the film?

JS: When I watched it I started thinking “I should have done that" or "I shouldn't have done that” and then I thought back on it and thought I'm a bit older now and the choices that I made then, when I was closer to Elizabeth's age, better suited Elizabeth's character than the choices I would have made now.

WD: Where did you have the most fun making this film?

JS: I really enjoyed the whole experience. Everyone on set was just so nice and so supportive and welcoming all across the country. That really made the experience great.

WD: What was the most difficult part of making this film?

JS: I think when it was over because when you're filming you create a strong bond with the cast and crew and the hardest part for every film experience for me is saying goodbye to everyone. And saying goodbye to the character because you're letting the character go.

WD: Well she's emblazoned on celluloid so you can visit her whenever you'd like.

JS: (laughs) yes, yes!

WD: What did you learn from making this film?

JS: I definitely learned a lot about people's jobs and what each person's specific job entailed. It's really an environment where everyone is working together and they're all working hard to achieve something that everyone wants so badly.

I'm really grateful to Tara and Barbara (Shrier) for giving me this amazing opportunity.

The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mom opens in theatres April 8, 2011.

Check your local theatres for times.

moot or hooey:

this is Julia's first feature film.

The PIXIES gear up to rock Vancouver

2011-04-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

The PIXIES are an American alternative rock band from Boston who took the late 80s and early 90s by storm with hit records like Doolittle and Surfer Rosa generating fans like Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Their music has been described as a combination of surfer rock and punk rock and music that's been hugely influential on bands of that era.

The PIXIES have been selling out shows to their critically acclaimed “Doolittle Tour” across the States and Europe, their first major tour in seven years, and are scheduled for Canada this month.

Kicking off in Halifax April 9 and culminating in Vancouver May 3, this tour is hugely anticipated as one of the best concert shows of 2011.

The show boasts a specially created cinematic production including eleven films by filmmakers Judy Jacobs, Tom Winkler, Brent Felix and Melinda Tupling, and spectacular visuals by lighting designer Myles Mangino and designer Paul Normandale.

Here's what PIXIES' drummer David Lovering had to say about their new box set and tour.

WD: I'd like to start by asking you about your Grammy-nominated box set Minotaur. What was that like for you to receive the nomination?

DL: It was exciting. This was the second time we'd been nominated for a Grammy. All I can say is maybe third time's the charm. If it happens again it'll be good.

Vaughan Oliver, who was the artist on all our albums, put together a lot of the artwork and it was an impressive thing. I actually own the deluxe set. It's huge: you need a sherpa to deliver it. That's how huge it is.

It's fur-lined. The whole case is all fur, faux fur, and in it you've got every form of video posters and ads, music... so I thought that when we were nominated it'd be a synch to win. But it ended up losing, so what a kick in the pants. Like I say, I hope third time's the charm.

WD: But you know, being nominated in itself is like winning.

DL: Yes, I think it's very special. I still can't say enough about it. I'm not a sore loser (laughs).

WD: What prompted you to create the box set? How did that get started?

DL: A gentleman came up with a proposition of having something with all our material in a grand slam box set. We toyed around with the idea and then finally we all got on board and it actually happened. It was amazing.

WD: Your show is quite spectacular, with eleven films and a specially designed light show. Can you talk a little about that?

DL: Doolittle (the album) was approaching its 20-year anniversary and people were telling us that it would be nice to put together some sort of show honoring that record.

A lot of people say it's a classic album. We were kind of biased. We think it's a great album but we didn't know what the outside world thought of it (laughs).

We got several video directors who did their own interpretations of each song.

So while we're performing there's a video interpretation of the song playing behind us and it's kind of synced up. They're pretty wild and out there.

I can't see a lot of what's going on because my back is to it the whole time and I can't really turn around while I'm drumming (laughs). During the break I can turn around and check it out.

So that's happening and there's also an amazing light show with visual lighting props hanging down. It's the biggest production we've ever taken out and it hopefully makes the whole show better.

WD: You're opening the show with (the film) Un Chien Andalou. That's quite a statement piece.

DL: Because of the song Debaser, the first track on Doolittle, which has a reference to it, we're using it as a catalyst: something to start off the show.

We have excerpts from that and some really powerful pieces behind it.

WD: You've been getting rave reviews all over the world. What is the most unusual or surprising thing somebody's said?

DL: That's a tough one. I can't recall anything that's struck me.

WD: Do you have a favorite part of the show?

DL: I like the beginning and I like the end (laughs). It's more because some of my favorite songs we play at the beginning, like Tame and Manta Ray, and I love playing them because they're really fast and up there. The ending again, I love Gouge Away. I love the ending knowing we've done the Doolittle album because then we usually come back to the older songs from Surfer Rosa, Bossanova, or Trompe Le Monde.

WD: You were together for a long time and now again for a long stretch. Can you talk about how that's worked?

DL: We were together for five years initially where we put out five records. Like most bands we were dysfunctional, parted and went our own ways. Then in 2004 we got back together and it was like riding a bike: it was very easy.

When you're older and wiser and realize what your faults are it makes it easier for everybody else. So cognizant of that fact, I think that we're enjoying ourselves and we're watching our Ps and Qs. We've been very fortunate.

We've been together on this reunion tour since 2004 which is longer than we were together during our initial run back in the 80s and 90s and that's surprising because we haven't had any new material.

WD: For the Canadian leg of your tour, what city are you looking forward to the most?

DL: I'm going to say it would have to be the four cities we have not been to.

We've been to Vancouver a bunch of times, Montreal, Ottawa... but we've never been to Kitchener, Hamilton, Moncton, or Halifax.

Maybe I'd say Halifax. I grew up in Boston but was never able to get up there so it'll be a thrill for me the first time going to Halifax. That's probably the city I'll look forward to the most.

WD: You'll have to make some time for a lobster dinner while you're there.

DL: That's what I hear. I'm looking forward to Canada. It's one of my favorite countries. I always tell everybody I'd be a proud Canadian if I ever was one.

The PIXIES' Grammy nominated box set “Minotaur”, contains all five of the band's albums on 24k gold-plated CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, a DVD and Blu-ray of the Pixies' 1991 performance at London's Brixton Academy, and an exquisite 54-page book of legendary designer Vaughn Oliver and photographer Simon Larbalestier's project artwork.

For tickets and times to shows please check out: www.pixiesmusic.com

moot or hooey?
the PIXIES' song Where is my Mind played at the end of the film Fight Club.

2010-04-26T17:34:00.001-07:00

Ice Capades

2010-02-27T21:36:00.001-08:00

My favourite event of the Olympics has always been couple's free skating :)

moot or hooey?
Roberto Luongo promised to do a triple salchow (sow cow) when they win the Olympic gold tomorrow.

Rice Fields of Japan

2010-02-01T23:59:00.000-08:00

Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan, but this is no alien creation. The designs have been cleverly planted.
Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye.
Instead, different color rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.
As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants.
The colors are created by using different varieties. This photo was taken in Inkadate, Japan.
Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the skies.
This was created by precision planting and months of planning by villagers and farmers located in Inkadate, Japan.
Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives are featured on the television series Tenchijin,
appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture of Japan.
This year, various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan, including designs of deer dancers.
Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers
The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed Kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed Tsugaru, a Roman variety, to create the colored patterns in the time between planting and harvesting in September.
From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.

Closer to the image, the careful placement of the thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.

Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew from meetings of the village committees.

The different varieties of rice plants grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces. In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention.

In 2005, agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art. A year later, organizers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to life.

moot or hooey?
the multi-colored harvested rice is sold only to health food restaurants and stores.

an angel of a film

2010-01-29T00:16:00.000-08:00

moot or hooey?
angels are all around us

Max Embarrassing Kicks off Reel2Real Festival

2010-01-17T02:08:00.000-08:00

Photo: Christian Geisnæs

Denmark in the dead of winter, a home made teeth straightening device, a prisoner, an eccentric neighbour, a young, awkward romance, and a mother who always says the wrong thing at the wrong time, and you have the makings of the award winning Danish comedy, Max Embarrassing.

Director Lotte Svendsen winds a lovely, humorous, story of Max, played by the talented young Samuel Heller-Seiffert, as he tries to impress Ofelia, the new girl in class.

He is the least cool person in school and believes he has the most embarrassing mother (Mette Horn) in the world. Max makes a series of blunders and bad decisions, and when his well intentioned mother steps in to help, things only escalate.

Based on the popular TV series Max, This amusing coming-of-age tale is full of pleasant surprises. It's a well crafted script and an insightful look into the teenage transition.

It may jump around a little in the wrap up, but still delivers a storybook ending. A must see for families and children of all ages.

Max Embarrassing is presented by the Reel2Real International Film Festival for Youth, in their Family Film series.

Sunday January 17th at 1pm, at the Vancity Theatre. (further screenings in March and May).

And stick around after the screening for the free film criticism workshop from 3pm-5pm, open to young viewers ages 10-19yrs.

moot or hooey?
all the actors in the film play the same characters in the tv series.

The Imagination of Terry Gilliam

2009-12-21T00:07:00.000-08:00

photo credit Cedric Arnold

I had the great honour of talking with the inexhaustibly talented Terry Gilliam about his latest film,
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.

ME: Let's start at the beginning. I'd love to ask you how you developed the ideas behind this film.
What was your starting point?

TG: God came to me at night and said “do this or die.” When you've got a god that wants to watch movies and is bored with the shit that's being produced these days, he gets angry. He forced me to do it and it was as simple as that, and how simple it can be. He's a god that I don't even believe in, which is even more extraordinary.

You're going to get one of these interviews that won't be like any of the others (laughs). You can check the answers on the other interviews.

ME: This is exactly what I'm looking for (laughs)!
So perhaps I should ask you then, what inspires you? What gets you to decide “I'm going to make another movie.”

TG: When people offer me large sums of money. I get very inspired. I realize life is worth living again. Unfortunately nobody offered me large sums of money on this, so I had to take a lot of drugs... aspirin mainly (laughs).

ME: (laughs) How do you see this film in context with your earlier work?

TG: It's kind of the best of everything... except for the films that weren't so good (laughs). We wanted to make something that was like a compendium film. There's a little bit of everything in there.

I would say it links in with Time Bandits and Munchausen most, mainly because both those films have little theatres in them (laughs). That's the connecting link.

Also, I think all of those leapt around in time and space, and within The Imaginarium , you leap through many different worlds each time you go through. It fits with those most of all I think.

ME: I'm curious as to how you came to choose Johnny, Colin, and Jude, why you chose three people to replace one person.

TG: Well there was no way any one person was going to be able to replace Heath in my books so that was ruled out. It was obvious very quickly that his character goes through the mirror three times, so three might be the magic number.

The father, son, and the holy ghost were not available so I had to get these other guys.

I went straight to the top. Here's a guy that pushed me into making this movie so “get to work”, but they were not available. Neither the father, nor the son, nor the holy ghost. I don't know where the son was working, probably down in Texas, he spends a lot of time down there perceive angelical living (laughs).

ME: It's no fair making me laugh

TG: It is fair, come on (laughs). It's making me laugh. I'm especially awake here. I've been doing this for years now, these interviews. Not this specific one but... I've talked about the same piece of shit films (laughs).

ME: Can you tell us, besides the tragedy of losing Heath, what the most challenging part about making the film was?

TG: It was trying to get my head around the fact that we could actually finish the film; actually make it. That was the hard part. I mean everything else was just what you do. It's difficult.
In Vancouver I think we were there for five weeks doing all the special effects, all the Imaginarium stuff. It's blue screen work...

It was very tricky, once we started up again, to mesh all the different schedules of Johnny, Colin, Jude, and the film schedule. That was a nightmare because we had limited stage space, and depending on who was available we had to wheel a set outside, replace it with something else, and then the next day try to bring the other set back in. The puzzle of shooting within all these different schedules was nightmare-ish. Other than that, it was kind of straight forward.

The hardest part was getting the money and that always is the hardest part. In the end we made this thing with no American money. This is the Queen's film. No cheap American money.

That's why I've got to thank Canada and the UK, because it's a Canada/UK co-production, with a few other foreign people, Japanese people, French people, and Germans giving us the rest of the money.
The Americans didn't touch it.

ME: Was there any particular Canadian actor or crew member who stood out for you. Who impressed you in some way?

TG: That's an easy one. Chris Plumber. He's Canadian. That's the only reason I hired him, not because he's a good actor. Cheap Canadian labour (laughs).

ME: (laughs)

TG: Chris is brilliant. And a lot of people don't actually know he's Canadian which I find extraordinary, but he is. He's the centrepiece of the whole movie. He just holds the whole thing together.

I loved partnering him with various other actors. It's a double act between him and Tom Waits, a double act between him and Lily Cole, who really had no acting experience, and a double act between him and Verne Troyer, the smallest man in show biz these days. Chris just holds the whole thing together.

ME: He definitely is fantastic.
What about any of the Canadians who played more minor roles, who you cast here in Vancouver?

TG: Well there were the dancing policemen (laughs). I mean men who could wear fishnet tights and still sing and dance like men. That's a very important thing.

I can't remember any individual names.
Of course there were the little girls and little boys who were in there.

It's really weird, I'm so bad with names. Even on the days we were shooting with good Canadian actors, I wouldn't know who I was talking to half the time. I kept my call sheet with me. It's a personal medical problem called nominal aphasia.

ME: It's not easy to recall such a huge cast and crew though.

TG: The crew was fantastic. Monique Prudomme, who did the costumes was brilliant, Anastasia Masaro the production designer was fantastic. It was a great crew. The other tragedy though was the Canadian producer Bill Vince. He was suffering from pretty brutal cancer and he managed to keep going until a couple of days after the last bit of film went through the camera, and then died. Without Bill well... he was the one who kept this thing going. Absolutely extraordinary.

The Canadian aspect is absolutely essential to this movie. It's the second movie I've done in Canada and I love working here.

ME: Can I touch briefly on Heath's scene with Lily. This is purely gratuitous on my part but it was absolutely...

TG: The one where he kisses her.

ME: yah, where he attempts to kiss her. That seduction scene was absolutely breathtakingly hot.

TG: Good! (laughs)
ME: I'm wondering how many takes you have and if you'd consider sending me a copy (laughs)

TG: (laughs) it's very funny because Heath had just come back from Australia, because we'd had a break for Christmas, and he got there and just lifted the whole spirit “let's go to work.” It was a miserable, cold, rotten day in London, grisly and all, and this energy arrived on the set.

He was wonderful with Lily. He just... All through the shoot he really kept lifting her performance. He actually drew it out of her, and that particular day all of his seductive powers were fired and yah, it's great, it's a good one.
He's slowly, slowly just drawing her in and the poor girl doesn't have a chance.

ME: Can you tell me what excites you and what limits you?

TG: Oh god, I don't know. I kind of trying to limit the excitement factor at my age (laughs). The problem is that everything excites me. That's the real problem. I'm very greedy for excitement so I just find things everywhere. What excites me is seeing people do good work.

One of the great things on this film was just watching all the wonderful acting going on because they bring life to these characters that I've been thinking about for a long time.

I'd probably got the characters up to about two and a half dimensions and they bring them to three and that is the joy, because filmmaking is very repetitive and it's quite slow and when the actors are firing it's just great and I just think wow, it's worth everything.

What limits me is my imagination. It's just not good enough. I can't imagine I'm going to get money for the next project (laughs). That's my problem.

ME: What was the most positive, memorable thing that happened during the project?

TG: A tragedy like that, and then to have three great actors step up, walk in, with no rehearsal, take over, do their bit, and give the money to Heath's daughter. That's memorable!

That has never happened before in the history of motion pictures I believe, and that's what's absolutely wonderful and magical about this whole experience.

moot or hooey?
Terry Gilliam just cast Robert Duvall as the lead in his next film Don Quixote.

Up Close and Personal with the Extraordinary Mackenzie Gray

2009-12-12T06:12:00.000-08:00

Last week I had the great pleasure of talking with one of Canada's most colorful and talented artists, Mackenzie Gray.

ME: So Mackenzie, can you tell us a little bit about yourself.

MG: all right, I'm an actor, a director, a writer, a producer, a musician, a composer, but mainly I'm an actor. I do all those other things because I can and because I like to. I started acting in high school. I didn't take theatre arts, instead I formed my own company because I wanted to do it my own way. I left school in 1976 and went right to England to study drama because I felt that was where I should go.

I was given some great help to become an actor, when I was a teenager, from two great people; Christopher Plummer and Sir John Gielgud. My dad was friends with Gielgud, and my uncle was the founder of the director's guild of Canada, had been in the theatre through the 40s, and knew Chris Plummer.

Christopher Plummer was doing Cyrano de Bergerac and I went to see it. I had a letter of introduction and he took me back stage at the end of the show and made all these other people wait. I had a poster of him as the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo and I wanted to get him to sign it. He was really generous, lovely and fun.

He looked at me and said “So I understand you want to become an actor. From the letter I've been given it says you're very serious about it. Tell me this...” and he looked me right in the eye and said, “do you need to be an actor?” I said, “I don't know if I need to be an actor, but that's all I want to do” and he said, “Well that's a start. Because it's a calling, a profession, and it's a life...”
and he'd committed to all of those things earnestly and fully, “...and if it's a hobby you like to do once in a while because it's fun, go into community theatre and have another life and don't crowd a very tight space unless you're serious about it and really want to do it. You'll find that out over time, but if you want to do it and you're serious about it you've got to commit wholeheartedly to the highs and the lows and you'll have to do many other things, other jobs to support yourself. There's no point doing it unless you need to do it and it's in your blood, in your veins and you can't really live without doing it. Are you prepared to make that commitment?” and I said, “I think I am.” and he said, “I look forward to sharing a stage with you some day.” He shook my hand and he held my hand really tightly and said, “you're going to do very well.”

He was quite terrifying, because I was only 14 or 15. I asked him to sign the poster and so he signed it for me, wished me luck, and off I went. That changed my life. The fact that he looked at me with these intense eyes and dared me and challenged me to become an actor and be serious about it. I was hell bent for leather, I was all over it, and I told my parents, who were very excited for me.

I kept that poster and still have it. I framed it and it's up on my wall. It reminds me of a huge kick start to becoming an actor.

A few years later when I was 18 John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson came to Toronto to do Harold Pinter's No Man's Land. My dad knew Gielgud and wrote me a letter of introduction and so I got taken back stage. I was stunned by the play. I'd never seen Pinter on stage before. It's weird and it's odd and it's challenging.

Ralph came out and was very theatrical and signed my book. He couldn't get the pen to work because he was used to fountain pens. He said, “this is a wonderful pen but it's no good.”
And he'd ask for another pen but nobody wanted to give them their pens because he kept throwing them away.
John came out and he asked me which picture I wanted him to sign and I said Hamlet.

He said, “So I hear you're going to go to RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art)” and I told him I was doing my audition in a couple of months. He asked me if I'd picked my thesis yet and I told him I'd picked my Shakespeare but not my contemporary pieces yet. He said, “You should do a piece from this play. It won't be done. It hasn't been done. It's just been published.” He said hang on a second went away and came back with his copy of the play and gave it to me. I still have it.

Then he asked me what Shakespeare I was going to do. I said Hamlet. And he said, “Very bold. Well, let's have a look at it.” I said, “Here?” He said, “Yes, I'll have a look and give you some pointers. That's what your father asked me to do.”
I can't believe my dad asked him to help me. I just wanted to meet him.
I said, “Well, I don't know...” and he said, “My dear boy, if somebody asks you to act and you are an actor, you should act. I'm willing to look at it.”

So we're back stage in the Royal Alexandra Theatre and I started doing Hamlet. I was so nervous I have no idea how it came out, but he stopped me and he said, “My dear boy, Hamlet doesn't have a skull facing him the whole time.” Then he went through the whole speech, from memory, line by line, giving me pointers. He just gave me this incredible direction.

I went away high as a kite, just out of my mind with this direction.
So from the age of 14 to 18 I had two of the greatest actors in the world, through pure privilege, give me a kick in the ass to become an actor.

When I went to RADA I did No Man's Land and they laughed. They thought it was funny and I was so unprepared for it I stumbled and I got lost and had to call for a line. It was ok. And then I did Hamlet and there was this silence after I did it and they asked me if I'd played Hamlet before. And like an idiot, instead of saying “No, but John Gielgud coached me,” (I'd probably have gone straight into the school), I said, “No, I just read it in school.” They took me aside and said, “We think you're very good but you're not ready to be here yet. You need to go and live some life. Do some plays, come back and give us something to mold.”

ME: What was the first job you got?

MG: Acting job? I did a film for a friend but it was just for fun. It wasn't a real gig. But I got a gig with the BBC. They were training young directors and they got actors to work with them. Then I got into a company called the Irish Circle Players. I played a stalk Englishman in an Irish play in an Irish Theatre company in London. That was my first real gig, doing I Know Where You're Going.

ME: So you've had a cross culture of film and theatre from the very beginning.

MG: yes, the film was a glorified student film but the BBC and the Irish Circle Players were real gigs.

I didn't get into RADA. I auditioned two more times but the auditions didn't go well. I spent the next three years kicking around London doing plays with small companies or training, and living a life. I packed about ten years into four. I worked in Harrods, went on crazy trips, just soaked up life. But I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere, so I got a job at the Royal Court Theatre.

I was so frustrated that I walked in and said, “I want a job. I need to work in the theatre or I'm going to kill myself.” They started to laugh and I said, “I'm serious!” and they said, “Is it desperate?” and I said, “No, I mean I'm just, I'm dying. I'll do anything. I'll sell icecreams, I don't care.”

They said they had a young company and that I could join but I'd have to work in the theatre as well. “We'll get you into plays and while there are plays being rehearsed you're allowed to attend the rehearsals and watch what's going on.” I said sign me up.
I had many great experiences there. I got to watch Samuel Beckett direct a play. Peter O'Toole and Ian McKellen were there one night.

When I came back to Canada it was to make money to go back to London. But when I got here I ended up going to the University of Toronto to get properly trained. It was an amazing place to train. You were always acting because all the student directors could only use you for their plays, so I think in three years I was in 21 plays. And in my fourth year I directed.

While I was in Toronto I got a call to audition, on tape for a series that was shooting in Vancouver, and that they needed someone who was versatile. So I went to a studio and took a hockey bag full of costumes and did each line with a different costume. I did this crazy audition where I did twenty characters in a minute and a half. I sent in my demo tape and this audition tape, and they hired me. They ended up casting Tim Curry as the character I'd auditioned for but they had this role for a hit man so they dropped all the actors and they hired me.

For about a week I didn't know, I didn't breathe, I didn't know what was going to go on. I was doing a thing with the Director's Guild for fifty dollars, and that was my last fifty dollars. Then my pager went off and they told me I had booked the lead on the series.

It was Monday and my agent said I was to start the coming Wednesday and would be getting $17,500.00 a week, a $5,000.00 signing bonus, a relocation fee, and five percent of the merchandizing. My life changed literally in that ten seconds.

I'd been doing a play in Toronto just before that, Bloody Poetry playing Lord Byron, and then here I was, a lead on a US series. It was a great way to hit town. Vancouver was at its height.

I was invited to be a guest star in other shows when I had a hiatus. I did a show with Larry Sugar and ended up being in almost every series he did.

I just started to make a career in Vancouver. Largely a television career, very little film. I really missed doing theatre, but theatre was a closed shop. I did small productions with friends but I wasn't getting to audition at the Playhouse or at the Arts Club.
The Studio 58, the University of Victoria, it's a very tight family and they have been together for years , and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not open to new people.

There's a point where you get niched in Vancouver. It was healthy in one way because I was making a lot of money doing well with all these shows, but I really missed doing theatre and I missed doing feature films.

Television was satisfactory to a point and it's really rewarding financially, but even that started to change after September 11th, and after the threat of the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) strike. Everything shut down in 2002 and it was devastating for many many people.

The industry came back but it changed fundamentally. There were no more Canadian guest stars and there were more Americans coming up to satisfy SAG and keep them happy. We were not being strident about our things and so we lost our way, lost our directors, we lost a lot in that period between 2002 and 2004, 2005 when the industry kind of picked back up.

For a lot of actors their whole income just changed and went down and it was a very difficult time.

So some years later, Michael Scholar Jr. called me and asked me if I wanted to take part in The Black Rider, directed by Ron Jenkins a Canadian genius director. I was very honoured to be asked so I jumped in. It changed my life.

It was the most demanding, hard, crazy, creative, thing I ever had to do. I had eight days to learn the whole part and go in. When we opened at the Arts Club I was so nervous my legs were like jello. I love that feeling. I love being nervous and feeling scared. And I love when you conquer it and you get through it and you have that great success. There's nothing like it.

So that brought me back to the stage and it got me to the Arts Club, which had been a closed place to me, through the back door. That's really how you do it in Vancouver I guess.

Then The Black Rider took me back to Toronto where we did the Tarragon Theatre. It was a massive success. In Toronto you can mix film, theatre, and television because all three are equally represented.
When I left Toronto a month ago there were sixty plays on the go.

ME: what was your favourite role to play?

MG: I have a few favourites. Stage favourites, film favourites, and TV. I loved playing Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show. It was like being a rock star for four months.
And I loved playing Lord Byron in Bloody Poetry. But I think my favourite stage experience was doing The Black Rider. It was demanding on every level.

As far as television, I loved being a hit man on The Net. I love a thing I did called Welcome to Paradox. It was a wonderful role. And I loved playing Skotos in Voyage of the Unicorn. He was the king of the trolls. He was like a belligerent coward and he was great fun to play. The director told me once “think of him as Mick Jagger and Mussolini crossed together with a coward inside.” I had so much fun doing that role.
On film I had a wonderful role called Strip Search. The character was called Lawrence Durrell. I based Lawrence a little on Tom Waits and various other character, but it was a beautiful role to play and it launched my career in Hollywood. The film was uneven, but the role was glorious to play.
ME: Let's talk about the industry in Vancouver.

MG: What we don't have in Vancouver is a domestic film industry. We have webisodes coming up which are being made, we have a service industry from the Americans but that's all changing. We don't have our own films. We have tons of indy filmmakers coming up but they have nowhere to go. There's no infrastructure to let them develop what we need to keep us all working.

Certainly the industry has changed with all these pretty twenty-somethings getting all the jobs all the time. It's been a great time to be a pretty twenty-something. It's not been a great time to be a talented seasoned fifty year old or forty year old even. There's been a lot of that going on, and god bless them they need to work those kids, but now even that's changing and they're out of work.

Actors don't know what to take anymore. I took two lines in a Terry Gilliam film because it was Terry Gilliam. I'd have walked across with a bullhorn, I'd have done anything. I ended up having five days.
They were special effects days.

I got to work with Terry, Christopher Plumber, Tom Waits, Jude Law, Verne Troyer. I got to direct the extras because Terry was having a hard time with them. And because I had just done The Black Rider, I was able to talk to Tom Waits. It was a glorious experience. Two lines,
and I made thousands and thousands of bucks.

I did a major lead part opposite Daryl Hannah. It was reduced money, I had twenty pages of dialogue, fifteen scenes, and we shot it in one day. It was an insane day. It was all expositional dialogue and half the things I was saying were all the same and it was enough to drive you nuts. It was a crazy day.

Twenty pages, fifteen scenes, lead role, one day. Versus two lines, Terry Gilliam film, five days, and I had the time of my life.

You don't know what to take so now you take everything. For actors the choices have changed. Some actors can ride through it. There are many Vancouver actors doing well, like John Cassini who's very popular in many things. He's riding that wave.
But for a lot of actors, you don't know what to take so you just take everything. Choice is no longer an issue. You've got to take it because you've got to work.

There's very little work. For three months before the Olympics where there will be no shooting whatsoever, and when it comes back it's going to be sporadic to begin with, and you're going to have thousands of actors all available. So a lead actor like me, or whomever, when we're available and they're offering principle roles, we'll take those.
That means the guys who are the principals have to move down to the day players, the day players move down to extras. It trickles down.
It's not good. No one's moving up and there's no room to move up.

The question is, how do we protect our industry. How do we make it open up again so we're not dependent on the Americans. God bless them they still come here and they give us work, but they're not giving us the same work they used to. They're bringing up more Americans because they can get them on cheaper contracts. Even putting them up at the Sutton Place Hotel they're getting them cheaper than we are.

There are no rules anymore. It used to be you could only have so many, and below a certain amount of lines you couldn't have an American. That's all gone. It all got changed to appease SAG and keep everyone happy, so we need to develop our industry but we can't when there're budget cuts.

The BC government is now doing this 92% budget cuts. They're cutting all of the arts so there'll be no theatre, no music, no dance, no film work, no development. They're freezing the tax credits for the film industry so no one will advance here because they can get better tax credits in Ontario where there's a full strata of actors, crews, and new studios.

Manitoba has a better tax credit than B.C.. Toronto matched Montreal. And now the provinces are saying you have to pay taxes in that province a year prior if you want to work there. I was born in Toronto and maintained a home there but I hadn't paid taxes there so I wasn't eligible for certain projects. I had to have filed my taxes in Ontario.

Everyone's tightening the belts so there are fewer places that actors can go. We used to be able to travel and move back and forth. Not anymore.

They're tightening the screws so there's less work so we have to create our own work where we say those rules don't apply. In order for that to happen we need to think, we are giving our money to the tax credits and the tax credits are being awarded and yet actors aren't tied into that.

Actors should be tied in to the tax credit. If you want the tax credit, if you want all that money back, you've got to have this many principles roles, this many guest star roles, this many supporting leads in the film, and they have to be Canadian.

It's not like we're offering them dreck. We're the best actors in the world. We're trained thoroughly here. We're trained fully because of our universities and our drama schools. The Americans come up here and they're always knocked out at how much training we have.
We have terrific actors who are honest and they know how to act. There're beautiful girls and wonderful handsome guys and interesting actors and we have everything they could possibly want.

For years it took even beating our own people into submission. The MPIA (Motion Picture Industry Association) used to go down to L.A. and they talked about the locations and the great studios and the post production facilities in Canada, and they never ever mentioned the actors.

We had to lobby and fight with them and say “Why didn't you mention the actors? Are you afraid of SAG? What is it? You've got to say we're part of it, we're as important as the mountains and the rivers and oceans and the post production facilities and the studios, and all of that. The actors are one of the biggest selling points here.” We don't do it. At least we don't say it enough.

We need to create our own stories. People say Canadian films aren't commercial. They're all about dysfunctional families and weird things. Well think of all the films that aren't getting made that could be getting made if we had the means. There are hundreds of comedies, light dramas, romantic comedies, there's every film imaginable right here in B.C., Ontario, wherever.

We don't have the structure to let them be made. We've got to find that way and everybody will start working again. If it means that we have to take less money to keep working then I guess we'll do that. We've done it for the Americans, why not do it for ourselves.

UBCP had a waver program for years and they cut it. Indy filmmakers used to be able to get a waver to use union actors. It took us a year and a half of fighting our own union, lobbying, having committees, and fights and arguments, and finally they brought back the waver. And they worked out a way to make it reasonable and where they could protect the membership, which was what their goal was.

I've had a great career, and I continue hopefully to have a great career, but this year has been my worst. I've been an actor for 33 years, and I worked three days this year. That's scandalous. It's not because I've done anything wrong or am any less of an actor, it's what the industry is demanding. There're more actors out of work, looking for work. It's a dwindling pool and there're a hundred million people trying to get in that pool. So it's tough for a lot of people right now.

As an actor, for me personally and I think I speak for many actors my age, just when you think you finally get it, that you know how to act, you've got your chops, you've got your professional skill, you know how to use the camera and keep your camera and know how to deliver, and you're at the height of your powers, and you can't get work, it's a really devastating feeling.

You have to remain positive. If you give in to the doom and gloom and think you'll never get work, you never will. You have to accept that every job is a job and you can make it worthwhile, and you should make it worthwhile, if you have two lines or two thousand lines. The thing is to start accepting the change and through that good things will come. It's a bit of going back to square one.

We need to ask the government to make these tax credits linked to acting. Go to the union to ask them to push for that because the union has the means to do it. But I also think we should demand of the union to make it possible to do as much acting as possible and to encourage people to write and to get in on projects with people who say “I want to make a film,” and find a way to make it.

Things can change.

Half of what's on TV right now, to many people, is crap. There's great TV like HBO and Showtime and things like that. How do we make more of those shows. I don't know how actors can affect that or change that except to say we don't want to be in those things and we don't want to watch them. But no actor right now can afford to say they don't want to be in them. If they can then god bless them because they're doing better than everybody else.

moot or hooey?
Mackenzie used to write for Sesame Street

Paul Lazenby and the MMA in Vancouver

2009-12-06T21:49:00.001-08:00

Today I had the great pleasure of sitting down with former Canadian Mixed Martial Arts champion, undisputed Canadian Muay Thai champion, stuntman, actor, pro wrestler and broadcast journalist Paul Lazenby, to get the scoop on Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), and what they could mean to a city like Vancouver, soon to be in the spotlight of the world.

ME: Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you're involved in at the moment.

PL: For the past nine years I've been a professional stuntman and actor in Vancouver. I'm currently working on The A-Team, and stunt doubling for former wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin on his movie. It's something I kind of fell over backward into after leaving a career in pro-wrestling and it's been a hell of a lot of fun. It's beat the hell out of me at times, but it's been a lot of fun.

ME: Could you tell us about your fighting background.

PL: I actually went into fighting with no intention whatsoever of being a fighter and I got into it extremely late. I originally wanted to be a professional wrestler.

When I was 23 I was a competitive power lifter and a strongman and I loved pro wrestling so I wanted to do that, so I kind of hammered away at that. I went to Calgary and learned how to be a pro wrestler at the Hart Brother's Pro Wrestling school and did that for a few years and got to travel around the world.

I always wanted to wrestle in Japan and a couple of times it almost happened but it fell through. Then I met an agent in Detroit in 1996 when I was wrestling on a show there and she said she wasn't booking wrestlers but she was booking real fighters.

I'd been watching bootlegs of mixed martial arts shows from Japan. MMA at the time was much more advanced over there than it was over here so I knew a lot of the names and faces and recognized the organization she was talking about. I lied to her and told her I was an experienced fighter and didn't really think much about it. I filled out the application form and thought that they'd look at it, laugh at it, and throw it in the garbage because they'd never accepted a Canadian before.
A month later I got a call from the same agent saying pack your bags you're going to Tokyo.

Without any prior experience in wrestling, martial arts or anything, at the age of 28 I had my very first fight in front of 10,000 people in Tokyo. And I guess I lost in an entertaining fashion because they immediately invited me back the next month to stay at their school in Yokohama for a six week training camp, contingent on me fighting the world champion four days after I got there. I kind of jumped in the deep end as a fighter.

ME: What was that experience like for you.

PL: I loved going to Japan. It was fantastic but at the same time it was frustrating because I developed physically a lot faster than I did mentally. I don't really have the same mind set as a lot of the other fighters. It takes a lot more for me to gear myself up mentally to go into a fight and I was fighting world class guys right out of the gate. As a result, I lost my first six fights in the process of learning how to be a fighter. I finally got into the right mind set just after moving to Vancouver from Ontario where I'm originally from. Then I got into kick boxing as a world mixed martial arts and started winning fights after that.

ME: How young were you when you first realized you wanted to be a wrestler.

PL: I was always a wrestling fan as a kid. I wasn't allowed to watch it so I'd sneak out of my parents' place to watch it. I always loved pro wrestling as a kid. I always say I had my mid-life crisis at an extremely early age because at 23 I remember I was working as an assistant manager in a department store and really hated my life. Aside from power lifting, from which you make no money, I didn't enjoy anything about what I was doing, and was thinking “I don't want to be here in ten years.”

Then I saw an ad for a pro wrestling school, The Hart Brothers' pro wrestling school, in the back of a wrestling magazine and a couple of very good friends of mine, Carlos Leal and Kristel Vines, actually lent me the money because I was completely flat broke. Carlos even drove me from Ontario to Calgary. That's how I got off the ground as a wrestler. That was all I wanted to do. I never wanted to fight for real.

ME: Can you describe some of the styles of fighting you do now.

PL: The two styles that I focus on now are pankration and muay thai kick boxing. Pankration is the original name for mixed martial arts, the name under which it was contested in the ancient Greek olympics. That's the style that my trainer Chris Franco teaches. I combine that with muay thai training, which I also do with Chris, and that's Thai style kick boxing which, in addition to punches and kicks, also involves the elbows, knees, and standing throws.

ME: What styles of fighting are within pankration?

PL: The word pankration loosely translates as all powers which basically means that you use every weapon at your body's disposal. Pankration fighters in the old days were allowed to do pretty much what we're allowed to do in MMA today: punch, kick, elbow, knee, take-downs, and grappling techniques on the ground.

MMA or pankration, has kind of become a style in and of itself. In the old days of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) one guy would stick to the rules of karate, one guy would stick to the rules of boxing, one guy would stick to the rules of wrestling, but that style versus style stuff has kind of fallen by the way side. Everybody is now a true mixed martial artist, they mix techniques from all of the martial arts together, to one style that's kind of a stand alone.

ME: Right now, who would you most like to fight... besides Aleks Paunovic?

PL: That wouldn't be a fight, that'd be an ass whooping! Aleks is a wimp (laughs).

Who'd I like to fight? That's easy. Shortly after I won the NFC (National Fighting Championship) mixed martial arts championship I found out that the knee pain that I'd been suffering from for the past few years was due to having no ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in the knee at all. I'd had no idea.

So I scheduled knee surgery, and about a month before the surgery I went to another NFC event and a guy named Dominic “the Nightmare” Richard knocked his opponent out in six seconds and then grabbed the microphone and called me out. It made me seethe.

I couldn't fight this guy because I had to get this surgery and it would be a year turn around time afterwards. I've been sitting on that for a few years and I'm getting to the point where I think my next fight will probably be my last, so if I've got to pick one guy to fight it would be Dominic. I want to put that one to bed. He might knock me out, I might knock him out, but we've got to settle that.

ME: What do you think of the bid to include the MMA in Vancouver?

PL: I've been at the forefront of that fight actually. I was one of the delegation who spoke to City Council when they were considering banning it in 2007. Unfortunately they'd made up their minds before we even got there. And ever since the ban was enacted I've been fighting to get it brought back.

I'm a huge proponent of having MMA brought back to Vancouver, especially considering the fact that the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) have displayed a strong interest in holding events here.

In Montreal they've set the precedent for what the UFC can do for a major Canadian city. They make roughly 50 million dollars long term, every time UFC comes to town. Nobody needs to tell them that Vancouver needs money, with all the money they're spending on the Olympics, so to turn down a cash cow like this with all the facts being in on how relatively safe MMA is as a combat sport, it would be unconscionable and I can't see city council under the mounting pressure doing anything but approving it, and doing that soon.

ME: Could you please elaborate on the safety of the sport in comparison to other contact sports.

PL: Absolutely. MMA gets a bad rap because when it was first introduced to North America it was marketed as a blood sport and it had far fewer rules than it does today. In it's current incarnation as a sport that's sanctioned by athletic commissions, and with a very ridged rule structure, it's safer than a lot of the other major sports out there.

A couple of years ago Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine held a study that concluded that it was more than twice as safe as professional boxing and that the injury rates, while roughly equivalent, showed that most of MMA injuries were hand injuries and most boxing injuries were brain injuries.

And the fatality rates speak for themselves. I'm a big fan of boxing, but the boxing fatality rates are astronomical, and in MMA sanctioned competitions I believe there have been two or three in the last decade. MMA is safer than horse racing, car racing, football, and boxing. As contact sports go, it's one of the safest sports out there.

moot or hooey?
If Vancouver opted to hold the MMA, they'd balance out their Olympic debt in three days of matches.

Serbian Film Fest

2009-11-09T23:42:00.000-08:00

Recently I had the great pleasure of previewing two well crafted films from the upcoming Vancouver Serbian Film Fest.

St. George Shoots the Dragon is a film about war, tolerance, and love, set primarily in the year 1914 during WWI, in and around a small Serbian village on the border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The story follows the tumultuous plight of three star crossed lovers as they struggle to survive during impossible times.

Director Srdan Dragojevic moves his characters through Dusan Kovacevic's dark, brooding screenplay with grace and a sense of heaviness that elegantly places the viewer within the pages of the story. The story is both unforgiving and effective.
Written after the 1984, highly acclaimed theatre production of the same name, (also by Kovacevic) the story is based on a true story told to Kovacevic by his grandfather.

Lazar Ristovski delivers a strong performance as the gendarme Djordje Dzandar and Dusan Joksimovic's work with the camera is captivating.

Here and There is the story of a New York musician who has lost his lust for life and, though a series of events, finds himself in Belgrade, Serbia. He is jaded, angry, and cold and seems to step from one dreary existence only to find himself in another.
That is until he meets Olga (played by the incredible Mirjana Karanovic) a vibrant, intelligent, unassuming woman with the power to shake his world to the core.

David Thornton delivers a subdued, yet powerful performance as the struggling musician Robert. And writer/director Darko Lungulov shows us a side of life both real and sad, leaving us longing for more and at the same time, writing our own ending.

This may be a love story of sorts, but quite thankfully this is not a Hollywood film. Instead, it exudes a sense of authenticity and honesty rarely seen in contemporary films, and a freshness that breaks all the rules, at the same time it breaks your heart.

The Vancouver Serbian Filmfest runs November 10th to 13th at the Hollywood Theatre, 3123 West Broadway, (604) 738 3211

moot or hooey?
the Serbian film fest is one of the best attended festivals in Vancouver.

I Feel Great too!!

2009-11-01T16:05:00.000-08:00

moot or hooey?

the energy emited when someone smiles for five seconds or more, can power a 60 watt lightbulb for ten minutes.

Firefighter Kuwait

2009-10-21T23:08:00.000-07:00

moot or hooey?
Since 1976, when the emir dissolved the National Assembly, there has been no elective body.

Adam's video

2009-10-21T17:57:00.000-07:00

moot or hooey?
Adam is planning a tour with his new album, that will include Vancouver BC.

65_RedRoses brings heart to VIFF

2009-10-05T22:04:00.000-07:00

(photo credit: Bill Markvoort. The day Eva's pager went off)

I spoke with director Philip Lyall about his moving film 65_RedRoses.

ME: Could you tell me a little about yourself.

PL: I graduated from the film production program at UBC. It was there that I met our second director/producer, Nimisha Mukerji, with whom I did this project.
We hit it off right away and knew that we worked well together. We wanted to make movies outside the program. We both did a few shorts in our third and fourth years that did quite well, and they went to the Toronto Student Showcase.

We knew that we wanted to make films, but when we graduated we both took on jobs in the film industry as production assistants and producer assistants. While working, we were going “oh my god, we have to make something” because you can work on a big Hollywood show, but you're just going to be hired help. You can't really work up that way. So we thought, we've gotta do our own film .

We had a teacher, John Zaritsky, who is an Oscar winner, who was our documentary professor. He's done a lot of great films and he encouraged us to find a documentary “because there are great stories in your back yard”.

I graduated from university and my friend Eva Markvoort, the subject of the film, I knew from first year because I originally thought I wanted to be an actor, and was in theatre at the University of Victoria with her.

At that time we became very close, then I left and transferred to UBC.
We kind of fell out of touch a little. But when I graduated she gave me a call and told me she was at St. Paul's waiting for a double lung transplant. And I'm going “what?” it just blew my mind.

Because from the outside she's a beautiful girl and she didn't look sick at all to me. She never acted like she was sick. I knew she had cystic fibrosis, but didn't know the extent of how bad that disease really was. I didn't know much about it. And so in that moment a light bulb went off and I thought “that's it. this is a great story. This girl is waiting for someone to die in order for her to live”.

I knew nothing about organ donation. I wasn't even an organ donor at the time and so I brought Nimisha and we met with her and from that moment we realized we wanted to do a documentary on her.

ME: So you're an organ donor now.

PL: (laughs) Of course. Right away, once I knew she was on the list I said “oh my god, I'm signing up right now” who knows if I won't get in a car crash, or something will happen to me, you know. I can save a life not even knowing it. You pass away but all your organs are perfectly intact so why not save four or five people's lives with the parts of your body.

ME: Could you like to tell us a bit more about your film?

PL: Yes, it's called 65_RedRoses, and the reason behind that title is, when you're little and you have cystic fibrosis, kids can't pronounce it so parents tell them to say 65 roses, and red is Eva Markvoort's favorite color.

65_RedRoses is Eva's online name that she uses to connect with other girls and boys that have cystic fibrosis or have gone through transplants. It's an online community, kind of like Facebook or MySpace, where they can connect and talk about their fear, waiting for transplants, or about cystic fibrosis.

The reason why they talk online, is that when Eva was waiting for a transplant, she couldn't be around other people with cystic fibrosis, or people who had transplants, because of the fear of spreading super-bugs, infecting each other.

Because they're so sick, if she got a bug from someone else, she's be taken off the transplant list. She would no longer qualify for a transplant.
She was isolated and she could only talk to friends and family and people who were healthy. We can be supportive but we don't truly understand her situation. People who do, are people with CF or who've have transplants, so that world she started to gear into when she waited for a transplant.

That was basically the arc of our story. Finding a few girls online that she's best friends with. You'll go the distance to tell each girl's story. Girls that are best friends that have never met in person. Eva's plight, going through transplant, and these two girls who are in different stages of transplant as well.

One girl is Meg, from Portland, who was addicted to pain killers, and doesn't want a transplant, and she's not going to be able to get one because she isn't compliant with her medication.
And there's the other girl Tina, from Pennsylvania, who already had a transplant and now is in chronic rejection and might need another transplant. The three different faces of cystic fibrosis.

ME: In your film, Eva is waiting for her pager to go off. Can you tell us a little bit about this moment?

PL: That's when we knew we had a movie. I can't believe we captured her pager going off. The thing for us was that we were so scared. We had to shoot so much before the pager went off because we were so worried that it could go off tomorrow, and we hadn't even got her back story yet.
We followed her for about eight or nine months before her pager went off.

In that moment, when we got her when it went off, I think we realized how time was running out. How she needed it now. It couldn't have come any later. It was the perfect timing for her pager to go off, because she was seven weeks in the hospital, she was so sick.
She had 31% lung capacity and we knew when we captured this high drama moment, of her getting on the phone and knowing that these lungs were coming in, it was a really intense, happy, joyous, scary, experience.

I was shooting that scene because we couldn't get our cameraman that day. We were just going to causally shoot with her throughout the day so I just brought our own mini DV camera. I was filming and Nimisha was boom operating, and we're shooting this incredible moment and it was a really crazy experience.

ME: Well, I was going to ask you what your most memorable moment of making this film was, but I'm guessing it'll be related to that experience.

PL: It had to be the pager going off. I mean the transplant was really intense too, but I think that in terms of it coming out of nowhere, the excitement of this pager going off and her running into her house, that whole scene was the most intense for us.
The transplant was pretty life changing. To see the medical system work. To watch something. To see her lungs come out and new lungs go in her, and start to fill up with air That was the craziest thing I've ever seen.

ME: That was incredible footage.

PL: And we were right in the room. We saw the whole thing. It was very spiritual. A very spiritual experience to sit there and watch a doctor perform a surgery like this. A life changing surgery.

ME: Can you tell us anything about the progress of the three girls in the film?

PL: Tina is doing quite well. Her chronic rejection reversed and her lung capacity has gone up. She's married and she lives in Pittsburgh. She's doing pretty well. She lives with her new husband and she's happy. I think she's in a happy place.

Meg left her boyfriend in the movie. She left him and moved in with a new guy who's pretty sketchy. Not a good influence on her.
She's not close to her family. She's kind of been on her own. She did move home for a bit but I think she got kicked out again. We're not really sure what happened. She's in hospital right now sick, but she will be coming up for the premier at VIFF. She'll be up here with her mom.

Eva has been doing well, but recently she got her first bout of chronic rejection. It's very common. Everyone gets chronic rejection at some point. It's just unavoidable. So right now she isn't doing so well, so she's looking at different options that will make her reverse out of the chronic rejection.

ME: What would you like people to take away from your film?

PL: Our film isn't a medical documentary, it's a film about friendship. In the end it's really about strong women coming together and supporting each other. But I think that what we want you to take away from this is for you to sign your organ donor card. I want every person who comes to see this film to say I want to become an organ donor.

This is who you can save. There are a lot of young people who are just trying to start their lives. I think that that's really inspiring. Also, you have to take responsibility and do it for yourself because if something happens to you and you're brain dead, you don't want your family to be confronted by the doctors asking whether they want their son or daughter to be an organ donor. You're almost doing a favor for your family, that they won't have to answer those questions.

ME: Are there any plans in the future for a sequel? Perhaps a continuation of these girls' lives.

PL: Wow, I can't believe no one's ever asked that question. I don't know. If there were to be a continuation, it would be Meg because she's the one who is fighting. She embarrassed by her disease and can't stand the way she's living. With Eva and Tina they took responsibility for their lives and they confronted CF with confidence. They embraced who they were and all the terrible things. I think with Meg, she'd be an interesting one to follow in the end. We haven't thought about doing it, but if we did, definitely a side story with Meg Moore.

ME: I know that when I watched the film, that's what I wanted to know. Where these girls were now.

PL: Meg is the one. We want to see her connect with her family again. I don't know, find worth in herself. Because you can see Meg is really, really insecure, but she's young and she's really sad and has a really depressed outlook on the world. She has no support system and you need that. She has nothing and she's so smart and she's actually got this strong spirit but she doesn't really have a lot of people out there to support her. She would be interesting to follow.

ME: Well I do hope you make the film.

65_RedRoses premiers at The Van City Theatre, Fri. Oct. 9Th, at 1:45pm
go to www.viff.org for more listings.

moot or hooey?
Eva belongs to a rowing club.

Taqwacore breaks boundaries at VIFF

2009-10-04T23:47:00.000-07:00

(photo credit: Mia Donovan)

I spoke with director Omar Majeed about his controversial film, Taqwacore.

ME: Could I ask you a little bit about your background?

OM: I was born in Canada. My parents are Pakistani. I wasn't raised Muslim in a very strict way. My parents identified as Muslim and that was always something in the back of my mind, but we weren't an extremely observant family. I did live for about four or five years in Pakistan as a teenager. My family moved back there for a couple of years so I got to experience that culture and by extensions, a little bit more engagement with Islam because it's a very big part of that culture. I have a particular attachment to being Pakistani as well as Canadian.

ME: Could you tell us a little bit about your film background?

OM: All my life I wanted to be a filmmaker. From a really early age.
Out of film school I went into television. I lived in Toronto for a long period of my life and worked for CityTV. I started off as an editor, eventually producing, in particular, short form half hour documentaries, but I really wanted to make something a bit more narrative and cinematic.

So four years ago I moved to Montreal with my wife, and decided that it was time to pursue different job in television and I would just try to kick around an idea I had in my head about making a film about what it was like to be Muslim in the post 911 world.

That was all I had at the time. That sort of notion that I knew I wanted to do something about that because I had certain feelings about it and wanted to get something out.

After doing some research, I connected with this idea about Taqwacore. I found out about what was going on and just decided to go for it.
I really tried to do a film in the way that I envisioned it, and take a more narrative approach to it, and here we are.

ME: Could you tell us about your film Taqwacore, the whole idea and how that formed.

Yes, well, as I was mentioning, I was doing this research just trying to find out what kind of interesting Muslim voices there were because my feeling was that we weren't hearing from those kind of people. We were hearing from very, very mainstream Muslim organizations that would apologize a lot for the fundamentalists or we were hearing from the fundamentalists themselves. We weren't hearing from anyone in the middle, in the gray zone. People who lived lives in between.

That was really important to me, so I was talking to all sorts of Muslim academics, Muslim artists, people like that, and time and time again they would ask me “have you read this book, Taqwacore?
It's really interesting considering what you're taking about. It's this novel by a man who converted to Islam, became a fundamentalist for a while, pulled back from all of that, and now, has written this very rebellious and challenging novel imagining what it would be like if there was such a thing as punk Islam.”

So I was like, that sounds a bit wacky (laughs) but you know, I'm going to give it a try. I got the book off Amazon and I read it and it blew my mind. On a personal level as a Muslim I was like, wow!

First of all, the kind of references that he was making, the language was so exact both in terms of his Islamic language and his punk language. I mean he really got the right references in there and the characters were really rich, full of contradiction and complexity, and a lot of the characters and the situations in the book really spoke to me.

So based on that I decided I had to meet this guy. So I made it happen. I emailed him and asked him to meet. He agreed, he's very amiable, so we met and from that point on I was hooked because he basically told me his life story which I found very fascinating.

The ideas in the book had already gripped me and then on top of that he was telling me, in our very first meetings, that he was starting to meet people who had read his book and were telling him they were Muslim and punk. I thought to myself, wow, this guy's written this fiction, this fantasy, and now life is imitating art. And that's just fascinating to be here on the cusp of that happening. I just jumped in and was sold.

ME: What was the most challenging thing about making this film.

OM: (laughs) Working with punks. The most challenging thing? The very origins of it date back to about three and a half years. By the time I actually got Michael and all the other guys, I'm assuming you've seen the movie...

ME: oh, yes.

OM: ... by the time I got Michael and all those guys involved in the thing, it had been about three years. And I think the most challenging thing with a film like this is you have very small, very astute, very media savvy subjects, people who understand the media. They're artists themselves so it's not as if we could script a lot of stuff or stage it.

As a filmmaker sometimes you kind of push and you prod to try to edge the story along in certain ways and sometimes you do that with people who are not as comfortable on camera as these guys are. Because they're performers, it took a long time to break through their distrust they have of the media and what the media could possibly do with their image and the message of what they're trying to convey. And like it or not, for a while I was considered part of that media.

First it took a long time to build trust, and even when we did that it was very hard to find very vulnerable, very real moments. The only thing you could do was to stand around. You just had to basically spend a lot of time with these guys, all of them, and be attentive and observant to capture moments that were very raw and personal. There was a lot of hanging around, waiting around, going with the flow, (laughs) a kind of Zen concentration in the end.
Sometimes I wasn't up for it, and neither was my crew, but I think that over that couple of years we got what we needed.

ME: How is your film being received so far?

OM: Last night was our world premier here at VIFF. It was surreal. This is my first feature length film. First of all, VIFF is awesome. I'm happy to go on any record and talk about how amazing VIFF is. They fly you out here, they feed you. I don't know any festival that feeds their filmmakers (laughs), so that's amazing. Everyone's really friendly and very helpful. It's incredible and I really get the vibe that the audience here is really in to going out and seeing interesting offbeat films. It doesn't seem to be about stars or industry. We're over indulgent in the industry side of things.

It was a well attended screening, which I was pleased about, but more important to me than that, was it was a screening of really thoughtful people. We had an excellent Q & A afterwards where the usual cliché questions weren't asked. I got really in depth questions from some of the Muslims in the audience, challenging me at some points, and some of the non-Muslims talked about things they found difficult or challenging as well.

You know at times I kind of felt that I really wasn't representing the punk side of things well because I was kind of pontificating. The Q & A ended up a discussion at the end, which was really nice. And it really made me feel like the film was working in terms of engaging people in ideas, which was my intent all along.

ME: What would you like people to take away from this film?

OM: That's interesting. Some people kind of challenged me yesterday asking if I was trying to make a definitive statement about Islam, was I trying to make some heavy handed point, and I totally don't think I am. I don't think that's what these guys who I portray in my film are trying to do either .

I think really in the end what Taqwacore (the book) is about, and what the film is endorsing as well, is this idea of being Muslim on your own terms, finding your own path, and that being ok. It's ok to be a complex human being. It's ok to have contradiction, we all do, let's just be up front about it and don't hide away from that.
If you don't feel like you can conform to your parents' Islam, if you don't feel comfortable with everything that's going on in the western world and the way you're getting stereotyped, don't be comfortable with it. Speak out against it where you can, express it in healthy ways like through music and through art, and through satire.

The ultimate thing for me is that Taqwacore is about a new space. It's not a movement, it's not an ideology, it's not trying to sell you something. Let's create a space here for all of us who feel like the labels don't work. I think the film is just asking for the right of that to exist.

ME: Where do you go from here? Is Michael writing another book? Are you going to make another film?

OM: Michael is one of the most prolific men I know. He's one of those people, as far as artists go, that just constantly inspires my jealousy, deep jealousy. He's younger than me, fitter than me, and has already published five or six books, and he's going to Harvard right now to study Islamic studies.
So the guy is just one of those guys that's got that kind of mind. The book, Taqwacore, is truly an incredible piece of writing. I urge people to read it. Michael's writing in general is quite vivid, and quite an amazing insight into Islam and the North American experience. And of course the bands and their music, all of whom people want to find out more about, you can find on the web site we just put up. (ww.taqwacore.com) We're trying to make that into a one stop resource.

There is one final screening of Taqwacore at the Granville 7 theatres this
Mon, Oct, 5th, at 1:15pm

moot or hooey?
there is a Taqwacore movement in Vancouver, BC

My Tehran for Sale, at VIFF

2009-09-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

Today I had the great pleasure of speaking with director/poet Geranaz Moussavi, about her debut feature film, My Tehran for Sale, a poignant and unique look at life within the largest city in Iran.

We sit in the lobby of the Westin Bayshore and Ms. Moussavi is confident and relaxed.

ME: Could you please tell us a little about yourself?

GM: I was born in 1974 in Tehran and I went to primary school and secondary school in Tehran. When I was sixteen I started publishing my poetry relatively widely in magazines and newspapers: literary newspapers that were available back then. When I was in grade eleven, I acted in my first feature film. I had been active in school theatre and all that, but nothing professional. That was the first time I experienced cinema professionally. I did my second feature film when I was nineteen.

I was born to TV/film parents. My mother was a video grader and my dad was a sound engineer for film and TV, so I was raised amongst all these sorts of people.

I enrolled in science at university because when you're a good student and you come from a middle class family, you are expected to become a doctor or engineer, or something along those lines. I knew that I wanted to be active in the world of literature and cinema.
I miscalculated and thought that I could study science, so I wouldn't live a poor life, and could continue filmmaking and acting as well. This, of course, didn't work because I was always busy in drama classes while I was supposed to be studying science. Inevitably, I had to drop university half way through.
I was simply more focused on acting and drama school and writing.

Just after high school, I worked as a book reviewer and editor for a literary magazine.

When I was twenty-three, I immigrated to Australia with my family. It was then that I made up my mind not to be an actor, but a filmmaker. So I started with a bachelor degree, and graduated with honors in screen studies at Flinders University in Adelaide, and then went to the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney, and did a post graduate degree in editing.

After that I did my doctorate in the field of filmmaking and screen studies, with a theme of poetic cinema, at the University of Western Sydney.

Meanwhile, this film happened. I was writing scripts all throughout these years, one thing lead to another, and I was able to make this film.

ME: Could you tell us about your film, My Tehran for Sale.

GM: I had had the idea for years, in my head. I wanted to tell a story of my generation. Un-said, and un-told Iranian stories. For some reason, mainstream media isn't interested in them. They are only interested in the hectic side of Iran, the political side of Iran, and not really focused on individual stories, the stories of middle class Iran.
It was always showing Iran poor, deprived, rural, or Iran upper class, politically run, and the whole tension between these two classes.

The Iranian industry was somehow dismissing the middle class story. Maybe because the market was more available to the exotic sides of Iran. Maybe that was what was being offered in a more kind way to Iranian filmmakers. I don't know the reasons. I've got my ideas, of course, but I can't be completely sure about them. The important thing is that, as a result, the Iranian films grew to be known to international audiences as rural films with no rhythm, landscape films, films for children or about children, or films with marginalized characters from the outskirts of bigger cities like Tehran. Rarely films concerning middle class people, urban life, contemporary life, and the complexities of these paradoxical lives within the city.

That was the main thing that got my attention because a lot of other stories existed that needed to be told.
Because the culture and society of Iran is so diverse, it seemed to me that that piece of the puzzle was missing.

I got to thinking about it, trying to collect stories using my own experiences, as well as my friends' stories, and my observations of society.
I lived in Australia for ten years but was never disconnected from Iran. I went back there, I lived there for a year, a few months, every now and then, and I was always filming, taking pictures and talking to people. I was collecting all these stories for the story I was going to tell in a film.

I had had an idea for the main actor in the film, Marzieh Marzieh Vafamehr. We'd been close friends for years, and we went to the same drama schools when we were eighteen and nineteen. We were very much aligned on the same page when it came to telling the story of our generation and had long conversations when I was in Tehran. She was the back-bone to the whole process and I wrote the script based on her acting in the film. That's why she uses her real name in the film.

It's my opinion that this story is not only authentic because it shows a truth that hasn't been seen, but also because it's coming from our hearts. It's a collective work of a few people who have poured their hearts into this project. People who participated in the film as writer, director, actor, assistant, and crew. They really helped in forming the ideas. It was interesting that people wanted to tell this story.

ME: Where was it filmed? Was it filmed primarily in Tehran?

GM: Yes. The whole pre-production and production happened in Tehran, and the post production was in Australia.

ME: How did it go throughout the filming process? Did you run into any obstacles?

GM: When it comes to Tehran, everything is so complex. There were a lot of problems, a lot of obstacles. This is why we have made this film. This is why the whole tension is there. When it came to our film, because it's a land full of contradictions, there was smoothness when you didn't expect, and problems and obstacles when you never expected. The whole situation was never predictable.

When I went to Tehran to film, I expected the whole process of filming to be a lot more problematic. But what I had, maybe I was just lucky, was a comparatively smooth, easy experience in terms of filmmaking.
It doesn't mean that we didn't have common issues that everybody has in Iran. We had electricity cut off every day for two or three hours, we had traffic, we had problems getting the gear in time, getting the right gear. These are common issues when it comes to the Iranian film industry.

Whether you have permission, whether you don't have permission, the whole film industry in Iran happens in a spectrum of gorilla filmmaking. Not because of the political or social situation, just because the whole film industry is not as organized as in other countries. We had to hire our equipment from individual people. There's no big organization that you can go to and order your stuff. You make your films through personal and individual contacts in a smaller system.

I was working with a very professional, experienced crew. It was small, so managing was not a big deal. And we tried to keep things small. We filmed low key. We didn't want a lot of press on set and articles being written about our film before it came out. We didn't want things to get out of control. We wanted to tell the story in our own way, without interruption.
I really like things to be more improvised and I care about this interaction between people. I wanted them to be part of the creative flow.

ME: What was your relationship like with your editor? There are a lot of poignant moments in your film. Was it a challenge to edit?

GM: Yes. We filmed the film in a free way and just let things happen and we tried not to self censor while filming. We left the editing to the editor.

Of course, while filming in Iran you have to be cautious. I respect the culture and situation there, and of course I want to challenge the boundaries, but we've seen the culture of the film industry there, and I had to consider the safety of everyone too. I didn't want to take my camera there and film everything in a way that you would film outside Iran, take the camera out, and leave people there with the consequences.
I had to be very thoughtful of how I wanted to tell my story. I wanted to take risks, but calculated risks, not go wild. The film isn't all about me. I am also dealing with people who are living in Iran, same as myself, and we have to think about our tomorrow. That's partly why we left it to the editor. We wanted to be safe, but not compromise the story for the sake of safety either. We wanted to find a balance.

I learned this from the Iranian director, Abbas Kiarostami's cinema. It is possible to challenge things in a proper way, and at the same time, say what you have to say. Everything comes through subtlety as well as risk taking.

My editor Bryan Mason was very quick and knew what he wanted to get out of those images. Because I did my post graduate in film editing, I made this film with an editor's mind. The rhythm and a little bit of the vagueness and openness to interpretation, I already had in my mind. Bryan was very quick in grasping that and being able to get all those nuances.

ME: What is Iran like for up and coming film makers?

GM: It's very difficult to say, but I think when the pressure gets high, and restrictions go beyond what is tolerable for filmmakers... there are a lot of restrictions. Very few people get permission for their script. Very few people get permission to be filmed. Very few films get permission for general release. Things become more and more difficult every day, not only in the area of filmmaking, but also in the field of literature, book publishing, galleries, visual arts and all that.

The situation has become so suffocating, in terms of restrictions and limitations imposed on the artist, that it's beyond tolerance. I believe Iranian artists and filmmakers have been so patient and still make beautiful pictures and beautiful works, against the odds.

I think that for young Iranian filmmakers, the future of filmmaking will be more unofficial. More home video style, more digital film. Iran is one of the countries that will most benefit from new technology because this is their situation. It's not so easy to make an unofficial film with 35mm. You need smaller cameras, something more portable. It's not possible to go full crew, full gear, because that requires proper permission.

ME: With your poetry, you stood in front of crowds and read your works. Did you read your script to anyone for feedback?

GM: No, not for this script. That was part of the improvisation. I think there is a better vibe when it's improvised. Not for everything, but there are certain things I am more comfortable with, improvised.
When you do this, it gives more of a documentary vibe, and that was part of the feel I wanted to have with this film. The film travels a fine line between documentary and fiction. I wanted to play with that line.

ME: How has your film been received? It played at TIFF, yes?

GM: Yes, that was the world premiere. We had the film at the Adelaide film festival, but that was more of a local film festival. I was really amazed by the warm reception of the film by the audience. There were three completely sold out theatres for the public screenings. It was really amazing.

ME: What would you like people to take away from this film?

GM: I'd really like them to take away a fresh and different picture of Iran. Something different from other Iranian films.

I actually played with that in the film. I opened the film in a way that for the first one or two minutes people might think “oh, another Iranian film” but instantly it changes. I'd like people to take this fresh image from Iran as something more authentic to the true lives of people behind the walls and behind the closed doors. I hope they take the feeling with them when they leave the theatre, that finally, they got a glimpse of the private, intimate places of real people who are living there today.

ME: What's in the future? What are you working on now?

GM: I have a few ideas in my head and two scripts that I'm working on at the moment. Again, Iranian themes, Iranian stories, urban, and I'm writing these hoping I can develop these scripts and get proper funding for making those films.
Of course, I have to stand by this film and make it more accessible to more audiences and hope that I can get to more festivals and theatres, because that is the main thing for me, especially with a lower budget, risk taking film. I want people to come and watch this film and this is a very good time for it. People are curious about the Iranian people they hear about in the media.

moot or hooey?
all the characters used their real first names in the film.

Heliopolis at VIFF

2009-09-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Ahmad Abdalla: “It all started with a failing love story”

I had the great fortune of contacting director Ahmad Abdalla, via email, to discuss his feature debut film, Heliopolis.

Abdalla gives us a compelling look the trials and tribulations of modern Egyptian life. The film beautifully intertwines the stories of a host of characters living in the neighbourhood of Heliopolis, Cairo, allowing us a deeper look at the common struggles of ordinary people.

ME:
Could you please tell us a little about yourself. What made you want to be a film maker, and when and how did that begin?

AA:
As a teenager, I spent several years trying to approach the local film scene in Egypt with no luck. I even failed to obtain admission in the only film school in Egypt. That's why I turned to another art-related subject instead. I graduated from the faculty of music in Cairo in 2001.

While I was in college, and thanks to that devil called the internet, I began to learn about non-linear editing. It was new in Egypt, and I played with it until I knew enough about it to actually edit. It occurred to me that I could work my way into film making by editing short films for students. That was a good way to meet young filmmakers from my generation while making some money at the same time. Later, I found myself editing commercial spots and eventually working as an editor.

Just when my name was starting to look familiar in the editing field, I discovered that I was only doing this to make my living, and not for the passion of cinema. I therefore took a radical decision; to stop my editing career immediately and to start working on my own projects.

ME:
Could you tell us a little about your film and why this subject matter resonated with you. What inspired you to make this film?

AA:
I don't consider myself a film director yet. I am just a film editor who happens to have a very personal story to tell: Heliopolis is my first feature film. I believe making it independently was the best choice, not only for financial considerations, but mainly for the experience of having people work with a fresh and different mentality, one that does not conform to the mainstream film making mindset.

It all started with a failing love story. This personal tragedy has inspired me to tell other related personal stories, about my life and my friends, and to put it in the context of the stunning Heliopolis neighborhood in Cairo.

I believe Heliopolis is the only remaining district in Cairo that still struggles to preserve its cosmopolitan spirit. This neighborhood is still home for people from different ethnicities, religions, cultures, and social classes, while Cairo, the mother city, is witnessing a rapid elimination of its multicultural character. I wanted to search for the sources of such transformations and to tell, in the process, my personal stories in Heliopolis.

ME:
How has your film been received so far? Is there anything that stands out that you may not have expected?

AA:
Vancouver International Film Festival is our world premiere. The film was officially selected to participate in Toronto International Film Festival, but it was withdrawn by the distributor.

We had a small screening of an early working copy at Cannes Film Festival's market. Several of the journalists and critics who attended this screening liked the film. Consequently, we received a very positive review from the respected Variety magazine.

I am hoping that people in Vancouver will like the film, especially that it is related to Canada somehow. But you have to see the film first in order to recognize this relation.

ME:
What would you like people to take away from this film?

AA:
I don't make films to convey specific messages nor to convince people of my beliefs. Films are just films. Heliopolis expresses questions rather than answers. I don't think I have any answers, and to be honest, I don't admire films that tell their audiences what they should think or do. I only hope to make the audience think with us, and see our lives the way we see it and the way we show it in the film.

ME:
What is in the future for you? What are you working on now?

AA:
Honestly, I am currently overwhelmed with film festivals and screening in different parts of the world. But I am trying to watch other films, to learn more about people and cultures, and most importantly to learn about my mistakes in this film.

My main concern now is to make this micro-budget film Heliopolis available to the largest audience possible, not for the sake of receiving awards or for personal publicity, but for the sake of proving to myself and to my small crew that it is possible for a crew of seven people, all volunteers, to make a film that can be recognized as such and watched in different parts of the world. Proving this to ourselves will help us continue to make the films we love, with the support of film lovers around the world.

moot or hooey?
absolutely everyone who worked on this film, did so as a volunteer, even the cast.

best correography ever!!

2009-09-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

moot or hooey?
these two are listed as two of the top dancers in the world.

Rocaterrania rocks!

2009-09-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

Director Brett Ingram's documentary Rocaterrania is a journey through the incredible imagination of the brilliant artist, writer, and visionary, Renaldo Kuhler.

Kuhler works as a scientific illustrator for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
He grew up in Germany and in 1948, when he was 17, moved to a remote ranch in Colorado. Introverted as a child, Kuhler found the isolation unbearable and retreated into his imagination, creating the fantasy world of Rocaterrania, “a little world made up of Eastern Europeans”.

Though Kuhler's father himself was an industrial illustrator, he didn't approve of his drawings and told him to burn them all. It was at this point that Khuler began to draw in secret. He's been doing so for over 50 years and has created a world complete with maps, alphabet, language, government infrastructure, revolution and executions.

For Kuhler, Rocaterrania has been a life long obsession. “I am Rocaterrania” says Kuhler. It directly tells the story of his life and his battle to be true to who he is as a person, and not to bend to conformity. “the ability to fantasize is the ability to survive” says Kuhler.

Rocaterrania is a film for the entire family. A fascinating must see for anyone who's ever chanced to dream.

Check out www.viff.org for tickets and screening times.

moot or hooey?
the language in Rocaterrania is Rocateranski, and the main body of the language is corrupted Spanish.

Haiku contest

2009-09-10T23:41:00.001-07:00

a haiku is a short Japanese poem based on a pattern of five beats, seven beats, five beats.

for example:

/ / / / /
I love drin-king beer
/ / / / / / /
eve-ry night I dance and drink
/ / / / /
oh my ach-ing head

moot or hooey?
moot will mail a fabulous gift to the 100th haiku submission

A Groovy Strip of Celluloid

2009-08-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

With Taking Woodstock, Director Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain) takes us back to August of 1969, for a behind the scenes look at the infamous concert known as Woodstock, where thirty-two of the biggest acts of the time performed to an audience of over 500,000.

This isn't a film about the concert itself, rather than events leading up to the infamous three days.

It follows Elliot Teichberg (Demitri Martin) as he attempts to help his parents save their family business, as well as help get a local theatre troupe off the ground.
Teichberg holds his own small scale music festival every year, so when he gets word that a large outdoor concert that was scheduled not far away has been cancelled, he recognizes a business opportunity, contacts the promoters and the seeds for Woodstock are planted.

A word of warning though: if you're hoping to see footage of Joplin, Hendricks, and The Who, you'll be sadly disappointed.

Lee slides past some of the biggest names on the bill, to hit all the right chords with his awesome soundtrack that includes Richie Havens, Ravi Shankar, Melanie, Ultimate Spinach, Arlo Guthrie, and a host of others that give the film a truly original feel.

Lee attempts a fresh take on a very old subject, and the result is lovely.

Avy Kaufman does an amazing job with the casting.

Imelda Staunton delivers an exceptional performance as the intensely hilarious Sonia Teichberg, Leiv Schreiber strikes the perfect balance with his character Vilma, and Eugene Levy as Max Yasgur, right on! Jonathan Groff (Michael Lang) and Paul Dano (guy in VWvan) deliver smaller yet poignant performances. We'll be sure see a whole lot more of them in the future.

Huge kudos to the production design, set decoration, and costume design teams. Not an easy job by any stretch, but they captured this era down to the last fringe, giving the film that extra credibility.

Taking Woodstock may not be the rock and roll film the title suggests, but it's an entertaining, uplifting film that satisfies on so many other accounts.

moot or hooey?
Jonathan Groff has never acted before but he's written a multitude of stuff for the TV industry.

Inglourious Basterds

2009-08-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

Quentin Tarantino has done it again.
At least that's what many have been saying.

Tarantino is known for his edgy, gloriously gory revenge fantasies, and his latest work, Inglourious Basterds, delivers on all accounts.

What it doesn't deliver however, is a great film, and for someone who's a big Tarantino fan, this is extremely disappointing.

Christoph Waltz is uncanny. He absolutely steals the entire film with his take on the brilliant and chillingly sinister Col. Hans Landa. Melanie Laurent (Shosanna) and Diane Kruger (Bridget) are both awesome and believable. And we don't see nearly enough of the amazing Til Schweiger as the brooding Sgt. Hugo Stiglits.
However, Eli Roth should never have been cast in this film, the talented Mike Myers was wasted entirely, and Brad Pitt, though I didn't mind his acting, sounded like he'd stepped out of a Three Stooges film.

It's like Tarantino couldn't quite figure out what he wanted to do. Like he had three different films he wanted to make, couldn't decide which one to focus on, so threw them all together.

Having said that, the biggest beef lay with the platform he chose.

Who was he making this film for?
Does he expect his audience and cheer at the slaughter of the Nazis?
Wouldn't that parallel them to the nauseating Nazi audience watching the “hero's” film?

Tarantino missed the mark this time around. His films are generally enjoyable for what they are, and yes, it's a well written revenge fantasy, but this one blended in a very real piece of history that doesn't work at all with his genre of film.
It was presumptuous and sad. And at 2hrs and 33 minutes, much much too long.

moot or hooey?
Christoph Waltz won best actor at Cannes, and is short listed for an Academy Award.

District 9

2009-08-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

what would you do if someone handed you 30 million dollars and said “here, make a movie, and do whatever you want”?

Peter Jackson did just that for lucky up and coming director Neill Blomkamp, and boy did he deliver.
Blomkamp's highly anticipated action film, is a captivating 151 minutes of onscreen magic.
Co-written by Blomkamp and writing partner Terri Tatchell, District 9 is a compelling original story that will keep you at the edge of your seat.

28 years ago a space ship settles over Johannesburg. Three months later, humans find a way to penetrate the ship and discover close to a million starving aliens. Not knowing what to do, the government cloisters them in an area they name District 9.
Almost three decades later, the area has become a slum filled with violence and corruption.

The film opens as a documentary following our protagonist Wikus (Sharlto Copely) on the first day of his newly appointed assignment of heading the government's resettlement of the aliens 200 kilometers outside, and out of sight, of the city.

Part of the “resettlment” includes the searching for and collecting of weapons.

Things go horribly wrong for Wikus when he discovers a mysterious vial of fluid. He accidentally sprays himself with what turns out to be DNA altering liquid.
Now everyone wants a piece of him and the film turns into a massive manhunt.

There are definitely a lot of things to keep us talking about this film for a very long time.
Most notably Sharlto Copely. He glides in and steals the film completely. Not bad for someone who never aspired to be an actor.

The story does take it's liberties with a few borrowed ideas:
-Pairing an alien with a human to make a commentary on racism (Alien Nation).
-Wikus pulling off his fingernails (The Fly)
-The larger than life exoskeleton (Aliens)

And it's not without its flaws and plot holes:
-Where were the female aliens?
-Why didn't he just tell the gangster how he got the arm?
-Inter galaxy prostitution? You saw that guy pee, right?
-Wikus thought he'd hop in the space ship and figure out how to fly it as he went along?

This is an ambitious film, to say the least. The topics it touches on are innumerable and difficult, and certainly unsolvable in 151 minutes, regardless of the amount of CGI.

Take it for what it is, and go see District 9!
You're going to want to have seen it on the big screen. Especially once the sequel comes out. And there will be a sequel. In about three years.

moot or hooey?
Sharlto Copely was a film producer who Blomkamp roped into playing the lead after he used Copely a couple of times as a stand in.

a tail tale

2009-08-09T23:01:00.001-07:00

For the past few months I've been taking care of a house that belongs to a couple of friends. Watering plants, a little sweeping here and there, general TLC.

I decide to take a swing by the house today to check on things, and everything seems to be fine.

There's a large struggling tropical plant, wedged in a corner in a room downstairs, that's been dropping leaves like crazy. I take particular care of this plant, nursing it back to health, and today when I check on it can see that the branches that reach out past the window are recovering well.

Encouraged by the results, I decide to pull the plant out of the corner entirely so all branches will be in full sunlight.

As I tug at the pot, I believe I see the tail of a mouse as it scampers away behind a stack of magazines.
I move the plant over, grab a broom, and slowly edge away the magazines one at a time, expecting the mouse to come darting out as the stack gets thinner.
Nothing.
I'm down to the last magazine, heart racing, balanced precariously on a small stool.

As I pull back the magazine, the last frontier between rodent and man, he makes a break for it.

Only the tail I'm remembering, isn't a tail at all...

It's the hind leg of the biggest, bad-ass, mf spider I've seen in a very long time.
He doesn't go far. He's too big to fit behind the desk he's trapped against.
Now if it were on wheels, he could just ...

I think he's going to run at me, instead, he bends over to pick up his escrima sticks and shows me his tats.

I put the magazines back, in the shape of a small fort as instructed, and go back to watering the plants.

I'm ok with letting him hang out for a while.
I just hope he remembers to put the alarm back on when he leaves.

moot or hooey?
spiders do not transmit any diseases

best underwater camera ever!!

2009-07-15T21:59:00.000-07:00

moot or hooey?

the Olympus 1030 SW, Olympus PT-043, Fisheye FIX M46 52 Wide Lens, & Sea & Sea YS-17 was rated the best camera package in the world, for 2009.

Michael Jackson

2009-06-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson, the sensationally gifted child star who rose to become the "King of Pop" and the biggest celebrity in the world only to fall from his throne in a freakish series of scandals, died Thursday. He was 50.

Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Ed Winter, the assistant chief coroner for Los Angeles County, confirmed his office had been notified of the death and would handle the investigation.

The circumstances of Jackson's death were not immediately clear.

Jackson was not breathing when Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics responded to a call at his Los Angeles home about 12:30 p.m., Capt. Steve Ruda told the Los Angeles Times. The paramedics performed CPR and took him to UCLA Medical Center, Ruda told the newspaper.

Jackson's death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music's premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.

His 1982 album "Thriller" - which included the blockbuster hits "Beat It," "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" - remains the biggest-selling album of all time, with more than 100 million copies worldwide.

The public first knew him in the late 1960s, when as a boy he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the music group he formed with his four older brothers. Among their No. 1 hits were "I Want You Back," "ABC," and "I'll Be There."

He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched voice punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks second only to his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.

"For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don't have the words," said Quincy Jones, who produced "Thriller." "He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I've lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him."

Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. In fact, he united two of music's biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie.

But as years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure - a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, often wore a germ mask while travelling and kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions.

In 2005, he was cleared of charges he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him. The case took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.

Jackson was preparing for what was to be his greatest comeback: He was scheduled for an unprecedented 50 shows at a London arena, with the first set for July 13. He was in rehearsals in Los Angeles for the concert, an extravaganza that was to capture the classic Jackson magic: showstopping dance moves, elaborate staging and throbbing dance beats.

Singer Dionne Warwick said: "Michael was a friend and undoubtedly one of the world's greatest entertainers that I fortunately had the pleasure of working with........we have lost an icon in our industry."

Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital as word of his death spread. The emergency entrance at the UCLA Medical Center, which is near Jackson's rented home, was roped off with police tape.

moot or hooey?
Ndugu Chancler drummed for Jackson on the hit, Billie Jean.

Who's Gonna Save My Soul

2009-06-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

this is probably the best short film I've seen in a very long time.
awesome song! acting! script! animation! directing!...

moot or hooey?
this is the second video Chris Milk has made for Gnarls Barkley.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

2009-05-29T00:13:00.000-07:00

please take the time to watch this 24:36 min video. it's beyond awesome!!

moot or hooey?

more successful positive world change has been made by individuals than any government in history.

Fat Pig

2009-05-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

Neil Labute is the master of uncomfortable. Take the title of his controversial play, Fat Pig. With two, three letter words, he manages to outrage, a clever ploy that dares us to ask him to explain himself. And he does just that, with elegance, fluidity, and intelligence. The title may be a shock value tactic, but the play itself is clever, honest, insightful, and true.

Fat Pig, is a dark comedic look at how we are perceived and how we perceive others. The harsh truths behind who we are, with plenty of cringe in the process.

Labute thrives on exposing human frailty, cowardice, and vulnerability. He's also very good at comedy. His timing is superb. He can throw you into fits of laughter, and have you shifting in your seat, exposed and uncomfortable, before you've taken your next breath.

Director Michael Scholar Jr. has done a great job at staging the play in a way that keeps the audience focused and engaged. The set is minimal and shifts direction, both physically and metaphorically, at several points throughout the performance.

Kathryn Kirkpatrick delivers a brave and stellar performance as Helen, the object of Tom's (Lawrence Haegert) desire and Haegert pulls us in completely with his performance, giving us hope that he'll come through in the end. Jennifer Mawhinney and Aaron Craven's characters (Jeannie, Carter) provide the cringe. Their dialogue is rich with all we try to hide in ourselves.

Fat Pig is a play that everyone should see. If you can get past the title, it's definitely worth the time.

On Stage: Fat Pig

Where: Performance Works, Granville Island

When: May 20 – 30

Tickets: Tues – Thur & Matinees $21.50; Fri – Sat $25.50

contact: 604 684 2787

moot or hooey?

Labute has never drawn from personal experience for any of his characters or stories.

Idol Finale

2009-05-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

I think America got it right.

I wanted to see them both win, and in the end, they did.

They are both great singers, but Kris said it himself, that he wouldn't know where to start in doing this on his own.

Now he'll have an entourage of people guiding him through to stardom.

He'll need that. It's a tough road.

Adam, he'll be just fine. He's been in the business long enough to know how to handle himself, and he's sure to get snapped up in a flash, if not by Simon himself.

Like I said before, If the results had been the other way around, I think Kris, for the reason above, would have stood a good chance at getting lost in the crowd as so many talented Idol finalists have done in the past.

That truly would have been a shame. He is one talented guy.

I've been a huge Adam fan from the get go. I accidentally caught Adam's audition one night while channel surfing, and that was that.

Adam will indeed reach "Madonna" status regardless, that, I am sure of.

So no regrets, "it is what it is"

moot or hooey?

Queen is looking for a new front man, and Adam is being considered.

final countdown

2009-05-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

what the heck was that?

the grand finale of Idol performances and it just kind of (yawn)...

first, there were the repeat performances.

why?

why on earth, after (a) America and the judges have already given their opinions on the songs long ago, (b) it is the year 2009 and there are a freakin' gazillion crazy wild songs out there to chose from, and (c) with these two guys being as awesomely talented as they are at song choices and interpretations there of, would they ask them for a repeat performance, hmm??

why wouldn't they ask the contestants to pick their all time favourite song and do that instead?

a further glimpse into who they are, what they're capable of, and what we might expect to see on an album.

I'm just saying!

then there were the songs chosen by Simon. not Simon Simon, the other Simon.

I thought they were both ok, but just ok. no fault of the boys though.

both contestants did a great job on their songs, regardless of what the judges said, which brings me to what the judges said.

lol, this is rich.

"didn't like the songs. they weren't lively enough or good enough for this level of competition."

...bah, hahaha, you're kidding... right?

certainly they must realize they had no choice in the matter. that the songs had been hand picked... by a television producer. (a businessman, but I'm sure he's very musical)

I suppose someone had to crash and burn once the blunder was exposed.

and who's gonna bite the hand that feeds them.

last but certainly not least, the dismal DioGuardi song.

next to letting Paula get up on stage and lip sync her new single, that was one of the lamest things Idol has ever done.

poor Kris and Adam.

it wasn't right for either of them, the judges concurred. hmm, and yet somehow...

even Kara's face read clear the unsettling drudgery of the oversight, droning home the element of confusion that clung like hair to a glue ball over the night.

the boys must have been laughing their heads off when they heard that song for the first time.

that's probably where Kris' comment of Adam and him deciding "it wouldn't be a competition tonight, and instead, a great performance" came from.

"well, there's not much we're going to be able to do with this one" (high five)

after tonight, I really don't care much who wins. I love them both, and I think they both deserve record deals.

so, with that, I'm hoping that Kris wins tomorrow.

not because I think he's a better singer, but for this:

if humble, quiet Kris wins, he'll get an Idol record deal and have an entire entourage of people helping him through the transition to stardom.

He'll need that.

And there will be no doubt in my mind that someone will sign Adam as well, immediately, if Simon Cowell doesn't get to him first. Adam just stands out that much.

now if Adam wins, I'm not 100% sure that would work the same way for Kris. it should, and it'd be insane if it didn't, but I think there would be a good chance he'd get lost, like so many Idols in the past regardless of their awesome talent.

I'd like an opportunity to buy both their albums.

moot or hooey?

American Idol is going to let Alexis Grace go one tour with the others.

well who'd a thunk

2009-05-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

I sure didn't see that coming... well, not really.

ok, so Kris really rocked it out last night. But Danny has never been in the bottom three, ever. Kris has been there a couple of times.

I guess at this point anything can happen.

who knows what they'll come up with for next week.

All I know is Adam better have his skates laced tightly, 'cause the race is on.

moot or hooey?

when Gokey cuts his record, he's going to guest star Jamal.

omega 3-6-9

2009-05-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a glimpse of the journey I took:

Omega,

"great O"

standing O

Lambert's numbers are 3, 6, 9

He was the bomb tonight, no doubt...

however, I think Kris rocked the personal choice songs tonight more than anyone.

I was a little baffled at the song the judges picked for Danny.

All along they've been harping on him, and the others, about playing it safe and not picking songs with enough of a melody. It sounded like that song had six notes and that was it. All up high where he does his best work, yes, but a little surprising at the simplicity of the piece.

The song he chose for himself was a ton better as far as I'm concerned.

Kris, I thought did well on both songs, acing the second and clearly showing he has a huge gift. I agreed totally with Simon that the judges were lame in picking a song then placing blame on Kris for not doing it the way they wanted it to be done.

Personally, I've not been able to figure out why Kara is a judge, period.

If she's not cowardly echoing Randy, she's traveling down her narrow line of tunnel vision at the speed of light, surely not sound, or she may have picked up some audio expertise along the way.

Adam did quite well with Simon's choice of song, and it was a good choice. I didn't hear anything new though. Maybe that's one of the perils of being exceptionally exceptional. If Adam could have been just a little rotten in a couple of the previous rounds dammit!

I'm just mad at the $50 bucks I dropped the other day on eco-friendly eyeliner.

never mind.

The second song was good too, but how does one ice icing... glitter!

regardless of how this turns out, I'm buying tickets to catch the tour in Vancouver BC.

I know Adam's theatrical hands will be tied, but that won't stop me from hoping he burns a Wicked Ring of Fire in the middle of the stage.

way to go boys!

moot or hooey?

Madonna's manager has asked her not to contact Adam until after the announcement of the Idol winner.

Idol thoughts

2009-05-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

I've thought from the very beginning (auditions) that Adam was the person to win. I still think so.

I'd originally pegged Adam, Danny, Allison, and Alexis as the top four. Not bad.

I do think that everyone's a winner this season. The top five anyway.

Adam's passion stands out though, and he has the showmanship to truly be great.

If he doesn't do something great through Idol, Tarantino is sure to write something for him.

I'LL write something for him!

I think Danny will be a very close second, Allison third, and Kris fourth.

Danny is very main stream and sexy. If he had just a bit more of an edge I think he'd pull ahead of Adam.

Allison can do everything. The only thing that's standing in the way of soaring past the boys is her age. She has yet to develop a "hunger" for what she wants.

I love Kris' voice. He has a very unique sound like REM, Aerosmith, Nirvana, but he's a bit too timid. If he doesn't reach out and grab it soon, it'll slip away from him.

having said all this, I think they're all ready to cut albums. Their careers have already been made. It's simply up to them to lasso the wave and ride it out.

moot or hooey?

if you ignore your hunger for 15 minutes, it won't come back until you've passed the ability to consume a full meal.

fortune teller

2009-04-25T07:06:00.000-07:00

apparently i have to confess.
i went to have my fortune read and was told i need to write.

so, once i get back to vancouver, i will be inundating you with photos and stories of japan, until every rock has been turned, every blade of grass has been dusted.

yoyogi koen tokyo tomorrow, should put the proverbial icing on that cake.

moot or hooey?
if you do not do what your fortune teller tells you to do, you will be visited by large furry animals.

harajuku

2009-04-11T00:39:00.000-07:00

tomorrow I board a plane to Tokyo.
the first place I'm going is Harajuku.
and if I manage to bump into these two, I'm never coming back :)

moot or hooey?
America may be the land of milk and honey, but Japan is the land of magic and truths.

deja vous? or simply really bad secret keepers...

2009-04-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

well if it wasn't obvious before, it sure is now!
Adam's won Idol.
A standing ovation from Simon? hmm

So Allison gets a record deal too, eh.

And Scott said he wanted America to know he was versatile before they said goodbye.
He's going home?

Tonight was a strange night.
It reeked of betrayal.
Kind of like they'd all sat down and discussed what the outcome would be... with the top four, that is.

So Adam, Allison, and Danny have made deals already. Who's the fourth? That's the only thing I've not been able to peg. I'll bet though, that it's Matt or Kris. Just a feeling.

moot or hooey?
the odds of winning 6/49 are 1:64, while the odds of winning Super 7 is 1:12. The odds of winning Idol, 1:4, the others are just there for ratings.

CTV blooper

2009-04-06T21:06:00.001-07:00

I don't know about you, but it drives me bonkers when people in the media publish ads, air commercials, read the news, and the like, with major grammatical errors.

It used to be that news editors and broadcasters, TV and radio hosts, etc, were reliable sources of proper grammar. One could always rely on them getting it right.

With all the possibilities to access Spell Check, Editors, Proof Readers, Grammar Check and a gazillion other things set up with the explicit purpose of aiding the writers and readers, there really shouldn't be any reason for grammatical mistakes.

This year's commercial build up to Tuesday's episode of American Idol ends with the announcer blurting out "this week the Idols will sing songs from the year in which they were born in"

Honestly CTV. no one caught that?

moot or hooey?

in Jan of 1989, the Mainichi daily news published the death of Emperor Hirohito, only he hadn't died yet. All those responsible were immediately fired.

more of my fav photos from '08

2009-04-05T16:11:00.000-07:00

world's largest bath tub on L'ile de Porquerolles, in the south of France.Galapagos salt water Iguana (about a meter long), a projectile sneezer.
Sam, in a Lego box.
sea turtle tracks, Galapagos. It was mating season, but this is a G rated blog...I think.
Zorro's saddle, Costa Rica ranch in the northern hills. Zorro was off in the woods carving zeds in the trees.. on foot.
Lago Chico, Chilean/Argentine border. An awesome but very cold swim!
Heron, western Ecuador. Just as beautiful as the herons from the sanctuary in Stanley Park, Vancouver.
Chilean Mount Fuji, from high in the hills of Tinquilco.
back yard of American Astronaut Brian O'Leary's Ecuadorian oasis, along the Peruvian border.
visiting boyfriend George, on The Hour just before my friend Richard's documentary "Cubers" aired.
George tries solving the Rubik's Cube. moot or hooey?
George was so absorbed in solving the cube, that we missed the first 10 minutes of the show.

Nick of time

2009-03-31T23:33:00.000-07:00

you know, I hate to say this, being the Adam fan that I am, but I really liked Nick's performance tonight. I still can't look at him when he sings, but I sure loved listening.

Adam pulled it back a bit which I think was a smart thing to do. Ear sex.
He was smart to change up the look again as well. Eye sex.
Kudos for acknowledging the band. I'll bet they're all on their cells right now, dialing your number... seriously.

Allison, omg, tried to do too much. In my opinion, that was an untouchable song. Gwen S. already did everything I ever wanted to hear done with it.

Danny was ok, but I didn't hear much of a difference between this and his other performances.

Megan, when is she going to find the right song. I love her voice but she may have blown it tonight.

Matt, I didn't really like it that much. He sounded like a cheap cover singer.

Scott, he didn't actually do that badly tonight, but again, it wasn't enough to stop me from going into the bedroom to finish folding the laundry.

Anoop, well, what can I say. Sayonara? perhaps. A strange choice of song. Again, someone who's really not that bad, when he has a little guidance. Unfortunately right now, he has no idea where he's going or how to get there.
But just to show you pretty much anything can go full circle into something amazing, I'm sharing this incredible rainbow that sat over my house the other day.

It's either a rainbow or an awfully large contact lens.

moot or hooey?
when you see a double rainbow, the colors on the second one, are reversed.

Kiefer gets naked

2009-03-31T00:05:00.000-07:00

I hate all the skinny ass photos on the net these days.
How are we supposed to blog properly about the people we love...

Tonight it happened. Lucky season seven!!
Kiefer got naked!
Oh yes he did. He took his shirt off then he dropped his drawers, in public. It was awesome!
So the camera didn't shoot below the belt. That's irrelevant when one has imagination.

Let me tell you how it goes down.

The alley is dimly lit. Jack Bauer is wearing a white cotton shirt. You know, the kind women like to wear on sleep overs. He's just removed his pants.

He looks into the distance, then gently pulls his arms out of his shirt.

He stands there half naked in the middle of the street, awaiting orders from the fully clothed woman with the examining wand.
She stares without saying a word.
He somehow knows what she wants.

We all know what she wants.

He hesitates, gives one of those "here? now?" looks, does the "oh I give in" slump of the shoulders, then slowly steps out of his tackle holders.

He doesn't move, like he's waiting for something. The audience goes wild!

Jack apologizes for all the scars on his chest.

The woman breaks into a sweat. She thinks she can read her name over his left nipple.
She's snapped back by the little tattoo of the pizza deliver boy on his bicep and tells Jack she's going to have to "lock him up" but before that, she's going to give him a "shower".

Jack stands in the middle of the street spread eagle (gawd!) while they soap him up from head to toe.
When she's done with him, she "tests" him to see if he was exposed to anything harmful, and lets him go.was it good for you? 'cause it sure was good for me!

moot or hooey?
tonight's episode won't be posted on the web because of its racy content.

(I've just posted the photo below 'cause it made me laugh way too hard. Enjoy it while it's still here.)quote read "Jack hates Nemo"

Idol guitar

2009-03-27T02:11:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist posting this great photo from my trip to LA last month.
(Ndugu Chancler, moi, Patrice Rushen, Paul Jackson)

My friend Ndugu did a music workshop with my friend Patrice, and Paul Jackson. It was awesome of course. How could it not be with three of the industry's best.

They graciously volunteered their time to sit in a room filled with budding musicians, and gave their all to these kids. It was inspiring.

LA is an incredible city, but what makes it so, are the amazing people who live there.

moot or hooey?
Paul Jackson sat next to Adam Lambert and played guitar during his performance of Tracks Of My Tears, on American Idol.

the tracks of my tears

2009-03-25T21:37:00.000-07:00

OMG!!

ok, I guess I should mention who I'm raving about (as if it wasn't too obvious)
the amazing Adam Lambert.

He did it!
He needed to get personal and close, and he rocked tonight's performance to a standing ovation from Smokey Robinson.
How awesome is that!!

I think anyone who's seen Adam's performance of Dust in the Wind would know he was totally capable of it though.

Adam is on his way. Just make sure you keep an eye on Allison, your fiercest competition.

moot or hooey?
Adam has already been offered a recording contract regardless of the outcome of AI

tonight's the night, everything's gonna be alright...

2009-03-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Motown is gonna make or break a lot of the contestants tonight on American Idol.

I'm guessing Adam will do something by Diana Ross. He loves the Divas!

moot or hooey?
they're saving the "save" card for Scott

POLECAM - ICONIX HD RH1

2009-03-23T16:01:00.000-07:00

this is the new camera i'm saving up to buy.

take a good look.
this is the wave of the future!!

this awesome little HD camera has won a multitude of industry awards to rival its competitors.

check out the specs on this beauty.

ok, so i'm going to have to save a few thousand dollars to get all the bells and whistles i'm looking for. i just hope i can do it before i'm ready to go to camera with my documentary in september.

way to go Polecam!!

moot or hooey?
by the time my doc is ready to shoot, there will most likely be two more updated models of this camera on the market.

RIP: a remix manifesto

2009-03-20T00:52:00.000-07:00

Brett Gaylor's ambitious documentary, RIP: A Remix Manifesto, is an eye-opening, insightful, and amusing look at one of the pressing issues of the Internet Age: how corporate culture and copyright laws are putting a censoring headlock on freedom of expression, knowledge, and creativity.

The film's central protagonist is Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis), a mash-up music master at creating “sample” songs: songs made up by snippets or “samples” of pre-existing songs.

In an illuminating sequence Gaylor shows how metamorphosing a previous idea, evolved over the years and into Girl Talk's show.

“The Staple singers had a song called 'The Last Time' and The (Rolling) Stones basically riffed on that to create their 'The Last Time'.” he says. “Andrew Oldham then did the instrumental of 'The Last Time' which is basically the refrain that you're familiar with from The Verve and that became 'Bittersweet Symphony' and then Girl Talk takes it one more step and adds the Ying Yang Twins.”

In a day and age where it's common understanding that pretty much nothing is new, that everything borrows from something and has done so for centuries, Gaylor questions why it's illegal to create something new out of scraps of things from the past. According to copyright laws, art itself can be illegal.

Gaylor explores the right to “fair use” or “fair dealing”, a legal defence that allows an artist to “borrow” from another to make a point. Should Intellectual property be protected or shared.
He believes the past should be fair game.

And he doesn't limit his argument to the music industry. Copyright culture in general. The Corporate Copyrighting of plants, animals, insects, and diseases and the very real threat that poses to society.

Gaylor started a web site, posted his rushes and invited users to remix them any way they pleased. Some of the footage made it into the film such as the one segment 16 students got together and altered into an animation piece.
Check out his film web site

RIP opens this weekend at The Ridge Theatre (3131 Arbutus at West 15th)
Screening Times: 4pm, 7pm, 9pm daily

Director Brett Gaylor will be in attendance for the 7pm and 9pm screenings March, 20th

moot or hooey?
Gaylor doesn't have the rights to any of the music in his film

Idolizing Lambert

2009-03-18T16:54:00.001-07:00

Adam Lambert is definitely my favourite this year. I think that's pretty obvious.

He's in a league of his own and it excites me to no end that he shakes up the judges the way he does.

He'll get picked up regardless, and I'll be first in line for tickets to his show.

I hope he gets to show his gentler side at some point during the competition though. He can deliver, and I think the judges as well as the audience need to know he can make that stretch. It'd be a shame if we never got to see that.

We know how original and hot he can be, now let us get close.

As the performances evolve, so do the performers.

Allison Iraheta is awesome. She's my new second favourite to Adam. She is so versatile. Can do country, rock, pop, pretty much anything they throw at her, and she's so incredibly young to be able to handle that with such grace.

Anoop Desai really shone this round, and he is definitely third on my list of great singers. I'm just not sure he has the versatility and audience appeal he'll need to make it to the top four.

Danny Gokey. I love this guy. I think he's a great singer, but he may have shot himself in the foot with the "Jesus" song. Kind of like the little blond Elvis from the last American Idol. Jaydee Bixby.

That's it.

I wasn't really that impressed with the others this week and it broke my heart that Alexis Grace didn't smoke that song. She's such an awesome singer, and totally marketable.

Lil Rounds, though I love her voice, didn't showcase it properly this week. This would have been a perfect opportunity to do a heart stopping ballad, and she would have knocked it out of the ballpark.

Megan Joy. I like her. She's very marketable but I'm not too sure where she'd fit. I'm still waiting and hoping to hear something remarkable from her.

moot or hooey?

although originality is a must, necessity is the mother of reinvention.

Adam Lambert

2009-03-18T01:12:00.000-07:00

what can I say, I simply love this guy. his imagination, talent, and fearlessness.
a true entertainer!
best thing I've seen in a very long time.

moot or hooey?
Adam Lambert is on his ninth time around.

are you a mensa genius?

2009-03-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a little test for you all.

You have to work out what the numbers and letters mean.

Scoring:
1 to 5 average
6 to 11 somewhat intelligent
12 to 18 intelligent
19 + genius

example:
24 H in a D = 24 Hours In A Day

1) 26 L of the A

2) 7 D of the W

3) 7 W of the W

4) 12 S of the Z

5) 66 B of the B

6) 52 C in a P (WJs)

7) 13 S in the USF

8) 18 H on a G C

9) 39 B of the O T

10) 5 T on a F

11) 90 D in a R A

12) 3 B M (S H T R)

13) 32 is the T in D F at which W F

14) 15 P in a R T

15) 3 W on a T

16) 100 C in a R

17) 11 P in a F (S) T

18) 12 M in a Y

19) 13=UFS

20) 8 T on a O

21) 29 D in F in a L Y

22) 27 B in the N T

23) 365 D in a Y

24) 13 L in a B D

25) 52 W in a Y

26) 9 L of a C

27) 60 M in a H

28) 23 P of C in the H B

29) 64 S on a C B

30) 9 P in S A

31) 6 B to an O in C

32) 1000 Y in a M

33) 15 M on a D M C

moot or hooey?
only two Mensa members have ever achieved full marks for this test.

just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

2009-03-15T15:34:00.001-07:00

I decide to go to the south of France this summer for a little R&R.

I haven't been to the beach in so long my skin is turning that pasty white/green and people have started to ask whether I'm feeling ok.

There's this great little place right on the Mediterranean Sea called Hyeres, and I manage to find a reasonably priced hotel right on the beach.

I'm a huge Jacques Cousteau fan, so they kind of have me at hello.I check in, unpack my bag, and walk down the road to the bicycle rental shop.
There are so many incredible beaches with such a variety of surf and sand, that it's a bit overwhelming, in a very good way. I've booked off a ton of holidays though, so I'm happy to explore them one grain at a time.

The locals have begun their mass exodus from the city to their summer homes that surround the little hotels like mine, and the cafes and promenades are coming to life.
There's nothing quite like the south of France in the summer.

I take two days to circle the peninsula from crevice to crevice, and pick out the best places to swim and eat.

One of my favourite places is this great long beach where the peninsula juts out from the mainland on the east coast.
I swim and play in the waves almost every day for at least a half an hour or so, and have the time of my life ... until ...

One day as I head out for my morning swim, instead of riding along the cycle path on the road, I decide to take a dirt path that runs the length of the beach.

Here's what I see tucked in among the trees right behind the beach.I was going to crop this down but I thought I'd leave it in its original size so you could see the magnitude of the mf.. (I stand about as tall as the smallest pillar)

And it looks like it's in the open where everyone can see it and be warned of the monsterage off shore, right? NO!

From the road you can't see it for the three oddly placed non-functional pillars of the same color, blocking it from view and disguising it as some artist's sadistic rendition of surreality. Like they wanted you to know it was there, but not really.
The only reason I even discovered it was motor crossing my bike into a small bush trying to avoid a lizard.

Perhaps I'm being a tad irrational and unfair. Maybe this statue doesn't signify anything at all. Maybe it's just an inconsequential piece of art made by an avid shark lover. Or maybe it's not a piece of art either. Maybe it's just a big rock that looks like a shark fin and somebody thought "hey, this would look great in among the bushes next to that beach where no one will see it and be afraid to go in the water". But maybe, just maybe, someone is trying to tell us something.
Oh I don't know, "jaws was here"?

I've been swimming in that water for weeks! gad!

Near misses stay with you forever, whether you learn from them or not, and I'm still a little freaked after the encounter with the bull shark off the Great Barrier Reef. The only reason I'm not shark pellets, is I'm dressed like a teletubby in a blue/green neoprene jellyfish suit. Sharks hate bright things...or do they love them...I don't know.

Then there's the time I'm diving around a reef in the Cook Islands and notice a shadow much bigger than anything I could cast darken the water in front of me, cooling the water behind me. I'm too petrified to turn around, so release a few bubbles and slowly swim away.
Later when I lay on the beach, the guide comes up to tell me he's never seen "grandpa", the local famed extraordinarily large and dangerous Moray eel, ever get that close to a human before.
I pass out.

Things happen when I travel. And while the dramas are largely lasagna based, I do believe there is enough of a "food" reference here to warrant caution or panic with the shark thing.

So the last two days of my trip I still go down to the beach, only the closest I get to the water is the ice in my drinks.

moot or hooey?
bull sharks and great whites are the only two sharks that will taste pretty much anything that swims.

Bachata!!!!! yayaya!

2009-03-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

Bachatas
by tryptico

check out this amazing bachata dance video.

moot or hooey?
if you can dance, you can get a hot date in pretty much any latin country.

what goes around comes around

2009-03-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

My sister is an artist. She works with wire and metals, sculpting anything from purses and bras to insects and life sized horses.

She gave me this wire tarantula.

It was a fun little project she made with some left over wire.

When she gives it to me I think it'll be a gaff to place it on the floor next to the front desk at work and wait until the receptionist came in.

After I peel her off the ceiling I swear I'll never do that again, tuck my tail between my legs and crawl back to my office.

The depths of evil being what they are, I keep it on the floor between my desk and the glass wall that separates my office and the hallway, just within peripheral vision, for the next six years or so.

Every now and then I look up from my computer to watch some unfortunate drop down the second half of the arc of fear, clutching their chest and scrambling to regain use of their legs.
ah, those were the days!

I mean come on, if you look real close, it's got goofy little Grover eyes on the ends of its antenna. Clearly a fake.

Yesterday I'm going through a box of papers and books, and come across my wired friend. I place it on the floor against one of the walls of my dining room, snickering to myself, then immediately invited some friends over for dinner.

As dinner cooks, I decided to throw a load of laundry in the washer. When it's dry, I scoop it out in a large mountainous armful, and trot through the dining room with the intention of dropping the bundle on the bed in the adjoining room.
As I make my way through, I catch something dark and awful from the corner of my eye.

It's like Mary Tyler Moore auditioning for that famous opening scene with the hat.
Flin-n-n-n-ng!
I spend the next twenty minutes pulling popcorn ceiling balls off my socks.
And let's just say it's a good thing my sister works with bendable, re-shape-able wire.

The spider lives. It's got me a few times since then, and I reckon if it's that good, it's gotta stay put. I've got a good heart. A strong heart I mean. Mean? m-m-maybe.

moot or hooey?

"spider" isn't a proper English word. It's actually slang. It means "a male" (I wonder what Freud would have to say about that)

Idol Update

2009-03-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, after tonight's performances, it's pretty clear who the top four are going to be...

only trouble is, no one's fessing up and it's driving me mental.

Here's how I think it's going to unfold.

Adam Lambert is a clear in. He's going to win the whole thing. End of story.

the other three in the top four are going to be Lil Rounds, Danny Gokey, and Alexis Grace. Having said that though, Matt Giraud, Allison Iraheta, and Jorge Nunez will give them a good run for their money.

The others, sayonara, two by two.

moot or hooey?

it's a huge shot in the foot to choose to sing a song that's been within somone else's top five hits.

Louis C.K.

2009-03-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

this is soooooo funny!!

check it out while it's here.

moot or hooey?

the only reason they don't make the entire plane out of the material they make the little black box, is that it'd never get off the ground.

pure genius

2009-03-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

pure genius!

My friend Shelley sent me this video today. It's awesome!!

If you're an artist of any persuasion, this 20 min video by Elizabeth Gilbert is a must see.

thanks Shelley!!

moot or hooey?

the word "Ole" also translates as "Ancestor"

more photos from last year I'd like to share

2009-03-01T17:01:00.000-08:00

Bridgette and Pablito,

Galapagos Iguana, and The Great Wall of China,

Hyeres, France,

Hollyhock apples, and Ecuadorian lineed oil,

moot or hooey?
if you're looking for happiness, it exists in the pleasurable moments we share.

a picture is worth a thousand words

2009-02-28T17:39:00.001-08:00

I thought these ones spoke for themselves.

moot or hooey?

80% of the population in China know some form of sign language.

Idol predictions

2009-02-25T22:06:00.000-08:00

Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey, and Alexis Grace will be three of the top four on
American Idol.

Mishavonna Henson may give them a run for their money if she makes it through to the next round.

moot or hooey?

no one under 20 has ever won American Idol

Her Morning Elegance

2009-02-25T13:43:00.000-08:00

check out this fabulous video/song!

moot or hooey?

YouTube is rapidly becoming the fastest way to fame and fortune, bypassing the multitudes of middlemen

Idol momentum

2009-02-20T00:05:00.000-08:00

Danny Gokey is through to the top 12. yes!

Alexis Grace will be with him in the top four!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Jamal Rogers comes back as a wild card.

There's simply no other explanation for his departure.

This week Ricky Braddy was bumped off.

I think he might come back as a wild card as well.

Who is Persenias?... am I spelling that correctly?

She is a force to be reckoned with.

I can't wait until her week comes up.

moot or hooey?

addictions can visual as well as physical

Oscars

2009-02-19T01:51:00.000-08:00

This year I'm ready for the Academy Awards.
I've schlepped my way from theatre to theatre watching film after film, spent a million hours in front of the TV watching CDs of the ones that were no longer screening, and I'm finally done.

Here's my take on what I saw.

Best Film
Benjamin Button
Slumdog Millionaire
Milk
Frost/Nixon
The Reader

The Reader is amazing and Kate Winslet and David Kross are stellar, but the film is long. It could easily have ended with Winslet's final scene, but it pushes on for another ten minutes and that's what I think pulls it out of contention.

Benjamin Button is an extraordinary film for its visual effects and unique story. The first 45 minutes of the film enraptures, but it slows down immensely after that. I felt little to nothing for Pitt's and Blanchett's characters. I think it a fundamental flaw that the director allows Pitt's character, with this extraordinary gift/flaw that surely would have made headlines world wide, let alone in his home town, be entirely forgotten as he grows younger and more vulnerable.

Slumdog Millionaire is unique and the pacing is great, but the romance isn't believable. It was very disconnected. My bone of contention with this film is the leading lady. I would have liked to see someone a little less “Hollywood” or in this case “Bollywood” in that role. A life of slums, prostitution, and malnutrition would have taken its toll on anyone regardless. Her flawless skin and perfect teeth proved only to take me out of the film and lose any belief I might have had in the character.

Frost/Nixon. I waited until the end to watch this film. It was worth it. A good film. I was fairly impressed considering the story was known beforehand. Frank Langella and Kevin Bacon were fabulous. Completely believable, they both drew me in entirely. If Milk wasn't on the list, I think this would have been my favourite film.

Which brings us to Milk. Sean Penn gives an incredible performance as Harvey Milk. This is the only film of the lot that I didn't want to end. I wanted more. I wanted to know what happened after Harvey died, to everyone and everything. It's not often you come across a film that can have that affect.

Who I'd like to win: Milk
Who I think will win: Benjamin Button, if it's not edged out by Slumdog Millionaire.

Best Male Actor
Brad Pitt - Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler
Sean Penn - Milk
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Richard Jenkins - The Visitor

Brad Pitt is ok when you see him, and he does a great job of the ADRs, but I think the majority of the most impactual moments on screen come from the performances created by the combination of stand-in actors and the digital work in post production. Not enough of a performance by Pitt to warrant an Oscar.

Mickey Rourke. You've got to admire the work put in to this role, and I'm glad he got the Golden Globe for this role. But is it Oscar worthy? I don't think so. Rourke does a great job bouncing around as a wrestler and if there was an Oscar for best wrestler impersonation, he'd win it hands down. It almost felt like he was hiding behind those tights.

Frank Langella is incredible. If you haven't seen this film, you absolutely must. Langella plays Nixon with such believability it felt like you were watching Nixon in real time. I think it will be a close race between Langella and Penn with Langella winning by an edge.

Sean Penn. What can you say about Penn that hasn't been said before. He's stellar, and delivers a hundred fold on his portrayal of Harvey Milk. Penn isn't afraid to delve into eccentric difficult roles and he does it with ease and flare. I must say though, that I'm torn. Although I truly loved Penn's performance, I felt it was almost too easy. Like giving a gangster role to Pacino.

Richard Jenkins. I have to say I liked this performance the best out of all the male contenders. Jenkins is solid and creates a character both lovable and believable. It's a subtle, mono-toned role (for the most part) within which Jenkins disappears. This, I believe, is an incredibly difficult thing to do, and the true mastery of his craft. The only two who could really give him a run for his money, are Penn and Langella.

Who I'd like to win: Richard Jenkins
Who I think will win: Frank Langella

Best Female Actor
Kate Winslet - The Reader
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Meryl Streep - Doubt
Anne Hathaway - Rachael Getting Married
Melissa Leo - Frozen River

Meryl Streep is awesome as usual, intense and refined. The only problem was I kept seeing her all the way through the performance. Meryl in a habit. I never once believed I was watching Sister Beauvier. It felt like she was somewhere else, detached. I think in the end though, it was the script I had the most trouble with.

Angelina Jolie. When I first started going through the films, I thought Jolie would take it for her flawless performance. She captures the essence of the character with the greatest of ease. Unfortunately this year, there are two actors who stood out a little more. Melissa Leo and Kate Winslet.

Kate Winslet. It's always a bit of an edge when one makes a film that touches on the holocaust. Winslet was amazing regardless. I believed her every minute of the journey. Her performance in Revolutionary Road felt a bit theatrical, but this one she nailed. I think her biggest competition will be Melissa Leo.

Anne Hathaway. Hathaway is always worth watching, and this is no exception. She puts her heart and soul into the role as we've never seen her. However, this year, she's up against some of the best in the business and the competition's too fierce. I hope she continues to take chances. They're sure to pay off.

Melissa Leo. This was my favourite performance of the lot. A small film with a lot of heart, and I feel the film itself was robbed of a nomination. Leo delivers on all fronts. She is stellar. An emotional, real, and believable performance. She'll never win in a hundred years against four monster Hollywood names, but she certainly deserves to.

Who I'd like to win: Melissa Leo
Who I think will win: Kate Winslet

Best Supporting Male Actor
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight
Robert Downey Jr. - Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
Josh Brolin - Milk
Michael Shannon - Revolutionary Road

Michael Shannon is the quintessential scene stealer. I couldn't take my eyes off him. I want to see this character in a lead role. That would be awesome. Scary but awesome. Shannon is my all around favorite this year. The only star who shone as brightly was Heath Ledger.

Heath Ledger. His performance was nothing short of genius. The intensity and depth of his performance was insane. No wonder he couldn't sleep. He's sure to take the Oscar.

Robert Downey Jr. hit the controversial funny bone, to say the least, with this role. He truly disappears into his character(s). Another scene stealer, but was it enough for Oscar?

Philip Seymour Hoffman. I could watch this guy butter toast and think it was Oscar worthy. He is an incredible actor. However, this role just wasn't edgy enough. Again, I think it was the script I wasn't that thrilled with.

Josh Brolin. I loved him in “No Country for Old Men”, but found his performance here a little weak. He didn't seem that invested in the role. For such an essential role in the film, he should have been entirely believable.

Who I'd like to win: Michael Shannon or Heath Ledger
Who I think will win: Heath Ledger

Best Supporting Female Actor
Marisa Tomei - The Wrestler
Amy Adams - Doubt
Taraji P Henson - Benjamin Button
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Christina Barcelona
Viola Davis – Doubt

Marisa Tomei. What can you say. It's worth the price of entry just to see this 44 year old rival not only Madonna, but half the 20 year olds in Hollywood with her flawless body. As for the acting, it's just kind of ordinary. Marisa is lovely, her performance good. But Oscar worthy? I don't think so.

Amy Adams is phenomenal. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was the best thing about the movie “Doubt”. She is mesmerizing and jumped into the role head first. Actors have been robbed of Oscars before (Ethan Hawke - Training Day, Djimon Hounsou - Blood Diamond) but if Adams doesn't get one this year, something's seriously awry in Hollywood.

Taraji P Henson. I like Henson's performance. She's a very likable actor. She was certainly the heart and soul of the film. The only person I cared to care about. However, I don't think her performance was strong enough to warrant an Oscar.

Penelope Cruz. I have to admit that I do like Cruz, when she acts speaking Spanish. Somehow, when she acts in English, things change. Having said that, I wasn't impressed with her performance in this film. I found it choppy and showy. But then I wasn't impressed with anyone really.

Viola Davis. Huge kudos for stealing that mega scene from Streep. I wanted to see more range though. It may just be me though. If she had only pulled out that hankie a little sooner.

Who I'd like to win: Amy Adams
Who I think will win: Amy Adams

Best Director
Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
David Fincher - Benjamin Button
Ron Howard - Frost/Nixon
Gus Van Sant - Milk
Stephen Daldry - The Reader

David Fincher. With all the buzz, Fincher simply has to win. He did an amazing job, with a tricky story. If he doesn't win for best director, then he should at least share the award with anyone else from his cast and crew they may honor.

Danny Boyle sneaked up behind us with this one. There's so much to say about this great little film. It won a Golden Globe and the People's Choice at Toronto and I believe it deserved those awards, when it comes to script writing and editing, that is. However, I don't think it will win an Oscar for directing.

Ron Howard did a great job with Frost/Nixon, I just wish he'd quit casting his family. He got some great performances out of his actors and brought us right into the centre of the action. This film is definitely my top pick of the bunch.

Gus Van Sant. I loved this film for its brave portrayal of an extraordinary man. Again, this was the first film I'd seen in an awfully long time where I wanted more. In a good way. It wasn't that I felt the film incomplete, but that I was so taken in by the characters I wanted to know more about their lives.
I think there is too much Benjamin buzz for Van Sant to win against Fincher. In my opinion he runs a very close second to Howard.

Stephen Daldry. The story-line of this film may be what edges Daldry onto the Oscar stage. The film was intriguing and human, but it went on much too long. It let's go of the viewer to polish the edges and I think that is it's biggest flaw.

Who I'd like to win: Ron Howard or Gus Van Sant.
Who I think will win: David Fincher

(For the categories below, I've put an asterisk* by the one I think will win)

Animated Feature
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
*WALL-E

Original Screenplay
Frozen River
Happy-Go-Lucky
*In Bruges
Milk
WALL-E

Adapted Screenplay
Benjamin Button
Doubt
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
*Slumdog Millionaire

Foreign Language Film
The Baader Meinhof Complex
The Class
Departures
Revanche
*Waltz with Bashir

Documentary Feature
The Betrayal
Encounters at the End of the World
The Garden
*Man on Wire
Trouble the Water

Film Editing
Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Frost/Nixon
Milk
*Slumdog Millionaire

Art Direction
Changeling
*Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Duchess
Revolutionary Road

Cinematography
Changeling
*Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire

Costume Design
Australia
Benjamin Button
The Duchess
Milk
*Revolutionary Road

Visual Effects
*Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Iron Man

Makeup
*Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
Hellboy II

Sound Editing
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
*Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted

Sound Mixing
Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
*Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E
Wanted

Original Score
Benjamin Button
Defiance
*Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
WALL-E

Original Song
*WALL-E - “Down to Earth”
Slumdog Millionaire - “Jai Ho”
Slumdog Millionaire - “O Saya”

Short Film - Animated
La Maison en Petits Cubes
Lavatory – Lovestory
*Oktapodi
Presto
This Way Up

Short Film - Live
Auf der Strecke
*Manon on the Asphalt
New Boy
The Pig
Spielzeugland

moot or hooey?

Oscar trophies are gold plated cast iron, and mounted on a solid plastic base.

Mr Smith comes from Washington

2009-02-18T23:23:00.000-08:00

tomorrow morning Canada will wake up to change.

With baited breath, we will all find out whether Harper will rise to the occasion, shake his hand and say "we can too"

... ah, in a perfect world ...

moot or hooey?

Harper fought to disband the coalition just so he could meet Obama

Danny Gokey

2009-02-18T23:13:00.000-08:00

Danny Gokey is going to win American Idol this year.

He has the entire package.

He can sing, he's good looking, charismatic, loveable, has a tragic back story, and is the boy next door.

He's the all American boy in a time where people need a hero, someone to believe in.

He will win this hands down.

moot or hooey?

this year the Idol judges have allowed some real wack jobs to remain, in order to glaze over the fact that they've already made their choice.

when paying forward, always pay in cash

2009-02-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

I drive through the line up at the local Tim Horton's the other day, order a breakfast sandwich and orange juice, and continue through to the pick-up window. When I get there, the girl at the window looks like she's gonna bust out of her skin. I hand her my debit card and she gushes like the Washington Post after an Al Gore event.

“the person in front of you already paid!!!”
“what?”
“the person in front of you already paid!!!”
“why?”
“she didn't say!!”
“oh”
“have a nice day!!”
“ 'kay, thanks”

I spend the next twenty minutes trying to work out why the person in front of me would have done that.
Does she know me?
Did I let her in the line ahead of me?
That must be it. I let her in the line ahead of me... i think.

I talk to my friend Paul who just laughs and points out the absurdity of me searching for the reason for someone being nice. I settle into acceptance but it sticks with me like hot gum.

It's another week before I'm at the Tim Horton's again and I decide this time to pay it forward. I get up to the pick-up window. There's a new guy at the till.

“I'd like to pay for the person behind me too please”
“what?”
“I'd like to pay for the person behind me as well”
“oh... ok. Just a minute...”

I hand him my debit card.

“I'm going to have to run this through twice”
“sure, whatever”
“here you go, one breakfast sandwich, orange juice... and a coffee, breakfast sandwich, and apple juice”
“what?!... no, I don't want their stuff too, I just want to pay for it”
“oh”
“can I have my receipts please”
“you want your receipts?”
“yah”
“... hang on a minute...

This is starting to take a bit of time now and the guy at the window has just wandered off with my card and started a conversation with some girl behind the counter.

The whole idea of this pay it forward thing, is to brighten the day of the person behind you, but all I've managed to do is irritate the hell out of the people in line 'cause I'm taking so damned long.

The guy finally finishes his conversation, and hands me one receipt.

“here's your receipt”
“and the other one?”
“oh, right, I'll have to get your card from you again”

needless to say, I slay him with my laser vision and pull out of the line-up.

Next time, and I'm just sucker enough for punishment that there will be a next time, I'm definitely bringing cash.

moot or hooey?
cash will be obsolete by the year 2020

thou shalt not worship false idols

2009-02-11T21:26:00.000-08:00

Have they completely lost their minds!!!!

I'm absolutely flabbergasted at the judges decision to send Jamal Rogers home.

He is soooooo talented! What were they thinking!!

Nick/Norman(A for originality but can't sing), Nathanial Marshall(cute but tone deaf), Jacky(nice but flat), and Scott MacIntyre(sweet, but I'm sure they felt the need to make up for Seacrest's hilariously stupid attempt to high five the blind contestant last week), all miraculously get through but somehow Rogers doesn't make it.

Even the other contestants were shocked at that decision. So why?

moot or hooey?

the American Idol judges have never changed their minds and asked someone back, though they do reserve the right to do so.

Jonas Idol

2009-02-11T19:14:00.000-08:00

is it me or am I the only one who noticed the Jonas flub at the Grammys?

about half way through the Jonas/Wonder Grammy jam, they break into Wonder's hit song "Superstitious". Anyone with an ounce of industry savvy would have understood this as the godsend of a career boost it was for the Jonas brothers.

Instead, what did they do?

at about 2:51 into the youtube video coverage, the guitar playing Jonas is given the honor of a lifetime of singing verse two with the Wonder god, and ... he forgets the words!!

ok, so maybe he just forgot how old the kid was but man alive, it was bad enough having to watch such a lame ass coupling of legend and luck, but to then witness something that would make Simon Cowell cringe, was nothing short of embarrassing.

I mean, Stevie Wonder guys!! ... I'm just saying ...

moot or hooey?

perhaps if they did look the gift horse in the mouth, they would have seen its true value

oliver twist

2009-02-07T10:43:00.000-08:00

this is Oliver

I have no reason to post this other than it's a hillarious photo that made me laugh 'til I peed.

Oliver belongs to two dear friends of mine who live in Phoenix Arizona.

He has quite the personality.

He chases after a long since disappeared cat, at the mear mention of her name, has an afinity for walking ve-e-e-ery slow under curtains, hanging towels ,and skirts for the back bristling tickle factor, and indiscriminately breaks silent wind regardless of how many people you've invited for dinner.

Oliver has a great smile, and he really is that happy. He's a good reminder of what it means to step back and enjoy life.

Thanks Oliver!

moot or hooey?

medicines and procedures can extend the average life span by aproximately 5%, the addition of a pet, by 20%

commercial interest

2009-01-28T01:49:00.001-08:00

With the flu season in full swing I decide to tuck a box of kleenex under my arm and take a few moments to reconnect with my couch.

It's been a while since I've sat in front of the TV and I must say I'm completely reclined at the absurdity of what's fed to me every time my program takes a time out

What is this slop they've slipped into the IV.

An ad for lawyer services follows a mother as she follows her teenaged son around the house. “this is the last time she will make lunch for him”, “this is the last time she will pick up after him”, “this is the last time she will say good-bye”. A drunk driver will kill him on his way to school. Now she's gonna have to call --- services.

Are you kidding me?

Next, an ad shows a pre-teen child walking away from a crowd and laying down in a field on her back. A white sheet is placed over her body and pulled up over her head. She is dead. A warning about driving drunk.

For pete's sake people.

Is this really necessary, with all the real life violence and sadness we experience on a daily basis that we need to be hammered with violent images during the down time too? Is that what it takes to extend our attention span so we'll buy an idea?

Then there're those lame ass Lotto 6/49 commercials poking at people struggling “some people have to deal with tragedy blah blah blah... well this (winning scads of $$) is my scorching desert” or the one where the guy buys, buys, buys all the cars and toys.

Lay around and buy...

That's all those lame ass script writers at the Lotto lab can come up with. Well someone certainly won the lottery with that job.

And then there are the Boatshow commercials. Yah, that's really funny when the old man psyches his grandson up for a day of fishing with gramps in a boat, and then there's no boat. That's just sad, not to mention mean. What a loser.

Violence with a hammer, to make sure the message sinks in, greed and consumption, insensitivity and callousness.

But surely they insult our intelligence with those assumptions...yes?... only, no one is saying anything, are they. No one seems to be disagreeing. The ads still run. We watch them without disruption. Man it's embarrassing being human.

moot or hooey?

humans will relate much quicker and easier to something negative than something positive, and respond likewise.

Obama drama

2009-01-22T23:08:00.000-08:00

now that Guantanamo is obsolete, where are they going to store all those orange suits?

moot or hooey?

Cuba has never cashed any of the rent cheques from the USA for the use of the base.

if the shoe fits...

2009-01-01T06:01:00.000-08:00

Shoes can say a lot about a person, especially when they're hurled at the head of the president of the United States.

When Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes (yes he managed to remove and hurl both before being pounced upon), President Bush responded by joking they were, “size ten”.

He told the people in the room “don't worry about it. Calm down” and even chuckled as Mr. al-Zaidi was tacked, beaten, and dragged from the room.

Bush didn't appear to give the incident much thought. He gave a short speech then quickly circled back to the conversation at hand. “In terms of the agreements, this is a major achievement...”

Mr. al-Zaidi was whisked away to jail and charged with assaulting a foreign president, which carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison.

Apparently he later wrote a (secret and confidential and therefore unable to be disclosed) letter of apology to Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki stating that a known (un-named) militant had induced him to throw the shoes.

His trial has recently been postponed for appeal, his lawyer Mr. Dhiya'a al-Sa'adi asking that the charges be shifted from “assault” to “insult”, which carries a lesser maximum of two years in prison and could quite likely result in al-Zaidi being released on bail.

Mr. al-Sa'adi claims it was someone “exercising their freedom of expression”.

According to his aforementioned speech, it seems Bush agrees.

“It's one way to gain attention. It's like going to a political rally and have people yell at you. It's like driving down the street and have people not gesturing with all five fingers. It's a way for people to draw attenti... I don't know what the guy's cause is. But one thing is for certain, he caused you to ask me a question about him.”

“... that's what happens in free societies when people try to draw attention to themselves. So, I guess he was affected 'cause he caused you to say something about it now.”

So Bush can't guess what al-Zaidi's cause was. Knowing what we know about Bush, that's not entirely unbelievable. But even a clued out, pretentious, fear mongering, nut-ball has a built in fight or flight response, so if Bush can calmly state “I didn't feel the least bit threatened by it” shouldn't we at least hear him out and give al-Zaidi a break? Surely the “bag 'o hammers” thingy doesn't apply to animal instinct, after all, he did duck.

Besides, like al-Sa'adi says “has anyone ever died from a shoe?”

... I guess we'll find out

moot or hooey?

All claims from al-Zaidi's family and lawyer that he's been tortured, resulting in a missing tooth, stitches on his nose, injury to his jaw, cigarette burns on his ears, and has been beaten with metal instruments have been denied.

Jim Fulton

2008-12-21T22:40:00.000-08:00

Ode to James R Fulton, a man who touched the lives of others with indescribable exhilaration, joy, and awe.

Jimmy, you have lived the lives of a thousand men, harnessed a thousand dreams, given us hope and something to believe in when everyone said there was none to be had.

You made things happen. Positive change. Tackled the impossible without fear. Told us it wasn't beyond our reach. Given us belief in a future brighter than anything we could imagine. Showed us there are no limits to the imagination. And proved to us again and again, that all things are possible.

The enormity of your heart and soul, your boundless energy, and spirited life force is incomparable. You have walked with giants Jimmy, and humbled them all.

I am both blessed and honoured to know you. There is no one can compare with you, now and forever.

I miss you already, the kindness in your heart, your generous and compassionate soul, and the warmth and love in your bear hugs.

love now, and forever...

moot or hooey?

Jim once walked into parliament with a spawning salmon stuffed down his pants, to prove a point.

Sean Penn at the Huffington Post

2008-12-16T14:31:00.000-08:00

Sean Penn has got a bad rap over the years. He's walloped reporters for getting too close to loved ones, been criticized for being too political, but think of the guts and gonads that takes.

He's not only a phenomenal actor and director, but has proven to be a talent in the writing field as well, articulate and smart, as you'll see from the article below.

He's fiercely loyal to what and whom he believes in, and he's not afraid to stand up for those people and beliefs and say the things or ask the questions most people shy away from.

I believe the more people like Mr Penn there are, who are willing to stand up, speak up and boldly move forward, the more likely we are to be inspired to believe in the reality of the power of the voice of a single man.

check out Penn's article/essay, Mountain of Snakes as well as a multitude of others at the Huffington Post.

moot or hooey?

more significant change has been made by lone advocates.

momma said not to play with those balls

2008-11-12T08:45:00.000-08:00

Eyes are a kid's dream play thing.

There are a thousand things a kid can do with his eyes, none of them involving seeing.

Have you ever tried to touch your eyeball? Not the colourful part in the centre, the white veiny part around it.

Probably not a very good thing to do.

It feels just like a peeled egg but you've got to wet your finger first or it'll stick. It can move around too, like there's lots of space back there.

Probably not a good thing either.

Everything is about the eyes when you're a kid.

-Don't sit too close to the TV, you'll go blind.

-Don't cross your eyes, they'll stick that way.

-Don't rub your eyes too hard, you'll push your eyeball around backwards.

-Don't turn your eyelids inside out, you'll pop your eyeballs out.

Eyeballs are a mother's biggest worry. Way bigger than a wrenched ear, a pinched nose, a smacked head, or a whacked bottom, there're no problems with those. All this importance put on them and yet you never hear a mother threaten,

“you better do your homework or I'll poke your eye out”

sacrilege!!

Wouldn't that be the threat of all threats though? Alas, the eyeball is sacred.

Still stuck in the adolescent years, I go into an optometrist's office on a whim to see what a pair of purple contacts might look like.

It's like that scene near the end of fight club where Edward Norton's character is in the parking lot punching himself in the head.

All I can see is this big fat finger with a piece of plasticy glass stuck to the end of it headed straight for my eyeball.

With all the strength I can muster, my left hand pushing on the back of my head, I cannot get my right hand to shove a foreign object in my eye.

It goes against everything I've ever been taught as a child.

-Don't run with scissors.

-Put down that pea shooter.

-Don't aim that pellet gun at you brother.

the optometrist offers to lend a hand. HA! ...I leave.

As I get a bit older I watch movies like Un Chien Andalou, A Clockwork Orange, Total Recall, and marvel at the use of eyeballs as a gross out factor. If you really want to scare someone to death, go for the eyes.

I think about my eyes a lot... then I forget about them. until...

I'm helping a friend sew a skirt the other day and the over-sized needle we're working with attempts to thrust its way through an exceptionally thick piece of fabric and snaps in half, sending the sharp end with the little hole propelling through the air. It bounces off my left cheek and lands on the table.

I've been sewing for decades and should know better about eye protection. I take this as a sign from the eye gods to get my butt down to the optometrist for a long overdue eye exam.

eyeball spearing near miss = eye exam.

If you really think about it:

eyeball spearing near miss = head exam.

I make an appointment, drag my butt down to the optometrist, and sit in the waiting room doing that bouncy knee thing.

I've never liked the idea of anyone getting close to my face, unless my heart's stopped, so the idea of someone with probes and lights shining a quarter of an inch from my eyelids, through the centre of my eyeballs to the back of my brain doesn't thrill me in the least.

I've only even considered this appointment because of the incident above. That, and all the recent ads I've come across pointing out the inevitable devastating sight loss from missing that simple yet crucial annual eye exam. I know my time has come. The needle has spoken. So here I am.

Dr. Ashraf is great. He sits me down, asks a bunch of intelligent questions, and conducts an amazing series of tests. I like him right away. He gets so close at one point, I could give him a little kiss on the cheek. I don't, but I wonder if anyone ever has.

After about an hour he scribbles something down on a piece of paper, slides it across the table and tells me to look around the office to see if I like any of the frames, 'cause I'm gonna need glasses.

I look down at the paper then back up at him. Surely he's joking, I chuckle to myself.

“I could probably just get a pair of reading glasses, yes?”

He shakes his head.

“your eyes are bad. You should have had glasses a long time ago. When was the last time you saw an Optometrist?”

“about a year and a half ago” I reply.

“and they didn't tell you you needed glasses?”

I stumble for an explanation.

“well they did, but I didn't think they were serious”

he sits there looking at me, with this look, just ... looking.

I make some lame excuse to leave the office, pay the bill, and go home to sulk.

A few days later I slink back to the office and begin scanning the shelves for frames.

“just looking” I tell the girl behind the desk, still in denial.

In a moment of what I can only assume was a lapse in sanity, I pick out the biggest, thickest, Buddy Holly frames I can find. Big brown horned rimmed glasses Freud would be proud of. When I pick them up a few days later, I'm given a small verbal manual on how to navigate.

Turns out you need fabulous posture to wear glasses properly. If nothing else, they're worth getting for that. You need to hold your head straight or you'll find yourself doing the Monty Python silly walk trying to get up the stairs. That is if you ordered progressives, which alas I did.

Two weeks later and I'm getting the hang of these things stuck to my face. But a few words of advice.

-Don't order progressives: unless you have extremely stable neck muscles.

-Don't drive with progressives: you'll kill yourself and all the other blurry things on the road.

-Don't attempt to use your peripheral vision with progressives: unless you're in to roller-coasters or have an extremely vivid imagination.

Last piece of advice: listen to your mom and take care of your eyes. Do whatever she tells you, and some. Play with all the balls you like, but stay away from the eyes.

moot or hooey?

Makapiapia means “eye goo” in Hawaiian

because my father was a veteran and a cowboy

2008-11-10T20:58:00.001-08:00

dad (left) and his friend Joe.

dad and friends from the army.

dad (left) and army friends out for a ride.

more friends join the group for a ride.

dad's favourite cowboy.

dad, Helene on dad's horse Jetty, and Kenny.

Marie the sheep, Sporty the mutt, Harold, Grandma, Clara, dad (15 yrs old), and Helene.

walking down memory lane for my dad.

moot or hooey?

memory is magical.

Nosbeeratu

2008-11-02T21:50:00.000-08:00

this is hilarious!!

moot or hooey?

Nosferatu's real name is Graf Orlok.

bloody scary

2008-10-30T22:16:00.000-07:00

This Hallowe'en I thought I'd look for the ultimate horror story to share.

I take a walk through a couple of parks in the downtown east side, visit a few Surrey malls, hang out at the Main Street Skytrain station, scan the web for Palin speeches, even sit in at dinner time at the care facility where my father lives.

Nothing. Not a bite. Not one visibly blood soaked fang anywhere.

Dracula is schlepping off on some oil encrusted beach in the Bahamas sipping on a pomegranate slushy, sand drying his cape.

I give up, pack up the wooden stake, dislodge the silver bullets, and head to a friend's place to help him put the finishing touches on his French maid costume.

About half way down Granville street we stop at a red light.

There's an enormous black, double cab, gas guzzling, jacked up, monster truck to the left and two wee little Toyotas up ahead. One in front of us, the other in front of the hell demon.

The light turns green and the Toyota in front of us pulls ahead. The other Toyota, not so lucky.

It stalls... oh.

The incubus beside us decides to lend a devilish hand. Throws her in gear and rams the little Toyota as hard as it can in the distance it has to accelerate.

bbb-r---oooong!!!! goes the plastic trunk, in, then out again as the little car bounces forward.

By this time the Toyota is running again and I'm guessing they catch a glimpse of the smoke coming from Beelzebub's ears because... Slam! into “D”, scree-e-e-e-e-ech!!! they tear out of there faster than a lightning bolt off a Saran wrapped cat.

I think what qualifies this as the most horrific story of the We'en is the fact that Brad and Janet are out-of-towners. Quebecers. Gilles Ducept-ers. Perhaps lost in a strange city, writing diaries and video travelogues. Maybe a blog...

We try to get the licence plate number but Bete Noire slips down an alleyway and loses us. Sigh, the little Toyota was probably half way home anyway.

moot or hooey?

maudit bloke! means “god damn English Canadian”, in Quebec French.

before you vote

2008-10-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

TheStar.com Party Game

hey check out the link above. if you're unsure of who to vote for, it might help, or not...

moot or hooey?

40% of the population closes their eyes when they vote.

september 11th

2008-08-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

I quit my job the other day. Actually it was about six weeks ago.
I gave two months notice so still have another two weeks to go.

I've been working at the same place for eight and a half years, and although certain aspects of the job are still enjoyable, I felt it was time to move forward into something else.

When I started this job I was essentially thrown into a lion's pit of disarray and asked to make some sense of it all. I was alone in this work and forced to come up with inventive ideas for managing and completing the multitude of tasks I'd need to do in order to make things function on an even keel.

Things have been running smoothly now for some time. It's not an intellectually stimulating job, mostly a bunch of banking, managing, organizing, and coordinating, but I'm happy to do it for the most part, because it frees up my employers to work on their environmental projects. Projects that are designed to benefit us all. Well, most of them.

I sat down and wrote a long letter outlining all the positive aspects of the job over the years, all the best moments, favourite memories etc, then I went to my employers' home and had a long talk, one to one, with my senior employer.

I was asked why I was leaving, and was ready with an answer. An answer that wasn't anywhere near the truth, but under the circumstances, the only answer possible to give.

I said that a recent illness I'd fully recovered from had forced me to take a good look at my life. Well that part was true. And that my recent trip to France coupled with the incredible response I'd received at the writer's workshop had also given me an opportunity to take another look at my life. Ok, this part was also true.

What I didn't mention was that the illness had been brought on by stress from over work, and that the writer's workshop served to remind me of my under utilization in areas where my talents lay.
Not necessarily writing. That just served as the wake up call.

What I didn't say, was that I felt like a pack horse. Unappreciated and stacked to the ceiling, and when ever there was one more job to do, something no one else wanted to take on, felt was below them, or just grew tired of, it was simply piled on top of all the rest of the stuff and strapped down tight, without any consideration of how my legs might be doing under all the weight.

These issues had been discussed several times in the past, the last conversation culminating in me standing firm in my resolution to not accept anything more. I was already over taxed.
This was countered with disgruntle, my senior employer complaining that it wasn't fair I didn't take on more work and alleviate that stress from them.

I suggested hiring a part time worker. They declined. They couldn't see how my job could have possibly increased in work load over the years and why I wasn't able to adjust to that even if it had.
I gave up and it was never discussed again, except between my two employers, who now deemed me a slacker.

My senior employer stood up at the staff meeting and announced my eminent departure.
I would be leaving after eight and a half years, to pursue my dreams and become a writer.

A collective gasp from staff.
I gasped too, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't for the same reason.

I'm gonna do what!!?

Everyone stood staring at me waiting for a response. I didn't know what to make of this, so I just said that it was all a big cover up and that I was just looking for a way to get out of staff kitchen duty.
They laughed, thank god.
I immediately felt the air clear, and so I took this as my cue to keep that sentiment flowing until I left in September. Exit on a positive note.

Everyone I spoke to congratulated me and gave me great praise for having the guts to make a decision like this. Some even expressed envy at a life change they themselves wished for but were unable to make.
I was tempted to outline the dictionary definition of the fight or flight response, but just nodded and thanked them for their support.

People kept asking who my publisher was going to be. They'd really taken this seriously. I took calls all that day from people I interacted with who knew my employers, and they were all asking the same question. Wow! This was thorough and news sure got around fast.

Eventually though, I was worn down, broke my silence, and gave them the details of my future plans and prospects.
I was going to be unemployed and begging for change on the streets outside their offices.

“no really, who's your publisher” they'd persist.
“no really, I'm gonna want some money” I'd lob back.

It seemed my employers needed to have a reason bigger than me just wanting to leave. I suppose that way there'd be no questions asked.

So I've been lobbing back and forth, dodging the odd direct smash, and generally dancing around the court until I leave. Another skill to scribble down on my resume, if I ever feel a need to throw something out there again.

Eight more days and counting! We're on a four day work week, so you guessed it, September 11th. Eight more days to train the two full time employees hired to replace me.

Moot or Hooey?

If you want to get hold of emergency services in the Yukon or the Northwest Territories in Canada, you must dial three digits plus either 1111, 2222, 3333, or 5555, depending on who you want to talk to.
In Nunavut, Canada, you've got to know the local numbers.

have a look at this fabulous video!

2008-08-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

HISTORIA DE UN LETRERO (THE STORY OF A SIGN)

when in Rome..... never, never, never eat the lasagne

2008-06-30T06:29:00.000-07:00

About a gazillion years ago, when we're impossibly naive, my friend Michelle and I pack our bags and head for the Philippines.

We get as far as the airport (there's a coup) and we're told we can be re-routed to either Hong Kong, or Thailand. We choose Thailand. Why, who knows. We sure don't.

We end up on Khohsan Road (as usual for most backpackers) in a seedy hotel that smells like something out of a Tom Waits album.

The following day we hop an old army truck up to Chiang Mai and book into an odd hotel that looks more like an asylum than anything. We're happy they have toilet paper and running water.

As soon as we've settled, we zip out to check out the town. We sign up for a four day elephant trek, for the following day, that'll take us through the hills of the Karen tribes.

We pick up a few essentials for the trip, back to the room to shower and change, and head out again to find somewhere to eat and explore the nightlife. We stumble across a restaurant that claims to cater to western tastes.

Now we're talking the far northern regions of a third world county that's renowned for its rice-noodle dishes, tasty soups, and seafood... so of course we order heaping plates of lasagne.

And later on when Michelle looks at me with big panicked doe eyes and asks for an ambulance, the question “who the fuck orders lasagne in a tropical country” still manages to elude us.

At first I don't believe her. Michelle tends to be a bit of a whiner, and I'm about at the end of my patience. Besides, where the hell do you get an ambulance in the middle of nowhere? There's only one place with even a remote resemblance to a hospital, and we're already here.

Michelle's laying on the bed on her side, clutching her stomach, and I'm doing what I can to get her to relax, when boom, it hits me, like I've been sucker punched in the stomach. Holy shit does this hurt.

I must have a pretty ridiculous look on my face because in the midst of all her cries, Michelle busts out laughing.

We spend the next nine or ten hours with one end or the other on the toilet or in the sink. First come, first served.

We don't have an ounce of anything left in us by the time the real pain sets in.

We lay on our beds looking at one another in silence, until I'm forced to turn over. I'm convinced I'm going to die and I'm a little disconcerted with the complacent look in Michelle's eyes.

This is it? This is how I'm going to go? I'm going to shit myself to death?

I've often thought of how I might go when my time comes. It usually ends in a blaze of glory, bullets flying, bombs going off, the last minute rescue. But this?!!! I can't believe it... (shit!)

Oddly, there's an uncanny acceptance that comes with truly believing you're at the end. Never once thought of my “stuff”. Happy to just lay there and drift into oblivion. Perhaps that's what was happening to Michelle.

Needless to say we made it through, despite our convictions, but man what a time we had on the elephant trek. Oh yes, we went. We spent the next four days in the jungle with dysentery, living with five others in very close quarters with nothing but sparsely woven straw doors to separate us and the makeshift toilet at the far end of the room.

We laughed our heads off in between bouts of pain and pooh. Never did get to know the others that well. Certainly didn't exchange any addresses.

And the reason I'm remembering this story at all, is that I'm reading “Bangkok 8” ? I am, but it's got more to do with yet another near death encounter with a plate of lasagne.

Now I was born with thumbs, so I don't get why this is happening to me again. There's something fundamentally wrong with the way I drift through experiences, tortured and scathed, only to repeat them again and again.

I'm in a beautiful village in the south of France. I rent a bicycle, ride to the neighbouring village of Gien for lunch, and find this cute little cafe called Les Thes de Capucine.

Gien is a small village bordering on the Mediterranean Sea, and is renowned for its mussels, oysters, and salads... so of course I order a heaping plate of lasagne.

Thirty minutes later, and floating on my back in the bay of Madrague, it hits me, like I've been sucker punched in the stomach. Holy shit do I remember what's coming next.

I pinch my cheeks, bolt from the sea, throw my hoodie on, and scramble up the hill towards a small campground I saw on the way in.

"port-a-pottie, port-a-pottie", thank god I know some French.

I'm walking like a duck, zig zagging this way and that, staring wildly through the liquid lapping fiercely at my eyes.

Who the fuck builds a campground without toilets!!

I seriously consider going back in the water, swimming wa-a-a-a-a-ay out, diving to the bottom, and letting 'er rip, but I'd have to swim about a kilometre to get past all the boats in the bay, and who knows what man eating sea-life I'd attract.

I'm spinning in circles now, not knowing which way to turn, so I sit down on a log. I just won't let it out, I think bravely to myself with my left brain, praying fanatically with my right.

Nope, not going to work.

I spot a small cluster of trees just behind military lines as I feel the rage of Montezuma consume me like the fire pits of hell, forcing logic, etiquette, and shame out the only orifices that haven't completely shut down, and I get up and run.

I've just come out of the water, and I'm wearing very tight, nylon, quick dry, Velcro fastened shorts, with a cotton draw-string tied in a knot, and soaked shut with sea water and sand.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!

(intermission)

ok then. Back on my bicycle I'm peddling down the road, “hello sea, hello trees, hello boats.” Life is grand.

Two days later, and I'm back on the beach. A big bottle of water, a huge roll of toilet paper, and, because it's either this or permanent brain nodes, a tattoo emblazoned on my menu grasping hand that simply reads, “lasagne.”

Moot or Hooey?

on average it takes a person six times to remember something, and three times to forget.

the old man and the pee

2008-06-27T05:05:00.000-07:00

I join this writer's workshop this summer, in a little place just outside Avignon, France, called La Roque, Alric. and have a pretty good time. I learn all sorts of great ways to pull characters out of one's head and on to the page. All in all, it's a grand success.

One man in particular I get along with famously and we decide, that once the course is over, to meet one last time for dinner just the two of us. He's a dynamic man, with an extraordinary past.

I listen attentively for hours, ignoring the smell of formaldehyde and the strings of melted cheese down his cheeks, moustache and stomach inflated shirt, as he sails over crests upon crests of remarkable remembrances, enthralling me with each tack through history. In his eighty plus years, he's done more than most people could imagine. Filled the cups of a couple of lifetimes.

We drink and talk, drink and talk, and not once throughout the entire evening, do I fathom for even a nano-second, that he might have an ulterior motive. Not, that is, until his hand slides across the table engulfing mine as he gazes deeply and suggests we go up to his room for a night-cap.

Ummm... ew...

One minute I'm having dinner with this sweet, silver haired man, musing quietly to myself about all the stories I'll be able to reiterate to my aging father of the same generation in the care facility where he lives, and the next minute I'm dodging the geriatric gene-pool.

My mind dashes to imagery of incontinence and the hobbit like virility of a gallon of viagra. I can't seem to get past the initial shock of the situation, to the multitude of “I don't think so's”. It's just wrong on so many levels.

Yes, he's famous. Yes, he's interesting. Yes, he's intelligent... but he's sooooooo old!!

I can't imagine (or rather, I can) what an eighty plus body looks like. I watched a nurse change my father's diaper once, and definitely don't ever want to go there again.

Then it occurs to me that this is all my fault.

Didn't I wish upon all the stars in heaven, to meet an interesting, intelligent man? Didn't I ask for someone with a little change in his pocket, just enough to take me to dinner now and then? Ah Harry, you're all that and more. Way more.... fifty five years to be precise.

It's a full moon tonight. South of France. Sandy beaches. So you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be out there at midnight with notepad in hand, wishing like crazy in a truckload of detail, for the man of my dreams.

Moot or Hooey?

The penis is the only part of a man's body that doesn't age.

photoless in phrance

2008-06-25T03:11:00.001-07:00

it's almost pointless having this blog with only half the skills required to properly post.
mind you i'm too damned lazy to go back to the room and get my camera so...

am sitting along the cote d'azur in a little place called Hyeres, with my toes in the Méditérannée, sweating into my keyboard.

i found this little hotel called the Calypso, and being the Jacques Cousteau fan that i am, couldn't resist.

i spent a good long week writing my brains out in a little hide away just outside Avignon, called La Roque, Alric.
nothing to do but slave away, pumping out line after line... well, that, and drink a gallon of fabulous wine... so i thought i deserved a little r and r.

i'm not a big "lay in the sun and fry to a crisp" person, so being here on the cote is a bit like a good game of paintball, dashing from sheltering tree to sheltering tree.

being an environmentalist of sorts, i'm always blown away with the way other countries approach the environment... or rather, don't...

i walk along the coast of some of the post reputable places on earth, for both beauty and history, only to find them lined with plastic and i'm not talking implants.

in canada, we're continuously bombarded with news of our high ranking place on the most wanted list of environmental slackers, but you've got to wonder when you see stuff like this where "they" get their stats.

whining is a lovely asset to compliment and justify the longing for another enormous self righteous bowl of environmentally friendly harvested mussels.

moot or hooey?

yawn... now that was a hiatus!!

2008-06-09T18:17:00.000-07:00

ever feel like you've got a big hairy living gargoyle perched squarely on your abdomen squeezing the dickens out of all that's left of your creative juices...?

i finally get my act together long enough to get back to writing, and find myself in a panic because i'm leaving for france in four days... to do a writers' retreat... sigh!

i'm actually looking forward to it a lot, and plan to spend tons of time on the beach, lost at the bottom of an enormous bowl of mussels... in between fits of creativity... i hope.

i say fits, because that's what it's felt like lately. i love writing, really! that's why i signed up to do the retreat. except i'm a little paniced right now, because it's only four days away and i'm dry as an Atacama skeleton... fucking gargoyles.

try as i might, all that comes out is dark and gloomy. even more deparaging is that i find that extremely funny. i'm desensitized and off the rails. a bit of a morbid secret pleasure seeker.

what's happening to me..? what are our mentors going to say when they read our stuff. will mine make them run for Hannibal's face mask? depends on what they thought of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre i suppose.

i've got four days to turn things around. i know i can, i know i can, i know....

Gilligan's, of Gilligan's Island, first name was Willy.

moot or hooey?

2008-05-01T18:56:00.000-07:00

aint this a corker! for the first time in 28 years a Canadian film will be opening the Cannes Film Festival !

It was six years in the making for Canadian script writer/actor/director Don McKellar (The Red Violin, Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, Highway 61) to adapt Jose Saramago's "Blindness" .

Brazilian Fernando Mereilles (City of God, The Constant Gardener, The City of Men) directed the film starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. If there was ever a year I would shave my head to attend... !!!

I have misgivings about Moore playing the role of "the woman" though. For me she just doesn't carry enough weight to do it justice. ouch! I apologise. But this story almost made me puke it was so intensely good. The only other book that has had that affect on me was John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath".
Anyway, I would have liked to see them really work hard to cast it a little... more accurately. It would have been a lot truer to the dialogue in the book, as well as the vulnerability and ferocity that emerge from that character, if that role had been filled by someone like Shohreh Aghdashloo , Meryl Streep, or Glenn Close and while we're at it why not Christina Ricci or Mila Kunis as the young girl...

Regardless, I will wait with baited breath until its theatrical release!!

moot or hooey?
In the film "Michael Clayton" George Clooney gets his character's age wrong.

green green bags of home

2008-04-23T18:16:00.000-07:00

Everywhere you look these days, people are getting on the hydrogen train to planet organic!

It's awesome watching people opt for reusable mugs, trade in their plastic bags for recycled, reusable grocery bags, take the bus or ride their bikes instead of drive, to name a few.
There's an incredible palpable pulse of change happening in the lower mainland these days.
Of course there has always been a small percentage of people doing these things for years, but recently these simple yet environmentally fundamental changes seem to be spreading like wild flowers, positively beautiful !

This year on Earth Day (Apr 22nd) the concentration seemed to be on eliminating the use of plastics bags.

Starbucks offered free coffee and a cloth shopping bag in exchange for using your own coffee mug. Safeway offered a free cloth shopping bag if you brought in your old plastic ones. Capers/Whole Foods were giving out free cloth shopping bags and basil seeds. Everywhere you looked people were making a difference!

It's been interesting talking to people about what they've been doing as individuals. Most people seem to be right into getting rid of their plastic bags, however, one of the most common dilemmas heard from people re-using plastic shopping bags as garbage bags, has been "if not plastic, then what".

There are indeed alternatives as some of you may know, but for the average layman, they aren't always obvious or clear. And it seems that somewhere during that train ride to petroleum-free euphoria, someone neglected to blaze the sister trail to the shelves of alternative household supplies.

One of the solutions to the dilemma is biodegradable garbage bags. They can be found at most grocery stores, anywhere from Safeway to Choices, and come in all sizes for all purposes.

So, to top off all the fabulous efforts by all participating establishments and ice the organic carrot cake this Earth Day, and every day for that matter, it would have been fabulous to see a huge bin right next to those easy to reach gum and magazines, filled to the brim with bags upon bags of these biodegradable alternatives.

Perhaps then people might be more likely to reach over and pick up a green, green bag for home.

moot or hooey?

80 percent of "at the cash register pick up puchases" are spontaneous.

gone baby gone

2008-04-06T17:44:00.001-07:00

Sergeant Thomas George Prince, who?...

Long Tack Sam, who?...

Lenny Breau, who?...

Portia White, who?...

moot or hooey?

even brain damage doesn’t seem to affect semantic memory, so why... i’m just saying...

back to the future...

2008-04-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

well after all my moping and hum/hawing about how much i missed the south of france, (see tuscany calling) it looks like i’m destined to return.

out of the blue a man i used to date through those glorious french summers tracks me down by googling me... thanks google... i mention this not because it’s a good thing. more to vent my exasperation. the last time i saw eric i spent the better part of the day dodging around buildings and stone walls (below) trying to escape.

the second to the last time i saw him he had casually invited me to coffee during a break in classes and i spent the next two days his captive in the forests of god knows where. ah those french!

this time around i’ve been accepted to a writers’ workshop/retreat in a small village just outside of avignon (scarily close to eric). i’m hoping the angst will come in useful when approaching the second plot point.

moot or hooey?

the difference between an obsessed partner and a stalker is that in the case of the latter, the person at the receiving end is their "prey".

mr right

2008-02-07T21:39:00.000-08:00

A girl I know at work has stated several times that there simply aren't any good single men in Vancouver. She's been single since I've known her, which is creeping up on eight years now.

I recently got back from an extended trip to Ecuador. There was anything but a lack of great single men there, of all ages. I'd consider myself a pretty average looking woman but I couldn't go far without someone sitting down beside me and striking up a good conversation. And age didn't seem to matter. Young ones, older ones, it just didn't seem to be an issue. Some of them would blatantly hit on you sure, but some just wanted to talk, and they all seemed to have a way of engaging you that made you feel beautiful, interesting, and desirable.

I'd experienced a similar thing in other countries as well. Spain, Cuba, Chile, France… all very different countries with very different standards of living, lifestyles and etiquette.

Ecuador is a particularly friendly country, with particularly lovely men. And what finally occurred to me, was that the fundamental difference with men in Canada was that they never engaged you. Oh sure, you could probably go to a bar, slam back a few drinks and talk your face off to someone itching to get in your pants and I'm sure they'd be willing to "engage" you all night, but generally speaking, men simply never,well, en-ga-a-a-a-ged you… in any way. Blank stares, no conversation, what does she want? can't get too close or make eye contact for too long or she'll assume...
There always seemed to be this unconscious psychoanalysis as they looked at you trying to sum you up without the effort of words… (sigh).

And just to kind of balance things out here a bit. It's not like the women in this country make it any easier for the guys. We're just as bad ladies. Maybe even worse. How long does it take a girl to roll her eyes, yawn, giggle to her friends, or cut someone off if she thinks for even a nano-second he might not be "the guy"? we're not exactly inviting. whatever happened to just communicating, for the sake of communicating...

So I guess what I'm saying is that I don't agree with the girl at work. There are plenty of great single guys in Canada… Vancouver even… we just need to pull out our mighty snow shovels and after we've cleared a nice safe path to our front doors, take those same shovels and scrape away some of the shit that's been piling up between us.

moot or hooey?

A good conversation is a powerful aphrodisiac for most women.

tuscany calling

2008-01-23T16:20:00.000-08:00

i'm here in one of the most beautiful places on earth and i don't want to leave. La Fortuna, Costa Rica. i could curl up in one of the hammocks and forget the rest of the world with little trouble. so, why do i feel so restless...

read about a million books these past few weeks. the latest is a book by Frances Mayes called Under the Tuscan Sun. my friend Sandy produced the film of the same name so i was curious to see how closely they'd followed the book.

i remember a few years ago when i'd spend summers in the south of France in a little village called Chantemerle-les-Grignan.

stone buildings set on a small mountain overlooking rolling fields of lavender and sunflowers.

my friend Matthew had convinced me one year to hop a train over from Austria for a weekend 'fete'. the fete lasted for four glorious summers, dining in open fields, traveling to Sete et Nime for the oysters, wine and mussels on the sandy beaches, and l'amour... we simply cannot forget l'amour... some the best times in my life were during those summers.

so i crack the cover of Tuscan Sun and at once am transported back to that glorious place.

i know, it's Italy not France, but the stone houses, the small villages filled with friendly locals, fresh produce, rolling fields... the ambience seems so familiar. i read through the first few chapters and am hit with a strange sense of longing. a longing to return to Europe, to the countryside and disappear into the hills.

so here i am in a Costa Rican Shangri-la dreaming about somewhere else. go figure.

moot or hooey?

"the grass is always greener on the other side" is an expression invented by someone with way too much time on their hands. that, and an extreme lack of perspective.

viva los diferencias... i think (Montanita part 3)

2008-01-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

back in Guayaquil, the two guys on their way back to England, i laugh with the friends who introduced them to me, reiterating the $0 .75 story from Montanita. when i get to the part where i´m left in the restaurant they bust out in hysterics. it´s a funny story, but not that funny, at least i didn´t think so until they pointed out a little faux pas on my part.

here's a closer recap of the conversation i had with the staff at the restaurant, one with whom i'd been flirting with all evening.

(guys storm out...)

"disculpe me", i say (i´m sorry)
"los hombres son locos" (the guys are crazy)
"soy muy embarazada" (i´m very embarrassed)

for all you out there who speak enough Spanish to feel my pain, i thank you.

(correct translation of conversation)

"disculpe me" (i'm sorry)
"los hombres son locos" (the guys are crazy)
"soy muy embarazada" (i'm very pregnant)

embarazada = pregnant ... who'd a thunk

so the waiters now know what the guys were arguing about. it must have been pretty strange for them to watch me then cross the road to a bar and sit there drinking until two in the morning with two completely different men.

we actually spent an additional four days in that town, frequenting that same restaurant, alas still unaware of my linguistical error... hmm

moot or hooey?

the creators of the Spanish language sat down with the creators of the French language and laughed their faces off as they deliberately twisted things around for the Anglo Saxons.

perspective (Montanita part 2)

2008-01-05T16:12:00.000-08:00

some things i understand, some things i don´t understand, and some things i... well i don´t understand those either...

last night was one of those times i just wasn´t getting it.

i go out for dinner with two new friends who have been pals since childhood. we enjoy a fabulous dinner with the biggest icecream deserts i think i´ve ever attempted.

right in the middle of paying, one of them realizes he´s a little short of cash. .75 cents short, yawn, and... however, this for some unknown reason infuriates the other guy and he refuses to cover him until the morning suggesting he get change for the 20 in his pocket instead, and pay up right away. this conversation goes back and forth for about five minutes, me in the middle trying to figure out what part i´d obviously missed.

the first guy storms off to find change and i tell the second guy that i've got a bunch of ones in my pocket but he refuses to take them claiming he was trying to make a point and that the first guy was always coming up short.

the first guy comes back without change, all sarcasm and fire until he finally pisses the second guy off enough where he gets up from the table, slams down some money, tells the other to fuck off, and leaves. the first guy then slams down some money, yells after guy number two that he´ll be back playing pool in the bar, and leaves....

when the smoke settles, i´m sitting there in the middle of the restaurant with a big stack of money, doing my best to apologise to the staff who are shaking their heads and nodding.

i apologise, pay the bill, exit the restaurant, cross the road, and set up shop with two very handsome young guys from my hotel. i spread the change out on the table and manage, in Spanish, something to the effect of two friends of mine insisting we have drinks on them.

a very happy ending indeed!!

moot or hooey?

if you, as a woman, have not been hit on within your first three hours in Ecuador, well, you´re simply not in Ecuador. you´ve been rerouted.

Montanita

2008-01-03T16:55:00.000-08:00

a very easy three hour bus ride up the coast from Guayaguil pops us down in the middle of what can only be discribed as a time slip back to Thailand in the late eighties.

sand roads, loud music pounding from the bars and restaurants, fresh fish, fruit from the trees, the beach at your doorstep, and surfer dudes everywhere, i mean everywhere.

Montanita is the Ecuadorian surfers´ paradise.

this place is alive with energy, not to mention frogs, dogs, and mosquitos.
we settle into our hotel and go check out the pool by the beach. this place has been recommended be an Ecuadorian friend who will be joining us in a few days.
that night we spoil ourselves with an incredible dinner across the road, head over to the pub for a few hours, then back to the hostal for a game of euchre.
we call it a night around 2am and head to bed...

that´s about as far as any of us get...

while taking in the sights, food, and beer, the hotel manager sets up a dance club... right under our windows... um, thanks

4am finds us all back down at the pub blurry-eyed, slumped captive and resolved, against the back wall of the bar bobbing our heads to the techno whateverthefuck they´re playing, trying to look amused.

we are now safely and sanely stowed away two sand humps down the road in a fabulous place we must have walked right past the day before.
our visit gets off to a rocky start, but seriously, an entire small surfer hangout populated by Argentinians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Chileans, ... foreigners from all corners of the world all speaking Spanish, hanging by the beach, smiling and dancing the night away, who could complain about a little lost sleep.

moot or hooey?

Ecuador is rated the safest country to travel in of all the Americas