Across Weirdish Wild Space

God, I love The Onion. I”m very glad that even their ability to poke fun at those in power hasn’t been dampened by Barack’s election win. Seriously, the one good indication that democracy and freedom are still alive and well in any country are people poking fun at politicos with impunity.

And in other political parody awesomeness…

• Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress
• Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job

One of the things I actually do always admire about the US around election time, is the incredible number of people and creativity willing to work on getting people out to vote. Considering the Canadian election that sadly has Harper and the Conservatives back in a minority, had historically low turnout, I do think when I get back that I need to work on something like this.

And you have to respect moveon.org. Consistently, these guys are just amazing with their ability to leverage web actions to get fundraising and mobilize support.

This viral replaces a simple first and last name of someone you send it to in the actual text shown in various places in the flash video making it seem like McCain won by one vote because of their not voting.

Absolutely brilliant. Can’t believe this would be too hard to do either.

OK, admittedly, as much as I really loathed the “Wassup” commercials when they were on television (and think Bud is a terrible beer), this parody is absolutely fantastic :

If you are unfamiliar with them, the original is here too :

(via BoingBoing.)

I was surprised to see this posted on the 37Signals blog today as I was combing through my feeds. I used to live on English Beach in Vancouver and this guy would be balancing rocks as you see in the video all the time. It is truly astonishing to see, and more so late at night when there is no one around and the tide has come in and there are all these isolated anthropomorphic figures separated on little rock islands by the tide. I don’t think the video does it justice, but considering this was literally right outside my door when I lived on Beach Ave, figured it needed a post.

Plus, really getting tired of England the past week and missing Vancouver and Canada and living next to the sea and friends far away (and really tired of absurd internal politics at work). Nice reminder of how beautiful the city is. Do kind of imagine I’ll be living back there someday…

OK, one final picture from my flickr just to rub it in…

(via Signal vs. Noise.)

YouTube has just started putting full length versions of vintage television shows such as MacGyver and (oh no !) the original Star Trek online for viewing with their “theatre mode.”

Apparently, though, it doesn’t look like they’re available outside of the US or Canada unless you’re doing a VPN workaround like evil little me. Yes, ssh tunneling to your own servers is the bees’ knees.

It is frightening how big an influence growing up on Star Trek TOS had on me (my Mom was a huge Trekkie). Besides, fundamental ideas about the future being better, stronger faster and ideas about technological progress, good and evil and fundamental rights, was this underlying theme below it all of the idea that one man, can indeed, summon the future. Oh, and oh yeah, that diversity itself is being attracted to green-skinned Orion dancing women… =] And let’s never forget the show was the first ever television show to actually show an interracial kiss (gasp!).

Anyhow, if giving you that link doesn’t waste most of the rest of your otherwise productive afternoon, I don’t know what will.

via Lifehacker

The Human Rights Action Center in NYC just put up a fantastic animation illustrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the observation of which being one of the cornerstones of what Amnesty works towards, for the 60th anniversary of the document on the 10th of December this year.

Utterly fantastic job in tone, animation, simplicity and even the music.

The action centre has also given over their home page to it in a full browser high fidelity version which looks amazing. Probably won’t be up forever, but looks great if you go there now.

via Cool Hunting

Beat junkies Hifana as two fishermen from a animated music video with stylistic nods to traditional Japanese folklore. Very cool.

Wamono

Money As Debt is a fantastic 45 min or so animated feature on the fundamental changed nature of money, loans and the banking system that disabuses people of the notion that money and especially loans are still tired to underlying value (like, say for instance gold).

The first half on the actual idea of money is debt gives a real insight into how we’re in the middle of our current financial crisis, though the second half goes off into some interesting talk of more sustainable money systems and then sadly goes somewhat into the realm of the weird talking about conspiracy theories and pins things on the idea of a cabal rather than a systemic problem and breakdown.

Basically, though it underlines the idea that banks can create as much money as people can borrow and the entire system of money creation and legal tender is based on the promise of the borrower to pay.

If too many people are unable to pay their promises, the fundamental debt repayment that all this money was created upon and the only real value to money that banks have multiplicatively lent out is cut from under them, which is why the crisis is so scary.

When I was a kid, before i got into power gaming and being a master geek, I used to read the “Choose Your Own Adventure” stories which were the forerunners of so many computer games and text adventures that were to follow. Ah yes, the path to being a high school social outcast…

And just in time for Halloween, someone has put together The Outbreak, a little video interactive adventure that is a hell of a nod of the head and petite homage to Romero’s ‘78 classic Dawn of the Dead.

Really interesting use of flash video as well. Like the opening screen before the movie loads especially.

Much as Google’s mission to organize all the world’s information gets scarier and scarier, it is without question an interesting beast. It’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto is actually extending well beyond merely being passive to actively trying to do good.

And you have to be impressed with their latest initiative to spend $10M USD on ideas to change the world and fund them. They’ve also got a deceptively simple site for submitting ideas and then getting everyone to vote on which are the best ones. Oh, and very importantly, a nice music video :

I particularly like the criteria they’ve used to define ideas and how they are measuring their merit :

Guidelines

Our goal is to set as few rules as possible. However, we ask that you put your idea into one of the following categories and consider the evaluation criteria below.

Categories:

• Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
• Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
• Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
• Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
• Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
• Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
• Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?
• Everything else: Sometimes the best ideas don’t fit into any category at all.

Criteria:

* Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
* Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
* Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
* Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
* Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

I always remember when I was a kid naively thinking Christmas should be this day, but September 21st, the day before the autumnal equinox would work for me as well. Any day we could get people to commit to there being a day of peace, even ceasefires, as long as it was a global gesture would be amazing.

It’s a very nice idea. Peace on earth, everyone…

[Actually, I did this last Saturday, it’s just taken me this long to get to write about it.]

While I’m not really plugged into what an iconic (happy, CG ?) part of life a flutter on the dogs was for the regular punters in the East End of London, it would be difficult to pass up the historic (and somewhat sad) occasion of the last greyhound races at the fabled Walthamstow Stadium before it closed its doors for good and made way for (yet more) boring and architecturally bankrupt London residential development.

So, I went down the dogs… to watch them burst from the traps for the last time.

And it was pretty great, despite the fact that, unlike the (ok, the one time) I went to the track and bet on the geegees and made a killing, I couldn’t pick a winning greyhound for the life of me despite using my time tested horsey method of picking by the stats in the racing form. Also, I kept thinking how much fun it would be to have other breeds race as well. Imagine a dachshund steeples for instance !

But the closing of Walthamstow was a bit sad, even for me, who it isn’t really a part of life for (and who hopes his grandparents, who would be quite disappointed, don’t find out about. Dog racing in general has been in decline for quite a while in England exacerbated by off-track high street betting (in every major street in London) and internet bookmaking. The Chandler family who runs the concern, and who originally opened it 75 years ago in 1933, claimed a loss last year of £500k which was unsustainable from a business perspective.

Still, it is always sad to see a piece of history go. Winston Churchill famously did his first address after the end of World War II from the stadium and it graces the cover of Blur’s Parklife album cover, was the set for films, TV, commercials and generally a stalwart part of the East End for its run.

After the last race, people burst out and starting running (the wrong way mind you) round the track and were joined by probably a third of the entire stadium before they started saying they were going to turn out the lights and lads and ladettes starting ripping pieces of the Stadium and tracks in order to have some memorabilia from this little piece of history (some of which I imagine are up on eBay already).

It was a very fun evening out and even with the losses, still worth it being there (but damn I wish we’d booked ahead for dinner and box seats). Pretty cool all round and even if you’re upset you missed it and want to contribute a bit to history and the memory of the place, there is a retirement fund for the those greyhounds that will be retired (rather than moved to the few other remaining tracks in the country) so that good, peaceful homes can be found for the speedy little puppies.

Another interesting side note is that the famous Walthamstow neon sign pictured here is apparently considered historic and therefore untouchable, so the new residential development, even in this downturn market of housing starts, will apparently be incorporated into the new design of the residential complex.

BoingBoing pointed to a great blog entry today from Errol Morris, the director of the amazing documentary The Fog of War (which you should really see if you haven’t. It did win an Oscar you know.).

Besides Powell’s now-infamous WMD photos of non-existent chemical weapons facilities that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq, it also covers the photoshopped Iranian missiles photo that ran across a number of US newspapers (the NYT article even has my very favourite mock shot of the Iranian missile launch photos, the godzilla in the midst of the launch field).

From a course I took back in Canada on Anthropology and the Image (fascinating by the way and well worth the time and effort – note now that the course is called Visual Ethnography), I know that photography as a political weapon, even as a cultural weapon, especially with reference to people like the Navajo and Africans, was amazingly devastating in associating a set of negative attributes with a culture, but the amazing thing in the modern era (perhaps because of the ubiquity of photographs in general), is the commonplace manipulation of them, or their captioning to achieve desired political ends, whether those be supporting invasion, instilling fear or misdirecting attention. Got to be a good book or documentary in there somewhere.

But a great read. Hopefully, Morris is working on another fab documentary along these lines.

The interesting thing though, is that the fodder here for activists of all stripes, to increasingly draw attention to disinformation and political propaganda by mocking these things. For example, Worth1000-esque photoshopping contests coordinated with a photosstream on Flickr and just tagged with an appropriately complex tag to make sure interesting photos get surfaced.

via BoingBoing

Well, had a bit of a hard slog the last little while, so just reminding myself of a few important things. Great advice and a fantastic speech from The Steve.

Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life. And the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. And don’t settle.

I don’t know what it is, but ever since seeing Macbeth with Patrick Stewart, my expectations of what I deserve to see when I go to see Shakespeare have been radically altered (yes, Jean-Luc starring in the direction in that play was that good ).

It’s not enough that someone throws a few interesting stage directions, or in this case a third dimension, to the production by putting Cirque du Soleil-esque netting overhead and allowing people to bounce down with bungees from overhead. There has to be an internal consistency to the play, an addition of something not seen before, a compelling take on its direction.

First off, though, the lead was absolutely fantastic even if he did have to spend the entire post-intermission running around in his undewear. And despite the addition of scatological farce after the intermission (and I did really love the way the intermission happened, with people being herded out, with the house livery screaming at them), he did an astounding job as Timon. Apemantus is also surprisingly good in his role as gadfly and critic of Timon and his Fool like ways.

And Timon is interesting for a lot of reasons. It’s one of Bill’s problem plays, plays that his most serious scholars have difficulty reconciling with the rest of his works. It’s darkness suggests it being written around the time of Lear, but there is no record of it ever being performed. And in fact, some doubt that the bard wrote it at all. It is, nevertheless, an interesting, dark and satirical take on the subject of a man who gives away all to his friends and is denied by them in his time of need and becomes a misanthrope because of it.

But overall, the entire production, really seemed designed more for critics’ enjoyment than the audience, and the experimental takes on different parts of the play (the ersatz vultures, for instance) just kinda fell flat for me overall.

Still, worth it for the excellent lead and Apemanus and as always, good to see one of Bill’s irregularly performed plays showing the round wooden ‘O’ in any case.

Great little mini-documentary ? Teaser ? that needs a bigger documentary added to it even though the student who did it calls it a small graphic novel.

Reminds me of the book about the actual journey a tshirt takes from where it is manufactured to the time it gets to your back (someone please tell me the name of the book since a search on amazon for journey and tshirt brought up way too much old concert memorabilia… =< ).

(via scaryideas).

Absolutely cool, Tarentino-esque short about… Tarantino. Even in Brazilian, totally reads like one of his scripts. An excellent little homage to the master… Tarantino’s Mind.

(found via Daring Fireball.)

OK, I have no idea why more people aren’t more furious about this, though I guess it’s just evidence of what everyone suspected all along.

And, ok… sure, the people who listen to Fox are the ones most likely to believe what the White House says in any case (or that the Dems do the same thing anyway), but this seems beyond that. As the commentator in this segment points out, there is a difference between saying “The White House today sent us a briefing saying… “ and “We think that… “

It’s the difference between propaganda and journalism or acting as a party mouthpiece and agreeing with a position. And while I don’t think anyone in the waning days of the Bush administration will be surprised to see that more cracks are appearing in the wall of an administration that would support torture, arbitrary detention and lying to start a war, but the degree to which the administration seems open to brekaing rule of law whenever it suited their agenda is a little bit frightening and should be a scary morality tale for all those governments (and journalists) who followed their lead on so many things so blindly.

Anyway, I hope it does create some incentive around a return to true journalism in the US. The Fox news model of opinion as journalism has provided a chilling effect on proper news reporting in the US and a “if it bleeds it leads” epidemic which I think ultimately hurts us all and makes it seem like we live in a much more violent and fearful world than is actually true. I’ve completely stopped watching US news programs since they seem so amazingly biased compared to their non-US counterparts (though still read the feeds for the NYTimes and the Washington Post).

I haven’t really been watching the American political race very closely so I can’t really comment on the relative merits of the current Democratic and Republican leaders going into the race. I’m sure anyone who knows me can figure out which way I’d be leaning. Either candidate, whatever the case, would be a massive improvement as far as I’m concerned over the current administration.

Nevertheless, this speech, regardless of the echoes of JFK’s and whatever you think of Obama personally, is a phenomenal piece of speech craft and an incredible piece of oratory. Let’s hope that it’s promises about a vow for unity and a global pact for working to solve our shared problems for a better world gets delivered on.

Bit long, and even though he brings up some unpopular issues on the American agenda in the middle, it still is a pretty amazing speech and definitely worth the time you’ll take to watch it.

Oh yes, it really, really feels like this sometimes…

I don’t think there is anything Joss Whedon has ever done that I haven’t liked; Buffy, Angel, and the brilliant, yet sadly-yanked-before-its-time-by-Fox Firefly have given me an appreciation of this guy’s writing (hell, I even like the “Grr! Argh!” of the mutant enemy animation at the end of all his shows… ).

He works the web like few others do, regularly hangs out in fan forums and plugs into his reader and viewership like few others.

So, I’m not sure what to make of his latest, Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer. OK,a supervillain musical sounds somewhat plausible, and there is no question that the singing Buffy episode is probably amongst most of my female friends’ favourites, but I’m still not sure what to make of it.

However, I still watched it like a rabid fan boy, and even though I’m not a fan of musicals, I have to say I enjoyed the episodic immensely (and tuned in today to watch the finale).

Now I’m kinda wondering where it goes from here. Is he moving it into the stable at Dark Horse comics ? Is it an indirect pilot for a show ? Not sure if its intentions are modest or grand but you have to give a tip of the hat to the guy.

More than anything though, I think it does demonstrate that excellent writing, and some low budgets can pull off some extremely interesting stuff on the internets.

(another interesting thing was the use of Hulu as the video serving. Have to admit it was extremely high quality and smooth).

Ah, if only it were socially acceptable for an adult of my age without children to watch Sesame Street more often. This is great. So subversive.

Contrast with the actual video !

Wow, the small team that did this did an utterly amazing job putting together this 10 minute short with Blender.

Back in the day when I first got to Uni, the plan was to be an astrophysicist. I literally saw NASA as a viable career choice. Academia wasn’t enough like Star Trek that it could hold me long, but I still get a vicarious thrill from watching space exploration and dreaming of alien worlds to explore one day.

The Phoenix Lander is just getting to Mars today and starting its descent. But the red planet has managed to take out as many probes as have made it to the surface of the planet, so the outcome is far from certain.

So, geek out a little with this footage from NASA of the projected landing.

[Update : You can actually watch the Lander run up live on NASA TV starting @ 6 PM EDT !]

Hard to watch but important to see.

I just watched Nid de Guêpes (the Wasps’ Nest) / The Nest (if you’re looking for it in an english speaking country) and just have to say it’s one of those great examples of French cinema taking a genre that is generally considered undisputedly Hollywood’s (the action or siege film) and doing it one better.

Seriously intense film. Well worth the rental.

Just a little propaganda for my peeps…

Professional theatre critics are already hailing this as one of the best productions of Macbeth ever, so I won’t waste time gushing with superlatives here, but it is quite simply, not just the best production of Macbeth I’ve ever seen, but the best Shakespearean play I’ve ever seen, period. It rocks. Just pony up the money for the best tickets that won’t break you, splurge on this, and go… You won’t be sorry.

Rupert Goold’s production is extraordinary. Everything Bill was trying to evoke with this play; the hesitancy, compulsion and attraction of the will to power, the horror of the supernatural, regicide and being outside of the natural order and questions about being fated to fall yet free to choose are all almost perfectly illustrated in this take on the play which is the freshest interpretation of Shakespeare I’ve seen in a long, long time.

While I had originally questioned the idea of a Russian, and obviously Stalinist setting for the play, the starkness and minimalism it allows the set to get away with and the fact it actually amplifies the emphasis of the play and fits so amazingly well with the dominant themes of tyranny and leadership really makes me think it was a brilliant directorial call. It evokes this creepily dystopian 1984 that seems at once both alien and disturbingly comfortable on Orwell’s home turf. Though occasionally sounding a bit strange when someone says they’re off to Fife or London when it feels like you should be hearing St. Petersburg, it really works.

Another thing which I have to say, not only sorts well with our proximity to Halloween, but something that never came off for me in any other film or stage production of Macbeth is the sheer creepiness and inherent supernatural horror of the play. Here it is totally nailed. I actually had goosebumps at parts of the play and the emphasis here on it, I think, is one of the reasons the play is being raved over.

The Weird Sisters are omnipresent throughout the play as part of the household retinue and lend that air of supernatural foreboding that I think adds so much to this production of the play. So too, Banquo’s ghost is handled masterfully and creatively which I’ve always felt is one of the hardest scenes in the entire play to pull off, especially when you know it’s coming… Here, it creeps you the hell out. As well as the way it is used to reflect the mental torment of the king (not to mention the sheer style is takes to put the intermission there), it is a masterstroke of artistic direction.

There are so many new ideas thrown into the traditional interpretation of Macbeth here, while still maintaining an absolute fidelity to its core, that I just can’t help but be awed by its brilliance. All of it works and all of it contributes a freshness to the play that really is a new line drawn in the sand for other Shakespearean productions to attempt to match, let alone exceed.

The performances are simply amazing throughout the entire cast. Patrick Stewart as Macbeth is incredible in being both murderous and yet human and delivers his soliloquies with conviction and force (and getting him is a masterstroke of marketing). Lady Macbeth is also pretty amazing with the tension between who wears the pants in the family alternating between the first acts and the later with her exhortations early on giving way to her somnambulating hand washing and the chasm that grows between her and her husband. Banquo and particularly Macduff also completely knock it out of the park as well.

This production epitomizes why London’s West End is the spiritual and intellectual heart of the world’s theatre community and it is my fervent hope we see a lot more productions of this character, quality, style and thought there in the future.

In high school, I was a victim of a sweeping wave of political correctness that spread over middle Canada. Cloaked as concern, prudish, naked and paternalistic conservatism did things like prevent The Merchant of Venice from being taught in school due to its anti-Semetic and rascist overtones.

As such, I had never read or seen the play performed until tonight, and so it was kind of strange, considering I also took Shakespeare for a year in Uni.

The strange thing about the Globe’s production, as excellent as it is for stage production, acting and sheer enjoyability, is that the central tension of Merchant and something every director needs to come to grips with is this : You need to make a call on Shylock.

Somehow, The Globe this season manages to avoid this. Comedic emphasis and elevation of the minor plots and consequences around the central plot seem to almost take precedence over it, and while it makes Merchant a much less darker and frankly more fun play, you leave the production feeling a little unfulfilled because of it.

Perhaps that’s what the Director was aiming for… that in a modern world of systemic racism and we have bread and circuses to keep us entertained that perhaps racism is all the worse for still being present, but unresolved and going virtually unnoticed, despite its distastefulness and effects. I’d like to think that… that would be almost sublime. But for some reason it never comes across like that. Shylock, while well played, lacks a decision and the play seems poorer for it despite being an excellent evening out. Should the Merchant even be fun ?

The sad fact is, I’m poorly positioned to critique. Having not read it in my academic days, I’m going to have to go back and pore over it myself before deciding if it’s a harsh critique or not.

Still, well worth the ticket price and still one of the best values in London for the theatre.

How can you not love this ? Kaiju Japanese monsters destroying a city mixed with lucha libre/WWE style ring matches…

(via Trendhunter)

I’m not sure what makes Bombón El Perro a great, if tiny bit slow, movie. It’s touching and heartwarming and you feel both for the nice guy down on his luck who ties himself to the dog given to him in return for an altruistic act of kindness or the dog who seems both wise and put upon all the time.

It is a very nice movie though and kind of reflective of the choices people are being forced to make in the aftermath of the crash of the Argentinean economy.

It’s ultimately redeeming showing that regardless of how tough thins are, life is about friendship, trust and joy.

Intellectual and cultural stimulation was a big reason behind the move to London. Even so, I’ve been very good at avoiding the West End since I arrived. Perhaps it’s the slew of musicals that seems to infest the place and barely worthy above reality TV (my favourite object of scorn right now, a “Lords of the Rings” musical… um, yah… ).

That changed last night when a friend asked me to go see The Woman in Black, a Victorian ghost story. I have to admit I was kind of expecting it to be a little bit camp as I really wondered how scary a play could actually be. Still, it’s run for 28 years and been seen around the world, so off I went.

The simple answer is : really freaking scary.

Considering I’ve just seen a bunch of lost-in-the-woods/slasher/gore horror films, I was actually shocked at how genuinely this play made me (literally) jump in my seat and the fact that it did, rather sadly, give me goosebumps in places. It uses simple, old-fashioned eerie creepiness, sound effects and sense of place to weave a believable Ringu-esque tale of eldritch haunting.

So, definitely recommended if you want to up the class on an evening. Was great fun and well worth the ticket prices.

A farewell dinner for a friend leaving London at the Tate Modern restaurant (fantastic view and very nice food BTW) gave me the opportunity to use my membership to check out the David Smith exhibit.

Now, I’m not a big fan of Smith’s work despite the fact he is considered one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His burnished 3D cubist steel sculptures of Abstract Expressionism (the Cubi) litter the outside of corporate headquarters across the North American landscape and I’m not keen to see Europe suffer the same fate regardless of their critical acclaim. While the burnished surfaces reflect light in a way that both I, crows and magpies find pretty compelling, overall the vision of the actual sculpture seems un-anaesthetic and contrived and lacks any sort of human dimension to it as far as I’m concerned.
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But it was not always so. In fact, Smith’s early works I find much more compelling that his later work and in particular, before he went commercial (one of his latest sculptures sold for a record $23.8 M USD), his work sculptures seemed to me to have much more depth.

In particular, I’d recommend the exhibition just for the Medals of Dishonour, Smith’s protest against the WWII inspired by both Sumerian seals and German WWI medals and not a little by Picasso’s Guernica

One interesting thing about this exhibit is that a company named Antenna Audio is trialing cell phone audio tours in the museum. The idea being that it is easier than renting an audioguide as it avoids overhead though I think ultimately while I like the idea the costs around phoning a number every couple of minutes (unless they make it toll free) would make most consumers balk even though virtually everyone in the UK has a cell phone. The other problem being a great number of people who visit are from abroad and would not want to be calling long distance. It did get me thinking, however, that when the iPhone hits European shores if they can figure out a way to push podcast rss feeds over the phone, it might be a great idea to deliver the content though penetration must be quite a ways off to make it a deliverable idea.

Bourne’s Swan Lake has met with rave reviews for nearly 10 years since it was launched in London nearly a decade ago because of his decision to cast men as the dancers instead of the traditionally female swans and change the story from the sorcerer who curses Odette to be a woman by night and swan by day.

Launched here in London back in 1995, it is deeply English with its obvious allusions to the Royals, their imagined life and scandals and the pressures of being the honorific for the nation complete with paparazzi flashbulbing their every shortcoming.

Pretty obviously, the elements of homosexuality and unfulfilled, doomed or unrequited love throughout the production are very strong and expressed pretty powerfully through the relationship of the King of the Swans and the Prince as well as with his relationship with the Queen Mother, but handled amazingly sensitively considering the variety of the audience they need to play to, not a few of which are Royalists of the first degree. Oh, and the costuming has to be amongst some of the best I’ve ever seen in a contemporary ballet production as well (not that I’ve seen that many.. )

The dancing was deeply impressive and expressive and it’s well worth the tickets if you can get them.

And yes, it is a lot of fun saying you can’t stick around for the late meeting because (best said with a poshy English accent) “I have tickets for the ballet… ”... :-)

One of the most amazing things about being back in a city with plenty of artistic pursuits is a simple sense of cultural humility and sense of history. Throughout Europe’s Dark Ages, amazing empires rose, flourished and left their cultural mark on the history of human civilization.

The Chola Bronzes currently at the Royal Academy are a good reminder of this essential fact. Beautiful, devotional pieces of art dedicated to the Hindu pantheon that encompassed all of Southern India during the 9th century ACE and for 400 years.

The workmanship and quality of the bronzes are stunning, and while the exhibit is way too small and needs to be on par with the Rodin exhibit currently showing in terms of comprehensiveness and breadth, it is still an impressive (if brief) survey of the gorgeous sculpture of the period.

The fact that many of the bronzes are so well taken care of due to their being in constant use even today is testament to both the quality of their casting, the care of their possession and the fact that they survive in many museums around the world today and in private collections due to caches of the devotional bronzes being hid against Muslim invaders throughout the 14th century and being constantly rediscovered.

Reminds me I need to learn a lot more about Indian history, theology and iconography before even attempting a trip to the great sub-continent and that in 2007 I need to be a lot better about travelling and learning (for instance, I have no idea why different people pray to Shiva, Vishnu, Ganesha or Kali really or what their representative attributes are other than a handful of half-known stories – anyone who has some pointers on where to begin in reading about this stuff, I’d sure appreciate the direction).

It just isn’t a complete Christmas if you can’t watch The Grinch Who Stole Christmas cartoon classic.

Dahoo Doraze everyone…

[update on 23 Dec 2006 @ 21:30: the irony of YouTube removing the Grinch video from YouTube over Christmas is apparently lost on their new corporate overlords. The video has disappeared due to “copyright infringement.”... Yep… like a video from 1966 that people only want to see at Christmas and can do so on TV for free isn’t really truly in the public domain by now. Sheesh. Apparently, someone else has something to learn about the true spirit of Christmas. But it does remind me that I need to make my donations to the EFF, Creative Commons and Wikipedia. Oh, and just to be sure for next time, I’ve got a bittorrent now.

It felt a little strange going to see Rodin’s sculptures here in London while being so close to their native Paris, more so than it did seeing the slightly disappointing exhibit in Vancouver (that did, however, have the fantastic Adam on display so well worth the jaunt despite the lack of the number of his sculptural works on display). But after my usual brunch at the Violette, I trundled down to await new found pals EG and SE anyway and see what the Royal Academy had to offer.

England has had a long love affair with Rodin, even in his early days, and in the opening days of the 20th century catapulted him to Andy Warhol-ish and Tracy Emin-esque fame amongst the elite of the time. And really,t he sub-text of the entire exhibition is really about Rodin’s relationship with England. Witness the number of busts of British aristocracy and such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw.

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So, even while there were a stunning number of his major works arrayed in the exhibit including the Thinker, les Bergers de Calais (which I had never seen before and was particularly interested in seeing), the Kiss, The Defence and casts of Eve, Crouching Woman, St. Jean Baptiste, the Age of Bronze and even in the courtyard the monolithically impressive Portes de l’enfer/Gates of Hell—what really impressed me the most (ok, besides the Burghers of Calais) were the additional ones I’d never seen before collected from British museums (with a seemingly great collections o gems I’d never seen before). I was particularly impressed with Cardiff’s contributions with Clouds, Illusions Falling to Earth and Earth and Moon. So, yeah… if you’ve never been to the Musée Rodin in Paris, this was definitely a great introduction to the greatest sculptor since Michealangelo.

I liked the Royal Academy exhibit enough (plus the super exceptional Aztecs exhibit they had several years ago pre-blog) that I actually bought an annual “Friend of the Royal Academy” pass + 2 guests and am thinking of going back shortly to see the Chola bronzes from South India.

Is travel pr0n. Pure and uncut travel crack. I’m not kidding.

Looking at the amazing photos of sacred sites, monuments, temples and places you’ve read about or dreamed of travelling to your entire life merely stokes the fires of the wanderlust that got you to the UK in the first place and makes the soles of your feet itchy to get in planes, trains, ships and automobiles.

Georg Gestner is his 40 years circling the globe taking photos in 111 countries and of some of the most amazing human edifices in the world has generated a remarkable and singular photographic achievement. While lacking the artistic merit of The Earth from Above/La Terre vue du ciel (which the French very, very coolly put up on the outside of the fence around the Jardin du Lexembourg in Paris for everyone to see which was amazing and free to all and still has me gobsmacked in their commitment to art for the sake of the people), the Past somehow gets a deeper under the skin, if less aesthetic, hold on the imagination and has you mentally creating travel lists and checking them against the new found vacation time you suddenly have.

Damn, I’m jonesing for a trip now.

I did make myself feel good by noting the number of places he’d phototgraphed I’d actually been to, which at least kept the jonesing in place a little. Still… so much to see, so little time for serious travel.

Highly recommended if you’ve got time anywhere just before or after the New Year if you’ve got to figure out what those resolutions for 2007 need to be in the adventure and travel categories.

I wish I was more musically inclined and had the benefits of a classical education in the arts. I really do. And I know there are acoustic ranges well beyond those that can be produced with fidelity digitally, but still, the music in this film is phenomenal and the five distinct tales intertwined by the passing ownership of the fabled Red Violin is both sublime and engrossing and has a wonderful denouement (no, really not just a finish, a real denouement). Oh, and it’s Canadian. What more reason do you need than those ?... Um, ok… it’s got Samuel L. Jackson and Colm Feore in it !

Besides all this, I think this film also gets the award for most languages used in a movie for main parts ever (Italian, German, French, English and Mandarin !). Thank god for subtitles. It works though. It doesn’t detract from the story and in fact enhances the sense of place that the story provides.

It’s strange, in that, while the film is a pleasure to watch, what puts it completely over the top is the acoustical accompaniment. It is seriously beautiful and textured and haunting and stays with you well after the film is over. It won an Oscar for best score. I intend to run out and get it now.

Damn fine film. See it. (and a special thanks to NZ and RG for lending me this !)

Russell Peters is someone I believe could have only been created in Canada. A Torontonian comedian of Indian descent who pokes fun at the differences between us as a multicultural people while still managing to celebrate the humanity that binds us together.

It’s hard to explain him without actually seeing him, but he is really funny and somehow manages to poke fun without being offensive. I’m not quite sure how he does it, but he pulls it off wonderfully.

Someone sent me the google link to his video Outsourced. It’s not his best performance… I think those are all about his family and especially his father (who reminds me of my father sometimes).

Still, ingenious and brilliant in places, it’s pretty hilarious overall.

Twisted is a kind of boring and fairly dull thriller which surprisingly fails to satisfy despite the presence of Andy Garcia and the amazing Smaule L. Jackson.

Predictable and kind of dopey starring Ashley Judd who is atttractive but not really hot enough or interesting enough to pull off this fairly transparent thriller.

See what happens when you’re trapped on airplanes and can’t do anything but watch your seat back ?

Bruce Willis playing a burnt out cop in some sort of dilemma where the whole world is against him is hardly news. Die Hard defined the genre just about. So, even trapped on a plane I was wondering what Willis paired with nasal rapper Mos Def could really have to offer. I mean after all, Bruce only has to transport him 16 Blocks.

Interestingly though, the film is not that bad. I’d hardly say it’s that big a twist on the good cop gone bad goes good again genre to make it that big a deal, but Willis is surprisingly convincing as the tired, burnt out, alcoholic and disillusioned NYPD who decides to do the right thing.

Ong Bak completely redefined the martial arts action film genre with Tony Jaa’s unbelievable, stunt double-less, no wires, no CGI, acrobatic Muay Thai completely over the top fighting moves.

I went to see The Protector solely on the strength of Ong Bak but was a little disappointed. Despite the over the top action in this film and the fact it was a much bigger success in Asia than its predecessor I thought that it lacked compared to the first film. Apparently, the US release of this film actually has fight scenes cut from it (rather inexplicably so I may have to see it again in the UK to see what was missing).

The fight choreography was amazing throughout but did a little silly at times and started to beggar belief (though I loved the fight with the capoerista and the wushu kung fu artist). In particular, a lot of the bone crunching grappling moves were things I’d never seen before in muay thai. Friends stated that someone must have been hurt during the filming of the movie.

Sadly the plot on this film was completely ridiculous, at least for western audiences, with the protagonist pursuing kidnapped elephants to Sydney to take on a crime syndicate that, um… wants the elephants for nefarious and evil purposes. Yeah, ok… I didn’t believe it either, particularly when he’s walking through the streets of the Australian metropolis with a baby elephant in tow.

One of the nice things about being trapped on a plane is that you really have time to do nothing but sit and stare at the back of the seat rest in front of you. When British Airways is good enough to put a little tiny TV packed with loads of movies there (rather being forced to watch just one), you can’t really pass that up.

I have to admit I loved the black satire that was Thank You for Smoking. Slightly evil, the entire story about how a lobbyist for the smoking industry manages to live with himself simply is beautiful in its sense of moral freefall and in its comedic protrayal of what it must take to be a lobbyist.

The great thing is that where it beings to be a redemption tale, ultimately it comes round to being exactly what it was intended to be, a sardonic comment on the horrible influences driving government and society these days and why so many things appear to be going horribly wrong with the fate of the Western world.

In general, films born of video games are pretty craptacular. The list of the shameful is legion. So, it’s a bit of a surprise that Silent Hill manages to avoid this curse.

High production values are obviously one of the reasons. The sets, lighting and ambient sound are spectacularly good at setting a stage ripe for nightmares. But i think the surprise here is that the story behind the film is strong, despite the simple premise a mother trying to get back her daughter, and not a simple excuse to fight things or blow them to smithereens. I’ve actually never played the game so it’s difficult for me to say if maintains faithfulness to the console title, but as a ghost story and a mystery being unravelled it is surprisingly strong.

While slightly and unecessarily over the top in the gore department, the story manages to be ceaselessly creepy and engaging as the mother searches for her daughter and unearths the dark secret of the town.

A media student friend at a dinner party pointed me at Brick and I have to say while I was a little sceptical at first, his enthusiasm for the film (not to mention his critical taste in such matters) intrigued me enough I grabbed it when I went to the video store.

Rian Johnson’s directorial debut more than deserves the Sundance Special Jury prize it won. It is a endlessly slick piece of work combining classic elements of film-noir and 1930s detective classics integrating language, subtext and even a clean grittiness (if that even makes sense) with present day California high school life and all that it entails.

It’s this deeply interesting, modern film-noir detective story told through the cliques of high school and the drug scene as Brendon Frye, the protagonist looks for the the murderer and manipulator of his former girlfriend who got mixed up in the high school dope dealing scene. Even though modern, the entire film strongly calls to mind the black and white film noir classics of the 30s and 40s; the Maltese Falcon, Chinatown and dialogue straight out of Dashiell Hammett. Touches such as the characters all wearing dress shoes and wing tips and their hard focus on them recalling 1930s films adds to the aesthetic of the film and it’s really hard not to be sucked willingly and entirely into the story as it unfolds. The nods to classics like the Falcon in Kill Bill Tarentino-esque fashion also makes it irresistible to anyone who adored the classics.

It is one of the definitely one of the better films I’ve seen all year and I’m shocked it managed to slip through whatever town I was in when it was released without me seeing it. Definitely should be on your DVD rental list if it’s not already.

Little Miss Sunshine was a film I was actually intending to avoid as it seemed to be yet another film about quirky, dysfunctional families. Not that I don’t like dysfunctional families (in fact, I believe all families are at their root dysfunctional and that’s why these films are so popular) but I was starting to believe the trend was getting it a America’s Funniest Home Videos sort of quality to it, laughing at the pain and stupidity of their anti-hero quality which is really not my bag unless it is targeted at cartoon characters.

Little Miss Sunshine is different though (props to the lovely JP for dragging me to it). The characters all have deeply seated dysfunction and are somewhat stereotypes but you quickly warm to them as their flaws seem protective mechanisms from feeling too much, getting hurt and living in pain. You quickly identify and commiserate with them as misfortune harries them in the ironic sense that this is what really happens when you don’t need it happening and in their belief that they have to band together a fam