It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)

I’ve been on an old movie kick lately. In the past two weeks I’ve rented "Casablanca" and "Breakfast at Tiffany’s," and on the day before Christmas Eve some friends and I met up at the Bloor Cinema to watch "It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen."

Now, all three of these films are guaranteed to warm my heart and remind me of just how great, great cinema can be. But Frank Capra’s 1946 black-and-white masterpiece, "It’s a Wonderful Life" hit a whole new level.

Of course I’ve seen it dozens of times, but it’s one of those films that can be brand new all over again depending on your mood, the atmosphere and the people you’re with.

In this case, my mood was very festive because Christmas was just around the corner. The atmosphere – the Bloor – was perfect, complete with hot apple cider, baked goods, hot chocolate with Bailey’s and a crowd that clapped and cheered and sighed and cried at all the right moments. And the people I was with, of course, were the best part – good friends spreading their Christmas cheer, including two friends who for some reason had never seen it before!

No matter how many times I watch it, IAWL still has the power to bring tears to my eyes. It’s just such a compelling story. If you haven’t seen it, here’s a quick synopsis: George Bailey is about to leave his hometown of Bedford Falls to go to college, when he is asked to stay back and help run the building and loan company that his father started, and to stand up to the town bully, Potter, who is trying to take it over.

George agrees to stay, despite his dreams of travelling the world. He eventually falls in love and starts a family, and his presence in Bedford Falls makes the town a better place.

When things go badly, however, and the small loan company suddenly faces bankruptcy because of a simple mistake, George Bailey comes unhinged, gets drunk and mean, and considers giving it all up. At that very moment, in Ebeneezer Scrooge fashion, a stranger comes into his life and shows him what Bedford Falls would be like without him, and as a result how valuable his life actually is.

After the film we went out for a beer, and my girlfriend asked me what scene was my favourite. I had a tough time answering. There’s a scene where George and Mary Hatch, played by Donna Reed in her first starring role – meet again after their initial romantic spark has begun to fade. George comes to her house, and she has set everything up just so, in order to impress him and remind him just how lovable she is.

But George is in the midst of self-pity and bitterness at his fate, and the fact he feels trapped in the small town he once vowed to leave far behind him. While he’s there, a suiter calls for Mary, setting up one of the key moments in the film. George and Mary share the same phone talking to the caller, and despite George’s anger and Mary’s disappointment, a palpable chemistry develops between them as they talk. Volumes are spoken without hardly a word being shared between them, and eventually the phone conversation is forgotten and their romance is firmly re-established.

The scene is a key to understanding the battle going on inside George Bailey. He's deeply conflicted. He loves Mary, but he’s desperate to hang onto his dreams. “I want to do what I want to do!” he tells her harshly. That theme plays out through the entire film, when he’s forced to give up plans to go to college to run the business, when his dreams of travelling the world fall by the wayside, and when the depression hits and he calls off his honeymoon to save the building and loan.

The climax of the film comes when all those disappointments have added up and disaster strikes, and Bailey realizes that this time, all of his best intentions can’t pull him through, and he hits rock bottom.

In the wrong hands, this film could have become just another feel good story with a positive message. But Frank Capra’s directing, and James Stewart’s believability make it more than that – it almost becomes an illustration of the human condition. That’s due in large part to the honesty in the storytelling. There are heartbreaking, harsh moments, such as when George screams at his daughter to stop practicing Christmas carols on the piano, or when he grabs his son and holds him in a violently tight grip, tears streaming down his cheeks, only to shout at him a moment later.

But that stuff is real: George loves his family but when everything goes wrong they are the ones he lashes out at. That honesty lends a genuineness to the film and makes the ending so much more compelling.

Like "Casablanca" and "Breakfast at Tiffany’s," IAWL is one of those timeless films that can be seen over and over again, and can break your heart every time.

"Consumption": Kevin Patterson, 2006

Dr. Kevin Patterson has been fascinated with the harsh, barren landscapes and lonely seascapes of the Arctic since he first travelled there to practice medicine more than a dozen years ago.

Since then he's made regular pilgrimages to the tiny, isolated communities perched on the edge of Hudson Bay, first as a family doctor, then as a specialist in internal medicine, treating illness and disease.

At the same time, he's learned about this remote, rugged corner of the globe through the stories of the people who live there.

Those tales, many consisting of the heartbreaking life experiences that have come to define the Inuit culture in many ways, help form the basis of Patterson's first novel, Consumption.

Click here to read the rest of my feature on Consumption (a great book!), and my interview with the author

Stranger than Fiction (2006, Marc Forster: Finding Neverland, Monster’s Ball)

As a writer, it’s easy sometimes to get caught up imagining the way my autobiography is one day going to be written. Or, sometimes I’m even so vain that I second-guess my decisions, considering the likely possibility that one day someone will probably want to write a biography about my life. And I wonder about how well some of my dumber decisions are going to play out on the page.

There’s even a letter or two I decided not to mail because I wasn’t willing to one day be remembered for those words.

Yikes! Honest eh? I’m exaggerating a bit, I hope, but the point I’m getting at is that Harold Crick, Will Ferrell’s character in Stranger than Fiction, gets the random, unexplained opportunity to hear someone else writing the story of his life as he lives it out.

This is a thoughtful, smart film that will let you glimpse a side of Ferrell’s acting ability you probably haven’t seen before, helped out by scene-stealers Maggie Gylenhall and Dustin Hoffman.

In the trailers, this film was sold as anything from a flat-out comedy to a dramedy and a dark fantasy. It’s a little of each, but doesn’t fit neatly into any of those genres, smoothly mixing laugh out loud with heartfelt tearjerker moments.

Crick is so boring and normal when the film begins he’s almost a cliché. He’s almost painful to watch, going about his structured IRS tax assessor’s life, counting stairs and tooth-brush strokes and measuring the minutes of the day with his faithful wristwatch.

But somehow he’s still lovable, and he becomes more so as the plot progresses, particularly when he starts hearing a woman’s voice narrating, or writing, his life, and the things she says in her literary-sounding English accent begin coming true with startling accuracy.

So Crick does what most people do when they start hearing voices. He goes to a shrink, but that doesn’t work and he eventually winds up in the office of Jules Hilbert, a literature professor played expertly by Dustin Hoffman. He steals every scene he’s in with little eccentricities like his passionate obsession with the line ‘Little did he know.’ -- “I once taught an entire university course based almost entirely on ‘little did he know,’” he tells Crick, thus beginning their quest to find the writer writing his life story, and, we eventually find out, planning his “imminent demise.”

Along the way Crick meets Ana Pascal, a cute, ornery, down-with-the-man tattooed bakery owner played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. She’s the Queen West to Crick’s Rosedale, but she’s kind and lovable and he’s sincere and earnest, and somewhere along the way, as Crick’s search for the essence of his like leads him down new paths, she decides “I think I might like you.”

The crux of this story though, the real battle, comes when Crick and Hilbert find the author who is writing his life story, and has just overcome writer’s block to pencil out an ending that, like all her other works, ends in tragedy.

And the story that is meant to end with Crick’s demise is a literary masterpiece that won’t be the same if he lives. The question is, will the ending be sacrificed, or will Crick pay the price for literary beauty?

You should go and find out.

Catch a Fire (2007, Derek Luke, Tim Robbins)

I attended the Toronto press screening for "Catch a Fire," a new film starring Tim Robbins, Derek Luke and Bonnie Henna. It's the fascinating true story of a normal, working class man with no political beliefs who became a political activist/terrorist and helped bring down apartheid in South Africa. I was able to interview Shawn Slovo, who wrote the film based on interviews with the real-life Patrick Chamusso shortly after his release from prison. She is also the daughter of Joe Slovo, the leader of the then-outlawed African National Congress's military wing. Click

here to read my review.

Half Nelson (Ryan Gosling, Shareeka Epps)

I watched Half Nelson with a friend who hates Ryan Gosling. He has a huge crush on Rachel McAdams and he’s actually met her on a few occasions, and they've had great conversations. On one of those occasions he also met Gosling, whom he says was a jerk.

But, he tried to put his preconceived notions aside and I tried to forget Gosling’s past roles in The Notebook and my personal favourite, his stint as Shawn on Breaker High, and we both tried our best to go into the film with an open mind.

And to be honest, it was easy to forget everything that came before, because Gosling is refreshingly new and genuine in this role. He’s amazing as Dan Dunne, a high school history teacher in inner-city New York.

He’s charismatic and riveting as a teacher and basketball coach who hates establishment and admits that the education system and his role in it are both part of the “machine” that is keeping the people down. He seems to believe in the potential he has to change lives and make a difference though, and it’s easy to accept that he’s the right person in the right place to actually do it.

In his classroom lectures he keeps coming back to this notion that there is conflict in everything. In one scene he describes the American civil rights movement to his black students. Butting his two fists against each other as he stands in front of the class, he suggests that at one time the people in the south who believed blacks were equal citizens were a minority. But they kept resisting against those who disagreed, and eventually, the minority became the majority.

The metaphor is a microcosm of what is going on in his own life.

He’s addicted to crack, and it’s increasingly becoming the majority that is smothering the minority – affecting his decisions and his actions and dragging him down, and robbing from his ability to connect and make a difference in his students’ lives.

He’s convincing in both of these separate roles, and continues to be believable as these elements of his life merge closer and closer together as they battle to overwhelm one another.

One of the most powerful scenes in the film comes when one of his students, Drey, played by Shareeka Epps-- a player on the girls’ basketball team he coaches –- discovers his addiction. He’s a broken man at this point, and she stays with him and takes care of him as he pleads, “please don’t leave me.”

The story hinges on this relationship and the trust that builds in their unlikely friendship, along with their mutual connection to the drug dealer who supplies Dunne’s habit.

And Drey is also in the midst of a struggle in her own life, with opposites doing battle inside of her heart. She’s at a crossroads, and you get the sense that her relationship with Dunne is the factor that is going to lead her down one path or the other – with vital consequences for the rest of her life.

Half Nelson is gritty and pulls few punches. There are some awkward and even painful scenes to watch – one where Dunne chaperones a high school dance while high on cocaine, another where he pays a late night visit to a female teacher, also while high.

This struggle, this ongoing battle that Dunne goes through, is always present. Even when he sinks to some of the deepest depths, redeemable qualities are almost always present, like when he arguably risks his life to look out for Drey despite the fact his own life is a complete mess.

"I had to do something, right?’ he asks.

Like Dunne’s life, and Drey’s, there are lots of unanswered questions and uncertain endings when the credits roll. What is certain though, is that both have real conflicts in their lives, real temptations pulling them away from what’s right, and their choices and dilemmas reflect real life crossroads that we all face -- decisions that have severe consequences.

Their problems are deep rooted, and the film doesn’t sort everything out and tie it up in a neat package because these are issues that simply can’t be solved neatly and quickly. In that way the film is painfully honest and serves as an accurate mirror for real life.

Broken Social Scene takes care of most of the soundtrack, using beautiful walls of sound and distortion to paint the emotional scenery for the film.

I recommend this movie.

Body Piercing Saved My Life (Andrew Beaujon)

The first record my parents every bought me was DC Talk's self-titled venture into the then fledgling world of Christian hip hop.

It blew my mind.

It was 1991 and I was only 11, but I had already decided that Christian music was definitely not cool. With that cassette tape though, I was forced to accept the reality that Christian music actually, possibly, maybe ... could be cool.

I wore it out, memorizing beats and lyrics and imagining that those words (which were often pretty terrible: "Your life story is like my brakes' sound.") were written specifically based on my life and whatever universe-encompassing struggle I happened to be going through at the time.

Now, it's not like I fully got lost in the world of Christian Rock, or CCM (Christian Contemporary Music as it's known in the biz) from that point on. A year or two later my dad bought me Dark Side of The Moon, and my allegiance quickly transferred to Pink Floyd, where it remained faithfully for a long, long time.

But over the years I've never been too far away from the CCM world, and have often checked out new bands when I've come across them.

In recent years though, some of my favourite bands, such as Pedro the Lion, have been increasingly more difficult to define, mysteriously straddling the line between Christian Rock and the mainstream -- hesitant to reveal too much about where their loyalties lie.

In his new book, Body Piercing Saved My Life, Andrew Beaujon expertly explores the phenomenon of CR, mapping a journey that begins with pioneers like Keith Green and Larry Norman, through to DC Talk and Newsboys and hair metal bands like Stryper, White Cross and Petra, through the massive worship scene and right up to the less easy to classify bands such as Pedro and Sufjan Stevens, Switchfoot, MXPX and a host of others.

Beaujon, perhaps better than anyone else, is well equipped for this task, having covered the subject for years for Spin magazine and the Washington Post. He is in the rare position of being an expert on a subject that few people outside of the Christian community understand or know anything about.

With no religious affilitation of his own, Beaujon is well poised to provide an objective window into a world that is often firmly shuttered to the outside. He accomplishes this, providing a valuable history lesson on the origin and journey of CCM up to this point.

But the book also provides what I hope will be considered a valuable service within the Christian community. BPSML gives Christians the opportunity to see this huge part of Christian culture through someone else's lens. And Beaujon's lens is sharply focused, objective, and even sympathetic to the subject matter -- a rare vantage point for the largely ghettoized industry.

But beyond all that, the reason this book was impossible to put down was because intertwined through its 271 pages of history, bios, interviews and personal anecdotes, is Beaujon's relentless exploration and investigation of why so many Christian-comprised bands flee from being lumped in with the genre, and are even skeptical of having the label applied to themselves as human beings.

Pedro the Lion's David Bazan is sort of a legend for holding tightly onto such a position, despite a huge Christian following and a career that began on Tooth and Nail, the iconic Christian rock label.

Now, I'm a huge Pedro fan, so it was fascinating to read about Beaujon's encounters with Bazan and his friend and sometimes bandmate Tim Walsh, during the year or so he spent researching the book. I get the impression they became friends through the many conversations and discussions they had in various corners of the U.S.

Few of his fans can definitively peg Bazan down. Despite conventionally 'un-Christian' lyrics that include regular use of the 'F-word', and his fondness for booze, Bazan regularly plays Cornerstone, a massive Christian music festival, where he is the blackest of black sheep. But Bazan draws some of the festival's largest crowds with his poignant, sincere songs that explore taboo subjects and question accepted truths.

His now expected Q and A sessions between sets have added to the confusion with statements like "I believe in God and the Bible and everything, but I ain't no fucking Christian."

But then Bazan quotes scriptural concepts to Beaujon about servanthood and following Jesus' example, and passes the apparent contradiction off as misunderstanding.

"There's sort of a qualifier," he says, when Beaujon asks him why he always says no when asked at shows if he's a Christian. "I'm not equating myself with Martin Luther by any stretch, but him and people that were part of his movement stopped calling themselves 'Catholics.' I'd rather there just be a misunderstanding -- 'The guy's flipped out and totally abandoned his faith' -- because it's not necessary for strangers to know exactly how I feel."

I think Beaujon may have come as close as anyone has to actually figuring out the Bazan paradox. And perhaps, by extrapolation, the mysterious, complicated relationship so many 'Christian' bands seem to have with the rest of the world.

Beaujon writes: "Whether it's Bazan's empathy for those who came up the same way he did, or the thrill of hearing a marginally sanctioned heretic ... who's somehow still allowed inside the Christian cloister, Bazan's become a leading figure in alternative Christian culture because he's a reflection of those who can't square their desire to believe with their contempt for the system in which they find fellowship."

Bold words and incredible insight for a self-proclaimed non-believer who really took the time to explore the set of core beliefs that often drive this entire industry.

I'm not sure who Beaujon intends as his readership. No Doubt the book will sell well among Christian emo, hardcore and pop-punk fans hungry for insider knowledge about the bands they follow. But I hope the book also finds an audience both inside the wider religious circle and among those who like Beaujon, have little spiritual attachment to Christian religion.

His perspective can offer Christians the chance to view their own, often exclusive community or 'cloister', through a new set of eyes. The world at large, meanwhile, can gain a new understanding and maybe even an appreciation for the struggles, frustrations, beauty and integrity that is all tangled up in the world of CR, and is brilliantly captured in BPSML.

Click here to check out a story I wrote for CTV.ca about comic book heroes making the transition to the silver screen (I got to interview Spawn creator Todd McFarlane -- so cool!)

A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick, 1977)

I’m pretty excited about A Scanner Darkly. The film comes out in two days, and stars actors whom I love -- Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Keanu Reeves -- and is directed by Richard Linklater (Waking Life, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset) who hasn’t let me down yet -- and is rendered in the dream-like rotoscopic animation that was made famous in Waking Life, which I envision to be the perfect medium in which to tell this story.

I’m so excited that I went to Indigo -- and I hate Indigo -- at least 19 times looking for a copy of Philip K. Dick’s novel by the same name until I finally found it. Of course, Indigo being a lame cousin to Chapters, which I also hate, it only stocks good books when it’s economically viable to do so. And in this case that meant the book, complete with a shiny new “ Now a Major Motion Picture” cover, appeared on the shelves about a month before the film was due for release, regardless of the fact it’s been a brilliant book since 1977 when it was first published.

Well, I sucked up my indie pride and bought it.

Sorry about that long intro. I know I haven’t even started to discuss the book, which I must say, is incredible.

The premise is brilliant, the prose is compelling, and it sucks you so far into a world of drug addiction and paranoia you begin to feel like one of the characters in the story.

Bob Arctor is addicted to a drug called Substance D. He and his friends are pretty liberal in their experimentation however, and everything from booze to cocaine and pot get used in heavy doses, and much of the story is spent describing in fascinating detail their conversations, interactions and efforts to get more drugs, while under the influence.

This unique portal into several lives that orbit almost entirely around drug use would be worth reading on its own, but the story takes the reader a couple of layers deeper.

Fred is an undercover narcotics agent working to infiltrate a group of drug users and dealers to find out where their supply is coming from. His superiors have installed a set of cameras, or scanners, and recording devices into the house where they all live, and part of his work is to review the material for useful evidence and discard the rest.

But one of the side-effects of Substance D is that it establishes a divide between the left and right halves of the brain, in effect allowing the addict to become two people without realizing it.

As Fred infiltrates the group in order to keep tabs on a heavy drug user/minor dealer named Bob Arctor, he is really collecting evidence on an undercover narcotics agent named Fred.

Clever and funny in parts, this story, based largely on Dick’s own experiences and meant as a tribute to many of his friends who lost their lives to addiction, is also deeply dark.

There’s a scene where Fred is hearing for the first time what he is suffering from. He comes to a conclusion that ties back to these words in 1 Corinthians 13 which are tweaked for the title of the book:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Fred, through the lens Substance D provides him, is seeing his own reflection in a darkened glass, and as such, he can’t recognize himself, and the realization of what he has become, or a distorted form of realization, sets in and he begins to realize how far he has slipped.

"'Through a mirror,' Fred said. A darkened mirror, he thought; a darkened scanner, And St. Paul meant, by a mirror, not a glass mirror – they didn’t have those then – but a reflection of himself when he looked at the polished bottom of a metal frying pan. … Not through a telescope or lens system, which does not reverse, not through anything but seeing his own face reflected back up at him, reversed – pulled through infinity, like they’re telling me. It is not through glass but as reflected back by glass. And that reflection that returns to you: it is you, but it isn’t. And they didn’t have cameras in those old days, and so that’s the only way a person saw himself: backward.
I have seen myself backward.”

The realization though, is just a step in a process that is too far-gone to halt, and he will fall further before he hits bottom.

There’s deep sadness in this harsh story, but somehow there’s hope and the footprints of redemption too –- maybe those are the traces of what Dick was searching for when he wrote it. If so, I hope he found it.

Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff)

Art School Confidential comes across, at first, as a half-hearted attempt at a gross-out comedy.

And 15 minutes into the film, I was disappointed, and was considering an early exit. But by 20 minutes in I was hooked, swept up by the ridiculous story and contrived characters all wound up in a package that is way too clever, and with a cast that is way too good, to be accidental.

Soon I was riveted to my seat, waiting to see where director Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Crumb) was taking me.

The story follows Jerome (Max Minghella) – a freshman, suburban America kid, as he ventures out on his own for the first time in an effort to hone his art skills, meet girls, and become “the greatest artist in the world,” like his hero Picasso.

But this school and the people in it are ridiculous, and he realizes quickly that he may not fit in any better here than he did in high school.

But he falls in love with Audrey, an artist’s model played by Sophia Myles, and his heart gets broken, and he starts smoking and drinking, and he twists some moral guidelines, and maybe accidentally kills someone – and soon he’s surrounded in all the inspiration an artist could ever ask for.

The girl I saw the film with is clasically trained singer. She told me that when she was in school, she knew musicians who wanted to be in a relationship just because they believed the passion and the pain – all the ups and downs of love – would make their music better.

If that theory is true, Jerome finds himself run over by a steamroller of inspiration by the time this story concludes.

But the plot and the characters really are so clichéd, and so over the top, that there has to be more to the message of this movie. I think it’s a mockery of Hollywood laziness. I think Zwigoff took these common clichés to an entirely new level – he really broke new ground in cinematic obviousness – in order to make a statement. I think he’s telling Hollywood ‘look, you guys need to try harder. Look at this brilliant film I made just by recycling all the old clichés and multiplying them by 10 and tying them together with a generic storyline. So smarten up!’

I mean seriously. The list is endless. Jerome’s roommates are a flamingly gay but still in the closet fashion student, and an eccentric film major who’s making a movie about a series of strangling murders that have taken place on campus. (Oh yeah, the subplot is about a serial killer haunting the campus.) And the roommate says the killings are the best thing that ever happened to him because they’re creating his plot for him.

There’s John Malkovich’s character – the jaded artist/prof who invites Jerome to his home and then hits on him.

There’s the more experienced, older art school veteran who becomes his best friend, showing him around, introducing him to people, but disappearing halfway through the movie when his presence is no longer necessary. “I’ve figured out who you are,” he tells Jerome, when it’s his turn to exit the plot. “You’re the class duschbag.”

There are even typecast cops investigating the murder – one who goes undercover as a student – a male artist’s model who walks around casually with everything exposed, and a jaded artist who hates the world and everything in it.

It’s crazy! It’s silly, it’s over the top. But somehow it works really, really well. My friend and I talked about it for a long time afterwards, and I’m still mulling it over.

The cast helps. Steve Buscemi is Broadway Bob, the owner of a café that is known for displaying the work of up-and-coming artists, Anjelica Huston is a professor at the school, Jim Broadbent is the once great, now jaded, alcoholic artist who is fed up with humanity.

And the fact that it, like Ghost World, was based on a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, helps add credibility to the project.

The ending takes a brilliant twist that somehow makes it plausible that Jerome really is well on his way to becoming the famous artist he dreamed he would be.
And then, at the very last moment, the movie ends with a reminder that this is parody and cliché taken to new heights – and that the viewer should strike a balance somewhere between not taking it too seriously, but not discounting the brilliance that went into every inch of celluloid that comprises Art School Confidential.

It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (Seth)

I’ve become interested in graphic novels lately. I’m not sure why – perhaps it’s the union of pictures and words that creates such a compelling medium -- two tools, used together to tell a story that wouldn’t be told the same way in any other format.

This novella, by Seth (Palookaville, Mister X), reinforces this new interest.

It’s written in the first person, and tells the story of Seth -- a Toronto cartoonist who becomes obsessed with a cartoonist from the 1950s named Jack Kalloway who signed his drawings ‘Kalo.’

Seth comes across a couple of drawings by Kalo in old copies of the New Yorker, and becomes intrigued by his style and his seemingly brief career.

He becomes even more interested when he finds out Kalo was from a small rural Ontario town, like him, and he begins trying to track down anything he can find on Kalo.

Seth’s interest in Kalo, he admits, may come from his attraction to the past, and the fact that almost anything that hearkens back to a bygone era appeals him.

Pages are dedicated to rambling soliloquy as Seth wanders through old industrial neighborhoods in Toronto, thinking out loud about what makes him tick.

I guess that obsession with old stuff is part of what connects me to the book. I see a lot of myself in Seth and his yearning for a time when things were simpler and better.
He’s scared of the future, which he sees as a societal evolution away from character and beauty.

“Life is about change,” his girlfriend tells him. “I mean, don’t you get excited just thinking about the future? So much will have changed by the time we’re old. It’ll be amazing. Think of the old people today and how much change they’ve seen.”

“Don’t even talk about it!” Seth retorts. “I look forward to the future with nothing but dread. Things are getting worse and worse every year. As awful as things are right now, I’d be more than happy if the world would stay relatively like this until I die. I can’t face the next fifty years.”

But then later, during a conversation with his friend Chet (Toronto cartoonist Chester Brown), that near-rage has subsided and he takes a much more thoughtful perspective on his appreciation for the past – though he arrives at the same conclusion.

“Look how pretty that old building looks against the night sky,” Seth says.

“It’s funny, there’s something in the decay of old things that provokes an evocative sadness for the vanished past. If those buildings were perfectly preserved it wouldn’t be the same.”

“It’s the difference between a dilapidated old farm house and a pristine deco hotel lobby. Somehow that lobby doesn’t convince you of the reality or the beauty of yesterday.

“I’d hate to think that my belief in the superiority of the past was really just a misplaced, over-rationalized aesthetic choice. No, forget I said that. Things are obviously getting worse every year.”

The conversations Seth has with Chet and his girlfriend give the story a human quality. Without those relationships it would verge on near-oppressive naval gazing, but it’s saved by their presence. They, along with the other characters in the book, also help us to see different sides of Seth. With his family he’s frustrated, with Chet he’s comfortable and gentle, with his girlfriend he’s a little more aggressive and possibly trying to prove himself.

Seth’s appreciation for the past is apparent in his illustrations as well as his words. Even Toronto, and Strathroy, Ont. where both he and Kalo lived, it turns out, are rendered in a simple, uncomplicated style that seems to be a throwback to the ‘30s or ‘50s.

Toronto is captured beautifully in the illustrations – but there no sign of the cold, post-modern all-glass office towers or condos that plague this city. Those are ignored, left behind while Seth records the decaying industrial buildings, mom-and-pop restaurants and forgotten local neighbourhoods. It’s almost a historic record of these locales, which sadly, seem to be disappearing from the face of this city as Starbucks and Indigo take over their spaces. Like Seth, I get sad thinking about it.

In his efforts to close in on Kalo, Seth is searching for something. Maybe it’s his own past, or the 1950s cartoonist’s skin he feels he should have occupied, misplaced as he feels in this time and place.

There’s no clear explanation of what he’s searching for or whether he finds it. Those truths are left to the reader to decide. The final, complete picture, though, is of a man’s exploration of nostalgia, discontent, and the realization of the truth behind what one old man shares with Seth.

“When you get to my age, you realize that everything mattered."

Shopgirl: Steve Martin

The other night my brother and I were driving from Barrie to Toronto at night. There’s a point in the journey, when the city is still miles and miles away, when the road rises and a blanket of lights stretches out across the horizon, serving as a reminder of how enormous Toronto really is.

We got talking about the city, and how it’s really a collection of lives. Millions of human beings -- living, breathing, working, loving. And how each of them is connected, in some way, to others around them, forming tiny little networks and communities, pockets of friendship and community that interconnect and stretch into a giant web that make this city, which sometimes seems so cold, into a beautiful, livable place.

Shopgirl, based on a novella by Steve Martin, explores one lonely girl’s life in Los Angeles, and how she, almost by accident, builds her own little community.
I read the book first. It, like the movie, provided a glimpse into the life of Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes), a pretty ordinary young woman who lives in the big city, works at Saks Fifth Avenue, and every once in a while draws a picture, in a small way living out the artistic ambitions that brought her to the city in the first place.

She’s lonely, but her issues go deeper than that– touching on depression. She wants to change her life but she doesn’t really know how to go about it, and is just sort of surviving.

“She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near-misses is starting to overwhelm her,” says Steve Martin, who serves as narrator as well as one of the leading characters in the film.

By accident, two people come into Mirabelle’s life simultaneously, and they couldn’t be more different from each other, right down to the way they meet and their opening lines.

Jeremy, played by Jason Schwartzman, is a sloppy 20-something who has a job stenciling logos on amplifiers. Mirabelle meets him in a Laundromat.
“Hey. I mean hello. Hi,” Jeremy says, by way of introduction. He later tells her: “I’m an okay guy by the way,” and you intrinsically believe this is true, though there isn’t much substance to him beyond the fact that he is an “okay guy.”

Ray Porter, on the other hand, played by Martin, is a distinguished, wealthy, 50-something millionaire. He meets Mirabelle at the Saks glove counter where she works, purchasing a $145 pair of gloves. Disarming, yet giving little away, he leaves an impression on the wary Mirabelle. Later he gives her the gloves with a note that reads: “ I would like to have dinner with you.”

Mirabelle, glowing a little from the excitement of it all, dates both for a while. But inevitably, despite his assurances that he’s “not looking for anything permanent,” she falls in love with Ray and mostly forgets about Jeremy, who goes off to pursue a dream, somehow inspired by Mirabelle to do so.

Ray sweeps her away with well-practiced charm, gifts and maturity that give her a sense of comfort. But in reality, she’s less secure with Ray than she was without him, because his love is fleeting and superficial and he’s searching for something that Mirabelle can’t provide, and that maybe no woman can provide – perfection.

Things between then go okay for a while, but there’s a sense that this can’t last. And then the moment comes when it all has to fall apart.
Ray is planning a trip to New York, and he tells Mirabelle – cruelly though he doesn’t realize it -- that he’s thinking of buying a place, maybe a three-bedroom ‘in case he meets someone and wants to settle down.’

Those careless words break Mirabelle’s heart, but give her the kick she needed to walk away.
“I can hurt now or I can hurt later,” she says, before saying goodbye.

Somehow, Ray is not ready to love Mirabelle and never will be, and despite his early warnings to her, his spiel about “ keeping our options open,” and his attempts to make it clear they weren’t really together, her true feelings took over and she fell in love with him.

In the meantime, Jeremy has moved towards becoming the man Mirabelle needs, and when he comes back into her life, she sees that.

Ray has shown Mirabelle what she needs -- through what he doesn’t possess -- and Jeremy, through the process of life, has developed some of those characteristics and become someone she can love.

And when their paths cross it’s the right time and the right place, and something beautiful happens.

“I’ll protect you,” Jeremy says, now grown up and successful. And his words are just what Mirabelle needs to hear.

“What he offers is tender and true,” the narrator says.

Isn’t that what we all need?

The Voice: The Last Eyewitness (2006)

So, Holy Week is almost over. So far it’s felt pretty normal. Almost like any other week really. That’s my own fault and I’m pausing now to ask forgiveness….
Last weekend though, I attended an event that inspired me to search out some holiness. It was a pseudo book launch for a project called The Voice: The Last Eyewitness. There were some good bands there – Waterdeep and the Rob Seay Band – who lifted my spirits considerably. And the main writer and proponent of The Voice, Chris Seay, was there too.
He challenged and inspired me and I bought the book.
The Voice is a retelling of the last week of Jesus’ life. Meant as a companion to the Bible, not a replacement, its intention is to recapture the art, poetry, the prose and the beauty of the scriptures as they were originally written. Seay, and the others behind the project, believe much of that beauty has been lost in translation over the centuries that have passed since the New Testament was written.
“Too often the passion, grit, humour and beauty has been lost in the translation process,” reads a description of the book. “The Voice seeks to capture what was lost.”
The story is told in the voice of John, Jesus’ beloved disciple, as an old man looking back on the most important period of his life, and in history.
This is done with scripture, mostly from the Gospel of John but also from the other three Gospels. It’s incredibly illustrated, and uses boxed sidebars that explore what John may have been thinking – often these are insights from scholarly sources -- as he witnessed miracles, questioned, and grew in faith as he saw heaven and earth joined together in this son of man called Jesus.
The Voice was crafted carefully and painstakingly, with the creative skill of people like Seay tempered by theologians and historians to ensure the accuracy of the content.

I quickly became absorbed in the pages as they told this story that is so familiar to me, in a brand new way that made me feel like I was hearing it for the first time. I often felt, as was the expressed intention of the writers, like I was sitting around a campfire with good friends talking about the most important thing in the world.
“I’ve outlived the rest of the “the twelve,” and His other followers,” John says, early in his narrative. “I can’t tell you how lonely it is to be the last person with a memory, some would even say a fuzzy memory, of what Jesus looked like, the sound of His voice, the manner of His walk. The penetrating look in His eyes. All I can do is tell my story.”

And the story is told beautifully. John emphasizes over and over the fact that he witnessed the events of Jesus’ life with his own eyes, and that when everything else is forgotten, it must be remembered that what he is setting down on paper…is true.
“Now I want to be very clear. This is my story, but unlike what you hear from most storytellers, this is completely true. I am giving you the testimony of an eyewitness, and like my brother disciples, I will swear on my life that it is true.”

Hmmm. I can almost smell the campfire smoke as I settle-in to listen to the story.

Chris shared an anecdote from his own life that helps me to explain why this book is important.
He shared about his grandfather, his “Pappy,” who only had one arm. He passed away when Chris was still young. Chris was often curious as to how Pappy lost his arm, but his family always shied away from the subject. Finally, when he was old enough, he learned that Pappy had been shot when he objected to the way a man was treating a woman.
But Pappy was so angry that despite his wound, he picked up his attacker with his good arm, and threw him across the room. And, such was the force of the blow, the man died.
After the incident, Pappy became a pacifist, desperately avoiding violence or confrontation.
After Chris learned this, he started to realize some truths about his own life. He realized why his own father also avoided confrontation, even at times when Chris felt he should have taken a stand. And he realized how his grandfather’s life, and the implications of that event, had trickled down and affected his own life, contributing to make him into the man he is now.
When Chris became a Christian, he realized that the Bible, the written, divinely inspired words of Jesus and his followers, had the same ability to help him see truths in his own life. It is Jesus’ story, and as a follower of him, it was Chris’ story too – a living story that coincides with the heartbeats of those who seek to know Him.

The Voice is an attempt to broaden and deepen that search for truth by helping us know who this man Jesus was and what his life could mean to our own.

So, as Holy Week now merges into Good Friday, a day that commemorates the most important journey Jesus would take in his short life, I’m trying to take some time to get lost in these pages and rediscover Him as I struggle along on my own journey.

Check out the conscious reflex drawings of Rob Pepper at: http://www.dailydrawingdiary.com/
Check out Waterdeep at: http://www.waterdeep.com/

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

I wandered down to the Bloor Cinema a couple of nights ago to see A Streetcar Named Desire. I was by myself, and there’s no better cinema than the Bloor for solo movie watching. It’s perfect.

This film was built for the big screen. It’s one of those black and white movies that fit the genre so well you forget there’s no colour. Dark, smouldering and moody. It’s genuine.
Starring Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh and Kim Hunter, it’s a story about Blanche DuBois (Vivian Leigh), a southern belle who looks up her sister in the big city after years apart.
DuBois is a fragile and sensitive creature who’s hiding something, and we later discover she’s left an unsavoury trail of men behind her, along with her innocence.
Her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) is a rough around the edges, but very lovable city girl who left home and never looked back.
The lightning rod in this story though is Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski, played superbly by Brando. He’s raw and intense, rough and intimidating, and completely unapologetic about it. He reminds the sisters “I’m king around here,” and from the very beginning he has it in for Blanche who has come to stay in their tiny apartment, disrupting his life.

Roger Ebert says Brando’s portrayal of this character changed the concept of the male lead in Hollywood. Before Streetcar, says Ebert, men, even villains, almost always had a gentle, polished undertone that was always just barely visible, like Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen (a performance that beat Brando for the Oscar that year) — he just wasn’t totally despicable, there was something refined about him that was never too far below the surface.
Brando has none of that. He’s malicious and mean, stalking around his home like he’s ready to pounce at any time. And yet, there’s something redeeming about him. You know he loves his wife desperately, and he needs her, and though there is intense friction, there’s also intense loyalty and love between them.
Some of their most tender moments come immediately after their ugliest clashes. After the most violent episode Stella runs out of the apartment, and you know she’s hurt badly and may never return. She escapes to the neighbours upstairs, seeking shelter from the storm that’s raging downstairs. In a legendary scene, Brando, desperate and empty without her, stands out in the street screaming “Stella! Stella!” in a heart wrenching show of vulnerability that underscores the codependency between them.

And in this way also, the film is real, showing that in everyday life, love, by necessity, can learn to deal with all sorts of very ugly things.

There’s no happy ending here. Blanche tries to hide what she’s left behind, but we still see traces of it. Her secrets, one by one, come out, and we learn of her mistakes and her steady descent to the final rock bottom landing.
There’s a shocking scene where she is confronted by a man who has proposed to her. He’s been told about her loose past, and he forces her into the light, exposing the imperfections she has tried so hard to hide. It’s hard to watch, but follows on this movie’s great strength – honesty.

Her secrets all come out and she comes unglued, finally facing up to her past and admitting everything boldly, almost proudly, but without trying to jstify anything.

He leaves her, and when everything seems at its bleakest, in comes Brando. And he makes things worse in the swaggering, bullying language he speaks for most of this film.
He takes her one peg lower, and in the famous scene that marks the climax of the story he assaults her – his hatred simply palpable. She never recovers from it, and the story ends with her heartbreaking departure, probably forever, from their lives.
You’re left with the feeling that all Blanche had left in the world was the hope she had hung on her sister – and when that falls apart, she does too.

There's no happy solution to tie this movie up in a nice package, but there’s something honest about this sad story that makes it beautiful, and well worth $5 at the Bloor Cinema.

The Idiot: Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’m scared to review a book of such brilliance. I read Crime and Punishment last year in Africa, and the characters came alive for me. I got so wrapped up in the story, it surrounded me and picked me up and carried me along with it. Now, almost a year later, I still find myself thinking about the characters as old friends whom I once shared something special with, but haven’t seen in a while.
The Idiot has affected me in the same way, and I know Myshkin and Nastasya and Aglaia and Kolya and the others are going to be with me for a long time.

Myshkin, who has returned to Russia after years of medical treatment in Switzerland, is ‘The Idiot.’ He’s earned this title through a combination of illness and innocent simplicity that his contemporaries in Russian society can’t understand.
His natural honesty, truth, courage and love are foreign to them, and despite their mostly warm feelings for this man, he is known behind his back, and sometimes to his face, as The Idiot.
Myshkin is a Christlike character. He always forgives the scoundrels around him who try to take advantage of him. They love him for it, but their nature still can’t allow them to truly follow his example.
He is mocked and revered equally, however. Kolya and Vera give him their unconditional dedication and love, while others respect him from a distance, and others disguise their affection with jealousy or mockery.
Upon his homecoming to Russia, Myshkin finds himself drawn irresistibly towards Nastasya Filipovna, a renowned beauty, but a fallen woman who was raised up as the mistress of a wealthy St. Petersburg man. As a result she is cruel and capricious and has trouble truly loving. She represents the prostitute Christ befriended at the well, as the prostitute represented fallen humanity not worthy to even stand before Christ, but somehow still loved by him.
Myshkin loves Nastasya for what she has suffered, and his love is based more on pity and sadness than passion. She loves him briefly then abandons him coldly.
Myshkin begins to fall in love with another woman. Aglaia is, in many ways, the opposite of Nastasya. Innocent and pure, young and beautiful, but at the same time she is also capable of great deception and cruelty.
Their love develops, and Aglaia becomes a passionate advocate of Myshkin, though she rarely speaks in his defence. But their love and pending marriage fall apart when Myshkin is forced to decide between Aglaia, and caring for someone who needs him desperately.
Though he knows the consequences will be harsh, Myshkin’s character only allows one choice, and Aglaia’s heart suffers the consequences. But even as Myshkin makes this choice, he knows what the consequences will be.
His Christlikeness is clear in this action, because he knows he is bringing ruin upon himself – the loss of love, of an adopted family that loves him as a son, of any public respect, even of his health. But as Christ sacrificed himself to fulfill his purpose, so does Myshkin.
At the climax of the story, Myshkin suffers his most public humiliation, and crowds gather around his home to enjoy the spectacle of a broken man.
Myshkin, always kind and generous and polite, opens his door even to them, offering them tea despite his grief.
Keller, a rough and tough character known for his prowess as a boxer and his willingness to fight, is astounded, and says this to a companion: “You and I would have made a row, had a fight, disgraced ourselves, have dragged in the police, but he’s made a lot of new friends – and what friends!”
The companion, Lebedyev, responds: “Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, but revealed them to babes."
As the Russians around him did, I too find myself feeling great respect and compassion for Myshkin, along with a desire to follow the example he sets. But at the same time, there’s pity mixed in with my admiration for him – and the lurking knowledge that my pride would have to be crushed and broken too, before I could become like Myshkin.

A Passage to India

Title: A Passage to India
Author: E.M. Forster

This is one of those books that has been sitting on my shelf for years. Ignored. Unattended. Forgotten. Then came a day when I had nothing to read, and absently scanned my shelf until my eyes rested on it's dusty spine. I picked it up. I read it. I enjoyed it. Maybe you should read it too. Or not. Read this synopsis and decide for yourself. Like the book, my review starts out a little boring but gets interesting fast. Good luck.

A Passage to India provides a detailed look into British India in the early 1900s, focusing on a city called Chandrapore.

The story centres around Aziz, a Muslim Indian doctor and his friends, Fielding, the British school principal, Ronny, a British court official, his fiancé Adele and his mother Miss Moore.

Miss Moore and Adele are visiting India, and Ronny, as an investigation into whether or not Ronny and Adele are suited for marriage.

Ronny has been in India just long enough to have little regard for nationals or their culture. Indian characters in the book explain that new arrivals are often genuinely kind and sensitive, but that it wears off quickly. With Ronny, it has clearly worn off.

For Miss Moore and Adele the thrill hasn’t worn off. In fact, they express a desire to experience ‘the real India.’

This leads to a lame ‘bridge party,’ at the British club. For one day, Indians are allowed in and a party is staged to ‘bridge’ the gap between east and west. The result is embarrassing and insulting for the Indians invited. However, it sparks a friendship between Fielding and the two women, as well as Aziz and several other Indians.

From there the little group meets again at a small party Fielding holds. In a rash moment Aziz offers to take the women to the Marabar Caves, and they accept his invitation, though it was only meant as a gesture. He has never been there himself, and planning the event will be expensive and awkward.

Eventually, the outing to the caves is pulled off, barely. For a time, Aziz is on top of the world, having organized this successful event for the British women—although the reader understands that no one is actually having a good time—but it all comes crashing down around him when a misunderstanding occurs in one of the caves and Adele believes she has been molested.

This leads to the climax of the story. Aziz is hauled in to jail, Adele has a breakdown, Miss Moore gets fed up with everyone, Fielding turns against the Brits and stands with Aziz, believing in his innocence, the community becomes polarized and the Muslim Indians threaten to revolt.

The event provides an opportunity to see inside both camps during a time of catastrophe. The Indians become angry, violent and unforgiving, loyal to their friends and hateful to their enemies. The British become scared, hard and cold, insulated and defensive towards anything and anyone foreign.

Somehow, Forster knows these two groups intimately. His prose captures the Arab-influenced Muslim Indian perfectly—as perfectly as I can imagine, having lived among Arab Muslims. And his description of the interaction between the two groups, and especially the Indian thought process he describes, is incredible.

The book is regularly interrupted by passages, sometimes pages long, describing India and its people. Elegant prose that paints a compelling picture of an ancient land and culture and people, invaded by a foreign power that fails to understand that beauty.

“The sky settles everything—not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful. By herself she can do little—only feeble outbursts of flowers. But when the sky chooses, glory can rain into the Chandrapore bazaars or a benediction pass from horizon to horizon . The sky can do this because it is so strong and so enormous. Strength comes from the sun, infused in it daily, size from the prostrate earth. No Mountains infringe on the curve, League after league the earth lies flat, heaves a little, is flat again. Only in the south, where a group of fists and fingers are thrust up through the soil, is the endless expanse interrupted. These fists and fingers are the Marabar Hills, containing the extraordinary caves.”

This book left me with a desire to see India. It also left me with a strong distaste for British influence in that country and the legacy it has left. That feeling might just overwhelm the desire to see the country.